Battle Fleet (2007)

by Paul Dowswell

  CHAPTER 5

  Peculs and Catties

  I felt some trepidation when we first set eyes on Coupang. We had heard a lot about how dangerous these islands could be for sailors like us. But the settlement I could see looked safe enough to me. It was a small town, surrounded by palm trees behind, and with a forest of tall ships in the harbour, here to trade or resupply. Amid all this greenery stood a church, a fort and other European buildings. They looked out of place in the savage splendour of the landscape, dwarfed as they were by the mountains that surrounded the town. The natives had their own buildings in the foothills above. There were scores of little huts, fashioned in a beehive shape.

  The forest shoreline looked familiar enough, but what lurked beyond the settlement? The closer we got to the shore, the hotter and stickier the air became. It drained our strength and teemed with pestilent vapours. I wondered about the alien creatures that lurked in the forest. Were the spiders and snakes as poisonous as the ones we had found in the bush of New South Wales?

  Late on an overcast afternoon we lowered our anchor. There had been no downpour that day but the sky was swollen with rain. Purple light shone through the hazy clouds, giving the place a dream-like air.

  Captain Evison announced we would go ashore the following morning. That evening, as the sun sank over the western horizon, I stood on the deck with Bel and Richard, watching a vivid sunset. Was Richard really going to leave us tomorrow? I couldn’t quite believe it.

  Purple and orange light filled the sky. The world felt utterly still. Bel said, ‘Makes it all worthwhile, dunnit – all the rain and the seasickness and the awful food – seeing something like this. I never seen a sunset like this back in Bermondsey.’

  ‘Did you talk to the Captain about going ashore?’ I asked her.

  She nodded but her mouth puckered into a pout. ‘Mrs Evison wun’t ’ear of it,’ said Bel, mimicking her Lancashire accent. ‘“More than my life’s worth t’tek the risk,” the Captain says. We’re not giving up though,’ she laughed. ‘We’re going to nag him to death about it!’

  She went below soon after and Evison came over to us at the rail. ‘I’m taking a small party ashore to meet the local merchants,’ he said to Richard and me. ‘I’d like you both to come with me.’

  ‘But I’m intending to leave the ship, sir,’ said Richard.

  ‘I know,’ said Evison. ‘Come anyway – you’ve plenty of time to find an American ship. This’ll teach you about trading here.’

  ‘The sly old dog,’ I thought. He wants Richard to stay, and he’s letting him know he’s valued. I was pleased he’d asked me too. He obviously thought we were worth a bit of his time and effort. I knew we could learn a great deal from someone with his experience.

  When Evison had gone I said, ‘You’re not really leaving me on my own with this lot, are you?’

  Richard’s mind was made up. ‘What’s that line from the Bible you’re fond of, Sam? “To everything there is a season …” Well my season in the British Navy, merchant or otherwise, is at an end. I’ll be sad to leave you behind, and Miss Lizzie. I shall miss seeing her every day.

  ‘Come with me, Sam,’ he said suddenly. ‘Or come over to visit when you can. My family would give you a job. We can sail ships together. You’ll make your fortune there. We’re not so bothered about what a man’s station in life is. We take people as they come in Boston.’

  It was a tempting thought.

  Next morning Evison paid him off. Then we took one of the Orion’s smaller boats to the quayside, just the Captain, Richard and me. Although it took a while to get used to it, it was good to put my feet on solid ground again. Richard headed off, keen to find a ship to take him home. He promised he would return to say goodbye, but I watched him disappear into the crowded quayside with a lump in my throat, convinced I would never see him again.

  ‘Won’t we need more of us?’ I said to Evison. ‘Safety in numbers.’

  The Captain shook his head. ‘Natives round here are a pretty docile lot.’

  They seemed quite lively to me and very different from the wild inhabitants of New South Wales. Although most wore little more than a linen cloth around their loins, they were clean and healthy and the children especially seemed bright and curious.

