Nobody’s Child

by Andrew Wareham

  “Strange! Some men are lucky, some are not… Throughout their whole lives, sometimes.”

  I was one of the lucky ones, I think.

  So was Maneater, he was using his arm again before we made the harbour at Bombay. Had he been aboard a naval ship I think it ten-to-one he would have lost that arm. Too ready by far to take out the bone-saw, navy doctors.

  We stayed in the harbour overnight, which may have been a mistake. The mosquitoes feasted on us.

  Master Gunner looked at the padlock on the heavy chest and sneered.

  “Big and strong and I much doubt I could cut through it, or pick it, or force its jaws apart. The chain, however, is made of wrought-iron links, hammer-welded together. What one hammer has joined, another can put asunder.”

  It took him twenty minutes to select the most easily accessible link and to use hammer and cold chisel on its weld. The chain sagged away, taking the lock with it. He opened the very ordinary hasp underneath and set to pulling out canvas bags of coin.

  “Mostly silver, Captain Marker. Maria Theresa dollars, such as are used much in trade throughout the whole of the East. Some gold, though… perhaps one bag of gold for ten of silver.”

  They weighed the coin and decided that there was the better part of two thousand pounds sterling there.

  “All to the shares, lads. Divvy-up this lot in Bombay. You’ll have money in your pocket in Bombay. Best we stay there for an extra week.”

  Captain Marker told me I was a three-share man now, for having behaved well at the Plate and now in this little fight. I pocketed more than three pounds in that share out.

  “A bottle of good gin costs a penny in Bombay and a clean girl is available for sixpence, and that’s for the whole night with breakfast thrown in come the morning. Lay down ten shillings and we shall not see thee for a week, Giles, and they will bring thee back in a chair, for not having the strength left to walk.”

  “What do I get for a whole quid, sir?”

  “A Christian burial – you’ll die from sheer exhaustion!”

  The fevers hit a week later.

  We were lucky, it was not the cholera or the spotted fever, nor was it the dreaded Yellow Jack. This was merely the recurrent fever, the ague.

  I woke up with a headache and rolled out of my cot swearing, then swore a lot more as I fell down, my legs simply refusing to support me. My guts seized tight on me and I began to crawl towards the heads. I didn’t make it.

  Half the crew were suffering in the same way. The remainder got out the salt-water hosepipe and manned the pump and washed us down. The cold water did some good in itself, bringing down the fever that had hit within the first minutes. They laid us out on the deck shivering in the hot sun and Jerry came round and dosed us with bark. We had no surgeon, but Jerry knew about the ague and its treatment – he was a clever man and bark was sufficiently well known in the naval world, there was nothing surprising in the remedy. The sole cause of amaze was that the owners of a privateer had chosen to spend money on medicines.

  Four days and I was on my feet again, half a stone lighter for having sweated the flesh off and weak at the knees but recovering fast.

  “You’ll get it again, Giles. Be alert to the symptoms. Was I you, I should buy a glass jar of bark in Bombay, for knowing that you will need it next year, or the one after. I shall show you how to make it up.”

  I took Jerry’s advice. Over the years I put a canvas ditty bag together with a jar of bark, well sealed with lead, and a bottle of laudanum and boxes of James’ Powder and another bottle of pure alcohol for washing wounds. I had a needle and strong thread as well, for stitching, which saw some use. Better than relying on a ship’s surgeon – they can cut a leg off or give a dose of mercury for the pox, but they don’t generally know much else, and the buggers never wash their hands, either. Never did fancy the idea of a surgeon treating a man for clap one minute then grabbing a needle to sew up a cut in me the next; call me squeamish if you want, I just didn’t like the practice.

  Something that interested me was that some of the men never fell to the fever. They simply didn’t get sick. Luck I suppose, or maybe clean living, or perhaps the opposite… Strange.

