Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley

by Kenneth Roberts

  So Swede volunteered to do the cooking until we reached Portsmouth; and when he went to the galley, Neal went along with him to help, not only to carry food to the after cabin, but to dish out to the men forward when they came to the galley with their mess kids.

  We wallowed creakingly south, with those dirty gray seas and stinging snow squalls hissing all around us, until nightfall, when the captain turned over the deck to Mr. Langman, and Neal brought us boiled beef, boiled potatoes and ship's bread; then disappeared. We ate our supper as well as we could in that heaving, lurching cabin beneath the dim lights swinging in their gimbals.

  The cabin felt empty without Swede and Neal, and as

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  time went on I worried about them and so climbed on deck to go forward to the cookhouse. The quarter-deck, except for the helmsman, was empty; and when I half slid, half skated forward to the galley, I found Langman braced in the doorway of that narrow cubicle. Inside it the lamp cast a flickering light on Swede and Neal, both of whom were staring at Langman with eyes so shadowed that they seemed sunk in their heads.

  When, to steady myself, I caught hold of the doorpost beside Langman, he opened his mouth as if to say something: then shut it again, turned, and worked his way back to the quarter-deck.

  "Miles," Swede said, "something smells around here, and it's not the cheese. Langman's been in the hold after extra meat for White and Mellen."

  "He's got no business tampering with the provisions," I said. "That's for the captain to do."

  "Yes," Swede said, "and he also wants to head straight out to sea."

  I couldn't believe my ears. "Straight out to sea! What for, for God's sake! We're running southwest before a northeaster. If we turn at right angles, we'll be in the trough and on our beam-ends before you can say Scat! Why would anyone want to take her straight out, anyway?"

  "Tell him what you heard, Neal," Swede said.

  "It was when he gave Mellen the meat," Neal said. "He said, 'If we can't wait for this blow to let up, we'll be in Portsmouth tomorrow.' Then he said, 'Tell 'em I'll get 'em more water too.' "

  "That's what Neal heard," Swede said, "and as I see it, there's no two ways about it. Langman wants this ship for

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  himself. He's waited till the last minute, all along, hoping for a fair wind and blue skies that would make it safe for him to take her over on one excuse or another. Well, he'll never get a fair wind or blue skies tomorrow, and he knows the only way to get 'em is to put straight out to sea and wait for the wind to turn. If he doesn't, we'll be in Portsmouth, and he'll have lost his chance."

  I stared at him; and only now did I see clearly what I should have seen long ago. "Of course," I said. "And the extra meat and the extra water would be for bribes to get the others to side with him."

  "What else?" Swede asked.

  I told Swede to dowse the lantern, lock the galley and get back to the cabin with Neal as quickly as he could-and because I didn't like the way Langman had abandoned the quarter-deck to argue with Swede and Neal in the galley, I went behind them to make sure they got there.

  When I reached the quarter-deck, I could just make out Langman in the snowy dark.

  "I didn't see a lookout up forward," I told him.

  "Lookout! What's the good of a lookout on a night like this?" I could sense the contempt on his swarthy thin face.

  In the snug cabin Captain Dean had his coat off, readying himself for bed; but when I followed Neal and Swede through the door and started telling him what they had told me, he reached behind him for his coat.

  Henry Dean, lying fully dressed on his bunk, climbed out heavily and pulled a knitted cap down over his ears.

  They heard me out: then Captain Dean angrily pulled on his own hat, picked up the loggerhead from beside the cabin stove; and all of us went out again into the whirling snowflakes.

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  Langman wasn't on the quarter-deck. Captain Dean spoke to the helmsman, "Where's the mate?"

  Gray, the helmsman, said, "He went forward, Captain."

  "He went to the hold," Swede said. "That's where he went: to the hold for water."

  The door to the hold swung open and Langman, carrying a lantern in one hand and a water jug in the other, stepped out on the snowy deck.

  "You're supposed to be on watch, Mr. Langman," Captain Dean said. "Where's your lookout? You have no business in the hold. What are you doing with that water jug? You know everyone on this ship is on a strict water ration!"

  "That ain't so," Langman said. "You have all the water you want, and the crew gets half enough! They're sick of you and your ways. They say you're aiming to run this ship ashore, now, tonight! They say you've got to alter your course and take her straight out to sea if you want to prove you're not aiming to wreck her."

  "Wreck her?" Captain Dean shouted. "In a northeaster? Are you crazy, Langman? Do you think I want to commit suicide? I took my bearings from Cape Porpoise! There's no place to wreck her unless I steer due west. Wreck her at night? Wreck her in a northeaster? Wreck her in a snowstorm? Talk sense, Langman! And get a lookout forward!"