  Evison had a few words of the local dialect and stopped to ask a young man directions. ‘I’ve been here before,’ he said to me, ‘but I need a slight reminder of where to go.’ The fellow disappeared, then returned a moment later with a pail of a slightly milky liquid. The Captain must have used the wrong words. He wasn’t concerned. ‘Try this,’ he said handing over a coin, and offering me a small wooden cupful. It smelled sugary. I took a sip. Cool and sweet, it slipped down like nectar.

  ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Evison with a smile. ‘It comes from those palm trees. Lontars they’re called.’

  ‘Is it coconut milk?’ I asked.

  ‘No, they tap it from the trunk – collect it twice a day. I’d buy it to sell in London if it would keep. We’d make a fortune. But it won’t travel.’

  Ahead of us was a large, noisy crowd. As we drew nearer, I heard angry squawking. It was a cockfight. Evison stopped a while to watch, but I held back, not wanting to look. I saw enough to know the birds had blades attached to their legs. When I was a boy, I had kept three chickens – William, Mary and Matilda – and had grown to love them. As far as I knew, they were still alive in Wroxham. They were so tame they would come to the kitchen door and peer inside, waiting to be picked up. Then they would coo as I stroked their soft feathers.

  This fight had drawn upwards of a hundred people. One bird eventually ran from the battle. But even then its torment was not over. The other bird was held before it. ‘It’s their tradition,’ explained Evison, who had been too wrapped up in the fight to notice I’d turned away. ‘The winner has to have enough strength left to peck the loser three times. Only then is he declared the victor.’

  Evison found his bearings and we headed up a hill away from the harbour, then along a well-beaten path from the main settlement. The chief merchant here was a Dutchman and we soon arrived at his house. It was built in a native style, and was quite grand with a large straw roof and low walls, but light and spacious inside.

  Waiting for us were several of the local chiefs. Unlike the almost naked people on the street, these men were dressed in beautifully embroidered waistcoats that stretched down to their knees. Their legs were covered by long cotton drawers, but none wore shoes or stockings. The room we entered was decorated in the native style, with little in the way of furniture but many plump silk cushions, bordered with fine gold and silver thread.

  As the merchant made his introductions, the chiefs all put their hands together and lifted them to their head. This gesture, I was told later, was known as the salem.

  We were offered a choice of coffee or toddy – a spirit distilled from palm juice. ‘Have the coffee,’ whispered Evison. ‘The other stuff will floor you.’

  Our refreshment arrived in fine bone china cups, decorated in the English floral style. This was the sort of tableware our village parson would provide for eminent visitors. It seemed strangely out of place in this exotic location.

  I sat back to watch Evison negotiate. He had buckles, nails and cloth to sell, and from the start he made it clear that Spanish dollars were the only currency he would trade in. They started haggling over pepper. The merchant suggested twenty dollars per pecul. Evison offered ten and budged slightly to twelve. So it went on.

  ‘Spice above any other item, Witchall. Any Captain will prefer spices. Try not to pay more than a dollar per catty. Good cinnamon will always fetch twelve to fourteen shillings a pound. Cloves a little more. Nutmeg less. Mace is more valuable, and you’ll pay twenty to twenty-five shillings a pound for that.’

  I listened, marvelling at these facts and figures, accumulated in a lifetime’s trading. After Evison had inspected the goods, he bought several barrels of pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg. He marked each with
an elaborate chalk signature over the lid and asked for them to be taken to the quayside ready for loading on to the Orion.

  Then we were taken to another house further up the hillside to look at some cloves, which we were assured had been brought fresh from the islands to the north. ‘They’ve a lot of them,’ said Evison to me, ‘and they’re keen to sell at a generous rate.’

  There were four barrels, and the lid was taken off one so we could inspect them. Evison picked them up and ran the small woody buds through his fingers. ‘When you buy cloves they must feel slightly oily to the touch, leaving a little residue on the hand, and be easily broken.’ He snapped one open and held it up to my nose. ‘They smell fine, now place one on the tip of your tongue. It should taste hot, aromatic, so that it almost burns the back of your throat. A fresh clove has fragrance and yields a thick reddish oil when you squeeze it gently.’

  Then, much to the consternation of our host, Evison put his arm into the barrel as far as it would go. He pulled out a handful and regarded them carefully. Then he shook his head. ‘No, sir, we will not be taking these,’ he said brusquely. We left with only the merest hint of a goodbye.

