CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
EVEN MORE TENSE TIMES
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
—John Maynard Keynes
On board ships—the Far East Transporter and the Vladivostok Cargo Liner–July-November, 1879
In truth, Alexandra was trafficking in extremely valuable drugs, and she was going to a place in a country not listed on her manifest as a port of call—Sitka in Southeastern Russian Alaska. Much as he detested himself for doing so, Boris’s main cargo on the outgoing limb of his voyage was to be furs, machine parts, European style clothing, iron ore, and long guns to Seoul. In truth, the goods were to be sold in Tokyo for Japanese slave women who would next to be sold as concubines to black African crewmembers and then taken to the west African slave auction centers and traded for black African men, women, and children who were to be taken to the West Indies to be sold into the stiflingly hot, humid, and pestilential jungle plantations. The profits were huge, and the risks small. On the legal documents, he carried, Boris’s last ports of call were Lyushunkou District/Port Arthur and Dalian on the tip of Manchuria—a two or three-day sailing trip around the southern tip of Chosŏn from the Yellow Sea and back to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. This was planned only as a ruse.
Alexandra met moderate fall storms most of her voyage; but the Far East Transporter–after the full refurbishment in Vladivostok–was sturdy and altogether seaworthy. Her two accompanying guard ships frightened away two attacks in the East China Sea, but just as they entered the southern end of the Bay of Bengal through the Strait of Malacca, a force of seven pirate ships swept towards them from the Indian Nikobar Islands.
The sentry standing on the barrel crow’s nest platform or the guardian ship, Archangel, shouted, “Red sails nor’nor’east at eighty degrees comin’ in hard!
The sailors on the Far East Transporter caught the sight and informed Alexandra and the ship’s lower officers.
Alexandra took the helm and shouted, “General quarters! all hands-on deck! Man all guns! Prepare to repel boarders!”
That included cooks and cabin boys. Every sailor and hand lined up on the main deck saber in hand. The first mate described the incoming force as he got the information from the crow’s nest and look-outs on lower spars:
“Seven total red-sailed junks. There’s a three masted and a two masted galley, one two masted galley barque, two three masted junks with what looks to be light cannonades, lighter than ours and no match for the security vessels. Aft, there’s what they call a pandaren junk and an ibn Nattuta junk. All sails are fully battened, and they are sailing light in the water—probably no cargo, but maybe sixty to as many as a hundred fighters aboard each. Probably gutted out their forty to sixty cabins to make room for the small army of piraty [pirates]!”
Alexandra trained her keen eyes on the fastest of the junks and saw that the rowers on the 200-ton fast boats were keeping up a furious pace. Behind them were larger—800-ton vessels—having three decks. The junks moved quickly through the two-three-foot waves and were gaining distance on Alexandra’s small fleet.
“Stand in your places, men,” she ordered at intervals. “We are better armed, faster, and more nimble than they are. We will take the day. Stand fast!”
Her ships were not only better constructed and better armed, but the drilling in Golden Horn Harbor now paid off. The guarding vessels defied the logic of defensive warfare by turning directly into the flanks of the oncoming junks. It became a question of who would blink first. The Vladivostok ships were considerably sturdier than the junks, and it appeared to the Bengal pirates that the intention by the commercial ships was to ram them. They broke ranks first and descended into a chaotic scramble to get out of the way of the rapidly advancing European vessels. When the pirate captains were able to see the size of the three Vladivostok ship’s guns, they lost their nerve and made a dash to get away from the upcoming fight that they had started.
When her ships were in range, Alexandra ordered the semaphore flags hoisted on the halyards on both the port and starboard yardarms with the company flag first then a simple message in the international code of signals from the remainder: “Fire at will!”
