The Convict Ship, Volume 1 (of 3)

On Friday, October 18, I went to drink tea and sup with my aunt, whom I had not visited nor indeed seen for nearly a fortnight. Whilst we sat at tea, my uncle being present, Will came into the room; his manner was rather excited, he entered with some vehemence, and looking around at us cried out:

‘What do you think?’

‘What?’ asked my uncle.

‘The tender of the owners of the Childe Harold has been accepted, and we are to load convicts for one of the settlements early next month.’

I started, then sat motionless, feeling my cheeks bloodless.

‘Who told you this?’ said my uncle.

‘Mr. Bates. I met him in the Minories. He only got the news this afternoon.’

‘Convicts?’ said my aunt. ‘I don’t like the idea of your going out in a convict ship.’

‘Safe as the Bank of England,’ said my uncle. ‘They carry plenty of soldiers, plenty of sailors, and a large freight of handcuffs and irons. What more would you have?’

‘Suppose Captain Butler should be put into our ship!’ exclaimed Will, looking at me.

I could not make him any answer then.

‘The chances are a hundred to one against such a probability,’ exclaimed my uncle. ‘It is a big convict ship that takes out three hundred felons. How many have you aboard the Thames’s hulks alone? Not less than one thousand, I dare say. Then batches are picked up at Portsmouth and Plymouth. Consider the odds. Besides, Butler has served no time in the hulks. Yet it would be extraordinary should it come to pass,’ he added musingly.

‘The ship goes to Deptford to be equipped—I don’t know when,’ said Will.

‘Will the Childe Harold be the only convict ship of her date?’ I asked.

‘That’s to be found out,’ said Will.

‘I’ll find out!’ I exclaimed.

‘Why do you ask, Marian?’ said my slow-minded aunt.

‘Tom is to tell me when he sails,’ I replied. ‘If his date is to be the Childe Harold’s date, and if there should be no other vessel, Will’s ship will be Tom’s ship.’

My aunt averted her face as though annoyed by my coupling Will with Tom in the same breath.

Having begun to talk, I continued; and our conversation for some time was all about the Childe Harold and convict ships. My uncle knew a good deal about this sort of vessel. Long association with seafaring people had taught him much that is not commonly known to lawyers. He explained that ships chartered for convicts often went to Deptford to fit out. The lower decks were cleared fore and aft; strong bulkheads of oak, frequently loopholed for muskets, erected; hatchway openings strongly railed and protected; bed-boards set up in tiers within the whole length of the prison, after the manner of a soldiers’ guard-room.

‘I dare say,’ said he, ‘the Childe Harold will get about five pounds a ton. Not bad pay, as times go. The captain receives so much a head for every man delivered in the colony. This makes him careful. Formerly, the skipper took the job in the lump, and the more deaths during the voyage the better, because deaths saved victuals. If Butler wants to sail I hope he’s pretty well.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘They’ll carry no sickly convicts to sea,’ said he. ‘The surgeon inspects the fellows and rejects those whom he considers unfit for the voyage. But they’re mostly so wild to get transported that they’d cheat Old Nick himself; and I’ve heard of surgeons being humbugged into taking men who died before the Scillys were fairly astern.’

‘Tom, when I saw him,’ said I, ‘was as strong and well as it was possible for a man to be who is everyday put to killing work.’

My aunt eyed me askant; my uncle softly drummed upon the table and then suddenly burst into a speech on the delights of transportation. He felt strongly on this point. He said he knew of country labourers who had called upon the parson of the parish to know what crime they could commit to insure their being transported.

‘Letters are read in village ale-houses,’ said he, ‘from rogues who are making money and doing well in New South Wales or Tasmania. The writers hail from the district, and they tell their friends how Bob, whom the country-side knows and who was transported for burglary, is receiving a hundred a year as tapster at a tavern, and how Bill, who was lagged for stealing wheat, has taken a large farm near Sydney. Transportation ought to increase crime in this country. I am not surprised that the people of Australia should be apprehensive that morality is on the increase amongst us.’

