Fletcher of the Bounty

by Graeme Lay

  The members of each mess take it in turn to be mess cook, and they do this for one week at a time. The mess cook also carries out some food preparation, like mixing the flour, suet and raisins for the puddings, then taking them in their bags or nets to the galley boiler. Each mess cook also prepares his men’s table and puts the benches in place for them to sit on. Once the food is cooked and ready to be served, the mess cook collects it from the galley and serves it to his group. There is a tradition attached to the serving of the beef and pork, too. The mess cook carves the meat and distributes it to the others, but he must first call out ‘Who shall have this?’ Then another member of the mess, his back to the table, answers with his name. When all the men have been served and the meal’s been eaten, the others resume their shipboard duties, while the mess cook cleans the table.

  The navy is full of traditions like this, I’m learning, rituals that have been carried out for many years. I enjoy being part of them.

  I only glimpse our commander, Captain Forsyth. He and his officers and the ship’s sailing master lead separate lives. They meet in the Great Cabin and dine together in the officers’ mess. Captain Forsyth puts in a regular appearance beside the helmsmen, though, to check our course. The ten midshipmen — all younger than me, by the look of them — also keep mostly separate from us, the lowest orders. More visible are our first officer, Lieutenant Grove, and the master, Abraham Troy. None of these take much notice of me. I am answerable mainly to the boatswain, Charlie Winscombe, and his mate, Will Anderson. Both are strict but fair, and take the time to show me the ropes when I am uncertain as to how to carry out a duty. Every day I learn something new.

  When the airs are light and the ship is becalmed, we gather on the mid-deck, sing fiddle-accompanied shanties and have wrestling and boxing matches. These are keenly contested. I don’t box, but I wrestle, and have won some bouts.

  Another popular challenge is the leaping contest. This is to determine who can carry out a standing jump from inside one barrel and into another next to it. The efforts cause much hilarity, with most men unable to get clear of the first barrel, let alone being able to land satisfactorily in the one next to it. But I can do it! I bunch my leg muscles, draw several breaths, clasp my hands in front of me, then spring like a frog out of the first barrel and over into the second. This dexterity must be the result of my fitness from the farm work. Whatever the reason, being able to achieve this when no one else can affords me admiration from the others. Also, my forearms are now strong enough for me to be able to hold out a musket with one hand at arm’s length and keep it completely level. I do not wish to sound boastful, but this too is a feat that none of the others can manage. Physical prowess counts for a great deal aboard ship, I’ve learned.

  Academic competence, however, counts for nothing. Most of those on board can neither write nor read, which is why as I write this at the mess table I am receiving some strange looks from my shipmates. A quill to them is a strange instrument, far less useful than their sailors’ knives, to which they are greatly attached. They even grumble at me when I read a book in my hammock by candlelight!

  Every day on the ship I learn something new; every day my respect for the sea deepens. It is my vocation, I am certain of that now.

  I must end now, as my watch impends. I trust that you are well and that you have had recent news from Edward and Charles. Please pass my best regards to cousin John.

  Your loving son,

  Fletcher

  He also wrote to his brothers, and to Isabella, confessing that he would love to see her again, when he had gained enough leave to return to the Isle.

  Captain Courtnay proved to be a dependable patron. After receiving a favourable report of Fletcher’s conduct on HMS Cambridge from Captain Forsyth (‘A young man of definite promise, dutiful, courageous, and educated to an unusual level’), Courtnay had written to his colleague Admiral Hood, requesting that Fletcher be added to the muster roll as a midshipman on his ship HMS Eurydice on her next voyage to the Far East. He had served as cabin boy on Cambridge for just one year.

  Hood sanctioned the appointment, and Fletcher was ordered to sign on to Eurydice. She was to sail on 25 April 1783.

  After being signed off from HMS Cambridge and bidding farewell to his shipmates, he travelled by coach from Spithead to Liverpool, and from there to the island, greatly looking forward to a few weeks on land and seeing again his mother and his cousins. Isabella especially.

  ‘Mother! How are you?’

  ‘Fletcher, darling.’ Leaning back, she stared up at him. ‘I’m coping. And you’re even taller!’

