“Adieu, adieu!” he cried as the gigger dubber on duty dubbed the gigger for his benefit. “We shall meet anon!”
“Mr. Thistlethwaite is a great swell,” said Bill Whiting as he usurped the departed visitor’s place alongside Richard. “Is he your London informant, Richard my love?”
The old nickname jarred. “Do not call me that, Bill,” he said a little sadly. “It reminds me of Gloucester Gaol’s women.”
“Aye, it does. I am sorry.” He was not the old, cheeky Bill these days; Ceres tended to reject jokers. He thought of something else. “At first I thought that Stanley from Seend would become one of us, but he is only with us for what he can get.”
“What could ye expect, Bill? You and Taffy made off with live animals. Stanley from Seend was caught skinning a dead one. He will always fleece what cannot fight back.”
“Oh, I do not know,” said Bill with a dreamy look at variance with his perky round countenance. “If you and Mr. Thistlethwaite are only half right, ’tis a long sail from here to Botany Bay. A spar might fall on Stanley’s pate. And would it not be a sight for sore eyes if Mr. Sykes met with an accident before we go?”
Richard took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Do not even think such things, Bill, let alone say them! There is only one way any of us can ever hope to see an end to misery, and that is to endure it without ever attracting attention to ourselves from those who have the power to increase our misery. Hate them, but bear them. All things end. Ceres will. And so, sooner or later, will Botany Bay. We are not young, but we are not old either. Do ye not understand? In surviving, we win! That alone must concern us.”
And so time wore on, marked by the little circuits of the dredge bucket’s chain—in, out, around. Piles of stinking mud. The stinking orlop of Ceres. The stinking bodies hustled out once a week for burial in a piece of waste ground near Woolwich that Mr. Duncan Campbell had acquired for the purpose. New faces kept arriving; some of them went to the waste ground. Old faces went to it too, but none belonging to Richard or to Ike Rogers.
A certain camaraderie existed between everyone on the orlop, born out of tribulations in common, remotest between groups who could hardly communicate. By the end of the first seven months every face which lasted was known, nodded to, gossip and news exchanged, sometimes simple pleasantries. There were fights, some very serious; there were feuds, some very bitter; there were a certain number of snitches and toadies like William Stanley from Seend; and, rarely, someone died violently.
As in any other enforced congress of very different kinds of men, the grains of single individuals and the various layers of similar weight shook until they settled into stability. Though a monthly repetition of Handelian and Hippocratic invocations served to keep other groups too wary to encroach on their domain, both Richard’s and Ike’s groups achieved confraternity as well as an exclusivity. They were not bully boys or pranksters or predators, but nor were they the prey of those who were. Live and let live: it was a good rule to go by.
Mr. Zachariah Partridge found no reason to alter his opinion of his dredging crew; as the days lengthened and the hours of labor increased, he was paid his £5 bonus for a full load more frequently than he had dreamed possible. These fellows made a ritual out of keeping fit by working and eating well.
Like everybody else on that populous river from the bum boat denizens to the hulk gaolers, he was well aware that Botany Bay loomed. This disposed him to be generous with his crew because he knew that were they chosen to sail, his chances of getting another crew half as good were slender. The Ricketts tobacco had arrived, together with a small keg of wonderful rum. So when Richard and his men wanted the services of a bum boat vending sometimes peculiar wares, he indulged them provided that the dredge scooped in its stipulated amount of ballast. Fascinated, he watched them accumulate duck clothing, sea soap, shoes, scissors, good razors, strops, whetstones, fine-toothed combs, oil of tar, extract of malt, underdrawers, thick stockings, liniment, string, stout sacks, screws, tools.
“Ye’re touched in the noddle,” he observed. “D’ye expect to be Noahses?”
“Aye,” said Richard solemnly. “That is a fitting comparison. I doubt there are any bum boats at Botany Bay.”
News came from Jem Thistlethwaite whenever he had more of it. In late August he was able to tell them that Lord Sydney had written formally to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury and notified them that 750 convicts were to be ferried to a new colony in New South Wales likely to be situated at Botany Bay. They would be in the custody of His Majesty’s Royal Navy and under the direct control of three companies of marines, who were to sign on for three years’ duty dating from arrival in New South Wales.
