Nothing had been heard from Christopher Langman or the two swimmers that had accompanied him, so John Deane decided to traverse the fallen mast himself and try and reach the rock. He removed his outer clothing. He waited for the movement of the sea to carry the ship that bit closer to the rocks and then climbed onto the mast. The mast was predictably slippery but Deane moved forward as best he could. He reached the end of the mast. The mast didn’t quite touch the rocks. Deane would have to jump the gap and hope that he could gain purchase on the rocks without injuring himself too badly. Deane jumped. He reached for the rocks but the rocks were slippery. He slid into the freezing water. He was lifted by the sea and flung back against the rocks. He found it hard to gain purchase. He struggled to climb to a safe part of the island. He would make a small amount of progress and then fall back in the ocean. As he hung onto the rocks, as he repeatedly tried to drag himself up and onto the island, the rocks cut into his fingers and ripped out some of his fingernails. Eventually Deane hauled himself to a place of relative safety and coughed up and spewed out the salt water he had taken into his lungs.
Captain John Deane crossed the broken mast of the Nottingham Galley in order to reach the precarious safety of Boon Island. Illustration by Stephen Dennis
Deane shouted back to his men. He guided them across the mast and onto the island. All the remaining crew members reached the island in safety. Deane and the ten men whose rescue he had just engineered walked across the island seeking higher ground. They met Christopher Langman and his two companions. It was ten o’clock in the evening. All fourteen men huddled together and prayed, thanking God that they were all still alive.
Deane and his crew travelled leeward looking for any kind of natural shelter. There was none to be found. As they walked, the dimensions and character of the island were becoming clearer to them all. The island was a scant 100 yards long and 50 yards wide. Besides rockweed there was virtually nothing in the way of vegetation. The ground was a mass of jagged rock. The simple act of walking was painful. The sharpness of the rocks also negated the only way, at present, they had of keeping warm, the stone prohibiting walking around to generate warmth and protect their circulation. Deane and his crew were forced to huddle together, motionless, their only defence against the wet and cold on their first night on Boon Island.
Deane began his first morning on Boon Island with a degree of optimism. If the night’s labours had been principally concerned with abandoning ship and keeping his men warm and alive, then the morning was to be about salvage, rescuing whatever he could find from the broken corpse of the Nottingham Galley and using the provisions to sustain his men until rescue.
Deane made his way to shore. He expected to see much of the ship still skewered on the rocks. But there was virtually nothing there. The bulk of the Nottingham Galley had been carried away and buried by the ocean. Masts, yards and detritus floated on the water, secured by the ship’s anchor. This was nature’s taunt to Deane and his men, as the wreckage was at the mercy of the waves and too far out to sea to safely retrieve. Bits of tent, wood, canvas and sail had washed up on the shore or else could be found in the rocks. At present these were the only materials Deane had to work with. They would have to do.
Most of the food had gone down with the ship. Fragments of cheese were found among the rockweed. Added together they amounted to the equivalent of three whole pieces of cheese. Even rationed carefully they wouldn’t last long. Gulls circled the island and floated on the water. Seals were spotted nearby but not on shore. The island was presumably their home so it could only be a matter of time before one of them ventured onto land and sacrificed itself to the needs of an already hungry crew. During his stay on Boon Island, John Deane would make frequent midnight hunting trips to capture a seal. He never did. But there were more pressing needs than seal or gull meat. The men required a fire. Between them they had a flint, some gunpowder and a drill. For the next ten or so days they would repeatedly try to utilise these tools to start a fire. Their efforts would prove useless. Their materials and everything around them was irredeemably sodden.
Two gunpowder horns had been rescued from the Nottingham Galley. These became the crew’s water receptacles. One was designated for common use among the men. One was reserved for the sick. On Boon Island there was always rain enough to provide a steady source of fresh drinking water. There was enough snow and ice on the island to provide a secondary source of water, although the snow and the ice had a predictably salty tang to it. However desperate things would get, the absence of drinking water would never be a serious impediment to their survival. It was one of nature’s few concessions to Deane and his crew in the painful ordeal that lay ahead of them.
At the end of their first full day on Boon Island the men tried to sleep. Their situation had been fractionally improved by a canvas sheet that had washed up on shore. They crawled underneath it and huddled together.
On the morning of the second day the elements had improved somewhat. Up until now, any view of the mainland had been obscured by the hostile weather. It was still frosty but John Deane could see land and had an inkling of where they were. He believed that he was looking at Cape Neddock. It was fishing country and so the chances of being spotted by a shallop improved the possibility of rescue. At least that was what he told the men. Privately he was doubtful that any shallop would risk the winter sea to sail close enough to the island to ever spot them. He kept his doubts to himself but let his men dine for a while on the succulent half-truth, good morale being as valuable as food, water or warmth at this point in their endeavours.
