by John Drake
"These articles…"
"Louder!" cried England. "So those aloft can hear." He pointed to the tops where the lookouts were stationed.
"These articles," roared the new brother, "I do enter into freely and volunteerly and thus do I solemnly swear. Article one: that I shall obey the commands of my captain in all matters of seafaring and warfare, upon pain of the law of Moses, viz: forty lashes - barring one - upon the bare back…"
And so it went on. There were twenty-three articles in England's book, mainly self-evident statements of the need for discipline on board any ship that ever went to sea in all of mankind's history. There was much other good sense too, on such matters as forbidding the dangerous business of smoking below decks, and the filthy business of pissing in the ballast, which lazy sailormen will do who can't be bothered to go to the heads on a dark night. Anyone caught doing that was obliged to drink a pint of the same liquid, piping hot, donated by his messmates. Also, there were ferocious punishments for taking private shares of the loot before its formal division. In all these matters, the articles were similar to those in use by numerous other freebooters and buccaneers currently doing business in the Indian Ocean and Caribbean.
But England's articles had some extras. He punished rape by castration, torture by hanging, and sodomy by dropping the offenders over the side, bound together, with roundshot tied to their feet. These eccentricities the crew took in good part (even the astounding prohibition of rape) because England was a fine and lucky seaman with a nose for smelling out gold.
So the new brother worked his way through the list till he came to the end, where followed four clear signatures, one obviously that of the draughtsman of the articles, plus a few painfully worked names such as children might attempt, then several hundred crosses, marks and scrawled drawings: some of fish, or birds, or animals, some of hanged men, some skulls- and-crossbones, and one splendid likeness of a face, the size of a penny piece, as finely drawn as the work of any London caricaturist, which was the mark of an illiterate man who nonetheless had this remarkable gift. Each mark had a name beside it in the draughtsman's hand. Many (including the likeness) were neatly ruled out in red ink, with a date beneath it. These were the dead.
The Englishman sighed. He took up the pen, dipped it into the ink, and paused. In fact he was only half an Englishman, for his seafaring Portuguese father had married an English girl and settled in Bristol. The son had taken his father's size and strength, his mother's yellow hair, and at thirteen had run away to sea to escape his father's belt. His name, as given to him by his father, had been Joao De Silva: a foreign-sounding name to some and therefore tainted, but not to him. Unlike the vast body of land-rooted, home-fast Englishmen, he had no disdain of things foreign, because seafaring men are an international breed taught by hard reality to know that all races have their strengths and weaknesses, and the only thing that matters is how your shipmate behaves when the sea turns nasty - and certainly not the land of his birth. But for all that he was still an Englishman in his loyalties, and so he signed with a flourish as…
* * *
Chapter 2
4th January 1749
Aboard HMS Elizabeth
The Caribbean
Captain Springer controlled his anger with effort.
"Lieutenant Flint," he said, "I swear that if I hear that tale once more, I shall put you in irons."
"Will you, though?" said Flint. "Then I pray that you may be cursed as I was. Four years under Anson, suffering scurvy, shipwreck and sores, only to see thirty-two wagons full of gold unloaded at London, and not a penny piece was my share!"
Springer glanced around the quarterdeck. The mids and the seamen were muttering and looking sly. Mr Bones, the master's mate, was staring attentively at Flint as if waiting for some word of command. Springer ground his teeth, Bones was Flint's man through and through, while next to him, Dawson, the sergeant of marines - who was loyal to Springer - was glaring his contempt at this public squabbling.
"Mr Flint," said Springer, "a word."
Springer walked up the sloping deck to the weather side and waited for Flint to join him while the crew looked on in wary fascination. Springer was pure tarpaulin: lumpish, heavy and elderly with a fat lower lip, watery eyes and a bristling white stubble that no razor ever conquered, while Flint was smooth as a cat, with an olive, Mediterranean skin. He moved like an athlete and had a beautiful, brilliant smile. He was slim-built and only of average height, but men always thought of him as tall.
