Boycott

by Colin Murphy

  ‘What’s wrong? Looks like you’ve seen old Duffy’s ghost.’

  ‘Nothing. I’m fine.’ Owen shook his head and moved on. He decided the moment was his alone, as if some deeply private act had just taken place that was not for sharing.

  They rounded the corner of the largest building, named the Custom House, where the expanse of the quay opened up to them and they looked in awe at the masses heaving on the dockside, which stretched beyond their line of sight. Besides the four tall ships, countless boats and barges jostled for position in the narrow channel, on the far side of which rose a tree-covered hill. Hundreds, if not thousands, milled about the quayside, mostly gaunt-faced emigrants carrying their possessions or huddling in groups awaiting the call to board. Cats snarled as they ran in pursuit of the many rats that openly scurried about. Owen marvelled at the sight of a man turning the handle of a modern metal device of giant interlocking cogwheels, which pulled a rope along a huge sloping beam of wood, underneath which an entire cow was suspended; he cranked a handle and the entire machine swung about, delivering the beast whole over the ship’s open hold.

  The smell of human and animal excrement was woven into that of the rotting marine vegetation and the noise was so great that Thomas had to shout to make himself heard. ‘There’s the ticket office. Come on.’

  They fought their way inside the building, which opened into a hall the length of which ran a counter with steel bars protruding up to the ceiling. Behind this were eight men engaged in selling tickets. The crowds were shepherded into long queues where people waited their turn to purchase what they hoped would be a new life. The brothers joined one of these and an hour passed before they reached the seller.

  ‘We want tickets for America.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘America, I said.’

  The seller, a man in his forties with spectacles and a wide moustache, rolled his eyes to the heavens. ‘Baltimore, Galveston, New York, Charlesto–’

  The names were so exotic and mysterious the brothers were momentarily baffled, but seized on the first name that they knew.

  ‘New York.’

  ‘Names of the passengers?’

  ‘Thomas Joyce and Owen Joyce.’

  ‘Ages?

  ‘Eighteen and sixteen.’

  ‘That will be eight pounds and twelve shillings.’ Thomas fumbled over the money, unused to handling paper cash.

  The seller slid the ticket through the bars. ‘You must pass a medical examination before you may board. It’s the Destiny, the second from last along the docks. Leaves at four o’clock sharp. Three tall masts, even you can’t miss it.’ He smiled ironically as Thomas grasped the ticket.

  The Medical Inspector’s office was next door and there they queued again as stewards attempted to maintain a semblance of order among the shuffling, noisome crowd. Two hours later they arrived at a table where a young, fair-haired man with spectacles and a loose, full-length brown overjacket looked up at them with weary yet, Owen judged, kind eyes. He took a strange instrument with an eyepiece from an array of such on the table and looked into Owen’s throat, eyes and ears, then probed under his jaw with his fingers. Lastly he lifted another device, a flat disc joined to a tube that grew wider along its length, held the cold metal disc against the bare skin of Owen’s chest and the cylindrical end to his own ear. Thomas looked at Owen and shrugged in mystification.

  ‘Any fevers, sneezing, shivering, pus from the nose, red marks on the skin?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Badly malnourished, but who isn’t?’ He smiled faintly, then turned to Thomas. As he repeated the process Owen’s attention was drawn to a pretty girl of about sixteen at the adjacent queue, who was travelling with two younger children. The thin, middle-aged man who examined them had a sneering expression and narrow, lascivious eyes, which he allowed to wander openly across the girl’s body.

  ‘I suspect contagion on you,’ he stated. ‘None of you may board the ship lest you infect the other passengers.’

  The girl almost fell to her knees, pleading with him to allow them passage.

  ‘Sir, I beg of ye,’ she wailed as the little ones clutched at her dress, ‘we have no disease! All our money is spent. If we don’t get on that ship we’ll surely perish.’

  He feigned indifference and sighed. ‘You must be inspected for the marks of contagion. Leave the children here and wait behind that curtain.’

  The girl closed her eyes momentarily and then whispered to the frightened children, who sat on the floor. She disappeared behind the long row of heavy curtains at the rear of the room.

