“The smell,” said Balmain loftily, “is due to dead bodies. A week or two at sea after extensive fumigation will remove it.”
White had wandered away to discover how the crew could load cargo through an intervening prison; a look below showed him that the tables and benches in the prison had been removed to reveal six-foot-square hatches beneath them exactly in line with those on the upper deck. Winched inboard on davits, even the gigantic water tuns were dropped straight into the orlop hold. He came back with his air of brisk superiority very much to the fore, brushed Balmain and Donovan aside, and issued orders.
The 36 starboard prisoners were despatched into the prison to mop, scrub and sponge the place with vinegar before fumigation with gunpowder; the 36 larboard convicts were sent down into the marines’ quarters below steerage, there to do the same.
“Christ!” squeaked Taffy Edmunds. “Poor little Davy Evans was right—we convicts are in heaven compared to this, though ’twould be nice to sleep in hammocks.”
The hold floor was awash in bilge overflow which stank worse than the prison compartment and released gases which had turned the pewter buttons on those brave scarlet coats as black as coal. The ’tween decks was scarcely six feet, which meant bending to pass under the beams, as on Ceres.
Thus it was that Richard and the larboard convicts were made privy to what took place between the irresistible force and the immovable object; Major Ross and Captain Sinclair came to grips in the marines’ hold under the fascinated eyes of 36 men. This stupendous battle was heralded by the arrival of the Major at the bottom of the wooden ladder from the crew’s quarters above.
“Get your bloated blubber down here, ye torpid bag of shit!” Ross bellowed. “Come and look, damn ye!”
And down the ladder on dainty booted feet came Captain Duncan Sinclair, for all the world like a glob of syrup trickling down one side of a smooth string. “No one,” he puffed, reaching the deck below, “speaks to me like that, Major! I am not only captain of this ship, but also one of her owners.”
“Which only makes ye all the more guilty, balloon-arse! Go on, look around ye! Look at where ye expect His Majesty’s Marines to live for God knows how many months! Almost three months already! They are sick and very afraid, for which I do not blame them one wee bit! Their dogs are better off—so are the sheep and pigs ye have aboard to pile on your own overloaded table! Sitting up there like King Muck of Dunghill Palace with a night cabin, a day cabin and the great cabin all to yourself, and my two officers in an airless cupboard! Eating with the privates! It will change, Sinclair, or I will personally spill your swollen guts into this liquid shit!” He put his hand on his sword hilt and looked perfectly capable of following the threat with the deed.
“Your men stay here because I have no other place to stow them,” said Sinclair. “As a matter of fact, they are occupying valuable space my firm contracted to fill up with more useful cargo than a lot of thieving, rum-swilling twiddle-poops not clever enough to get into the Navy nor rich enough to get into the Army! Ye’re the entire world’s leavings, Ross, you and your marines! ’Tain’t for nothing they call an empty bottle a marine! Cluttering up my crew’s galley, letting two dozen dogs shit from bowsprit to taffrail—look at my boot! Dog turd, Ross, fucken dog turd! Two of my hens dead, four of my ducks, and one goose! Not to mention the ewe I had to shoot because one of the fucken bulldogs got its teeth in and would not let go! Well, I shot the fucken dog first, ye Lowlands bastard without a mother!”
“Who’s the Lowlands bastard, ye Glasgow bitch’s by-blow?”
A pause ensued as both the combatants searched wildly for a new and mortally wounding thing to say and the convicts stood as still as statues for fear they might be noticed and sent on deck.
“The Lords of the Admiralty accepted Walton’s tender, which was specific about Alexander’s appointments,” said Sinclair, eyes two blazing slits. “Blame your superiors, Ross, do not blame me! When I heard I was to have forty marines as well as two hundred and ten convicts, I was not a happy man! The marines stay right here, and ye can like or ye can lump it.”
“I do not like it and I will not lump it, ye elephant’s arse! Ye will shift my lads up into steerage and accommodate my officers properly or I will have words to say from Governor Phillip all the way to Admiral Lord Howe and Sir John Middleton—not to mention Lord Sydney and Mr. Pitt! Ye have two choices, Sinclair. Either put your crew down here and my marines where they are, or move the stern bulkhead of the prison twenty-five feet forward. Now that the fleet has Prince of Wales, the displaced convicts can go to her. And that,” said Ross, brushing his white-gloved hands together, “is that, suet-face!”
