All at once she saw a chance for herself. She was young and strong, no man had spoiled her, she knew she had a quicker mind than most, and she had determination.
She waited until Bessie asked to relieve herself, and once all the women had climbed down from the cart, Mary positioned herself so that she shielded her squatting friend from the guard with her skirt, and smiled warmly at him.
‘Where are you taking us?’ she asked. ‘Is it back to the prison in Plymouth, or straight to a boat for the Americas?’
He was a hard-looking man, with brown, broken teeth and a battered hat pulled down over his slanty eyes.
‘You’re bound for the prison hulks at Devonport,’ he said with an evil grin. ‘Don’t reckon you’ll get much beyond there.’
Mary gasped involuntarily. She might not have seen a prison hulk but she knew their evil reputation. They were old warships, moored in estuaries and creeks, the government’s answer to overcrowding in prisons. The responsibility for running them was passed over to private individuals whose only interest was making as much money as possible from each prisoner. It was said that the unlucky felons who got sent to them would die either of starvation or of overwork within the first year. For the sideline of these notorious hell-holes was that the prisoners were forced to do slave labour on land, usually building ‘hards’ along the river bank.
‘I didn’t think they sent women there,’ she said, her voice trembling.
‘Times are a’changing,’ he grinned. ‘You’d better pretty yourself up if you want to make it off there alive.’
Mary gulped and looked him in the eye. She knew gaolers and guards were punished too harshly to dare let anyone escape, however ‘nice’ a prisoner was to them. But he probably thought she was stupid enough to be ignorant of this and hoped she might make up to him imagining he would help her in return.
‘But the judge said it was transportation.’ She forced herself to squeeze out a few tears.
‘They mean it to be,’ he said, his voice softening. ‘But they can’t send no one to the Americas since the war. They tried Africa, but that didn’t work. There’s talk of a place called Botany Bay, but that’s on the other side of the world.’
Mary vaguely remembered the sailors in the ale house she’d once worked in talking about a man called Captain Cook who had claimed for England a country that was on the other side of the world. She wished now she’d listened properly, but at the time it held as little importance for her as whether King George was really mad, or what grand ladies wore to balls in London.
‘Do you think that’s where we’re bound then?’ she asked.
He shrugged and scowled at the other women who were crowding around Mary to hear what he was saying. ‘Get back on the cart,’ he said curtly. ‘We’ve got a fair few miles to cover before dark.’
Once back on the cart, Mary decided there was no point in thinking upon anything more than the present. It might be uncomfortable in the cart, but it was better to be out in the spring sunshine than in a stinking gaol. She would keep herself poised for an opportunity for escape.
She doubted there was any hope of that before Devonport. If the guards on this journey kept to the same routine as those on the way from Plymouth to Exeter, she and her companions would remain shackled together constantly.
But there was a faint possibility that the chains would be removed when they had to get into the small boat to be rowed out to the hulks. If so, she could jump out and swim for it. She smiled inwardly. It was a very faint hope, for surely any guard worth his salt would anticipate such an attempt, but then few people knew how to swim, even sailors like her father couldn’t. The thought of swimming was pleasing, to be able to wash off the prison stink and make for a stretch of coastline she knew well. It was worth any risk, and even if she couldn’t do it then, maybe she could jump from the side of the hulk at night.
But as the afternoon shadows lengthened and it grew colder, Mary’s spirits began to sink again. Even if she could escape, where would she make for? She couldn’t go back to Cornwall, she’d be caught again in no time. And how would she get anywhere else with no money, wearing filthy clothes and boots with holes in them?
By dusk Mary was in too much pain to think beyond lying down. Even the slightest movement from herself or one of her companions made the iron shackles bite into her ankles. She had torn a strip off her petticoat to act as a bandage beneath the iron, but the cotton was stiff with dried blood now, and it rasped against the wounds rather than protecting them. She had hunger pains in her stomach, her back was so stiff she doubted she could walk, and she was shivering with cold.
Four days later, when the cart eventually reached Devonport, Mary’s companions were too deeply demoralized even to react to their first sight of the prison ship moored out in the river. It had been raining solidly for the past two days, and they were all soaked through to the skin. Many of them were feverish and everyone was exhausted through lack of sleep due to the cold in the barns and sheds they’d been locked into overnight.
There had been no conversation on the cart today. The only sounds were groans, sneezing, coughing, sniffing and the clank of chains as they vainly attempted to get more comfortable. Able was now seriously ill, unable to sit upright, and with each strained cough he brought up blood.
‘That’s yer new home, the Dunkirk,’ the guard said, turning in his seat to grin maliciously as he pointed at the old hulk moored out in the river. ‘She ain’t a very pretty ship, that’s for sure, but then you lot ain’t so pretty either.’
Mary had suffered as much as her companions, but whether it was because she was the youngest and the most healthy at the outset, or just because she had kept her mind active by thinking about escape, she appeared to be the only one affected by the sight of the hulk.
