Would five o’clock be acceptable?
Your true friend
Robert
The idea of meeting Robert’s family filled me with trepidation. They were very grand. And what would we wear? We had our sailor’s slops and they were looking threadbare after a trip across the world. ‘We need to go shopping,’ said Richard. ‘Fine clothes ahoy.’
A tailor would take a week to make new clothes. We would just have to go dressed as we were and hope the family would understand. Although we cleaned ourselves up and put on fresh clothes I still felt shabby as we set out for the Nevilles’ London home.
Robert greeted us with a gleeful hug. We had not seen him for over two years and he had grown taller and stouter. He seemed every inch the young gentleman. The boy I had first known on the Miranda had gone. ‘You both need some meat on your bones,’ he said to Richard and me. ‘Good thing we’ve quite a banquet before us.’
We were ushered into a hall even grander than Lord Montague’s. The Nevilles’ house was lit by myriad candles, their light twinkling in chandeliers, casting a warm glow over the plush furniture and rich oil paintings of country landscapes and horses. There were also portraits of several generations of the Neville family. I assumed they were anyway; they all had the same look about them.
As I gazed around at this extraordinary splendour, I was introduced to Robert’s family. There were two younger brothers, Charles and Henry, one already a midshipman by the look of him, the other only nine or ten and dressed in a smart slate-grey jacket. Lady Neville was a vision of floating silk and lace. She offered us both her hand to kiss and whispered, ‘Thank you for saving my son’s life.’
Finally, there was Viscount Neville himself. He too was in grey silk with a bright red embroidered waistcoat. He was every bit as distinguished as the governors and admirals I had come across over the previous few years. He exuded power and authority and I could imagine him being a terrifying man to work under. But to us, he was charm and affability.
We dined on goose, served with several bottles of fine wine. ‘Shame we’ve fallen out with those Frenchies,’ said the Viscount. ‘My cellar’s running low on wine and I’d love to sail over there to replenish it.’
Such food, after months of leathery salt pork and dried peas, tasted unreal. We had enjoyed our pub meals since coming ashore but I had quite forgotten how mouth-wateringly delicious well-cooked food could be. The goose was rich and pungent, and I had to stop myself gobbling it down like a starving dog. I didn’t want Robert’s family to think his friend was some sort of wild urchin.
Richard and I were made to tell the whole story of our near hanging, transportation, and time in New South Wales. We skipped the bit about felling a tree on Lewis Tuck’s cottage.
Some time towards the end of the evening, Viscount Neville fixed me with a stern eye and said, ‘And what of your future, Sam? Do you intend to return to the sea?’
‘I do, sir,’ I said confidently. ‘But not yet. I went to sea to find adventure, and I’ve had sufficient to last me a lifetime. For now, I’d like to spend a month or two on land. I want to enjoy some fresh food and days that aren’t marked out by the ship’s bell.’
‘And would you enlist in the Royal Navy or do you intend to sail a merchantman?’
This was a tricky question. I decided honesty was the best policy.
‘I started with the merchant fleet, sir, and I expect this offers me the best chance of advancement. I can only hope to sail before the mast in the Royal Navy. On a merchant ship I can pick and choose my Captain and companions, and the length of voyage. On a Navy ship I cannot.’
Viscount Neville nodded sagely. ‘You have a wise head on your shoulders, Sam. But you will do well in the Navy. I am prepared to help you become a midshipman, if you would like that. I would be pleased to see you serving alongside Robert again.’
I was flabbergasted, and I replied with care. ‘Thank you, sir. It would be an honour to serve alongside Robert. But I need to think about this. For now, I hardly even know what I’ll be doing tomorrow morning.’
He nodded and turned to Richard. ‘That goes for you too, young fellow, although I would surmise that you intend to return to Massachusetts?’
Richard looked astonished and for a second I saw a gleam of mischief in his eye. His face seemed to be saying ‘You must be joking!’ For one horrible moment, I thought he was going to launch into a wine-fuelled rant about the Royal Navy being full of high-born snobs and being heartily sick of them and their stuck-up manner.
