Command (31 page)

That left only the eighteen seamen and four boys—apprentices they were termed but they had the knowing look of the London dockside.

Kydd had so little time left. He had worked into the night, trying to get on top of the terrifyingly large number of matters needing his attention. Even the most familiar were subtly different; he was beginning to feel punch-drunk at the onslaught.

With a casual knock at his door Cuzens entered before Kydd could reply. “Y’ papers, Mr Kydd,” he said, slapping down a thick envelope on his table. He had the odd habit of seldom looking directly at people—his eyes roved about restlessly. “Hear tell they’re comin’ aboard when y’ tips the wink,” he grunted.

Totnes Castle
was moored out in Galleon’s Reach, within sight of both the Woolwich Royal Dockyard and Deptford, making ready to take aboard her cargo of criminals. The banging and
22

Julian Stockwin

screeching Kydd could hear was the carpenter and his crew preparing the ’tween decks for use as a prison.

“Thank ye, Mr Cuzens,” Kydd said heavily. “That’ll be all.”

With ill-natured muttering, the man left and Kydd spread out the contents.

One document of thicker quality than the others caught his eye: “The Transportation Register.” He smoothed it open: columns of neatly inscribed names—and sentences. This was the reality of what was about to happen: the meaningless names were under sentence of law to be Transported to Parts Beyond the Seas for terms ranging from seven years to the heart-catching “term of his natural life”—and Kydd was under the duty of ensuring that this took place.

He pushed the papers away in a fit of misery. That he had been brought so low! To be master of a prison-ship and personal gaoler to these wretches. Their crimes were dispassionately listed: the theft of lodging-house furniture, probably sold for drink; a soft-witted footman pawning a master’s plate that no doubt bore an incriminating crest; a cow-keeper thinking to add to his income by taking game in the woods at night. A pickpocket, a failed ar-sonist. It went on and on in a monotonous round of idiocy and venality. These, of course, were the lucky ones: there were others at this very moment in Newgate prison whose next dawn would be their last.

At another knock on the door, Kydd called wearily, “Come!”

He looked up dully as a stranger entered. “Mowlett,” the man said quietly, and helped himself to Kydd’s only armchair.

“Oh?” said Kydd, noting the deeply lined yet sensitive face.

“Dr Mowlett—your surgeon,” he said, in a tone that was half casual, half defiant.

“Ah. I was told—”

“I would think it imprudent to be too credulous about what

Command

22

one is told in this business, Mr, er, Kydd,” Mowlett said. “Do you object?” he added, taking out a slim case and selecting a cheroot.

“If ye must, sir,” he said.

Mowlett considered for a space, then replaced the small cigar.

“Are you in any wise ready to show me your preparations, sir?”

“My preparations?”

“Of course.” Mowlett smiled. “In that as surgeon I am also, as of this voyage, your government superintendent. You are responsible for landing the prisoners in a good state of health—in accordance with your government contract, I hasten to add. Shall we inspect their quarters?”

Kydd had quickly made his acquaintance with
Totnes Castle
before. Her capacious hold was still being readied; the carpenter had done the job before and seemed to know what was needed.

Kydd had simply let him get on with it.

He and Mowlett stepped gingerly through the half-constructed bulkhead, studded with heavy nails and with loopholes. Their entry was a small door, but it was more like a slit, requiring them to squeeze through sideways. At sea if the ship was holed this would be a hopeless death-trap.

With hatches off, the entire drab length of the space was illuminated pitilessly, a reeking grey-timbered cavity with iron bars fitted as a barrier at midships, another further forward. As soon as the convicts were aboard, the hatches would be battened down securely with gratings and this would change to a dank hole. The carpenter straightened and offered, “Men ’ere, females the next, an’ the nippers right forrard.”

Kydd had forgotten that he was to carry women and children as well; with a lurch of unreality he realised that nothing in his previous sea experience had prepared him for it. Mowlett moved over to the side of the ship where most of the work was going
230

Julian Stockwin

on. Two levels of berths were being fitted along the sides with a narrow central walkway. They were like shelves: four or more would be expected to sleep together. It was all a hideous travesty of sea-going and Kydd’s gorge rose.

