The Convict Ship, Volume 1 (of 3)

This gave me exactly a fortnight in which to prepare for my departure, for now it was settled that the Childe Harold was to drop alongside H.M.S. Warrior on November 12, receive her cargo of convicts next day, then to proceed to Gravesend, where the crew would come on board, and then head direct for the Antipodes. What arrangements had I to make, do you ask? First, as to the disposal of my home. I had sometimes thought of selling it, conceiving that if Tom lived to regain his liberty he would abhor a country from which he had been inhumanly and unjustly expelled, and settle abroad. But on reflection I made up my mind to keep the house, knowing that it was always very saleable property should I wish to convert it into money.

So, a day or two after Will and I had come to a thorough understanding and everything was arranged so far as human foresight could provide, I sent my maid downstairs to request Mr. Stanford to see me. He came, and I opened my business with him at once without any needless civilities.

‘I am going abroad, Mr. Stanford,’ said I. ‘I am going to leave England, and I make you an offer of this whole house, furnished,’ and I named a price by the year.

He wished to question me as to where I was going and how long I would be absent; but my behaviour soon forced him to swallow his curiosity and to confine himself to the question of the hire of the house. It ended in his agreeing to take the house off my hands on my own terms, and that same day I got Mr. Woolfe to draw up an agreement which Mr. Stanford and I signed. I then wrote to my trustees to inform them that I was about to leave the country and gave them instructions as to the receipt of the rent from Mr. Stanford and the payment of my income. The plate and many cherished objects which had come to me from my father and mother were packed and sent to my bank.

I recount all this in a plain, sober-headed way, but let me tell you, it was a time of wild and frightful excitement to me. I had a hundred things to think of, a hundred stratagems to practise. I gave money to Will to procure a stock of food for hiding warily by degrees in the black lodging I was to occupy under the forecastle. He found he could not manage single-handed. Though he was an apprentice in the ship and had a right to go on board whenever he thought proper, his services were not required until the vessel was equipped and ready to drop down to Woolwich. He feared he would be noticed and then watched, if he was seen frequently to enter the forecastle, and it ended in his bribing a rigger, who was a brother of one of the crew of the Childe Harold during her last voyage, to help him to store water bottled for me to drink whilst I was in hiding. The man asked no questions, my cousin told me; he merely grinned when he said that the stowaway was an old schoolfellow of his, whose father had failed in business, and he grinned again when Will tipped him two sovereigns.

For my part I was wholly fearless when I looked forward. My heart beat high. I had but two anxieties: One lest my uncle Johnstone should discover what I was about and stop me by warning the captain of the Childe Harold; the other lest Tom at the last should be detained on board the hulk for a later ship. For this latter difficulty I had provided with Will. But as to my uncle and aunt, I told them plainly that I was going out to Tasmania, and that I only waited to learn that Tom was on board the Childe Harold to follow him by the first ship. You will suppose that neither of them had the slightest suspicion that my ship was to be Tom’s convict ship herself. How could such an idea enter their heads unless Will blabbed, which he had taken his oath not to do? Mr. Johnstone could never dream that I meant to dress myself up as a boy and hide under the Childe Harold’s forecastle.

One night, and that was the last I spent at his house near the Tower, he talked of my resolution to follow Tom till we rose to high words. Will was out, or I dare say my temper might have brought him to side with his father and mother, which would have raised a feeling between us, and ruined my hopes so far as he went. Mr. Johnstone said he thanked God I was no girl of his. He thanked God his only child was a boy. What would my father, if he were alive, think of my following the fortunes of a convict?

I answered that my father was a true man and would always wish me to be a true woman. My father was not a man to oblige me to betray and desert Tom because a dreadful trouble had come upon the poor fellow; and here I cried a little.

‘Still, my dear, Captain Butler is a convict,’ said my aunt. ‘I wish to say nothing about his guilt or innocence, but he wears felon’s clothes, he is loaded with irons; he lives with the scum of the nation——’

‘And, guilty or innocent, he is irrecoverably disgraced,’ broke in my uncle.