I kicked him under the table. The gleam faded. To my great relief he said instead, ‘I’m grateful for your offer, sir. But I’m set on returning to the United States.’
‘How extraordinary,’ I thought, ‘to have such an opportunity.’ Already I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of my response. I knew in my heart I’d be foolish not to take up Neville’s offer. A country boy like me could never afford the schooling, the uniform, nor the equipment necessary to become a midshipman. And even more crucially, people like me, or more to the point my father, did not have the influence to secure such an appointment. I hoped I had not destroyed my chance by not seizing the opportunity as soon as it was offered.
It was after midnight when we prepared to leave. As we stood in the hall, Viscount Neville called Robert into a room to talk to him privately. Then they both came out to see us off.
‘My coach and four will take you home,’ said the Viscount. ‘You never know quite who you’ll meet out on the street, and you boys are rather close to the rookeries of St Giles and Holborn.’
Robert said, ‘You know, we have a small property to rent close to St James’s Park. You can stay for three shillings a month between you. Father suggested it just now. No sense running up a big bill where you are. You could move in as soon as you like.’
‘What good fortune!’ I said to Richard, as our coach trundled over cobbled streets back to Covent Garden. ‘We can stay here for longer on such a low rent!’
We were both flying! ‘Hurrah!’ we said and burst out laughing. ‘You know you’d be mad not to take up that offer of a midshipman’s post?’ Richard said.
‘I do know,’ I said. ‘But the thought of another endless posting, especially the North Sea in winter, and all that burgoo and scotch coffee, and maggoty meat, and sleeping in the stinking hold alongside hundreds of other seamen, the cat o’ nine tails, bullying bosun’s mates, cannon balls screeching over to take the limbs from my body … it’s all too horrible.’
Richard said, ‘But you’ll be an officer, you’ll receive better food, better quarters, and the bosun’s mates would be doing what you told them rather than hitting you with a rope! And if you pass your exams and become a lieutenant, what next? You could grow rich on prize money from captured warships and see the world.’
His face lit up. ‘On the other hand, you could always come to Boston. Plenty of opportunity there for a lad like you. Think about it, Sam. Even if you take up old man Neville’s offer to train as a midshipman, you’ll still have to go to sea in a man-o’-war and everything that goes with it. Come to Boston, and you’ll work as a junior officer on a merchant ship. You’ll be a captain one day. I hope to be. No chance of that in the British Navy.’
That was a tempting idea too. But I was not ready to leave England, or give up sailing English vessels. I did not like the idea of being a foreigner to my fellows on ship, and leaving England would feel like a betrayal, especially with us still at war with France.
Viscount Neville’s offer dangled in front of me like forbidden fruit. I had meant it when I said I was not ready to return to sea. The dark side of the Navy was still too fresh in my mind. But the money we had made on the Orion would be spent soon enough and I would have to make a living. I wondered what else I could do. London was a city of endless opportunities – I could take a trade, become a craftsman, work on the docks, there were plenty of ways to make a living that didn’t involve going to sea. But I knew one day I would have to, because the sea
was where I felt most alive.
CHAPTER 11
London Life
We moved to our new lodgings in Marlborough Road the next day. It was only a few minutes from St James’s Park. It wasn’t long before I started to get a feel for London, and the place was every bit as exciting as I hoped it would be. Robert visited frequently to take us on trips to the British Museum or public science lectures at the Royal Institution.
But like the Navy, London had its dark side. Right outside our front door were beggar women with babies in their arms, and girls younger than us offering their bodies for money. There were pickpockets and thieves too and Robert cautioned us never to leave a window open in the house, lest we be broken into. ‘The burglars work with young children. They slip them through an open window and the child opens the front door.’
