Celeste

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by Roland Perry


  They forced the novice sailors into a humiliating baptism ceremony, throwing them in the pool where six men (called Tritons) all but drowned them by forcing them to swallow as much salt water as possible. One sixteen-year-old recruit, whose parents had pushed him against his will into life as a sailor, was so terrified that he hid in a cabin. He hated the sea and sailing, and could not swim. He was dragged kicking, screaming and crying to the pool of terror, where he received the roughest treatment of all.

  ‘You have to stop this!’ Lionel told the captain.

  ‘I can’t do anything before sunset,’ he replied helplessly, ‘otherwise they’ll give me the same treatment.’

  The teenager was carried semi-conscious from the brutal ordeal to a cabin. Later in the evening he developed a fever. He wandered to the deck in a delirious state, intending to throw himself overboard. One of the former Tritons spotted him perched on a railing about to leap and rushed forward to pull him back. The boy was locked in a cabin and put under guard until he recovered.

  CHAPTER 34

  Watertight

  All concerns were soon swamped by a huge problem for everyone on board. The heat was oppressive and the Croesus had not made much progress for a week. The captain had turned off the engine and proceeded under sail with the aid of a strong breeze. But when the wind died the engine was not stoked up again. Passengers wanted to know why. A four-man delegation, including Lionel, was sent to inquire. After a long meeting, Céleste cornered her husband and demanded answers.

  The issue of the silent engine would have to wait. There was a more pressing problem. Pale and near tears, Lionel broke the news to her, ‘There’s no more drinking water.’

  He explained that a window had not been shut in time during a swell. Waves had swamped the main tank, ruining the fresh water supply. On top of that, machines that could condense steam and create a large supply of fresh water daily were broken. The alternatives in the oppressive heat were to drink the copious amounts of alcohol on board, which the crew was intent on doing, or soda water. Lionel bought bottles of the latter, but Céleste was wary.

  ‘This effervescent water can cause dysentery,’ she warned, ‘an illness which in the tropics is similar to cholera. You can die from it in a few hours.’

  On day three of the water crisis they were forced to consume beer and undiluted wine that ‘burnt out stomachs without quenching our thirsts’.

  They prayed for rain, but the blue sky was clear, the azure water calm, and there was not the slightest breeze. In this situation no movement was much worse than a storm. They drifted towards their now hoped-for destination, the Cape of Good Hope on the coast of South Africa. The working crew, drinking alcohol, suffered most from dehydration. Engineers, stokers and carpenters worked in the hold while sailors and officers manned the pumps day and night. But every passenger felt the pressure. The livestock began to die of thirst and were heaved overboard.

  On the fourth day of misery, Lionel and Céleste were sitting on deck under a window, which was open on the captain’s cabin. Unseen by those inside, they could hear the conversation between the captain, an officer and the first mate.

  ‘If God doesn’t help us, we’re finished,’ the first mate said.

  ‘What about the repairs?’ the captain asked, subdued.

  ‘Hopeless! As soon as we seal up one leak, a large one develops alongside.’

  Céleste and Lionel looked at each other in dismay. After a few seconds, the first mate said, ‘The hull isn’t strong enough to cope with the propeller’s motion. This is causing all the planks at the stern to move apart. The water keeps coming in. It would take four hours or more at the pumps just to empty out the water we’ve taken on in an hour.’

  Lionel admitted to Céleste that he had known about the problem for some time. He held her in his arms and wept, not for himself but for her and Solange. Céleste told him not to cry. She was stoic and fatalistic.

  They then heard the captain say they would take three days to reach the Cape of Good Hope. But the officer was adamant they would not make it. He wanted the crew to prepare lifeboats and order the second-class passengers to stay on deck for the night. The captain refused, saying that would alarm all the passengers.

  Most passengers chose to sleep on the deck anyway. The next day a light breeze raised hopes. The stricken boat began to move towards the Cape but now with an alarming roll from side to side, and it sat three metres deeper in the water than when they had first set sail. In other words, the vessel was sinking, slowly and imperceptibly. Ballast and provisions were dumped to reduce the forty-tonne load.

