Secret Life of James Cook

by Graeme Lay

  ‘And the width?’

  ‘The one-inch, please.’ Nodding, she added, ‘Yes, a yard and a half of the one-inch.’

  James uncoiled a length of the ribbon and measured it against the brass yardstick set into the counter. Then he took the scissors, snipped the ribbon to the ordered length, folded it and passed it to the customer. As he did so he noticed the three large rings on the middle fingers of Mrs Acklam’s left hand: two encrusted with diamonds and the third with scarlet stones. Rubies, were they? She placed the ribbon in her bag, drew out a small leather purse and bulged her eyes. An expression that James had learned meant, ‘And the price?’

  ‘That will be sixpence please, Mrs Acklam.’

  She passed over a shilling which James set down on the counter. He opened the drawer, took out a sixpenny piece and gave the change to her. She nodded dismissively, said goodbye and left the shop.

  He picked up Mrs Acklam’s silver coin and was about to place it in the shilling bowl when he paused and looked at it more closely. It was worn, and quite unlike any coin he had seen before. The date — 1723 — explained its worn surface as it was more than twenty years old, but what were the strange coats of arms on one side? He brought the coin closer to his face and peered at the three letters in the spaces between the coats of arms. SSC. What did the letters stand for? Intrigued, he placed the shilling in the bowl with the others and slid the drawer shut. The shilling was … what was the expression Mr Sanderson used? Legal tender. ‘As long as it’s legal tender, lad, into the drawer it goes.’ But all the same he thought he would take the strange shilling to the Customs House to see if anyone there could explain its origins.

  James entered the office, which was located in the High Street. The Customs Officer, Edward Goddard, was behind his large desk, making entries in a ledger book.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Edward Goddard was stout with pouched cheeks and pronounced dewlaps. It was said in the town that he couldn’t tell a smuggler from a pirate’s parrot, and didn’t care, so long as his salary was paid by the government.

  James took out the shilling.

  ‘I was wondering, sir, if you are familiar with a coin such as this. A customer used it to pay for some goods at the shop.’

  He handed it to Goddard, who placed a pince-nez on his nose and peered at it, first one side, then the other. Then, removing the glasses, he said, ‘It was minted by the South Sea Company, during the reign of George I.’

  ‘What is the South Sea Company?’

  ‘One that trades with Spain’s South American colonies. Argentina, Chile, Peru.’ Goddard chuckled. ‘Lots of people invested their savings with that company, and their shares rose in spectacular fashion. Then it collapsed, in 1720 I think it was, and fortunes were lost. People called it the South Sea Bubble.’

  ‘But the shilling is still legal tender?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The company’s still trading, Lord only knows how, so their shilling’s legal.’ He handed the coin back to James.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  James walked back to the shop, one hand in his breeches pocket holding the shiny shilling. To himself he said the words over and over: ‘South Sea Company, South Sea shilling’. There was something exciting about those words, ‘the South Sea, the South Sea’. No one knew what really lay deep in the South Sea, the Mar Pacifica as it was marked on maps. People wondered, but no one knew. But one day, surely, men would discover what lay in the rest of the ocean. As for the shilling, he would see that it was put back in the shop till that night.

  Staithes’ fishing fleet clustered inside a sea wall which broke the force of the ocean waves. From his very first days in the town, James felt himself drawn to the seafront and its activities, sights and sounds, which felt a world away from those of the farm and village. Fishermen sailed their cobles out at first light and brought them back in by mid-afternoon, six days a week, except when the wind was impossibly strong. Back in port, the men hauled wicker baskets of cod, herring and plaice up onto the quay, accompanied by shouting, cursing and laughter. There was a constant wash of waves against the sea wall and a pervasive stench of fish, seaweed, pitch and salt spray.

  James drank in these sights and smells, and was spellbound. As he watched the cobles’ sails hoisted, then catch the wind and buck their way out into the grey, cold sea, he envied the fishermen their lot. Their lives raised questions in his mind, too. What was out there, beyond sight of the land? What lay beyond that gravestone-grey sea and its gauzy horizon? What skills were needed to confront and combat it? And, as the months passed, a question grew, nagging within him. Would he, James Cook, have the courage to make a life on the sea?