“It is not!” Sinclair snapped through his teeth; the sight of so much adiposity in such a ferment was Homeric. “Alexander was contracted to transport two hundred and ten convicts, not one hundred and forty convicts and forty marines in a space belonging to seventy more convicts! The purpose of this expedition is not to cosset a parcel of scabby marines, but to get as many of England’s felons to the far end of the earth as possible. I will keep my entire contracted complement of convicts and—if ye like—I will take full responsibility for their confinement through the agency of my crew. It is very clear and simple, Major Ross. Move your precious marines off Alexander. I will lock the convicts in the prison permanently and feed them through the hatch bars for the duration, which does away with the need for marine guards.”
“Lord Sydney and Mr. Pitt would not approve,” said Ross, on safe and sure ground. “They are both modern men who insist that the convicts be delivered at Botany Bay in better condition than ye used to deliver your slaves to Barbados! If ye lock these men in for as much as a year, they will half of them be dead on arrival and the other half fit only for a Bedlam. Therefore,” he continued, looking as malleable as a cast-iron thirty-two-pounder, “it might behove ye to build yourself a poop roundhouse and a forecastle within the next month. Ye may then move yourself one deck up to live in solitary splendor and turn your quarterdeck over to my officers. Do not forget, Sinclair, that ye have also to accommodate the ship’s surgeon, the naval agent and the contractor’s agent, all of whom have quarterdeck rank. They will fill it without your presence, ye cheeseparing bile bag! As for your crew—put them where a crew belongs, in a forecastle. My enlisted men can then move up into steerage and I will undertake to provide them with a galley stove on which they can cook for themselves and the convicts. Thus your crew can keep their galley, you can build yourself a new one in your roundhouse, the officers can use the quarterdeck one, and Alexander will turn into something like a ship rather than a slaver, ye fat flawn!”
The grey slits of eyes had changed during this masterly speech, from furious rage to a more natural cunning. “That,” Sinclair said, “would cost Walton’s at least a thousand pounds.”
Major Ross turned on his heel and mounted the ladder. “Send the bill to the Admiralty,” he said, and disappeared.
Captain Duncan Sinclair looked at the ladder, then suddenly seemed to see the silent ring of men around him for the first time. “Ye need a bucket chain to get rid of this overflow,” he said to Ike Rogers curtly, “and while ye’re about it, lift that hatch over there and start baling out the starboard bilge. Some more of ye can bale out larboard. Tip fresh sea-water in and bale until the bilge water is clear. I can smell it on the quarterdeck.” He stared at the ladder again. “You, you and you,” he said to Taffy, Will and Neddy, all much of a height, “get your shoulders under my arse and push me up this fucken ladder.”
Once the sound of his progress upward had faded, the convicts collapsed into shrieks of laughter.
“I thought,” gasped Ike, “that for a moment there, Neddy, ye were going to tip him flat on his puss in the bilge water.”
“I was tempted,” said Neddy, wiping his eyes, “but he is the captain, and ’tis best not to offend the captain. Major Ross don’t care who he offends, so much is sure.” He giggled. “An elephant’s arse! Oh, it fits!
Getting him up that ladder near killed us.”
“Major Ross won the engagement,” said Aaron Davis thoughtfully, “but has bared his arse to the Admiralty boots. If Captain Sinclair goes ahead and builds a roundhouse and a forecastle, the Admiralty will refuse to pay the bill and Major Ross will be in a kettle of boiling water.”
“Somehow,” said Richard, smiling, “I cannot see Major Ross’s arse bare for anybody’s boot. His spotless white breeches will stay up, mark my words. He was right. Alexander cannot hold so many people without a roundhouse and a forecastle.” He huffed. “Who wants to be on the bucket chain? If, that is, we can persuade Lieutenant Johnstone to let us have more buckets, for I will not use the prison ones on this disgusting foulness. Bristolians, we head the chain at the bilges themselves. Jimmy, go and smile at the pretty Lieutenant for more buckets.”