  Jenny Dawes sailed through a calm ocean, luckily, the sloop in line, and those of us who had been caught by the fever recovered. Took the better part of a month before I felt strong again and able to stay on my feet working for a whole day. Jerry reassured me that the recurrent fever only hit hard the first time, that it was far milder in its later attacks.

  “Until the last one of all, that is, Giles. It will kill you one day, but possibly not for another seventy years, by which time it may be too late. But it might do for you next month. Most sailors I’ve known have lived out their three-score-and-ten, just going down with the agues once every couple of years before the fever comes out and gets them at the last, but it might be that the fever’s only released because they’re dying of something else already. I don’t know. Nobody knows. But keep your bark close to hand.”

  There’s a fresh jar on the bedside table, ready to be made up at need.

  There’s no harbour as such at Bombay; like Madras for that. It’s a roadstead and ships anchor offshore and offload cargo and crew alike into surf boats to go into the beach. Can be a very dodgy business, on occasion, if there’s an onshore wind and the waves are high. Wasn’t too bad when we came to anchor and put our little into the boats to go ashore to auction; made it to the beach almost dry shod.

  There was always a sale for elephant’s teeth in Bombay. It seemed that the African sort was preferable to their own Indian ivory. I never did discover why. Rhino horn went for more than its weight in gold – amazing what old men will believe, ain’t it? The rest of the stuff fetched a few pounds but was insignificant compared to the two main items. There was sufficient to give us a good time for a fortnight and to restock the holds with rations.

  Captain Marker took me along with him for a few days, not on the razzle but to confer with local merchants and with officials of John Company.

  He explained why.

  “Thing is, Giles, that we must never tread on the local men’s toes. The Company has its own Navy – the Bombay Marine – and if they declare us pirates then we shall have a very torrid time of it. We won’t survive, in fact. The Marine is at least as efficient as the Royal Navy, and many might say more so, and they have an enviable record for running down pirates. So we must choose our customers carefully, and that means to discover where the Company has friends and take ourselves only where it has not. The local men – they call themselves Country Merchants – will also have much to tell us, if we ask and they wish to.”

  I did not understand why that meant that I must accompany him.

  “You’ve got the accent, Giles. You sound like an English gentleman of the new sort. I don’t. I speak like a merchant. You sound toffee-nosed, like they taught you at your school, I don’t doubt. Sound like one of them and they’ll tell you things they might not mention to me.”

  He was right, of course. Found it often since – speak with the ‘right’ accent and you will be told a lot that common peasants won’t hear. You’ll get away with things as well – a couple of times I’ve found that ‘I say, my dear chap’ will disarm an army officer who is enquiring just why one happens to be where one should not. I needed to talk to the Duke once – Wellington, that is – and just walked into his headquarters dressed smart and using the accent, got all the way into his personal quarters. I was delayed half an hour there until the young lady was free to leave, but I spoke to the man far more quickly than if I had gone through the proper channels. Mind you, it was a Guards battalion providing his protection that week – it might have been different had it been a Line regiment with professional officers.

  I was still learning, that first time in Bombay, the world fresh and new and everything fascinating… though it still is that – amazing sort of place, when you consider it. I get up every morning and see something new, something sur
prising. I suppose the most surprising thing is that I get up – at my age I can’t take that for granted.

  The country merchants in Bombay were a strange lot, especially to a youngster fresh from a sheltered existence in England. Many of them were Scots, the majority probably, most of the remainder English and a few Welsh. Not a single Irishman among them; that I noticed and wondered why. I never did find a certain answer, but I was told that the Irish tended to be found in America and Canada but seemed rarely to travel East. Peculiar.

  They found time to speak to Captain Marker, and I did not know why. They were almost all rich men and with big trading concerns and I could not imagine how they should be interested in the captain of a small ship, until I had sat and listened two or three times to their meetings. They were adventurers, almost to a man. These were fellows who had taken chances, borrowed – or perhaps stolen – funds and had set them at risk, trading in the princely states of India, the parts that were out of the control of John Company. They had ridden out into dangerous lands – and not all who tried that came back again – and had managed to trade and bring goods back and make their profits - big money, very often. Once established, they stayed in their warehouses in Bombay and let the traders come to them, but they were still, many of them, wild men at heart.