  Turning up the collar of his jacket, he walked back along the waterfront. Hearing laughter and shouting coming from one of the town’s public houses, the Cod and Lobster, he put his face to a pane of one of its mullioned windows. Sailors were sitting on upturned beer kegs, tankards of ale in front of them, talking and laughing. A log fire burned in the grate next to the alehouse’s servery. Even from the outside, James could feel the camaraderie radiating within, and appreciate it. These were men who worked hard, he had come to realize, and who risked their lives every time they set their sails. He admired them for it. Reluctantly he moved away from the Cod and Lobster’s window. For another two and a half years he was bound to Mr Sanderson, and a life of ribbons, cotton reels, flour and sugar. He crossed the cobbled street to the shop. Tonight he would write another letter to his parents, letting them know of his recent doings, knowing that Christiana would enjoy reading it to them.

  Through the shop window James could see a coble approaching the harbour entrance, its sail close-reefed, a fish net draped along its starboard gunwale. A gang of gulls was following the high-bowed vessel, squabbling over who would get the first pickings. The gulls were the highwaymen of the sea, James thought. He saw that the coble was Isaac Thompson’s Patricia, and he kept watching as she rounded the end of the breakwater, admiring the dextrous manner in which her sail was lowered and furled by Thompson’s fishing partner, Alexander Holloway. Lowered, furled. James was learning this new language, picking it up from the fishermen he spoke to on the seafront. Close-reefed, gunwale, bollard, boom, mizzen, windward, leeward, going about. It was a special language, of which people who lived on the land had no knowledge. He had bought a small notebook, and in it was carefully listing these strange new words and their meanings. ‘Mizzen’, he wrote, then, as Isaac had defined the word for him, ‘the mast that is next aft of the mainmast’. In this way he observed, listened to and learned this special vocabulary.

  Isaac threw out a mooring line as the coble came alongside the mole, and John Coulson the wharfinger caught the line and made it fast to a bollard with a few deft figure-of-eight turns. James averted his eyes. The sea was so close, but for him it was also far away, shackled as he was to the shop, six days a week. The one day of the week the fishermen never ventured out was Sunday, the one day that James was free of his shop duties. He yearned to be able to ask one of the coble owners if he could go out in his boat, if just for a day, but this was not possible.

  Yet always, peering from the windows of the shop by day, or standing on the harbour wall of an evening, watching the waves and observing the rise and fall of the tides, James felt the tidal pull of that grey sea. His eyes would stray to the river mouth and the harbour, watching the comings and goings of the cobles and smacks. The harbour entrance was an opening into another world.

  William Sanderson had a glass-fronted bookcase in his parlour upstairs, in which he kept a collection of history books. Medieval history was a particular interest to him, he explained to James, taking out a leather-bound volume and showing it to him: The Cathedrals of England by Charles Knightly. But James’s eyes had alighted on the spine of one of the other books: Sir Francis Drake’s Famous Voyage Round the World, 1580 by Francis Pretty.

  ‘Might I be permitted to read this one, sir?’ he asked, placing his finger on its
spine.

  ‘Certainly.’ Sanderson took it down. ‘Francis Pretty was a gentleman-at-arms on Golden Hind.’ Handing it to James, he added, ‘It’s a rattling good account.’

  And reading it for hours on end, by candlelight under the shop counter, James had to agree. Drake’s voyage — including as it did so much high-seas misadventure and death — was enthralling. He began to borrow and read more of his employer’s books, eschewing the medieval histories for accounts of the great voyagers: Magellan, da Gama, Columbus. And when at last he snuffed out the candle by which he had been reading and fell asleep, his dreams were invariably of the sea.

  He was peering through the window again, watching Alexander Holloway and Isaac Thompson unloading baskets of fish from their vessel onto the mole, when the shop’s doorbell rang.

  Mistress Jackson, a basket over her arm. ‘Good morning, James.’

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Jackson. It’s a cool wind today.’

  ‘Aye, but we mustn’t grumble.’ She placed her basket on the counter. ‘One reel of white cotton, please.’

  ‘Certainly, Mrs Jackson.’

  But as he reached for the item, he sighed with the tedium of it all.

