He did as he was told – he pissed in his shoes, one pair at a time, and set them out in the sun for a couple of days so that the ammonia could work on the poorly-cured leather and make them far more comfortable. He cut the stitching on his knapsack and sewed it up again properly, in neat straight lines that sat far more easily. He learned how to set the straps on his shoulders and to fold the blanket exactly correctly so that nothing would rub or irritate. They had not been issued with greatcoats, there being no need for them down on the Coast, and that would make the load less.
The final trick to learn was to carry the heavy musket, powder and ball and to ensure that he did not poke out the eye of the man behind him when he slung the weapon on his shoulder.
The long forty-two-inch barrel was inconvenient and badly balanced, made the carrying awkward until a man had the trick of it – it seemed much easier on parade.
The extra men never came – the gaol fever in Bedford had been vigorous and had killed the bulk of the inmates on this occasion and so the felons remained undelivered, and recruiting grew even poorer as the word of their destination spread through the countryside. Finally, they were forced to march, could wait no longer.
They set off on a bright summer’s morning, silent, for they had no music, the colonel being too close-fisted to pay out even for drums and fife, though they had no doubt a band appeared on the accounts for payment that the Regimental Agent submitted to Horse Guards.
The Grenadier Company led the column out of town, which was to their benefit – the others marched in their dust, they breathed clean air. Sergeant Hollis set a precise pace, they could not be seen to slack in town; it might be a different matter out on the road where there was no knowledgeable audience.
“Keep an eye out on the road, Harry. Horsehair, you wants, if you can get ‘old of it.”
Blank incomprehension; he could not imagine why.
“Your bloody queue, nipper – it ain’t an inch long! Gets to parade and they could put you down for punishment, ‘improperly dressed’. You needs horsehair and tallow to make up a proper queue at least half a foot long.”
The oldest soldiers, who had not cut their hair in twenty years, had queues dangling to the small of their back, all made up with grease and flour to the proper colour and thickness. Most had not washed their hair since first tying it up and the smell of rancid fat was unattractive, as was its population of crawling bugs.
Harry’s hair had always been hacked short for him – long hair was a nuisance in the mine, forever falling forwards over a boy’s eyes.
Where possible the battalion was billeted, forcibly imposed upon the population of the villages and small towns on their route. The landlords of pubs were legally obliged to put soldiers up and to feed them and supply them with drink according to laid-down scales and fees; they were typically paid more than a year in arrears and did their best to avoid the duty and short-change the men. The soldiers themselves did their damnedest to loot the publicans’ cellars. It was not a happy arrangement.
Where there were too few pubs the men were distributed between barns and cottages; they had no tents. The locals locked their wives and daughters away and loaded their shotguns, uncertain whether to stand guard over the womenfolk or the pigsties, both being at risk from soldiers’ appetites.
They marched cross-country to Reading, using the back-lanes before coming out onto the Great West Road to Bristol. No battalion ever marched through London; there would be a riot in response, the apprentices out on the streets to stone the troops and the men themselves taking advantage of the disorder to desert.
They were a fortnight on the road, the lanes winding and adding much to the distance actually to be travelled, and then they reached the great seaport of Bristol.
Chapter Three
A pair of small ships were waiting in Bristol, had been tied up for three weeks, they said, earning no money while they hung about for the benefit of idle soldiers.
The battalion waited on the docks, listening with vast, but silent and straight-faced, entertainment to the shouting match between their colonel and the ships’ captains. The colonel demanded respect while the captains told him that they were free men, not bloody soldier slaves, and that if he didn’t like their attitude then he knew just where he could put it! The ships’ crews did their best to help the affair along, hanging over the sides and cheering particularly good insults, treating the whole business as a burlesque staged for their amusement.
The argument came to an end when the Harbourmaster’s deputy arrived and demanded that the soldiers should, now that they had finally deigned to turn up, waste no further time. He also presented a bill for demurrage, stating that three of the port’s berths had been blocked by the waiting transports for more than a fortnight, to the financial disadvantage of all parties. He did not explain how two ships could block three berths and it did not occur to the colonel to enquire.
The colonel was outraged and insisted that the bill be presented to Horse Guards – he could not be expected to pay it. The Harbourmaster’s deputy, who had not for a moment expected to get away with his initiative, demanded to know whether the colonel accepted that the bill must be paid.
“Just as long as you don’t want the money from me! Send it to Horse Guards, man!”
“Certainly, sir. If you would just append your signature and the direction of the appropriate officer, sir.”
The colonel took the pencil offered him and scrawled his name and that of the Officer Commanding the Slave Coast Forts, thus officially accepting the account to be legitimate. The Adjutant arrived from the rear of the column in time to see him doing so; it was too late to make a protest and the colonel would not thank him for pointing out that he had just made a fool of himself. The Adjutant caught the Deputy Harbourmaster’s eye and shrugged; he received a beaming smile in return.
The men eventually filed aboard ship and were led down into the holds, each ship set up to take three hundred hammocks. The shortage of bodies meant that they at least had sleeping space and full rations waiting for them; there would be sufficient water as well, they would not have to go onto reduced allowance as they entered the Tropics.