  ‘Thomas…’ Owen started, but realised that the doctor was studying a facial gash that Thomas had received when the starving villagers had set upon them.

  ‘I’d better put something on that.’

  They followed the man into a tiny curtained compartment with a single table covered in small corked bottles. He poured a liquid of a deep, violet colour onto a rag and Thomas flinched and inhaled sharply when he pressed this against the wound.

  ‘You’re lucky. Mildly infected. Wipe this over the wound for the next few days.’ He handed Thomas the cloth.

  Owen was looking with mild amusement at the large purple splotch on his brother’s face when a grunt from the adjoining compartment drew his attention. He gently pulled back the curtain a few inches and stared with horror at the girl he’d seen outside, seated on a table with the top of her dress pulled down to her waist, as her examiner sucked at the side of her neck in a nauseating fashion. The girl’s legs were parted and the man was writhing between them, brutish grunts escaping him. Her eyes found Owen, her face filled with revulsion and tears streaming down her dirty cheeks.

  Owen had never been one to leap into conflict; he suppressed the notion that he was a coward, but fear usually gave him pause. Suddenly, now, a deep instinct surmounted all his fear and he made to move towards the man, his rage such that he was intent on beating him senseless, but the girl made the slightest of movements with her head, panic in her eyes, and he stalled. He was breathing hard, his heart torn, his stomach knotted in spasm. He briefly allowing his gaze to linger on the girl’s pitiful eyes then withdrew to the presence of the others.

  ‘Sir,’ he whispered urgently, ‘there is a man…an examiner…he’s got a young girl…he’s…’

  The young man, shame in his eyes, placed a hand on Owen’s shoulder. ‘I’m afraid it is beyond my power to intervene. And yours, if you wish to board the ship.’

  ‘But he can’t just–’

  ‘There’s nothing can be done.’ He stamped their ticket sharply and turned away.

  Thomas seized Owen’s arm and pulled him, protesting, to the exit.

  They found a perch by a stack of barrels near to the Destiny. Owen told Thomas what he’d witnessed, then stared unseeing at the chaos around them.

  ‘There was nothing ye could do. Forget about it.’

  Owen meditated a little more before turning to Thomas. ‘That bastard was Irish.’

  His brother looked away along the dock. ‘He’s been corrupted by–’

  Owen interrupted him. ‘Maybe we’re as bad as them. The English. Maybe we’re up to doing what they do. Maybe if we had the power–’

  ‘Maybe, maybe! Don’t talk like a madman. He was one filthy oul’ bastard who deserves te have his balls cut off. You always get rotten apples. But don’t compare me te any Englishman. They’re no better than the shit ye wipe off yer foot.’

  Owen leaned his head against a barrel and rested there, unspeaking. Thomas, seeking to shift the subject, lifted the ticket and stared at it as though it was a map to secret treasure, then began to read: ‘Grimshaw & Sons Shipping. Passengers Contract Ticket. Ship Destiny, of 450 tons registered to sail from Westport for New York on the thirtieth day of October 1848; ten cubic feet of space per–’

  ‘The thirtieth of October,’ Owen muttered and shook his head.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s my
birthday.’

  Thomas laughed and slapped him on the back. Owen seemed indifferent. I’m seventeen, he thought. The experiences of these past few days and weeks he felt had aged him a decade. He’d grown up almost overnight. Desperation has a way of doing that.

  He gazed across the quayside at the huge ship, where sailors bustled about loading supplies and readying the sails, and he felt as though he was about to board a vessel bound for a penal colony. He heard shouts rise high into the air back along the dock and saw the lower sails of one of the other ships unfurl as it slowly pulled away.

  They both made their way to the quayside to witness the ship’s departure, marked by the rising wails of mothers clutching at their breasts as they watched their sons and daughters depart forever.

  ‘If she’s six hundred tons, I’m the Queen of Sheba,’ commented a man of undoubted seafaring experience, with a shaggy beard and a weatherworn face, wearing a heavy black coat and a broad-rimmed sailor’s hat. His companion nodded in agreement. ‘And I’ll wager there’s more barnacles eating at them timbers than there are people in China.’