Together, these two opposites stood locked in argument in their long blue coats with the brass buttons.
These uniform coats were badges of rank which few officers were wearing as yet, for they were an innovation introduced only the previous year. But Elizabeth's officers all had them, thanks to Lieutenant Flint, who, wanting a smart ship, had spent his own money to get them - including one for Springer, who'd never have bothered if left to himself.
But if the coats were uniform, nothing else was: not the shirts, nor breeches, nor shoes, nor the big straw hats the two men wore against the sun. Nonetheless, the coats served their purpose of marking out the wearers as officers of His Majesty King George II. In fact, since Elizabeth was sailing with a reduced, peace-time, crew, they were the only two commissioned officers on board, and it was sheer madness for them to be seen in open dispute before their men.
"Mr Flint," said Springer, "look about you. If we continue in this manner, there'll be no discipline worthy of the name in this ship. So, listen to me: I am resolved to proceed to Sao Bartolomeo according to my orders -"
"And leave a fortune in prize money to pass by?" said Flint. "We named this ship Elizabeth when we took her, but she was Isabella la Católica before that, and she's Spanish from keel to maintruck. We could use that to come alongside of any Spanish ship -"
"But we ain't at war with the Dons!" said Springer. "Can you not appreciate that, you bugger? Not since last year!"
"Bah!" said Flint. "There's no war, but there's no peace neither. Not out here. It's dog eat dog: us and the Dons and the French! And I know ports where a prize'll be bought for cash money and never a question asked."
"No…" groaned Springer, and he wavered. He distinctly wavered, and Flint spotted it instantly and changed tack. He was exceedingly charming when he chose, and now he spoke sweet and friendly.
"See here, Captain, sir," he said, "there's a way to square the matter between us, I do declare. Indeed, I take my oath on it, for I'd not see a brother officer suffer in such a matter."
The words meant nothing, but they were so fairly spoken that Springer relaxed. The scowl left his face and he gave Flint his entire attention.
Ah-ha! thought Flint, and rejoiced, for it was his guess that deep within Captain Springer there was greed that was just itching to be squared with duty, if only the means could be found.
"The fact is, sir…" said Flint.
"Aye?" said Springer.
"… I lost my share of the greatest treasure ever taken because of that bastard Anson, and I'd not see you lose your own best chance -"
But Springer snarled like a wolf as Flint struck a wildly false note by harping back upon the great wrong that had scarred his life.
Flint had sailed with Anson on his famous circumnavigation of 1740-44, when the Manila galleon was taken: the most fabulous prize in British naval history. But before that, Flint's ship Spider had foundered going round the Horn, and Anson had taken her people into his own ship, Centurion, where Spider's officers had nothing to do and were rated "supernumeraries". As Flint told the story, this meant that they fell into legal limbo and got no share of the loot: a monstrous injustice, but one that a man got sick of hearing about.
"Mr Flint," roared Springer at the top of his voice, "you will attend to your duties this instant, or I'll not be answerable."
Barely in control of himself, Springer turned away and yelled at Sergeant Dawson, "Turn out your men, damn your blasted eyes! Bayonets and ball cartridge!"
Dawson yelled and hollered and a company of marines doubled up and formed on the quarterdeck with steel gleaming at the tips of their musket barrels.
"Mr Bones!" cried Springer. "Muster all hands!"
"Aye-aye, sir!" said Mr Bones, and after a deal of cursing, kicks and blows, and a rushing of bare feet, Springer's eight- score seamen poured up from below, and down from the rigging, to fill the waist. There they stood, squinting up at the quarterdeck in the sun, on the hot deck, in the mottled shade of the towering canvas high above their heads.
So, with his officers and marines behind him, Captain Springer reminded his crew of their duty under his orders from Commodore Sir John Phillips, which orders were to occupy, fortify and hold the island of Sao Bartolomeo. He reminded them of the strategic importance attached to the island by Sir John. He further reminded them of the dreadful penalties provided for disobedience under the Articles of War.
