by Derek Yetman
Events took a turn for the worse a moment later. The shallop had fallen off the wind and we were scarcely on a broad reach when the mainsail split with a crack as loud as a musket shot. Everyone but Reverend Stow looked up at the torn canvas, Frost swearing under his breath before ordering the rag hauled down. This was exactly the sort of calamity I’d feared and which can happen when sailing an unproven boat in a gathering storm. At Mister Cartwright’s command I put the tiller over and pointed us for the Guernsey, even as I ordered the staysail loosened in order to scud with the wind astern.
It was here that a second calamity befell us. The staysail earring let go in a powerful gust, leaving the sail flapping like a sheet on a washline. The hands rushed to gather it in before Frost stopped them in their tracks with a barked order to unbend the jibsail. He was perfectly correct in this, of course, as a fluttering staysail was the least of our worries. We were now without control of the vessel and therefore at the mercy of the elements, which were quick to put us broadside to the wind and swell. The men jumped to the boatswain’s command, but to my wonder Lieutenant Cartwright belayed the order, calling instead for the topsail. This in itself was not a poor decision, as a closely reefed topsail will serve as well as a jib in a pinch. But it did mean the loss of valuable time. The men had already begun to loosen the jib’s lashing and now had to abandon the task.
Reverend Stow was not taking the excitement well. His face betrayed his terror at our situation and he clung to the gun as though it were something that would not drag him to the bottom the instant we broke apart. Our other gentleman, Mr. George Cartwright, was standing amidships with his hand on a shroud for balance. In profile he looked very much like his brother, except his smiling face displayed his ignorance of the danger we were in.
By now we were taking the brunt of the wind’s fury and rolling like a puncheon in the mountainous swell. Frost was standing next to me, his face as dark as the lowering sky. He nodded in the direction of Reverend Stow and the two Cartwrights, and above the strumming and whistling of the wind in the rigging, I heard him say: “Three wise men of Gotham went to sea in a bowl; if the bowl had been stronger, my poem would’ve been longer!”
We drifted past the high stern of the Guernsey, where no particular attention was being paid to us, and were driving broadside for the rocks at the mouth of Bonavista Harbour. Greening and the three Liverpools worked like demons and were finally able to set the small topsail. It filled immediately, and our bow swung away from the wind just as an enormous roller came under our stern. The shallop rose as if it were no more than a chip of wood and for an instant I felt the rudder come free of the water. We were lifted and propelled at the same time, and we felt a profound sense of helplessness as the wave hurled us deeper into the harbour. At that moment, above the roar of the tempest, I heard the voice of the chaplain wailing, “How vast is thy sea, O Lord, and how small is my boat!”
It was as close a thing as ever I’d witnessed, much less experienced. If the wind had been another point northerly the sea would have careened us onto our beam ends and into the rocks. The small topsail had provided some control but I still had the tiller hard fast under my arm, trying to avoid the rocky lee shore. I managed to veer us off to windward before a strong gust put our starboard gunwale under, snapping a line and sending two kegs over the side.
In another breath or two we were safe and sound, though in a fine pickle all the same. The Guernsey was due to sail at any moment and here we were with her gunner and boatswain, plus young Greening, on board the shallop. To make matters worse, we could not take the boat back out, owing to the strength and direction of the wind and the lack of room to tack in the harbour mouth. Mr. Cartwright was thoroughly nettled, as was the chaplain, who had let go of the gun and was now demanding to be returned to the ship.
I knew, as did the warrant officers, that we would not be going near the Guernsey anytime soon. Captain Palliser could not wait for the weather to improve even if he had a mind to do so. The ship’s bowers were barely holding her now and he would not ride the worsening storm at anchor. A parted cable would mean being driven ashore in the middle of the night and no captain would take that risk for want of two or three men, however useful they might be to his vessel.