  A boat was spotted on the horizon but did not come to their rescue, despite frantic signalling. Lionel was almost suicidal with despair for having invited Céleste and Solange to come with him. He’d known the risks, he said, but his feelings had overridden his good sense. Céleste remained brave as women cried and men quarrelled.

  ‘They all lost their heads,’ she recalled.

  When the situation seemed hopeless, it was announced that the engine was repaired. The captain consulted the four men representing the passengers, who reported that the passengers wanted him to take the gamble and use the engine. He then made a hard-headed decision to use steam, knowing that the force and thump of the propeller would separate any loose planks with each jolt. More water would seep in and the Croesus would sink further.

  The engines were stoked up. They had to work harder than ever to slug through the water, but progress was made.

  The captain told Lionel in confidence that it would be touch and go to make the Cape, as the ship ground and groaned its way through the night. Dawn brought cheering as the Cape could be seen. They reached it an estimated six hours before the boat would have sunk, justifying the captain’s decision to gamble and use the engines.

  The damaged Croesus had to be put in dry dock for repairs that would take an unspecified time. It was an enforced, unwanted vacation for the passengers, who after two, at times agonising, months at sea were keen to reach their destination.

  After several weeks’ repairs in Cape Town, the boat struggled for another six weeks across the Indian Ocean and round the south coast of Australia to the colony port of Melbourne. At one point when everyone on board was straining to see landmarks, a flock of small birds flew to meet the ship and perched in the rigging. This mass landing signalled that the boat was close to land. The passengers cheered. After four gruelling, dangerous, intoxicating months, mostly at sea, they were close to their final destination.

  The captain took no chances. He sent for a pilot boat and relied on sail, rather than the problematic engine, to slip through the heads of the horseshoe-shaped Port Phillip Bay, where Melbourne was sited. It was mid-morning on 15 April 1854.

  Céleste noted that Solange, Marie and most of all Lionel were happy. She was both nostalgic and depressed at arriving at a place of exile, halfway around the world from her beloved Paris. Yet she was optimistic. The journey had drawn her closer to Lionel. Amid the stress, strains and extreme challenges of the trip she had seen more of the man from the Café Anglais, who had been so gallant in the first hour they’d met. If this was the real Lionel after all, then she had hope that she could overcome all the future tests and trials that were sure to come in this wildest of frontiers.

  CHAPTER 35

  Trials in a Wild Southern Town

  Ten other boats arrived from Europe before the month-delayed Croesus, and one of them held a small crate of Céleste’s Mémoires. The book had been a controversial hit in France, rising quickly to the top of the bestseller list. The crate of ten books would remain in a local Melbourne publisher’s warehouse, their contents in French and unlikely to be translated into English.1

  The Chabrillans were oblivious to all this as the Croesus, surrounded by a score of craft, drifted into the Bay under sail. On dropping anchor off Sandridge (later Port Melbourne), Céleste said her goodbyes to many passengers. While she was a little sad to see them go after sharing so many m
emories and experiences, more bad than good, her regrets were few now that the ordeal was over. Lionel went off alone in search of accommodation. He had been in Melbourne briefly before returning to Paris and thought it would be wiser to go alone around the town, much of it trudging on foot in the mud.

  As the passengers disembarked, Céleste was alarmed to see a contingent of port guards and soldiers man the boat. The authorities feared the crew members would try to jump ship, as many others had, to join the gold rush to the north in the towns of Ballarat and Bendigo.2

  A brawl broke out. Shots were fired and police reinforcements aided the guards and soldiers. Many sailors were put in irons and ferried to prison ships, at least for the two-week duration of the Croesus’s stop in Melbourne before its onward journey to Sydney.