‘Why did you undertake his defence, then?’ I cried.

‘A man is innocent till he is proved guilty,’ answered my uncle. ‘By the logic of the law I undertook the defence of a guiltless person.’

This enraged me. It was like burning or cruelly wounding or torturing me in any savage way to speak ill of Tom or to cast a doubt upon his innocence.

The quarrel was put an end to by my uncle walking out of the room. I stayed a little, wishing to cool down that I might say good-bye with grace and heart, with something indeed of the real love and gratitude I felt; for I knew when I said farewell it would be for the last time. But my aunt was cold and vexed; she resented several things I had said in the heat of the quarrel; she took my kiss lifelessly, and I went out of the room. On the landing I paused; I longed to return and kiss her warmly and seek my uncle, that this parting might have the tenderness my heart longed for, now that my passion was ended; but I said to myself: ‘No, they may suspect a final leave-taking in my behaviour,’ and so I stepped into the street and drove home.

I had told my maid I was going abroad, and next day I paid her and gave her a substantial gift in money over and above her wages, and she left me, crying. I grieved to part with her. She was a good and faithful girl, and would have been glad to go with me anywhere, even to the other side of the world.

Five days before the ship was to haul alongside the hulk I went to Woolwich, and took a lodging as close to the river as the respectable accommodation of that dirty town permitted. I hired two rooms for the week. The landlady asked no questions. She was satisfied with my paying for the lodgings in advance. After I had engaged those rooms, I crossed the river afresh and returned to Stepney to fetch a little trunk. I was to be a stowaway, and of all ocean travellers the stowaway is the one who sails with the fewest effects. A hackney coach stood at the door to convey me to Blackwall. I carried my little box downstairs and put it with my own hand into the coach. I then returned and stood awhile in my room thinking. The walls and tables were stripped of all that I cherished. The room looked somewhat bare. I slowly cast my eyes around and thought of the past. I conjured up my father and mother. I recalled my early life, my lonely holiday trips, much of what I had felt and suffered. I then knelt down and prayed, rose and, going to the wall, kissed it, and, with dry eyes but with a sobbing heart, departed.

Whether Mr. Stanford saw me or not I am unable to say. He did not appear, nor did I catch a sight of him at his window.

No one knew that I had gone into lodgings at Woolwich, not even Will, though I had told him that I should be leaving my home on such and such a date, and that he was to keep a sharp look-out for me when his ship lay off the Warrior. I did not want to burden him with the obligation of telling lies. My uncle might hear that I had quitted Stepney. He’d ask his son where I was; and Will, with a clear conscience, would be able to answer on his honour he had no idea.

As you may remember, Tom had written that I was privileged to bid him farewell before he sailed. I thought deeply on what I should say when we met, and finally resolved not to utter a syllable about my going with him in the same ship. He was a sailor, and would understand what I had made up my mind to suffer and endure for his sake. He might refuse, and sternly refuse, to allow me to attempt the wild, extraordinary adventure I had planned with Will. Indeed, I feared his love. He was a man to give notice of my intention sooner than suffer it. I guessed he would not bear to think of my locking myself up in a ship full of convicts. Well knowing his own profession, he would say to himself, when she is discovered how will she be treated? If she maintains her disguise as a boy, what sort of work will they put her to? If they find out that she is a woman, what sort of treatment will she receive from the master and mates, from the officers in charge of the guard, from the seamen forward? All this and much more would run in his head, and his love might betray me that he might save me.

