A surge of interest rippled through the throng as a lighter bumped alongside the small landing place ahead. The crowd pressed forward with a buzz of excited comment and were met by the redcoats who held them at bay to form a clear path behind them. Then there was an expectant quiet and rustle of anticipation.
Suddenly a loud sigh went up: the head of a pathetic caterpillar of ragged individuals appeared, shuffling and clinking along, a line of humanity that went on and on. Sharp orders from the black-coated guards brought them listlessly to a halt at the end of the gangway.
Two officials went up to Kydd. “Cap’n?” The moment he had dreaded was upon him. He looked once more at the column of human misery. Some were apathetic, their fetters hanging loosely, others gazed defiantly at the ship that would tear them from the land of their birth; all had the deathly pallor of the cell. He took the book and meekly signed for 203 convicted felons, the rest to be picked up at another port.
Nodding to the guards he retreated to the afterdeck; it seemed indecent to peer into the faces of the pale wretches as they shuffled up the gangway. The gawping onlookers, however, appeared to feel no shame, revelling in the delicious sensation of being in the presence of those condemned to a fate that, after a dozen years, was still a byword for horror: transportation to Botany Bay.
More shambled aboard; it did not seem possible that there was room for the unending stream. The unspeaking Dane and brash new third mate were below with the seamen and the stiffening of soldiers who oversaw the embarkation and berth assignments. Kydd was glad that it was they who had to bear the brunt. He could hear the wails of dismay and sharp rejoinders as the unwilling cargo of humanity saw their home for the next half a year, and tried to harden his heart.
The female convicts began to come up the gangway: hard-faced shrews, terrified maids, worn-out slatterns, some in rags, others in the drab brown serge of prison garb. As they filed below there was an immediate commotion, squeals of protest mingling with lewd roars and anonymous screams.
“Mr Cuzens, I’m going to m’ cabin,” Kydd said thickly, and hurried below. He flopped into his chair and buried his face in his hands.
A bare minute later there was a casual knock and Cuzens entered. Kydd pulled himself together. “Mrs Giles,” Cuzens said, as though this was all Kydd had to know.
“Who?”
“Ma Giles. Come t’ see the women.”
Kydd made his way up. On the quayside a lady of mature years was angrily waving a book at him. Her shrill cries were overborne by the Bedlam between decks. Kydd went down the gangway to see her. “Sir, are you the captain of this ark of misery?”
Something about her fierce determination made him hesitate. “I am that, madam.”
“Then is there no spark of godliness in you, sir, to deny those unfortunates the solace of their faith?” The book, he saw, was a well-worn Bible. “They are condemned to a life of—” Kydd gave her permission to board and, accompanied by a guard, she primly mounted the gangway to perform her ministry.
Kydd hesitated before he followed her—above the clamour he could hear tearing sobs nearby. It was a woman prostrate with grief, far beyond the tears and cries of the others, her face distorted into a rictus of inconsolable tragedy. The man who held her was himself nearly overcome and admitted to Kydd, through gulps of emotion, that their daughter was one of the female convicts aboard.
A daughter: betrayed and abandoned, now about to be torn from their lives for ever. Was it a mercy to allow them aboard to a tender farewell in the hell and chaos that was the ’tween decks? What kind of last memory of their child would they take away?
“Mr Cuzens,” Kydd croaked loudly, “two t’ come aboard.” Instantly he was besieged by other tear-streaked faces shouting and weeping.
Kydd glared venomously at the gawpers taking in the spectacle and mounted the gangway again. Pitiful bundles in piles on the foredeck were, no doubt, personal possessions. It was within his power to refuse them but Kydd knew he could not. Time pressed; he tried to persuade himself that once under way at sea things would settle down.
“Everyone off th’ ship b’ two bells, Mr Cuzens. I’ll have the crew mustered forrard afore we single up,” he ordered, grasping for sanity. There was no mercy in delaying; there were now but three hours left for goodbyes. “An’ send word t’ the Shippe that the free settlers c’n board when convenient.”
