by John Drake
Horace was amazed at how fast I picked it up because he’d made the mistake of looking at my six feet and sixteen stone and thinking that since I was so big, then I must be stupid. I’m sure he took me on because he thought I’d keep his crew in line. Mr Tadcaster, his First Mate, had sailed with Horace for years, and had used to be his bruiser, but Tadcaster was beginning to show too great an interest in the rum.
Horace was an odd bird in many ways. He knew his job all right or he’d not have lasted five minutes at sea. Not off the African coast, he wouldn’t. And he knew how to pick a crew of good men, even with the Press Gang sweeping London. But he was an old woman in some ways and looked tireder and greyer than his years. And he worried too much. His worst peculiarity, however, was a constant protestation of solicitude towards the men, which meant no starting, flogging or beating. I don’t know how Tadcaster had ever gone about his work. Presumably he’d done it when Horace was looking the other way.
In the event, I had to find my own way when, two days out and running down Channel, one of the men gave back an oath in exchange for an order. He was a Manxman named Jervis, an active and sinewy fellow, hard as nails, who was the fist-fighter among the fo’c’sle hands. He’d been spoiling for trouble ever since I came aboard. Now, I didn’t mind that. It’s perfectly natural for a ship’s crew to sort itself out so as to see whose arm cracks the walnuts. The trouble was, under Horace’s rules I wasn’t sure how to deal with the dark looks and surly mutterings I was getting from Mr Jervis.
But on this occasion he pushed the thing too far, and I had to make my own arrangements. Bednal Green was rolling along steadily, with a fair wind, lines coiled down and with little for the watch to do. Most of the other hands were on deck idling, since the weather was fine. Horace was on the quarterdeck, by the wheel, and Tadcaster was down below with another bottle. Jervis was sitting cross-legged by a companionway sewing a shirt when I told him to shift before somebody tripped over him.
“Gam, ye bugger!” says he, and every conversation instantly stopped. The men looked on eagerly to see what would happen next, and Horace affected not to have heard, although he was barely twenty feet away. Knowing his views, however, I felt it best to be careful, so I turned, and went down the companionway to the lower deck, and beckoned Jervis to follow me.
Jervis got up with a leer and swaggered after me, making lewd signs with his fingers at my back for all his mates to see. There was a lot of laughter but that didn’t matter ‘cos once he was below decks, the swab was mine.
I swept him off his feet by the collar and the seat of his breeches and, swinging him like a sack, I cracked his head smartly two or three times against a nearby oaken bulkhead. I wasn’t angry and was seeking to correct rather than chastise. When I thought he’d had enough, I dropped him on the deck. But Jervis bounced up like a jack-in-the-box! And the rascal caught me a blow on the jaw with the full swing of his arm. I shook my head. That hurt. And it roused my temper too, such that I put my own fists up and let Mr Jervis have what he’d been asking for since first I came aboard.
Later, when he resumed his sewing, his well-blacked eyes, his thick lips and his tapped claret told their own story to the whole crew. And do you know, I never had the least trouble out of any of them after that? Most especially not from Jervis.
And so I learned a most important lesson about the running of a ship. Had I dealt with Jervis at once, as I should have, then I’d not have had to batter him quite so hard. Ever afterwards, I made it my practice on joining a ship, immediately to seek out the “Jervis” among her crew and to thrash him on the spot. I have found this to be a kindly and efficient way to run a ship, and to prove it, every vessel I have had the unhindered mastery of has gone like clockwork with the hands jumping to obey. Oh by George they did, just you believe me!
So in fact Horace got exactly what he wanted out of me. That is, he got his enforcer and bruiser. At first that’s all he thought I was good for. But I soon put him right and in return got back something that I wanted out of him. For Horace had the virtue that he knew talent when he saw it, and once he saw where my real gifts lay, he let me exploit them. Needless to say, this was in the area of trade and commerce.