  The ferry services in the Bay finished at 8 p.m. and Céleste retired to their cabin for the night, realising that Lionel would not reappear until the next day. Céleste had trouble sleeping. She had just drifted off when she was awoken by loud hammering. Incensed, she dressed and climbed on deck to protest only to be shocked to see a coffin maker at work. A body draped in a British flag was lying on the deck. The coffin maker lifted the flag for her. She was deeply saddened to see the boat’s ‘boy’, the lad who had been so terrified by the crossing-of-the-equator ‘baptism’ that he had tried to jump overboard. Céleste was speechless and did not inquire how his end came. She would never know if he had succeeded in a second suicide attempt or had been stricken by illness. His demise was a reminder, not that she needed one, of the perils of being at sea for so long.

  ‘I can’t believe the changes in Melbourne,’ Lionel said when he returned in the morning. ‘It’s only been a year, but prices have doubled everywhere. Carriage rides are exorbitant. Café food is ridiculously priced and rents are ruinous.’

  He looked disturbed. Céleste asked, ‘What’s the matter, darling? What else is bothering you?’

  ‘You know me too well.’ He sighed. ‘An old friend from Berry, the Duke d’Esclignac, died in July of last year in the direst poverty. He’s been buried in an unmarked grave in the main cemetery. It’s gone unrecorded. I tried to find it, but it’s impossible.’

  ‘We can create a memorial for him . . .’

  ‘More than that. We’ll have a ceremony befitting his status.’

  Marie imagined Australia to be a land where everyone was carried about on palanquins.3 Instead, they took a slow steamer up the Yarra Yarra River to a makeshift quay at the Melbourne Terminus, which was under construction (and would later be known as Flinders Street Station).4 The previous month of March had been unusually wet, and from the Croesus Melbourne had looked lush and green. But close up the fields by the Yarra were uncultivated. Céleste noted ‘scraggy, sickly livestock, some of them dead and left to rot in the sun . . . the few trees are misshapen . . . lined up in battle formation like a regiment of hunchbacks’.

  Her feelings were not helped by the way they were treated at the terminus. The porter fees for their considerable luggage were high, and finding someone willing to take it all on a handcart was difficult.

  ‘We followed behind, paddling through the mud like poodles. The roads had potholes . . . Lionel helped push the cart.’

  After an hour and a half they stopped at an eating house, which was not quite the Café Anglais. ‘The bread, butter, eggs, ham, sauerkraut, beer and even the coffee seemed off,’ Céleste noted. ‘The cost of sixty-eight shillings was far too high for this feast that was inadequate in every way!’

  The group set off again. Céleste carried Solange, who carried their talking parrot, which fell silent as they trudged onward. Marie, no longer dreaming of palanquins, straggled on with a dog under each arm. They crossed Melbourne’s central street, which looked like a fairground.

  ‘The shopkeepers were not dealing in gingerbread,’ Céleste noted, ‘but in gold.’ They were gesticulating wildly to attract miners wishing to sell their nuggets, large and small.

  ‘There is movement everywhere,’ she wrote. ‘Everyone yells; it’s exactly like the Paris money markets.’

  Along the main street were shops that sold everything, forerunners to general stores and, much later, the shopping emporiums. Dresses, York hams, hats, miners’ boots, candles, perfumes, pickaxes, children’s toys and a thousand other items could be bought by the discerning and undiscerning newly gold-rich miners. Then they would go to the hotels to unload their surplus money on beer, whisky and rum.

  Beyond this frenzied circus of eager transactions were some brick houses, huts and tents.

  Céleste was most unimpressed with what she observed of her new home city. Paris, with its boulevards, dance halls, castles and grand homes, seemed a painful distance away. She also abhorred the local manners. People pushed every which way and were most reluctant to stop and give directions. As a result they took the wrong tracks and were soon lost in woods.

  ‘I’m not going on!’ the carter said finally.

  ‘Oh, yes you are, my friend,’ Lionel said.

  ‘Bugger you, cobber! We’ve been up hill and down dale, and along wrong tracks. I’ve done twice as much as I should for the payment!’

  Lionel was seething. He stared at the carter, who began to wander off.

  ‘Hey!’ Lionel yelled. ‘Stop there!’ He pulled out his pistol and pointed it at the carter’s head.

