Prison Ship

by Paul Dowswell

  Later on, one of the ship’s hands came to take away our plates and mugs. ‘I ’eard they ’ad you up to be ’anged,’ he said. ‘Then they let you off. I seen that ’appen a few times, but usually you get pardoned. It’s rare to get another sentence, like as you ’ave. I’ve ’eard allsorts about where you’re goin’. Some good, some bad. First they’ll put you in a prison hulk outside Portsmouth. That’s where we’re goin’. Should be there in a week. You stay on that ’til there’s a ship ready to take you away. If you can survive the hulk, you’ve got six months at sea to look forward to. Takes that long to get down there. Still, you bein’ Navy men, you should be tough enough.’

  * * *

  When after another week or so at sea we were finally brought up from the hold of the Aeneas, I saw at once we were back at Portsmouth. We were not taken directly to a prison hulk, but instead spent a couple of weeks in a stinking barracks cell close to the quayside. We slept on a bed of cold straw and talked constantly of our hope for a reprieve.

  ‘They’ve put us here because they’re going to let us go!’ I said to Richard.

  He shared my hope. ‘Maybe they’re just playing us along for a bit, like they did when they pretended to hang us. Keep us here for another couple of weeks then let us off?’

  When a squad of marines came for us, I couldn’t help but ask, ‘Have you good news? Are we to be set free?’

  The Sergeant commanding didn’t even have the heart to hit me for my insolence. ‘Shut up, you silly boy,’ he said. ‘You’re off to the hulks.’

  ‘Anything’s got to be better than this horrible place,’ whispered Richard with a grin.

  The Sergeant overheard him. ‘You wait and see, lad, you wait and see.’ He was beginning to sound impatient. ‘Now shut your mouths, the pair of you.’

  A small tender ferried us over Portsmouth Sound to our new home. It was a day full of promise for anyone not bound for a prison hulk. On shore, blossoms burst from the trees and the air was filled with fresh scents and sunshine. Despite my fate, my spirits were high. Every day I woke and told myself I was still alive and not slowly turning to corruption at the bottom of the North Sea, with a rope around my broken neck.

  Our destination was the St Louis, a prison hulk outside Portsmouth harbour, which we were told was a captured French 74. There were ten other prison vessels moored beside the St Louis, in the waters leading down to Spithead. I could see them clearly, all moored together in line. What a pitiful sight they made, compared to the proud warship I had seen sailing in line at Copenhagen. The mizzenmast and yardarms had been removed, and just a stump left for the main mast and foremast. No sails or flags billowed proudly from these masts, only a single black pennant. All the ships were the colour of rotten wood, with none of the proud spick and span of a Navy vessel. They looked like a row of loathsome brown toads squatting on the green marble surface of the sea.

  Richard and I fell into conversation with an older man on the tender, who had been sent down to Portsmouth from Newgate Prison in London. He had a wrinkled face and mean, ratty eyes, but I thought there must be some good left in his soul as he was keen to give us advice.

  ‘Third time I been sent to one of these,’ he told us.

  ‘Didn’t you get transported?’ I asked him. He shook his head. ‘There’s plenty on the hulks who never get sent out to Botany Bay. We get sent to the ships because the gaols are full to bursting.

  ‘I expect I’ll see a few old mates,’ he went on. ‘I usually do. Only, as a word of warning to you boys, don’t go thinking anyone here is going to be your mate. Even me. They’re just out to trick you of every possession you have. And if you find the prisoners nasty, you should see the guards. They come from the depths of humankind. Lightermen, rat catchers, slaughtermen, saltpetre men. Most have never held power over another fellow in their life, except on these hulks, and they love to torment the wretches they’re charged to mind.’

  ‘So what’s the drill?’ said Richard, hurriedly trying to change the subject. His cheery optimism of this morning had vanished.

  ‘Every morning, seven o’clock, any man who can stand up is ferried to government works. They work the whole day. Sometimes the work’s filthy, sometimes it isn’t, but it always wears you to the bone. Then, when it’s dusk, we go back to the ship to be locked in the hold ’til six o’clock the next morning.’

  ‘You mean we get to sleep the whole night?’ said Richard.