The hard-faced leader of the guards reported all secure: he could be relied upon for the final roll-call and, with luck, there would be no need to go below before sailing. Leaving the deck for Cuzens to attend to the terrified, bellowing cow that was being pushed into its pen forward, Kydd took refuge in his cabin once more.
He closed his eyes. It was a hideous nightmare and it was only just beginning.
Roused by the announced arrival of the first free settlers, a disdainful family from Staffordshire whom he welcomed and showed to their cabin, he returned and closed his eyes once more. Again a knock and Cuzens waddled in. “Trouble,” he said with just a hint of satisfaction. “Y’ other settler kickin’ up a noise. Came wi’ a chest bigger ’n the longboat an’ won’t board wi’out it.”
Kydd held in his temper. “Where?”
Cuzens pointed to the wharf. A thin man in plain brown sat obstinately facing away on a vast case, a good six feet long. Next to it was neat, seamanlike baggage that, on its own, would stow perfectly well. Kydd clattered down the gangway and approached him. “Now then, sir, ye can’t—”
The man jerked to his feet in consternation and spun round.
It was Renzi.
“N-Nicholas!” Kydd gasped, shocked and delighted at the same time. Renzi was thin, sallow and painfully bent, but his sunken eyes burned with a feverish intensity. “Why, dear friend, what does this mean? Do y’ really—”
“Thomas. Mr Kydd, I did not think to see you . . .” He had difficulty continuing and Kydd heard an impatient Cuzens behind him.
“Y’r books, I believe?” he guessed.
“Yes,” Renzi said defiantly.
“Mr Cuzens, take this aboard and—and strike it down in m’ cabin f’r now.” The mate ambled off, leaving them with the few remaining onlookers. “Nicholas, if you—”
Renzi straightened and said carefully, “This is my decision. I ask you will have the good grace to respect it.
“You may believe I have had time to think long and deeply about my situation and there were aspects of it that were distressing to me. It is now my avowed intention to find a fresh life—and cut myself off from a wasted past. There is a new land waiting, one where hard work and imagination will yield both self-respect and achievement.”
“Nicholas—you?” It was beyond belief that Renzi could—
“It is not a matter open to discussion. I have formally resigned my commission and am now a free agent, and therefore as a citizen whose passage money has been paid I believe I have a right to my privacy. Do you understand me?”
Kydd was lost for words, then stuttered, “M’ friend—”
“Mr Kydd. Our friendship is of long standing and I trust has been of service to us both, each in his own way. That friendship is now completed. I have . . . warm memories, which I will . . . treasure in my new existence. Yet I will have you know that as our paths have now irrevocably diverged I wish no longer to be reminded of a previous life and as such ask that I be addressed and treated as any other passenger.”
“Then, Nicholas . . . er, Mr Renzi, if there’s anything I c’n do for you—is there anything at all?” But Renzi had turned on his heel and was painfully mounting the gangway.
• • •
Torn by happiness that his friend lived and anxieties about the ship, Kydd took his place near the wheel and tried to focus on the task in hand. Totnes Castle must be under weigh for New South Wales very shortly, but was Renzi in his right mind? Would he finally come to himself too late, far out on the ocean with no turning back? Or was he on a slow decline to madness?
Kydd bit his lip: the
first part of his world-spanning voyage was going to be the most difficult, the winding route of the Thames to the open sea through the most crowded waterway on earth. An ignominious collision with a coal barge at the outset would be catastrophic, and although they would carry a pilot, the actual manoeuvring would be by his own orders. They would tide it out, a brisk ebb in theory carrying them the thirty-odd tortuous miles to the Isle of Sheppey and the open sea—but this had its own danger: while being carried forward with the press of water the rudder would find little bite. It did seem, however, that the south-westerly would hold and therefore their way was clear to cast off and put to sea at the top of the tide.
“Hands to y’r stations!” Apart from the huddled, tearful groups watching sadly, no one was interested in yet another vessel warping out to midstream for the age-old journey down-river. No taste of powder-smoke from grand salutes or streaming ensigns and brisk signals, just a nondescript barque flying the red-and-white pennant of a ’Bay ship with yet another cargo of heartbreak and misery.