Three days before the convict ship was to haul alongside the Warrior, I went on board the hulk. This time I gained the deck by the dockyard stairs and the gallery that stretched to her gangway. The sentry or warder, in bright buttons and a glazed military cap and a stiff stand-up collar with a bright crown upon it, asked me my business, and bade me pass when I told him that I was going to visit a convict and explained that it was an errand of farewell. It was a very gloomy sullen day; a dark fog stooped to the breast of the river and the water flowed seaward in a stream of liquid greasy mud. The few ships in motion oozed out of the fog, black, wet and gaunt, and vanished with a sulky reel. The prison-ship looked horribly grim and miserable; her decks were dark and very damp, the fog dripped from the edges of her boxed-up structures forward, the cold gleam of moisture glanced from whatever the eye rested on; the pole-masts vanished in the thickness overhead; and the air was bitterly cold with the chill of damp.

A convict, in the dress of the felon, with a bullet-shaped head and a flat face, stared at me through one of the galley-doors; he had badges upon one arm, and was probably a cook. Several warders moved about the decks, and a soldier in a red coat, but unarmed, stood forward, talking to somebody inside one of the galleys. All the convicts were ashore at their spirit-breaking work. I walked to the quarter-deck. I saw no visitors. A warder was approaching me at the moment when the deputy-governor came up through the after-hatch. I was unveiled, but whether he remembered me or not, no look of recognition was in his face. He asked me my business on board.

‘I have come to visit Thomas Butler,’ I answered, ‘a prisoner.’

‘When were you here last?’

I gave him the date.

‘You are too soon,’ said he. ‘The rules are every three months.’

‘He wrote to tell me I was privileged to pay him a farewell visit,’ I said. He bade me wait a minute, and walked to the governor’s quarters. He returned soon, and said: ‘Thomas Butler is one of a batch of convicts who are to be sent across the seas on the 12th of this month.’

‘I know that,’ said I.

‘You will have to bid him farewell on board the ship he embarks in.’

‘I shan’t be able to see him, then?’ I cried, putting on an air of consternation and grief, that I might obtain some particular information from him.

‘I am sorry you will have no other opportunity of bidding him farewell.’

‘But tell me, sir,’ cried I, ‘shall I be certain of seeing him if I go on board his ship?’

‘Undoubtedly. You will be allowed the customary quarter of an hour.’

‘How am I to know he will be one of the convicts on board?’

‘Oh,’ said he, very good-naturedly (and I will say here that a kinder and better-tempered man than the deputy-governor of H.M.S. Warrior was not to be found among the prison officials of his time)—‘oh,’ said he, smiling, ‘there is no fear of his not being on board. The surgeon has passed him. He is one of the batch.’

My heart beat quickly on hearing this. He may have wondered at the effect of his words. He darted a keen look, with an expression of mouth that was like saying he was not used to the friends of convicts exhibiting delight on hearing that they were to be shipped off.

‘Can you tell me how he is?’ said I.

He gave me a sort of mocking bow as though he would intimate that he had told me enough. I took the hint and left the hulk, wondering that under the circumstances the warder or sentry should have passed me on board, but greatly rejoicing over the information I had received that Tom would undoubtedly be one of the convicts of the Childe Harold.

On reaching my lodgings, I wrote the following letter to my sweetheart. I dated it, but omitted the address:

I addressed this letter and went out to post it. It was then shortly after two o’clock in the afternoon. Having posted the letter, I walked a little distance until I came to a hairdresser’s shop. I entered and said to a woman who sat behind the counter that I wanted my hair cut. She took me upstairs, and in a few moments a man stepped in.

‘I wish you to cut my hair,’ said I.

‘The hends of it, miss?’ said he, bowing and smirking and rubbing his hands.

‘The whole of it,’ I exclaimed.

He opened his eyes, but said nothing whilst I removed my hat. He then exclaimed: ‘That’s a beautiful ’ead of hair to remove, miss. Hall, do I understand? Or can it be singeing and cleaning that you want done?’

‘All,’ said I, ‘and pray be quick, for there is not much daylight left.’