  "By God," Langman said, "you'll take her out to sea or we'll know the reason why!"

  Captain Dean raised his head and seemed to sniff the air. "Swede!" he shouted. "Go forward! Keep your eyes peeled!"

  Swede left us, scrambling, his right arm hanging low,

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  ape-like, as if to keep himself from falling on the scum of slush amidships.

  To Langman Captain Dean said, "I'll take no orders from you, Christopher Langman. You'll stop inciting this crew to rebellion! If you don't start acting like the mate of this ship, I'll take steps! What in God's name are you running without a lookout for?"

  "How can a lookout keep his eyes open in gurry like this?" Langman demanded.

  "He could hear, couldn't he?" the captain snapped.

  Langman turned contemptuously away, and found himself squarely confronted by Henry Dean, who reached out and took the water jug, almost as though he took a child from its mother's arms. Langman resisted, shouting, "Mellen! White!"

  On this Captain Dean stepped forward and brought the loggerhead down on Langman's skull. When Langman swayed but didn't fall, Captain Dean hit him again. Langman dropped to his knees, but, unfortunately for all of us, staggered to his feet again and reeled toward the cabin.

  We heard Swede shouting something from the bow.

  The captain ran forward, sliding precariously on the sloppy planks. Almost immediately he ran back past us to climb to the quarter-deck again and I was conscious of a hoarseness in the air about me, a sort of raucous wet humming that seemed to fill me with a deadening fright and turn my arms and legs to water.

  "Starboard!" Captain Dean shouted to the helmsman. "Hard to starboard!"

  The deck surged up beneath us. The whole ship lurched and seemed to cough, as a man, coughing, convulses himself.

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  The bow fell off to larboard, and the vessel sickeningly rolled and rose up and up on a monstrous wave.

  "Get your helm to starboard! Starboard!" Captain Dean screamed.

  The raucous wet humming all around us deepened to a menacing all-pervasive rumble, overwhelming, stomach-shakingand the enormous comber on which the ship was riding seemed to hurl her forward.

  She struck with a crash that threw me to the decka crash so loud that my brain crackled, and among the splinters was a faint hope that if any man lived within a mile of where we struck, he would be wakened by that dreadful sound and hurry to help us.

  The rumbling, roaring thunder of which we seemed to be the center was the sound of breakers pounding at the unseen rocks on which the Nottingham shuddered and grated; and even in my despairing panic I had quick thoughtsif the disjointed fragments that flutter in a man's mind in an emergency can be called thoughts:

  ... that Langman's repeated insistence that Captain Dean had all along intended to run the Nottingham ashore now seemed to be
true, but was in truth more untrue than ever:

  ... that never, in all our weeks of sailing against adverse winds, had we ever heard anything approaching the deafening tumult that now surrounded us:

  ... that nothing made by man could withstand the hammer blows that beat upon the Nottingham's weather side to pour torrents of icy water and slashing spray across her canted deckand yet that this shore upon which we had struck had been here, unharmed, since the world began,

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  in spite of innumerable stormsthat among the crevices of those rocks were living things that would survive these pounding waves ... and that perhaps we ourselves would similarly survive.

  The Nottingham's stern was higher than the bow, as if bent on thrusting her stern more solidly against the shore, and the waist of the ship seemed filled with struggling figures, striving to reach the after cabin.

  I found Neal pushing at Swede's buttocks: found a rope-end to which to cling: ran into Chips Bullock, with an axe and a hammer in one hand and his workbag in the other, making his way along the weather rail.

  A breaker curled over the bulwarks, hit him squarely, and sent him sliding down the steep deck and into a gun carriage. My rope-end let me reach him, take his axe and hammer and pull him to his feet.

  "My workbag!" he shouted. "Spikes! Nails!" He fell to his knees, scrabbling in the scuppers for his workbag. Another wash of icy foam struck us. By the grace of my rope-end we clawed free of the scuppers and pushed and pulled each other to the cabin companion.

  The cabin was like a room insecurely poised on one of its corners, and something about a structure so tilted throws a man off balance, both physically and mentally. Every person in it is dizzy and, unless he holds to something, falls down: his mind, too, is so addled that he thinks he can stand, and so gets to his feet only to fall immediately, like a wounded pigeon.

  The dark deck had been bad enough, what with waves, the icy torrents that drenched us, the crunching of the ship as she thumped upon the rocks; but the inside of the

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  cabin was worse, and for the first time in my life I knew terror, as I think each of the fourteen of us knew it, even though some concealed it.

  A single lamp still burned dimly, shuddering in its gimbals. Only Captain Dean was on his feet, supporting himself by the rudder case. The others were on the floor, some trying to rise, only to reel down again: the others just lying there. Cooky Sipper was moaning.