  I was impressed too. On some nights in the Navy we were allowed only four hours’ rest.

  The old man thought we were simpletons. ‘You fresh-faced boys won’t be getting much sleep. After lockdown the worst of them roam the decks unhindered, tormenting the weaker prisoners. I imagine you’ll be getting more than a fair share of their attentions.’

  We were used to the rough world of the Navy, but we weren’t expecting this.

  As the tender grew closer to the St Louis my heart sank. On the top deck, ugly wooden huts sprouted like warts on a face. Instead of cannons at the gun ports there were thick iron grills. Instead of colourful pennants or signal flags on the rigging, washing hung out to dry. Then the wind blew in our faces and a choking stench oozed from the ship.

  We were shoved up a stairway that stretched from the waterline to the top deck. From a platform at the top, I looked over the deck to see a handful of men, all of them in leg irons, trudging in a circle. Their chains scraped on the planking as they hobbled around.

  From below came a strange rattling noise, which I supposed to be the chains of all the other men. Amid the hubbub of voices from within the St Louis, I could make out an extraordinary deluge of oaths and execrations new to my ears. Having sailed on a Navy vessel for most of the previous year, I thought I had heard every swear word known to man.

  The men were herded below, the more tardy of them suffering blows from the guards’ musket butts. When the deck had been cleared we were lined up and addressed by a marine sergeant, who ordered us to strip and wash in the tubs of water provided. Then we were given filthy, ragged clothes and sent over to a blacksmith. I sat down before him and once again irons were placed around my ankles. I was swiftly hauled to my feet and staggered over to the hatchway leading below. It was time to meet our fellow prisoners.

  I made my way down the ladder to the lower deck, suddenly clumsy with the burden of my leg irons. If I had been descending into hell, I could not have felt more afraid. But there on the crowded deck was a familiar face.

  ‘Well boyos, am I pleased to see you! I heard you were going to be hanged!’ It was Vincent Thomas – Vengeful Tattoos himself – our shipmate from the Elephant and the Miranda.

  I had expected to see hollow-eyed men, wandering like the damned, not a cheery Welshman. But the hollow-eyed men were there too – the St Louis carried a cargo of human scarecrows.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I was astounded.

  Vincent drew me closer, and whispered. ‘They said I was getting too friendly with one of the sailmaker’s mates. Blew up just after the battle it did. They wanted to hang us too, but couldn’t prove anything. So we got packed off here on the double instead. He’s been sent to the hulk behind us I think. Bit overcrowded, isn’t it?’

  ‘Are they going to transport you?’ I asked.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so, Sam. I’m hoping they’ll just keep us here for a few months and let us go when the fuss dies down. Certainly hope so.’

  He seemed remarkably cheerful, considering.

  ‘Well, this is all very nice,’ he went on. ‘You boys can join our mess. We just had two scoundrels who messed with us taken off and flogged to death. Tried to escape they did. Terrible business. Well you can make up the numbers. Regulations say we need six for a mess. Come and meet your messmates.’

  One of them was a boy of seven, a sorry-looking little chap who sucked his thumb and had a bright green blob of snot running down his nose.

  ‘Terrible story it is. You tell it Johnny Onions,’ said Vincent.

  But the b
oy remained mute, and hid his face behind Vincent’s bulky shoulders.

  Vincent smiled at him indulgently. ‘Stole some bread, didn’t he? Poor lad was hungry. Mother just let him roam the streets of Westminster while she sold lucky heather, and herself too I shouldn’t wonder. The judge says to his mother, “You take him home and look after him and the court shall let him go on account of his youthfulness.” And what does she do? She says, “You can take him and lock him up for all I cares.” Cockney slut. So the boy gets sentenced to transportation, doesn’t he? Never you mind, Johnny. We’ll look after you, lad.’

  Another messmate was even stranger. His name was James Updike. When introduced, he bowed, and spoke with the most affected high-born accent I had ever heard. Although he smiled at us pleasantly, he seemed unwilling to talk. So Vincent told his story too while he looked on with an indulgent smirk.

