“My thumbs are pricking,” said Joey Long over supper on the 5th of January, 1787, and shivered.
The others turned to look at him seriously; this simple soul sometimes had premonitions, and they were never wrong.
“Any idea why, Joey?” asked Ike Rogers.
Joey shook his head. “No. They are just pricking.”
But Richard knew. Tomorrow was the 6th, and on each 6th of January for the past two years he had begun the move to a new place of pain. “Joey feels a change coming,” he said. “Tonight we get our things together. We wash, we cut our hair back to the scalp, we comb each other for lice, we make sure no item of clothing or sack or bag or box is unmarked. In the morning they will move us.”
Job Hollister’s lip quivered. “We might not be chosen.”
“We might not. But I think Joey’s thumbs say we will.”
And thank you, Jem Thistlethwaite, for that half-pint of rum. While the Ceres orlop snored, I was able to secret your guineas in our boxes, though no one knows save me.
PART FOUR
From
January of 1787
until
January of 1788
At dawn the tranfportees were culled, a total of 60 men in their habitual groups of six, leaving another 73 convicts looking vastly relieved at being passed over. Who, how or why the ten groups chosen to go from the Ceres orlop had been selected no one knew, save that Mr. Hanks and Mr. Sykes had a list and worked from it. The ages of those going varied from fifteen to sixty; most of them (as all the old hands knew) were unskilled, and some of them were sick. Mr. Hanks and Mr. Sykes ignored such considerations; they had their list and that, it seemed, was that.
William Stanley from Seend and the epileptic Mikey Dennison were hopping from foot to foot in glee because they were not on the list. Life on the Ceres orlop was comfortable, there would soon be fresh fleeces.
“Bastards!” Bill Whiting hissed. “Look at them gloat!”
The door opened; four new convicts were thrust inside. Will Connelly and Neddy Perrott squawked simultaneously.
“Crowder, Davis, Martin and Morris from Bristol,” explained Connelly. “They must have been sent from Bristol just for this.”
Bill Whiting gave Richard a broad wink. “Mr. Hanks! Oh, Mr. Hanks!” he called.
“What?” asked Mr. Herbert Hanks, who had been liberally greased in the palm by Mr. James Thistlethwaite and had promised to do his utmost to favor Richard’s and Ike’s groups if they were among those to go. That he was inclined to honor his promise lay in the fact that Mr. Thistlethwaite had whispered of additional largesse after they had gone if his spies informed him that what could be done had indeed been done. “Speak up, cully!”
“Sir, those four men are from Bristol. Are they going?”
“They are,” said Mr. Hanks warily.
The old, merry Whiting looked sideways at Richard, then the round face assumed an expression of diffident humility for Mr. Hanks. “Sir, they are but four. The thing is, we do so hate being parted from Stanley and Dennison, Mr. Hanks, sir. I wondered. . . ?”
Mr. Hanks consulted his list. “I see that the two who were to go with them died yesterday. They is four too many or two too few, whichever way youse looks at it. Stanley and Dennison will round it off real nice.”
“Got you!” said Whiting beneath his breath.
“Thankee, you bugger!” said Ike through his teeth. “I was looking forward to life without that pair.”
Neddy Perrott giggled. “Believe me, Ike, two craftier shits than Crowder and Davis do not exist. William Stanley from Seend will meet his match and more.”
“Besides, Ike,” said Whiting, smiling angelically, “we will need a couple of workers to mop the deck and do the washing.”
The convicts to go were fitted with locked waist bands and locked manacles, but no extensions to their ankles; instead, a long chain was passed from one waist to the next and fused each six men together. Weeping and wailing because they had not sufficient time to gather all the things they needed, Stanley and Dennison were hitched to the four newcomers from Bristol.
“That makes sixty-six of us in eleven groups,” said Richard.
Ike grimaced. “And at least that many from London.”
But that, as they found out later, was not the case. Only six groups of six were chosen from upstairs, and by no means confined to the true flash coves of an Old Bailey conviction and the London Newgate; most were from around London and many of those from Kent of the Thames, particularly Deptford. Why, no one knew, even Mr. Hanks, who simply followed his list. The whole expedition was a mystery to all who had dealings with it, whether a part of it or whether remaining behind.