“They will not simply throw ye ashore,” he said, “so much seems certain. The Home Office is awash in lists, from convicts to rum, and tenders for the contracts. Though,” he grinned, “it is to be an expedition of male convicts only. They plan to provide women from islands in the vicinity, no doubt in the same manner as Rome obtained women from the Sabines on the Quirinal. Which reminds me that I must give ye the existing volumes of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.”
“Christ!” Bill Whiting exclaimed. “Indian wives! But what sort of Indians? They come in all varieties from black through red to yellow, and fair as Venus or ugly as Medusa.”
But in October Mr. Thistlethwaite informed them that there were to be no Indian wives. “The Parliament was not amused at a reference to the rape of the Sabine women, for all could see that the Indian men would not offer their women as a gift, or maybe even sell them. The Do Gooders shrieked a treat. So women convicts will sail too—how many, I do not know. As forty of the marines are taking their wives and families, it has been agreed that husbands and wives in prison together will both go. There are some such, apparently.”
“We knew a pair in Gloucester,” said Richard. “Bess Parker and Ned Pugh. I have no idea what has become of them, but who can tell? Perhaps they have been chosen if both live. . . . Yet what a shame to send men like Ned Pugh and women like Lizzie Lock when by next year they will have served five of their seven years.”
“Do not hope for Lizzie Lock, Richard. I hear that the women to go will be drawn from the London Newgate.”
“Ugh!” was the general reaction to that.
A week later their fount of knowledge was back.
“A governor and a lieutenant-governor have been appointed for New South Wales. A Captain Arthur Phillip of the Royal Navy is to be the governor, and a Major Robert Ross of the Marine Corps is his lieutenant-governor. Ye’ll be in the hands of the Royal Navy, and that means ye’ll be introduced to the cat. No naval man, even a marine sort, can live with out the cat, and I do not mean a four-legged creature which says meow.” He shuddered, decided to change the awful subject. “Other appointments have been made. The colony is to exist under naval law—no elected government whatsoever. The judge-advocate is a marine, I believe. There will be a chief surgeon and several assistant surgeons, and of course—how could ye live without a good, stoutly English God—a chaplain. For the moment, however, it is all hush-hush. No public announcement has been made.”
“What is this Governor Phillip like?” asked Richard.
Mr. Thistlethwaite guffawed. “He is a nobody, Richard! A true naval nobody. Admiral Lord Howe was very disparaging when he heard, but I imagine he had some young nephew in mind for a thousand-pound-a-year commission. My source is a very old friend—Sir George Rose, Treasurer of the Royal Navy. He informs me that Lord Sydney chose this Phillip personally after a long conversation with Mr. Pitt, who is determined this experiment will work. An it don’t, his government will face defeat on something as piddling as the prison issue. All those felons with nowhere to go, and ever more of them into the bargain. The problem is that transportation is linked to slavery in zealous, reforming Do Gooder minds. So when a Do Gooder espouses the one, all too often he espouses the other.”
“There are similarities,” said Richard dryly. “Tell me more a
bout this Governor Phillip, who will be the arbiter of our fates.”
Mr. Thistlethwaite licked his lips, wishing he had a glass of brandy. “A nobody, as I have already said. His father was a German and taught languages in London. His mother had been the widow of a naval captain, and was a remote connection of Lord Pembroke’s. The boy went to a naval version of Colston’s, so they were poor. After the Seven Years’ War he was put on half-pay and chose to serve in the Portuguese navy, which he did with distinction for several years. His biggest Royal Navy command was a fourth-rater, in which he saw no action. He has come out of a second retirement to take this present commission. Not a young man, nor yet a very old one.”
Will Connelly frowned. “It sounds distinctly odd to me, Jem.” He sighed. “In fact, it sounds very much as if we are to be dumped at Botany Bay. Otherwise the governor would be—oh, I do not know, a lord or an admiral at the very least.”
