Admonition

by Chris Throsby

  “Me dad was in the Merchant Navy. When he come ’ome one time, he brought his ’ammock with him. He told me mum ’e couldn’t sleep in their ordinary bed no more, so ’e slung his ’ammock over their bed.” She laughed. "Mind you, I think ’e must have fallen out a few times ’cos I’m only the third-born of fourteen.

  Anyway, in the daytime, we kids used to fight with each other to lie in it, and like the rest of ‘em, I got really good at climbing in quickly and hanging on when the others started it swinging. Dad explained to us that on a ship, ’ammocks were safer than a bunk ’cos they swung with the ship. A bunk, he said, could throw you out but an ’ammock just rocks you to sleep. Unlike all the other men I’ve ever known, Dad never told me somethin’ that didn’t turn out to be true."

  She’d laughed like when she was telling us about Simon Peters, and I can’t remember when I’d last heard laughter before then, it certainly wasn’t while I was on the hulk. But I’ve also decided that what she said makes sense, so I’ve decided that tonight, even though we’re at sea now and the hammocks are really swinging, I’m definitely going to try to use my hammock like Mary.

  It was only this afternoon, when we were allowed on deck to get some fresh air and a little exercise, that I noticed how many women are on board. In fact, apart from the crew, I haven’t seen any men. When I asked Mary if she’d noticed, she said she hadn’t but then added,

  "But if you want my opinion the fewer there are the better.’

  I agreed with her, but told her why I thought a shortage of women was probably the reason we were gathered together to be sent to New Holland. I asked her,

  “You and me were on a hulk for about the same time, four months, yes?”

  She nodded, “Well, I don’t know about on the Warrior," I said,”but on the Brunswick about once a month, some were carted off to join a transportation ship."

  She said it was more or less the same in Woolwich.

  “Now,” I said, “ask y’self. What was the split? How many men and how many women were taken?”

  “I dunno,” she said. I could see she was trying to think back.

  “About the same?” she asked, then before I could reply, answered her own question,

  “No, definitely more men. I remember, before I was taken from the Warrior, almost all the men had already been taken for transportation. ’Cos of the gaol fever they ’adn’t put any new prisoners on, so most of those left were women. When I think about it, I’d say about twice as many men were taken as women.”

  Looking straight at me, she said,

  “So what do you fink that means is waiting for us in New ’olland? Wives, maybe?”

  I knew by then she was thinking the same as me, so I just came out with it.

  “Maybe, but a hundred or so women are never going to be enough to provide wives for every single man out there. There must be hundreds, thousands even, of men on their own. No, they don’t want us to be wives, not mostly anyway. We both know they think of us all as being prostitutes and I think that’s exactly what they’ll expect us to be when we get out there.”

  As I say, she knew I was right.

  “So what ye finkin’ of doin’ then, Adie?”

  She looked at me expectantly. I didn’t really have an answer, but I told there was one thing I was certain of,

  “I don’t know, but I do know one thing. No one is going to make me do anything like that – not if I don’t want to.”

  She didn’t argue with me, but even then I knew Mary would find her own way.

  Mary

  The Bay of Biscay

  We’d been at sea about a week and every day the weather was much like the day before – a light breeze and a cloudless sky. Every morning they released our chains and allowed us up on deck for an hour or so, but for the rest of the day we were kept chained to one another in the hold. Confined to that gloomy, vermin-infested dungeon most of the time, it ain’t hard to see why all of us lived for that precious hour when, basking in the sun, we could breathe deep without fear of taking in disease. So at the end of a day when the weather was unchanged, we had no reason not to look forward to being back on deck again the next morning. But overnight there was a major change and we woke early, our hammocks swinging in a full blown storm. The storm raged for five days.

  On the first morning, three half-drowned seamen scrambled down the ladder and took off our chains. But before they struggled back up again, one of them told us the chains had been removed on the Master’s orders to save us from injury. The Master had also ordered, so no one got washed overboard, that we should be locked in the hold until the storm was over.

  So for the next five days, we were at the mercy of the storm, tossed in whatever direction the sea fancied. Some of the women found lengths of discarded rope and lashed themselves to the mainmast, but soon found the rope was rotten and failed to hold them. Others removed clothes which they used to tie themselves to any part of the ship that would take it. Most hoped that by lying down they would save themselves from too much movement, but in no time this became impossible as well because the hold leaked like a sieve. So when a huge wave went right over the ship as if the hatch weren’t there, the hold filled over our heads.

  We were lucky though because the water subsided quickly, otherwise I think some of us would have drowned, but it still stayed far too high to allow anyone to lie down. So for five exhausting days, wet, cold and sleepless, we were thrown like peas in a drum to all parts. We were only given food or fresh water twice; on the second day and again on the fourth when the hatch opened and a bucket, suspended from a rope, provided us with a small barrel of water and some sea-soaked biscuits. Hunger forced us to eat the biscuits and we were so thirsty we would have fought each other over the barrel if we’d been able to stand fore-square long enough to exchange blows.

