Prison Ship

by Paul Dowswell

  ‘It’s just had a baby!’ yelled Richard. Sure enough, as we watched, a miniature version of the creature tumbled out of its mother’s stomach and bounded around.

  ‘That doesn’t look like any new-born I’ve ever seen,’ I said.

  We watched with open-mouthed fascination. As the infant bounced around, the mother lay flat on the ground, resting her head on one of her front paws. Shortly after, a stray dog from the town approached and began to threaten the baby. At once it bounced back to its mother and got back in the same way it had come out.

  The mother turned aggressively towards the dog and advanced. The mutt growled angrily and would not back down. As it crouched to leap forward, the mother spun its heavy tail round and delivered an almighty blow to the dog, which fell at once to the ground. The creature bound off, and it was several minutes before the dog regained strength enough to limp away.

  ‘That, my dear boys, is a kangaroo,’ said Doctor Dan, when we told him about it. ‘What you saw coming out of it was a kangaroo cub. She carries it around in a sort of pouch. It’s not new born at all. Might have been six months old. Aren’t they marvellous?’

  These wonders did not cease. The skies and trees were filled with birds of amazingly bright plumage. These, as a sort, were called parrots, and individually, according to Doctor Dan, there were lories, cockatoos and parakeets. Despite their beauty, the cockatoos were particularly hated by the farmers, because they would descend as a flock on a ripe crop of wheat and destroy it.

  These were far from being the strangest birds on the territory. One, called an emu, was comical in appearance. Lacking the grace of the other creatures we had seen, it had a huge body of shaggy, dirty feathers shaped like a mound of earth, and long skinny legs. Its head protruded from a scrawny neck and was covered in bright blue feathers. Its wings were tiny and seemed of no use. It made up for its flightless state by running at great speed. Richard had heard the meat tasted like beef.

  Some of the new animals looked as lovable as kittens or puppies. There was one kind of bear-like creature called a koala. It was no bigger than a small dog, though much rounder and grey in colour. These animals squatted silently in trees with their babies on their backs.

  Not all the animals around here were so appealing. Our sleep was often interrupted by the cries of birds or other tree dwellers. Some, called possums, kept us awake with their strange laughter, which sounded like a consumptive old man clearing his throat. They seemed to be calling to each other, for when one started, another would reply from some distance away.

  Insects plagued us. Flies descended every time we brought out food to eat. Every night we would search our hut to drive out mosquitoes before we could settle down to sleep. Almost always we missed one, and I would wake to hear the detestable creature buzzing near my ear.

  The hours we had been given to work seemed long, but we soon discovered we were rarely expected to keep to them. We’d be given daily tasks – decks to be caulked, sails repaired, rigging tarred. If we worked hard, we could be finished by late morning. We usually ended up having our dinner in the Sailor’s Arms. James Lyons was often there and after we’d bought each other several drinks I couldn’t help but ask him, ‘Why did you only take seven shillings from me? I would have given you that ring.’

  ‘I know, but you would have soon found out how much less other men paid and then you would have been my enemy for life. It’s a small place is Sydney. You’re shorter than me now, but you won’t be forever. I’m a scribe Sam, and not much of a fighter. It doesn’t do to tussle with fellows who spend their life hauling up sails or anchors, or heaving timber. Most of us government clerks have never lifted anything heavier than a goose-feather quill. We have an easy life, so why ruin it by making enemies? Besides, thieves’ honour and all that. We’re all in the same boat.’

  James had a logic about him that intrigued me. He had a sharp mind and was forever on the lookout for some way to fleece his masters. But he was clever enough to know how far he should go. It was a lesson he had learned the hard way.

  ‘I was apprenticed as a clerk to my uncle, who was a lawyer in Norwich. We used to siphon off a few guineas from old ladies who leave their estates to the church. One day we got greedy. My uncle danced on the end of a rope. I was sent here. Silly, weren’t we?’ He looked wistful. ‘Still, it’s an easy life. Just keep your nose clean, keep your tongue still when you’re shouted at by soldiers or government officers, and for heaven’s sake don’t hit one of them. Do that and you’ll find yourself lashed on the triangle then packed off to the country to work in an iron gang.’

