“Ye cannot site it in the vale, sir,” said Richard strongly.
“I agree. Have ye any suggestions?”
“Nay, sir. I travel only as far afield as my sawpits.”
“Let me think about it, Morgan,” said Ross, rising with some reluctance. “In the meantime, have Lawrell cut your sugar cane.”
“Aye, sir. But I will tell him that ye’ve ordered me to start refining sugar to sweeten the officers’ tea.”
Off went the Major, nodding in satisfaction, to supervise the final installation of his grindstone. When the wheat came in, hand querns would not cope with it. Therefore the full-sized millstone would have to be turned by the only labor he had, that of men. A useful adjunct to floggings, which Ross tolerated but privately detested—not because of scruples, rather because the lash only deterred crime when it was administered in very large doses, and those rendered the victims partially crippled for the rest of their lives. To chain a man to the grindstone for a week or a month and make him push it like a sailor a capstan was good punishment, hideous but not ruinous.
The roads to Ball Bay and Cascade were finished. Hacking a road westward to Anson Bay began at the beginning of June, and yielded a delightful surprise; about a hundred acres of rolling hills and vales halfway between Sydney Town and Anson Bay were discovered utterly free of pine forest—for what reason, no one could fathom. Accepting this as a gift like unto the manna of the Mt. Pitt bird, Major Ross immediately decided to establish a new settlement there. The ground he had cleared at the middle of the Cascade road was intended as a place of banishment for the Sirius sailors; Phillipburgh, at the Cascade end of the road, was still trying to turn flax into canvas.
The settlement in the direction of Anson Bay was called after Her Majesty Queen Charlotte—Charlotte Field. Why was Richard not surprised when none other than Lieutenant Ralph Clark was deputed to establish Charlotte Field? In company with Privates Stanfield, Hayes and James Redman? The still would be tucked somewhere along the way between Sydney Town and Charlotte Field, he was sure of it.
Rightly so. Soon after, he was summoned to walk out in that direction to site a new sawpit for Charlotte Field. A nice area. The pineless ground was densely covered with a creeper Clark fancied resembled English cow-itch; the creeper came out of the ground easily and was found useful in the construction of fences when mixed with a bush sporting thorns two inches long—not a fence a pig would tackle, enterprising though pigs were.
Major Ross had chosen a site for the distillery down a track off the Anson Bay road well before Charlotte Field; a stream arose from a spring below the crest and flowed down with other tributaries to join a creek which entered Sydney Bay not far from its western promontory, Point Ross. On additional pay, the three marines and three sailors set to with a will to clear enough ground for a small wooden building and a woodheap of white oak, the same local tree which fueled both the salt house and the lime kiln because it burned to scant ash. The stone blocks which would make the hearth and furnace were hauled by convicts from Sydney Town, ostensibly destined for Charlotte Field later on; Richard and his six men took them from the road to the distillery themselves after dark. They also had to erect the shed. Ross furnished copper kettles, a few stopcocks and valves, copper pipe and vats made from barrels sawn in half. Richard managed the welding and assembling himself. Secrecy was maintained, rather to his surprise; the cut cane and some ears of Indian corn simply vanished to presses and hand querns at the distillery.
Four weeks later he was able to produce his first distillate. The Lieutenant-Governor sipped at it cautiously, grimaced, had another sip, then drank the rest of his quarter-pint down; he liked his rum as much as any other man.
“It tastes dreadful, Morgan, but it has the right effect,” he said, actually smiling. “Ye may well have saved us from mutiny and murder. ’Twould be much smoother if it were aged, but that is for the future. Who knows? We may yet supply Port Jackson with rum as well as lime and timber.”
“An it please ye, sir, I would now appreciate it if I could return to my sawpits,” said Richard, to whom the sight of a still brought no happy memories. “ ’Tis necessary to keep up the mash and the fire, not to mention the water, but I do not see the need to be here myself. Stanfield can take one shift and Drummond the other. If ye’ve any drop of good rum in store, we can put a bit of the raw distillate in an oak cask with a mite of the good stuff and see how it goes.”