The first time we came to the transcendingly important matter of bargaining for price was with a Portuguese Jew named Pareira-Gomez who was chief factor of a West Africa baracoon.** A “baracoon” was a fort where wretched negroes were confined awaiting sale to slavers. What follows establishes Fletcher’s involvement in this loathsome trade, of which his only opinion was enthusiasm for the profits involved. S.P. He had a face like a razor and doubtless made his own children pay for their mother’s milk. Old Horace started the dealings but I soon edged him out and he had the sense to leave me to it, where he might have let his pride get in the way. What clinched it was Pareira-Gomez himself. When he and I finally shook hands on the deal, he put his head on one side and grinned like a cobra.
“Boy,” says he, “you sure you not a little bit of a Jew, eh? You pretty damn bloody good bastard!” I shall always treasure those words as the sincere compliment of one expert to another. After that, old Horace left me to make all dealings for the ship. So all went well apart from the fact that we lost a third of our crew from some filthy African pox that also sent Mr Tadcaster deeper into the bottom of a rum cast, and turned Horace into a grey old man.
None the less, Pareira-Gomez got us a fine cargo of blacks in exchange for our trade goods. A splendid piece of business this, since our goods were cheap trash, strong gin and rusty muskets (it being disputable as to which of the two latter commodities was the more deadly to the user). Pareira took quite a shine to me and invited me to go up the coast with him to meet the local king that he dealt with. There, I was feasted and entertained with every imaginable kindness while the king’s warriors gathered in the last of our slaves.
By February of 1794 we were bound for America on the second leg of the triangular trade. We sold our cargo at Charleston, Carolina, at a second healthy profit and took on a third cargo of cotton and tobacco for the homeward voyage. Once we sold that cargo in London we would have made a profit on every penny originally invested in Bednal Green three times over! Do you see the beauty of it?
But first we had to get our cargo home. And while we were in Charleston, we heard some very bad news. The whole town was holding its breath waiting for the Yankee Congress in Washington to declare war on England.
Today, people have forgotten the American war of 1794, for it was overshadowed by events in Europe and it didn’t involve much more than a few single-ship actions at sea. It was all due to the Yankees securing their business interests following monstrous great purchases of American wheat by the Froggie Government. When Bednal Green anchored in Charleston on 10th March, an enormous French convoy of 117 ships, under Rear-Admiral Vanstable, with a couple of 74’s and assorted frigates, was busy loading wheat, up north in Norfolk, Virginia. The wheat was to feed Mossoo the common Frog, since thanks to La Revolution, and all the benefits of liberty and fraternity, the Frogs had so comprehensively buggered the ‘93 harvest that they were facing starvation in ‘94 (serve ‘em right too).
Unfortunately, all that French gold spent in America had tipped the balance of Yankee opinion in favour of Mossoo. So Congress worked itself into a passion, observed that the Royal Navy had for years been pressing Yankees into the King’s service, and suddenly decided that this was cause for war. Of course, what Congress was really doing was keeping the Frogs sweet for next year’s wheat sales.
And a nice little war with England was good business in its own right. It meant that the Yankees could let loose their privateers in legalised piracy against our merchantmen. It had to be privateers since they had had no navy since 1785. But they’d plenty of armed merchantmen ready and waiting, and all Congress had to do was issue Letters of Marque to these ships and a swarm of them would be out into the Atlantic sniffing for British merchantmen — that is, for ships like Bednal Green.
It w
as a dire prospect, for the Yankees were fine seamen and fought like Britons. Faced with this, all we could do was try to get out of Charleston as fast as we could in the hope of being gone before the game started. And there we were lucky, for Charleston was split in its loyalties. Some of the people supported a war, but the tobacco and cotton merchants, who traded mainly with London, didn’t want their markets shut down. So in fact we had every assistance in completing our business, taking on cargo and getting to sea again.