I gave the tiller to Frost and clambered over the cargo to the first lieutenant, intending to tell him as much. But before I could speak, I heard him tell his brother and Reverend Stow that we were as good as stranded in the harbour. We were unlikely to see the Guernsey before Fogo, he said, if indeed then. I was pleased that he had a full appreciation of our situation, since he was largely to blame for it. His brother George merely shrugged at the news, his experience in the army having no doubt accustomed him to sudden changes of plan. The chaplain was not quite so accepting and griped loudly at the suggestion that he would have to make do with nothing more than the clothes on his back. He was a pitiful, if not a comic sight, with his mournful face and dripping wig. He was no soldier and even less a sailor and I could not help but wonder why he’d volunteered for this voyage.
To add to the chaplain’s misery, it began to rain as we were securing the errant barrels and repacking our kegs. In short order it was coming on with a fury. I instructed the boatswain to rig canopies from the damaged sails while the seamen took to the sweeps and rowed us across the harbour. We soon came alongside a stage where two splitters, their canvas aprons and boots covered in blood and gurry, left the shelter of a storeroom and tied us fast. It was a prosperous fishing room with a good many flakes and stores and a substantial house in a nearby field. The men said it was owned by Mr. Joseph White and managed by his agent, Thomas Street. If Reverend Stow had found the smell of our boat offensive, I could only imagine what he thought of this place. The stench of fish would have stopped a town clock.
It was now coming on dark and Mr. Cartwright instructed me to go to the house of the local surgeon, that I might learn the condition of the sick midshipman from the Liverpool. I took one of the frigate’s seamen with me as a guide and we crossed the harbour in the jolly boat, landing near a wooden shack that looked in danger of falling over in the wind. I knocked and stood for a time in the rain before a door of rough planks was unlatched and an untidy woman peered out at me. I told her my business and she admitted me reluctantly, insisting that my guide remain outside. This struck me as most inhospitable, until I remembered that the Liverpool sailors had been here for two weeks without an officer. They had probably raised the devil in that time.
My eyes began to water as soon as I stepped inside, the air being thick with smoke from a crude chimney of loose, flat stones. The surgeon was not at home, the woman said, but she would show me to the young gentleman. I followed her across the flagstone floor and into a tiny coffin of a room, where a thin form lay on its side, the face obscured beneath a counterpane. By the glow of her lamp, I saw the moisture and mildew on the walls and the scurrying vermin that disappeared into cracks and shadows.
“How long has he been ill?” I asked.
She looked down at the slight figure and shrugged. “Don’t rightly know. ’E were bought ’ere nearly a fortnight past and ’e were sick when ’e come.”
“And what is the nature of his illness?”
“Master says ’e got da scurvy.”
I nodded, not at all surprised that the most common affliction of the Navy had struck this young man down. During my own recovery, I had read a treatise on the disease that was newly written by a surgeon named Lind. He seemed to think that oranges and lemons were an effective cure, which I suppose was well and good if you fell ill in the Mediterranean.
“What treatments has the surgeon applied?” I asked.
The woman shrugged. “Diff’rent ones. First ’e covered ’im up to ’is neck in soil but after a few days da sores got worse, like. Then ’e give ’im doses o’ tarwater, only ’e couldn’t keep it down. Lately ’e been bleedin’ ’im every few hours.”
I had experienced all of these so-called remedies and kne
w of none that was worth the suffering endured by the patient. “Anything more?” I asked.
She took down a tiny bowl from a nearby shelf. “Just dis med’cine.” I lifted the thimble of reddish brown powder to my nose and recoiled at the pungently bitter smell.
“What is the boy’s name?” I asked, returning the bowl and stepping closer to the bed. I took hold of the sheet and her reply came as I drew it back. I cannot say if it was the name in my ear or the face before me that gave me such a shock.
John Cartwright
It was a close thing with that confounded shallop, I have to say. Of course, had the boatswain not issued orders contrary to my wishes, we would have weathered the affair quite nicely. Valuable time was lost in sending the hands to the jibsail first, when that was clearly not my intention. But there is no harm done, other than the addition of three men to my crew and the lack of our baggage. I am certain that we shall prosper all the same, provided the boatswain remembers his place on my vessel.