  ‘No!’ Céleste said. ‘Lionel, please . . .’

  Marie started crying.

  The women’s reaction gave the carter pause. He walked back to the cart and began hauling it again.

  He pushed on, grumbling, for another hour until they reached some huts in the middle of a forest. The two-level house was poorly constructed, but none of them cared. It was late; they had somewhere to sleep that night.

  Céleste was alarmed to learn the next day that they were in an area called Collingwood and its isolation made it a favourite haunt of Melbourne’s worst criminals. She imagined that everyone in the area looked like a ‘veritable bandit’. Lionel, cool-headed and stronger than she had ever seen him, was less perturbed, even though everyone was armed. He settled Céleste’s mind a little by saying that the weapons were for defence rather than attack. Road repairs were going on nearby and Céleste noted that the workers were shackled ‘like horses in a field’. The guards carried muskets. Some of these men had been shipped from the Sydney penal settlement; others were local miscreants.

  Lionel wasted no time in opening the consulate, using a room in the house as his office. Within a day there was a stream of clients wanting assistance. Most had stories about confidence tricks, theft and daylight robbery. Many wanted repatriation to France and soon it was like a combined doctor’s surgery and solicitor’s office, with never-ending tales of woe, some of them atrocious. At the end of day three, a 26-year-old Frenchman, Louis-Édouard Manceau, came with perhaps the worst experience short of death. He had been ambushed by six thugs in Collingwood, who broke his arm and shot him in the leg. He ended up in the Royal Melbourne Hospital for three months and had only been out for two days. Manceau had no money and no food. Lionel felt sorry for him but explained he did not have the authority to ship him back to France at the government’s expense. Instead, he gave him some money from his own pocket and said he would be his guarantor if he could raise funds for himself. Manceau was consoled by Lionel’s idea that the man’s mother might meet the cost of the trip back to France.

  Hearing this conversation from the other side of the thin partition, Marie commented that if the count continued to be that generous they would not have the money to buy the not-so-pure water, which was dearer than wine, from the over-used Yarra, which doubled as a sewer. Yet Lionel could not deny his own heart, which went out to those suffering and less well off in the new territory. He could not resist the plight of a stonemason father of three from Berry, whose wife was ill in hospital. In a moment of inspiration, Lionel bought a tombstone for twelve pounds, the equivalent of 300 francs, and paid the man to engrave something for t
he unfortunate Duke d’Esclignac’s grave. He and Céleste went to the Melbourne Cemetery but could not find the grave in the large area set aside for paupers. They ended up leaving the stone by the entry wall.

  ‘Lionel’s good intentions were not really wasted,’ Céleste noted cryptically. ‘The stonemason profited from them. But we are poor enough already without wasting 300 francs.’

  May brought torrential rain. It swamped their unstable dwelling and Lionel had to work under an umbrella. The southern winter had come early and the Chabrillans experienced cold they normally associated with January in France. Wood was also expensive, but at least it burned long and economically.

  Céleste felt uncomfortable in dangerous Collingwood and could not sleep. She was also bothered by rats that were ‘fighting each other to eat my shoe’. When an Irishman was murdered for his tools just a hundred metres from their home, they decided to move to a small four-roomed brick house in Victoria Heights, located between Melbourne and Port Melbourne, with a view of the Yarra and Richmond village. The rent was high at ten pounds (250 francs) a month, which was not much less than Lionel’s salary.

  In the following months Céleste turned her idle time to writing in French and learning English. She was unsettled in her new life, but it had given her a fresh start with Lionel, despite the hardships. She observed, sometimes acutely, the rapid growth of a new city and a population of mainly immigrants, some of whom coped and some of whom did not. She was damning of the farmers and stockbreeders, the real pioneers who had arrived in the decades before the gold rush in 1851. Some had acquired vast tracts of land and made it tough for newer immigrant farmers to establish themselves. The available fertile land, it seemed, had all gone. Céleste foresaw a problem when the gold dried up and miners would be forced back into Melbourne to look for scarce work.

 

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