With its masts cut down to mere stumps and surrounded by wispy sea mist, it had the eerie look of an ancient wreck waiting for one good storm to dismember it. But worse still than its appearance was the putrid stench wafting from it on the wind.
Mary was already shivering so violently that her teeth were chattering, but she felt an even icier chill run down her spine, and her empty stomach lurched with nausea. This, she sensed, was going to be real hell, a hundred times worse than Exeter Castle.
She thought she’d been in hell there, and was glad when they’d first left, delighting in the fresh air and sunshine. But all too soon she’d found herself wishing she was back in the Castle. Late the previous night, cold, wet and hungry, every bone in her body screaming in pain, she would even have accepted a noose being put round her neck to end it all. Now it seemed there was even more horror in store for her.
‘Ain’t no use looking like that,’ the guard said, and leaned back in his seat to give Mary a poke with the stick. He’d already struck several of them when they took too long getting off and on the cart. ‘That’s the wages of sin out there. You lot deserve it.’
A few days earlier Mary would have cursed him, spat in his face or even lashed out at him, but she had no fight left in her.
‘Are we to be taken out there now?’ she asked instead, her quick mind telling her she’d better keep on the right side of him.
‘No, it’s too late,’ he said, touching the horses with the whip to get them to move. ‘You got another night in a warehouse first.’
It wasn’t just the occupants of the two carts from Exeter who spent the night in the warehouse. They had hardly got inside and slumped down on to the dirt floor when the doors opened again and another couple of dozen people joined them.
They were in an even worse state than Mary’s party, having come all the way from Bristol. Their clothes were mere rags, they all looked feverish, and gangrene had clearly taken a hold of a gaping wound in one of the men’s legs, for the smell was unmistakable.
There was a feeble attempt at conversation, questions asked about friends who had been incarcerated in Exeter Castle and Bristol’s Bridewell, but the main thing everyone was concerned about was ho
w long they would be kept in the prison ship before being transported.
‘I heard a party escaped from Gravesend,’ one fierce-looking man from Bristol claimed. ‘The guards opened fire on them and killed a couple, but the rest got away. Since then they’ve kept everyone in chains.’
Bessie, sitting next to Mary, began to cry. ‘We might just as well been hanged,’ she sobbed out. ‘I can’t take no more.’
The same thought was in Mary’s head too, but faced with Bessie’s utter dejection she swept it away. ‘We will be all right,’ she insisted, putting her arms around the woman and hugging her tightly. ‘We’re just cold, wet and hungry now, we can’t think straight. In a day or two everything will look different.’
‘You’re so brave,’ Bessie whispered. ‘Aren’t you scared too?’
‘No,’ Mary replied without a second thought. ‘Not now I know I’m not going to be hanged.’
Later that night as Mary lay in a huddle with the other women, desperately trying to draw some warmth from their bodies, she realized she really wasn’t scared. She was angry that people could treat others so cruelly, ashamed of the crime that had brought her to this, apprehensive about what would come next, but not scared. In fact, when she thought about it, she’d never been fearful of anything. She had taught herself to swim at six by just plunging into the sea. After she’d discovered she could keep afloat, the sea held no terrors for her. Nor did anything else. She was the one who always took dares, found risk exciting. Even when she first found out how Thomas made a living she wasn’t horrified – it just seemed daring, a bit of a lark.
She remembered then how her father had always remarked on how sharp she was. She had always been much smarter than Dolly and her friends of a similar age. She grasped things quickly, was curious about how things worked, and retained the information. She could almost hear her father boasting to the neighbours that Fowey was too dull for Mary, and that he had no doubt she’d come home one day having made her fortune.
How was he going to hold his head up when her recorded crime and punishment was seen in the Western Flyer? He couldn’t read himself, but there were plenty of people in Fowey who could and would be only too glad to pass on such a shocking piece of news.
Knowing she was only about forty miles from home brought on an unbearable pang of homesickness. She could imagine her mother sitting on a stool in front of the fire, some mending in her hands. Mary took after her in looks, the same thick curly hair, which she braided tightly round her head, and the same grey eyes. When Mary was small she could remember her mother undoing the braids at night, running her fingers through them till her hair fell in a dark shiny storm on her shoulders. It transformed her from being just an ordinary woman into a beauty, and Mary and Dolly often asked why she didn’t leave it loose for everyone to admire.
‘Vanity is a deadly sin,’ she’d reply, yet she always smiled as if it pleased her to have a beautiful secret, unseen by anyone but her own family. She kept her feelings secret too, and the girls had learned from a very early age to gauge them purely by her actions. When she was angry she banged pots and poked the fire vigorously; when worried she was silent. Her way of showing affection was no more than a tender stroke of the face or a squeeze of the shoulder. Yet now that Mary knew she would never see her again, those little gestures seemed so precious and important.
She remembered how her mother had hugged her as she left home that last morning in Fowey. She hadn’t really hugged her back, for she was impatient to leave. The last memory her mother would have of her was that. A daughter who went off giggling carelessly. Never to be seen again.
Chapter two
Thankfully the rain had stopped when the prisoners were ordered out of the warehouse the following morning. But the sky was still grey, with a keen wind blowing off the river which made them all huddle together for warmth.