The crew stared sideways at one another, for they knew all this already. They also knew all about Flint's "secret" plans for privateering. They knew because Lieutenant Flint had made it his business that they should know, and thereby they knew that Springer's speech was not for themselves but for himself and Lieutenant Flint. Springer no longer trusted either, and was parading the power of the King's Law to deliver the two of them from temptation. And for a while, the stratagem worked.
So His Majesty's ship Elizabeth sailed steadily southward from the Caribbean, heading for a certain latitude and longitude that Commodore Phillips had got from the last survivor of a Portuguese barque wrecked on the coast of Jamaica. Elizabeth was a big ship, of near eight hundred tons, mounting twenty brass guns. She was old fashioned, with a lateen sail on the mizzen, a spritsail under the bow, and steered with a whipstaff. But she was well found and comfortable and, with so few men aboard, and fair weather and no war actively in progress, Elizabeth should have been a happy ship. But she was not.
As far as the foremast hands were concerned, Elizabeth was becoming a hell-ship. This was thanks to Mr Flint, who, having failed to bend Captain Springer to his will, was taking out his spite on those beneath him. As first officer, he had unbounded opportunity for this, together with a natural aptitude for the work.
Naturally he flogged the last man down off the yards at sail drill. Naturally he flogged the last man up with his hammock in the morning. Any vicious brute would think of that. But it took Joe Flint to punish a mess by making them serve their grog to another mess and stand by while it was drunk. And it took Flint to set the larboard watch tarring the decks for the starboard watch to clean - and vice versa.
His repertoire was endless and creative. A man who prized his three-foot pigtail was made to cut an inch off it, for the crime of sulking. Flint contrived to detect a repetition of this crime each day until the pigtail was entirely gone. Likewise, a man caught sleeping on watch was made to throw his savings overboard, and another who doted on a particularly fine parrot was obliged to give it up to Flint, though in this case a quirk of Flint's character drove him to take the bird - for its own good, he said - in order to save it from the filthy words the lower deck were teaching it.
This he believed to be a cruelty, which he despised. For, whatever his attitude towards men, Flint could stand no cruelty to animals, and undoubtedly the bird flourished under his care as never before. Soon, he and it were friends, and he went about with it riding on his shoulder, which was a great wonder to the crew.
But mostly Flint's tricks were cruel, and a particular favourite of his was to offer escape from flogging to any man who would play "Flint's game" instead.
"Mr Merry!" said Flint, the first time this offer was made. "I see you've been spitting tobacco juice upon my clean decks. There's two dozen awaiting you for that. Is not that so, Mr Bones?"
"Aye-aye, Mr Flint!" said Billy Bones, who followed Flint like a shadow. "Shall I order the gratings rigged, sir?"
George Merry stood trembling in fear of the cat, while his mates bent to their work and looked down, for it was unwise to catch Mr Flint's eye when he was in a flogging mood.
"No," said Flint. "Here's Mr Merry that would escape a striped back, if he could, and I'm resolved to give him that chance."
Billy Bones stared in amazement, and George Merry's face lit up with hope.
"Will you play 'Flint's game' instead, Mr Merry?" said Flint, tickling the green feathers of his parrot.
"Aye-aye, sir!" grinned Merry.
"Good," said Flint. "Fetch a small cask and a belaying pin, Mr Bones, and put it down here."
Flint had George Merry sit to one side of the cask, cross- legged, while he sat on the other, and the heavy oak pin was placed on the cask between them.
"Gather round, you good fellows," cried Flint at the furtive men watching from afar, and soon a crowd surrounded the cask. "Now then, Merry," said Flint, smiling, "here's the game: I shall put my hands in my pockets, while you shall put your hands on the rim of the cask."
Merry did as he was told and an expectant silence fell.
"Now," said Flint, "choose your moment, Merry, and pick up the pin. If you pick it up, you go free." Merry leered confidently at his messmates. "But," said Flint, "if you fail, the game continues until you choose to take two dozen as originally promised."
