Shadow of the Boyd

by Diana Menefy

We had no money, and being on land felt strange after six months at sea, but we didn’t care. We trailed along behind Bo’sun, who did his best to ignore us. The streets were thick with dust that clung to our tongues and made us blink. There were huge pot-holes and we passed gangs of convicts guarded by bored-looking soldiers. The convicts wore odd assortments of clothes, mostly tatty, and were working on shabby buildings. I wondered if any of them were from the Boyd. At least they were out in the open now.

  Groups of tall trees with grey-green leaves had bark peeling off like sunburnt skin. Gum trees, John said. They were loaded with strange parrotlike birds that had pink fronts, grey backs and white crests. The birds made small grating calls, and John said they were galahs. We also saw a small, furry bear-like creature with a flat nose sprawled on the wide branches of a gum tree, munching on leaves.

  When we’d finished taking the supplies to the dock where the boat was tied up, Bo’sun grudgingly gave us permission to stay ashore. We hurried back into the town. John had noticed a crowd watching some sort of sport and was keen to see what was going on. We wriggled and pushed our way through, to see a bull being challenged by snarling dogs.

  Bull-baiting they called it. The dogs dashed in and bit the bull’s legs, then darted back out of his reach. We watched for a while, and the bull got madder and madder, pulling on his chain. There was blood on his legs from the bites. He gored one of the dogs, and the crowd groaned, but another dog was released and ran in, its teeth bared. The bull lunged at it, his chain going taut. Then the chain snapped off the stake and the bull was free. He shook himself, and hesitated for a moment before charging into the crowd. Everyone screamed and started to run. We laughed and laughed, being out of danger on the safe side of the crowd. The bull took off and Will shouted for us to follow.

  The beast scattered everything in his way — stalls, tables, baskets and even an orange cart. The orange cart’s owner got caught by the bull’s horns, and while everyone’s attention was on him John and I grabbed oranges, tossing some to Will, and ran off. We stopped at the edge of town under some trees and started peeling them. It was the first time I’d stolen anything. The thrill was exhilarating, but I knew I’d never tell Da.

  As I sucked the wedges the juice ran down my chin, and my fingers were sticky with the sweetness of it. Not even the film of dust could spoil the flavour. We all agreed that they were the best, sweetest, juiciest oranges in all the world.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  February 1810, on the City of Edinburgh —

  somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean

  It was nearly three weeks since we had left New Zealand. There was nothing to see but ocean and a few birds. One morning I saw a bird with a huge wing-span that wasn’t an albatross. It was sort of grey. I forgot that Kee was standing next to me, and asked Mr Russell what it was. He said it was a juvenile southern giant petrel. I thought he was pulling my leg. The petrels I knew were small black birds — storm petrels.

  ‘Know nothin’, do yer, cry-baby,’ said Kee as Mr Russell walked off.

  The sneer on Kee’s face was too much for me.

  ‘At least I can write a decent hand. Yours looks like a ten-year-old’s.’

  I should have known better. Kee leapt at me, grabbed my arm and twisted it up behind my back. His breath was hot on my neck.

  ‘Well, I’m not a bloody scrub.’ The words came out with such force that I felt his spit on the side of my face.

  It wasn’t my fault I got off some of the boring work.

  ‘I’d rather be caulking the decks than writing. You think it’s easy? I just want to forget the whole thing, pretend it never happened.’ Tears threatened again.

  ‘Cry-baby.’

  ‘Am not.’

  My arm felt like it was being pulled out of the socket. I bit my lip to stop any sound from escaping. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  ‘Bo’sun’s coming,’ Duncan warned.

  Kee dropped my arm and we sprang apart.

  ‘What’s this, then?’

  ‘Just a bit of fun, Bo’sun,’ Kee said.

  ‘That right, Davidson?’

  ‘Yes,’ I muttered.

  ‘Well, get back to work then. All of you,’ he added, glaring at me as the others picked up the caulking iron, mallet and bag of cotton. I slammed my mallet onto the wood, imagining each thump as a hit on Kee’s face.