His box and two canvas sacks by his side, Richard told the orlop transportees off: one gang from Yorkshire and Durham, one from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, one from Hampshire, three from Berkshire, Wiltshire, Sussex and Oxfordshire, and three from the West Country. With an occasional oddment. But Richard’s puzzle-loving mind had long ago made certain deductions: some parts of England produced convicts galore, while others like Cumberland and a large tract of counties around Leicestershire produced none at all. Why was that? Too bucolic? Too sparsely populated? No, Richard did not think so. It depended upon the judges.
* * *
Two big lighters lay alongside. The three West Country groups and the two groups from around Yorkshire were loaded into the first—a tight fit—and the six remaining groups were squeezed perilously into the second boat. At about ten o’clock on that fine, cold morning the oarsmen stroked off downriver toward the great bend in the half-mile-wide Thames just to the east of Woolwich. Traffic was light, but the news had gotten around; the denizens of bum boats, dredges and other small craft waved, whistled shrilly and cheered, while the men on the dangerously overloaded second boat prayed no one sailed past close enough to create a wake ripple.
Around the curve lay Gallion’s Reach, an anchorage for big ships occupied on that day by two vessels only, one about two-thirds the size of the other. Richard’s heart sank. The larger vessel had not changed a scrap—a ship-rigged barque standing about fourteen feet from gunwales to water, which meant she had no cargo aboard—no poop and no forecastle, just a quarterdeck and a galley aft of the foremast. Stripped for speed and action.
His eyes met those belonging to Connelly and Perrott.
“Alexander,” said Neddy Perrott hollowly.
Richard’s mouth was a thin line. “Aye, that’s her.”
“Ye know her?” asked Ike.
“That we do,” said Connelly grimly. “A slaver out of Bristol, late a privateer. Famous for dying crews and dying cargoes.”
Ike swallowed. “And the other?”
“I do not know her, so she ain’t from Bristol,” said Richard. “She will have a bronze plate screwed to her hull at the stern, so we ought to be able to see it. We are going to Alexander.”
The nameplate said she was Lady Penrhyn.
“Out of Liverpool and built special for slaving,” said Aaron Davis, one of the newcomers from Bristol. “Brand new, by the look of her. What a maiden voyage! Lord Penrhyn must be desperate.”
“No sign of anyone going aboard her,” said Bill Whiting.
“She will fill up, never fear,” said Richard.
They had to get themselves and their gear up a rope ladder to an opening in the gunwale amidships, a twelve-foot climb. Those ahead of his group were not encumbered by boxes, but even when their chains became entangled in the rungs and supports no one appeared in the gap above to help.
Luckily the chain connecting them ran free and distance between each of them could be expanded or contracted. “Bunch up and give me all the chain,” said Richard when their turn came. He tossed both his sacks up, used his manacles to cradle his box, and scaled those few feet in a hurry to make sure no one already up had the presence of mind to pinch one of his sacks. Once aboard, he gathered in his stuff and took the boxes his fellows handed up to him.
Alexander’s two longboats and her jollyboat had been taken off the deck and put in the water, so there was room for Richard to move his three West Country groups out of the way. Confusion was his initial impression; knots of scarlet-coated marines stood about looking like thunder, two sashed marine officers and two corporals manned a small scatter cannon swiveled on the quarterdeck rail, and a motley collection of sailors hung from the shrouds or perched on various kennels like spectators at a boxing match in a meadow.
What happens now? As there was no one to ask, he watched the confusion grow ever worse. Long before all eleven lots of convicts were on the deck the place resembled a menagerie—an impression added to by dozens of goats, sheep, pigs, geese and ducks running all over the place pursued by a dozen excited dogs. Feeling someone watching him fixedly from above, he lifted his head to see a large marmalade cat balanced comfortably on a low spar surveying the chaos with an expression of bored cynicism. Of gaolers there were none; they had stayed behind on Ceres, responsibility for the transportees ended.
