Secret Life of James Cook

by Graeme Lay

  Having served much time on the orlop deck, the lowest on the ship, James was well aware that disharmony occasioned by unjust or disproportionate punishment led only to festering resentment among the crew, with a consequent lack of willingness to carry out essential duties. As a consequence, a ship became not only unhappy but also inefficiently crewed. Long ocean voyages and sea battles demanded discipline of the most rigorous nature, but the need for crew cooperation at sea remained paramount. If he ever had the privilege of a command, he would never avoid prescribing the cat — to be lenient with the lash was viewed as a weakness by the lower deck. But cooperation was just as necessary as without cooperation a ship could not be worked efficiently. A captain’s crucial challenge was to achieve a balance between crew discipline and solidarity.

  As fresh fruit was unobtainable in Halifax during the frozen season, and the men still refused to eat the pickled cabbage which was made available to them, they continued to suffer the effects of scurvy. Witnessing this scourge again, it now seemed to James to be a matter of the utmost importance to insist that a dietary regime at sea which included scurvy-combating ingredients, called ‘anti-scorbutics’ by the physicians, be made mandatory. He was aware that it was now thought likely that a regular intake of pickled cabbage — which the Prussians called ‘sauerkraut’ — could prevent the onset of scurvy. Yet the Navy had done nothing to make such an intake compulsory on its ships. Until it did so, he felt certain scurvy would continue to afflict its crews.

  With March came the thaw, and the seemingly endless winter was over. Eagerly he resumed his surveying programme beyond the confines of Halifax harbour.

  Six

  IT WAS A MID-MORNING in November 1762 when James left Mrs Rigby’s boarding house in Shadwell on the north bank of the Thames. He walked briskly along Candle Street, passing rows of brick houses whose front doors opened directly onto the street. Groups of children were at play in the street and some called ‘Mornin’, sir’ to him as he passed. Smiling, he nodded a greeting in reply. His day was planned: he would walk into the city, then visit James Sheppard, John Walker’s London agent, whom in a recent letter John had recommended he meet. An open carriage approached, carrying two ladies, and James stepped aside to let it pass, raising his hat to them as it did so.

  The autumn air was chilly, the sun low, and he was glad of the stout Navy-issue cape he had put on before he left. He was glad, too, of the five days’ leave he now had, having at last completed and delivered the charts of the St Lawrence to the Admiralty in Whitehall. He was pleased with the charts, which had been completed in his room at the Shadwell boarding house. They were the culmination of two years of surveying and note-taking along the river and he was confident that, should hostilities against the French be resumed, they would be invaluable to the Navy and the Admiralty.

  The month before he had turned thirty-four. He was proud of what he had achieved in the seven years he had been in the Royal Navy. Although he detested boasting, to himself he could admit that signing on with the Navy had been a successful move. But now, in his thirty-fifth year, he felt that there was something vital missing from his life. A hollowness deep within himself, he thought, a scurvy of the spirit. This was not the result of a lack of friends, for he had forged strong comradeships with men such as Samuel Holland, and he had gained influential patrons who knew of his abilities and respected his work. Men like Sir Hugh Palliser and Lord Colvill.

  He crossed Dellow Street, stepping over the deepest of the muddy coach tracks, then walked on towards the city. The melancholia that he had been experiencing lately was becoming more and more difficult to dislodge. In a year or two he would have spent half his life at sea. Nearly sixteen years, spent entirely in the company of men. That was how it had to be, for the sea was no place for a woman. But now that he was back on land, on English soil once again, he found himself longing for the touch and warmth of a woman. Not for merely a carnal relationship, but for someone he could know as a friend and companion. He was struck again by a guilty memory of the harlot in a waterfront whorehouse in Halifax during his last bitter winter in Nova Scotia. That woman — part-Indian, part-French — he had used purely for the relief of his base urges, and afterwards James had felt nothing except pity for the poor creature and a lingering shame for himself. The act had been the recourse of a sad and lonely man.

