English passengers

by Matthew Kneale

  ‘‘We ’ll hardly find our way into Kingston harbour with that,’’ said Brew, screwing up his face.

  I had a little thought. ‘‘Perhaps we don’t need to.’’

  The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson

  JULY–AUGUST 1857

  THREE DAYS into our journey Captain Kewley and his chief mate, Brew, suddenly strode into the cabin without so much as knocking at the door. Hardly had I begun to register my displeasure at this invasion of my privacy, when the Captain began trying to persuade me that we should not, as planned, drop anchor at Jamaica.

  ‘‘It’s just that I remembered the chase you were in to get to Tasmania, you see, Vicar, while the fact is we never need to go there. We’ve got supplies enough to carry us to Africa nicely.’’

  While I regard myself as a man ever open to suggestions, I confess that this particular proposal held little appeal. In the first place I felt that an agreement, once entered upon, should be properly adhered to by both parties, if only as a matter of principle, while it had been amply clear that we were to stop at Kingston. There was, in truth also another consideration. Ever since the Sincerity had reached open waters and so encountered the full motion of the seas, the pleasing prospect of our first landfall had been greatly—even ceaselessly—in my thoughts. The possibility of this now becoming even further removed, and of my remaining aboard ship continuously for two months or more, was therefore far from welcome.

  ‘‘I believe we should keep to our original course,’’ I told the Captain firmly.

  ‘‘It’s to your own advantage,’’ Kewley insisted.

  Assistance came to me from an unexpected quarter. Potter’s head loomed down from his bunk bed. ‘‘But we must call in at Jamaica,’’ he declared simply. ‘‘Besides, I cannot believe it would add so greatly to our journey, seeing as we have to go near.’’

  I must confess I had found the behaviour of the expedition surgeon far from helpful—a matter which I will recount more fully later—and yet his words at this moment were welcome enough. Kewley tried to threaten us with sea technicalities, but when I warned him that I might be forced to reconsider the charter fee that we had agreed, his face, which normally displayed a kind of beaming slyness, quite scowled. ‘‘I’ll see what I can do,’’ he promised sourly, and with this he and Brew marched away, grumbling to one another in that infuriating language of theirs.

  I am never one, I must insist, to indulge in self-pity—I have, indeed, observed that this quality can be as much the undoing of a man as drink, leading him into ever greater aimlessness and despond—and yet I confess the days after we departed from the river Blackwater had hardly been my happiest. The start of my difficulties was, I believe, the dinner we were served the evening we set sail, which was excessively fatty, while matters were not helped when, on retiring that night, I found the cabin became filled with a most noxious smell, much like some terrible gaseous pond, and which, I was later told, was caused by water in the bilges becoming disturbed by the movement of the ship. It was true that the Sincerity was rolling and pitching ever more wildly. Within the hour the wind seemed to be blowing little less than a full gale, and, feeling suddenly unwell, I found myself journeying up to the deck, shivering stoically by the rail in my nightshirt and overcoat.

  Sadly this proved only the first of many such visits. The weather seemed obstinately resolved to grow worse rather than better, and by morning waves were crashing against the bow so hard that the whole vessel reverberated with their force, and that a man more lacking in courage than myself might almost have feared that the ship would capsize altogether, or simply fragment into so many splinters. Rather to my surprise my two colleagues appeared unaffected by the fatty dinner, and would both greedily march off to the dining cabin on every occasion. Despite my discomfort I was most happy for them, naturally, though I did take exception to the way Dr. Potter would insist on loudly describing the meals he had just consumed, even though it must have been evident that I was feeling still delicate.

  Apart from sickness, the other matter that was much in my thoughts was sleep, or rather my own lack of this essential sustenance. I do believe that, with the exception of a field of battle, there is hardly a place on earth more poorly suited to the gaining of rest than a sailing ship. Every night, just as I was falling into much-needed dreaming, there would be some shout in Manx and all at once the ceiling of the cabin would shudder with the stamping of heavy boots, so loud that it sounded as if the crew were revenging themselves upon some tiny scampering creatures. Next they would then set to work upon some operation of the ship, such as bringing round the sails to obtain a change of direction, which could occur numerous times in one single night. Timbers would creak, ropes and blocks would squeal, officers would bellow, boots would thump and the crew themselves would begin singing at the top of their voices, seeming unable to tug at any rope without wailing some unspeakable shanty song.