  I found that if I closed my eyes the strange tilt of the room had next to no effect upon me. I could crawl to the cabin wall and pull myself erect by clinging to it. I made my discovery known to Neal and Swede and Chips.

  Langman, when we crawled in, was striving to make himself heard by Captain Dean. "You were bound to do it from the very first!" he was shouting. "You've been looking for a chance to run her ashore since the day we left the convoy! You planned it!"

  "Don't be a damn fool!" Captain Dean shouted back. "This is no time for such stuff as that! I want every man in this cabin to pray."

  "Pray?" Langman demanded, and his voice was a squeal. "You think God's going to come down here and pull us off these rocks after you've put us on them?"

  Captain Dean smashed his fist against the rudder case. "All right! All right! I put you here! All I know is there was no land on the course I plotted from Cape Porpoise, and there was no lookout forward when you had the deck. Now pray!"

  "Pray?" Langman shouted again. "How's that going to help us? Nothing can help us, now you've gone and run us ashore!"

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  "Don't pray for help!" the captain told him. "Pray for the strength to help yourself! Strength!"

  The whole ship sagged sickeningly to one side: reeled even more sickeningly to the other: a sea that must have been enormous struck her side with such force that my eardrums felt thrust against my throbbing brain. A splitting sound came from beneath us, and the cabin floor fluttered.

  "Oh, God!" Captain Dean said, "give each man the strength to stand upon his feet and stretch out a helping hand to every other man. Say it, every last one of you, and mean it! God give me strength! Say it, Langman."

  "God give me strength," Langman said.

  "Again!" Captain Dean shouted. "Everyone! God give me strength!"

  The men's voices quavered, thin and bird-like through the sounds of the smashing seas.

  The whole after part of the ship straightened a little, then seemed to slide downhill.

  "Get on deck," Captain Dean cried. "Get up and get out before she breaks in two or slides off." He reached out and pulled Chips to his feet. ''Use your axe! Swede! Miles! Go with him! Cut the weather shrouds and ratlins! If the masts fall toward the land, we may have a chance! If they don't fall, chop the foremast!" He flung Chips toward the companionway. Swede and I followed him.

  Behind us Captain Dean stormed among the men, kicking them and hauling them to their feet.

  The task of cutting those shrouds and ratlinsof keeping a foothold on that steep and slippery deckwas difficult beyond belief. We couldn't trust ourselves on the chains because of the smashing of the waves against the

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  side. For a time Chips insisted he could stand on the bulwarks and swing his axe. We hoisted him up to let him thrust a foot through the ratlins. He hooked his other leg around a stay, but when he swung his axe, one of those roaring towering breakers foamed against him and blinded us. When the foam subsided, Chips was in the scuppers once more, but still clinging to his axe.

  We tried holding Chips pinned against the bulwarks with our shoulders; but the unending slash of icy foam and the driving snow numbed me: must have numbed Chips, too, for he couldn't seem to swing the axe.

  "Give me that axe," Swede shouted. "We've got to get ashore somehow! Stand under me. When I fall, catch me if you can."

  He pushed the axe handle inside his breeches, put an arm around Neal's shoulders, bellowed, "We'll be all right"; then went up the inside of the ratlins like a big spider. We lost him at once in the snow and the flying spray, but felt the jarring of his axe against the riggingand then, suddenly, he came sprawling down among us. Almost in the same moment the foremast went over the side with a splintering crash. Then the mainmast went, and the ship rolled on her side to surge soggily as if agonized by the pounding of those roaring breakers.

  "Look for the axe!" Swede said. "I threw it to leeward when I fell!"

  "To hell with the axe," Chips said. "Get ashore! Wherever people live we can find another axe."

  I agreed with him. We could have hunted forever for that axe or for Chips's workbag in the darkness and on that glacial deck.

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  "I'll go first," Swede said. "I want Neal close behind me. I want Miles behind Neal."

  He left us, and we felt rather than saw him inching along the mast. We crawled out after him. Ratlins and shrouds were tangled around it. The foretop was like a fence to be climbed, but we climbed it.

  The tip of the mast rested against something solid. That something was seaweed, and beneath the seaweed were rockssolid, immovable rocks.

  We were safe, I thought, secure from those bellowing breakers; and even as I write the words "safe" and "secure," I feel a sort of shame for those who, like myself, could let themselves think that there is ever any such thing as safety and security.

  The seaweed was so slippery that if a person upon it was unable to see where to step, he staggered, he lurched, his feet went out from under him, pitching him upon his face or, even worse, wrenchingly upon his back.