  He paused to look up at the grey, brooding sky. It matched his mood. Perhaps it was the memory of the death of his brother John, at the age of twenty-three, that was prompting these considerations of mortality. Three of his sisters and his other brother, William, had died too, but in infancy. This was a sad but inescapable part of life. But for his unmarried older brother John, his parents’ first-born, to reach maturity and then die before them from typhoid fever had been a bitter blow for his surviving family. At sea James had seen a good deal of death; men dead from disease or battle wounds. As he watched their canvas-shrouded bodies committed to the deep, the words of the naval chaplain had come increasingly to just wash over him. His thoughts instead were always with the victims’ bereaved families on land, the ones who would not learn of the fate of their lost men until many months after the event.

  He walked on. If he, too, were to die, after he returned to sea, who would there be to remember him, beside his parents, Christiana and Margaret?

  He passed the Tower of London. Every other day he took this walk, west from Wapping along the river and into the city. He relished the exercise, and the sights and sounds of London’s streets usually cheered him: the cries of the kerbside hawkers and broadsheet sellers, the elegant sedan chairs and their curtained occupants, the fine carriages and their horse teams, the delicious smells from the coffee houses and food stores.

  Near Garraway’s coffee house in Clement’s Lane he came to one of his favourite haunts, Lambert’s Book Emporium. It was narrow, with diamond-patterned windows, rough-hewn ceiling beams and bare, sagging floorboards. It was so dark inside the shop that its lamps barely illuminated the crammed shelves. But by searching them carefully, James usually discovered something of interest: a book of maps of North America, accounts of East Indiamen’s voyages, histories of European wars, astronomical tables.

  He stooped as he entered to avoid banging his head on the low lintel, then squinted in the dim light. The proprietor, Charles Lambert, sat at the desk just inside the door, absorbed in a copy of The Spectator. By now James was well known to him. A fellow with a furrowed forehead, dimpled chin and heavily powdered wig, Lambert looked up with obvious reluctance from his reading. ‘Good day, sir. Are you keeping well?’

  ‘Quite well, thank you,’ said James.

  ‘And are you looking for anything in particular today?’

  ‘Just browsing, as usual, thank you.’

  His eyes returning to his Spectator, Lambert waved his hand airily towards the shelves. ‘Browse away.’

  James moved down the narrow space between the shelves, which gave off a smell of leather, ink, candle smoke and camphor, a not unpleasant combination. Heading towards the ‘Explorers’ Chronicles’ section, he noticed a shelf entitled ‘Dietary Advice and Digestive Treatments’. One word on the dark blue spine of a shelved book caught his attention. Scurvy. He reached up and took down the book. Its full title was A Treatise of the Scurvy and the author’s name was James Lind. Opening it, James saw that it had been published nine years earlier, in 1753. The author was not familiar to him, but as the subject was of close interest he paid Lambert threepence for the little book (‘The only copy I’ve yet sold’) and placed it in his haversack. Leaving the shop, he walked down Lombard Street, and past Wren’s Monument to the riverbank. There, on a bench beside London Bridge, ignoring the cool east wind blowing along the river, he began to read Lind’s treatise, and something of the author’s life.

  A Scotsman, Lind had been a naval surgeon and was now chief physician at the Royal Naval Hospital at Gosport. As part of a study of naval hygiene, he had conducted at sea an experiment on the causes and p
ossible cures for scurvy. James read on, fascinated. Postulating that the disease had multiple causes and therefore required multiple treatments, mainly of a dietary nature, Lind considered that scurvy could be combated by an intake of acids in the body. While in the Bay of Biscay he had treated scurvy-afflicted sailors with various fluids, including cider, barley water and vinegar, along with citrus fruits. The latter, he concluded, were particularly effective. Lind also advocated a strict regimen of personal cleanliness in naval vessels: better ventilation below decks, regular washing of bodies, bedding and clothing, and fumigation of a ship with sulphur and arsenic.