  I didn’t know what he meant.

  ‘They clap you in irons, eight men all linked together. Then you spend your days clearing bush or chopping down trees. Everyone off the boats gets a chance to prove they’re decent sorts, but if you do something that upsets them, then the authorities come down on you like a ton of hot bricks.

  ‘You and your pal Richard are bright boys,’ he went on. ‘You could get a job with the clerks if you asked. It’s an easy life and we’re always short of them that can read and write.’

  I said I’d think about it. But I liked my work in the Navy office and I felt uneasy with the little fiddles of the clerks. They were likeable rogues, but I wanted to do an honest job.

  We went to the Sailor’s Arms almost every day to meet with James and soon got to know his friends there. They were not the sort of people my father would have approved of. James liked his company rough, and would often buy drinks for the most dangerous-looking men in the pub.

  ‘Pays to be on the right side of the worst ones,’ he whispered.

  One night we got to talking with some of them about Captain Bligh and the Bounty mutiny. They thought the crew should have killed Bligh rather than set him adrift in an open boat. ‘That Fletcher Christian was a bleedin’ nancy,’ said Edward Bean, who was one of my close neighbours. ‘If they’d slit the throats of all the men that didn’t side with ’em, they’d have stood a better chance of getting away with it.’

  Bean was a frightening fellow at the best of times. I was amazed at his ability to hold such hatred for someone he had never met. ‘That bastard Bligh, I know his type. If he ever comes my way, I’ll run him through soon as look at him.’

  Among James’s friends were several girls around his age and I was particularly fascinated by one called Orlagh Killett. Orlagh I immediately assumed to be Irish, so I was surprised to hear her speak with a Liverpudlian accent. Her parents had come over from Ireland before she was born, she explained. She was a skinny, striking girl with a mane of glorious red hair, and had two children by a man who had left her for another girl when the second child was three days old. Orlagh’s mother-in-law would sometimes turn up at the pub, demanding she return home to mind the children. The mother-in-law was a terrifying-looking woman, painfully thin, with straggly grey hair. The skin on her face was mottled and sallow but tight too, so it looked like a skeletal mask with darting, angry eyes. She and Orlagh quarrelled incessantly and would often start shouting abuse as soon as they saw each other.

  Orlagh was utterly beyond what I had been brought up to believe was ‘respectable’, but I liked her. She told a good story. The first day we had a drink together she recounted the tale of her two neighbours, the Cluttons.

  ‘Met each other over here soon as they came off the transport ship. Anyway the old man got ill, and one of the missionaries here lent him some money for food and the like. Any road, he called in to ask the Cluttons for his money back. So old man Clutton attacks him with a knife. Then his missus smashes him on the head with an axe. That’s nice, isn’t it. Blood all over the place. Anyway, they wait until it’s dark and drag him out to dump the body in some bushes. Did a rotten job. Next morning some woman’s walking by and sees this foot sticking out. She screams and then there’s people all over the place. Soon after that, the Magistrate arrives with a squad of marines. Stupid thing was, there was a trail of blood leading from the bushes straight to the
house. The Cluttons started arguing and screaming at each other, each blaming the other for the murder. They made it up by the time they got sent to the gallows. Hung ’em side by side, and they were holding hands. I like a nice ending to a story.’

  We were all roaring drunk when we heard the tale and thought it hysterically funny. But when I recounted it to Doctor Dan the next day he looked quite blank. ‘What a terrible story. You boys ought to watch who you’re mixing with. You don’t want to get yourself into any more trouble.’

  But I found myself constantly drawn to Orlagh. She was afraid of nothing and swore like a trooper. She was funny and slow to judge anyone. When I drunkenly admitted in the pub that we had originally been sent here for cowardice, some of James’s friends started to cluck like chickens. She turned on them and gave them a tongue-lashing. ‘You lot’d cack your pants as soon as you saw a spider. You boys were mad lettin’ yerself get mixed up with the Navy in the first place. I wouldn’t blame you if you had hidden in the hold.’ They stopped clucking. Everyone was frightened of Orlagh.