  Owen looked up at the emigrants clutching at the ship’s rail, crowding over each other as they sought to catch a last glimpse of a loved one below. Owen spotted the girl from the medical office, and even at this remove he could see the lines on her face where the tears had drawn tracks through the grime. She gazed towards Croagh Patrick, blessed herself, then turned away and was swallowed into the body of the ship.

  He stepped over to the bearded man. ‘Sir, pardon me, but what do you mean about the ship’s weight?’

  He pointed to the waterline on the ship. ‘See how she sits in the swell? Her usual waterline’s out of sight and she’s riding very deep.’ He had a strange accent, not Irish or English but with a curious fluidity. ‘A ship can only take three passengers for every ton she carries. She’s bearing two hundred souls, so she should be six hundred tons. I’ll wager she’s not more than four-fifty.’

  Thomas stepped into the conversation. ‘You mean it’s overloaded.’

  ‘I wouldn’t sail on her.’

  The brothers eyed each other with disquiet as the ship moved away along the narrow deep-water Westport channel that led beyond Garvillan Point, after which it would navigate a path beyond the hundreds of islands that speckled Clew Bay, and out into the Atlantic.

  They rested again near the Destiny, munching on biscuits hard enough to break teeth. According to the large clock on the face of the Custom House, they had one hour left in Ireland.

  ‘Our ship’s safe, I’m sure of it,’ Thomas muttered unconvincingly.

  Owen didn’t reply.

  A sailor, perched on the rail of the Destiny and clinging with one hand to the rigging, held up a board and began to read from it in a booming voice:

  ‘All steerage passengers hear this…boarding of the Destiny shall commence presently…no passenger shall be permitted across the gangplank without a fully paid ticket stamped by a Medical Inspector. Each adult shall be entitled to a space of ten cubic feet for luggage. Any found in excess of this shall have the excess thrown overboard. Obedience must be observed of signage which indicates areas permitted to passengers, rules concerning latrine usage and cleaning, distribution of food and water and so forth. These rules are for your own safety. Penalties for breaking them include shackling and flogging. Berths are provided to accommodate…’

  They never heard the rest of the seaman’s discourse as distant screams turned hundreds of heads almost as one towards the ship just departed, which had moved just beyond the patch of land called Roman Island. Now the families of its passengers who still lingered were running along the quayside towards the ship, a few hundred yards distant, as the level of the screams swelled.

  Owen and Thomas could clearly see that the ship was listing to one side like a young tree in a high wind. There was panic on the deck, sailors and passengers scuttling about, some leaping into the water while others, unable to swim, stood screaming at the rail, arms waving in frantic appeal; but no boats were near and they were too far out to cast ropes. The ship lurched and the mast leaned precariously over as a renewed surge of human terror gave voice.

  A uniformed man came running towards the waiting crowd, his face red from the exertion and panic. ‘Her hull gave way at the brush of a sandbank! Launch the boats! In the name of God launch the boats!’

  ‘God Almighty have mercy,’ a woman sobbed and crossed herself several times in quick succession.

  Owen could only imagine the horror taking place even as they stood there, the timbers exploding inwards followed by a wall of water, crushing people in an instant, drowning others, some desperately clambering up gangways only to find themselves trapped on the deck, most unable to swim. He thought of the young girl and her brothers. This had been their reward for her sacrifice. Better she had walked away and thrown her fate in with Ireland’s.

  ‘All you people, listen to me!’ The sailor on the ship’s rail bellowed again. ‘Have no fear for your safety! The Destiny is a new ship in good order. That ship was over-laden and ran too deep. This ship will not, I tell you, and you will all arrive safely in the New World, with God’s grace, in one month’s time. But we must commence boarding now or we will miss the tide. The gangplank will be lowered and you will board in an orderly fashion. Have tickets at the ready!’

  Four men hefted the heavy gangplank across the gap to the quay. Immediately the passengers began to stream aboard, burdened with babies, bags, wooden crates and sacks.

  ‘Jesus, Thomas.’

  ‘It’ll be safe, like he said.’