  James put the little book in his haversack and began to walk back along the river, contemplating Lind’s theories. He passed the fishing smacks alongside the Billingsgate fish market, smelling the stinking stalls beside the quay, hearing but not really listening to the calls and curses of its porters. What Lind proposed made sense to him. On that first voyage to Halifax on Pembroke, when scurvy had taken such a terrible toll, he was aware that the outbreak happened only after their supplies of fresh cabbages, lemons, limes and oranges — taken on at Tenerife — had been exhausted. The men on the upper deck, encouraged by Captain Simcoe, had continued to consume regular intakes of lime juice and pickled cabbage and had remained in sound health, but the men below deck steadfastly refused to consume these items, stubbornly continuing to eat only salted beef, pork and ship’s biscuit. James was aware that citrus fruit was acidic and therefore anti-scorbutic. Thus, Lind’s medical experiment may well have made a vital connection. So why, he wondered, had the Navy not acted upon the doctor’s findings?

  Deciding to take lunch at an alehouse he knew, the Bell, which was a short walk from his boarding house, he made his way back over Tower Hill and down Wapping Lane towards the river. The streets became crowded with carts, wagons, carriages and men on horseback, jostling for the right of way. Minutes later he could smell the industries of the Thames: boiling pitch, fresh-sawn timber, the reek of roperies, tanneries and breweries. He loved this mixture of odours that pervaded Shadwell, the smells of maritime industries. Quickening his step, he soon heard the familiar sounds coming from the riverside: the cries of lightermen, wharfingers and the ferrymen who plied the Thames. Rounding another corner, he came to the Bell, a half-timbered building on the corner of Brewhouse Lane and Wapping High Street, its sign swinging in the cool breeze. He wiped his boots on the iron scraper beside the entrance, then went inside.

  The ceiling was low and cream-coloured, the beams blackened, the floorboards covered with sawdust. A coal fire was burning in the capacious fireplace, which was lined with rows of horse brasses. A portrait of George III hung above the mantelpiece. A few men sat about at tables in the room, mugs of ale in front of them, playing cards. At one end of the room was a servery, and James went directly to it. It was attended by a young woman. James removed his hat. Then, inclining his head towards her, he said, ‘Good morning, miss. I will have a pint of Steele’s ale, if you please.’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  She turned and fetched down a pewter tankard from a shelf, placed it under a spigot and began to fill it. James studied her as she did so. She was of medium height, shapely and fair-haired. Her lilac gown was pulled in tightly at the waist, accentuating her full hips. She wore no bonnet, and her hair was drawn up high on her head and pinned in place with a tortoiseshell comb. The tankard filled, she passed it to him. He noted her cornflower-blue eyes and the scattering of pale freckles on her rounded cheeks. They reminded him of a quail’s egg. He thought, too, that he had seen the young woman somewhere before. But where?

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, sliding a penny piece across the servery counter. Then, frowning, he said, ‘Have you worked here long, miss?’

  ‘Since I were eighteen, sir. And I’m twenty now.’ She smiled. ‘I don’t usually work on Mondays, but Constance, the publican’s daughter, slipped in the yard and turned her ankle.’

  He nodded. ‘Do you know Mistress Mary Batts who used to own the Bell when I first came to London?’

  The young woman gave a delighted laugh. ‘I should think I do know her, sir, as she is my mother.’ Her smile faded. ‘But since my father passed away, she has remarried. She is now Mary Blackburn, and living in Shadwell.’

  ‘I see. And do you live there too?’

  She picked up a cloth and wiped the top of the servery. ‘No. I live with the Sheppard family, in Barking.’

  ‘Is that James Sheppard?’

  ‘It is. Do you know him?’

  ‘I do. Through my one-time employer, John Walker of Whitby.’

  ‘I have heard of Mr Walker.’ She began to squeeze the cloth out into a bowl.

  As James sipped his ale, he cast his mind back. Then, watching her spread the cloth out on the counter, he said thoughtfully, ‘You must be the little girl who once dined here with your parents and me when I was serving on a Whitby collier. I used to stay in a room upstairs.’

