Barbara Erskine - The Ghost Tree

HMS Tartar was a 28-gun sixth-rate frigate with a complement of two hundred men and officers. She sailed from Spithead on 28 March 1764. Tom had watched a burly sailor stow his sea chest in the cockpit down on the orlop deck with increasing despair. His new uniform of blue jacket and white breeches sat uneasily on his small frame and his buckled shoes hurt. He sat down on the chest, staring round in the gloom, his cocked hat clutched defensively on his knees. They were below the waterline here and the air was fetid and damp. He looked up at his new friend Jamie and bit his lip fiercely. He would not let himself cry.

‘You’ll get used to it,’ Jamie said wisely. ‘We all do.’ He spoke from several months’ experience as a midshipman. ‘We are lucky; we have a good captain and Lieutenant Murray is popular with the men.’

Tom wiped his nose on his sleeve and took a deep breath. ‘It didn’t sound like it, not from the way that sailor was swearing.’

Jamie laughed. ‘That was O’Brian. He is a bit of a troublemaker, but a good sort at heart. Here’ – he dived into the shadows and produced a canvas bundle – ‘this is your hammock. Let me show you how you hang it. Did you bring a pillow?’ As he moved around, the shadows cast by their only light, a candle stub stuck to an oyster shell balanced on the narrow table, leapt and flickered against the wooden walls of the compartment which served as cabin for the midshipmen, separating them from the rest of the crew. They staggered slightly as the ship moved restlessly beneath them and Jamie laughed as Tom threw out an arm to steady himself. ‘You will need to find your sea legs quickly, my friend. We’re still at anchor here!’ he crowed. He was right. As they headed out into the ocean swell, Tom began to feel sick. The feeling grew worse and worse until he thought he might die. Then one morning as he climbed, half asleep, out of his hammock at the beginning of his watch he found the feeling had gone. It never returned.

It must have been climbing trees on the edge of the River Almond and the Brox Burn at Kirkhill that had given Tom a head for heights, that and scrambling round the ruins at St Andrews, or hauling himself up into the ancient chestnuts and oaks and onto the crumbling walls of the priory on Inchmahome Island. Always, when he could, he had climbed.

As he looked up at the towering masts of the ship, the network of ropes, the huge billowing sails and realised that he was expected to climb up there, now, he felt a sudden surge of excitement. ‘Can you do it, boy?’ Lieutenant Murray looked down at him. There was a certain sympathy in the man’s eyes. He had seen too many boys quail and shudder and cling in terror to the lowest rigging.

‘I can do it, sir.’ Murray saw the glee there and recognised it as genuine. For once there was no bravado. ‘Up you go then. To the cross trees and wait there for further orders.’

‘Aye-aye, sir!’ Tom resisted the urge to spit on his palms as he had seen the sailors do. He must remember he was one of the young gentlemen and expected to behave with a certain decorum.

George Murray watched, shading his eyes against the sun, then he turned to Jamie who was standing beside him. ‘Better go with him. Keep an eye on him.’

Jamie saluted gravely. ‘Looks as though he was born to it, sir. I expect he could teach me a thing or two.’

The ship heeled slightly in the swell of the sea, heading south. On the quarterdeck the captain paused in his slow patrol. Hands behind his back and seemingly relaxed, he was watching the ship. Early days yet, but it was coming together well. His attention was caught by the movement at the foot of the main mast and he watched the two figures as they swarmed up the ratlines. He gave a barely perceptible nod. Young Erskine would make a sailor yet; and by the time he returned to England he would be a man.

‘It’s amazing.’ Tom was talking to Jamie at the end of their watch. ‘You can see the whole world from up there.’

Jamie scowled. ‘The whole sea, more like.’ He was not going to admit to Tom that he was still unhappy going aloft, clinging to the handholds, his whole body iced with fear.

‘It’s like being a bird, soaring high over the waves,’ Tom went on, oblivious. ‘The sound of the wind in the sails and the whistling of the rigging is like music. Doesn’t it excite you?’

‘No.’ Jamie sat on his sea chest and pulled off his shoes. His feet were covered in blisters. ‘These are too tight. I will have to see if I can swap them. The purser gets angry if we grow too fast! If I’m lucky, one of the lieutenants might have an old pair he doesn’t want any more.’ He groaned with relief as he stretched out his toes.

Down below the cockpit was full of the sounds of the ship, the creaking and easing of her joints, the slap of a rope against the masts, the surge of water beneath them in the bilges. Below deck they could smell the stink of it. From beyond the thin partition between them and the seamen’s quarters they could hear the low voices of men talking, the occasional burst of laughter, a shout of anger.

Tom was growing used to the routine on board; their lives were ordained by the sound of the bell every half an hour, by the division of their day into four-hour watches, by the longing for mealtimes and for sleep. At first he had thought he would never fall asleep in his hammock, but sheer exhaustion soon won and he was unconscious as soon as his head touched the rough brown canvas. Nearby one of the smaller middies was crying quietly, trying to muffle the sound in his arms as he clenched his eyelids against an intolerable world and Tom found himself aching with sympathy and at the same time relief that he himself felt, if not at home, then at least able to bear it.

As a young gentleman, Tom’s main duties were as one of the captain’s servants, the young men training to be officers; when called to perform these duties he must brush his own blue coat and make sure his hair was tidily tied back beneath his cocked hat and report to the captain, be it in his cabin or on the quarterdeck. As with everything else, he watched and learned and sometimes, with Jamie at his side, he got into mischief. Once or twice he was invited to the captain’s table not as a servant but as a guest, sitting amongst the other officers, permitted with a certain good-humoured tolerance to give his views on subjects of the moment.

Almost as soon as they had set sail, Thomas and the other young gentlemen had been summoned to the quarterdeck to begin their lessons in navigation and it was then Tom discovered that this was to be no ordinary voyage. Not that he had any idea what an ordinary voyage entailed, but he could sense that this was special. The captain himself was there and with him their two civilian passengers, William Harrison and Thomas Wyatt. Sir John was, he explained to the boys, to oversee the sea trial of a special timepiece which would help navigators work out the position of the ship through an accurate knowledge of longitude. A prize was to be awarded to the first person to invent a chronometer that was sufficiently accurate and much was at stake.

With the aid of his calculations Mr Harrison predicted that the ship would arrive in Madeira on 19 April and the exact distance the ship would have sailed.

Tom stared at the watch. It was beautiful. He had only a vague idea of what the men were talking about but one thing swiftly rose uppermost in his mind. How envious his brother David, with his fascination for the stars, would be of this chance to see these trials. He would write to him and tell him all about it, make his brother envious. He was gleeful at the thought, unaware that at that moment the captain happened to glance his way and caught sight of the fierce excitement on the young midshipman’s face. His uncle had told him to keep a special eye on young Tom Erskine and suddenly he understood why. It was more than a benevolent family interest; there was a good brain there and a spark that could be cultivated.