  I asked him what had happened. ‘It’s an old trick the Dutch play,’ he said. ‘They put fresh cloves at the top of the barrel. But the rest are a mixture of fresh and distilled. They’ve taken them and extracted their juices – you can tell by their paler colour, shrivelled appearance and the fact that many have lost the bud on top. The Dutch sell their cloves by weight, so this makes them an extra profit. There’s another trick they play where they soak them in water to make them heavier, but that’s easy enough to spot when you squeeze them.’

  When we returned to the harbour, Hossack had brought the Orion up to the quayside. I spent the afternoon helping to load spices into our hold, and making final preparations for Orion to leave Coupang. Richard had not yet come back and the thought of having to say goodbye to him lowered my spirits. Just as I was beginning to worry that I had missed his return when I was ashore with Captain Evison, I saw him hurrying down to the harbour.

  I asked Evison for permission to go ashore to say goodbye. As I ran down to Richard, he caught sight of me and stopped in his tracks. He looked suitably solemn for such a sad occasion but as I came close his face broke into a great big grin. ‘I’m not going, Sam,’ he said. ‘There’s an American ship just sailed, and they say there might not be another for six months or even a year. I don’t want to be stranded here that long. I’ll pick one up back in London.’ I cheered out loud and gave him a big hug. ‘Here, steady on,’ he said. ‘I thought you British were meant to be reserved.’

  We had one more stop before we could set sail for home – the port of Bencoolen in Sumatra. I asked the Captain what we might find there. ‘Pepper – can’t have too much pepper, and more nutmeg, cloves, hopefully good ones this time, camphor, timber – the most beautiful teak in the world, and dragon’s blood.’

  ‘So whose job is it to catch the dragons?’ asked Bel.

  Evison wasn’t used to having his leg pulled. Perhaps he thought it was a serious question. ‘It comes from the dragon’s blood palm, lass. A very efficacious crimson powder. It’ll cure the pox or the flux and you can even use it to colour your paints and plasterwork.

  ‘There’s gold here too – somewhere up in the heart of the island.’ He looked over to the shore. Dense jungle began at the very lip of the sea, with just a short strip of sandy beach along the tide line. ‘But there’s headhunters too, and cannibals. So I wouldn’t like to go to the trouble of finding it.’

  Staring into that mysterious interior I felt a deep, almost overwhelming curiosity. Earlier we had sailed past steep mountains that plunged down into the water like the most formidable cliffs you’ve ever seen. I would go, I wanted to say, just to find out what was there. Headhunters with spears. Would they be any match for our pistols, muskets and cutlasses? ‘We could come back here, maybe, when we’re older,’ I said to Richard. ‘Go and search for that gold.’

  From the ship, Bencoolen looked much the same as Coupang. Evison took me and Richard ashore again, but this time we came with six of the toughest-looking seamen on the Orion. ‘There’s plenty here who’ll be out to rob us, so we’ll need to have our wits about us,’ said Evison. We all carried pistols and cutlasses.

  They were quite a different kettle of fish in this port. The buildings here seemed to be in a poor state of repair and many of the natives dressed in filthy clothes and looked as though they never had enough to eat. These ragged people had a desperate look about them, and clamoured around us asking for money. I searched their faces, wondering who among them would turn on us when we refused them. I was extremely glad we had come as a gang.

  ‘Most of them are slaves to opium. It’s what they do instead of drink,’ Evison explained as we walked through dirt-strewn tracks to the merchant quarter. We passed one beggar lying in the gutter. It was difficult to tell whether he was dead or alive.

  ‘Don’t go trying it, Sam, I beg you,’ said the Captain. ‘They say it’s like the most wonderful dream you ever had, then you want to do it again and again and it enslaves you. The rich ones here, they’re slaves as much as the poor. But they have money to pay for it and servants to run their homes and businesses. The poor, they live like starving beggars just to scrape together the money to buy some.’

  Our visit did pass without incident, though I was glad to be back on the ship. It seemed strange to be among so many people with glazed, faraway eyes. Our trade completed and our hold full of goods, we sailed on along the island chain, heading for the Indian Ocean. So far, luck had been with us.

