Halfhyde Outward Bound

by Philip McCutchan

  Halfhyde felt the whisky glow in his veins, bringing back a touch of health. He said, “The training ship Britannia gave me some basic sailing skills. Then I was in the sail training squadron as a midshipman, under the Earl of Clanwilliam.”

  McRafferty laughed. “Aye, the Earl o’ Clanwilliam, no less. There are few earls in the merchant ships, Halfhyde. You will find life harder here.”

  “Yet Lord Clanwilliam drove us hard.”

  Here, this morning, aboard his ship, Captain McRafferty seemed a different man, a man standing where he was acknowledged as God. Smiling, he said, “You will embark on the hardest life that providence ever put in the way of man, and you will ship with some hard shipmates. Rogues the lot of them, or mostly—but fine seamen—again, mostly. Every ship has its share of loafers, who are not signed on again once found out. My First Mate, Mr Bullock, is a hard case who’s done time in the down-easters under the Yankee flagships that have always carried bullies as mates. If you ship under me, then you’ll be driven harder and for longer than any lord would drive. I have given you fair warning. Do you accept?”

  Halfhyde finished his whisky. “I accept,” he said quietly.

  “Very well, then. You will learn plenty, Halfhyde. But there is one thing above all that you must learn for your own sake to forget, and quickly, and that is this, that you’ve held command of your own. For my part, I shall make no mention to anyone of your past, or of your future hopes as an owner. I shall make it known, if I need to, that you have done naval service—it will be, or should be, clear to the hands that you’re no greenhorn.” McRafferty paused and turned away to pace his cabin. When he spoke again he came close to Halfhyde and kept his voice low. He said, “There is a reason why I have a need for you…why you can perhaps be useful to me.”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  McRafferty said, “I told you last night, I own my ship, as you hope to own yours. Times are hard in sail today. The expenses mount continually, and cargoes are not always easy to find. No cargoes, no money—no money, no ship. The Aysgarth Falls is my home. It is very worrying—the ship is heavily mortgaged. What I am driving at is this: after we discharge at Sydney, I have as yet no homeward cargo promised—”

  “Is there not always plenty of wool for home?”

  “No,” McRafferty said with a shrug, “not always. Sail is being beaten to it by these damned steamers—it’s true our rates are preferential, but we have not the speed. And always I am forced to cut my rates a little more to obtain the cargoes. I repeat, it is very worrying for a shipmaster who also owns his ship.” He paused, pulling at his bushy side-whiskers. “I have had to provide an additional form of income, a kind of insurance, in case there is no homeward cargo. I have arranged to pick up a passenger in Iquique, our first port of call, in Chile. I am being paid a not inconsiderable sum to take this person to Sydney.”

  Halfhyde raised an eyebrow, quizzically. “A not inconsiderable sum…do you mean a sum beyond what you’d normally expect?”

  McRafferty nodded. “You are quick enough to guess. Yes, that is the case.”

  Halfhyde asked directly, “Why are you telling me this, Captain?”

  McRafferty shrugged and said simply, “Because I trust you. You have an honest look, an honest way of speaking. I have had much experience of men, as all shipmasters have. I know a good man from a bad one. And as I’ve said already, I may need your help. Your advice.”

  “My advice? I have no commercial experience as yet, and a passenger, I would take it, is a commercial proposition. Is not your First Mate the man for this?”

  “It was my First Mate who arranged this passage, Halfhyde. A personal contact…a friend of a friend of a friend. I don’t like it, but was forced by necessity to agree.”

  “And your reason for not liking it?”

  Captain McRafferty moved even closer, and his next words were said almost into Halfhyde’s ear. He believed his forthcoming passenger to be a man on the run, whether from the law or not he was unable to say. He admitted his suspicions to be based upon nothing more substantial than his instinct but made reference to a long seafaring experience and a nose for trouble. He said, “I would like to feel that I have aboard someone who has held—still holds— the Queen’s commission. At a time of difficulty…I shall say no more for now, but possibly you will understand.” His tone changed, and he moved away, becoming formal. He went on, “The Aysgarth Falls leaves for Sydney on the tide tomorrow with a cargo of cased machinery and machine parts. After rounding the Horn, we steer north for Iquique to take on a part cargo of nitrates, also for Sydney. You will report to the shipping office to be signed on articles in my presence by the Board of Trade’s shipping master at two bells tomorrow forenoon.”