He glanced at Mowlett and saw his lips moving as he counted.

The surgeon swivelled round to count on the other side, then turned to Kydd and drawled, “Upwards of two hundred human beings confined in here, for four, five months. All weathers, half the world over and in chains.”

What was he expected to do? Kydd wanted to retort. The contract was for 214 convicts and the ship was being stored and victualled accordingly. Kydd stepped forward doggedly and checked the fore hatchway; the compartment led up the ladder to the foredeck, where pens for cattle and poultry were ready.

Barricades had been erected at each end of the open deck with firing slits facing inwards, and everywhere bore evidence of the real purpose of the ship.

Four or five
months
at sea in this! It was inconceivable, and with not a soul aboard who could in any sense be called a friend to share with him the grievous assaults on his soul. He turned and tramped back to his cabin.

Glowering out through the salt-misted stern windows at the busy Thames, Kydd was startled by a light laugh behind him. It was Mowlett, who must have followed him in, now sitting at his ease in the armchair. “So you’re Kydd, a victor of the Nile and now prison-ship master! What possessed you to take the post I can’t possibly conceive.”

Something in Kydd’s look made him add, “Easy enough. An unusual name and I do read the
Gazette
sometimes.” He went on offhandedly, “So we can take it that it’s in your interest to land the convicts in Port Jackson fit and healthy at more than seventeen pounds a head, then.”

Command

231

“Aye,” said Kydd, cautiously.

“No, it’s not,” retorted Mowlett, half smiling, “It’s much more in your interest to have a sickly voyage with half the convicts shaking hands with Davy Jones. Claim their rations and sell it on in New South Wales—on that alone you’ll make twice your figure for landing ’em healthy.”

Kydd was speechless.

“But, then, of course you’ll be venturing privately? A decent freight of baubles and trinkets will have all Sydney a-twittering.

It’s expected, you know, and if you come all that way without you have something, well, consider the disappointment.” As captain, Kydd was free to arrange cargo stowage for any such speculation and it did not take much imagination to conjure the effect in the desperately isolated colony of the arrival of the latest London items of fashion. It would be a captive market.

“You are a man of the world, Mr Kydd, and you will know that this is not where the greatest profit lies—oh, no . . .”

“So then, what is—”

“Why, I’m astonished you confess ignorance! All the world knows the one cargo perfectly sure of a welcome, that will be snatched from your hands by free and bound alike, and that is—

rum! Rivers of the stuff are thrown down throats daily to dull the pains of exile, to make brave the weak, to blind the eyes to squalor. I should think the whole colony will be safely comatose in a sodden, drunken stupor for at least three weeks after our arrival . . .”

The bitterness he could detect under the banter eased Kydd’s misgivings and he replied gravely, “Then they’ll be disappointed, Mr Mowlett, for there’ll be no rum cargo f’r
Totnes Castle.
”

Mowlett seemed taken aback, then added, in a milder tone,

“We shall hope that our squalid cargo of humanity does not bring the usual gaol-fever or worse—you have the easier task. I
232

Julian Stockwin

ask you to conceive of my dilemma in the selecting of physic to meet all and any scourges of the flesh brought aboard by the poor wretches and which invariably will become apparent only in the midst of the ocean.”

He got to his feet. “Good luck, Doctor,” Kydd said quietly.

“It’s you who will need the luck, Captain.”

Kydd watched the lighters approach with bleak resignation. The vessel was as prepared for the convicts as it was ever likely to be: the ’tween decks were now one long prison-cell. He and the officers would inhabit the raised after cabins, what the Navy would call a poop, while the seamen had a corresponding raised fo’c’sle forward. Apart from store-rooms and hideaways for the boatswain and carpenter, the rest was so much prison lumber.

