Prison Ship (14 page)

Among James's friends were several girls around his age and I was particularly fascinated by one called
Orlagh Killett. Orlagh I immediately assumed to be Irish, so I was surprised to hear her speak with a Liverpudlian accent. Her parents had come over from Ireland before she was born, she explained. She was a skinny, striking girl with a mane of glorious red hair, and had two children by a man who had left her for another girl when the second child was three days old. Orlagh's mother-in-law would sometimes turn up at the pub, demanding she return home to mind the children. The mother-in-law was a terrifying-looking woman, painfully thin, with straggly grey hair. The skin on her face was mottled and sallow but tight too, so it looked like a skeletal mask with darting, angry eyes. She and Orlagh quarrelled incessantly and would often start shouting abuse as soon as they saw each other.

Orlagh was utterly beyond what I had been brought up to believe was ‘respectable', but I liked her. She told a good story. The first day we had a drink together she recounted the tale of her two neighbours, the Cluttons.

‘Met each other over here soon as they came off the transport ship. Anyway the old man got ill, and one of the missionaries here lent him some money for food and the like. Any road, he called in to ask the Cluttons for his money back. So old man Clutton attacks him with a knife. Then his missus smashes him on the head with an axe. That's nice, isn't it. Blood all over the place. Anyway, they wait until it's dark and drag him out to dump the
body in some bushes. Did a rotten job. Next morning some woman's walking by and sees this foot sticking out. She screams and then there's people all over the place. Soon after that, the Magistrate arrives with a squad of marines. Stupid thing was, there was a trail of blood leading from the bushes straight to the house. The Cluttons started arguing and screaming at each other, each blaming the other for the murder. They made it up by the time they got sent to the gallows. Hung 'em side by side, and they were holding hands. I like a nice ending to a story.'

We were all roaring drunk when we heard the tale and thought it hysterically funny. But when I recounted it to Doctor Dan the next day he looked quite blank. ‘What a terrible story. You boys ought to watch who you're mixing with. You don't want to get yourself into any more trouble.'

But I found myself constantly drawn to Orlagh. She was afraid of nothing and swore like a trooper. She was funny and slow to judge anyone. When I drunkenly admitted in the pub that we had originally been sent here for cowardice, some of James's friends started to cluck like chickens. She turned on them and gave them a tongue-lashing. ‘You lot'd cack your pants as soon as you saw a spider. You boys were mad lettin' yerself get mixed up with the Navy in the first place.
I
wouldn't blame you if you had hidden in the hold.' They stopped clucking. Everyone was frightened of Orlagh.

She treated Richard and me like her younger brothers. ‘They'd be around your age, if they're still alive,' she said. Hers was a shocking story. When she was ten she and a friend had stolen a bonnet from a younger girl as she headed home from market and pawned it for a few pennies. To them it had been a childish prank, but they were arrested by the city constables. Charged with felonious assault and putting a child in fear of her life, they were both sentenced to hang. ‘I cried m'self to sleep every night, in that condemned cell, in all the stink and filth and rats scurrying round me feet. Me mate Molly, who was sentenced with me, she died of gaol fever. Then they let me off and sent me here. After all that you're afraid of nothing.'

Orlagh was a survivor and I admired her greatly. She provided for her children any way she could, stealing vegetables from allotments and sometimes, it was whispered, going with men for money. She seemed to have some sort of loose relationship with James, but they would both leave the pub arm in arm with other people.

The drinkers in the Sailor's Arms were sometimes violent and unpredictable, but they were feisty and generous and took people as they found them. They liked to gamble, and they swore and they stole. I could tell by his pained expression when we talked about them that Doctor Dan didn't approve of our new friends, but I wasn't going to turn my nose up at them.

* * *

Our house had little furniture, but we had iron pots and a stove to cook with. There was a small piece of garden around the hut too, which we planted with vegetables. Doctor Dan advised potatoes, as they could provide two crops a year. This we did, and also peas and cabbage. We jealously guarded our vegetables, but our precious crops were frequently stolen in the night, often before they were ready to eat. I sometimes wondered if Orlagh had taken any. I would have gladly given her some.

The Rocks was a noisy, restless place most hours of the day. In daylight babies howled, children screeched and tumbled, and the women who lived there called out across gardens and streets to their friends in nearby houses. By night, when people drank, there was singing and fighting, and arguments, always arguments. Dogs barked day and night, and pigs snuffled underfoot, in and out of any garden they could get into. Broken glass was everywhere, not least because children would throw bottles at each other for sport. People here lived by their wits and fists.

Across the street from us lived Edward Bean, who we often saw in the Sailor's Arms. His wife had died the previous year and he'd had her buried just outside his front door. Some nights he would sit alone drinking rum from the bottle, talking to her as if she was still alive. Occasionally he would pour a portion over the grave, saying, ‘I know you like a drop. A bit more won't hurt you.'

It was not just the convicts who lived their life free from the reason and regimentation of England. On the other side of the Rocks was a former marine who deserted soon after arriving here. He was sentenced to death. On the day of his execution it was raining cats and dogs. The hanging was postponed for a week and he endured another wait alone in his cell. When the day came he was taken out again to the gallows by the Parramatta road. But it was still raining torrents and again the execution was postponed. This time, when he returned to his cell, he was told the Governor had commuted his sentence. He was now a convict and found lodgings on the Rocks. Everyone was convinced the execution had been postponed because the officers called out to witness it did not want to get wet.