The Guernsey has now parted company, leaving me to my own resources until we reach Fogo Island. I have decided that, if the ship is not there when we arrive, we shall provision as best we can and set a course for the Bay of Exploits. Mr. Palliser has determined that Man of War Cove, on the southern end of Fogo Island, will be our alternate rendezvous in a fortnight from now. In the meantime, I have made it known to all and sundry at Bonavista that a reward is offered for a captive Red Indian. Our host, Mr. Street, seems to have some reservation on this. He has said little, however, other than to note that a great many ruffians have passed through the town this summer, bound for the fishing stations of the northeast coast.
Mr. Street informs me as well that there are many criminal charges waiting to be heard there. I have not the least knowledge of these cases but I can easily imagine the offences involved. They will include assault, theft, wanton damage to property and so on, and no doubt the greater part of it will be down to the immoderate consumption of spirits. Many of those brought before the court will also be of the Irish race. This I know from experience. They will be young men for the most past, shipped to Newfoundland because their families or parishes were unable to support them at home. Here they are known as White Boys, though few of them have actual ties to that rebel cause. They may sympathize with it and why should they not? English landlords have been turning them off their tenant farms and crofts for years, evicting them with no compensation, few skills and even fewer prospects.
Reverend Balfour at Trinity has informed the governor that his parish has been the scene of many outrages, where from want and necessity the Irish riot frequently. The English settlers have been forced to draw together for their own protection and no man will accept the duties of constable, for fear of his life. Many of these Irish routinely die of starvation and exposure in winter. I myself have arrested individuals for manslaughter that was brought on by desperation and fuelled by intoxicating spirits. Only last year, a young woman named Hannah Barrett was tormented by a mob of these fellows and run off a cliff to her death. The situation has not improved a year hence, for recently I’ve heard that a gang of scoundrels has been terrorizing Trinity once more. As surrogate magistrate, I have no time to deal with them now but I shall certainly clip their wings on my return.
Even the Irish who have employment here are no better off, it seems. Their employers will cheat them and abuse them given half the chance, and they do not help themselves with their weakness for drink. Captain Palliser has had occasion to reprimand certain English merchants for paying their servants with rum instead of wages. Unable to buy their passage home at the season’s end, these servants are abandoned to debauchery and wickedness for six months of the year. They become perfect strangers to all government, religion and good order.
One of the most notorious merchants for this is Andrew Pinson, an agent of John Noble at Toulinguet. The governor has reprimanded him repeatedly for landing his crews at St. John’s in the fall and paying them entirely in spirits. While he and his methods are condemned by us, his business fellows love him even less, owing to his attempts at monopolizing the fur and salmon trade on this coast. Pinson, I am bound to say, is the epitome of all that is wrong with this place, for the man is Greed itself.
By contrast, it has been most gratifying to serve under an individual as enlightened as Captain Palliser. We are of the same mind in believing that the lower classes do not have to be kept poor in order to be kept industrious. We are part of the new order, he and I: compassionate, yet firm and consistent in administering justice to the lower ranks of society. I recall our very first conversation, on whether God had established our social system, and whether poverty, pain and death are part of the mystery of Creation. We are both inclined to think it is so, though we shall never shrink from appeasing human suffering where we find it.
Suffering is a word that I have heard frequently of late. The Reverend Stow is most insistent that we catch up with the Guernsey to prevent our own suffering. Of course, I suspect that our ecclesiastical friend is more concerned with his personal comfort than with any true suffering on the part of the crew. The word has also been used by Mr. Squibb, in connection with a midshipman who was left here by the Liverpool. He seems to think the boy will suffer and die if he is left in the care of a former naval surgeon. These surgeons may be crude in their methods, I will admit, but it would be impossible to take a bedridden man on an expedition such as this. Still, our young Mr. Squibb can be most persistent, a distasteful quality that I have noted in him. But Mr. Palliser is not here to favour him now, and so he shall have to obey my orders on the subject. We are overcrowded as it is and our provisions were meant for eight men, not eleven and certainly not a dozen. I have therefore decided that the midshipman from the Liverpool will remain where he is.