‘How do the respectable people out there,’ inquired my aunt, ‘relish our turning their country into a dustbin for our own vile sweepings and offal?’

‘The system’s liked. We send them labour for nothing. Labour they must have, and they get it free. In the West Indies they have to pay handsomely for slaves; in the colonies the slaves called convicts cost their masters nothing but their keep.’

‘Let us change the subject,’ said my aunt; ‘really all this talk of convicts and transportation makes me feel as if one was just out of jail oneself. I wish they would give Will another vessel. I do not at all like the idea of a convict ship.’

‘Pshaw!’ exclaimed my uncle, and left the room.

Next day I called upon Mr. Woolfe and requested him carefully to ascertain what or how many ships had been accepted by tender for the transport of criminals between this and a date I named to him. I promised him a handsome fee if he could accurately find this out for me. I don’t know how he went to work; probably he obtained his information direct from the Admiralty; I did not inquire. But in a few days he managed to learn all I desired to know, and without my having told him that I was aware the Childe Harold’s tender had been accepted, he informed me that the only transport taken up, the only ship, indeed, whose services were required down to the end of the year, was the Childe Harold, and that Government would not call for further tenders till the following spring.

I came down one morning to breakfast, and the first thing I saw lying upon my table was a peculiar-looking letter. I snatched it up, and instantly saw that the handwriting was Tom’s. It was not three months since I had visited him, and therefore I instinctively guessed that he was about to be removed, and that leave had been granted him to communicate with his friends. It was a supreme moment; it was a crisis in my life. My hand shook; I could scarcely open the letter. It was a prison sheet, with certain jail-rules of which I forget the nature printed in a corner. The letter ran thus:

I easily understood the meaning of the cold, formal style of this letter. A single injudicious sentence might have caused the governor, through whose hands it passed, to withhold or destroy it. Tom was right; he could not deliver himself too briefly and dispassionately.

I read this letter a dozen times over and kissed it as often. It seemed that an extraordinary coincidence was about to happen; I mean that the vessel in which Will was an apprentice was to prove the very ship which would carry Tom across the seas. I was strangely agitated; in a manner semi-delirious with the sudden wild play and disorder of my spirits. Tom was to be transported to Van Diemen’s Land. I would follow him. I would immediately find out if any vessel was sailing for Hobart on or about the date of the Childe Harold’s departure. But, then, suppose the destination of the Childe Harold should be changed without my knowing it! Or suppose she should sail without Tom, whilst I, not guessing this, should be on my way to the ends of the earth, thinking to find him there!

I read the letter again. I paced the room as though I had gone mad. My maid put the breakfast on the table, but I could not look at food. Why, how could I be sure of my ever meeting Tom again, of my ever seeing him or hearing of him, indeed, if I did not go out in the same ship with him, if I was not certain that he was not one of the convicts on board?

How was this to be done? I bitterly well knew that no passengers were received in Government felon transports? Could I obtain a berth in the Childe Harold as stewardess? Was there any sort of post aboard her that I, as a woman, was qualified to fill?

Whilst I thus thought, half distracted by the hurry and confusion my mind was in, I stopped at the window and, looking out, saw a young sailor walking on the pavement opposite. He was dressed in pilot cloth and a cloth cap, and was a very pretty lad; perhaps sixteen years old; something girlish in his looks, however, his hair being of a pale gold, his figure thin and his face without colour. He came to a stand, with his face my way, and laughed at something that was happening under my window; perhaps a dog fight, but I was too full of thought to take notice of the noise of the curs. My eye dwelt upon the pretty lad with a sort of pleasure. He looked up and saw me, and kissed his hand, but so girlishly and childishly that, though I instantly drew back, I did not somehow feel offended. When I peered again he was gone.

All on a sudden an extraordinary idea entered my head. It had been put into it by the sight of that girlish-looking sailor lad. I set off pacing the room afresh, frowning, talking aloud to myself, halting to smite my hands together.

‘It is to be done!’ I kept on thinking. ‘It will be the surest and the only way! Why did not I think of it at once?’

