Powder Monkey (4 page)

‘She looks like a pressing tender to me,' said the Captain. ‘She's probably already full of men seized by the press gangs. Must be heading for Portsmouth.'

‘I'm sure she means to board us,' said Mr Anders.

‘No matter,' said Rushford. ‘We shall carry on and see what happens.'

The
Franklyn
sailed on. I flinched when I heard a gun shot. A plume of water erupted in the water ahead of our bows. They were telling us to heave to.

All hands were called on deck to bring the ship to a halt. As I ran up the masts to do this, I felt as though I was being told to dig my own grave. I knew the Navy ship would be watching, and they would spot me among the crew. There was nothing I could do. When the ship's sails had been taken in, I noticed a boat being launched from the tender, set to board us. I immediately ran to the Captain and asked if I could hide. ‘Yes, lad, off you go,' he said. But he sounded so downhearted, I supposed that he already suspected they would take me.

As I ran below I saw Silas. He was looking agitated. ‘I'm not going back to that. They'll not take me alive,' he said as I passed him.

‘They'll not take you alive or dead,' said another seaman, but his joke fell rather flat.

I went at once to the hold, but it was almost bare – we
had emptied it trying to pick up speed to escape the
Isabelle
. I began to panic, realising I had only minutes before the Navy men would board our ship. Then I remembered a large locker in the forecastle near to my bunk, used for storing canvas sheets for sail repairs. I ran there at once, past George who seemed to be sleeping, and pulled out a large piece of canvas. I placed it untidily under the blanket of my bed, and squeezed into the locker as best as I could. Then I waited...

At first I could only hear my own breathing, and even fancied I could hear my heart, it was thumping so hard in my chest. I heard the dull clatter of a boat pressed hard against our hull, and the sound of feet scurrying aboard. There were muffled but agitated voices, and then Captain Rushford calling for all hands to assemble. With four of us dead and two of us down in the forecastle, the nine men standing before the press gang must have looked suspiciously few in number.

I heard raised voices and the sound of a struggle. I thought at once of Silas, and wondered if they had picked him. He, more than any of the surviving crew, looked every inch the hardened sea dog. Then there was a clatter of feet rattling down the ladder, and I peered through a small crack in the door to see who was coming.

Leading them down was a young man in a blue coat with brass buttons, white breeches and a cocked hat. A
sheathed sword swung at his waist. He looked immaculately smart, and I recognised his uniform as that of a Navy lieutenant. He must have been sent along to accompany the crew of the pressing tender. His face was refined but sharp, and he wore a determined expression that declared him open to neither argument nor reason. With him were four burly thugs. They were not wearing any recognisable uniform and all of them carried wooden clubs. One time in Norwich I had seen the local hangman whip a felon through the streets. Each looked as villainous as the other, and if they had changed places no one would have been surprised in the least. Those men obviously had brothers, and here they were now.

They went at once to George. ‘There you are, my fine fellow,' said the Lieutenant, with just a hint of mockery. ‘Was that you we saw in the rigging?'

George seemed unruffled by their attention, until they made it plain they intended to take him off immediately. Then fear crept into his voice.

‘I have documents, sir,' he cried, trying to sound important. ‘I am apprentice to the Captain.'

The Lieutenant looked incredulous, and his cronies all laughed. ‘I've heard that a few times, I can tell you,' he said. George raised himself from his bed, revealing his bandaged left arm, and plucked a key from a chain around his neck. With his good right hand he pulled a
heavy chest from under his bunk, unlocked it, fetched out a plain envelope and handed it over.

The Lieutenant cast a brief eye over it, and tossed it back on the bed. ‘You're obviously not the ragamuffin we saw in the rigging. Any idea where he might be?'

I held my breath and somehow I knew what would happen next. George didn't say anything. He just glanced over to the locker, lowered his head slightly and raised his eyebrows. I cursed myself for finding such a poor hiding place, but I was still white with anger that George had so readily betrayed me. Two of the men strolled leisurely over. The door creaked open and I froze as the light fell on me, feeling entirely naked and foolish.

‘Come here, you,' said the Lieutenant. ‘Was that you climbing the mast?' I stared at him, too furious to speak. He placed a hand on my arm and pulled me out of the cupboard. ‘Up you go.'

Out on the deck, our crew were still standing before the rest of the party from the pressing tender – three other men and another officer. Also on board were three marines. I recognised them at once in their bright red coats. Silas was lying on the deck, with one of the gang standing over him. At first I wondered if he were dead, but then I saw he was breathing hard and his eyes were open, darting to and fro. He looked very, very angry.

‘Just the two, I think, Mr Collinge,' said the
Lieutenant. Then he went to talk to Captain Rushford.

The other officer came over to me and said, ‘Fetch your belongings, lad. If you can write, you've got ten minutes to pen a letter to your mother telling her what's happened.' Then he walked over to Silas, and prodded him with his polished black boot. ‘You go and fetch your belongings too, and if there's any more trouble out of you we'll club you unconscious.'

I had only a small bag of possessions – clothes, a few keepsakes from home – and they were quickly gathered. I was so flummoxed by this turn of events I could think of nothing to say to my parents other than the plain facts of what had happened.

I passed George Mansell and whispered, ‘You weasel.' He didn't look the least bit ashamed. I was so vexed I grabbed his injured arm and twisted it, and he yelped in agony. Then, on deck, Silas and I were each presented with a document from Captain Rushford, guaranteeing our pay up until this day. I wondered bitterly why I felt grateful.

I gave the Captain my letter and he wished me well. It was a formal farewell and I supposed he had said goodbye to several ship's boys in these circumstances. Just before we left, the Lieutenant spoke to us both again.