  Captain Marker was proposing to go into the wild lands, to take his ship into strange waters, and no few of the country merchants wished they might do the same, and knew they would have done, had they been younger and without families and rich firms to nurture. They told us of the rumours they had heard and of the possible source of fortune and trade goods. Captain Marker was right. They spoke more easily to me than to him.

  “Do you see, Mr Jackman, that I hear word from faraway places, and remember it, ye ken, but I do nae have the opportunity to verify those rumours. Some are like the old tales of Prester John in Africa – stories of what may have been five hundred years ago. Others are no more than wishful thinking – like the Spanish with their Eldorado, their city of gold. But some, to my mind, have just a tinge of truth to them. Pearls do come to Bombay from the South Seas Islands. Gold dust is not unheard of. Was I young, Mr Jackman, then I might well sail away to the Papues and the great continent of Terra Australis, which certainly exists.”

  Time and again in that week, I was told of the rich and wild islands far to the east. Not so far as the Philippines and south of them in any case.

  “The land of the Fuzzy-Wuzzies, ye ken, Mr Jackman, for such they are. I saw a one of them wi’ my ain een, not seven years since, who was brought aboard a trader from Canton what was blown far south by great winds – the tai fung of those parts. He travelled on as far as London, and never came back nae more, to my knowledge.”

  I nodded and thanked Mr McPherson and suggested to Captain Marker that we should follow the gentleman’s wise advice, much to the merchant’s pleasure.

  We wandered from the merchant’s offices to the Tavern at the shore side and sat to bottles of India Pale Ale, one of the great imports from London to John Company’s lands. I was told that the fortunes of more than one English brewery had been made by the thirsts of Bombay.

  “I think the gentleman is right, Giles. The Papues should be our port of call. The word I have is that they are Stone Age people, so it is easy to imagine what we must trade.”

  I tried to think quickly, not wishing to seem stupid in the captain’s eyes.

  Stone age meant flint knives, so I recalled… steel blades must be far preferable.

  “Axes and knives, sir?”

  “Just so, Giles. Easily bought in Bombay – the local folk have flourishing smithies and can supply blades by the thousand, and at low price, as ever.”

  “How do we purchase, sir? In the markets?”

  Bombay was full of markets, each with hundreds of sellers and tens of thousands of customers, or so it seemed. The city was full of people, most dressed in bright cottons, a swirling rainbow of colour in every street. I saw nothing below the surface at that age – the poverty, the near-starvation was hidden by the external show. I thought the town to be a wonderful place. For many of its people, perhaps it was. The poorest were not to be seen in the markets, of course, for they had no money to buy with - and I was very young.

  Captain Marker said that it was not for us to buy in the markets - it was not proper for outsiders to dabble there. He led me next morning to an appointment with a senior clerk, a Writer, he was called, in the offices of the Honourable Company.

  “Mr Arbuthnot, it is so very good of you to find time for us, sir. This is Mr Giles Jackman, a youngster who is learning the supercargo’s functions on this voyage before setting up as his own man in a later year. His parents have entrusted him to me for the while.”

  He gave the impression that my parents were rich and would set me up in my own ship, or so Mr Arbuthnot heard.

  “Welcome to Bombay, Mr Jackman. You are fortunate in your mentor, I believe.”

  I made my bow and said that Captain Marker had been good to me.

  “And Mr Jackman has more than repaid all that I have done, Mr Arbuthnot, for defending my back against a vicious assault by a bully-boy in Poole and fighting at my side twice off the River Plate and on the coast of Africa. Still a young gentleman, sir, but most redoubtable.”

  “A man needs be such if he is to prosper in the East, Captain Marker.”

  I blushed, which did me no harm, it transpired, Mr Arbuthnot having a predilection for boys of tender years and gentle upbringing. He looked very kindly upon me from that moment.