  On the fifth morning, we noticed waves weren’t hitting the ship so often and when they did, it was with much less force. Finally, early in the afternoon, the hatch opened and Mr Carlyle, the ship’s surgeon, shouted down that we were free to come up on deck. Some of the women had been injured and though no bones had been broken, all of us were fit to drop. But whatever state we were in, none of us wanted to stay in the hold a second longer than we had to, so we all managed to scramble up the ladder. The sky was still heavy and the sea tormented, but the wind had dropped and there were no longer any large waves.

  While the surgeon tended the injured, four of the women who were still able, were chosen to cook us some food. When we finished eating, we were all sent back down and put in chains again. Returning to the hold, one of the first things we noticed was that all the vermin had disappeared. We soon realised that, as the women who’d been sent to clean up told us they’d found only three drowned rats, the rats would soon be back. Still, it was three days before a tell-tale scream from one of the women let us know the rats had returned. Now I’m not saying we would have volunteered for the five-day nightmare we’d endured, just for three days without rats, I don’t think any of us ever would. But those three days, was the only time in the whole trip we could put our food down safely or leave our shoes on the floor while we slept. Their return meant that by the time we reached New Holland, hatred for any rat who was stupid enough to let itself be caught guaranteed it a bloody end.

  As we went south, the weather got warmer. Otherwise it was unchanged – a steady breeze and clear sunny skies, or storms with high winds and high seas. Luckily, though the wind always seemed to blow as strong and the waves grow as high as in the Bay, the storms never lasted more than a couple a days.

  But then the weather changed. We never noticed at first because when we were allowed up on deck, it was just a hot, still day. That was the difference though, and me and Adie didn’t notice it for about four days – we hadn’t realised just how still it was. When we did, I talked to one of the sailors and he told me we were in what they called the ‘horse latitudes’. That scared me, I don’t mind saying, because I remember me dad talking about them. D
ad used to tell us stories about his times at sea before we went to bed and I never forgot the horse latitudes, because it was the one time I’d heard him say he’d thought he was going to die. He told us his ship had been stuck for a month with barely a breath of air and in the end without no water and they’d thrown overboard anything that wasn’t vital, just to lighten the ship.

  It was in the fourth week that a few desperate sailors wanted to launch a Jolly, even though they were still two hundred miles from the nearest land. Dad said they would have as well, if the captain hadn’t refused to let them take any water with them. Dad said they were too weak to row two hundred miles, even if they’d taken all of the ship’s water and that the captain had probably saved their lives.

  Anyway, after a month the look-out picked up a faint breath of wind and the ship drifted just about far enough south for that breath to push them into the Westerlies. The captain kept on as much sail as the strong but steady gale that blew them towards South Africa would allow without capsizing the ship, and they made Cape Town just as dusk fell. Dad said they lost a total of four men on that trip and all had been lost in the Horses. Just like on Dad’s ship, the Master on the Sydney Cove raised every sail we had and for two weeks they just hung like wet washing. Even though we were nearly out of water, I said nothing to anyone about me dad, not even Adie.

  The third week had just begun when the crew started throwing any heavy but not essential items overboard and by then I had seen how deep in the barrel the sailor giving us our water reached over, to know it wouldn’t last to the end of that week, let alone a month. It was late one afternoon at the back end of that third week that things began to change. We were all in the hold. They hadn’t chained us for several days – I thought they were probably as weak as we were – and most of us were sitting round wherever we could. But a few, including Adie, were lying in their hammocks, which I suppose is the reason she was the first to notice.

  “My hammocks moving, there must be a bit of a swell.”

  As soon as she said it, I knew she was right. Relieved, I said,

  “If there’s a swell, there must be wind.”

  Others noticed the ship was moving and one, because the crew hadn’t raised it, climbed the ladder and started banging on the hatch. A few seconds later, the hatch was opened by one of the crew, who sounded annoyed when we heard him tell the woman to get back down. Climbing down the ladder after her, but only far enough to tell us a storm was building and we would be kept where we was until it was over, he climbed back out, pulling the ladder after him. Cries from some that they were thirsty went unheard, or more likely, were ignored.

  As it happens, we was only without water for a couple of hours. Due to the movement of the ship, the ones who’d been in their hammocks all got down and were holding on to lengths of honest rope we’d found and already tied onto the ship wherever we could. The storm was blowing hard when the hatch opened and a water barrel was lowered down. A familiar voice told us to move it out the way and then the ladder was lowered and our surgeon hurriedly descended.

  "The storm’s already blown us into the path of the Westerlies and as soon as it’s over, we’ll be using the winds to sail into Cape Town; the Master says we should be there in a day once we’re free of the storm.

  Now that’s the last of our water," he pointed at the barrel, “so, as we don’t know how long the storm will last, you need to make it last as long as you can.”

  With that, he turned and climbed the ladder again then, struggling against the pitch and roll of the ship, raised the ladder behind him.

  As soon as the hatch was shut, Adie stepped in front of the barrel and, leaning over, grabbed the ladle. Straightening, she turned and with the ladle in one hand, the other holding the edge of the barrel, she shouted over the noise of the storm,

  “I think there’s enough here for a ladle-full each, but I don’t know if there’s any more than that.”