  As he left the ship, Halfhyde pondered McRafferty’s words about his passenger and the help that might be required. Halfhyde was not sure that he entirely understood what McRafferty might be after, but one thing appeared certain. McRafferty did not trust his First Mate.

  Chapter 2

  ONCE AGAIN wearing his tall hat, Captain McRafferty attended next morning at the shipping office to sign Halfhyde on articles, along with two other fo’c’sle hands neither of whom was sober. Making his way afterwards to the Aysgarth Falls with these two men, who had the aspect of men recently out of gaol, Halfhyde reflected on his wife, smug and snobbish in Portsmouth. During the afternoon she would doubtless be off on a round of visiting with Lady Willard, leaving cards on such socially possible persons as had recently moved to the naval town. Halfhyde’s lips twisted in a smile as he recalled something Vice-Admiral Sir John Willard had said a few years ago in Malta, when Halfhyde had been bidden from his ship to the Admiral’s residence for dinner. Sir John had commented upon his Flag Lieutenant’s report of a probing visit to the wardroom of a torpedo-boat destroyer newly arrived on the Mediterranean station. Socially quite impossible, had been the Flag Lieutenant’s edict, not a gentleman among them.

  Sir John would spin into his grave if he could see his son-in-law now.

  Halfhyde elicited that his new shipmates were named Float and Althwaite. Float had indeed come recently from gaol and was inclined to boast of it. “Grievous bodily ’arm,” he said with relish, unasked. “Best watch it, matey. Me, I don’t like being crossed, all right?”

  “All right indeed,” Halfhyde answered coolly, stepping across the filth and scum of the docks, avoiding bales of cargo, the wicked cargo hooks of the stevedores, and ships’ mooring lines.

  “I’m inclined to be the same myself, as a matter of fact, so don’t cross me either—matey.”

  Float gaped at him. Men didn’t usually speak to him like that, having once been warned. He looked a shade unsure of himself; and the other man nudged him and said, “Sounds like a gennelman, Float.”

  “’E’d best watch that and all,” Float said. Float was a thin man, but tough-looking. He reached into his clothing and showed the tip of a knife, making sure Halfhyde saw it. He said nothing, but the gesture was clear enough. The three men walked on, carrying their gear in canvas bags; Halfhyde had kitted himself out on leaving his lodging that morning, before reporting to the shipping office. His gear was simple: a couple of thick woollen jerseys, heavy duty trousers of coarse cloth, sea-boots, oilskin coat, sou’wester plus thick underwear, clasp-knife and lanyard together with personal necessities and toiletries: he had always shaved at sea and intended to continue doing so whatever the state of other chins; neither Float nor Althwaite appeared to have shaved for many days. The morning was foul with a penetrating drizzle, but Halfhyde walked jauntily and with a springy step. All new experiences were welcome to him, and he looked forward with a sense of adventure. He and the others were met at the gangway of the Aysgarth Falls by a hefty man of about forty years of age sporting a drooping ginger moustache and a peaked cap. This man stood with his hands on thick hips, looking the three arrivals up and down.

  “Names?” he demanded.

  They gave them. The man said. “I’m Mister Bullock
, First Mate. You’ll be getting to know that bloody fast. All right?”

  “Yessir,” said Float and Althwaite together. They sounded sycophantic in Halfhyde’s ears and no doubt in Bullock’s, but he would be used to that. He told them to get for’ard and report for work on deck in ten minutes’ time; Halfhyde was told to wait behind a moment.

  Bullock said, “The Captain’s spoken to me about you. Done time in the Queen’s ships, he said.”

  “That’s right, Mr Bullock.”

  “Sir to the fo’c’scle scum.”

  “Perhaps. But not to me—that is, not in the role of fo’c’sle scum.”

  Bullock stared, fists clenching at his sides. “Say that again.”

  Halfhyde did so. Bullock’s fists moved fast, but Halfhyde moved faster. He stepped neatly aside, and the First Mate’s right fist crunched full into a heavy block on the mainmast shrouds. He swore, blasphemously, and made a dive for Halfhyde, who seized his wrists and held them fast.