  ‘Ha! Must be all that salt meat and ship’s biscuit.’

  They sat in the garden at Milntown, under the big elm that was bursting into leaf. He told her something of his year at sea, but she showed only token interest in his new life. She said that she had heard regularly from Edward and Charles, and that they had spent Christmas with her on the island. Edward had begun practising as attorney-at-law in London, and Charles was employed as a surgeon at a hospital in Chelsea, but was still thinking of serving in the merchant marine.

  His mother reported all this with more than a hint of reproach that Fletcher was the only one of her sons who was for the time being not within reasonable reach. He reminded himself to be tolerant of her attitude, knowing that she must be lonely for long periods of time. But he still found her carping tiresome.

  ‘Your father’s family have still not accepted me,’ she complained. ‘They keep their distance. Emotionally, I mean. And I do so much miss Cumbria.’

  ‘I understand. I still miss it myself.’ He put a hand over hers. ‘But I am growing to love the sea, Mother. Even when it frightens me, I still savour its moods. And its challenges.’

  She nodded, but sorrowfully, realising that this would mean his continued absence from the island for long periods. After he told her he would like to spend some time in Douglas, and see the Taubmans, he said, ‘And cousin Isabella. Is there a letter here for me from her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I would like to visit her, in Peel.’

  His mother gave him a hooded look. ‘It will not be possible to see her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Two months ago there was a scandal involving Isabella. John reported it to me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Isabella has eloped. To Dublin.’

  For some moments Fletcher couldn’t speak. Then he said, ‘With whom?’

  ‘Her music professor. He’s twice her age. And has a wife and four children in Peel. The elopement scandalised the town.’

  ‘Good grief.’

  He could think of nothing else to say. But he was thinking plenty. It must have been the professor who had schooled her in the arts of love-making as well as pianoforte. And now she had gone, and he would almost certainly never see her again. Well, he wished her good fortune, but that seemed unlikely, since it was an ageing man she had run off with. But he would never forget the night they had spent together. Beautiful, wonderful, wanton Isabella.

  Again he said his farewells to his family on the island and travelled to Spithead. There he was issued with his midshipman’s uniform and signed on for service on Captain Courtnay’s 24-gun ship, HMS Eurydice.

  Familiar with the vessel from her visits to Douglas, Fletcher was now accommodated more comfortably mid-decks along with the other midshipmen, most of whom were five or six years younger than himself. As such, he found some of them tiresome, particularly thirteen-year-old Samuel Evans, who seemed to think Fletcher was his elder brother and never stopped following him.

  The best part of his enhanced status was the midshipman’s dress uniform: indigo coat with white patches on the collar and brass buttons at the cuff, cream waistcoat, white ruffled blouse, black neck cloth, ivory trousers and a belt with a scabbard for a cutlass. The crowning touch was the tall, round, black hat. Whenever he put on the uniform, he felt grand. What a change from the calico trousers, coarse s
hirt and fearnought jacket of his cabin-boy year.

  They set sail for the Coromandel coast of eastern India on 2 May 1783, via the Cape Verde Islands and Cape Town.

  Throughout May Eurydice made steady progress into the South Atlantic. They encountered no enemy vessels, only other British ships-of-the-line to whom they sent flag signals, but did not stop for Captain Courtnay to parley with their commanders.

  For Fletcher and the other midshipmen this part of the voyage was one long lesson in seamanship. Rain, gale or sunshine, they kept strictly to their allotted duties, overseen by the officers: learning the flag signals, taking and recording soundings, marking the ship’s log board, taking observations to mark her position and determine noon, running messages between the lieutenants and the captain. Each midshipman also oversaw and commanded a gun crew, ensured each member had clean clothing and that all gunnery equipment and the powder cartridges were at hand, and that the guns were ready for action at a moment’s notice.

  When off duty they studied the navigation manuals, trigonometry texts and the general skills of seamanship, such as the procedure for hoisting out the launches and catting the bow anchors. Every day’s activities had to be recorded in their log books and handed in to the Great Cabin for reviewing by Captain Courtnay.