And then I placed myself opposite a long glass that reached to the floor and surveyed my figure, turning myself on this side and then on that. My eyes shone. My cheeks were as full of colour as though I had been burnt by the sun. I lifted my dress to clear my ankles, and stepped backward and forward before the mirror, imitating as best I could the peculiar rolling gait I had always admired in Tom.

I had arranged with my cousin to take a plain dinner with me at one o’clock, and we were then to take a turn in the West End. But for this having been settled, I must have sought him at his house at once, and traced him to wherever he might have gone, so crazy was I with the eagerness and hope my extraordinary, startling idea had raised in me. I could not bear to sit alone; never did time pass so slowly; I’d look at the clock and find that only a few minutes had passed, when I could swear that half an hour was gone.

I put on my hat and walked toward Whitechapel, and paused at the window of every marine outfitter’s shop I came to. From one of these shops a black-looking fellow with a great hooked nose and a white hat stepped forth and accosted me in a thick lisp. He asked me what I would like to buy. I pointed to a monkey jacket in his window, and inquired the price. He said I should have it, a bargain, and named four pounds. I was moving on, when he begged me not to be in a hurry. Would I give three pounds ten shillings? I told him that I did not wish to buy; he followed me a considerable distance, lisping first in one ear and then in the other:

‘Vhat vould you give? Vould you give three pounds? Vould you give fifty bob and an old dress? Have you any old shilver to exchange or shell?’

He quitted me at last; but though I looked into other outfitters’ shops, I asked no more questions.

When I reached home, I found that my cousin had arrived. I ran up to him, and exclaimed:

‘Will, I have heard from Tom! Read the letter! Here it is! It reached me this morning!’

He said with a grimace:

‘The very paper they make them use has an Old Bailey look.’ He then read the letter, and cried out: ‘Why, Marian, this seems as though we were to take him!’

‘Yours is the only ship, Will. I am certain Tom will go with you. Is it not extraordinary?’

He looked at the letter again and said:

‘The dates tally. I was at the office of the owners yesterday, and I learn that we sail about the 12th. But Tom speaks here of Van Diemen’s Land. That’s certainly not known at the office. I asked the question, and they said it was not known whether it was to be Launceston or Hobart Town or Sydney.’

‘It will be all the same,’ I replied, ‘so long as he goes in your ship.’

‘I hope it won’t be to Norfolk Island, for his sake. You look strange, Marian. What’s put all that fire into your eyes? And you breathe as if you’d been running. Tom’s letter has upset you.’

‘It has done me so much good that I feel almost a child again, Will.’

He took the letter from me to look at it, as though my words had made him doubt that he had gathered its import.

‘But, Marian,’ said he, ‘he’ll be leaving the country next month.’

‘Well, dear?’

‘Isn’t that separation? I mean, it’s not like having him within reach of even a three-month visit.’

‘There’ll be no separation,’ said I.

‘You really mean to follow him?’ I viewed him steadily without speaking. ‘Alone, as you are?’ he continued. ‘All the way to the other side of the world, where you haven’t a friend and where the chances are—the chances are—’ he repeated slowly, then paused and cried out: ‘Why, yes, you have the love and spirit to do it, and when done it will be nobly done, to my way of thinking. But it will be like making a felon of yourself, Marian.’

I put my hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes.

‘You know, Will, I couldn’t live separated from Tom.’

‘Don’t stare so. What eyes you have! Do they shine in the dark?’

‘He is an innocent, suffering man, and I am as much his wife at heart as though his wedding-ring were on my finger. I mean to do more than follow him. If he goes in your ship I shall sail with him.’

The young fellow drew backward from my hand with a movement of astonishment.

‘Impossible!’ he exclaimed.

‘Stop! Before you say a word—but stay: wait till we have dined. I have much to talk to you about. There will be no going to St. James’s Park this afternoon.’

My maid had entered to lay the cloth, and I broke off nodding and smiling at him, and went upstairs to remove my outdoor things.