  Halfhyde said, “I am not to be hazed by bullies, Mr Bullock, and I am not fo’c’sle scum, though some may be. That having been said, I know enough of the ways of the sea to understand that one’s superior officers are normally addressed as sir. Now that we know where we stand, the sir you shall have.”

  Halfhyde had an idea he was saved only by the appearance on deck of Captain McRafferty, but knew beyond a doubt that he had started off by making a dangerous enemy. In an ominously quiet voice, Bullock ordered him for’ard. He obeyed. He went through the door beneath the break of the fo’c’sle into the space that was home to the twenty or so deckhands, a filthy compartment enveloped in a filthy smelly fug, its sides surrounded by tiered bunks which Halfhyde could only make out when his eyes had accustomed themselves to the gloom. The stench was appalling, a mixture of bilgewater and damp, of foetid human breath and sweat, of dirty clothing and bodies. Many of the hands lay on the bunks or on the deck, men recently returned from the shore, as drunk as lords and not yet fit to stir. Vomit lay around. A moment later the light filtering in from the door lessened and, turning, Halfhyde saw the threatening bulk of the First Mate. Bullock’s voice cut like a knife through the murk of the fo’c’sle messroom, shouting the hands on deck and never mind the alcohol-drugged brains and limbs. As he left, he made room for the ship’s bosun, who started dragging the men out and dumping them on the deck, where the hoses were turned on them.

  BY SAILING time it was a thoroughly wet day, with the Mersey rain teeming down in earnest; and the decks were still filthy, not yet cleared of shoreside grease and muck, the patina of Liverpool Town. Liverpool was a sailor’s town; none quite like it anywhere else on God’s earth. Solid and prosperous like the good old Queen herself, the buildings tall and imposing as they loomed over the crowded shipping in the port, worn with the soot and damp of Merseyside. And the smell: a smell made up of a magic mixture of mist and soot and tar laced with the fragrance of spices from the Orient, laced again with the smoke from the steamers so abominated by Captain McRafferty. But those steamers brought trade to the Mersey’s acres of docks, its thirty-six miles of quays; the total tonnage, sail and steam, owned in Liverpool exceeded, as Halfhyde had learned, the tonnage of all the German Empire and amounted to three times the tonnage owned by all the United States of America. Halfhyde was glad enough to be a part of this challenging commerce, one of the cogs that would keep the wheels of Empire grinding on as much as had been the case when serving in Her Majesty’s Fleet. Britain depended for her very survival on her seaborne trade, and thus upon her ships and the shellbacks who drove them through the storms of wind and water. These were the sinews of her being, of her current expansion into the greatest Empire the world had ever known. From Liverpool and other British ports her armies overseas in India and elsewhere were kept supplied and in good heart to fight the battles of the Queen-Empress who, from Windsor Castle, ruled a quarter of the world’s inhabitants; the ships of England were the lifeline that kept an Empire and a way of life in being.

  As sailing time approached, more drunken seamen drifted back aboard to be set to work immediately by the First Mate. Bullock sent his powerful voice for’ard from the poop to travel angrily along the wet deck and among the bleary-eyed seamen struggling through the haze of liquor to identify the myriad ropes, the braces and downhauls, the sheets and tacks, leechlines and buntlines. One man, the last aboard, brought his stomach up in vomit on the deck and was seen by Bullock.

  Bullock roard, “O’Connor!”

  The bosun turned. “Aye, sir?”

  “See to that man, and quickly.”

  “Aye, sir,” the bosun said again and moved for’ard. He laid hold of the offender and upended him, pushing the screaming face into the pool of vomit, rubbing it hard up and down the deck planking. Blood mingled with the vomit. The man started a dry retching; when he was allowed to stagger messily to his feet there was murder in his eyes, but the bosun gave him no chance before landing a heavy blow that put him down like a log. Then O’Connor swung round on Halfhyde, breathing heavily.

  “Turn to, damn your eyes, and look busy,” he ordered. “There’s no skulking aboard a windjammer, not ever. Been to sea before, have you?”

  “Yes,” Halfhyde said.

  “Stand by to take the tug’s line, then.”