  I tried my best to induce the Manxmen to show a little consideration but it was to no avail. When I struck upon the ceiling of the cabin with a stick they pretended not to hear. When I asked Captain Kewley, in a most friendly manner, if his crew could not engage more quietly in their nocturnal operations, he was nothing less than uncivil. Nor did the behaviour of my two fellow passengers, I regret to say, help matters. While I am never someone to judge others with undue harshness, and it is my greatest delight to find goodness in my fellow men, I confess I found my patience increasingly strained. Though Renshaw had a tiny cabin of his own, the wooden partition that divided this from ours was of such poor construction that there were large gaps between the timbers, and one could hear his every movement, while frequently during the night I would be disturbed by the sound of his fidgeting with his person in some curious, twitching way, quite as if he had some ailment. Dr. Potter was more distracting still, and would insist on keeping a light burning late into the night so he could scribble notes in his notebook with that infuri-atingly scratching quill. ‘‘I’ll just be another moment, Vicar,’’ was his ever repeated cry when I requested, with all the gentleness I could muster, that he cease.

  I did my best to regard the man charitably, despite his many provocations. When he insisted on draping his clothes, that he had just washed, around the edge of his bunk, so they dripped seawater directly onto my own cot, leaving large damp places, I told myself this was not the result of some lawless nature, but only of his having been brought up without the advantage of fine manners. I even thought to help him improve himself, drawing up a few simple rules with regard to domestic matters, which I then placed in written form on the wall just above his own berth, so he might observe them with convenience. One might have supposed he would welcome such a kindness, but no, he instead showed a maddening forgetfulness as to my little suggestions—a forgetfulness so pronounced that I could not help but doubt its sincerity—while he would insist on referring to them as ‘‘the parson’s laws,’’ in a tone of voice that was little less than offensive.

  Some men might have answered such behaviour with anger, but I preferred to seek solace through faith. These were days of much praying, and I found myself often moved to seek guidance from Him with regard to my two colleagues—often in their own presence—perhaps dwelling upon some little trait of character of theirs that might, I believed, with His help, find improvement. Thus I would pray that Potter would find in his heart greater kindliness and consideration towards his fellow men, and that Renshaw would sleep soundly without disturbing any with his restlessness. I did have hopes that these humble efforts might help them both to find a greater understanding of themselves, and that, with time, they might even join me in these little ministrations. To my regret, however, they seemed wholly to ignore my endeavours, quite as if they had not heard me at all.

  My humble efforts did not go entirely unheard, however. It seemed beyond mere chance that, as I prayed, I found my own life aboard the ship growing slowly less burdensome. Little by little my sickness began to pass until finally the great day came when
I made my way to the dining cabin, with its many delightful, if cheap, prints of the royal family (a man could find no keener monarchist than Captain Kewley), where I dined for the very first time since leaving Essex. The lurching of the vessel, likewise, became less strange to me, until I was able to walk from place to place quite without suddenly clutching for support, and even the nightly din of work upon the deck grew less irksome, until it was hardly more distracting to my sleep than so much birdsong. Before long the prospect of the many miles and months of voyaging ahead seemed of little account, as I became accustomed to living upon this vessel, viewing it hardly as a machine of travel, but rather as my home.