  Sometimes on his evening walks to the mole, James would come across Nicholas Bartholomew, a recently retired mariner who lived alone in a cottage above the town. Old Nick, as he was known, had spent eighteen years as a Royal Navy able seaman. The old man had long, lank hair which he covered with a woollen cap, and his left eye was entirely white, like a milky marble. One of the bollards on the mole he considered his exclusive territory. Sitting there, staring out to sea, he found a ready audience in young James.

  ‘Have you heard of George Anson, lad?’

  ‘Was he the commander who sailed around the world?’ James remembered Mr Skottowe speaking of Anson.

  ‘Aye, that’s the one.’ The old man cocked his head. ‘I were with his fleet. On the Gloucester. Eight hundred and fifty-three tons, a fifty-gunner.’

  James crouched down beside him. ‘So you sailed in her right around the world?’

  ‘No. Gloucester were lost along the way. I came back on Centurion.’ He scratched the white stubble on his cheek. ‘Almost four years, it took. Old Nick laughed harshly. ‘We were meant to raid Spanish settlements in South America, but the campaign were a disaster.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In every way.’ The old man looked down at his boots. ‘We started out with eight ships, we ended up with one. We started out with nearly two thousand men, we came back with a hundred and eighty-eight, including meself. Two of the ships never even made it around the Horn.’

  ‘Were the men lost in sea battles with the Spaniards?’

  ‘Some.’ His one good eye brightened. ‘We did capture one of their galleons, off the coast of China. But we lost over a hundred men in the taking of that prize.’ He put a hand over his left eye. ‘That’s how I lost this. From a short sword.’ Grimacing, Nick adjusted his buttocks on the bollard. ‘But most of the men what were lost died of the scurvy.’

  He recited the grim facts, appalling James with the details. After several weeks at sea, most of the men fell ill. Their gums became swollen and bled, and their teeth were so weakened they could hardly chew their salt beef and ship’s biscuit. Dark blue blotches appeared on their skin and they fell into a lethargy from which they could not be aroused. ‘Men died like flies,’ Old Nick concluded. ‘Hundreds of ’em.’ Nick and the remainder of a skeleton crew were left to work the ship.

  He closed his one eye for a moment. ‘Yes, it were the scurvy that were worse than the battles, it were the scurvy that were our curse.’

  ‘How did you survive?’

  ‘By eating the weevils from ship’s biscuit. He chuckled. ‘Yer didn’t need teeth t’eat the weevils.’ He sat up straight. ‘And d’you know, lad, I saw sights on that voyage that you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘In South America?’

  ‘Aye. Natives, entirely naked, who painted theirselves with coloured clay. Great eagles which soared above the plains. Strange furry pack animals, like a cross between a sheep and a small horse. An island where there were huge stone statues, mountains that exploded.’ He shook his head in awe at the memories. ‘Yes, there were many, many deaths.’ His good eye shone again. ‘But lad, I tell you, if I were fit and able, I’d sign on again termorra.’

  Walking back to the shop, James was lost in thought. What sights the old man had seen, what wonders there were in the world beyond. Anson’s fleet, and Old Nick had merely skirted the west coast of South America before crossing the North Pacific. The rest lay undiscovered. What adventures there were yet to be had. By others. For him there were only ribbons and kippers, and sleeping not in a galleon hammock but a palliasse under a grocery store counter.

  It wasn’t enough, he thought. Not nearly enough.

  Two

  THE DOORBELL TINKLED, THE SHOP DOOR OPENED. A young woman, small, dark-eyed, someone he had not seen before.

  ‘Good morning, miss.’

  ‘Good morning.’

  The small figure stared about the shop, her eyes flicking across the shelves. Only just over five feet, he estimated, she wore a gown of pale brown tweed, cinched tightly at the waist by a wide black belt, and a bonnet tied under her neatly pointed chin. Her nose was narrow, her lips prominent and shapely. There was a round wicker basket over her arm. Her attention returned to James.

  ‘I need to buy some bacon.’ There was something strange about the way she spoke. Bay-con.

  ‘Yes, miss. How much?’

  ‘Six pieces, please.’ Seex.