  Halfhyde looked away to starboard. From across the far side of the basin, a steam tug was to be seen approaching and as Halfhyde climbed to the fo’c’sle deck the tug used her steam whistle to give a monotonous blast of warning, a melancholy sound beneath the lowering, wet skies. Halfhyde reflected that this was to be a very different departure from that of a battleship or first-class cruiser leaving the south railway jetty in Portsmouth dockyard, with the guard and band of the Royal Marine Light Infantry paraded with its buglers to salute the Commander-in-Chief on proceeding outwards for a foreign commission.

  CAPTAIN MCRAFFERTY climbed the ladder running up from outside the saloon through the hatch to the poop. Once again he was wearing his tall hat, but removed it as he went to the ship’s side. Lifting it high, he cast it into the scummy water of the basin, then, dusting his hands together, turned away. Halfhyde had seen this performance from the fo’c’sle head; and made an enquiry of one of the apprentices, a youth who had served two previous voyages under Captain McRafferty.

  “Same each voyage,” the apprentice said, grinning. “Buys a new one on each arrival home, chucks it into the basin on each departure.”

  “For what reason?”

  “He says it clears the mind of thoughts of the shore and is an excellent mental preparation for the voyage ahead.”

  Halfhyde gave a shrug: ships’ captains, be they Navy or Merchant Service, were often enough an enigma. He looked again towards the poop. Behind Captain McRafferty an officer of H.M. Customs and Excise had come up from below, one who according to the apprentice had examined the jerque note issued after the Aysgarth Falls had discharged her inward cargo and had been rummaged, and who had now cleared her once again for foreign. Behind this official came the mud pilot who would take the 2,000-ton windjammer off the berth and out through the locks, after which he would hand over to the river pilot.

  The steam tug came up, fouling the day further with its black, smothering belch, coming through the grey overcast towards the outward bounder, ready to cut the last links with home. As she drifted up and lay off the bow, Captain McRafferty gave an ostentatious sniff and brought out a vast linen handkerchief which he held to his nose. There was a hail from her bridge, answered by the mud pilot who then lifted an eyebrow at the ship’s Master.

  McRafferty nodded in response then caught the eye of his First Mate. “Single up, if you please, Mr Bullock.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Bullock walked to the poop rail and shouted, “Cast off the back-up headrope and sternrope, cast off breasts.” He turned to McRafferty. “Springs, sir?”

  “Let them go, Mr Bullock.”

  Bullock shouted again. “Let go springs fore and aft, stand by for’ard to take the lin
e from the tug.” He made his way quickly along the deck to the bow. As the echoes of his strong voice died away, there was a curious quietness, a quietness that Halfhyde recognized as the melancholy lull that always came before a ship proceeded to sea on a long foreign commission. He had known it when going China-side, or when leaving Portsmouth or Devonport yards to join the Mediterranean Squadron, or to take a ship to the far distant South Pacific. Halfhyde watched as the hands under the Second Mate, Mr Patience, bent to the spring leading aft from for’ard and heaved it in. There was a splash as the shore gang let go the sternrope from its bollard and the eye slid from the dockside into the murky basin water. The ship’s crew brought it in, hand over hand, dripping, and coiled it down on the deck. With only one headrope and one sternrope to hold her now, the Aysgarth Falls waited for the order that would let the last lines go. The helmsman, standing stolidly behind the wheel on the poop, awaiting the Master’s orders, chewed on a plug of tobacco, the dark juice running from the corners of his mouth while he kept an eye lifting on the masts now crossed with their yards—kept an eye lifting from sheer force of habit at this stage, for until the great sails were loosed there was little point in looking aloft and watching for the tremor that would indicate he was too close to the wind. A few moments later a heaving-line was sent snaking through the air from the tug, to be caught in the eyes of the ship by a seaman who brought it through a fairlead to the bitts. Behind it came a heavier line, then finally the tow-rope proper, a twelve-inch hemp hawser sparkling with rain and basin water. When this had been made fast, the paddle-wheels of the steam tug turned over, and the ship was drawn to the locks, where the Customs officer and the mud pilot disembarked. Ten minutes later the Aysgarth Falls was away for Sydney, with no one to see her go bar a few circling seagulls crying eerily as they swooped upon the trucks of the masts or skimmed the water for garbage, and a disinterested watchman looking down from the after rails of a steamer in a nearby berth: even the Customs man had turned his back and was making a dash through the rain for the warehouse.