He took down my hair, and in the glass I sat in front of I saw him fall back and admire it. I also witnessed expostulation in his face, and he stole doubtful looks at me in the mirror as though he questioned my sanity; on which I peremptorily repeated my request that he would cut off all my hair. A woman’s hair is her glory, they say, and I felt as though I was parting with a crown of beauty as I watched my long raven-black tresses in the glass falling under the shearing snip of the remorseless scissors. But there was a sense of triumph in me, too—the elation of love—the feeling that what I was doing was for Tom’s sake, and that this was the very least of the sacrifices I was willing to make for him.

I obliged the man to crop me as close behind as though I were a convict, but to leave me enough in front to part my hair on one side. He did as I bid him, but when I came to part my hair I found it stubborn; the old parting down the middle would insist on showing; so I told him to crop me close that the hair might bristle on end.

When he had done so, I scarcely knew myself. The man looked at the hair he had cut off and asked what I wished to do with it.

‘I don’t know,’ said I, putting on my hat.

‘I’ll give you a guinea for it, miss, and throw in the job of cutting it.’

‘It is beautiful hair and worth three times what you offer; but you shall have it for a guinea, nevertheless.’

He paid me the money, and I left the shop. When I got to my lodgings, I locked the door, dressed myself in the boy’s clothes I had brought with me from Stepney, put on my cap, and then stood upon the table that I might see my full length in the chimney-glass. I was perfectly satisfied with the appearance I made. I looked just a hearty, strapping young lad of seventeen, out and away more manly to the eye than the saucy boy who had kissed his hand to me. I sprang on to the floor, and for a long while practised the paces of a man, striding round the room and stretching my legs, and whilst I walked I told over a few things I might require when I should be hidden under the forecastle of the convict ship, and paused at the table from time to time to note down the articles.

And, first of all, I was resolved not to lie in a black hole for a week, perhaps a fortnight, without the means of procuring a light. So I made an entry in my trifling list of wants of a parcel of small wax candles of the very finest quality, such a parcel as I could carry in my pocket without observation. I guessed that I should require a light only when I wished to eat and drink, that I might see where my food lay, and that the candles, used for a few minutes at a time and at long intervals, would last till Will released me. I also put down in my list a tinder-box and matches.

(My memory is at fault. I cannot recollect that we had the common lucifer match in 1838.)

The other items consisted of a couple of clay pipes, a clasp-knife, and a pair of strong shoes that should thicken out my feet to the look of a youth’s. These things, and the boy’s clothes I was disguised in, comprised all the luggage I intended to take.

The next day was unspeakably wretched both to body and soul. It blew hard, it was bitterly cold, and it rained incessantly, with a frequent clouding of grimy sleet. I struggled to the several shops to purchase the articles I had jotted down, and then returned to my lodgings, where I remained the rest of the day. To-morrow the Childe Harold was to haul alongside the hulk. I was to embark upon a more wild, perilous, romantic, heart-shaking undertaking than probably was ever conceived by woman since the days of the mother of all. I was banishing myself from my home, from friends, from every convenience and luxury of shore-going life within the reach of my purse. I was going to hide myself in the black and noisome hole of a convict ship, without having the least idea of what lay before me whilst I remained hidden and after I should have been discovered. I was going on a long voyage in a suit of boy’s clothes and no other wearing apparel, and should be taking my chance of being equipped by the charity of the captain out of the ship’s slop-chest, or of falling into rags, and so, perhaps, discovering my sex, unless it should be sooner detected, or unless I should find it necessary to confess it.

Yet I had not the least fear; nay, I preserve the recollection of an increasing emotion of triumph swelling into elation and hope and confidence as the hours of that wet, cold, and miserable day rolled past and brought me to the night whose dawn should start me on my adventure. Never was my love for Tom so great as now in this lonely time of waiting in those Woolwich lodgings, when I reflected that all I had done, was doing, and yet hoped to do, was for him, that he might know me to be true as the faithfullest of women could be to the man of her heart; that he might be gladdened by presently discovering I was with him in the same ship; that his guiltless spirit might be supported by knowing we were together, that we should arrive together, and that whilst his term of infamous, unjust servitude lasted, I should never be far off, patiently and hopefully waiting for him.