The light guns of the fleeing junks lacked the power to strike any of Alexandra’s ships at her carefully chosen distance; so, they fled. Her guns wrought devastating damage to the hulls, masts, and galley sailors and slaves. One junk—the three-masted galley—was too heavy in the water and too light in her gunnery to escape; so, she sunk in a ball of flame leaving her crew to sink or swim in the roiling ocean. Three more were crippled beyond repair and ran up flags signaling surrender. Two junks were boarded by Alexandra’s highly trained marines, and the officers and crews surrendered quickly without inflicting injuries on the men from Vladivostok.
Seeing the catastrophic error of the plan to attack the seemingly easy prey presented by the commercial ships, the last combatant—the colorful ibn Nattuta junk—hauled up its surrender flags just before being boarded from both sides by Alexandra’s terrifying and screaming marines.
In less than twenty minutes, the battle was over. Alexandra ordered that any of the pirates who willingly surrendered be brought aboard her three ships and loaded onto the ibn Nattuta junk which had been taken over by an able Vladivostok crew. The rest of the ships, what remained of them were put to the torch.
The four ships sailed to the Indian Andaman Islands and made port. There they met the Bengali pirates who worked hand-in-glove with that pillar of British Ceylon’s high society, Glenleven Armitage, after sharing prearranged challenge signs (“Who is king?”) and countersigns (“Chamaraja Wodeyar IX of the Wodeyar Dynasty”). Alexandra ordered her cargo of legal and illicit Russian goods and the prisoners–who would be valuable slaves—transferred to the one-eyed, one armed pirate captain, who—in return—delivered to Alexandra four chests of mixed national origin gold coins. That payment was a profit four times over the expenses of her investment. She basked in the glow of the shining gold and forgot to think about the odium of being a slave trader.
That mission accomplished, Alexandra ordered her navigator to set a course for Sitka in Southeastern Russian Alaska with one of her cargo holds still filled with drugs to ease the difficulties of Aleuts and dragooned Chinese peasants laboring as slaves in the fur industry.
Boris left the Golden Horn Harbor less than hour after Alexandra’s three ships left for Nagasaki; so, he had been informed. His large commercial ship was christened the Vladivostok Cargo Liner. His destination was ostensibly Seoul, but actually, Tokyo. There he offloaded the usual cargo of easily marketable furs, walrus ivory, scrimshawed ivory, heavy leather and fur clothing, silk, porcelain, spices, and other luxury goods, boots, leather horse tack, machine parts, European style clothing, iron ore, and long guns.
He delegated the task of loading on the next cargo—kidnapped Japanese women–bound for the city of Cape Coast on the coast of Upper Guinea, one of the major British slave trading centers. He did not want to know about the treatment of the women before they were interned in Tokyo’s slave quarters nor about any information about rape and other crimes—including murder–against them while aboard his ship. He was mathematician enough to know that the space set aside for the women was not enough from them to sit, stand, or walk. They would be stacked in like cordwood.
The unlucky ones, usually unattractive country girls, were doomed to lie shackled on the stinking floor for the entire hellish voyage. The moderately lucky ones would be married to black African crewmen and possibly treated relatively decently. The truly lucky ones were those who died.
The voyage was an almost unbearable three-month ordeal for the captors and ships’ crews to say nothing of what the slaves—identified on the ship’s manifest as ‘ivory’–had to endure. Besides the slaves, they loaded precious metals and lacquer including exquisite lacquer dishware from Tokyo. The ship stopped for prov
isions in the Dutch East Indies, then passed via the Strait of Malacca through the Bay of Bengal and to Colombo, Ceylon for another provisioning stop where they got rid of their Tokyo cargo and took on a ship load of Indian cloth, yams, silks, indigo, pepper, and silver. They picked up fresh loads from the Spice Islands of pepper, nutmeg, ivory, cinnamon, cardamom, arecanuts, sappanmwood, and rubies from Burma.