“Soldiers,” whispered Billy Earl from rural Wiltshire.
“Marines,” corrected Neddy Perrott. “White facings on their coats. Soldiers have colored facings.”
Finally a first lieutenant of marines descended in a snappy fashion from the quarterdeck and surveyed the scene with a nasty look in his pale blue eyes. “My name,” he bellowed with a burr in his voice, “is First Lieutenant James Shairp of the 55th Company, Portsmouth! Ye convicts are under my command and will answer to no one except His Majesty’s Marines. It is our duty to feed ye and keep ye from annoying anybody, including us. Ye will do as ye are told and not speak unless ye are spoken to.” He pointed to a yawning hatch aft of the mainmast. “Get yourselves and your rubbish below, one lot at a time. Sergeant Knight and Corporal Flannery will precede ye and show ye where ye are to be stowed, but before ye move I will inform ye what the business is. Ye will go to the berths the sergeant assigns ye and ye will not change from those berths because ye will be counted and told off by number and by name every day. Each man is allowed twenty inches, no more and no less—we have to fit two hundred and ten of ye into a very small space. If ye fight among yourselves, ye will be flogged. If ye steal rations, ye will be flogged. If ye answer back, ye will be flogged. If ye want what ye are not allowed, ye will be flogged. Corporal Sampson is the company flogger and he takes pride in his work. If ye like to lie down—and lie down is all ye will be able to do—then do not court a bloody back. Now get going.” He turned on his heel and marched back to the quarterdeck and the scatter cannon.
Though Scotch convicts were nonexistent, Richard recognized the speech pattern by now, particularly Shairp’s constant use of “ye.” The old form of “you” was slowly disappearing; he used it himself, but not when “you” needed special emphasis. So this marine officer was a Scotchman; he had heard that most marine officers were.
Sergeant Knight and Corporal Flannery disappeared down the hatch. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, thought Richard as everyone hung back. He jerked his head and led his three groups to the six-foot-square opening in the deck. God help us and God save us! he prayed, handed his box to Bill Whiting behind him, dropped his two sacks down the hatch, and leaned over it. About four feet below him was a narrow plank table; he sat on the edge of the opening and dropped neatly onto it, reached up for his box, and waited until Bill had enough slack on the chain to follow. All six got down, each stepping off the table onto a bench and thus to the deck, where they found themselves penned in by another table and set of benches. Everything seemed bolted to the floor, for nothing moved a fraction of an inch when shoved.
“Get over!” barked the sergeant.
They got over and stood in an aisle of deck less than six feet wide. Looking forward into the darkness, they were on the left, or larboard, side. Fixed to the larboard hull were two tiers of platforms very similar to those on Ceres, save that these were double. Each was firmly braced by stanchions and had a curved outer edge which followed the line of the hull, and they were actually quite beautifully made. No one would be able to dismember them in a fit of lunacy. At ten-foot intervals the platforms were partitioned off; the top tier was a little over two feet below the upper deck, the bottom tier was a little over two feet above the lower deck, and the distance between the two tiers was a little over two feet. As even Ike Rogers could comfortably stand upright in the aisle between the beams, Richard calculated that the ’tween decks height was close to seven feet; his head cleared the beams themselves with half an inch to spare.
“These are yer cots,” said the sergeant, a villainous individual who grinned to display the rotten teeth of a heavy rum drinker as he pointed at the tiers. “You lot, up on top, first cot agin the bulkhead, and gimme yer names and numbers. Corporal Flannery here is an Irishman and writes a treat. Look sharp, now!”
“Richard Morgan, number two hundred and three,” said Richard, put a foot on the lower platform and hauled himself and his goods onto the top platform, the other five following; they were still chained together. Ike’s six were directed into the adjoining top “cot,” partitioned off from theirs by thin boards down the middle of a beam that ran from larboard to starboard hull. Stanley, Mikey Dennison and the four late arrivals from Bristol were put into the cot below theirs; underneath Ike were six Northmen including the two sailors from Hull, William Dring and Joe Robinson.