Captain Sinclair made his renovations, but for a great deal less than £1,000. While the convicts kept on board toiled with oil of tar and whitewash, the loading of cargo went on around them, which gave them a good idea of what was stowed where. The spare masts were lashed on deck below the boats, whereas spars, sails and rope went below; the 160-gallon water tuns, by far the heaviest objects, were put in clusters among other, lighter cargo. Cask after cask of salt beef and salt pork came aboard, sack after sack of hard bread, dried peas and the chickpeas called calavances, kegs of flour, bags of rice, and a great many parcels sewn in coarse cloth and inked with the name of the owner. There were also bales of clothing the sailors called “slops,” apparently destined for the convicts when their present clothing wore out.
Everybody knew that there were pipes of rum aboard; neither crew nor marines would stand for a dry voyage. Rum was what made the miseries of cramped quarters and poor food bearable, so rum there had to be. But it did not go into the general holds, either beneath the prison or steerage.
“He is clever, our big fat captain,” said William Dring from Hull with a grin. “Right up forward there is another hold in two decks. Top one is for firewood—they pack it everywhere around bowsprit and partnerson. Bottom deck has an iron cover and that is where rum is. Cannot be got at from prison because bow bulkhead is a foot thick and stuffed with nails, just like stern bulkhead. And cannot be got at from firewood hold without shocking racket. Rum on issue is in big cupboard on quarterdeck and captain doles it out himself. No one can steal it because of Trimmings.”
“Trimmings?” asked Richard. “Sinclair’s steward?”
“Aye, and completely Sinclair’s creature. Spies and pries.”
“He is using his own chips to do the alterations,” said Dring’s friend Joe Robinson; seamen, they had scraped acquaintance with the crew. “He took five convicts as well, all fit to hammer in nails. Got ’em off lighter and Fortunee. Forecastle is just a forecastle, but some real pretty mahogany panels have gone up roundhouse way. Captain pinched all the great cabin furniture, so Major Ross has to obtain more for quarterdeck and ain’t happy about it.”
Major Ross was never happy. His displeasure extended a great deal further than Captain Duncan Sinclair and Alexander, however. The new battle, as several marines informed the convicts (gossip was everybody’s main recreation), was to have the expedition’s rice exchanged for wheat flour. Unfortunately the contract with Mr. William Richards Junior had been drafted in the same format as for the transportation of Army personnel, which had enabled the frugal purveyor of food to convicts and marines alike to substitute rice for some of the flour. Rice was cheap, he had a warehouse full of it, and it stowed smaller because it expanded in cooking. The issue was that rice did not prevent scurvy, whereas flour did.
“I do not understand,” said Stephen Martin, one of the two quiet Bristolians sent down with Crowder and Davis. “If flour can prevent scurvy, why cannot bread? ’Tis made on flour.”
Richard tried to remember what Cousin James-the-druggist had said about such matters. “I think it is the baking,” he said. “Our bread is hard—sea biscuit. There is as much barley and rye in it as wheat, if not more. Flour is ground wheat. So the—the antiscorbutic must be in wheat. Or it might be that the flour is made into dumplings in stew or soup and does not cook long enough to ruin whatever it is prevents scurvy. Vegetables and fruit are best, but no one gets those at sea. There is a pickled cabbage called ‘sour crout’ my cousin James imports from Bremen for some of the Bristol sea captains because it is cheaper than extract of malt, which is a very good antiscorbutic. But the trouble with sour crout is that sailors loathe it and have to be flogged to eat it.”
“Is there anything ye do not know, Richard?” asked Joey Long, who deemed Richard a walking encyclopedia.
“I know hardly anything, Joey. It is my cousin James is the fount of knowledge. All I had to do was listen.”
“And ye’re very good at that,” said Bill Whiting. He stood back to survey their work, which was almost done. “There is one grand thing about all this whitewash. Even when the bars are down on the hatches, there will be a lot more light inside.” He threw an arm about Will Connelly’s shoulders. “If we sit at the table right under the after hatch, Will, we will have enough light to read.”