The ships followed the old string of pearls route across the Indian Ocean to the east coast of Africa, with stops only for fresh vegetables, local meats of dubious quality, and fresh water. Their next major stop was in the bustling city of Cape Town where the pent-up urges of the sailors were allowed to be vented in the alleys and brothels of the city. Even Boris could not resist. He was one of the lucky ones who was able to escape gonorrhea and syphilis and the terrible treatments that the unlucky ones had to undergo: eating powdered cowhorn, being whacked on the genitals with a cane or a book, applying soothing sandal oil when available, salves and ointments made of herbs, garlic, and hot peppers, strapping lead weights to the waist until the patient regained strength enough to ward off the disease from overactivity of a sexual nature, cauterize sores with a hot iron, applying mercury and lignum vitae [holy wood].
The weather was execrable around the cape and up the west coast until they at last made their final landing in the Gold Coast of West Africa. Boris did his business with the slavers in the Cape Coast Castle, one of forty such large commercial forts—or slave castles–built on the verge of the coast. It was one of the main hubs in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The castles were used to hold slaves before they were loaded onto ships and sold in the Americas, especially the Caribbean. These castles were dubbed the “gates of no return” since they constituted the last stop before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.
Hou Eadric had explained some of the complexities of the triangular African to America to Europe international slave trade before Boris left Vladivostok; but it was more than Hou could explain; and more than Boris could assimilate even after spending a week there. He waited in the officers’ quarters of the Castle–which were spacious and airy–with beautiful parquet floors and scenic views of the blue waters of Atlantic. He was able to make use of the beautiful little chapel in the castle enclosure for the officers, traders, and their families as they went about their normal day-to-day life completely detached from the unfathomable human suffering they were consciously inflicting on the damned souls below. The negroes were loaded into the stagnant holds of his ships, an image he avoided incorporating into his memory—not altogether successfully. During the entire homeward voyage, he never once ventured to look into the steaming cesspools below decks. He could not avoid watching the daily dumping of bodies over the rails and into the ocean. That he had to put out of his mind actively if he was going to maintain his hold on sanity.
The voyage across the Atlantic to Cuba took forty-three days. On average two slaves died each day and were dropped unceremoniously into the ocean, never to see land since they exited Africa through the ‘gates of no return’. The survivors were in wretched condition; and once again, Boris hurried ashore to hobnob with the genteel of Havana society; so, he would not have to see them again. Many of the slaves were sent to fattening farms and given rest; so, they would bring a better price. Others–less fortunate–were whipped to drive them into the roasting humid heat of the sugar cane fields where very few of them lasted more than six months. At least it was a good thing for Boris to see his ship’s records no longer indicating ‘ivory’ aboard.
Because the plantation owners were very anxious to expand their holdings, they had to have slaves; and they needed an ever-increasing supply. It never occurred to anyone in the slave triangle trafficking that taking good care of the negroes would be economically wise because the supply was both cheap and apparently infinite.
The owner of the largest slave auction house, complimented Boris on his delivery of so many black slaves.
He said, “Times will not always be this good for us. You are no doubt aware that in 1807 and 1808, Great Britain and then the U.S. banned the Atlantic slave trade; but we have been able to carry on by smuggling the blacks by barges out to our ships—ships like yours—and bring them here. We have an understanding with our Spanish crown governors to turn a blind eye in return for…certain …accommodations. So far, our argument has been that having a couple of slaves per farm helps our country’s agriculture industry; so, they have not passed any serious laws. However, to those of us with large plantations, it looks like that is going to come to an end. Our colleagues in Asia tell us that they can ship upwards of 100,000 heathen Chinee a year. Since you come from that area of the world, maybe you would like to get in on the fabulous riches this trade provides, my friend.”
“I will explore the capabilities and contacts of my company and will send a message to you soon after I get back to Russia,” Boris told him.
He cringed at the thought of getting further involved in the ‘ivory’ trade or what ever the transporting of Chinese peasant slaves was going to be called. Boris decided to make a studied observation of conditions for the slaves on the plantations to convince himself one way or the other if his conscience could withstand more of an assault than what he knew about the maritime slavery conditions. He quietly visited two plantations near the edge of Havana.