Totnes Castle pulled slowly to mid-channel, slewing at the increasing effect of the tide. The taciturn pilot stood next to the wheel, arms folded, while Cuzens stood back, watching Kydd with a lazy smile. He must have done the trip dozens of times, thought Kydd, resentfully. On impulse he said quietly, “Mr Cuzens, take her out, if y’ please.”
The mate jerked in astonishment. “You mean—”
“Aye, Mr Mate. Let’s see what ye’re made of.” Kydd stepped back. He was quite within his rights, for among the terms of his articles was an injunction to see that the first mate was “instructed in his duties” as what amounted to deputy master.
Cuzens hesitated, then cupped his hands. “Lay aloft, y’ bastards.”
They made the depressing flat marshes of the estuary late in the afternoon and by nightfall had dropped the pilot and were making sail for open sea—and a land unimaginably remote.
The same south-westerly that had helped them to sea was now foul for the Channel. Kydd decided prudence was called for in the darkness and felt his way into the crowded anchorage of the Downs and let go anchor for the morning.
Now he had to face his human freight: they had been battened down for the run to the sea, but the nocturnal hours were not the time to be letting them roam the decks: they must remain under lock and key below.
With the guard leader, he went down the hatchway, rehearsing words of admonishment and encouragement. At the bottom of the ladder he turned—and the sight that met his eyes was closer to that of a medieval dungeon than a ship’s ’tween decks. The fitful gleam of the lanthorn into the darkness forward revealed scores of bodies draped listlessly over every part of the hold, some on the shelf-bunks clutching thin blankets over four and even six, and still more wedged upright against the ship’s side as if afraid to seek release in lying asleep. Moans, coughs, occasional mumbling and muttering mingled with the deep creaking from invisible waves passing beneath the hull in an endless counterpoint. A miasma rose to Kydd’s nostrils of more than two hundred bodies and the unmistakable rankness of vomit. Even the movement of the slight seas round the Foreland had brought on spasms in some, which in the closeness of the prison hold had set others to retching. Along with the sour stink of the night-buckets, it was all Kydd could do to stop himself fleeing back on deck.
A few raised their heads at the light and disturbance. Kydd’s words died in his throat: for the inmates, darkness was for sleep and enduring until morning. He turned to the guard who stolidly returned his gaze. What might be going through these poor wretches’ minds was beyond imagining—half a year confined to this?
Shaken, Kydd clambered back to the blessed night air and stared out at the calm sea scene denied to those hidden under his feet: dozens of vessels placidly at rest with golden light dappling the sea under their stern windows, a half-hidden moon playing hide-and-seek in the clouds.
He took a deep, ragged breath and turned to go below. Mowlett stood before him as though to bar his way. “An agreeable enough scene, Mr Kydd,” he said softly.
Kydd could not find pleasantries in reply.
“Surely you are not discommoded by what you have seen below. You may view its like at any time in any gaol in the land. It is of no consequence.”
“It was not as I . . . Damn it, they’re human beings, same as we,” Kydd said raggedly.
“Of course not,” Mowlett responded, as though to a child. “They’re not human at all, old fellow—they stopped being human when sentenced in the dock. Now they are government property, exported for the term specified, and form the freight you are being paid for. When you deliver them to the colonials in New South Wales they will go into a storehouse and be handed out to whoever lays claim to a free government issue of labour. They have no other purpose or existence.”
The Isle of Wight lay close to larboard in all its dense verdancy but Kydd’s gaze was to starboard, to the tight scatter of houses and grey-white fortifications that was Portsmouth Point and the entrance to the biggest naval harbour in the land.
Totnes Castle’s anchor took the ground at the Mother Bank, well clear of Spithead, the famed anchorage of the Channel Fleet. Before, there had been fleets of stately ships-of-the-line riding at anchor, but now in these piping days of peace, there was emptiness: only ghosts remained of the great ships that had fought to victory at St Vincent and the Glorious First of June. And his own Duke William in which he had learned of the sea.