  She treated Richard and me like her younger brothers. ‘They’d be around your age, if they’re still alive,’ she said. Hers was a shocking story. When she was ten she and a friend had stolen a bonnet from a younger girl as she headed home from market and pawned it for a few pennies. To them it had been a childish prank, but they were arrested by the city constables. Charged with felonious assault and putting a child in fear of her life, they were both sentenced to hang. ‘I cried m’self to sleep every night, in that condemned cell, in all the stink and filth and rats scurrying round me feet. Me mate Molly, who was sentenced with me, she died of gaol fever. Then they let me off and sent me here. After all that you’re afraid of nothing.’

  Orlagh was a survivor and I admired her greatly. She provided for her children any way she could, stealing vegetables from allotments and sometimes, it was whispered, going with men for money. She seemed to have some sort of loose relationship with James, but they would both leave the pub arm in arm with other people.

  The drinkers in the Sailor’s Arms were sometimes violent and unpredictable, but they were feisty and generous and took people as they found them. They liked to gamble, and they swore and they stole. I could tell by his pained expression when we talked about them that Doctor Dan didn’t approve of our new friends, but I wasn’t going to turn my nose up at them.

  * * *

  Our house had little furniture, but we had iron pots and a stove to cook with. There was a small piece of garden around the hut too, which we planted with vegetables. Doctor Dan advised potatoes, as they could provide two crops a year. This we did, and also peas and cabbage. We jealously guarded our vegetables, but our precious crops were frequently stolen in the night, often before they were ready to eat. I sometimes wondered if Orlagh had taken any. I would have gladly given her some.

  The Rocks was a noisy, restless place most hours of the day. In daylight babies howled, children screeched and tumbled, and the women who lived there called out across gardens and streets to their friends in nearby houses. By night, when people drank, there was singing and fighting, and arguments, always arguments. Dogs barked day and night, and pigs snuffled underfoot, in and out of any garden they could get into. Broken glass was everywhere, not least because children would throw bottles at each other for sport. People here lived by their wits and fists.

  Across the street from us lived Edward Bean, who we often saw in the Sailor’s Arms. His wife had died the previous year and he’d had her buried just outside his front door. Some nights he would sit alone drinking rum from the bottle, talking to her as if she was still alive. Occasionally he would pour a portion over the grave, saying, ‘I know you like a drop. A bit more won’t hurt you.’

  It was not just the convicts who lived their life free from the reason and regimentation of England. On the other side of the Rocks was a former marine who deserted soon after arriving here. He was sentenced to death. On the day of his execution it was raining cats and dogs. The hanging was postponed for a week and he endured another wait alone in his cell. When the day came he was taken out again to the gallows by the Parramatta road. But it was still raining torrents and again the execution was postponed. This time, when he returned to his cell, he was told the Governor had commuted his sentence. He was now a convict and found lodgings on the Rocks. Everyone was convinced the execution had been postponed because the officers called out to witness it did not want to get wet.

  Doctor Dan was kept busy in the hospital. ‘Most of my patients are convicts or their families,’ he told us. ‘I rarely see any of the “keepers”, unless it’s soldiers with a dose of the pox. Doctor Reynolds at the hospital has been here almost since the beginning. He told me there used to be an epidemic every time a new fleet came in from England. Smallpox, dysentery, some unnamed fevers. Always affected the natives the worse. I don’t think there are any diseases here that are new to Europeans. We’ve brought these plagues with us – it’s very much a one-way trade. Poor savages, we cultivate their land, we bring them the gospels, we teach them shame so they want to wear clothes, we bring the marvellous sciences of navigation and shipbuilding and metal working. But they seem to have managed well enough without, before we arrived.’

  ‘But they just roam around like animals, living off the land,’ I said.

  ‘Why settle down in one spot if the earth provides you with food wherever you wander?’ Daniel replied.

  We had taken several tips from the natives to add to our diet, not least their habit of foraging for seafood – fishing and gathering shellfish. I rarely saw them though, they kept away from our town. I was horrified to see how they were treated by the British settlers. One evening we saw two native men, who had obviously been drinking, having a vicious fight near to the edge of town. A whole gang of soldiers gathered around to cheer, as if they were watching two dogs fighting. I was shocked to see there was even an officer with them.

