Powder Monkey

Map

Chapter 1     Drawn to the Sea

Chapter 2     Pressed

Chapter 3     His Majesty's Ship
Miranda

Chapter 4     The
Miranda
Goes to Sea

Chapter 5     Treacherous Waters

Chapter 6     B is for Boarder

Chapter 7     Brutal World

Chapter 8     Storm

Chapter 9     The Cat and a Cat

Chapter 10   To Quarters

Chapter 11   Another Prize

Chapter 12   Prisoners

Chapter 13   The Home Shore

Chapter 14   Uncertain Future

Acknowledgements

Some notes on sources

A Note on the Author

PRISON SHIP Sneak Peek

To
J & J
D & B
and
CV

I have watched great men-o'-war raked and blazing, their crews scurrying like ants before the white-hot beam of a child's sun glass. I have seen boys and men right beside me, torn in two halves by chain shot, bloodied torsos twitching in death spasm, faces all around staring in wide-eyed horror. I have looked on broken ships swallowed by the sea, silhouetted in the dusk of a pale pink sky. I have known the bile-sour taste of fear, and I have cried with such relief I felt faint with joy. And all these things I knew before I turned fourteen
.

Samuel Witchall is my name. I was born in 1787, in the village of Wroxham, in Norfolk. Stay with me, and I will tell you a story you will never forget …

One night at supper I told my father I wanted to become a sailor. He laughed at first, not taking me seriously. But when I insisted, his face grew darker.

‘The Navy's a brutal calling, Sam, only suitable for brutal men. You're a thinker, you're a sensitive boy, and you're still young, for heaven's sake. I'll not have you waste your talents with the thugs and sweepings of our gaols that fill the Navy ships.' Then his voice softened. ‘Besides – I want to see you grow up and marry. I want you to look after your mother and me in our old age! We
don't want you getting yourself killed hundreds of miles away from home.'

My mother stayed silent, but her eyes filled with tears. There had been four of us boys once, rather than two. Smallpox carried off my two younger brothers when I was six. Now there was just my older brother Thomas and me. He was more of a timid soul and not so interested in the world. It was Tom who would inherit my father's shop. My father had in mind that I would teach at the village school and help my uncle run his shop. A life selling groceries would suit Tom fine. But not me. I always wanted to escape from the vast, flat horizon of Norfolk, with only the flapping sails of a few creaking windmills to break the silence. Grey and grim it is for two-thirds of the year, with a biting wind coming straight off the North Sea. Reverend Chatham, our village parson, says there are barely three hundred people in the parish. Imagine just seeing those same few faces for the rest of your life?

My older cousin John had sailed a merchantman from London to Madagascar, then through the Indian Ocean. He came back berry-brown, cock o' the walk. What tattoos he had – beautiful curling designs up his right arm, that the natives had done when the ship stopped in Sumatra. I wanted to see the things he'd seen.

Recently my father and I had visited relatives close by Lowestoft. I wandered down to the beach with my
cousin Joe and stared out to sea. The waves were high and crashed noisily on to the beach, and I was filled with excitement. Then, as we stood there, running up and down in the sand every so often to keep warm, a flotilla of British warships sailed by in the middle distance. I asked to borrow Joe's ‘bring 'em near', what he called his telescope. These ships looked magnificent – great, bruising war machines, bristling with gun ports, and with masts that reached impossibly high. Peering through the eyepiece I could see the officers in their blue coats, and men and boys scurrying up the rigging with great speed and daring.

My father and I argued for weeks about what I should do. Eventually my parents agreed to help – but only on the condition that I joined a merchant ship, rather than the Royal Navy. I didn't mind. Although the fighting ships I had seen fired my imagination, I knew enough to believe life aboard them was quite as barbaric as my father had said.

‘We've discussed the matter with Reverend Chatham,' said my father. ‘He knows a merchant captain called Thomas Rushford in Great Yarmouth. He'll see if Rushford will have you as a ship's boy.'

A week after my thirteenth birthday Rushford agreed to take me at once into his ship the
Lady Franklyn
, which sailed the coastal routes of England and Wales. Sometimes, I was told, the
Franklyn
ventured further
afield – north to the colder waters of Scotland, or far south into the Mediterranean. Once or twice, she had even braved the North Atlantic, with goods for Boston and New York. This sounded exactly like the ship for me.

My father took me to the
Franklyn
one late spring morning in 1800. She was a sturdy brig with two masts, and a black hull topped with a band of golden yellow around the gunnels. The crew numbered rarely more than fifteen or sixteen men. I was taken under the wing of the Captain's apprentice – a wiry boy a year or so older than me, with a handsome face and a shock of dark hair. He was called George Mansell. His father was a merchant who wanted one of his sons to become a sea captain.

We took slate from Wales to Bristol, to make the roofs of new houses in that ever-growing city, and ferried timber from Dorset to Whitby. I learned my trade quickly, which pleased Captain Rushford, and could soon tie knots and work ropes with the confidence of a born sailor. With a daily round of washing dishes and scrubbing the deck, my hands became as tough as leather, which made scurrying up the rigging easier. Cleaning clothes took place once a week, if that. It took me a full month to stop retching whenever I had to clean the clothes in the bucket of urine provided for that purpose, but, as the Captain occasionally reminded me, it got the
dirt out like nothing else known to man.

Despite the chilly fogs and occasional rough seas, I took to life on ship with a pleasure I had never known before. When work was slack, and the sun shone brightly, I would climb to the top of the foremast, and, with my face full on to the wind, could make-believe I was flying over the sea like a great white gull. I loved the dawn and dusk best. On early-morning watches the sun would come up to burn away the mist over the cliffs, leaving a pure, clear light that would only grow hazy as the day grew hotter. Sunsets were extraordinary – especially when we were away from the coast, and there was nothing on either side of the ship save the flat canvas of the sea. Night would come in from the east like a vast dark blanket, and stray clouds would turn from light pinks to fiery reds against a milky-blue sky. Then I would go to my straw mattress – ‘donkey's breakfast', the crew called them – in the forecastle, and sleep the sleep of the just. But this life I had chosen was about to be taken away from me.

The dawn of 27th August brought an unwelcome sight. As we sailed along the Dorset coast, a man high in the rigging spotted a French privateer closing in two miles to our stern. As he called down his voice betrayed his anxiety, and his fear lodged in my bones.

I was standing on the forecastle next to George
Mansell and gave him a puzzled look.

‘Privateers,' he said. ‘They're almost as bad as pirates.'

I must have still looked baffled, because his voice took on a slight impatience.

‘They're armed ships given permission by their government to capture enemy vessels. She's going to try to seize us and take us back to France. We have privateers too, I'm afraid to say.'

Captain Rushford was roused from his cabin, and arrived on deck looking grim and determined. He studied the approaching ship for a couple of minutes, then gathered us together – all fifteen of us in varying shapes and sizes – and made a short speech.

‘We must with all haste empty our hold to try to gain speed. The wind is fair, and we may yet outrun our pursuer. The ship's gun must remain on board, however, as I fear we will have to fight. With this in mind, when you have emptied the hold, you may be called to my cabin to be issued with cutlass, musket and pistol. I don't have to remind you of the fate of British merchantmen recently held prisoner in Quimper. Now carry on.'

George and I were confused by this last reference. One of the old salts filled us in. ‘Couple o' thousand men died. They just let them waste away … wicked business, it were.'

All available men went at once to the hold. While some of us set about draining the water barrels into the
step of the main mast and pumping this overboard, others began to haul our cargo – sacks of cattle feed – over the side of the ship. It was hard, exhausting work, and as I tired I began to fret about the coming attack.