  Unlike Fletcher’s shipmates on HMS Cambridge, all the midshipmen were literate, although not schooled to a high level. Evans and several of the others sometimes asked him how to construct a sentence correctly or spell a word (‘It’s “spritsail”, Evans, not “spirit-sail”’, and he consistently misspelled ‘Eurydice’). And every night following supper the young men collapsed into their berths, exhausted from the demands on their day.

  They reached Funchal, Madeira’s capital town, off the west coast of Africa, on 10 June. The midshipmen were not permitted to go ashore there while the ship was being reprovisioned, much to Fletcher’s disappointment. He had read of Captain Cook’s Endeavour’s calling there in August 1768, during his first world voyage.

  Most of the four days that Eurydice was anchored in the Funchal roads he spent aloft, staring at the island’s forested mountains and sniffing the scent of the tropics, the smell of wet earth and foliage and wood smoke from the natives’ cooking fires. He watched enviously as the ship’s launches transferred onions, sugar cane, lemons, fresh beef, brandy and wine from shore to ship.

  Then they weighed anchor again, prepared for the next long reach to Cape Town.

  The day after the summer solstice, 23 June, Eurydice crossed the line. The topsails were close reefed, the course hauled up and the top gallant sails furled. The initiation rituals were observed under the direction of King Neptune, alias boatswain Robert Johnstone. Dressed in a horsehair wig and grey beard, tin crown atop his head and trident in hand, Neptune ordered every midshipman and able seaman who had not previously crossed the Equator to be liberally coated with pitch and galley filth, then tossed by the ‘Trusty Shellbacks’ and ‘Sons of Neptune’ — those crew members who had crossed the line before — into a seawater pool contained in a spare sail extended out from the starboard hull with a yard arm. The captain and officers, most of whom had paid their way out of the ducking by bribing the boatswain with a bottle of rum from their private grog supplies, watched the hilarity from the quarterdeck.

  Fletcher bore the humiliation good-naturedly, and supported young Evans when he almost choked on seawater during his ducking. Fletcher had learned to swim during his boyhood, in the River Cocker, but few of the others could. Evans took his ducking gamely, but as Fletcher hoisted him clear of the water he realised that there were tears as well as seawater running down his cheeks. ‘Just think, Evans,’ he reassured the boy, ‘you’re now a Trusty Shellback yourself. So come next time, you’ll be able to duck others.’

  When he came back aboard, still smeared in filth, Fletcher lay on the deck and stared up through the shrouds into the blue sky and felt satisfied as well as exhausted. From now on they would be sailing in the Southern Hemisphere, where for years he had longed to be.

  Cape Town, 28 July 1783

  Dear Mother,

  I am in Africa! Or, at least, in Cape Town, anchored in Table Bay, at the southern end of Africa. Some repairs are needed to Eurydice’s rudder stock, as well as the need for fresh food and water, so we are in port for at least ten days. On two of those days I have been onshore leave, in the company of some of the other midshipmen. What a place Cape Town is! Looming above the town is a huge, flat-topped fell, aptly called Table Mountain. A river flows down from its slopes, providing fresh water for the town and any visiting ships. Cape Town’s location west of the Cape of Good Hope means that nearly every ship sailing between Europe and Asia calls here for victualling, and does so too on their return voyage. The provisions are brought down to the port in vast quantities: fresh vegetables, grain, meat and wine — all produced in the town’s hinterland and purchased by Eurydice’s purser, George Cutler.

  As it is winter here (yes, so peculiar, winter in July!), a cold wind blows down from Table Mountain, often bringing rain showers, so that we must wear our waistcoats, topcoats and hats when we are ashore. Cape Town is clustered around the waterfront, but could hardly be more different to a British port town. The buildings are very strange, tall, narrow and gabled ornately, with window boxes. Most fly the Dutch flag. The shops along the quay sell very unusual foods: smoked sausages, pickled herring served with sliced onion and gherkins, thick ham soups and spicy fried rice. I tried some of the spicy rice, it’s called ‘nasi goreng’, a dish introduced by the Dutch from the East Indies. Delicious.