“Give me the name of one lord or admiral who would consent to go to the far ends of the earth for a mere thousand pounds a year, Will, and I shall offer ye England’s Crown and Scepter.” Mr. James Thistlethwaite grinned evilly, the lampoonist in him stirred. “A refreshing trip to the West Indies, perhaps. But this? It is very likely a death trap. No one really knows what lies at Botany Bay, though all are assuming it is milk and honey for no better reason than that to think thus is convenient. To be its governor is the sort of job only a nobody would accept.”
“You still have not told us why this nobody,” said Ike.
“Sir George Rose suggested him originally because he is both efficient and compassionate. His words. However, Phillip is also a rarity in the Royal Navy—speaks a number of foreign tongues very fluently. As his German father was a language teacher, he probably absorbed foreign tongues together with his mother’s milk. He speaks French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian.”
“Of what use will they be at Botany Bay, where the Indians will speak none of them?” asked Neddy Perrott.
“Of no use at all, but of great use in getting there,” said Mr. Thistlethwaite, striving manfully to be patient—how did Richard put up with them? “There are to be several ports of call, and none of them are English. Teneriffe—Spanish. Cape Verde—Portuguese. Rio de Janeiro—Portuguese. The Cape of Good Hope—Dutch. It is a very delicate business, Neddy. Imagine it! In sails a fleet of ten armed English ships, unannounced, to anchor in a harbor owned by a country we have warred against, or gone a-poaching in its slaving grounds. Mr. Pitt regards it as imperative that the fleet be able to establish excellent relations with the various governors of these ports of call. English? No one will understand a word of it, not a word.”
“Why not use interpreters?” asked Richard.
“And have the dealings go on through an intermediary of low rank? With the Portuguese and the Spanish? The most punctilious, protocolic people in existence? And with the Dutch, who would do Satan down if they thought there was a chance to make a profit? No, Mr. Pitt insists that the governor himself be able to communicate directly with every touchy provincial governor between England and Botany Bay. Captain Arthur Phillip’s was the only name came up.” He rumbled a wicked laugh. “Hurhur-hur! It is upon such trivialities, Richard, that events turn. For they are not trivialities. Yet who thinks of them when the reckoning is totted up? We envision the likes of Sir Walter Raleigh—ruffler, freebooter, intimate of Good Queen Bess. A flourish of lace handkerchief, a sniff at his pomander, and all fall at his feet, overcome. But quite honestly we do not live in those times. Our modern world is very different, and who knows? Perhaps this nobody, Captain Arthur Phillip, has exactly the qualities this particular task demands. Sir George Rose seems to believe so. And Mr. Pitt and Lord Sydney agree with him. That Admiral Lord Howe does not is immaterial. He may be First Lord of the Admiralty, but the Royal Navy does not rule England yet.”
The rumors flew as the days drew in again and the intervals between Mr. Zachariah Partridge’s £5 bonuses stretched out, not helped by two weeks of solid rain at the end of November which saw the convicts completely confined to the orlop. Tempers shortened, and those who had come to some sort of arrangement with their shore supervisors or dredgemen whereby they ate extra food on the job found it very hard to go back to Ceres rations, which had not improved in quality or quantity. Mr. Sykes trebled his escort when obliged to be in the same area as a large group of convicts, and the racket upstairs on the Londoners’ deck was audible on the orlop.
They had ways of passing the time; in the absence of gin and rum, chiefly by gambling. Each group owned at least one deck of playing cards and a pair of dice, but not everyone who lost (the stakes varied from food to chores) was gallant about it. Those who could read formed a substratum; perhaps ten per cent of the total number of men exchanged books if they had them or begged books if they did not, though ownership was jealously guarded. And perhaps twenty per cent washed their linen handouts from Mr. Duncan Campbell, stringing them on lines which crisscrossed the beams and made walking for exercise even harder. Though the orlop was not overcrowded, the available space for walking limited the shuffling, head-bowing parade to about fifty men at any one time. The rest had either to sit on the benches or lie on the platforms. In the six months between July and the end of December, Ceres lost 80 men of disease—over a quarter of the entire convict complement, and evenly distributed between the two decks.