Merry considered this. He looked at Flint. He looked at the belaying pin, only inches from his fingers. He stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth to help himself think… and reached for the pin.
Crunch! The pin beat down on Merry's fingertips, drawing blood from a broken fingernail. Flint had moved faster than thought. A roar of laughter came from the onlookers, Merry howled in pain, and the parrot on Flint's shoulder screeched and struggled and flapped its wings in disapproval of the proceedings. It stamped and cursed and nipped Flint's ear.
"Ouch!" said Flint. "What's the matter with you?" And he shook the bird off to fly free and nestle in the maintop, chattering and muttering to itself. Meanwhile Flint smiled and replaced the pin and stuck his hands in his pockets.
"Play on, George Merry," he said, "or take the alternative."
Merry instantly snatched at the pin… and thud! It smashed blood out of his thumb, to more laughter from all sides. And so it went on, until Merry could stand it no more and begged for a flogging, which Flint graciously allowed.
As for the parrot, in time it came back to Flint, since no man beneath him dared feed it, and Captain Springer - drunk or sober - did not care to. It even seemed to be begging his forgiveness, for it began preening him, taking a lock of Flint's long, black hair and gently pulling its formidable hooked bill down the length of the strand.
Ever afterwards it took flight whenever men were flogged or abused. Eventually it developed a frightening prescience of Flint's moods, for it had grown to know him very well, such that even before Flint grinned and gave the word, it flew off because it could not abide the cruelty. The bird was innocent, but the foremast hands saw things differently. They hated the parrot. They called it Cap'n Flint, and on those fell occasions when it flew from its master's shoulder, and no man knew what might follow, they groaned and whispered:
"Watch out, mates… the bird's in the maintop!"
And yet there was still worse to come from Flint and all hands soon had warning of it.
The formalities of the service had to be observed before George Merry could be flogged, since only the captain could order it, and Merry was clapped in irons awaiting his captain's judgement - which was indeed a formality but took time. Thus Merry had to wait for his punishment, which took place during the forenoon watch of the day after he'd played Flint's game, when all hands were mustered to witness the defaulter lashed to a grating to receive his promised two dozen. Being already in severe pain from the battering he'd had from Flint, George Merry took his flogging with much groaning and weeping, which disturbed an already unhappy crew far more than a usual flogging when a brave man clenched the leather between his teeth and refused to cry out.
Once Merry was taken dow
n, and the decks hosed clean, eight bells were struck for the turn of the watch, when the navigating officers took their noon-day observations; for which ceremony Mr Flint demanded an absolutely silent ship. After that, the hands were sent below for their dinner, the best time of the day, with full platters and the happy communion of messes clustered at their hanging tables on the gun-deck, where pork, pease, pickles and biscuit were shovelled down throats with a generous lubrication of grog.
It was a noisy, happy time, except for George Merry and his messmates. George himself sat painfully upright, bound in the vinegar and brown paper that the surgeon declared was the best thing for a flogged back. With his broken fingers, he could eat and drink only because his messmates fed him and held his mug to his lips.
"Ah, George Merry!" said a voice from the next-door mess. "I sees you be in poor straights."
"That I be, Mr Gunn," said Merry, nodding politely towards Ben Gunn and his messmates, who were quartermasters, rated able to steer the ship. They were the elite of the lower deck and aboard Elizabeth they were always addressed with the honorific "Mister".
"So," Ben Gunn declared, "you thinks you be in pain?"
"Aye, Mr Gunn," said Merry, and bit his lip.
"And you thinks you be hard done by?"
"That I does!"
"Then listen," said Ben Gunn and beckoned his messmates and George Merry's to lean closer. Ben Gunn was a serious and sober man, if a little strange. He was much respected for his skill, but was distant - even odd - in his manner, as if his mind steered a different course than that of other men.
"You've heard Flint tell of the Manila galleon," he said, "and how he was done out of his share for being supernumerary?"
"Aye!" they said, and could not help but look over their shoulders in fear of Flint.
"Then heark'ee, my lads, for he don't tell the whole tale."