  Dutch people gather on the main street and in coffee houses. The women are rather stout and plain, with black gowns and ornate, lacy bonnets. The men too are plump and well fed-looking, most with wigs, black topcoats and always smoking pipes. These Dutch people look at us curiously but do not show any sign of friendship. They do not like the English, I’ve been told, and it shows. Far more interesting are the African people, the ‘Hottentots’ as they are called. We see the men only; their women must be in the little houses at the back of the town, quite separate from their Dutch rulers. The skins of the Hottentots are very black, their hair is frizzy, their lips prominent, their noses flat. Most go barefooted in spite of the cold and their clothes are ragged. They are the beasts of burden for the Dutch and appear to be very strong, their legs muscular and sinewy. Some carry sacks of grain or flour across their shoulders, others pull handcarts piled high with produce or drive wagons pulled by oxen, all heading for the dock. Unlike the Dutch, these natives smile and greet us cheerily, calling out ‘Hay-low Boss,’ ‘Hay-low Boss,’ whenever they pass us on the street. We wave back. I feel rather sorry for them, as they are such poor creatures. I saw a Dutchman threatening a native with a stock whip and berating him with cries of, ‘Lui kaffir! Lui kaffir!’ I didn’t know the meaning of these words, but it sounded very insulting. I didn’t like it.

  I will end this missive now, as the ship’s noon bell has just rung, signalling that dinner will be served shortly. Pleasant as it is to be in port, I relish the prospect of setting sail again, since it means that our long haul across the Indian Ocean will soon be under way.

  I shall ask one of the other midshipmen to dispatch this letter at the town’s postal office when the next one goes ashore.

  Your loving son,

  Fletcher

  By September they were in the Indian Ocean, on a due north course. Temperatures rose again and the winds were accompanied by drifting rain which saturated the decks and sails. The humidity was measured at over ninety per cent, and below decks it was sweltering. Men worked topside only in trousers, their feet bare, kerchiefs around their necks to block the sweat which streamed down their faces. The slightest exertion made it stream more. The seamen inched along the yardarms as they worked the sails, anxious not to slip.

  They re-crossed the Equator on 13 October. A week later, at five degrees north, they were in the vicinity of the Maldives, a cluster of atolls scarce
ly above sea level. Men were posted to the top of the mainmast day and night, as the coral reefs surrounding these islands were capable of tearing open Eurydice’s hull. The waves breaking on the atolls’ reefs were bright white, even at night, so that a man aloft could shout to the helmsmen below to warn of the approaching hazard, but the frequent squalls hid the reefs, necessitating the launch being sent ahead to check that the course was safe. From the decks and rigging they saw palms growing from the cays, and black, loin-clothed figures standing on the strand or fishing from canoes.

  Once safely through the Maldives, Eurydice bore due east for the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait separating Ceylon from India.

  ‘Land! Land ho! Off the larboard bow!’

  They rushed to the rails, and there it was, a dark mound in the mist. India. A tremor of excitement passed through the ship. Some of them had read of this legendary land, and the rest had heard other sailors’ tales. India, land of strange religions and languages, of temples and turbaned rulers, of bazaars, spices, elephants and tigers. And dark-skinned, sari-clad women.

  Eurydice sailed north along India’s Coromandel coast, keeping well off, then into the Bay of Bengal, as far as twenty degrees north. The air was clogged with heat; the sea was the colour of mulligatawny. ‘It’s the water from the Ganges,’ one veteran sailor told Fletcher. ‘The river flowing into the bay.’ And although they were out of sight of land, when they sampled the brown water it was fresh.

  For two weeks they patrolled the region, tacking back and forth across the bay, seeking French vessels to attack but seeing only merchant vessels of the East India Company and native craft called parias, trading between Calcutta and Chittagong. They did not call at Calcutta, located on one of the Ganges’ many mouths, and at the end of January Captain Courtnay ordered the ship to go about and follow a direct southerly course, back down the Coromandel coast.

  With the apparently endless hills and plains of India usually visible off their starboard bow, they were now bound for Madras. There they would take on fresh food, water and firewood, supplies of which were running low.