Prison Ship (8 page)

Pain made me come to my senses. I must have fainted and hit my head on the deck. The next few minutes were a blur. Richard and I were bundled off the
Elephant
and on to a small boat. I must have looked as shocked as he did. He was unable to speak and could barely walk without two marines either side of him.

When it dawned on me that our lives had been spared, I should have felt a great joy. Instead I was indifferent. I kept wondering if I was really dead. If all this was some strange hallucination. But the cold north wind blowing down on us seemed real enough.

We were sculled over to a nearby frigate, the
Aeneas
, and thrown in a storeroom at the bottom of the ship. ‘We should be helping to sail her,' I protested. ‘We're wasted here, locked in the hold.' I got a sharp rap with a rope for my troubles. Afterwards I felt stupid, but
people say silly things when their minds are not working properly.

Richard kept holding his neck and twisting it. He stared straight ahead and refused to speak. When our dinner time ration of bread and water arrived, he ignored it. I wolfed mine down and a feeling of euphoria came over me. I was still breathing, eating, drinking. We were not dead men after all. I would see another sunset. I might even see my mother and father and Rosie again. I spouted this all out to Richard, but he remained in a strange, blank state. Only in the evening did his countenance change. He ate his dreary rations then he became very angry. He picked up his empty mug and threw it hard against the wall. Then he began to shout. ‘What a dastardly, low-down, miserable, rotten bastard trick.' He was beside himself.

I was more philosophical. ‘I don't know who pulled strings for us – Middlewych? Robert? Maybe even Foley himself?' I suggested. Perhaps those with the power to reprieve us felt we needed to be sufficiently punished before they spared our lives?

He shook his head and muttered, but I could see my words were making sense.

‘And what's this about transportation?' he said.

‘I've heard about that. They send you off to New South Wales.'

Richard looked puzzled.

‘New South Wales. You know, Botany Bay, New Holland,' I said. ‘It's called umpteen different things. I don't know much about it other than that it's on the other side of the world, and it's very hot.'

Richard looked close to despair. ‘But how will I ever get back to Massachusetts?'

As he said it, it dawned on me that the very great distance would make it difficult for us to escape or even return as free men. If that had been our original sentence, I would have been devastated. But at this moment, anything seemed better than being dead and I was filled with curiosity. Richard returned to his sullen silence.

Later on, one of the ship's hands came to take away our plates and mugs. ‘I 'eard they 'ad you up to be 'anged,' he said. ‘Then they let you off. I seen that 'appen a few times, but usually you get pardoned. It's rare to get another sentence, like as you 'ave. I've 'eard allsorts about where you're goin'. Some good, some bad. First they'll put you in a prison hulk outside Portsmouth. That's where we're goin'. Should be there in a week. You stay on that 'til there's a ship ready to take you away. If you can survive the hulk, you've got six months at sea to look forward to. Takes that long to get down there. Still, you bein' Navy men, you should be tough enough.'

* * *

When after another week or so at sea we were finally brought up from the hold of the
Aeneas
, I saw at once we were back at Portsmouth. We were not taken directly to a prison hulk, but instead spent a couple of weeks in a stinking barracks cell close to the quayside. We slept on a bed of cold straw and talked constantly of our hope for a reprieve.

‘They've put us here because they're going to let us go!' I said to Richard.

He shared my hope. ‘Maybe they're just playing us along for a bit, like they did when they pretended to hang us. Keep us here for another couple of weeks then let us off?'

When a squad of marines came for us, I couldn't help but ask, ‘Have you good news? Are we to be set free?'

The Sergeant commanding didn't even have the heart to hit me for my insolence. ‘Shut up, you silly boy,' he said. ‘You're off to the hulks.'

‘Anything's got to be better than this horrible place,' whispered Richard with a grin.

The Sergeant overheard him. ‘You wait and see, lad, you wait and see.' He was beginning to sound impatient. ‘Now shut your mouths, the pair of you.'

A small tender ferried us over Portsmouth Sound to our new home. It was a day full of promise for anyone not bound for a prison hulk. On shore, blossoms burst from the trees and the air was filled with fresh scents and
sunshine. Despite my fate, my spirits were high. Every day I woke and told myself I was still alive and not slowly turning to corruption at the bottom of the North Sea, with a rope around my broken neck.