Eleven more convicts were embarked by hoy and Kydd’s orders were complete. Sail was loosed, and in a workmanlike southerly he shaped course for Plymouth, their final port-of-call in England for last-minute provisions and water.
They sailed past the triangular mass of the Great Mew Stone and into the Sound, then across to Cawsand Bay. Leaving the mate to take men to Drake’s Leat to fill casks with clear Dartmoor water, Kydd made ready to go ashore, his the unenviable task of cozening down the costs of fresh greens, fish and potatoes that would allow his ship to face the months of voyaging that lay ahead.
Far off he made out Teazer, one among many in the Hamoaze, mastless and high in the water, still and unmoving in a line of small ships. It was a sight of infinite melancholy.
It was a hard, crisp January morning when Totnes Castle finally left English shores, the winter beauty of the country never so poignant. The ship’s bows were headed purposefully outward bound and even those fortunates who could look forward to returning in due course would not see it again in much less than a year.
As soon as Rame Head was safely astern and the ship irrevocably committed to the ocean, the first convicts appeared on the foredeck. Pale, unsteady and shivering at the sudden change in air, they stumbled about, manacles clinking dolefully. Some went to the side where they hung unmoving, others stared back at the receding land for a long time. Still more shuffled about endlessly with not a glance at the country that had given them birth.
Kydd tried to read their faces: there were case-hardened men, some of whom would have been reprieved at the gallows, along with a scatter of sensitive faces distorted by misery, but the majority looked blank and wary, muttering to each other as they moved slowly about their defined area of deck.
At the main-hatch a barrier stretched across: forward the convicts shuffled and clinked, aft was a broad expanse of deck for the passengers. The only ones embarked were the free settlers; Kydd had entertained the family from Staffordshire at the captain’s table for dinner; the man was going out with plans to establish an industrial pottery but had little else in conversation. He and his insipid wife were huddled in deck-chairs to leeward while the daughter sat at their feet and worked demurely at her sewing.
Alone in a deck-chair on the other side was the Castle’s other settler and passenger. Kydd had been repelled at every approach: at the very time he so needed a friend, his closest had withdrawn from his company. He knew better than to try to press his attention, even though the book Renzi held had not advanced a single page.
The crew se
emed to know what was expected of them and, for the most part, kept out of his way. They were few compared to the manning of a warship where the serving of guns required so many more—and had a different relationship with a ship’s master: they had signed articles for a single voyage with specified duties and wages.
In the afternoon the female convicts took the deck. Prison-pale and ragged they blinked in the sunlight, tried to comb their hair and make themselves presentable.
Kydd called all the officers to his cabin. When they were assembled he opened forcefully: “Now we’re at sea I want th’ people to be out on the upper decks as much as possible. How do we do this?” He looked at Cuzens, then at the others, but saw only incomprehension and veiled irritation. Not waiting for a reply he went on, “An’ why do they need t’ be in Newgate irons the whole time? Strike ’em off, if y’ please.”
There was a confused murmuring and Cuzens said darkly, “Guard commander makes them kind o’ decisions, Mr Kydd.”
“An’ I’m in charge o’ the guards. If they needs fetters we use leg-cuffs an’ a chain—what th’ Army calls a bazzel.”
“You ain’t seen a mutiny, then?” the young third mate said, with a sneer.
Kydd held a retort in check: he would certainly never forget the bloody Nore mutiny. “With guns on th’ afterdeck charged with grape and ball, each o’ you with pistols an’ swords and the crew with muskets—an’ you’re still a-feared?” He let his contempt show and the murmuring faded. “I mean to—”
“Ven we get th’ vimmin?” the close-faced Dane spat. At first Kydd thought he had misheard.
“He means, when d’ we get our rights an’ all?” Cuzens came in forcefully.
He was quickly supported by the third mate. “No sense in ma-kin’ the cuntkins wait!” he chortled.
Kydd exploded. “The women? Ye’re asking me f’r—” He could not continue. That the law required degradation and misery he could not question; that he was the agent of it was wounding to a degree, but where was the humanity and natural kindliness that any soul, however taken in sin, might expect from a fellow-creature? What right did these men think they had to prey on any more helpless than they?
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