  When I described the incident to Daniel he shook his head in disgust. ‘The New South Wales Corps, those men are on the side of the devil. The Governor’s always trying to curb their behaviour, but they are the ones with the real power here.’

  For all its advantages, Sydney was a peculiar, unsettling place.

  Chapter 10

  Friends and Enemies

  One bright afternoon in the early autumn, Richard noticed a familiar face down at the market. ‘What the hell is he doing here?’ he said. ‘I thought we’d seen the last of him when the Spanish hauled him off.’

  I peered through the crowd. My stomach turned. It was Lewis Tuck, the bullying bosun’s mate from the Miranda. His towering size and his curly fair hair made him easy enough to spot.

  We slipped away without being seen. But a day later, while we were walking home from the Navy office, he came up to us in the street. ‘Well I never,’ he jeered. ‘What are you pair doing here?’

  We told him a little of what had happened. He laughed. ‘All those books never did you any good after all, Witchall,’ he said. Tuck had always mocked my ability to read and write. I suppose he had an almighty chip on his shoulder because he could do neither.

  ‘So what are you doing here?’ said Richard.

  I winced instinctively. On the Miranda such a question would have been considered impertinent and earned a sharp blow with a rope. But Tuck carried on talking to us as if our time together on the Miranda had been a jovial adventure.

  ‘Those of us they took prisoner, they only held for a couple of months. There was an exchange of prisoners and we were paid off. I went to Tenerife to pick up a ship back to England, but decided to try my luck in New South Wales instead. There’s plenty of work for men like me, and plenty of prospects, from what I’ve heard.’

  I was staggered by his manner. Here was a man who had taunted and hounded me mercilessly on the Miranda. He had beaten me at every opportunity and would have had me flogged if we had not been captured by that Spanish frigate. Now he was talking to us like we were
old shipmates. Perhaps he thought behaving as he had done was just part of his job, and the men who suffered his bullying would understand that?

  ‘Keep out of mischief,’ he smirked and sauntered off, leaving me seething and staring daggers.

  It was a funny day for meeting old faces. Walking back to the hut later that morning, my eye was drawn to a young woman walking with a soldier in his bright red jacket. As I came nearer I saw it was Lizzie Borrow. She held the arm of a handsome young lieutenant.

  Before I could say hello there was a terrible commotion behind us. We all ran over to a small group of children who were staring fearfully down a well, their eyes wide with horror, hands held up to their mouths. Like many wells around the Rocks, it was uncovered and a danger to anyone, drunk or sober.

  A little girl rushed up. ‘Joshua falled in,’ she said. I looked at once to the Lieutenant, expecting him to take command of the situation, but he seemed aloof, as if it were none of his affair. I knew we had to act immediately. I peered down the well and could see the surface catching in the light about seven feet down. Whoever had fallen in was under the water. I looked around frantically for any stick, plank or rope I could use to try to get this child out. There was nothing. I had a horrible decision to make. If I waited any longer the child would surely drown. If I jumped into the narrow hole, I could drown down there myself, and even kill the child as I hit the water.

  There was no time to think. I turned to Lizzie and the Lieutenant and shouted, ‘Get a rope or a ladder!’ then I climbed over the lip of the well. Looking for footholds along the sides I lowered my body down until I was hanging on to the edge by my finger tips. I launched myself into the void, falling three or four feet into chilly black water. On the way down I banged my elbow hard on the side of the well, but made no contact with the child in the water. I surfaced, spluttering and shuddering with the cold, reeling with a sharp shooting pain in my arm. The water was deep, for despite my fall I did not touch the bottom. There was barely space to pull my arms up through the water to launch myself down again, and my fingers caught the side of the well as I forced air from my lungs to let myself sink below. This time my foot brushed against a solid object. I let myself sink deeper into the black water, feeling the pressure grow in my ears. Moving my hands before me I touched solid flesh and bone and sodden clothing. I grabbed his shirt and kicked my legs hard, but the child was heavier than I imagined.