  It wasn’t until after we’d finished that I was free to go up the companion to the great cabin and carry on with my account.

  The passengers started loading on 23 October. They didn’t take any notice of us boys — we were scrubbing the decks. Again. The holds were three-quarters full with cargo: 2,235 fine salted sealskins, barrels of whale oil, a load of coal and lengths of Australian hardwood.

  Most of the cargo belonged to this flash cove, Mr Lord. He came on board to talk to Captain Thompson, and I overheard Mr Strunk telling Bo’sun that Mr Lord had suggested Captain Thompson visit a place called Wangaroa that had good spars. Two of Mr Lord’s own ships — the Star and the Commerce — had been there. He’d invited Captain Thompson to dine at his house and meet with one of his captains, Captain Wilkinson, who was in port at the time, to find out more.

  Over the next few days, passengers started coming on board. There was a young woman with hair like curls of sunlight around her face. She had a tiny baby in her arms and smiled at us. Will found out later that her name was Mrs Ann Morley.

  The only other passenger who stopped to talk to me and Will was this old sea captain. ‘Burnside’s my name,’ he said. ‘Captain Burnside. I did my time caulking decks, too. Keep up the good work and one day you might get a ship of your own. I did. I’ve had lots of ships. There’s nothing like trade in silks and spices to make a man rich.’ And he strode off towards his cabin.

  Later Mr Pritchard said that that wasn’t all Captain Burnside used to trade in, and we’d do better to keep our noses clean.

  ‘What does he mean?’ I asked Will, after Mr Pritchard had gone.

  ‘Slaves, I think,’ Will said.

  ‘Oh.’ Images of Ma striding out with the other women yelling anti-slavery slogans crowded my mind. I could still remember the celebration at home when the slave trade was outlawed — I was twelve and Da had given me my first taste of whisky. It had burnt and I’d swallowed it in a gulp that made me cough.

  Having the convicts on board was bad enough, but the thought of shipping slaves was appalling; still, I liked the old man. He had this bright multicoloured jacket with fancy sewing and buttons on it. He’d wear it some evenings when he stood on the deck and smoked his pipe. ‘A last turn before hitting the bunk,’ he’d say.

  One morning I was holystoning drips of tar off the main deck when the ship’s boat came alongside with four natives in it. ‘New Zealanders,’ Mr Strunk said. They were joining the crew for the voyage to their home. They all had black hair and tattoos on their faces; one of them had patterns over every inch of his face. At first, every time I looked at him my eyes seemed to focus on the spiral on the side of his nose.

  Mr Strunk said they would be sharing our quarters. Some of the crew grumbled, but he said three of the natives had just returned from a sealing expedition with Captain Wilkinson and were experienced sailors. He introduced the one with the spiral pattern as George, saying he was the son of a chief and telling us Captain Wilkinson had asked Captain Thompson to look after him. After that, Mr Strunk left.

  George and the others just stood there, still holding their kit bags, looking at us. Most of the men went back to what they’d been doing, and three of the New Zealanders moved towards the empty hammocks. George put his kit down and held his hand out to me.

  ‘How do you do, my boy?’ he said. His voice was deep and soft at the same time, and his words took me by surprise. I took his hand. His skin was the colour of strong coffee. He shook my hand hard.

  ‘Good, good,’ I said. ‘And you?’ He had dark brown eyes, but I could feel mine sliding back to that spiral.

&n
bsp; ‘Er … this is Will,’ I said, nudging Will with my free elbow. Will stuck his hand out.

  ‘How do you do, my boy?’ George said again, shaking Will’s hand.

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’ Will always knew the right thing to say.

  ‘I am Te Aara, son to Piopio of Te Pohue, son to Kaitoke of Wangaroa. You may call me George.’

  The next day, when we were gathered on deck, Mr Strunk tried to introduce George to Captain Thompson, but the captain brushed George aside and we all heard his comment: ‘Chief or not, on my ship he’s just a foreign sailor and will be treated accordingly.’

  Most of the men sniggered. I glanced at George’s face but there was no expression on it. It was as if he hadn’t understood, but I had a sneaky feeling he had.

