The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  Jesse Broad was ill as well. Several of the injured mutineers were left below, in chains, and several died. It did not suit that Broad should die, however – Swift would not have it so. He was placed in the sick-bay under the surgeon’s tender care. No guard was needed, for he could not move. He received the best of nursing, and a complicated operation to remove the ball. His left shoulder and several of his ribs were badly smashed, and for weeks on end his life hung in the balance. He too dreamed in delirium, but not of Bentley. The nightmare of the past few months was mingled with his earlier life. Sometimes he thought he was back in Langstone, a free man once more and happy. At others, bloody shades rose up before him and he would awaken, racked by screams or sobs. He dreamed often of Thomas Fox.

  As they neared England, and his lucid periods got longer, Broad harboured no happy thoughts. He pondered longest on whether he should get in contact with his wife before he died, or whether it was better just to leave it. That way she might never know, he thought, for the evidence was minimal. If the wherry he and Hardman had been caught in had ever been found, it would have been assumed they had been overwhelmed, or met some other sea-accident, he supposed. Even if it had ever been guessed that the press had had a hand in it, he could have gone to any of a dozen ships. Nothing strange at all if he were never heard of any more. By now Mary might have grown accustomed to her loss; heartless, stupid, cruel to let her know he lived –for the few short weeks before they hanged him. The day it dawned on him that she was bound to know was one of his worst. A black despair settled on him and he writhed in mental torment on his palliasse. For he was a ringleader; the only ringleader left alive, at that. The Welfare mutiny would be noised throughout the land, he would be pilloried, his name would be a household word. Not only would his poor wife come to know, she would share the final agony of his trial and hanging. It was intolerable. He jerked and fumbled, with some idea of reopening his wounds, unknitting the knitting bone, until the pain was appalling. He succeeded only in passing out.

  Later on, Broad tried to kill himself. He had crawled six feet across the sick-bay, towards a box he hoped might contain some sharp instruments, before a surgeon’s boy discovered him. He cried weakly as they carried him back, tears of sheer frustration. The surgeon shrewdly guessed their meaning, and from that moment on he was tied to his berth.

  It never entered Broad’s head that William Bentley would plead for him, or tell the truth of the affair. It never entered William Bentley’s head that he would not. At one end of the ship the sick boy lay, making his careful plans, at the other lay the sailor, his mind a cauldron of desperate thoughts. Both of them were sleeping uneasily when the anchor plunged into the bright green depths of Spithead early on a sparkling summer morning.

  *

  When the full extent of William’s revolt became apparent, some days later, it caused a storm that bade fair to swamp him. He was at home, in the big house near Petersfield, some twenty miles from Portsmouth. He was in his own room, in his own bed, and the medical man who had tended him since a child visited daily and had declared him on the road to recovery. Much of the day he spent in thought, sunk deep in bunched-up pillows, breathing the clean warm country air that blew in at the window. He had greeted his father and his older brother with a certain coldness that he could not hide. It troubled him, but the coldness would not go away. His mother, too, even his sisters, were somehow like strangers, he had seen their faces with indifference, tolerated tears of joy with vague distaste. Uncle Daniel had stayed in the house for a time, explained presumably that William was in some kind of state; so fortunately the matter had not been dwelt upon at first.

  When it was, he stated his position with great care. Firstly he told his father all about the mutiny, starting so far back that he snorted with impatience. But William insisted. It cost him a lot in energy, holding back his desire to launch into a tirade, as well as resisting the temptation to succumb to his father’s tendency to bluster, to try to make him retract, when he said something even mildly critical of Uncle Daniel. However hard he tried to point up his own faults, he was just pooh-poohed. At the end of an afternoon he was exhausted, and the visiting physician was appalled by the worsening of his condition. Next afternoon he tried once more; he had not even reached the incidents in the doldrums.

  His father was not a stupid man, and his blustering, hearty approach soon gave way to a much more grave and serious one. He sat in a high, winged chair, his back to the window, his face in shadow. He said so little, contradicting not at all, that William began to believe he understood, condoned. He talked with passion of the acts of Broad and Matthews, painted the scene of Fox’s death in tones that shook with horror. Or was it hatred, he wondered in a pause? Self-hatred or for Daniel Swift? Or both?

  Finally, stumbling over his slow-picked words, William made his statement on the subject of the court-martial. His Uncle Daniel Swift should stand arraigned, he said, and if need be, he himself as well. The voyage had been carnage, a slow-unfolding massacre. He could not stand by and see the man who had been its author preside over the murder of any more unfortunates. For all the mutineers who had survived, not only Jesse Broad, deserved a better fate. There must be no more killings.

  His father had left the room in silence. William had lain in the dwindling light drained of energy, but not unhappy. It was later, when Swift had been told and said his piece, when the family had closed ranks, that the storm broke, that the nightmare began. William, already weak, became yet weaker. He even suspected that his weakness was being used against him, to break down his resistance. But he fought on, despite all threats and cajoling, despite all pleas to think of family honour, despite all hints of faults within himself. It became a fixed point, an anchor for his being, it kept him going. The truth must be told.