“Ye can share the task of supervision with Lieutenant Clark, Morgan, but ’tis a waste of your talents to keep ye here feeding the apparatus and the furnace, ye’re right about that.” He strolled off, smacking his lips, obviously permeated with a feeling of well-being. “Walk with me back to Sydney Town.” Then he remembered the rest of the team, and paused to clap each man on the shoulder. “Guard and tend this well, boys,” he said with startling affability, still smiling. “ ’Twill earn each of ye an extra twenty pounds a year.”
The road through the pines followed the crest down across the top of Mount George, where the views were glorious—the ocean, the whole of Sydney Town and its lagoons, the surf, Phillip and Neapean Islands. Stopping to gaze, Major Ross spoke.
“I have it in mind, Morgan, to free ye,” he said. “I cannot give ye an absolute pardon, but I can give a conditional one until time and altered circumstances make it possible for me to petition a full pardon from His Excellency in Port Jackson. I think ye’ve earned a better status as a free man than simple emancipation by virtue of having served out your sentence—which, as I remember, ye said expires in March of ninety-two?”
Richard’s throat worked convulsively, his eyes overflowed with tears; he tried to speak, could not, nodded as he brushed at the torrent with his palms. Free. Free.
The Major continued to stare at Phillip Island. “There are others I am freeing as well—Lucas, Phillimore, Rice, the elder Mortimer, et cetera. Ye should all have the chance to take up land and make something of yourselves, for all of ye have behaved like decent men for as long as I have known ye. ’Tis thanks to your sort that Norfolk Island has managed to survive and I have been able to govern—not to mention Lieutenant King before me. As of now, Morgan, ye’re a free man, which means that as supervisor of sawyers ye’ll be paid a wage of twenty-five pounds a year. I will also pay ye an emolument for supervising the distillery—five pounds a year—and a sum of twenty for building it. None can be paid in coin of the realm—that His Majesty’s Government did not give us. ’Twill be accorded to ye in notes of hand which will be properly entered in the Government’s accounts. Ye can use it to transact business with the Stores or with private vendors. On the subject of the distillery I want complete silence, and I warn ye that I may close it down—this is an experiment only, which I am performing because I do not want to see any naval individuals go into the distilling business for themselves. My conscience gnaws, I suffer doubts,” he ended, mood flattening. “Lieutenant Clark I can trust not to breathe a word, even to his journal. Its contents—as he well knows—must reflect not only his virtues, but mine also. Oh, I acquit him of the desire to publish, but sometimes journals fall into the wrong hands.”
The speech was long enough to allow Richard to compose himself. “I am your man, Major Ross. That is the only way I can thank ye for all your many kindnesses.” A smile lit his eyes, turning them very blue. “Though I have a favor to ask. Would ye let me make my first act as a free man the honor of shaking your hand?”
Ross extended his hand willingly. “I am for town,” he said, “but I am afraid, Morgan, that ye must return to the distillery and fetch me enough of that horrible brew to water down my little remaining good stuff at dinner this evening.” He grimaced. “I am as tired of Mt. Pitt bird as the next man, but I doubt there will be any complaints if there is a jug of spirits to wash it down.”
Free! He was free! And pardoned free, which meant everything. All men were free once their sentences expired, but they were mere emancipists. A pardoned man had a reference. He was vindicated.
On the 4th of August a sail was sighted from Sydney Town; the entire community forgot work, discipline, illness, good sense. Lieutenant Clark and Captain George Johnston ascended Mount George and verified that the sail was real, but the ship passed serenely onward. Landing at Sydney Bay was impossible in the teeth of a strong southerly gale, so Captain Johnston and Captain Hunter walked to Cascade in the expectation of a landing there, where the water was as quiet as a millpond. But the ship passed serenely on, and by dusk she had disappeared northward. The mood that night in the town and vale, even in Charlotte Field and Phillipburgh, was despairing. To see a ship and be ignored! Oh, what worse disappointment could there be?
The next day Major Ross sent a party to the top of Mt. Pitt to watch, but in vain; the ship was definitely gone.
Then on the 7th of August people in Sydney Town were woken at dawn by screams of a ship on the far southern horizon.
The wind against her, she had not worked much farther in by late afternoon, but she had been joined by a second set of sails. This time it was real, this time they would not be ignored!