  “Well I need a drink now.” It was the woman who’d climbed the ladder. “We’ve not had any storm that’s lasted more than two days since that first one in the Bay of Biscay. So that means we should be on our way to Cape Town sometime tomorrow.”

  She looked at Adie like she’d cause trouble if she didn’t get her way, but Adie looked straight past her and spoke to the rest of us.

  “Now you all know how much we’ve got, so now we need to agree a time when we all want to drink.”

  Looking for the first time at the woman who had demanded her water, but still speaking in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone, she said,

  “We need to agree on one time because, even if only one of us ladles out the water, she’s never going to be sure that anyone who asks for a drink hasn’t already had one. So I suggest we drink either now, this evening, or first thing in the morning.”

  She asked for a show of hands and it was clear most agreed they’d take their chances with the storm and have their ration right away. As it turned out, that was the right decision, ’cos even though when the last person emptied the ladle the barrel was almost dry, the storm dropped in the night.

  Most of us took to our hammocks then and got some rest, but it seemed I’d only just shut my eyes when the sound of the hatch opening, followed by the ladder being lowered, woke me up again. Two of the crew began to climb down the ladder. Above them I could see dawn was breaking and as soon as they reached the bottom, they started fitting the chains back on us. When they finished, they headed straight back to the ladder, but as one started up again the other turned and said,

  “We’ve been travelling towards Cape Town for the last three hours and the Master says we should be there by nightfall. So he’s commanded us to fix the chains back on you – you’ll be kept down here until we’re back on our way to New Holland.”

  He paused before adding,

  “As soon as we get to Cape Town, we’ll be replenishing our water supply. When that’s done, we’ll send down a barrel.”

  I felt like Lazarus when they finally let us back on deck, I can tell you. We’d been held below for four days while supplies were taken on board and we were back out at sea before they let us breathe fresh air again. Up on deck we found that the wind was blowing hard, but not so hard we couldn’t sail under full canvas most of the way to Sydney Cove. I suppose I could tell you more about our daily drudgery, but that’s all it was – drudgery. In fact, because the wind was too hard and the sea too rough, we spent most of the time chained up in the hold, which got more and more disgusting every day.

  It was during the only time that the wind dropped between when we left Cape Town and our arrival in New Holland, that we experienced the one incident worth remembering on that last leg of our journey. We were in the Southern Ocean when we woke one morning to find ourselves becalmed. About an hour later, the hatch opened and a couple of sailors came down and released our shackles. They told us we could go up on deck, which was just as well ’cos we’d been stuck down there for nearly a week and the foul smell from our buckets was overwhelming.

  When we got on deck, me and Adie went different ways; I went to the port side, which turned towards New Holland, while she went to starboard which still faced out to sea. With the drop in the wind, the sky was clearer and the sea flatter, meaning we could see a lot further and in the distance we could just make out land. At first we thought it was just some clouds, but one of the other women had a word with a sailor she’d been getting very close to and it turned out that we were passing Van Diemans Land. We were just taking in the fact that we should reach Sydney Cove in the next three days when the most memorable and terrifying event of the whole journey occurred. With the ocean so still, I had noticed how clear the water was, and it was while I marvelled at how very far down I could see, that a small but growing shape way down in the depths caught my eye. Soon, about thirty feet from the ship and rising steadily towards the surface, the shape was already impossibly large and still growing. I looked around and was surprised to find that not only were all the women who
’d been straining to see their first sighting of New Holland were now staring into the ocean, but that all the rest had come across from starboard and were looking down in the same direction.

  Moments later, the monster broke the surface and continued to rise higher and higher, until it towered over us. What then happened appeared to happen in slow motion. When all of the creature had left the ocean it hung in the air, torrents of water cascading from its body before its weight, slowly at first then gathering speed, returned it to where it had come from. As most of the water was sucked down after the creature, creating a hole above it, we first experienced nothing more than a drenching from the little water that escaped the hole. But after a long moment, one long enough for us to relax, a deluge rose from the hole and engulfed us all in a wall of water. Because we were held by the ship’s rail, no one noticed that with all of us stood on one side, the ship was already listing dangerously. Now the weight of added water that soaked our clothes, left the deck awash and swamped the hold, left our ship on the verge of capsizing. We held onto the rail to keep our balance, but then the voice of the master rang out above the roar of the water and the screams of those who could still breathe.

  “Get over the other side. We’ve got to balance the ship or we’ll capsize.”

  Some of the women who heard him and understood what he was saying started to scramble up the hill that the deck had become, others followed. But that was the tragedy; although enough women scrambled across to allow the ship to right itself, because two set off while the ship was still at its steepest and the deck at its wettest, both slid back and under the rail. No one saw them go and if they cried out, no one heard them. It was only about a quarter of an hour later, when women who knew them were unable to find them, that we realised they were lost.

  Then, even though the wind was picking up again, our surgeon insisted the master turn the ship around and we all hung over the rail straining our eyes into the increasingly choppy ocean depths. We looked for over an hour without any sighting of either of them. It was only then, when we knew they must be drowned, that no one protested when the Master insisted that we return to our original course.