Strolling through St James’s Park, a young lad walked straight into me. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir,’ he said and hurried off. Richard was behind me and saw the boy whip a hand into my coat and take my purse. The two of us hared down the road after him. But when we turned into the back alley we’d seen him dive down, he was there with three other boys, their knives glinting in the dull light. We ran back to the high street as fast as our legs would carry us.
‘We could have had them, Sam,’ said Richard, who felt a little bashful about running away. ‘They were just urchins.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ I said to him. ‘We’re not in the Navy any more. Would you want to kill a boy for a few pennies, or risk your own life for the cost of a meal and a few pints of ale?’
What sickened me most were the public hangings. They were always well attended. One day, the three of us went to St Paul’s Cathedral. Robert’s uncle was the Dean there and we were allowed to climb to the top to admire the view. On our way home we walked into a large crowd close to Newgate Prison. ‘Is this some sort of fair?’ wondered Robert.
‘Naaah, there’s a hangin’,’ said a chestnut-seller.
The crowd was dangerously excited. As they waited, a man with a small monkey running up and down his arm offered extraordinary cures for their ailments. ‘MAGNETIC TRACTORS TO PULL OUT DISEASE,’ he shouted into a voice trumpet, ‘SPIRIT OF PEARL FOR MADNESS AND DROPSY.’ People flocked to hand over their money.
There were children there too – awaiting the spectacle with the same ghoulish glee as their parents. Having almost been the victim of the hangman myself, and seen several executions in the Navy, I knew first hand the terror and anguish behind this display of official justice. Or so I thought.
Ordinarily, none of us would have stayed to watch, but as we walked away the hangman’s victim was ushered through the prison gates to the scaffold in front of the square. I looked on him with pity, but as he appeared the crowd gave a massive cheer. Curiosity made us turn back. I wondered if the crowd would surge forward and rescue him, but a phalanx of soldiers, five deep with muskets and bayonets, surrounded the scaffold.
The man was wearing his finest clothes. He looked like a wedding guest and sauntered up the steps of the scaffold without a care in the world. Raising his hands for silence, he began to speak in a clear, confident voice.
‘My old ma always told me I’d die with my boots on.’ The crowd laughed and whistled its support. ‘But I’ve had plenty of fallings out with the old witch and I’ve always delighted in proving her wrong.’ He kicked his boots off and threw them into the crowd. There was a frantic struggle to claim them.
Speech over, he waved and removed his hat, so the hangman could slip the noose around his neck.
‘He’s got enough pluck for ten men,’ said Robert.
The deed was quickly accomplished as his friends tugged at his feet to hasten the work of the rope.
Richard understood what that performance was all about. ‘It’s his way of cocking a snook at the authorities,’ he said. ‘He’s supposed to be terrified. But if he can show them he doesn’t give a fig then he’s won. The crowd came here to cheer him on. They want to raise two fingers to the establishment too.’
The longer we stayed in London, the safer we felt. We’d been in combat and knew we could handle ourselves in a fight. As the weeks went by, Richard and I became careless about the areas we visited. Although we never said as much, we would dare each other to see who would be first to back out of a dangerously seamy riverside pub.
One Tuesday afternoon we were in the North Star close by Southwark dockside. Most of the dinnertime trade had come and gone. Now there were just a few stragglers – the roughest-looking men in the pub. They looked so villainous and seedy among the dingy furnishings I thought Mr Hogarth would have loved to sketch them as subjects for one of his engravings.
Two of them, on the far side of the room, were engaged in an endless game of vingt-et-un. One had several fingers missing, the other an eyepatch. Each swore like a trooper (which they probably used to be) when they lost to the other, slamming down his cards in a fit of temper. I kept expecting the landlord to come over and stop them gambling in his pub, but instead, when trade died down, he went to join them.
To our right were another couple of brutes. They started off talking in whispers but the more they drank the louder they became. One had recently been released from Newgate Prison. ‘It’s better than the workhouse, I tells yah. If you got money, you can get anything y’like. Brandy, couple o’ doxies, even the keys to the front door.’