  CHAPTER 6

  Ten Little Daggers

  There was an unnatural stillness in the sky – no seabirds circled our ship. They knew something bad was coming our way. The animals in our manger sensed it. The sheep and goats lay down in the straw, tense and wary. The hens on deck stopped clucking. Even Sydney stopped chattering. He kept flapping his wings trying to get away. I took him and his perch down below to my cabin and that calmed him.

  Thunderstorms had come and gone all the time we sailed through the East Indies – they were just part of the climate here, along with the clammy heat and the occasional whiff of volcanic sulphur. The rain would come down in sheets, the sky would rumble and flash. Then, an hour later, it would be a breezy bright day again. But this one, coming over the horizon on our larboard side, seemed particularly ominous. The sky had the strange inky purple glow which seemed to be a feature of storms in these parts, and the moisture in the air was so dense you could taste it on your tongue.

  Evison had us spend the day preparing for the storm. We brought down the canvas from the lower sails, then the lower yards too, leaving only the topsail yards and canvas to provide some control of the ship if we should drift dangerously close to the shore. It was a difficult job with this crew, lowering the heavy canvas and wood to the deck, and I was relieved when we had accomplished it without injury. The deck was cleared of all the birds and plants. Anything there that wasn’t tied down was going to be swept away.

  Night fell with such all-enveloping blackness I could have believed we had been cast into some purgatorial void. Then the ship was lit by a majestic flash of lightning, which spread across the sky like an upturned, bare, satanic tree. This was lightning I had never seen before – not white but blue.

  That first bolt was our sign to go below – with only a handful of men on the weather deck left to stand watch. The hatches were battened down and all lights extinguished. Bel and Lizzie sought me out and we sat together in the dark. ‘I’ve been in much worse storms than this,’ I said, trying to reassure them. ‘We’ll be fine.’

  Still, I muttered a thankful prayer that we were a good distance from land and only if the storm lasted several days were we likely to be driven ashore. I muttered another one too, beseeching the Lord to safeguard our wormy hull. If the timbers cracked open as we lurched between the waves, the ship would be lost with all ha
nds.

  Rain lashed the ship until the timbers were sodden, seeping down to the stinking hold, drenching every living thing, from bilge rat to Captain. We worked the pumps until our hands were bleeding and blistered, trying to keep down the rising water in the hold. Evison even enlisted the help of the passengers to take their turn. Some complained haughtily that they had paid for their passage and were not going to do the work of common sailors. But when Bel and Lizzie offered to do their share on the pump handles it shamed them into helping out. ‘Come on, Mr Ellis,’ I heard Lizzie say to one of the passengers, ‘it will take your mind off the seasickness.’ There was plenty of that too – making the dark, airless deck an even viler place to wait out this ordeal.

  Then came the thunder, creeping nearer, an unseen menace, loud enough to shake the strakes from the hull. As the thunder passed over our heads, lightning split the sky so close I imagined the ship hit and shattered into a million pieces. Actually, this was worse than any storm I had endured before.

  A rumble of thunder seemed to steal the air from the atmosphere and a blinding flash of light shook the ship from foretop to keel. We heard a creaking, splintering of wood and the braces and shrouds and ratlines shrieking in their posts. A brief silence followed. Then a huge crash rocked the ship from bow to stern.

  One of the passengers screamed.

  ‘That’ll be a mast,’ I said to Bel. ‘I’m needed on deck.’

  I was almost knocked off my feet by the force of the wind and drenched in a second by sheets of blinding rain. Gigantic waves towered above the weather deck on either side. I saw at once the mainmast had been struck close to the deck and toppled. The smell of it smouldering caught in my nostrils. Evison and the officers were out on deck, frantically trying to save their ship. The mast had fallen over the larboard fo’c’sle, mangling the rigging of the foremast and smashing one of the ship’s boats. Now the topmost part of the mast lay broken in the sea, with the canvas on the upper yard soaking up water and giving it greater weight to drag the Orion down. The lower part stood crooked above our heads, trailing a tangle of ropes. Leaning over the rail, I could see the larboard gun ports perilously close to the waterline.