  ‘Only turned up here with his servant. Course they wouldn’t let the lad on with us, so Mr Updike sent him away and had him come back later with his dinner. Fellow sailed up to the bow with a meal in a silver salver. The guards weren’t having that either. Told him not to come back. Still, Mr Updike’s friend, Lady Farringdon, has made an arrangement with the authorities, ensuring he gets proper food and he in turn has made an arrangement with me, ensuring he gets proper looking after from the more disagreeable sorts in here. We all share his spoils naturally.’

  ‘So what did you do to end up here, Mr Updike?’ I asked.

  ‘Never could resist a handsome snuffbox,’ he said in a languid drawl. His manners were exquisite, but I thought him the silliest man I had ever met. How anyone with his wealth and connections would be careless enough to land himself in such trouble was beyond me.

  The sixth man in our mess was called Joseph Swales. He was a tough-looking salt with blue tattoos all up his arms, and wiry, greying hair. He was happy enough to tell us his story. ‘I was transported twelve years ago,’ he said. ‘Went over in 1790 I did, on the Neptune. There were five hundred of us, men and women, packed in like slaves we were. Nearly two hundred of us died on the way, from gaol fever or want of proper nourishment. Then another hundred or so pegged out soon after they landed.’

  Swales was a sailor by trade, and had been transported for pilfering supplies. He had made an extraordinary escape. ‘Caught me a Yankee merchantman in Port Jackson, didn’t I?’ he boasted. ‘Stowed away in the hold. When they found out I was a sailor they let me work my passage to Jamaica. Spent a good few years there, then worked a ship back to London. Thought I’d be able to settle down there. All them people, it’s easy to blend in, get lost in the crowd. But first thing I sees is me bleedin’ old ship’s first lieutenant down on the Strand. He had me arrested at once and sent back to the hulks. Lucky I wasn’t hanged. My old mate Will Moulder, who pulled the same trick, got strung up at Newgate he did.’

  Swales told us some of the transport ships were run by cruel captains and crews recruited direct from the slave ships. ‘I knew some of them. I worked those slave ships myself before I joined the Navy. They keep their cargo double-ironed for the whole journey. They’re frightened of a mutiny. One man who tried to stir things up, he got snitched on. They gave him three hundred lashes then rested him for the night and brought him out to give him five hundred more the next day. Poor bastard died halfway through. I heard some fellows nearly got away with it once. When most of the crew were up in the rigging and the officers were having their dinner, they rushed the guards by the quarterdeck and tried to break into the ship’s armoury. Right bloody mess it was. Fifteen of them killed before they gave up, then the ring leaders were hanged, them that were still alive.

  ‘Some of the transport ships, the women and men were packed in together. Only let them on deck for a few minutes a day. Even in the tropics, when the ship was becalmed they had to stay below and swelter. They called them hell ships, those. They reckon the Devil came to have a look at them to get a better idea of how to torment the damned.’

  Swales struck me as someone who had fallen foul of the law through a moment’s temptation and ill luck. He wasn’t a dyed-in-the-wool villain. I was pleased to have him as part of our mess. His stories had frightened me, though.

  ‘And these ships, Mr Swales. Are they still like that now?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think they’ve changed much. We’ll find out soon enough.’

  We ate our supper, then it was time to prepare for bed. A large wooden board that had acted as a partition during the day was laid flat against the wall, and a hay-filled mattress placed on top.

  Vincent addressed us. ‘Now I’ll tell you exactly how we’re going to sleep. Joseph on the outside, then me, then Mr Updike, then Johnny, then you and Richard.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘No one’s going to stick a knife in Joseph because they know I’d kill them. If I’m on the end, they could get me while I’m asleep. You boys can stay well on the other side of us because that’s where you’ll be safest. It’ll all make sense come bedtime.’

  We did as Vincent said. There were lice in the blankets and rats scurried around our bodies. I jumped up the first few times I heard one, then I learned not to.

  ‘You can worry about them if they bite you,’ said Vincent.

  As night fell the sound of hatches being locked echoed around the interior. After a short while the guard and ship’s officers retired to their cabins on the quarterdeck. Although barriers were placed on the stairways between the decks, the decks themselves were open, and the gangs began to roam. We saw very little, but heard screaming, whimpering and begging from the younger inmates. It was a terrifying place and I lay awake long into the night haunted by the thought of what would happen to us if Vincent was not here to look after us.