  ‘It’s not that. All those people.’

  ‘I know. Come on.’

  Owen looked to see the doomed ship almost on its side now, the screams diminishing as the icy water silenced their voices. Ten or more small boats rowed furiously to their aid but they’d be lucky if they saved a hundred. He prayed the girl was among them.

  The brothers passed up the gangplank and were admitted on deck, where hands directed people down into the body of the ship. Owen had the briefest glimpse of the deck: three huge masts towering skywards, at base each as wide as a man, and from them was strung a mesh of heavy rigging. Rearward of the ship he could see men in dark uniforms on a raised platform, a large wheel at its centre, one consulting a chart while another viewed the sinking ship through a long metal eye-glass.

  ‘Hurry along now and stow your baggage, you may come back to the deck when you’ve found a berth,’ one of the hands repeated again and again.

  They descended the wooden stairway into the dimly lit space below and were struck immediately by the ingrained smell of those who had inhabited this chamber before them, musty and lingering and mingled with that of the sea. They walked through the ship’s belly looking at the cramped berths with loosely fitting wooden slats for sleeping, stacked three high, each space barely affording room for two adults side by side, but already in some cases crammed with whole families and their baggage. There were already a hundred or more people jostling for space. Thomas yanked Owen forward.

  ‘Here. This one.’ They clambered up into the tiny space and undid their sacks, spreading out the blankets they’d purchased, then turned and lay watching as the noise swelled in proportion to the numbers. Owen was on the inside, against the hull, which was covered with the messages and invocations of past travellers, mostly cut into the wood, but some in ink. He read a few. ‘May God have mercy on us. Peadar 1846.’ ‘Infant Joseph, perished in fever, God watch over his watery grave.’ Others were more prosaic: ‘Bastards.’ ‘Fever. Dying.’ Another of affection: ‘Is breá liom Eilín.’ His own random thoughts at that moment still echoed the screams of the drowning, and the dread of the departure rested heavy in his heart.

  After an hour, in which they barely exchanged ten words, he felt the boat shift beneath him. A deckhand appeared in the stairway and called out.

  ‘You may go above to say farewell, but not all together as anyone falling overboard will
be left to their fate.’

  Seeming collectively to ignore him, almost every passenger clambered up and rushed to the stairway.

  ‘You go. I’ve seen enough of Ireland,’ Thomas muttered, shifting aside so Owen could pass.

  Feeling despondent and confused, Owen joined the crush up the stair. He emerged to a brightening evening, just a few wispy strands of white in a clear sky, and pushed his way to the rail. A hundred or so people stood on the quayside below, waving, calling out, wailing. With none to bid him farewell, Owen lifted his gaze to the horizon where Croagh Patrick was cut out in sharp contrast to the rare blue sky. Far beyond the majesty of the holy mountain lay Tawnyard Hill, an insignificant bump in the earth, beyond his sight and fading with each moment into memory.

  Men scurried about on the quay untying ropes as the lower sails were unfurled, and the ship lurched as it drew away from the quayside.

  Not a soul to wave to, he thought. All the people he’d ever loved, bar one, lay in the boggy earth in the shadow of that faraway hill, and as he looked down at the widening gap between the ship and the quay wall he began to sob. He raised his arm and tried to wave, as though the spirits of his loved ones could see him. The ship was ten yards out now and preparing to set off along the channel, where they would pass the wreck of the last ship and look upon the bodies of the unfortunate wretches whose dreams had ended not a stone’s throw from Ireland.

  Ireland. They were abandoning her to her fate. She was dying under the uncaring ravages of nature, the scourge of indifferent English rule and the inhumanity of landlordism. It seemed all of life was ranged against her survival. And if, as Thomas believed, the English had been waging a war of extermination, soon they would stand triumphant over a kingdom only of the dead. He could take no more. He wiped his tears and walked down the steps to Thomas, who lay staring blankly into space.

  ‘Thomas.’

  ‘What, Owen?’

  Owen shook his head. ‘I can’t go.’

  ‘What? We’ve already left. We’re free. What are ye talking about?’

  ‘I can’t leave Ireland.’