It seemed to be a time of introspection for John Deane. He was concerned with questions of command now that a form of de facto equality had fallen on the marooned crew. Aboard the Nottingham Galley his authority had been absolute. He would have expected his orders to have been obeyed without question. Deane had been on the island for less than a few days and some of the crew had refused simple requests as well as direct commands. Crew members were shirking the common tasks. Deane’s response was to neither impose command nor insist on obedience. He wandered off alone to search for materials, a pretext designed to give the crew the necessary room to decide for themselves if they still wanted him to lead them. The crew talked in Deane’s absence. The majority came to the decision that Deane would remain their captain; that they would defer all powers of command to Deane exactly as they had when on board the Nottingham Galley. Ten men were in agreement. There were three voices of dissent, the first mate Christopher Langman and two unnamed sailors. Langman and company were overruled. John Deane was made aware of the crew’s decision. He agreed to carry on as before with the concessionary gesture of consulting the crew in the case of certain important decisions.
The next few days on Boon Island were spent searching for further materials and tending to the sick. Three crew members had fallen ill. They all convalesced together. Worst among them was the ship’s cook. He was physically weaker than the rest of the men and inexperienced when it came to toughing out the natural rigours of life at sea. In these extreme circumstances it was more than his body could bear. At noon, on the third or fourth day, the crew reported the cook’s death to John Deane. Deane ordered the cook’s body to be taken to edge of the island and given to the waves.
When the cook had been alive he had been the most conspicuous in his complaints about the lack of food on Boon Island. He seemed to feel the extremities of hunger before anyone else. The other crew members hadn’t arrived at that point of desperation quite yet. But as the cook’s body was given to the ocean many privately considered whether his corpse might not have been put to better use as a meal for the living. These were the first thoughts of cannibalism among the crew. Even John Deane was not immune, pondering privately whether it might not have been better to eat the dead cook rather than bury him at sea.
The supply of cheese had not yet run out. There was about half a pound of cheese for each man. During the food distribution Deane would ensure that eve
ryone received exactly the same ration. This was an act of diplomacy on Deane’s part. Despite the crew’s decision to obey Deane’s orders, not everyone appeared to be pulling their weight in the allocation of daily tasks. Deane could have withheld food from those he deemed to be wilfully lazy but he chose not to.
In that first week on Boon Island, in addition to the cheese, the crew ate powdered bone. The bones were from pieces of beef from the food supplies of the Nottingham Galley. Fish had eaten the meat but the bones had washed up on shore. The crew smashed the bones to powder on the rocks in order to render them digestible.
The men were starting to show the grotesque physical effects of half a week in the freezing wet. Most of the crew were suffering from frostbite. Many had lost some degree of feeling in their fingers and their toes. When fleeing the Nottingham Galley some members of the crew had gone barefoot. Others had worn boots and stockings. Those that wore boots had to have them cut from their feet. As the boots were removed and the stockings peeled off, skin and toenails came away with the material. Feet were horribly blistered. Deane tended to the wounds of his men as best he could. He personally dressed ulcers, binding feet in makeshift bandages fashioned out of linen, rags and oakum that had washed up on shore. He cleaned wounds, washing them with an antiseptic brew concocted from a mixture of seawater and human urine.
The hands of many of the crew had begun to change colour. This was a source of pressing concern for Deane. Discolouration presaged the onset of mortification. It was important to keep the blood circulating in the hands and feet, or fingers and toes might have to be amputated. The best defence against the mortification of the skin was work. And there was important work that needed to be done. The canvas sheet could not continue as their only defence against the night cold. A shelter had to be constructed. Building work would be easier than had been previously anticipated as carpenter’s tools had been discovered in the preceding day’s search for materials.
The first structure built by the survivors of the Nottingham Galley was a tent. It was triangular in shape. The tent was between 8 and 9ft in diameter. It was made from a mixture of canvas and sail and bits of oakum. The tent pole was a wooden staff. On top of the pole was a flag made out of a piece of cloth that stood as a signal to passing vessels. It was an important achievement but there was a problem. When it came time for the men to bed down for the night it became evident that there wasn’t enough space within the shelter for everyone to lie down properly. All of the crew were obliged to sleep on their sides. Problems arose whenever a single crew member decided he wanted to turn over. If a man turned over it caused disruption among the other men. Deane’s solution was to regiment the men’s sleep. During the night, at two-hourly intervals, a call would be given and the entire crew would turn over in unison. Comical though it must have appeared, it seemed to work and the men’s chance of getting some approximation of rest was substantially increased.
The crew of the Nottingham Galley took shelter from the fierce New England elements in an improvised tent. Illustration by Stephen Dennis
Deane and the crew began to turn their attention to getting off the island. Having built a tent they now felt galvanised enough to try their hand at constructing a small boat. In terms of materials there was now sufficient wood washed ashore to build a boat. Nails had been discovered in the rocks. As far as tools were concerned the men had a caulking mallet and a cutlass. Many of the crew had their own knives. They used the knives to carve teeth into the cutlass blade, turning a weapon into an improvised saw.
John Deane described his crew’s efforts:
Three planks were laid flat for the bottom, and two up each side, fix’d to stanchings, and let into the Bottom timbers, with two short Pieces at each End, and one Breadth of new Holland’s-Duck round the Vessel, to keep out the Spray of the Sea: they caulk’d her with Oakum, drawn from old Junk: and secured the Seames with Canvas, Pump-leather, and sheet-lead, as far as the extent of their small Stock would allow; a short mast was fix’d, with a square Sail; seven Paddles provided for Rowing, and an eighth, longer than ordinary, for Steering.