Unable to make contact with the first of the two sighted ships, Lieutenant Clark in the coble headed for the second one and managed to board her. She was Surprize, captained out of London by Nicholas Anstis, who had been first mate on Lady Penrhyn and had an interest in the slaving business. Surprize, he informed Clark, carried 204 convicts—but very few stores—for Norfolk Island. Before Clark could have a conniption fit, Anstis added that the other ship was Justinian, carrying no convicts but lots of provisions. Port Jackson no longer starved, and nor would Norfolk Island, where less than three weeks’ rations of salt meat and flour remained.
“Which vessel was it ignored our signals?” Clark demanded.
“Lady Juliana. She carried a cargo of women felons to Port Jackson, but was leaking so badly that she sailed straight for Wampoa empty. She is to pick up a cargo of tea there, but first she needs dry docking,” said Anstis. “Justinian and I are going on to Wampoa as soon as we have dropped our loads here.”
Even men like Len Dyer and William Francis worked energetically to pile Surprize and Justinian longboats with vegetables for the greens-starved crews; neither was able to land any cargo, human or food. Letters came ashore from England and Port Jackson, together with some ships’ officers of a mind to stretch their legs. Unloading would have to wait, happen if necessary at Cascade. The delighted Lieutenant Clark received no less than four fulsome missives from his beloved Betsy, learned that she and baby Ralphie were very well, and felt less anxious.
Governor Phillip explained to Major Ross on paper that Supply had been sent to Batavia, there to pick up whatever food her tiny holds could carry, if possible charter a Dutch vessel to follow her back to Port Jackson with more food, and drop off Lieutenant Philip Gidley King; His Excellency hoped that King would be able to board a Dutch East Indiaman from Batavia at least as far as Cape Town on his long journey of petition to London. As soon as Supply had returned to Port Jackson and was shipshape, she would be sent to Norfolk Island to pick up Captain John Hunter and his Sirius sailors—an event Phillip did not think likely to happen until well into 1791. But, said Phillip firmly, now that sufficient provisions had arrived, Major Ross had no excuse to continue governing under the Law Martial. That would have to be repealed immediately. Oh, bugger ye, King! thought the Major savagely. This is your doing, no one else’s. How am I to get any work out of Hunter’s sailors if I cannot hang them?
There was other bad news from Port Jackson as well. Storeship Guardian, en route from England laden with food, had purchased every beast Cape Town had to spare and set off on the last leg to Botany Bay. On Christmas Eve of 1789 she was 1,000 miles out of the Cape and proceeding placidly through reasonable seas when she sighted a summer iceberg. Her captain had not counted on how much water cattle could drink in one day, so he decided to take advantage of his good fortune and send a few boats to chip off some of the ice, thus replenishing his water. This was done expeditiously, and Guardian made sail away from the ice island. Captain Riou, a happy man, saw for himself that Guardian was well clear and went below to enjoy a good dinner. Fifteen minutes later the ship struck by the stern, wrenched her rudder off and stove in her round tucks. She made water slowly enough for Captain Riou to think that he stood a good chance of getting her back to Cape Town; every last animal was thrown over the side and five boats were launched with the majority of the crew and some very choice artisan convicts in them. But the sailors had broached the rum to deaden the pain of dying in a sea cold enough to harbor ice; the five boats reeled away loaded to the gunwales with drunken men. Only one of them reached land. Guardian reached land too, after limping in aimless spirals all over the south Indian Ocean for weeks. She beached not far from Cape Town, hardly any of her cargo worth salvaging. What could be saved was put aboard Lady Juliana, the first Botany Bay ship to arrive at the Cape of Good Hope after the disaster. But of animals Cape Town had absolutely none to sell Justinian a few days later; they had all been lost off Guardian. As had the personal effects of Governor Phillip, Major Ross, Captain David Collins and others among the senior marine officers. Ross for one never recovered from the magnitude of his financial losses when Guardian foundered, for by proxy he had bought a great many animals for his own use and breeding.
Good news perhaps to learn that starvation was postponed, but repeal of Law Martial and news of Guardian made the Major wish he was a genuine drinking man.