  Captain Marker explained that Jenny Dawes was to trade into the Papues, carrying in all probabilities a cargo of axes and knives, among other goods.

  “Iron cooking pots, I can recommend, Captain Marker,” Mr Arbuthnot immediately responded. “Also popular, and selling remarkable well, so I am told, are case bottles of gin, of which we have no little store in our warehouses. I should say that the Governor was of the opinion that we might intoxicate the people of Bombay less, for fear of a repeat of the upset caused by a large cargo some few years since, and it might be possible to supply some few tons at reasonable cost.”

  The speech was obscure but it became clear that the gin was an embarrassment, imported foolishly by a country merchant who should have known better and had been financially punished by the Company for causing them annoyance. The country merchants existed at the sufferance of the Company, for the services they performed in the China Trade, and they were under obligation to be obedient to the Company’s word. I knew nothing, then, of the China Trade.

  Over the space of a week the holds were packed three parts full with gin in the square case bottles, fitting neatly into wooden chests and with a low rate of breakage as a result. The remainder of the space was taken up with axe heads and wooden-handled knives, supplied by John Company from what source we did not know. The price was low and that was all we cared for.

  Jerry reminded me of the lesson to be learned from our activities.

  “We know but one word to say to John Company, Giles. ‘Yes’. The Company might be the most powerful single institution on Earth, apart from the Catholic Church, which is richer and far more ruthless. Certainly, the Company is, for the while, senior to the British government in terms of wealth and ability to see its will translated into action, and not solely in India. With its sepoys, the Company has a larger army, as well. If push ever came to shove, and the Company decided to declare its independence, like the Americans did, then it would win any eventuating war. They will not do so, because the old hands in India know that one day the Indians will rise against them and throw them out, though not for a lot of years yet. In the final analysis, the Company will not survive, but it may well have two more centuries in it, so we need not concern ourselves about that. For the meanwhile, the Company is rich and is open-handed to those who serve it. If we carry out the Company’s policy, or passing whim, then we shall be rewarded.”

  That was an easy lesson to learn, and one that has
done me good over the years.

  “The Company found itself with a cargo of gin that it needed to dispose of. We arrived in Bombay – independent, with no roots here or anywhere else, and evidently efficient in our own little way. Add to that, we are not mere horny-handed sailormen – we have a patina of gentility about us. That’s you, by the way. So, we end up with the better part of ninety thousand bottles of gin in the hold, on credit, at a price that amounts to a thieves’ bargain. Three hundred pounds in our ledgers – less than a penny a bottle to pay on our return. On top of that, axes and knives that are not of the best, but are sharp and will last for a year or two.”

  I asked whether the blades were on credit too, was told they were.

  “We shall not attempt to bilk the Company either, Giles. We shall return to Bombay and pay every penny we owe. Long memory, John Company has.”

  We took on our water and recovered the crew from the stews, and replaced the two who had not survived, asking very few official questions of their fate. The officers of the law in Bombay cared nothing for the fate of two careless lower-deck hands – they were gone and that was that. I asked Maneater out of curiosity whether he knew what had happened to them.

  “Aye, Master Giles, I did see it. They was playing at cards with the men off a Liverpool bark, so they was. In the bar of a house where we had been for a day or two, just amusing ourselves, and them the finest of young ladies, too. I had no time for gaming, meself, being interested in other things, for them having a fine cook as well as the other things to do. I did see Michael and Jack to be helping their cards along, you might say, being sat next to each other, and swapping the odd card under the table, from one hand to the other. I said nowt, for what could I do? There was a whisper to the Indian men what was keepin’ the peace, as you might say, and I saw them to watch and then they said to stop playing and took Michael and Jack into another room at the back and I did hear a great shout from one of them and nowt more. Then the Indian men came back with their purses and gave them to the Liverpool men and said they had better leave and took them up the street to another house, all very kind and polite, like.”