The entire complement of convicts were back on board shortly into April, while the erection of forecastle and roundhouse went on apace. Had the convicts only known it, Major Ross was still to write to the authorities about conditions on Alexander, preferring that the alterations be too far along to stop before he roared. Captain Sinclair had chosen to build his crew’s new quarters inboard, allowing a three-foot-wide gangway along either side for easy access to the bows, where the crew’s holes were situated. For those convicts left aboard Alexander during the hygienic measures it had been bliss; the hatches were open and they too could use the crew’s holes rather than their night buckets. The hatch forward of the foremast was now sheltered with a house (a structure a little like a dog kennel with a curved roof) to afford the cooks weatherproof access to the firewood hold; the hatch just in front of the quarterdeck which led down into the steerage compartment was also housed, whereas the two hatches above the prison were simple deck hatches, equipped with iron grilles over which a solid cover could be battened.
They will be battened down, thought Richard, whenever the seas break over the deck, and we will be absolutely blinded for however long the tempest lasts. No light, no air.
Despite fresh meat and fresh vegetables every day and despite being permitted onto the deck in small groups for air and exercise, the sickness aboard Alexander continued. Willy Wilton died, the first casualty among the West Country people, though not of the mumpish disease. He had caught cold in the perishing weather and it settled on his chest. Surgeon Balmain applied hot poultices to draw out and loosen the phlegm, but Willy died during much the same treatment a free Bristolian would have received from his doctor. Poultices were the only remedy for pneumonia. Ike Rogers grieved terribly. He was not the same man Richard had met in Gloucester Gaol; that blustering pugnaciousness was all bluff. Underneath was a man who worshiped horses and the freedom of the road.
Others died too; by the end of April the month’s toll among the convicts stood at twelve. And sickness was spreading through the marines as well—fevers, lung inflammations, deliriums, paralyses. Three terrified privates absconded, a fourth on the last day of the month. A sergeant, a drummer and fourteen privates had been shipped off to hospital and replacements were hard to find. Alexander was getting a reputation as the death ship of the fleet—a reputation she was to keep. Every so often all but the original convicts (now 71 men, with Willy Wilton dead) were sent elsewhere and the vinegar, fumigation, scrubbing with oil of tar and whitewashing began all over again. Each time Richard’s larboard group found the bilges fouled.
“She may as well not have bilge pumps,” said Mikey Dennison in disgust. “They do not work.”
Three more men died. The toll now stood at fifteen dead since the 1st of April, and the number of convicts had shrunk from 210 to 195.
On the 11th of
May, more than four months after boarding the death ship, news came that Governor Phillip had at last arrived on his flagship, Sirius, and that on the morrow the fleet of eleven ships would sail. But it did not. The crew of the storeship Fishburn had not been paid and refused to leave until they were. The occupants of the Alexander prison lay in their cots to sleep, finally provided with blankets—one per two men. Perhaps that was some kind of reward for having been stripped and searched—what for, nobody knew. Only that with Major Ross there to supervise, no one was rectally examined. Nor was anything confiscated.
About an hour after dawn on the 13th of May—summer solstice was coming, so dawn was early—Richard woke to find Alexander moving, her timbers creaking, a faint sighing of water nudging her sides, the slightest roll. Enough for Ike, already puking, but they had dealt with that by giving him poor dead Willy’s wooden eating bowl, which Joey Long had undertaken to empty into the night bucket whenever necessary.
Robert Jefferies from Devizes died that day of pneumonia; the blankets had come far too late for many men.
Once through the Needles at the western end of the Isle of Wight, which happened on that same day, Alexander grew more frisky than at any time on the slow sail from Tilbury to Portsmouth. She rolled a lot and pitched a little, which sent most of the convicts to their cots in the throes of sickness. Richard became conscious of nausea, but not to a degree beyond controlling, and it passed within three hours after a single dry heave. Maybe sea legs grew automatically on Bristolians? The other Bristolians—Connelly, Perrott, Davis, Crowder, Martin and Morris—were in similar case to himself. It was the country boys seemed the worst, though none was as bad as Ike Rogers.
The next day Lieutenant Shairp and Surgeon Balmain came down the after hatch more awkwardly than in still water, but with sufficient dignity to look impressive. The two privates with them collected the body of Robert Jefferies while Shairp and Balmain negotiated the heaving aisle by hanging on to platform edges, Shairp very careful not to put his hand on anyone’s vomit. The order was the same: get out and clean your deck, get out and empty your night bucket, get out and clean your cot, I do not care how sick you think you are. If you have puked on your blanket, wash it. If you have puked on your matting, wash it. If you have puked on yourself, wash yourself.