Some stores off Justinian and Surprize were landed over the next days, but none of the convicts—47 men and 157 women. The women were all off Lady Juliana; she had been the first of five ships to make Port Jackson during June. Naturally Phillip had expected a storeship. To find instead that this first vessel to reach them after so long held nothing more useful than women and clothing was appalling. Then storeship Justinian had sailed in, to be followed at the end of the month by Surprize, Neptune and none other than Scarborough, on a second venture to New South Wales.
“Oh, what a shock!” said Surgeon Murray of Justinian to a big audience of marine and stranded naval Norfolk Island officers. His face paled at the memory, he drew a long breath. “Surprize, Neptune and Scarborough brought an additional thousand convicts to Port Jackson, but two hundred and sixty-seven of them had died during the passage. They landed only seven hundred and fifty-nine, of whom nearly five hundred were gravely ill. It was—I thought that His Excellency the Governor was going to faint, and no one blamed him. You can have no idea, no idea. . .” Murray gagged. “The Home Department had changed contractors, so the victualler of the three ships was a slaving firm, paid in advance for each convict with no stipulation that he be landed alive and well. In fact, it was to the contractor’s financial advantage if the convicts died early in the voyage. So the poor wretches were not—fed. And they were confined for the whole length of the voyage in the old kind of slave fetters—you know, a foot-long, rigid iron bar welded between the ankle cuffs? Even had they been allowed on deck—they were not—they could not have gotten up to the deck. They could not walk. Hard enough on negroes for a six or eight weeks’ passage, but ye can imagine what the fetters did to men incarcerated below deck for nigh a year?”
“I daresay,” said Stephen Donovan through his teeth, “that they died in hideous misery and pain. God rot all slavers!”
When no one else offered a comment, Murray continued. “The worst was Neptune, though Scarborough was not much better—she had near sixty extra men in less space than on her first voyage. Surprize was the best of the three, she lost but thirty-six of her two hundred and fifty-four on the way out. We wept when we were not vomiting, I tell ye frankly. They were living skeletons, all of them, and they kept on dying as they were helped from the holds—the stench! They died on the decks, they died as they were put into boats, died as they were carried ashore. Those who were still alive as they got near to the hospital had to be treated outside until their vermin were dealt with—they seethed with thou
sands upon thousands of lice, and I do not exaggerate—do I, Mr. Wentworth?”
“Not one iota,” said the other visitor to the officers’ mess, a tall, fair, handsome fellow named D’arcy Wentworth, who had been posted to Norfolk Island as an assistant surgeon. “Neptune was the ship from Hell. I sailed on her as a surgeon from Portsmouth, but never once was I asked to go below during the voyage—in fact, I was forbidden access to the prison. The smell of the prison was in our nostrils the whole way, but when I went down into the orlop at Port Jackson to help—Christ! There are no words to describe what it was like. A sea of maggots, rotting bodies, cockroaches, rats, fleas, flies, lice—but some men were still alive, can ye imagine it? We surgeons expect that any who do manage to survive will emerge raving mad.”
Knowing more merchant masters than the navy men, Stephen asked, “Who is the captain of Neptune?”
“A beast named Donald Trail,” said Wentworth. “He could not understand what all the fuss was about, which made us wonder how many live slaves he delivers to Jamaica. The only thing interested him—or Anstis, for that matter—was selling goods to those in Port Jackson at such exorbitant prices only his rum was bought.”
“I have heard of Trail,” said Stephen, looking sick. “He can keep a negro alive because he can sell the live ones only. To give him a contract that was tacit permission to murder is murder. God rot the whole Home Department!”
“He did not even treat his free paying passengers well, is the mystery,” Wentworth said, shaking his head. “Ye’d think he would at least be conscious enough of his own skin to pander just a little to them, but he did not. Neptune carried some of the officers and men of a new army regiment recruited solely to do duty in New South Wales. Captain John MacArthur of the New South Wales Corps, his wife and babe, their son and servants were jammed into a tiny cabin and forbidden access to the great cabin or the deck save through a corridor filled with women convicts and overflowing buckets of excrement. The babe died, MacArthur quarreled fiercely with Trail and his sailing master and transferred in Cape Town to Scarborough, but not before the squalor had made him quite gravely ill. I understand that the son is seedy too.”