Our destination was the
St Louis
, a prison hulk outside Portsmouth harbour, which we were told was a captured French 74. There were ten other prison vessels moored beside the
St Louis
, in the waters leading down to Spithead. I could see them clearly, all moored together in line. What a pitiful sight they made, compared to the proud warship I had seen sailing in line at Copenhagen. The mizzenmast and yardarms had been removed, and just a stump left for the main mast and foremast. No sails or flags billowed proudly from these masts, only a single black pennant. All the ships were the colour of rotten wood, with none of the proud spick and span of a Navy vessel. They looked like a row of loathsome brown toads squatting on the green marble surface of the sea.

Richard and I fell into conversation with an older man on the tender, who had been sent down to Portsmouth from Newgate Prison in London. He had a wrinkled face and mean, ratty eyes, but I thought there must be some good left in his soul as he was keen to give us advice.

‘Third time I been sent to one of these,' he told us.

‘Didn't you get transported?' I asked him. He shook his head. ‘There's plenty on the hulks who never get sent
out to Botany Bay. We get sent to the ships because the gaols are full to bursting.

‘I expect I'll see a few old mates,' he went on. ‘I usually do. Only, as a word of warning to you boys, don't go thinking anyone here is going to be
your
mate. Even me. They're just out to trick you of every possession you have. And if you find the prisoners nasty, you should see the guards. They come from the depths of humankind. Lightermen, rat catchers, slaughtermen, saltpetre men. Most have never held power over another fellow in their life, except on these hulks, and they love to torment the wretches they're charged to mind.'

‘So what's the drill?' said Richard, hurriedly trying to change the subject. His cheery optimism of this morning had vanished.

‘Every morning, seven o'clock, any man who can stand up is ferried to government works. They work the whole day. Sometimes the work's filthy, sometimes it isn't, but it always wears you to the bone. Then, when it's dusk, we go back to the ship to be locked in the hold 'til six o'clock the next morning.'

‘You mean we get to sleep the whole night?' said Richard.

I was impressed too. On some nights in the Navy we were allowed only four hours' rest.

The old man thought we were simpletons. ‘You fresh-faced boys won't be getting much sleep. After lockdown
the worst of them roam the decks unhindered, tormenting the weaker prisoners. I imagine you'll be getting more than a fair share of their attentions.'

We were used to the rough world of the Navy, but we weren't expecting this.

As the tender grew closer to the
St Louis
my heart sank. On the top deck, ugly wooden huts sprouted like warts on a face. Instead of cannons at the gun ports there were thick iron grills. Instead of colourful pennants or signal flags on the rigging, washing hung out to dry. Then the wind blew in our faces and a choking stench oozed from the ship.

We were shoved up a stairway that stretched from the waterline to the top deck. From a platform at the top, I looked over the deck to see a handful of men, all of them in leg irons, trudging in a circle. Their chains scraped on the planking as they hobbled around.

From below came a strange rattling noise, which I supposed to be the chains of all the other men. Amid the hubbub of voices from within the
St Louis
, I could make out an extraordinary deluge of oaths and execrations new to my ears. Having sailed on a Navy vessel for most of the previous year, I thought I had heard every swear word known to man.

The men were herded below, the more tardy of them suffering blows from the guards' musket butts. When
the deck had been cleared we were lined up and addressed by a marine sergeant, who ordered us to strip and wash in the tubs of water provided. Then we were given filthy, ragged clothes and sent over to a blacksmith. I sat down before him and once again irons were placed around my ankles. I was swiftly hauled to my feet and staggered over to the hatchway leading below. It was time to meet our fellow prisoners.

I made my way down the ladder to the lower deck, suddenly clumsy with the burden of my leg irons. If I had been descending into hell, I could not have felt more afraid. But there on the crowded deck was a familiar face.

‘Well boyos, am I pleased to see you! I heard you were going to be hanged!' It was Vincent Thomas – Vengeful Tattoos himself – our shipmate from the
Elephant
and the
Miranda
.

I had expected to see hollow-eyed men, wandering like the damned, not a cheery Welshman. But the hollow-eyed men were there too – the
St Louis
carried a cargo of human scarecrows.

‘What are you doing here?' I was astounded.