  In the end, he was very ill again. Much too ill, it was certificated, to give evidence to a court-martial, although he was the only gentleman-witness to the continued atrocities of the mutineers who had seized the Welfare and cast off captain, officers and loyal men to almost certain death. A pity, but he was too ill. Mr William Bentley’s evidence will not be heard. In fact, it was not until after the trial that they told him it had taken place. And that seven men were to hang. Among them Jesse Broad.

  *

  The agony for Broad had not been, as it happened, deciding whether or not to tell his wife and friends, but wondering whether they knew. After the ship had anchored in Spithead, he and the other prisoners had been moved within two days. They had not been blindfolded, and the sight of Portsdown Hill, the yellow beaches, the green waters and the walls of Portsmouth, had been too much. Many wept, all were speechless. Broad was lowered to the waiting boat in an arrangement of planks. He looked at the whitish, dirty faces of his fellows, but no smiles were passed. Less than three hours later they were on board another ship, a dank, foul-smelling hulk at the mouth of Fareham creek; a prison hulk, with a filthy sick-bay with no outer openings. There they stayed, with no visitors, no letters in or out, no contact with the outside world. His thoughts of Mary were jumbled now, a touch of madness hovered always near. He let his health sink downwards, it did not bother him. He realised he would die without seeing her, and probably without knowing if she knew. It was, finally, the best way.

  The trial was held on board another ship, to which the prisoners were rowed every day. The evidence was long, but all one-sided. Broad did not listen very hard, just lay on his pallet staring at the deckhead. It did not surprise him much that Bentley was not there, although his name was mentioned very often. Apparently he was deadly ill, having borne the brunt of the last stages of the mutiny. Broad did not blame him for not being there, there was no blame to be attached; easier to keep away, poor lad. He had suffered very much.

  Many of the accused men made impassioned speeches, but these did not interest him much, either. The accusations of ill-treatment and brutality sounded wrong in the elegant and airy great-cabin of the line-of-battle ship where the trial was held. The
captain of the Welfare, quiet and restrained in splendid silk and blue, would look down modestly, breathe on his nails and polish them, as wild-faced, inarticulate men spluttered out their hate-filled ‘evidence’, or told crazy-sounding stories of how he was a monster. It was those who kept their mouths shut, in the main, who pleaded madness and confusion, the heat of the moment, who avoided the rope. They could not hang them all, indeed; but prisons there were in plenty.

  Broad, the ringleader, the villain, the scoundrel, declined to speak at all. He smiled wanly when they said he had to die.

  The day of the executions was fixed, by accident no doubt, on Bentley’s fifteenth birthday. This time there was no escape. He was much fitter, his father had made the position very clear as to the financial future, and my Lords of the Admiralty required it with equal insistence. If he did not present himself on board the Duchess in Portsmouth harbour on that bright morning, he would stand alone in the world. All right, he had said at first, then alone in the world I shall stand. As he was rowed across the waters of the harbour, the harbour at its most freshly beautiful, his eyes were blank. He tried to keep them so throughout.

  The officers were mustered on the quarterdeck, and the affair was very formal and correct. He did not see the ceremony, did not hear the last words, did not hear the guns, most of all did not watch the bodies as they swung suddenly from deck to yardarm, throttling as they rose. Until it came the time for Jesse Broad, the biggest villain, the last to hang.

  Jesse Broad could not go to his death unaided, try as he might.

  He stood between two seamen, his legs like dolls’ legs, his crippled shoulder hunched. He fought desperately to stay upright on his own, but he could not. He had to be held. Even his head had to be lifted up so that the noose could be slipped over it. It was then his eyes met Bentley’s.

  They stared at each other for what appeared to be eternity. As if there was no one else on board, as if they were utterly alone. They stared and stared, their faces clenched and rigid. It was like an age.

  Then Broad’s feet swung out and upwards with a jerk.

  His eyes met Bentley’s just once more, and they were bulging, filled with pressured blood. Then away, high up in the air he flew, twitching on his rope. The sightless eyes, bulging out obscenely, passed across the island as he turned, then seemed to scan Spithead. Then the Gosport shore, the hill, and then he spun round back again.

  William Bentley could look no more. His eyes had seen enough.

  Author’s Note

  I started writing historical sea books because I thought another point of view was long overdue. All the ones I’d read and loved were about a certain sort of hero, and followed a well-worn path – roughly, the real-life transformation of Horatio Nelson from a weedy, sea-sick boy to a towering strategist and hero. I was born and raised in Portsmouth, from where Nelson sailed for many a battle, had strong family naval connections, and studied the sea and ships from the moment I was old enough. I spent many childhood hours crawling about in the lower decks of the Foudroyant – now renamed the Trincomalee – when she was moored out in the harbour. I also spent hundreds of hours, and most of my money, on visiting the Victory in her drydock.