The ships were old and dirty, as was normal for troopers. The general way of things was for superannuated colliers to be put to the trade, the coal-carriers generally being broad in the beam and originally strongly built. Battalions going to East or West Indies were normally transported in larger ships, though not necessarily better; old East Indiamen or naval ships that could no longer carry a broadside generally ended their days serving the Army.
The old soldiers who had crossed the seas before showed the new men how to tie their hammocks to the hooks in the bulkheads and deck beams. They then amused themselves watching them try to climb in for the first time.
The officers were all accommodated in the one ship which had a great cabin large enough to be a mess, together with a range of partitioned-off individual sleeping spaces. To the relief of the grenadier company, they were ordered with half of the battalion onto the other ship, their sergeants the sole authority aboard.
The ships cast off soon after dawn with the high tide and set off in company down the Bristol Channel. It was within reason calm and the ships’ motion was mild enough that the bulk of the men rapidly became accustomed to the slight rolling and pitching. Half a dozen of unfortunates were particularly susceptible to seasickness and threw up almost immediately; there was nothing to be done for them, other than hope that they would get over it.
“They’ll be over it within a couple of days or dead within the week, Harry!”
Corporal Smith leaned against the bulwarks, wholly unconcerned; there was nothing to be done for the weak men – they must live or die of their own volition, but if they showed unable to stomach their food then they would have very little prospect of survival.
“How long do you reckon, corp?”
“Might be six weeks, if we’re lucky. Could be a hundred days if the winds are agains
t us. Might be never if a real storm blows up – these ships are bloody old!”
A hundred days was a great long time, Harry suspected – the number was over-large for his counting still.
“What we supposed to do for all that while, corp?”
“Not much! Stay out from under my feet, and the sergeant’s. Keep your uniform up. You once let the salt air get to your brasswork and into the barrel of the musket then you’ll never get back on top of it. Polish and oil every day; same for the shoes. Don’t wear the coat and cross-belts except the sergeant tells you to – keep ‘em wrapped up in cover. Other than that, watch out for the dice and cards! Plenty of the lads will be playin’ all day, every day, and some of them’s goin’ to owe a year’s pay time they gets ashore!”
Smudger showed Harry how to cook, Army style, to get the best out of their sea-going rations, somewhat different to the food they received on land.
“Only real difference is we gets an issue of sugar and of suet and raisins once a week, and vinegar. We gets less of beer and more of spirits, and the QM ‘as fiddled tea as well, but it ain’t so easy to get a kettle on. Was I you, Harry, then I’d drink the rum; well-mixed to make grog – makes the water safer to drink. The QM ‘as brought some sacks of onions with ‘im, but we got to buy them off ‘im, and not bloody cheap as well!”
The ‘bread’ was actually naval biscuit as well; twice-baked and rock hard, but edible with a little of ingenuity, provided always that a man had his teeth. Most men past the age of thirty had lost more than half of theirs, and the rest tended to be shaky and carious; naval biscuit in its original form was impossible for them.
“No choice, Harry, the bloody stuff’s got to be cooked up some’ow.”
Smudger’s solution was to pound the bread until it was reduced to crumbs and then add it to the dinner of boiled beef or pork on meat days. On the three days a week when there was no meat issue then it was a matter of boiling up pease, biscuit, rice and onions with the addition of their butter or cheese allowance, whichever was made. The mixture was cooked until it became pudding-like, almost solid, and was issued to each man with his share of the week’s vinegar splashed on top. It was edible, and filling; there was not much else to be said for it.
The ration was varied by the addition of oatmeal in place of some of the bread on occasion; then there was skillygaloo for two of their meals in the day, breakfast and supper normally. The sugar ration was used together with the butter to boil up a thin, sweet, greasy porridge that made a welcome variation and stuck to a man’s ribs. Harry thought he might be putting weight on, idling aboard ship and eating unaccustomed foods.
Five weeks into the voyage, somewhere in the ocean – neither he nor any of the others of the company had any idea where – and the wind blew up a gale. The sailors said it was from the south-west, wherever that was, and that if they ran before it they would end up back in England, so they must try to quarter it. That meant nothing to Harry, but he had no wish to be blown back to England and have to start all over again; he had no say in the matter in any case. The wind raged and the waves rose and began to hammer against the front side of the ship – the ‘starboard quarter’, so they said. The vessel took on a combined pitch and roll, corkscrewing. The bows dipped violently, combined with a roll to the left; then they rose and at the same time the deck tilted to the right; then the process started again. The whole business took the better part of two minutes to complete.
The soldiers heaved. Those who could, threw up over the side; those who lacked the strength to get that far spewed over the decks and in the holds, splashing themselves and everything and anybody in range. Half a day and the ship reeked.
They could not cook as the galley fires had been dowsed for safety’s sake; as none of them wanted to eat it made no difference.