Vincent drew me closer, and whispered. ‘They said I was getting too friendly with one of the sailmaker's mates. Blew up just after the battle it did. They wanted to hang us too, but couldn't prove anything. So we got
packed off here on the double instead. He's been sent to the hulk behind us I think. Bit overcrowded, isn't it?'

‘Are they going to transport you?' I asked.

‘I shouldn't think so, Sam. I'm hoping they'll just keep us here for a few months and let us go when the fuss dies down. Certainly hope so.'

He seemed remarkably cheerful, considering.

‘Well, this is all very nice,' he went on. ‘You boys can join our mess. We just had two scoundrels who messed with us taken off and flogged to death. Tried to escape they did. Terrible business. Well you can make up the numbers. Regulations say we need six for a mess. Come and meet your messmates.'

One of them was a boy of seven, a sorry-looking little chap who sucked his thumb and had a bright green blob of snot running down his nose.

‘Terrible story it is. You tell it Johnny Onions,' said Vincent.

But the boy remained mute, and hid his face behind Vincent's bulky shoulders.

Vincent smiled at him indulgently. ‘Stole some bread, didn't he? Poor lad was hungry. Mother just let him roam the streets of Westminster while she sold lucky heather, and herself too I shouldn't wonder. The judge says to his mother, “You take him home and look after him and the court shall let him go on account of his youthfulness.” And what does she do? She says, “You
can take him and lock him up for all I cares.” Cockney slut. So the boy gets sentenced to transportation, doesn't he? Never you mind, Johnny. We'll look after you, lad.'

Another messmate was even stranger. His name was James Updike. When introduced, he bowed, and spoke with the most affected high-born accent I had ever heard. Although he smiled at us pleasantly, he seemed unwilling to talk. So Vincent told his story too while he looked on with an indulgent smirk.

‘Only turned up here with his servant. Course they wouldn't let the lad on with us, so Mr Updike sent him away and had him come back later with his dinner. Fellow sailed up to the bow with a meal in a silver salver. The guards weren't having that either. Told him not to come back. Still, Mr Updike's friend, Lady Farringdon, has made an arrangement with the authorities, ensuring he gets proper food and he in turn has made an arrangement with me, ensuring he gets proper looking after from the more disagreeable sorts in here. We all share his spoils naturally.'

‘So what did you do to end up here, Mr Updike?' I asked.

‘Never could resist a handsome snuffbox,' he said in a languid drawl. His manners were exquisite, but I thought him the silliest man I had ever met. How anyone with his wealth and connections would be careless
enough to land himself in such trouble was beyond me.

The sixth man in our mess was called Joseph Swales. He was a tough-looking salt with blue tattoos all up his arms, and wiry, greying hair. He was happy enough to tell us his story. ‘I was transported twelve years ago,' he said. ‘Went over in 1790 I did, on the
Neptune
. There were five hundred of us, men and women, packed in like slaves we were. Nearly two hundred of us died on the way, from gaol fever or want of proper nourishment. Then another hundred or so pegged out soon after they landed.'

Swales was a sailor by trade, and had been transported for pilfering supplies. He had made an extraordinary escape. ‘Caught me a Yankee merchantman in Port Jackson, didn't I?' he boasted. ‘Stowed away in the hold. When they found out I was a sailor they let me work my passage to Jamaica. Spent a good few years there, then worked a ship back to London. Thought I'd be able to settle down there. All them people, it's easy to blend in, get lost in the crowd. But first thing I sees is me bleedin' old ship's first lieutenant down on the Strand. He had me arrested at once and sent back to the hulks. Lucky I wasn't hanged. My old mate Will Moulder, who pulled the same trick, got strung up at Newgate he did.'

Swales told us some of the transport ships were run by cruel captains and crews recruited direct from the slave ships. ‘I knew some of them. I worked those slave ships myself before I joined the Navy. They keep their cargo
double-ironed for the whole journey. They're frightened of a mutiny. One man who tried to stir things up, he got snitched on. They gave him three hundred lashes then rested him for the night and brought him out to give him five hundred more the next day. Poor bastard died halfway through. I heard some fellows nearly got away with it once. When most of the crew were up in the rigging and the officers were having their dinner, they rushed the guards by the quarterdeck and tried to break into the ship's armoury. Right bloody mess it was. Fifteen of them killed before they gave up, then the ring leaders were hanged, them that were still alive.