Yet I could not close my eyes all that night. I seemed to catch the sound of the storm-whipped river, though my lodgings were at a distance from it. Would Will be on the look-out for me? I kept on thinking. Suppose he should be detained by illness ashore; many things I supposed; and then I thought to myself, if he should not be on board, yet if I can contrive to enter the ship it will be strange if I don’t find my way into the hiding-place under the forecastle. But if he is not on the look-out or, indeed, not in the vessel, I shan’t be able to invent an excuse to go on board of her. The guard will be received at Deptford; the surgeon superintendent will be already, no doubt, in the ship; there will be mates and apprentices on the poop and about the deck. I knew it would be impossible for me to cross the gangway without being challenged as to my business. What, then, should I do if Will was not on the look-out for me?

These were considerations to give me a sleepless night. I lay in bed till seven, then rose, dressed myself in my ordinary apparel, and telling the servant to have breakfast ready by half-past eight, I passed out of the house and went quickly toward the river.

It was still blowing fresh, but the morning was dry, gray, hard with cold. I passed through some mean little streets of small houses, such as labourers would occupy. Hard as the morning was, the mud lay soft as grease in the roadways. Here and there was a public-house, two of which—the ‘Warrior Arms’ and the ‘Justitia’—were named after the prison-hulks. Though it was barely good daylight as yet, these public-houses looked as if they had been open for some time. In places I tasted an acid smell of stale beer and tobacco as I passed along these mean little streets, and most of the people I saw, dressed in a sort of velveteen or corduroy, conversing near the public-houses, many of them of the flat-faced type of Englishman, with streaks of black hair down their cheeks, and a habit of glancing sideways without turning their head, might have passed for convicts enjoying a free-and-easy half-hour.

I came within view of the river, and looked along Woolwich Reach, but saw no signs of such a ship as the Childe Harold approaching. The hulks floated huge and motionless off the Dockyard and Arsenal. White clouds of fog were creeping over the flats of Plaistow, and the river streamed cold and yellow into the bleak gray haze of Bugsby’s Reach. A waterman approached and bade me good morning. I looked at the man, and recognised him as one whose boat I had hired on several occasions. He told me he had come to settle on this side of the river, as the Calais steamers and the hoys were making business scarce for the likes of him down the Stairs, Tower and Wapping way. He asked me if I wanted a boat. I answered no; I was waiting to view a convict ship that I understood was to come alongside the Warrior hulk that morning.

‘Ay, that’s right,’ said he. ‘You’ll be catching sight of her any minute. The convicts go aboard to-morrow, I believe. She’s the Childe Harold. Too fine a ship for such dirty service, to my mind.’

Whilst I stood waiting and conversing with this fellow, who was one of the civillest of his kind on the river, a handsome barque under a main-topgallantsail came rounding to abreast of us out of Galleon’s Reach, driven by the fresh south-easterly wind. She was painted green and cleanly sheathed; her canvas was white as a yacht’s, and the whiter for the contrast of the glare of it upon the sullen gloom of the atmosphere. Her stem, as though it were red-hot, boiled the water at her bows; the white swirl rushed past the ruddy gleam of the copper into a ribbon-like wake of yeast, short and melting quickly for the lack of brine, and the picture was one of exceeding beauty and of inspiriting warmth and colour. She swept into the haze of Bugsby’s Reach, and vanished with a gleam of her topmast canvas showing in a hovering sort of way for a breath or two over the land abreast of the East India Docks.

The waterman at my side was loud in praise of her. ‘I haven’t seen a pootier barque in this here river since the Arab Chief towed down some weeks since.’

I started and looked at him, and exclaimed: ‘The Arab Chief!’

‘Ay, the Arab Chief, the pootiest little vessel out of any port of the country.’

‘Is she not a Liverpool vessel?’