  By then our steady progress southwestwards had begun to bring noticeable changes, which resembled the alterations of the seasons, but strangely intermixed, as if May and September were occurring at one and the same time. While the sun grew stronger—care soon had to be taken if one did not wish to suffer a pinkened nose—the hours of daylight steadily shrank. Time itself seemed fluid, indeed, in this strange liquid world. Every midday a curious ritual was performed, when the Captain and his two mates—the smooth fellow Brew and the small, angry one, Kinvig—would stand side by side, pointing their sextants southwards. Finally, when each had lowered his device, Captain Kewley would call out, ‘‘Noon it is,’’ and at once the bell would ring out eight times, hourly sandglasses would be set, and the new ship’s day would begin. Without fail the hands of my watch would require adjustment by a minute or two to match this new noon.

  I found myself much intrigued by the many curious ways of shipboard life. Why, I quite wished I could understand the crew’s strange Celtic language—vile though it sounded—as they frequently spoke it when I was near, and always with such cheerful laughter that I would gladly have given a penny to know the subject of their happy bantering. They were, I observed, a people of strong and yet puzzling traditions. They quite insisted, for example, that we must never call the pigs aboard the vessel by their correct name, but should instead refer to them always as ‘‘swineys,’’ as a matter of some seagoing protocol, though this seemed a most foolish requirement, and I quite wondered if they might be playing a joke upon their new passengers. Then again I observed the Sincerity to be a place of no small formality, where every man had his exact post, quite as in some court of law. The Captain and the chief mate, Brew, would be found on the quarterdeck, to the rear of the vessel, where Kewley would have pride of place on the windward side, giving him a clear view forwards, with all the great sails billowing away. This was despite the fact that he himself rarely issued an order to the crew, such work being the preserve of Mr. Brew, who had to suffer the leeward side of the deck, from where it was hard to see anything except vast curtains of canvas stretching up to heaven. If, however, the Captain went below, then Brew would at once usurp his position.

  Forward of the quarterdeck one would find the crew, and the second mate, Kinvig, angrily issuing instructions. His rank seemed much inferior to Brew’s and he was often required to clamber into the rigging with the crew, while Brew hardly stirred from his comfortable spot upon deck. Further forward still lay the galley, a kind of rough hut upon the deck, which was the workplace of the cook, Quayle: a moody soul, who seemed to find companionship only in the shipboard animals. These beasts, I should explain, were numerous—at least at the start of the jour-ney—and were housed in the various ship’s boats, though it did occur to me that this was not the best arrangement, as, were the Sincerity to strike disaster, it would be no easy thing speedily to remove four bullocks from the long boat.

  Prevention is better than cure, of course, and I was ever impressed by the concern shown towards the maintenance of the ship, which seemed to consume the majority of the working time of the crew. The deck was thoroughly scrubbed down as many as three times each day, which struck me as obsessively cleanly, until I learned that it was to prevent the planks from shrinking, which would permit water to seep below. To the same end the crewmen were frequently to be found hammering strands of old rope between the planks and pouring on hot pitch as a seal. Each and every rope of the ship’s rigging was regularly examined, and perhaps painted with tar, while constant adjustments were made to maintain their tautness: a painstaking business, as the ropes formed quite a cat’s cradle, and to tighten one invariably meant altering half a dozen others thereafter. There were frequent expeditions aloft to oil the blocks, through which the ropes moved, or to chip and repaint the ironwork. It seemed, altogether, that no sooner had some lengthy chore been completed than the order would be given for it to be begun all over again.

  When not busy with such drudgery the crew either would be found in a state of semi-somnolence, dozing in the sun and smoking pipes, or would be high in the rigging, engaged in some display of skill worthy of circus acrobats. Often and again they would clamber, in hardly more than an instant, to a dizzy height above the deck, where it was a mystery to me how they managed to cling on at all. On one occasion the ship met an especially heavy swell that caused it to roll like a fearful seesaw, wildly tipping from side to side, so that the ends of the yards actually dipped into the ocean, and though it was hard for me even to keep my place just upon the deck, still the crew carried on quite as usual. One of them, whose place was at the very edge of the mainsail spar, was repeatedly plunged waist-deep in seawater, only to find himself a moment later propelled skywards as the vessel righted itself, until he was higher almost than the crow’s nest, with the whole ship leaning crazily beneath him. All the while he was quietly at work fastening a rope.