  I never got to know the other three, but George turned out to be on our watch. I discovered he knew what he was doing around a ship, and sometimes at night he’d talk to me and Will.

  We were due to sail on 30 October. The ship was checked to make sure no convicts had got on board, and our clearance issued. After that, no one else was allowed aboard. According to Mr Strunk, convicts were known to slip on board and hide on ships about to leave. In August, four convicts and a seaman had been found hidden on one ship at the moment of her intended departure and the master was fined eight-hundred pounds sterling.

  While we were waiting for the naval officer, Mr Nichols, to bring our clearance papers, a boat came alongside with an extra passenger. He had already paid his way and was loudly insisting, ‘I have every right to board. The port regulations don’t apply to me.’

  The passenger and the owner of that boat, Mr Gordon, boarded — but then Mr Nichols arrived. He was angry and seized Mr Gordon’s boat. Then, while Mr Nichols was in the cabin with Captain Thompson, another boat turned up. This one belonged to Captain Dundas, who’d come to deliver some letters.

  Mr Strunk went below to advise Captain Thompson and Mr Nichols of the approaching boat, and when he came back he shouted down to Captain Dundas that Mr Nichols said he wouldn’t give permission for the boat to come alongside. Mr Strunk told Captain Dundas three times, and pointed out that Mr Gordon’s boat had been seized. But Captain Dundas ignored him and insisted on delivering his letters. He apparently didn’t think Mr Nichols would enforce the order.

  But Mr Nichols did, which made Captain Thompson furious. He argued with Mr Nichols; we could hear them from the lower deck. Mr Nichols said he’d received orders to enforce the regulations to prevent the escape of prisoners from the colony. He said there were plenty of places where someone could stay out of sight behind our cargo. Captain Thompson shouted back that Mr Nichols knew very well that no one had come aboard from Captain Dundas’s boat.

  However, the naval officer didn’t care.

  ‘Article 220 of the Port Regulations states that no ship or vessel is to leave the Cove until she has received her clearance, after which she is not to allow any boats to go on board of her. You have broken this ruling and will not be permitted to sail without a fresh permission — and if you sail, the Boyd will be refused entry to this port again.’

  And that’s what happened: we had to wait for new permission to sail.

  The whole matter had to go before the Bench of Magistrates, and that delayed us for a week. Mr Strunk reckoned Captain Thompson must have upset the port officials. Captain Thompson’s mood didn’t get better. We’d hear him yelling at Mr Strunk, and sometimes it sounded like he was slamming his fist on the cabin table. He didn’t come on deck very often, and when he did Will and I kept our heads down, working.

  One afternoon I was supposed to be oiling the dead-eyes (the round wooden blocks with holes in them used to set up the ship’s stays) but a strange-looking bird had swum close to the ship and I was watching it.

  ‘What are you doing, boy?’ Captain Thompson’s voice made me jump to attention. I hadn’t heard him coming.

  ‘Nothing, sir. No, not nothing — the duck … ‘

  ‘By God, you boys are all the same lazy ingrates. You need a taste of the cat to get focused. Name, boy?’

  ‘Davidson, sir.’

  ‘Tell me, Davidson, what were you meant to be doing?’

  ‘Oiling the dead-eyes, sir.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  I stood there trying to form an answer.

  ‘You were wasting my time and yours, weren’t you, boy?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What are you going to do, boy?’

  ‘Get back to work, sir.’

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Jump to it! And pay attention — no oil on my deck, by God, or you’ll feel that lash.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He continued on his way. I kept half an eye on him as I rubbed, letting the air ease out of my lungs.

  The delay meant our fresh vittles would run out sooner than they should have. Bo’sun and Doc almost came to blows over it. Not that anyone told me all this — I just listened to the others talking in the fo’c’sle.

  It was Tuesday, 7 November, before we got our new clearance. It was an exciting day, and to cap it off we saw two men almost drown. They were in this small boat and the next time we saw them they were in the water, clinging to a log of wood and yelling. We could only just hear them. Lucky for them the port official and policemen who’d reinspected our ship were on their way back to shore and pulled them into their boat.