“Cozy,” said Bill Whiting with a rather hollow chuckle. “I always wanted to sleep with you, Richard my love.”
“Shut up, Bill! There are plenty of sheep on deck.”
Six of them were crammed into a space ten feet long, six feet wide and twenty-seven inches high. All they could do unless they lay down was to sit hunched over like gnomes, and, sitting like gnomes, each of them tried to cope with leaden despair. Their boxes and sacks occupied room too—room they did not have. Jimmy Price began to weep, Joey Long and Willy Wilton in the next cot were howling—oh, dear God, what to do?
Across the three tables and six benches in the middle was another double tier of platforms on the starboard side; even craning into the darkness did not reveal how far the chamber extended or what it really looked like. A steady trickle of chained men were dropping onto the middle table, then were herded into the aisle and inserted into a cot. When six of their eleven groups had been put on the larboard side, Sergeant Knight started directing men to starboard and again filled up the cots from the stern bulkhead forward—up, up, down, down.
Over the worst of his shock, Richard summoned the will to act. Did he not, all of them would be in tears, and that he could not have. “All right, first we deal with our boxes,” he said crisply. “For the moment we stack them upright against the hull—there will be just enough room between them to put our feet. ’Tis lucky we put the solids in the boxes and filled at least one sack with clothes and rags, because a soft sack will be a pillow.” He felt the coarse matting under him and shuddered. “No blankets as yet, but we can bundle for warmth. Jimmy, stop crying, please. Tears do nothing to help.” He eyed the beam where the partition was between them and Ike’s cot. “That beam will take extra things once I manage to get out a screwdriver and hooks—cheer up, we will manage.”
“I want my head against the wall,” said Jimmy, snuffling.
“Definitely not,” said Will Connelly firmly. “We put our heads where we can hang them over the edge to puke. Do not forget, we are going to sea and we will be doing a lot of puking for a while.”
Bill Whiting achieved a laugh. “Just think how lucky we are! We puke on those below us but they cannot puke on us.”
“Good point,” said Neddy Perrott, and leaned his head over. “Hey, Tommy Crowder!”
Crowder’s head appeared. “What?”
“We get to puke on you.”
“Do, and I will personally fuck ye!”
“In fact,” said Richard cheerfully, interrupting this exchange, “there is a lot of beam vacant—all the way to the starboard cots. We may be able to build
some sort of shelf off it on either side to hold spare stuff—even our boxes, certainly our sacks of books and spare dripstones. Yon Sergeant Knight looks as if he would not say no to an extra pint of rum, so he might be willing to gift us with planks, brackets and rope for trussing. We will manage, boys.”
“Ye’re right, Richard,” said Ike, poking his head around the partition. “We will manage. Better this than the nubbing cheat.”
“The hangman’s rope is the end, I agree. This will not last forever,” said Richard, glad that Ike and his boys were listening.
The prison was almost pitch-black; its only light came from the open hatch to the deck above. And the stench was frightful, a stale foulness that was a mixture of rotting flesh, rotting fish and rotting excrement. Time passed, how much of it was impossible to tell. Eventually the hatch was closed with an iron grille that permitted some light and a hatch in the forward end of the chamber was opened. From where they huddled this extra illumination still did not tell them what their prison was like. Another stream of convicts dribbled in, voices muffled, attenuated; many wept, a few started to scream and were suddenly silenced—with what and by whom, the six in Richard’s cot had no idea. Except that what they felt, everybody obviously felt.
“Oh, God!” came Will Connelly’s voice, loud in despair. “I will not be able to read! I will go mad, I will go mad!”
“No, you will not,” said Richard strongly. “Once we settle in and stow our things properly, we will think of things to do with the only instruments we have left—our voices. Taffy and I can sing, so I am sure can others. We will have a choir. We can play at riddles and conundrums, tell stories, jests.” He had made his men change places so that he now sat against Ike’s partition. “Listen to me, all of you who can hear! We will learn to pass the time in ways we have not yet dreamed of, and we will not go mad. Our noses will get used to the smell and our eyes will become sharper. If we go mad they win, and I refuse to allow that. We will win.”