Doctor Dan was kept busy in the hospital. ‘Most of my patients are convicts or their families,' he told us. ‘I rarely see any of the “keepers”, unless it's soldiers with a dose of the pox. Doctor Reynolds at the hospital has been here almost since the beginning. He told me there used to be an epidemic every time a new fleet came in from England. Smallpox, dysentery, some unnamed fevers. Always affected the natives the worse. I don't think there are any diseases here that are new to Europeans. We've brought these plagues with us – it's very much a one-way trade. Poor savages, we cultivate
their land, we bring them the gospels, we teach them shame so they want to wear clothes, we bring the marvellous sciences of navigation and shipbuilding and metal working. But they seem to have managed well enough without, before we arrived.'

‘But they just roam around like animals, living off the land,' I said.

‘Why settle down in one spot if the earth provides you with food wherever you wander?' Daniel replied.

We had taken several tips from the natives to add to our diet, not least their habit of foraging for seafood – fishing and gathering shellfish. I rarely saw them though, they kept away from our town. I was horrified to see how they were treated by the British settlers. One evening we saw two native men, who had obviously been drinking, having a vicious fight near to the edge of town. A whole gang of soldiers gathered around to cheer, as if they were watching two dogs fighting. I was shocked to see there was even an officer with them.

When I described the incident to Daniel he shook his head in disgust. ‘The New South Wales Corps, those men are on the side of the devil. The Governor's always trying to curb their behaviour, but they are the ones with the real power here.'

For all its advantages, Sydney was a peculiar, unsettling place.

One bright afternoon in the early autumn, Richard noticed a familiar face down at the market. ‘What the hell is
he
doing here?' he said. ‘I thought we'd seen the last of him when the Spanish hauled him off.'

I peered through the crowd. My stomach turned. It was Lewis Tuck, the bullying bosun's mate from the
Miranda
. His towering size and his curly fair hair made him easy enough to spot.

We slipped away without being seen. But a day later, while we were walking home from the Navy office, he
came up to us in the street. ‘Well I never,' he jeered. ‘What are you pair doing here?'

We told him a little of what had happened. He laughed. ‘All those books never did you any good after all, Witchall,' he said. Tuck had always mocked my ability to read and write. I suppose he had an almighty chip on his shoulder because he could do neither.

‘So what are
you
doing here?' said Richard.

I winced instinctively. On the
Miranda
such a question would have been considered impertinent and earned a sharp blow with a rope. But Tuck carried on talking to us as if our time together on the
Miranda
had been a jovial adventure.

‘Those of us they took prisoner, they only held for a couple of months. There was an exchange of prisoners and we were paid off. I went to Tenerife to pick up a ship back to England, but decided to try my luck in New South Wales instead. There's plenty of work for men like me, and plenty of prospects, from what I've heard.'

I was staggered by his manner. Here was a man who had taunted and hounded me mercilessly on the
Miranda
. He had beaten me at every opportunity and would have had me flogged if we had not been captured by that Spanish frigate. Now he was talking to us like we were old shipmates. Perhaps he thought behaving as he had done was just part of his job, and the men who suffered his bullying would understand that?

‘Keep out of mischief,' he smirked and sauntered off, leaving me seething and staring daggers.

It was a funny day for meeting old faces. Walking back to the hut later that morning, my eye was drawn to a young woman walking with a soldier in his bright red jacket. As I came nearer I saw it was Lizzie Borrow. She held the arm of a handsome young lieutenant.

Before I could say hello there was a terrible commotion behind us. We all ran over to a small group of children who were staring fearfully down a well, their eyes wide with horror, hands held up to their mouths. Like many wells around the Rocks, it was uncovered and a danger to anyone, drunk or sober.

A little girl rushed up. ‘Joshua falled in,' she said. I looked at once to the Lieutenant, expecting him to take command of the situation, but he seemed aloof, as if it were none of his affair. I knew we had to act immediately. I peered down the well and could see the surface catching in the light about seven feet down. Whoever had fallen in was under the water. I looked around frantically for any stick, plank or rope I could use to try to get this child out. There was nothing. I had a horrible decision to make. If I waited any longer the child would surely drown. If I jumped into the narrow hole, I could drown down there myself, and even kill the child as I hit the water.

There was no time to think. I turned to Lizzie and the
Lieutenant and shouted, ‘Get a rope or a ladder!' then I climbed over the lip of the well. Looking for footholds along the sides I lowered my body down until I was hanging on to the edge by my finger tips. I launched myself into the void, falling three or four feet into chilly black water. On the way down I banged my elbow hard on the side of the well, but made no contact with the child in the water. I surfaced, spluttering and shuddering with the cold, reeling with a sharp shooting pain in my arm. The water was deep, for despite my fall I did not touch the bottom. There was barely space to pull my arms up through the water to launch myself down again, and my fingers caught the side of the well as I forced air from my lungs to let myself sink below. This time my foot brushed against a solid object. I let myself sink deeper into the black water, feeling the pressure grow in my ears. Moving my hands before me I touched solid flesh and bone and sodden clothing. I grabbed his shirt and kicked my legs hard, but the child was heavier than I imagined.

My lungs felt painfully tight and my head buzzed fit to burst, so desperate was I for breath. I kicked again and broke surface, treading water with the weight of the child pulling me down. Before I had got my breath I yelled ‘HELP' at the top of my voice, and we immediately sank again, as my lungs emptied of air.

I kicked hard to regain the surface, and felt around in the gloom for some hole or projection to hold on to. If
there were none, I would surely drown. I held on to the child with one hand as the other searched the walls. There was nothing. My legs were tired and I was beginning to panic. Just then, the child began to splutter and cough, spewing out a lungful of water and gasping in air.