There was, however, a state-room on either forward wing of the officers’ cabins. These were prepared for two free settler families apparently booked for the passage; they would board at the last possible moment before they sailed to minimise any distasteful exposure to the prisoners.

The lighters had put off from the dark hulks moored further along; foetid, rotten and stinking, they were worse even than the disease-ridden bridewells ashore. Later there would be carts with unfortunates from Newgate and other London gaols to crowd aboard.

In his pocket was a letter just received from Cecilia. She had understood Kydd’s need to be away to sea again and had avoided reference to his ship, only stating a forlorn request for a souvenir of the far land they would reach after so much voyaging. Renzi was still missing but Cecilia stoutly believed they would find him soon. Kydd felt there was little hope if he had not been found by now, and he could not shake off an image of his friend lying dead in a ditch somewhere like any common pauper.

Totnes Castle
had been warped alongside the wharf. A scruffy

Command

233

troop of redcoats arrived, took station at either extreme and, with musket and bayonet, stood easy, taking no notice of the fast-growing numbers of spectators. Kydd was determined to get away on the afternoon tide; once the hundreds had come aboard they would be consuming ship’s stores and precious water.

More worries nagged at him: he had sent for the usual charts from Falconer’s in the Strand but all they had of New Holland were the meticulous but single-track charts of Cook and hopeful productions from the small number of those who had passed that way in the score and a half years since, and whose accuracy could not be guaranteed. For his own cabin stores he had relied heavily on the placid steward, Cahn, who had made a previous voyage. Was he trustworthy? Should he have taken on a speculative freight? It had been tempting but he had no idea of how to go about it and, in any case, he had neither the time nor the capital.

The lighters neared. Kydd’s gaze strayed to the plain, blocky deck-line of his ship. Within the compass of its small length more than two hundred souls would spend the next four or five months under his care and command. Had he taken enough aboard to see them safely through the months ahead?

A surge of interest rippled through the throng as a lighter bumped alongside the small landing place ahead. The crowd pressed forward with a buzz of excited comment and were met by the redcoats who held them at bay to form a clear path behind them. Then there was an expectant quiet and rustle of anticipation.

Suddenly a loud sigh went up: the head of a pathetic caterpil-lar of ragged individuals appeared, shuffling and clinking along, a line of humanity that went on and on. Sharp orders from the black-coated guards brought them listlessly to a halt at the end of the gangway.

Two officials went up to Kydd. “Cap’n?” The moment he had
234

Julian Stockwin

dreaded was upon him. He looked once more at the column of human misery. Some were apathetic, their fetters hanging loosely, others gazed defiantly at the ship that would tear them from the land of their birth; all had the deathly pallor of the cell. He took the book and meekly signed for 203 convicted felons, the rest to be picked up at another port.

Nodding to the guards he retreated to the afterdeck; it seemed indecent to peer into the faces of the pale wretches as they shuffled up the gangway. The gawping onlookers, however, appeared to feel no shame, revelling in the delicious sensation of being in the presence of those condemned to a fate that, after a dozen years, was still a byword for horror: transportation to Botany Bay.

More shambled aboard; it did not seem possible that there was room for the unending stream. The unspeaking Dane and brash new third mate were below with the seamen and the stiffening of soldiers who oversaw the embarkation and berth assignments.

Kydd was glad that it was they who had to bear the brunt. He could hear the wails of dismay and sharp rejoinders as the unwilling cargo of humanity saw their home for the next half a year, and tried to harden his heart.

The female convicts began to come up the gangway: hard-faced shrews, terrified maids, worn-out slatterns, some in rags, others in the drab brown serge of prison garb. As they filed below there was an immediate commotion, squeals of protest mingling with lewd roars and anonymous screams.

“Mr Cuzens, I’m going to m’ cabin,” Kydd said thickly, and hurried below. He flopped into his chair and buried his face in his hands.

A bare minute later there was a casual knock and Cuzens entered. Kydd pulled himself together. “Mrs Giles,” Cuzens said, as though this was all Kydd had to know.

“Who?”

Command

235