Jonah Squibb
I was more than a little chafed at Lieutenant Cartwright’s refusal to have the ailing midshipman brought on board the shallop. To leave a fellow sailor to die in such a remote place, and at the hands of such a charlatan, would be unpardonable. All the same, I held my tongue, owing to the weather continuing wet and cold throughout the night. With nothing more than a lantern to heat the fore and aft cabins of the boat, it was just as well that the lad remained at the surgeon’s house for the time being, especially as the surgeon was away and incapable of doing further harm.
As for Lieutenant Cartwright, he had taken up residence in the merchant’s premises, accompanied by his brother George, Reverend Stow and old Atkinson, the brother’s cadaverous servant. They were to reside there as guests of Mr. Street while I remained on board with the crew. The arrangement served me well enough, as I wished to put our vessel into an improved state of order and comfort. I thought little of the fact that I had not actually been invited to stay at the house.
The evening’s work began with the makeshift canopy, which was taken down and rigged to better effect until it kept most of the rain off our heads. I then sent Bolger to find something fresh for our dinner and he returned with two enormous codfish and a quantity of their tongues. He knew of my fondness for tongues and, despite his disgust, he’d done me a great kindness in getting them. The fish we boiled on the boat’s stove and the men ate it with biscuit and a plum duff, all the while eyeing me doubtfully as I floured and fried my cod tongues in lard. Only Greening would accept the offer of a few on his plate, saying that he was more partial to the cheeks himself.
Next I set about ordering the messes, assigning the forecastle to the seamen and claiming the aft cabin for the use of the warrant officers and myself. I had no doubt that Lieutenant Cartwright would change the arrangement when he returned from his comforts, though for now, the men were happy enough. To refer to the enclosed spaces fore and aft as cabins is perhaps to exaggerate their size. There was barely width or length for three men to sling their hammocks side-by-side, and just enough height to sit on low benches when the hammocks were stowed. Even when seated, the tallest amongst us, who happened to be me, had to be mindful of the
beams. We managed to pass the night in reasonable, if chilly, comfort, the men serving in two watches under the warrant officers.
The next morning the weather continued poorly and I issued the first ration of rum early, so as to put a cheerful light on the day. I was not pleased, however, to observe petty officer Grimes gulping down his grog before demanding a share from his fellow Liverpools. By then, I’d had some time to take the measure of these three, and I did not like what I saw. Grimes was a swaggering, thick-necked tar whom I’d already pegged for a tyrant. To quote Smollett, whom I’d been reading the day before: “He had all the outward signs of a sot; a sleepy eye, a rubicund face, and a carbuncled nose. He seemed to be a little out at the elbows, had marvelous foul linen, and his breeches were not very sound; but he assumed an air of importance.” The other two sailors, a wizened Cornishman named Rundle and a near-idiot lad named Jenkins, were bullied by the petty officer at every turn. Jenkins, a slack-jawed and glassy-eyed youth, seemed to take the greater part of the abuse.
A short time after the incident with the grog, I saw Grimes approach the boatswain and heard him ask for leave to go ashore. Had he known our Mr. Frost better, he would never have committed such folly. Or else he would have been suspicious of the pleasant manner in which the boatswain asked the reason for his request. Grimes, suspecting nothing, told him of a widow who sold rum in the parlour of her house and that he would stand the boatswain a tot if he joined him. It had not escaped my attention that our new crewmen were short on discipline, owing no doubt to having been left so long without supervision. Nor had this state of affairs gone unnoticed by the boatswain, who began putting things to right from that moment. I took my leave for the surgeon’s house as he launched an oath-laden tirade against the hapless Grimes.