  He took the roll of bacon from under its gauze cover, placed it on the cutting board and carefully sliced off the rashers, conscious of her eyes following his movements closely. As he wrapped the bacon in brown paper, he said, ‘Are you new to Staithes, miss?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her eyes were large and dark, contrasting starkly with her very pale cheeks, her lashes long and curling. Strands of dark hair curled from the sides of her bonnet. ‘I am just employed as a servant by Mr and Mrs Acklam.’ Serr-vent.

  ‘Ah.’ Handing the parcel over, he said, ‘There you are. And is there anything else your household needs, miss?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘That’ll be tuppence, please.’

  She took a small purse from the basket, took out the two coins and handed them to him. Her hands were small, ringless and rather chafed. Nodding, she said, ‘Thank you, and good day.’

  ‘Good day to you, miss.’

  Through the window he watched the small, neat figure walk across the cobbled street, then in the direction of Church Street. Where had she come from, he wondered, and why did she speak in that strange way? He thought it must be true what they were saying in the town, that the Acklams were growing rich from Samuel’s business dealings. They already had a groom and a caretaker; now it seemed they could afford another servant. And one who was unusually beautiful. He had never seen anyone quite like her.

  His gaze returned to the waterfront where Joseph Coster was readying his smack, Duchess, for its departure to the fishing grounds. What would it take to break the bonds that were shackling him to this shop, he wondered.

  James walked out onto the breakwater. It was October, the days were drawing in and it was already nearly dark. The sky was black and threatening, the cuticle moon low in the sky. A strong, cold wind was blowing onto the coast from the north, causing waves to slop up against the stones of the sea wall on its ocean side, flinging up spray. A line of gulls stood like sullen sentries along the edge of the mole, their backs to the wind, and on the harbour side the cobles and smacks of the fishing fleet jostled against one another in the chop.

  Peering into the dusk, James was surprised to see that he was not alone on the sea wall. A diminutive figure was standing at the far end, close to the harbour entrance. The hood of a cape was drawn up over its wearer’s head. As he stared up ahead through the gloom, a large wave reared, then dashed itse
lf against the sea wall, sending up a shower of spray which reached the caped figure. Hearing a cry, seeing the person spin away, James ran forward.

  She peered up at him from within the hood, blinking away the seawater from her eyes and brushing away the spray from the front of her cape. ‘Come back, miss,’ he said. ‘You’re too close.’ Instinctively he held out his hand. She took it, and he led her back along the breakwater. At the end, above the area where the cobles and smacks were tethered, they stopped. Their hands parted. James frowned down at her. ‘That were dangerous, miss, to go so far along the wall at nightfall.’

  Then he realized who it was. The Acklams’ servant girl. Staring up at him, she pouted. ‘And who might you be, to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do?’

  Feeling a flash of anger at her reaction, he said, ‘I were concerned for your safety, that were all. The tide’s rising. You could have been washed into the sea.’

  Meeting his reproachful look, she said defiantly, ‘I didn’t know that the tide were rising.’ Then her hand went up to her mouth. ‘Oh, you’re the boy from the shop.’

  The boy. He nodded brusquely, then said, ‘Come on, it’s time we were both off the wall.’

  She walked beside him in silence, her head barely reaching his shoulder. At the end of the wall, where a set of stone steps led to the quay, they both stopped. The wind was bitter, and he saw her shudder with the cold. She was so small, and seemed so vulnerable in the face of the wild sea. Noticing the dampness of her cape, concerned for her, he said, ‘You need to get dry.’ He looked along the river Beck to where a buttery light glowed in the window of the Cod and Lobster. ‘Come over to the alehouse and get warm by the fire.’

  She stared up at him doubtfully, then glanced over towards the inn. She nodded, conceding, ‘I need to get warm.’ That strange way of speaking. Ay need t’get war-rum. Was she from the Borders?

  He led her to the inglenook, bought a handle of warm milk for her and a half pint of ale for himself. The only other people in the inn were three old men sitting around a table in the corner, enveloped in pipe smoke. One of them was Old Nick. He raised his chin and his pewter mug in greeting when he saw James and the girl walk in. The trio stared at them curiously, muttered comments to one another, then returned to their ale and conversation.