‘If you volunteer at this point, then you will be entitled to a five pound bounty. The Royal Navy makes this offer to all men who come aboard, regardless of whether
they have been pressed or volunteered.'

This was a significant sum – maybe nine months' wages aboard the
Franklyn
. But I was so angry at being seized, I refused it. Silas did too, and looked at me with a fierce pride.

‘Very well,' said the Lieutenant, and smiled in a way that suggested he cared not a jot what we chose to do with his offer.

Almost immediately I regretted not taking the money. After all, it made no difference to my fate.

Then we were manhandled off the
Franklyn
and into the boat, and pushed off towards the Navy tender. I knew a little of what awaited me, and what I knew was enough to make me feel very afraid.

As the boat rowed closer to the tender, I wondered if I should jump into the sea and try to swim for shore. But it looked a formidable distance, and it was a cold morning – the kind of late summer day when the sunshine feels tired, and a chill wind blows in to remind you that autumn is coming. Besides, I was sat facing a marine with a bayonet pointed right at my stomach. I would almost certainly be run through before my head hit the water. Silas had even less chance of escape with his hands tied behind his back.

As we approached the tender I could see that she was perhaps half the size of the
Franklyn
. About her upper
deck there were several more red-coated marines, all of them carrying muskets with fixed bayonets.

We pulled up alongside, and Silas and I were told to climb aboard. A marine untied his hands, and up the boarding ladder we clambered, bayonets to greet us, bayonets to prod us on our way. There were only a few souls on deck, but I could hear the low murmur of a large number of men coming up from below – like a strange human hive. A ghastly stench rose up to greet us.

We were swiftly ushered below, to a ladder which led to a large holding pen in the bowels of the vessel. Peering down through a hatch I could see scores of upturned faces – the hold was crammed with the most desperate bunch of men I had ever seen. Silas and I made our way down the small ladder and tried to find a place to stand. Although it was a cold day, the hold felt unbearably airless and hot. There was straw on the floor, and among the forest of arms and legs I could make out the occasional overflowing bucket. The smell was vile. Along with the usual human waste were pools of vomit from seasick men. I felt sick myself, but managed to control the urge to empty my stomach. There must have been a hundred men in the hold – certainly not enough room for all of us to sit or lie down at the same time. Some had managed to slump against the wall and sleep. Others had passed out, for want of air, I imagined.

The hatch closed over our heads and Silas and I stood
staring at each other. By the look on his face I guessed he was as dumbfounded as me. At first nobody talked to us – everyone seemed wrapped up in his own little bubble of misery. I saw that there was a large barrel of water at one end of the hold, and pushed my way over to drink from it.

Then, after half an hour, the hatch opened again, and the same lieutenant who had picked me out from the crew of the
Franklyn
called down. ‘I want four volunteers to come up, two at a time, with the buckets of waste.' Immediately there was a score of men raising their hands to be chosen, hoping for a moment of fresher air away from the hold. The Lieutenant announced we would be given a midday meal – ship's biscuits. Each man had to come up separately to be presented with his ration. The process took nearly two hours. The Lieutenant then called down again. ‘Gentlemen,' he said with a quaint formality, ‘we have a good wind behind us and intend to reach Portsmouth by this evening, so you will not have to wait in the hold for much longer.'

The news seemed to brighten everyone's mood, and Silas and I began to talk to some of the other prisoners near to us. From what I could gather, most of the men in the hold came from Weymouth, where the press gang had descended with a vengeance. But several, like Silas and me, had been lifted from merchant ships.

One fellow with thinning blond hair and several days'
growth of beard told us he and three of his companions had been returning from a French prison.

‘Three years, we'd been held,' he told us with mounting anger. ‘Caught by privateers in the Channel, we were, and left to starve in a stinking Froggy jail. Three years . . . then there was one o' them exchanges of prisoners. They get some of ours, we give back some of theirs. 'Bout bloody time too. But soon as we reached the coast, the bastard Royal Navy plucks us from our ship . . .' By the time he finished his sorry tale he was so angry he could barely speak.

We did reach Portsmouth that evening. Slowly, we went from Navy ship to Navy ship, gradually emptying our human cargo. There were ten of us left in the hold when Silas and I were called up along with the last of the men. We assembled on deck, shivering in the sunset, surrounded by around twenty marines all pointing their muskets and bayonets directly at us. The Lieutenant came up to address us.

‘Well, my lucky lads – this will be your new home.' He turned and gestured expansively towards a sleek-looking man-o'-war, which we were fast approaching. ‘This is the frigate
Miranda
– the bravest, deadliest ship in the Navy.'

I guessed from his speech that he was a serving officer aboard the
Miranda
. Perhaps us ten men remaining on the tender he had judged to be the best of the crop? I
turned to look at the ship, its three tall masts and rigging stark against the fading sky. In size she was perhaps twice the length of the
Franklyn
, and stood taller in the water.

She looked both elegant and lethal. From what I had been told, I knew that frigates were lightly armed – there was only one gun deck – but they were fast. ‘The greyhounds of the sea', the
Franklyn
's crew had called them. I also knew that of all the Navy ships, frigates were the most likely to be involved in action. At that moment I understood that whatever terrors I had been through the previous day with the
Isabelle
would be nothing compared to what I would have to face on the
Miranda
.

As we grew nearer the
Miranda
I began to see her more clearly, and could now make out the ship's figurehead – a magnificent, bare-shouldered, buxom woman, with flowing white robes and long golden hair. A few dark shapes scurried around on deck. I felt tense and wary, and a painful knot had lodged in my gut. Silas was standing next to me and he spoke softly.