The slaves who labored in the fields were started to work at an early age, often working as much as twenty hours a day during harvest and processing times. Other times, he learned, the slaves worked sixteen to twenty hours a day during the times of cultivating and cutting the crops. Throughout the year, no matter how hot and muggy the days were, slaves could be seen hauling wagons, processing sugarcane with poorly maintained and often dangerous machinery. The wretches slept in locked barracoons getting about three and four hours of sleep if their hunger and pain quieted down enough to permit sleep. The barracoons were filthy, stinking, and extremely hot. They lacked ventilation. The standard barracoon had only one window, a barred hole in the brick wall; so, no slave could escape through it.
A moderately drunk overseer–a former Afro-Cuban slave–confided to Boris that many captives died in the rude hut barracoons either from the horrors they experienced on their journeys from Africa or because they caught some deadly European disease like small pox or plague or the endemic island scourge of yellow fever.
On one plantation, Boris saw man whipped into unconsciousness. His back was flayed, then the wounds were covered with layers of tobacco leaves soaked in urine and salt which caused the large powerful man to wake up screaming from the stinging pain. Boris had seen enough. His ‘ivory’ days were over, but he did not tell the Havana planters that.
As he enjoyed the famous hospitality of the laid-back Cuban planter class, his ship, the Vladivostok Cargo Liner, had its filthy holds thoroughly scrubbed by slaves and was loaded with sugar cane, potassium nitrate—called salt peter—a component of gun powder, nickel, iron, and cobalt bearing ore, cement, feldspar, gypsum, lime, limestone, asphalt, bentonite, chromite, zeolite, marble, steel, and sulfuric acid. With the holds straining the strength of the bulk heads and with the ship sitting low in the water, Boris had the navigator set a course for Trinidad off the Venezuelan coast. Boris sailed from Cuba through the Bocas and anchored off the coast of Chaguaramas which lie in the North West peninsula of Trinidad west of Port of Spain. The island country was as exotic as any man on any of the three ships had ever seen. With no apparent prejudice, Spaniards, Africans, free blacks, assorted other people of color, slaves, former slaves, indigenous Americans, mulattos, east Indians, Spaniards, French republican soldiers and nobility, and retired pirates, mingled in a robust haggling commercial society.
There Boris sold the bulk of their load for the burgeoning economy of Venezuela. From there they traveled across the South Atlantic to the Malvina Islands where they had a major rest and provisioning stop in the port of St. Malo in the Islas Malvinas, an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean. The town connected
to Port St. Malo was a flourishing British and Spanish sheep ranching area; and, more importantly, a ship salvage and repair yard. The Vladivostok Cargo Liner required some minor carpentry, and Boris and the ship’s crew were impressed about the professionalism of the labor force in this extremely isolated set of Atlantic Islands.
The Vladivostok Cargo Liner’s holds were partially replenished with sheep skins and dried mutton–at a high price–and some specialized ship building and repair tools which Boris hoped to be able to sell at a handsome profit in Shanghai or Tokyo. From Port St. Malo in the Malvinas they sailed on relatively calm seas around the Cape of Good Hope to the major harbor of Port Elizabeth to prepare for the arduous voyage from the east side of the tip of southern Africa. Near the coast, the waves were high and the winds variable and troublesome. But–with good seamanship–the sturdy three-ship group sailed out into the Indian Ocean.
Their first stop in the Indian Ocean was at Antananarivo, capital city of the huge and primitive French protectorate island of Madagascar. The entire crew took advantage of the pleasant people, climate, and calm of the capital city. This happened to be one of the intermittent periods of peace because of the modernizing influence of Great Britain; through the previous eight decades, a series of Merina monarchs became enthusiastic about the British look which led to the establishment of European-style schools, government institutions, infrastructure, and the introduction of Christianity. By the tireless efforts of the London Missionary Society, Christianity was now entrenched and dominant on the island. The queen had recently declared it to be the state religion. The downside, for Boris–who was beginning to feel pangs of conscience—was that there still remained more than half a million slaves on the island.
The Mysterious Alexandra Tarasova-Yusupov Page 25