  The next morning we were taken from the ship and sent to work. Our shackles weighed heavy on our ankles as we spent the day clearing earth from the embankment by the harbour. The overseers stood by with drawn cutlasses, and beat with a stick any man they thought was slacking. Although the work on the embankment was hard, it was not exhausting, as everyone seemed to go at the pace of the most emaciated and weary convicts. There was no talking, and certainly no singing. I missed the rhythm of the sailor songs we used to sing to help us with our work on the Elephant. I realised how much they had assisted us in hauling up anchors and sails, and scrubbing wooden decks.

  I was amazed to see a crowd of well-dressed men and women peering over the railings by the quayside to stare and point at us. ‘Worthless scum,’ whispered one convict to me. ‘You’d think they’d have something better to do with their money. They can’t go an’ gawp at lunatics anymore, they put a stop to that, so they pay to come and gloat at us instead.’

  Back on the hulk at the end of the day I asked Vincent how often people tried to escape.

  ‘Well, not much,’ he said. ‘You get hung for it, see. Or flogged to death. Or put down in the hold in a dark room for months on end. Or you get double-ironed for life. So, it’s a bit of a risk.

  ‘There’s enough to worry about already,’ he went on, ‘so I’m sitting tight. That James Updike, he’s got friends in high places. He’s told me that if I look after him, he’ll try and get me out of here. You won’t be here long, Sam. You’ll be off to New South Wales any day, so you don’t go worrying yourself. But I hope Mr Updike gets me and him away before there’s an outbreak of something. I don’t want to waste away with typhus or dysentery in this stinking hell hole …’ he tailed off. It wasn’t like Vincent to admit to his worries.

  I expected trouble from the inmates and it came soon enough. One ratty-looking thug cornered me with a knife soon after I arrived. ‘I know you got valuables, boy. Everyone has when they come aboard. Are you going to give them to me, or do I have to slice your guts open to get them?’

  Vincent came up quietly behind him. Seizing his shirt he lifted him clean off the ground so that the man choked on his collar. The rotten fabric ripped within seconds and Vincent threw him to the deck in a heap. ‘This
lad’s a friend of mine,’ he said quietly. ‘And you’re making me angry.’ That was enough. Word went round the worst of the prisoners and Richard and I were spared their bullying.

  After a few days, we realised that if we kept our heads down and did as we were told, the guards were no worse than the Navy bosuns. What was worse than the Navy, though, was the food. If the inmates had not been starving, I doubt any man on board would have been able to eat it. The bread was always mouldy. On a ship at sea for several months this was unavoidable, but on a vessel moored offshore and visited daily by boats from the harbour it seemed a deliberate part of our cruel punishment.

  ‘Most of what we get here,’ said Vincent, ‘is old bulls or cows that have died of age or famine.’ One of our most frequent meals was something the men called ‘smiggins’, a thin soup of water thickened with barley, in which beef was boiled. If it wasn’t for Mr Updike’s food deliveries, which were shared between the six of us messmates, we would have become weak from hunger and prey to disease.

  What disgusted me most about the St Louis was how little the guards or convicts cared about the cleanliness of the ship. The stench near the ‘necessary’, as the men called it, was enough to make your eyes water. ‘Surely they could put us lot to work cleaning the place to make it more bearable to live in,’ I said to Vincent. ‘You’re thinking like a sailor, Sam,’ he said to me. ‘They’re not concerned with our welfare. In fact if we die, it just means they don’t have to cough up to feed us.’

  Ever since Vincent had mentioned it, I worried constantly about disease sweeping us away. For even without epidemics, people died often on the St Louis. Usually it was the men who had been there for years. With no fever or other disorders upon them, they seemed to die merely from lowness of spirit. The doctor who worked the ship had an arrangement with the officer in charge. When his patients gave up the ghost, they were taken away. All of us believed they were destined for the dissection table at the local hospital. They certainly weren’t going for a Christian burial in a leafy churchyard.