  The more I read fictional accounts of marvellously brave and noble young midshipmen doing barely credible things to defeat the evil French, the more I felt it was by no means the whole story. There were villains and cowards among British naval officers, as there are in any body of fighting men. And many upstanding young midshipmen started as brutes, and grew only into greater brutishness. Hugh Pigot is a single name that might stand for this counterview. He was murdered by his crew in the bloodiest single mutiny in British navy history.

  The premise for A Fine Boy for Killing, then, was to portray a young midshipman who was neither a decent person nor a hero. He ships on board his uncle’s frigate Welfare, and buys into that man’s cruelty and failure of empathy. He brings on board the two people who become the greatest targets of Captain Swift’s regime, and is in the vanguard of their appalling treatment and misuse.

  It seemed a simple narrative that I had undertaken, but it turned out very differently. As many writers have pointed out before, characters have a habit of taking over their own lives. Vile as William Bentley was, I began to feel for him, to pity him, to understand what made him tick. Which did not make his actions less reprehensible, but made them horrifyingly inevitable. At times, to me, he seemed to be a person without hope.

  The conclusion of A Fine Boy for Killing is necessarily bleak. But Bentley, who started out severely damaged, has begun to grow. Over the next books, his rejection of the givens of his life becomes more complex and more urgent, and in The Wicked Trade, he meets the girl who is his destiny. Deb’s is another life formed by pain and horror, and in The Spithead Nymph and Undertaker’s Wind their journey continues. For them, the 18th century navy is not a romantic, easy, place. But they will fight on, clear-eyed and with unquenchable hope.

  THE WICKED TRADE

  For my Uncle Les, who brought me stories of the Seven Seas,

  and all the other Brices, young and old

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  William Bentley’s life, and those of his friends and enemies, reflects a time not ruled by the iron hand of specific history and its dates. Pre-Nelsonian, certainly, when the Eastern seaboard of America was still controlled (nominally!) by the British. Beyond that, please don’t pin him down: he sails; he sails.

  J.N.

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  ONE

  The two men, Yorke and Warren, were talking in comfort the evening they were taken, when they’d thought at last that they could see an end in sight. Their mission had been long and arduous, their need for secrecy a constant strain. But earlier that day, on the shores of Fare-ham Creek, they had met a man and made an offer, and backed it with a string of names. They were venturers, they said, and they wished to join the trade. They had information that they’d gathered in dire secrecy, and they used it as a lure. Now, feet into the fireplace, Mrs Cullen preparing them a meal, they were contented.

  “He said his name was Saunders,” said Charles Warren, musingly. “But it is not, it is George Felton, his home is in Cowplain. But Saunders is a name I know from Kent, one of the eastern crews. I wonder what significance there is in that?”

  Charles Yorke was comfortably amused. He selected a new clay from the table rack, and began to pack it, for after dinner. Mrs Cullen had provided them with fresh tobacco, in a box, and boasted, with fetching naivety, that it was “from the trade.” Whatever, it was good tobacco, lately cured.

  “None at all, I doubt,” he said. “A name he plucked from out the air. Although Saunders may well have been high up in his mind, if we are right about the Kentish men. Perhaps it was a test, to try us for reaction. I suppose if you had let on that you recognised it, that could have set suspicion in his head.”

  Charles Warren was fifty-six years old. He was a stocky, quiet, sombre man, with eyes of fierce intelligence.

  “No, I think the time for tests is past,” he said. “I think tomorrow or the next day we will get to see the men we need. Let’s hope they don’t demand the stake in sovereigns, there on the table. If they make me turn my pockets out, the very fluff would cry out my true profession
!”

  He was a riding officer in the normal way — and if success was paid in bounties, was deserving to be rich. But his wage was tiny of itself, hardly enough to keep him in the class of horse he favoured — good horses were his only weakness, it was said. His origins were humble, also, which was why Charles Yorke, at barely twenty-five, was in command of him. There were ways to get wealth while doing Customs work, but Warren shunned them vehemently. Officers who accepted gifts instead of blows could wear good cloth and ride fine horses; also stay alive. Charles Warren, it was known, would court death, rather.

  Yorke, hungry but impatient, leaned into the fireplace and took out a glowing stick. It was a warm evening, almost summer still, but the smouldering logwood enhanced the parlour and gave off a pleasant smell. He felt the brand’s heat on his cheek as he sucked the clay. Truth was, he’d smoke while eating, if he fancied it; he was fanatick for the weed.

  “We’re businessmen,” he said, around the pipestem. “To make free with our money in a trade like this, unless we had an army at our back — now that would be suspicious, with brass knobs! No, we’ll deal in talk and promises until we’ve met them, to the very top. Then the gold will hit them, like a ton of bricks. Ah Charles, we’re getting close to it, I really feel we are. Today I had a premonition, a solid premonition. I think that we are coming very close.”