  We sailed on the turning tide the next morning. There were thirty-five in the crew and about forty passengers. I didn’t know about the passengers, but all the crew were happy to be under sail again and looking forward to seeing New Zealand.

  Everything was fine for the first ten days or so. We were kept busy hauling on the halyards, sheets, braces and tacks as the sails went up and then were trimmed when the ship tacked or went about. In between times we scrubbed the decks, hauling up buckets of seawater, and picked oakum from old ropes to caulk the deck. I longed for the time when I’d be spending more hours up the mast.

  CHAPTER SIX

  February 1810, on the City of Edinburgh —

  sailing towards the Horn

  Mr Cowper said that we were closer to the Horn than to New Zealand now. My nights were still haunted with dreams, but each day was much the same as the next. I took my turn at the bell and learnt to keep my eye on the sandglass. Duncan and I carted buckets of water, scrubbed the pots in the galley, limed the heads, and hauled on ropes to help trim the sails.

  Duncan came from Leigh in Scotland, a small place on the firth not far from Edinburgh. He was fifteen, too — four months older than me — but I was taller. Sometimes, like when we raced up the ratlin to see who could reach the main yard first, this was an advantage, but there were times below decks when I forgot to duck and hit my head on the exposed beams. He’d call me lubberly then, but I’d just grin. There was no malice in Duncan. I called him Dunc now like the others did.

  I didn’t see much of Mrs Morley. She’d befriended one of the helmsmen from Kee’s watch. The sores on Betsy’s face were healing, and her hair was trimmed and clean. Everyone watched out for her when she was on deck, and sometimes I caught Mr Berry in the great cabin with her on his lap.

  ‘I am a friend of her family,’ he told me, the first time I saw her snuggling up to him. ‘They sailed with me twice — once from Norfolk Island to Hobart, and then later on a trip back to Port Jackson. Her name is Elizabeth Isabella Broughton. She was only a year old on our last trip and I often amused her here.’

  Besty was walking everywhere now and was quick to get into mischief. I liked having her in the cabin. I was forever leaping up to shift things out of her reach, but her chuckles and chatter made me feel better about writing.

  While I was jubilant to see the last of New Zealand, Dunc was sad. He’d liked the warm weather and being anchored in among the sheltered islands. He’d even spent a couple of months on shore by Kororareka while the City of Edinburgh was careened and the bottom re-planked. I was curious and asked h
im about it.

  ‘All the stores were unloaded and stacked on the beach. I had tae stand watch on them. Captain Patterson wouldn’t let me go into the town with the others at night,’ he told me.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘He didna say. But Macduff said it’s because all the sailors get drunk and fight and there’s lots of loose women.’

  ‘Ah.’ Da had warned me about them. ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘I was allowed tae go with the boats tae where they were cutting the trees down. Only for a day, though, and then we sailed again. Six of the native boys came with us. Sailed well, they did. Mr Berry said we’d bring them back when we came for our spars later in the year. That’s what we were doing before we came tae rescue you.’

  ‘Captain Thompson had gone to get spars when he was killed,’ I said, as I rubbed holystone over the plank in front of me.

  ‘Some of the natives threatened us. Mr Berry scared away one lot by firing the cannon from the beach, and later on, when a canoe-load of natives tried tae board us, we fired at them and managed to hit the head man. After that they fled. But not all the natives were like that. The ones at Kawakawa were Mr Berry’s friends. A bunch of them came on board while he was away checking on the spars. They waited for him, and when he got back they told him about the Boyd — that the natives at Wangaroa had captured a large ship and killed and eaten the captain and crew.

  ‘Mr Berry didna tell us straight away about it, though we knew something was going on ‘cause he sent more men in tae get the spars, and they were armed.’

  Dunc paused to scrape at a lump of hard tar with his knife. ‘One afternoon he ordered everyone tae the quarter-deck and told us about the rumours and that he now considered them tae be true. Then he said that he’d just found out there were some captives who had survived, and said that now that our ship was loaded he wanted tae organize a party to free them.’

  Dunc shifted over a couple of planks and I followed him, intent on his story.