Late in December Mr. Thistlethwaite was able to tell them more. By now his audience had greatly enlarged and consisted of all who could understand him—and that number had grown too, thanks to propinquity. Only the slowest rustics among the orlop inmates by now could not follow the speech of those who spoke an English somewhat akin to that written in books, as well as grasp a great deal of flash lingo provided the users of it spoke slowly enough.
“The tenders have been let,” he announced to his listeners, “and some tears have been shed. Mr. Duncan Campbell decided that he had sufficient on his plate with his academies, so ended in not tendering at all. The cheapest tender, from Messrs. Turnbull Macaulay and T. Gregory—seven-and-a-third pence per day per man or woman—did not succeed. Nor did that of the slavers, Messrs. Camden, Calvert & King—Lord Sydney did not think it wise to use a slaving firm for this first expedition, though again the price was cheap. The successful tender is a friend of Campbell’s named William Richards Junior. He describes himself as a ship’s broker, but his interests go well beyond that. He has partners, naturally. And I take it that he is cooperating closely with Campbell. I should tell ye that the lot of the marines to go with ye is not enviable, for they are included in the tender price on much the same rations save that they get rum and flour daily.”
“How many of us are to go?” asked a Lancastrian.
“There are to be five transports to carry about five hundred and eighty male convicts and almost two hundred female, as well as about two hundred marines plus forty wives and assorted children. Three storeships have been commissioned, and the Royal Navy is represented by a tender and an armed vessel which will function as the fleet’s flagship.”
“What are they calling ‘transports’?” asked a Yorkshireman named William Dring. “I am a seaman from Hull, yet it is a sort of ship I do not know.”
“Transports convey men,” said Richard levelly, meeting Dring’s eyes. “In the main, troops to an overseas destination. I believe there are some such, though they would be old by now—the ones used to send troops to the American War had already been used during the Seven Years’ War. And there are coastal transports for ferrying marines and soldiers around England, Scotland and Ireland. They would be far too small. Jem, were there any specifications in the tender for transports?”
“Only that they be shipshape and capable of a long voyage through uncharted seas. They have, I understand, been inspected by the Navy, but how thoroughly I could not say.” Mr. Thistlethwaite drew a breath and decided to be honest. What was the point in giving these poor wretches false hopes? “The truth, of course, is th
at there was not a rush to offer vessels. What Lord Sydney had counted on, it seems, was an offer from the East India Company, whose ships are the best. He even dangled the bait of the ships’ proceeding directly from Botany Bay to Wampoa in Cathay to pick up cargoes of tea, but the East India Company was not interested. It prefers that its ships call in to Bengal before proceeding to Wampoa, why I do not know. Therefore no source of vessels proven sound for long voyages was at Lord Sydney’s disposal. It may well be that naval inspection consisted in culling the best out of a poor lot.” He looked around at the dismayed faces and regretted his candor. “Do not think, my friends, that ye’ll be embarked upon tubs likely to sink. No ship’s owner can afford to risk his property unduly, even if his underwriters allowed him the opportunity. No, that is not what I am trying to tell ye.”
Richard spoke. “I know what ye’re trying to say, Jem. That our transports are slavers. Why should they not be? Slaving has fallen off since we have been denied access to Georgia and Carolina, not to mention Virginia. There must be any amount of slavers looking for work. And they are already constructed to carry men. Bristol and Liverpool have them tied up along their docks by the score, and some of them are big enough to hold several hundred slaves.”
“Aye, that is it,” sighed Mr. Thistlethwaite. “You are to go in slavers, those of you who will be picked to go.”
“Is there any word of when?” asked Joe Robinson from Hull.
“None.” Mr. Thistlethwaite looked around the circle of faces and grinned. “Still, ’tis Christmastide, and I have arranged for the Ceres orlop to be issued with a half-pint of rum for all hands. Ye will not have the chance for any on the voyage, so do not guzzle it, let it sit a while on your tongues.”
He drew Richard to one side. “I have brought ye another lot of dripstones from Cousin James-the-druggist—Sykes will hand them over, have no fear.” He threw his arms about Richard and hugged him so tightly that none saw the bag of guineas slip from his coat pocket into Richard’s jacket pocket. “ ’Tis all I can do for ye, friend of my heart. Write, I beg, whenever that may be.”