Harry held onto the bulwarks next afternoon, not vomiting because he was too empty after twenty-four hours of seasickness. He watched as some of the sailors made their way up into the rigging and set a small sail on the foremast, tying it tight and angling it carefully. They came down again and he asked one of them what it was for and were they about to sink perhaps.
“A jib, mate, so she’ll point up a bit more. Wind’s easing and veering as well. Couple of hours and the worst’ll be over. Not that bad a blow, not like some I’ve seen in these waters. Three days, most like, and we’ll be tied up at Cape Coast Castle. We’ll be shipping the pumps and hoses as soon as it calms a bit. Clean the bloody cow up!”
The next morning showed almost calm and the galley fires were alight again. Smudger brought their food up, shaking his head.
“Quartermaster told me he was issuing eleven rations less this morning, Harry! Blokes what died from throwing up blood. Hacked up so much they ripped their guts up, so ‘e said.”
Harry still felt ill, was not deeply concerned for the poor souls. An hour later, food in his belly, and he felt much better, was inclined to wonder what had happened to the unfortunates.
“Surgeon’s on the other ship, so there ain’t no bugger to tell us, not for sure,” Corporal Smith said. “All of ‘em was pasty-faced buggers, though, the sort who fell off the pace on the march. I reckons they was a bit ill already and the rolling was too much for them to take, being on the weak side. I bet some of those fat, drunk bastards over in the Officers’ Mess took it hard, boy!”
The two vessels had managed to keep company and heaved-to for sea burials at the same time. Their eleven went over the rail in rough shrouds of old sail-cloth, weighed down with lumps of stone taken from the ballast, and then they watched the other ship.
“Nineteen, I made it, Harry. Three of them was covered in the Union flag as well. They put the flag over the stiffs and then shoved ‘em out from underneath it, didn’t let the flag go to waste, but it showed willing. They’d ‘ave been officers, I’ll bet! Wonder which ones of the bastards it was?”
Sergeant Hollis overheard and muttered that he hoped it was bloody Atkins, but he doubted it because the Devil looked after his own, as was well-known.
Next morning, they saw the coast, grey in the distance and the ships turned their heads towards their destination. The word came down that they would enter harbour the following day; they would hold offshore overnight, clear of the shallows, and make the harbour in good light.
General opinion among the soldiers was that this was a good idea. If there were shoals and reefs then they would prefer not to end up on them. They settled down to work on their uniforms – they would certainly be called to parade as they took over from the outgoing battalion.
Some of the sailors had made the run before, shook their heads condescendingly.
“Ain’t going to be no bloody battalion, soldier! There may ‘ave been when they come down, but there ain’t going to be more than a couple of full companies when they comes aboard again!”
They moored in the harbour and waited for the boats to come out to them, taking in the sights and rather impressed by the Castle itself. The original building of the Dutch and Portuguese had fallen into such disrepair that the whole fortress had been rebuilt less than ten years before and now stood tall and white painted with great external staircases leading up from the walls to the main parts. They could see lower structures on either side which they presumed were barrack rooms.
They waited and realised that even out in the harbour, two hundred yards or so offshore, it was stiflingly hot. There was a little of wind to cut the temperature; on still days it would be very nasty indeed, they began to suspect.
The boats came out, rowed by black men! Most of the soldiers had seen only one or two black men in all their lives and had tended to assume that was because there were very few of them. Now they realised that the whole of Africa was full of them. It was very strange.
It took three hours to get all of the men ashore and they had to stand in the sun for the whole of that time.
The colonel finally appeared and put them into parade order and waited while the outgoing garrison marched
out to form ranks opposite to them.
Six officers and perhaps eighty men lined up. As they went through the formal motions a series of stretchers appeared from the barracks area; the better part of forty men were carried down to the boats. They were followed by another twenty or so of ambulant cases, just able to walk by themselves.
Two of the men on parade collapsed in the ten minutes they were there.
The garrison had boarded the ships before noon and their baggage followed without delay. The ships’ crews had been wrestling the big water barrels out of the hold and into the sea behind their own boats, towing them quickly into the watering point where they were filled from the cisterns in the castle. They were ready and anxious to leave the harbour before last light, hoping perhaps that if they were very quick they might outrun the fevers.
The ships made sail and were gone almost before the new battalion had settled in.
Sergeant Hollis appeared just before the tropical dusk came in, the ten-minute transition from full daylight to black night.
“We drawn the short straw, lads. We got guard tonight and for the rest of the week. Corporal Smith! Your platoon to hold sentry tonight; B platoon at five-minute readiness now and to be awake tomorrow night. Alternating for eight nights, four and four. Then we don’t get guard again for damned near three months.”
“Is there a password, Sarge?”
“Nope. Nobody comes in at night. Anybody who’s allowed inside is here already. There ain’t many of ‘em!”
The fort had ramparts to walk, nearly a furlong of them with heavy cannon at intervals, the bulk of them pointing out to sea but with some covering the approaches from the town and the bush. There was a main gate and a pair of smaller sally ports in the rear and side wall. There were far too few men to maintain a proper guard.
Hungry Harry: An Orphan in the Ranks Page 5