  She tilted her head on one side. ‘And when would that have been, sir?’

  ‘Before I joined the Navy. It would have been 1748 or ’49.’

  ‘That would have made me six or seven then.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I have no memory of the occasion.’

  James did, though. He well remembered the vivacious child who had joined the adults at table one evening. Elizabeth. When he had told her that he sailed on a cat, she had looked puzzled and asked: ‘A cat? How can anyone sail on a cat? Where does the mast go?’ The questions had caused great mirth at the table. And now, here was the same Elizabeth. No, not the same, now a grown woman. And a comely one.

  ‘I was a mere lad then,’ James said. ‘But I remember the occasion as it was one of my first voyages to Wapping. And I well remember your father, Samuel. And your mother. Is she well?’

  ‘She is, sir.’ She began wiping the counter again, and as she did so he noticed that she wore no wedding ring. ‘She will be visiting here after midday, and so too will my stepfather, John Blackburn.’

  ‘Perhaps I shall see them then.’

  The young woman moved away to serve another customer, an elderly man whose wig was decidedly lopsided. James watched her as she poured the man a tankard of ale. How lovely she is, he thought, so fresh and wholesome. A fine example of young English womanhood.

  He finished his ale, and it formed a warm, satisfying pool within him. When the young woman returned to where he stood, he said, ‘I would like a pork pie, please, Elizabeth.’

  Her blue eyes widened with surprise. ‘You have remembered my name, sir, after all these years.’

  ‘I have. And please, Elizabeth, my name is James. James Cook.’

  His visits to the Bell became more frequent. Remembering that she did not usually work on Mondays, he took his lunch in the alehouse on the other days of the week. Each time, she greeted him warmly. Their conversations became longer. She asked him about his work in Nova Scotia; he asked her about her wider family and their interests. Then, several lunches after they had first talked, and anxious to converse with her beyond the confines of the Bell, James plucked up the courage to ask her to walk out with him on a Sunday. She blushed at his invitation but smiled too, nodding her agreement.

  They crossed the meadow behind Shadwell. It was only a month since that first conversation in the Bell, but James felt himself being drawn more and more deeply into Elizabeth Batts’ orbit. Her gentle company and utter naturalness delighted him and was bringing a new dimension to his life. After so much male company over the years, much of it brutish, he found her feminine presence enchanting. That he had found a woman he already knew he loved, and whom he dared to hope might return his love, seemed a kind of miracle to him.

  The ground was still frosty, and the sun, low in the eastern sky, gave off a lemony light. He wore a heavy topcoat, she a red-and-brown checked woollen gown, a matching shawl and woollen gloves. The grass crackled underfoot as they made their way up a low rise in the meadow. There was an oak tree at the to
p of the rise, its leafless branches appearing to implore the grey sky for warmth. James led Elizabeth to a carved seat under the tree. She read from a brass plate on the back of the seat. In memory of Joseph Finlay 1694–1752. Rest and be Thankful. Spreading her gown first, she sat down carefully. ‘Well, thank you for your help, Joseph Finlay, whoever you might have been.’

  Laughing, James sat down beside her.

  They sat in silence for a time, staring in the direction of the Thames, across the roofs of Shadwell and the chimney tops that stuck up from them like the stumps of a felled forest. A sinuous mist hung over the river, marking its meandering course eastward towards the estuary.

  Since they had first walked out together they had learned a great deal more about each other. He had told her about his family in Great Ayton, his apprenticeship in Whitby, his adventures in North America; she had told him about her life in Barking, her mother’s remarriage and the way her mother and her second husband had built up their business interests.

  James had been invited to stay with James Sheppard in his commodious house in Barking. There they spent the evenings beside the fire, reminiscing about their connections with the Whitby-based coal trade, sometimes joined by Sheppard’s business partner, Erasmus Cockfield. The two men, Quakers like the Walkers, were timber merchants and sailmakers, as well as master mariners in their own right. And during that time, James’s interest in the vivacious, intelligent young woman who was part of the household intensified.