Breakfast had been nothing more than water and a lump of stale bread, and as Mary looked across at the prison ship Dunkirk, and saw it really was as decrepit as it had appeared at dusk yesterday, she guessed the provisions there would be no better.
Yet her spirits were a little higher than on the previous day. Despite her wet clothes, she had slept quite well, and at least there was no further travelling today. She thought escape was out of the question for the time being. Apart from her shackles, which she now doubted would be removed, the quay was busy with watchful Marines, all carrying muskets.
Dozens of boats of all sizes were bobbing around on the water, ferrying passengers across the river and carrying goods to the bigger ships anchored at deep water. Mary couldn’t smell the prison ship today, but whether that was because the wind had changed, or she had imagined the smell last night, she couldn’t guess. It was good to breathe in the salty air, and if she ignored her fellow prisoners and her hunger, and just drank in the sights, sounds and smells, it was almost like being back in Fowey.
At midday Mary was still waiting on the quay, still chained to her four companions. So far several small groups of male prisoners had been rowed out to the Dunkirk, and they had watched them climb up the ladder to the deck, then disappear from view. But the women’s interest in this procedure had long since waned. Most were trying to improve their appearance, combing or plaiting their hair, attending to wounds on their ankles from the chains, and any who were carrying belongings were sifting through them, sorting out another dress or petticoat.
Mary had no belongings beyond a comb, and that had been given to her by another prisoner at Exeter, so her grooming could go no further than trying to remove as many lice as possible from her hair. They had been provided with a bucket of water to wash their faces and hands that morning, but she longed to be able to strip off her dirty clothes and wash herself completely. She hadn’t done that since before her arrest, and she felt she must stink.
None of the other women seemed that concerned about their filthy state, but then Mary had discovered almost as soon as she left home that the high standard of cleanliness her mother had instilled in her was rare. When she confided in Bessie about how she felt, the other woman looked at her askance. ‘We can’t look that bad,’ she said. ‘Those Marines over there are giving us the glad eye.’
Mary glanced at the group of men surreptitiously and observed that she was being singled out for particular attention from them. She thought that red jackets, well-fitting white breeches and highly polished boots gave almost any man, however homely-looking, an unfair advantage over civilians. But she wasn’t going to delude herself that they were looking at her because she was outstandingly attractive.
Mary had been around seamen all her life, and she knew the first thing they did when they got off a ship was look for a woman. Mostly they landed up with whores, and with that came the near certainty of disease.
These Marines were in a slightly different position to seamen. They would be guarding the prisoners, both male and female, here and on the transport ship later. Mary guessed they knew they’d get little if any shore leave. It stood to reason they were all hoping that amongst this ragged, demoralized bunch of women, there would be some eager to meet their sexual needs. A young, fresh-faced and disease-free country girl would be their ideal. Mary thought she’d sooner throw herself off the Dunkirk in her chains than be used that way.
It was mid-afternoon before Mary’s group were rowed over to the hulk. The chains linking them together had been removed, but they were still shackled from their ankles to their waists. As they drew closer to the prison ship, Mary saw the sides were green and slimy with weed, and the smell of human effluent gradually increased until the women were gagging.
Once up the slippery ladder, they were lined up to be examined and measured, and their crime recorded.
‘Mary Broad,’ a young Marine called out, and ordered her to stand in front of a rule marked on the broken-off mast. ‘Five feet four,’ he called out to another man who was recording it. ‘Grey eyes, black hair, no visible scars. Crime highway robbery. Seven years’ transportation.?
??
As soon as the whole group had been similarly dealt with, and each of them been handed a worn, stinking blanket, a hatch was opened and seamen pushed them roughly through it, down a steep companionway. Bessie tripped on her shackles and fell the last few feet, letting out a cry of pain. They were in a narrow area which appeared to lead on to the guards’ quarters, then another hatch was opened.
The stench that burst out hit the women like walking into a brick wall, and they all moved back involuntarily, horror on every face. Each one of them had grown used to filth in all its forms in the past few weeks, but this was something far beyond anything they’d experienced previously.
‘Get in there,’ the guard shouted, hitting at them with a stick to make them climb down the stairs. ‘You’ll soon get used to it. We have.’
Mary resisted, but the guard hit her on the shoulder and forced her down through the hatch into what must have been the hold when the vessel was still sailing. The first thing she glimpsed was a sea of ghostly white faces, and when her eyes grew more used to the gloom, she saw a series of wooden shelves which were to be their beds, four women to each. There was some air and light though, coming from open hatches on the seaward side of the ship and a further grille at the far end through which Mary could just make out the male prisoners’ quarters. The evil smell came from the floor, which was awash with the contents of overflowing slop buckets. Clearly this was one place which was never cleaned.
Mary realized this meant that rats, bugs and lice would be living here in their hundreds with the women. Just to look at their haggard grey faces, stringy hair and bony bodies was proof that the diet was one of starvation. Fever could sweep round in one night and under these conditions would claim them all.