‘That’s her, mum. She sailed from the Mersey and brought a cargo to the Thames. There was a difficulty. The captain as had her, ’tis said, has come into one of them hulks.’

‘When did she sail from London?’

‘I don’t know, but I could easily find out for ye.’

‘Which docks did she load in?’

‘I believe she hauled out of the London Docks,’ answered the man.

I struck my hands together, and said: ‘I wish I’d known she was in the Thames. I’m interested in that vessel. They charged her captain with scuttling her. Not the worst villain in any of those hulks yonder is capable of a fouler lie.’ I checked myself, on observing the manner in which the man was regarding me; and, happening then to glance up the river, I espied the towering fabric of a big ship that was magnified by the haze into the proportions of the masts and yards of a line-of-battle ship looming astern of a little tug whose smoke blew black and scattering upon the level of the yellow water.

‘That’ll be the convict ship,’ said the man at my side.

I gave him a shilling, and walked some distance to be alone, and stood watching the ship. She floated stately and grand in tow of the tug; the Government stores in her were a comparatively light lading, and she sat tall, presenting a frigate-like height of side. She was massive aloft in her sea-going trim, sails bent, running rigging rove, royal yards across. A small red ensign at her peak stood with the wind like a painted board there. It was ebb-tide, somewhat slack, and she came along on the languid stream of it, head to the breeze, with white water spitting at the bight of the hawser betwixt her and the tug.

As she glided abreast I stared at her with devouring eyes. Oh, she was the Childe Harold, right enough! I was a sailor’s child, and knew a ship after seeing her once as you would know a face. Was Will aboard? I would have given my left hand then for five minutes’ use of a telescope to make sure. I saw a few figures on the poop and three or four red-coats of soldiers on the forecastle, but she was far too distant for the sight to distinguish the people. I stood watching until the tug had floated her abreast of the Warrior, by which time I heard a clock strike nine. I then walked quickly toward my lodgings, half frozen with having stood for about an hour and a half in that bitter morning wind and in the atmosphere of the November yellow river.

Though without appetite, I forced myself to make what would be called a good breakfast. The sitting-room adjoined the bedroom; I rang the bell and toasted myself before the fire whilst I waited until the maid had cleared away the breakfast things. I then went into my bedroom, unclothed and dressed myself in the sailor-dress. This done, I mixed some soot and rouge, and lightly rubbed the compound into parts of my face. The effect was good; you would have supposed I was fresh from the ocean. The clothes I had taken off I made into a parcel and addressed it thus:

‘To the care of the Commander,
‘Government Transport Childe Harold,
‘Off Woolwich.’

This I had made up my mind to do whilst I lay thinking during the long and stormy watches of the previous night. It was just a speculation, and, good or bad, would amount to little or nothing. The landlady of the lodgings, on finding I did not return, might send the parcel to the ship; if not, no matter. The captain, on receipt of it, might hand it to the steward to hold, concluding there was a blunder somewhere. If he rejected it and sent it back, still, as I say, no matter. I valued not the clothes one farthing, but, I had reasoned, if the parcel found its way on board, and my sex should be discovered, there would be my clothes in the ship ready for me.

Having addressed the parcel, I put the little packet of candles and the other few matters I had bought into my pockets, and counted my money. I had between four and five pounds, one guinea of which I had received for my hair; and I need not tell you that this was even more money than it was prudent I should have if I was to act the part of a stowaway supposed to be driven from home by poverty; that is to say, if I should come to be searched, which on board a convict ship was extremely probable.

I paused to consider if more remained to be done. I then opened the door and listened, and, finding all quiet, slipped down the short stairs, passed into the street, and walked quickly in the direction of the Dockyard.

And perhaps I should repeat here that I had paid the woman of the house in advance for her lodgings, and that I had departed leaving her in my debt, so to call it, for I had purchased everything I had eaten, and left enough behind me in groceries and the like to last her for a week.