When they ran out of conversation they started playing dice. Looking round at us, one of them said, ‘You look like useful sorts. You boys is sailors, aincha? Come an’ join us. See if y’can beat us.’
Neither Richard or I had ever gambled in our lives. I was about to make an excuse when Richard said, ‘Just need a leak, mate, then we’ll be with you.’
We both went to the urinal on the other side of the building.
‘Is this a good idea?’ I said. We were both a bit drunk, and I was feeling rattled.
Richard sniggered. ‘They look like a right couple of villains. Let’s just sit with them for a bit and see what they’ve got to say for themselves.’
They introduced themselves as John and William and bought us a couple of pints of ale. We began to play a dice game called hazard, where you have to guess the number to be thrown. We had seen enough sailors play to know the rules. John placed a farthing on the table, and I matched it with an identical stake. Drunk though I was, I noticed how low his bid was and immediately began to feel better. This didn’t feel like a swindle and sure enough, we kept playing for similarly low wagers, money crossing to and fro in almost equal amounts.
They weren’t out to cheat us, they were sizing us up. We carried on buying each other drinks and listened to them boast about their adventures with the ‘night plunderers’, as the warehouse robbers called themselves. We carried on drinking, playing along with them, fascinated to discover what they were up to.
‘You boys lookin’ to earn a couple o’ bob?’ said William. ‘There’s a merchantman just come in from the West Indies. Hogsheads of tobacco and sugar. There for the takin’.’
We wobbled our heads side to side, trying to appear noncommittal.
I started to feel uneasy when some of their friends joined us. One told us he made a packet as a body-snatcher, supplying fresh corpses for medical students to dissect. ‘You boys game?’ he said. ‘There’s ten shilling in it for you. I know plenty at the hospitals who’ll take ’em. Got your own spade? There’s two fresh graves at St Anne’s, Limehouse. We’ll have to go tonight, mind, before someone else nabs ’em.’
We kept turning down their offers of ‘work’ and they began to get suspicious. ‘You aint noses are you?’ said John.
It was time to go. I should have been more frightened but I was now so drunk this all felt like it was happening to someone else. They followed us out into the street and we were dragged into an alley. ‘This is it,’ I thought, ‘we’re going to get murdered.’ I expected to see the flash of a knife, but we weren’t worth killing. A punch to the stomach winded me a
nd as I doubled over I could feel my pockets being fleeced. Then they were gone. We both lost a few shillings. I thought we got off lightly.
This was Richard’s cue to leave. Next morning, as we nursed our hangovers, he announced, ‘Fun’s over. Time to go before something nastier happens!’ I supposed it was time for me to visit my parents in Norfolk too.
Richard’s departure was swift. Almost at once he was taken on to a returning American merchantman. On the night before the ship sailed, we dined with Robert at his club. ‘You must visit Boston, the both of you!’ said Richard. ‘I have no doubt we will see each other again.’
I was sure of it too, otherwise I would have been dejected to see him go. Richard had been my greatest friend. He was like a brother. After we bade farewell to Robert he said, ‘You’d have a brilliant future in Massachusetts. My father would find you work. You’d soon make your fortune.’
We talked long into the night. The next day he walked up the gangplank and shouted, ‘See you in Boston!’ Then he was gone.
In their letters my mother and father were increasingly indignant that I had not yet visited them. I had been in London three months now, so they did have a point.
It was a slow and tedious journey back to Norfolk. The countryside of England was winter weary. My companions in the coach were a corpulent merchant, his mean little wife and their sour-faced daughter. ‘Not long till spring,’ I said with a smile. But my attempts at starting a conversation were haughtily rebuffed.
I had written ahead, and when I reached the coaching inn in Norwich my father was there with my brother Tom, waiting with the horse and cart. I’m embarrassed to admit there were tears when we met.
CHAPTER 12
Back from the Dead
My father looked in rude health and Tom seemed to have grown up. He was still shy but had developed a certain steeliness – no doubt after one too many farmers had sold him rotten vegetables.
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