In the event, we very nearly did it. We left Charleston on the 15th, with a fair westerly in our sails, on the very day Congress took the plunge, but before news had reached Charleston. Before nightfall we were out of sight of land. All next day we were on tenterhooks, and every man of us searched the horizon for strange sails. But those we saw made no approach and by the second day we felt ourselves safe.
The only event of note was Mr Tadcaster’s sudden appearance on deck and his epic ascent of the mainmast to escape the blue goblin that had chased him out of his cabin. He was going strongly, calling all hands to his aid in a loud voice, and had reached the t’gallant shrouds, when he let go his grip, all the better to pull something off his back. And so he returned to the deck, hands clenched tight about an invisible neck which he exerted himself to strangle, while bellowing the triumphant words, “Got ye, y’little bastard!”
He landed in the longboat, where it lay in the waist, with a thump that shook the vessel, and once the sailmaker had sewn him snug in his hammock, we put him to rest in the deep. The crew stood bare-headed, the Captain read from The Book, and Matti the Braziliano, mumbled some prayers of his own to such gods as he honoured. I mention this episode as it confirmed my position as First Mate “de jure” as well as “de facto” and I was now a watch-keeping officer immune to the Navy’s impressment.
Then, about mid-day on the 17th February, our mainmast lookout spied a ship bearing down from the north-west. She came on steadily and Horace began to chew his hat with anxiety. North-west was just the direction a Yankee privateer might come from. Horace squinted at our sails and turned to me.
“D’ye think she’ll bear more sail, Mister?” says he. I went through the pretence of looking.
“She’ll take fore, main and mizzen t’gallants, sir,” says I. As usual Horace was running under easy sail. It was typical of him. That way he’d have all the less sail to take in should the weather blow up. It was craven, if you ask me. True, he hadn’t the huge crew of a warship, where a single word would send hundreds of men running to obey. In fact, after the African fever, we’d only a handful of real topmen. But other merchant skippers were bolder than he. Look at the way they drive the tea clippers home from China, nowadays, and with only twenty men in the crew.
But he listened to me on that occasion ‘cos he was frightened, and so Bednal Green shook out her extra sail and plunged along that much harder.
“Heave the log, mister,” says Horace. “See what she’s making.” That was pointless. It wouldn’t make her go a knot faster, but it kept Horace quiet, so I whistled up the two boys and had one turn the sand glass while the other cast the log over the stern and held up the great spool of line for it to run out as the ship left the log behind. I counted the knots in the line coming off the spool. She was going seven and a half knots, which wasn’t bad for a bluff-bowed trader in a heavy swell.
If you ask me, Bednal Green was a grand little ship and was doing her best for us. She wasn’t built for speed, after all. Her hull was squarish in cross section to pack in the maximum bulk of cargo. She was a good, sea-keeping vessel but not fast. You’d never choose to race her against a New England ship with its fine lines, broad spars and deep sails. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we were tying to do on that occasion.
“Seven and a half knots, Cap’n,” says I to Horace, but he knew already. He’d been right at my elbow. He looked at the pursuing sails, now visible from deck level, and he took the brim of his hat out of his mouth for a second.
“Put her before the wind, mister,” says he. “We’ll run for it.”
“With respect, Cap’n,” says I, “we’re already on our best point of sailing. She’ll not do better than this.”
“Perhaps they’re harmless,” says he, nodding at the distant sails. “Mr Fletcher, take my glass and have a look from the masthead.” He gave me his glass and I made the climb up to the mainmast cross-trees.
Now you won’t know what that means, so I’ll tell you. Take a pencil and snap it in half. Lay the stumps side by side on a table, as if they were two sides of an imaginary square. Now take three more pencils and lay them parallel to each other, at right angles across the two stumps, to form a grid, with the long ends of the unbroken pencils sticking out on either side of the two stumps.
