Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“And the sloop?”

“The tender Supply, a very old girl indeed-one might say, at near thirty, past her last prayers. Commander’s name is Lieutenant Harry Ball. This will be a cruel voyage for her-she has never been farther from the Thames than Plymouth.”

“Thank you for the information, Mr. Donovan.” Richard stood straight and saluted him in naval fashion before shuffling away.

And that is a kind of man loves being at sea, but never in the same vessel for more than two voyages. Loves come and go for Stephen Donovan, who is married to the sea.

Once back in the gloom of the prison Richard related his news about their naval escorts. “So I imagine we will be off any day now, at least to Portsmouth.”

Ike Rogers had his own item to impart. “We will have women at Botany Bay,” he said with great satisfaction. “Lady Penrhyn is carrying naught but women-a hundred of them, ’tis said.”

“Half a one for each Alexander man,” said Bill Whiting. “It would be my luck to get the half that talks, so I think I will stick to sheep.”

“There are more women going from Dunkirk in Plymouth.”

“Together with more sheep and maybe a heifer, eh, Taffy?”

On thefirst day of February the four ships finally sailed, having been delayed twenty-four hours by a merchant seaman pay dispute-very common.

It took four days of placid sailing to cover the 60 miles to Margate Sands; they had not yet rounded the North Foreland into the Straits of Dover, but a few men were seasick. In Richard’s cot all was well, but Ike Rogers became ill the moment Alexander felt a slight sea and continued very poorly until some hours after the anchor went down off Margate.

“Peculiar,” said Richard, giving him a little filtered water to drink. “I fancied that a horseman would not turn a hair at the sea-riding is perpetual motion.”

“Up and down, not side to side,” whispered Ike, grateful for the water, all he could keep down. “Christ, Richard, I will die!”

“Nonsense! Seasickness passes, it lasts only until ye get your sea legs.”

“I doubt I ever will. Not a Bristolian, I suppose.”

“There are many Bristolians like me who have never been aboard a ship afloat. I have no idea how I will fare when we get into real seas. Now try to eat this pap. I soaked some of the bread in water. It will stay down, I promise,” Richard coaxed.

But Ike turned his head away.

Neddy Perrott had come to an arrangement with Crowder and Davis in the cot below; in return for a loud warning whenever someone above was going to puke, William Stanley from Seend and Mikey Dennison would be delegated to clean the messes off the deck and empty the night buckets. Against the stern bulkhead on either aisle was a 200-gallon barrel full of sea-water which the convicts could use to wash themselves, their clothes and the premises. It had been a shock to discover that the night buckets had to be emptied into the lead-lined scuttles which ran below the bottom platform against larboard and starboard hulls; these drained into the bilges, which were supposed to be evacuated daily by means of two bilge pumps. But those with experience of ships like Mikey Dennison vowed that Alexander’s bilges were the foulest they had ever, ever encountered.

During January they had had to use the emptied night buckets to flush the excrement away down the scuttle drains, which meant they had nothing bigger than a two-quart dipper for all other sorts of washing. Inspecting at Margate and revolted by conditions in the prison, Lieutenant Shairp issued an extra bucket to each cot and also provided mops and scrubbing brushes. That meant a bucket for bodily waste and deck scrubbing and a second for washing clothes and persons.

“But that ain’t going to help the bilges,” said Mikey Dennison. “Bad!” Dring and Robinson from Hull agreed fervently.

While ever there was daylight outside, a few faint rays percolated through the iron grilles which closed off the hatches; at sea, said Lieutenant Shairp, no one would be allowed on deck for any reason. Which meant that in this winter season the 200 men in Alexander’s prison were far longer in utter blackness than in that comforting grey gloom, though sailing helped the monotony. Heeling into a bigger swell as Dover and Folkestone passed, they rounded Dungeness into the English Channel. Richard felt queasy for a day, dry-retched twice, then recovered feeling remarkably well for a man who had eaten naught except hard bread and salt beef for over a month. Bill and Jimmy were the sickest, Will and Neddy only a trifle greener than Richard, while Taffy existed in some kind of Welsh ecstasy because there was still nothing to do, but at least they were moving.

Ike Rogers grew steadily worse. His lads nursed him devotedly, Joey Long most devotedly of all, but nothing seemed to help the prostrated highwayman find his sea legs.

“Eastbourne just went aft, Brighton is next,” said Davy Evans the marine to Richard as the days wore into their third week at sea.

Convicts started to die on the 12th of February. Not of any familiar disease, but of something bizarre.

It started with a fever, a runny nose and a soreness beneath one ear, then one chop began to swell just as it did when a child caught the mumps; swallowing and breathing were not impaired, but the pain of that aching, tender mass was intense. As the side affected deflated, a worse swelling came up on the other side. By the end of two weeks it too shrank back to normal and the sufferer began to feel better. At which moment his testicles commenced to puff up to four and five times their usual size, with such pain that none of the victims screamed or thrashed about; they lay as still as possible and whimpered as their fevers rose again, higher this time than in the beginning. About a week later some recovered and others died in agony.

Portsmouth at last! The four ships anchored at the Mother Bank on the 22nd of February, a boat trip away from shore. By this time the appalling swelling disease had spread to the marines and one of the sailors was sickening. Whatever it might be, it was not gaol fever, the malignant quinsy, typhoid, scarlet fever or the smallpox; a whisper began that it was the Black Death-hadn’t that produced hideous buboes?

Three of the crew deserted as soon as they could beg a boat ride ashore, and the marines were so terrified that Lieutenant Shairp departed immediately to find his superiors, Major Robert Ross and First Lieutenant John Johnstone of the 39th Company of Marines, based at Plymouth. Three marines were sent to hospital, and more were ailing.

The next day Lieutenant John Johnstone-another Scotchman-boarded in the company of a Portsmouth doctor, who took one look at the victims, withdrew in a hurry with his handkerchief plastered over his nose, sent more marines to hospital, and declared that in his opinion the disease was as malignant as it was incurable. He did not employ the word “plague,” but this omission only served to highlight his private diagnosis. All he could suggest was that fresh meat and fresh vegetables be served to everybody on board at once.

It is like Gloucester Gaol, thought Richard. As soon as that place held more people than it could bear, it produced a disease to cull the flock. So too with Alexander.

“We will stay well if we remain where we are, confine our exercise to deck we have washed, wipe our bowls and dippers out with oil of tar, filter our water and keep taking a spoonful of malt extract. This disease came aboard from Justitia, I am sure of it, which means it is forward.”

That evening they ate hard bread and boiled beef as usual, but the beef was fresh rather than salted, and a pot of cabbage and leeks came with it. They tasted like ambrosia.

After that they were forgotten, as was the order to supply fresh food. No one came near them save for two terrified young marines (Davy Evans and Tommy Green were gone) deputed to feed them salt beef and the inevitable hard bread. The days passed in a dull, brooding silence broken only by the moans of the sick and an occasional terse conversation. February turned into March, and March dragged away while the sick continued to die and were simply left where they lay.