  It was, as it happened, as I looked upon the men on that day, and witnessed their perilous toil, that a most pleasing notion occurred to me. I dare say that for many men there is some special activity that is essential if they are to feel a sense of completion in life. For some this may be adventure, or the pursuit of wealth. For others it might be family bliss and the comfort of routine. As for myself, nothing is quite so pleasing as the prospect of honest work, through which I may bring a little joy and comfort into the lives of others.

  I wasted no time but mentioned my idea to Captain Kewley that same afternoon. Convincing the Captain of anything was never easy, as, like his compatriots, he possessed an obstinate reluctance to be impressed by another’s enthusiasm. A favourite word of the Manxmen was middling, which they used to display a seemingly limitless absence of concern in anything. If some furious typhoon were to strike, threatening to sink the ship, they would likely say only that it was middling bad weather. If there occurred a wondrous tropical sunset with colours to dazzle the eyes, it would be only middling fine. Why, if the four angels of destruction themselves were to appear before a Manxman, toppling mountains like so many flowerpots, I dare say he would think them only middling troublesome. With this in mind, I should not perhaps have been surprised by Kewley’s response to my proposal.

  ‘‘Sunday sermons, eh?’’

  ‘‘I feel it is nothing less than my duty,’’ I explained. ‘‘These men who face danger every day would, I believe, find no little comfort in their being brought closer to the word of God.’’

  Kewley frowned. ‘‘I dare say it’s harmless enough.’’

  It was, at least, no prohibition, and this was enough for my purpose. I set to work with cheerful determination. Before I could begin labouring on the sermon itself there were a number of small matters to which I had to attend. It seemed only right, for example, that I should be provided with a few simple shelves placed in the cabin, on which I might keep my books, my papers and writing implements. Likewise, the table in the dining cabin being irretrievably gashed and stained with grease for my purposes, I proposed that a tiny desk be attached to the dining cabin wall. The Captain, though he grumbled, eventually agreed to have the carpenter work upon these, and soon afterwards it occurred to me that it would be delightful to have a little platform constructed, perhaps upon the quarterdeck, together with a stand for the Good Book itself which would serve as a kind of sea pulpit and sea lectern. What was m
ore, it seemed only logical to have constructed a number of simple yet sturdy benches, so the crew might listen in modest comfort. Here, however, the Captain proved wholly uncooperative.

  ‘‘I’m not having any deck of mine turned into some floating chapel,’’ he insisted, in a tone of voice that was, I regret to tell, hardly polite. ‘‘This is a ship, not a preaching house.’’

  Sad to say, he was not the only one whose help in these little matters proved wanting. Dr. Potter became quite sulky when my little writing desk was set onto the wall, as—by purest chance—it happened to lie just behind his place at the dining table, and he made the greatest fuss that it interfered with his sitting. His mood did not even improve later when I tried to raise his spirits, sitting down beside him on his cot and quietly praying for the Lord to help us to find that kindliness that lay somewhere in every man’s heart. In fact he seemed if anything to grow worse. It was about this time, indeed, that I began to wonder if such a man was suited to take part in an expedition of such great importance as our own.

  Dr. Thomas Potter AUGUST 1857

  The Celtic Type

  The Celtic Type (instance: Manx) is altogether inferior in physique to the Saxon, being smaller, darker and lacking in strength. Typically the forehead is sloping, showing evidence of the ‘‘snout’’ characteristic, noted by Pearson as an indication of inferior intelligence. The skull is marked by deep eye sockets, expressing tendencies of servitude. Cranial type: G.

  As to his general character, the Celt is wanting in the industriousness and nobility of spirit of his Saxon neighbour, his dominating characteristic being indolence. He is content to wait upon events rather than moulding them, and suffers a fatal patience, hoping that fortune may smile upon him. In his favour it can be observed that the Celt possesses a rude sense of creativity (instance: songs and stories). He also possesses a simple physical courage, which has provided him with his most enduring role, as the foot soldier of the Saxon.