While constructing the boat the workforce consisted of John Deane and two members of the crew. A working day lasted four hours. The cold prohibited working any longer than that. On some days the cold was so intense that no work was done at all. The irony of the entire endeavour was that the man best qualified to oversee the building of the boat was too incapacitated to help. The ship’s carpenter was so weak he couldn’t even offer advice. He had been among the first of the survivors to fall ill. He coughed up large amounts of phlegm and suffered from back pain and neck stiffness. He would lose the use of both feet and be incapable of walking.
At the end of that first week on Boon Island three things happened that raised the crew’s morale: work was finished on the boat; a carpenter’s axe washed up on shore; and three boats were spotted. John Deane was the first to spot the boats. They were about 5 or so leagues away. They were sailing from the south-west. The wind was north-east. Most of the crew were in the tent. John Deane called them all outside. They shouted and gesticulated trying to get the attention of the boats. The boats didn’t see them and sailed by. The crew ought to have been despondent but instead drew encouragement from the near miss. They reasoned that the boats might have been a search party responding to the presence of wreckage from the Nottingham Galley that had washed up on the shore of the mainland. If this were the case, then an ongoing search must be in progress and rescue was simply a matter of time.
In spite of a newly acquired incentive to sit where they were and wait for rescue, most of the crew were still determined to use their newly constructed boat and affect their own deliverance if they could. Work had finished on the boat around about 21 December. The day’s weather was relatively placid and favoured an attempt to launch the boat. There was space in the boat for six people. Which six was a point to be debated by Deane and the crew. Deane proposed himself. The crew agreed. Deane was the fittest among them and the most experienced. It was also agreed that Jasper Deane and Christopher Langman should go. Four more crew members whose names are not reported were selected. The crew paused for a moment’s prayer, committing the success of their impending adventure to God.
Every crew member that had the strength to do so dragged the boat to the water. The crew were weak. Dragging the boat was an effort. The sea was uncharacteristically smooth. The surf was high. The boat was dragged into the water. The crew were obliged to wade deeper into the sea than felt safe to ensure that the boat was properly launched. John Deane and a crew member hauled themselves into the boat first. The smoothness of the ocean was deceptive. There was a sudden swell in the water that turned the boat over and pitched Deane and his companion into the sea. The boat was smashed to pieces against the rocks. The carpenter’s axe and the caulking mallet had been on board. Both tools were lost to the ocean. Deane and his companion struggled to get ashore. Both men nearly drowned in the attempt.
Deane and the crew were despondent. The blow to their morale erased all thoughts of discovered wreckage and New England rescue parties. As if to mimic their mood, a violent storm blew up that afternoon. John Deane drew some encouragement from the tempest. He knew that, had his boat not capsised, he would be in the ocean in the middle of the storm and would surely be dead. He saw something of the wisdom and the grace of God in the destruction of the boat. He also believed that God had spared him for the sake of the men. He remained the fittest among them and possessed the soundest mind. The men relied on him. If he died then they would not know what to do. They would give up. Deane’s sense of divine perspective was not shared by his men. That night their melancholy could not be penetrated. They truly believed that they would all die on Boon Island.
Boon Island exacted its toll on the survivors in increments. Their physical condition was growing worse by the day. The hands of many of the crew were starting to exhibit symptoms of gangrene. Ulcers were giving off a shocking odour. There was nothing left t
o bind the wounds with, save a bit of linen rag. And at last hunger had supplanted lack of heat as the main impediment to Deane and his crew’s chances of survival. The supply of cheese had run out. Deane scoured the island for alternate sources of food. The men ate rockweed and kelp. Deane found mussels, which the men could eat raw, but they were physically difficult to gather. Nevertheless, Deane managed to provide his men with an average of three raw mussels a day.
Although hunger was their greatest enemy there were other devils to contend with. Those who understood the seasons knew that there was an impending spring tide due. The tide could theoretically cover the island and drown them all. Concerns of a more metaphysical nature assailed the minds and the souls of many of the crew. With death as tangible as it was, some of the men feared that if they died they would go straight to hell. The prospect of eternal punishment invoked a profound and debilitating fear among the crew. John Deane was more certain of his own standing with the Almighty. He believed that God had blessed him with more physical strength, a better constitution and a stronger mind than his crew specifically for the purpose of exhorting and encouraging them to trust in the delivering power of God.
Deane and the crew’s attempts at piety manifested itself in a strange relationship with the calendar. During the course of their stay on Boon Island, no member of the crew was ever completely certain what day of the week it was. In recounting the events of Boon Island, both John Deane and Christopher Langman often approximated the dates when recalling their experiences. The crew would observe two Sundays during the week, presumably out of a sense of religious anxiety, making certain that they accurately observed the Sabbath, even if that meant observing it twice. They also celebrated Christmas Day on two separate occasions, just to be certain.
The Shipwreck Cannibals Page 2