Now look at what you have made and magnify it so it’s made of oaken spars, with the longer ones six feet long and six inches thick. Then bolt it all together and place it one hundred feet over a ship’s deck at sea, with the peak of the topmast sticking out of it, and the t’gallant mast lashed to the topmast and rising another fifteen feet above. And that is the cross-trees of a ship — the thing into which I was climbing. Not a piece of work, incidentally, that my bulk makes easy for me.
Once up there, there’s no shelter, no comfort, and the height of the mast exaggerates the movement of the ship so you’re swung like a conker on a string. You need a monkey’s grip and a leather arse just to stay up there five minutes. God knows how the lookouts stand it for hours on end, but then they ain’t humans like you and me, they’re seamen.
The lookout on this occasion was a Londoner named Welles, with a red woollen cap that he always wore. He knuckled his brow respectfully. “Mr Fletcher,” said his lips, but I couldn’t hear him. That far above the sea, the wind was howling so loud that speech was impossible. And there was far more spray about than at deck level. It stung the eyes and drenched your clothes. Welles pointed and mouthed something. I looked but could see nothing other than the endless, grey-green of the waves.
My God but that’s a dismal sight. There’s nothing to make you feel so insignificant as to look from the masthead in mid-ocean. The bloody sea goes on for ever, and it rolls and turns and plays with you. But Welles was tugging at my arm and pointing again. I was looking the wrong way. All too easy when you’re half stupid with dizzy movement. And then I saw it. There it was. I put the glass on it and tried to hold it in view. It took some time, but I got them in the end.
The first thing I saw was the Yankee ensign, then I counted a broadside of at least a dozen guns and saw the decks alive with men: fifty or more against our dozen. And she was forging along with the spray bursting over her narrow bow like breakers on the rocks. She was a ship superficially like our own, three-masted and about the same tonnage. A landsman would never spot the difference. But I could see that she was faster and better armed than us. She had privateer written all over her, and barring some miracle, she must catch us.
It was a moment of intense disappointment. I remembered the times I’d taken prizes in the Royal Navy and thought what capital sport it was, and never thought about what it was like to be on the other end. Well now I was learning and I didn’t like it one bit.
The fruits of months of hard work were about to be taken off me by some damned, greedy, legalised pirate. I was furious and I decided then and there that they weren’t getting my money without a fight. Many times in my life I’ve had to fight for reasons, and in causes, that weren’t mine, but not on this occasion. This time I would fight for myself and in defence of my own profits. They might get the victory at the end of the day, but first I was going to kill some of the buggers.
3
CLIENT: Lady Sarah Coignwood.
INTEREST: Find Jacob Fletcher.
FEE: Unlimited.
(Heading from filing card, transcribed from the shorthand, Samuel Slym’s system, 30th August 1793.)
*
Slym was very neat. He was neat in his clothes, neat in his black,
crop-short hair, and especially neat in his face, which was shaved to within an inch of its life, and the cheeks and chin of which glowed with a red-black shine.
Everything in his office was neat. His desk was bare but for pen and ink and a stack of white, oblong cards each about the size of a man’s hand. The spotless room was furnished wall-to-wall with rows of little drawers: dozens of them, like those for the drugs in an apothecary’s shop. But these were not for drugs, though each was labelled with a neat and mysterious hieroglyph.
Slym stood as Lady Sarah entered, and as he did so this better view of him showed up the contrast between the gentleman that he was trying so hard to be and the thing that he actually was: a bully in gentleman’s clothes. Thick muscular calves bulged through his silk stockings. Big hands with knobbed knuckles thrust through the narrow cuffs of his tailored coat. And cold eyes glared under black brows with all the God-damn-you confidence of a man who’d sent over a hundred felons to the hangman, and always made a special point of going to watch them dance.
“Mr Slym?” said Lady Sarah.
“Slym, ma’am,” he corrected, pronouncing the word like “slime”. “Mr Samuel Slym, at your service, ma’am.”
“Indeed?” said Lady Sarah with a tiny smile at his pretentiousness.