'Sweethearts
'n' wives, sir?' Kydd asked Binney.
'Cap'n's orders are very clear,' Binney
replied, with a frown. 'Wives only, no pockey jades to corrupt our brave tars.'
The master-at-arms raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Binney turned and left
the deck to Kydd. The officers would now retreat to their wardroom and cabin
spaces, and in time-honoured fashion the ship would be turned over to the men
and their wives of the day.
'They shows their lines,' ordered Kydd.
There would be some genuine wives; the rest would carry unimpeachable marriage
lines, obtainable for a small fee ashore. But this fiction served to
demonstrate to an increasingly prim public ashore that HMS Achilles was taking
its responsibility seriously concerning the traffic in women's bodies.
He walked to the side
and beckoned the waiting outer circle of watermen's boats. They bent to their
oars with a will, the bulwarks lined with sailors lewdly urging them on.
It was as much to
reduce numbers aboard as anything, but as practical senior of the watch he had
the dubious honour of selecting those allowed to entertain Achilles men. The
invading crowd swarmed aboard, modesty cast aside as the women clambered over
the bulwarks. It was hard on the watermen; those whose passengers were rejected
must return them ashore, a good mile or more and not a sixpence in it for their
trouble.
The lucky ones pranced
about on the pristine decks. A fiddle started on the foredeck and an impromptu
dance began about the foremast. Feminine laughter tinkled, roars of ribaldry
surged — the stern man-o'-war lines of Achilles melted into a comfortable
acquiescence at the invasion.
Real wives were easy to
spot: often with awed children, they bore lovingly prepared bundles and a look
of utter disdain, and while they crossed the bulwarks as expertly as their
rivals, they were generally swept up in a big hug by a waiting seaman. Some
were told, 'Forrard on the gundeck, m' dear,' from a gruff master-at-arms.
Their spouses being on duty, there they would find a space between a pair of
cannons, made suitably private with a canvas screen, the declared territory of
a married couple.
It was nearly six bells; when eight
sounded and the evening drew in Cockburn would relieve Kydd, and he could
retreat to the gunroom. The midshipman's berth was, however, only too near and
it would be a noisy night.
Cockburn came on deck early: harbour
watches were a trial for him, the necessary relaxation of discipline and
boisterous behaviour of the seamen hard on his strait-laced Scottish soul.
'What cheer, Tarn? Need
t' step ashore? Cap'n wants t' get a demand on the dockyard delivered b' hand
f'r a new wash-deck pump. Ship's business, o' course, gets you off the ship f'r
an hour.'
'In Sheerness?' Cockburn retorted
scornfully. Kydd was looking forward to getting ashore and seeing something of
the local colour, but Cockburn remained glum.
'Join me in a turn
around below-decks afore I hand over the watch,' he said to the young man,
trying to draw him out of himself. 'Younker, stand by on the quarterdeck,' he
threw at the bored duty midshipman. The rest of the watch were together around
the mizzen-mast swapping yarns, a token number compared to the full half of
the ship's company closed up at sea.
They strode off
forward, along the gangways each side of the boat space. 'Clear 'em off
forrard,' Kydd said, to a duty petty officer following, who duly noted in his
notebook that the wizened crone and the young child selling cheap jewellery on
a frayed velvet cloth should be moved forward to clear the gangways.
The foredeck was alive
with cheerful noise. Traders, expert in wheedling, had set out their portable
tables and were reluctandy parting with gimcrack brass telescopes, scarlet
neckcloths, clay pipes and other knick-knacks that were five times their price
ashore.
By the cathead another
basket of fresh bread was being hauled up from a boat. Teamed with a paper pat
of farmhouse butter and a draught from a stone cask of ale, it was selling fast
to hungry seamen.
A cobbler industriously
tapped his last, producing before their very eyes a pair of the long-quartered
shoes favoured by seamen going ashore, and a tailor's arms flew as a smart blue
jacket with white seams and silver buttons appeared.
All appeared shipshape
forward, and Kydd grunted in satisfaction. Beyond the broad netting, the bare
bowsprit speared ahead to the rest of the ships at anchor.
Cockburn indicated the
old three-decker battleship moored further inshore, 'ifo'll never see open
water again.' Stripped of her topmasts and running rigging, her timbers were
dark with age and neglect; her old-fashioned stern gallery showed little
evidence of gold leaf, and green weed was noticeable at her waterline.
'Aye, Sandwich — she's th' receiving
ship only,' Kydd answered. Too old for any other work, she acted as a floating
prison for pressed men and others.
'Do you know then who's the captain of
the sixty-four over there?' Cockburn asked.
'Director}
No, Tarn, you tell me!'
'None else than your
Cap'n "Breadfruit" Bligh, these five years avenged of his mutiny.' He
paused impressively.
Kydd did not reply: in
his eyes Bligh should have been better known for his great feat of seamanship
in bringing his men through a heroic open-boat voyage without the loss of a
single one. He turned abruptly and clattered down the ladder to the open
boat-space on the upper-deck.
Sitting cross-legged on
the fore-hatch gratings, a fiddler sawed away, his time being gaily marked by a
capering ship's boy with a tambourine weaving in and out of the whirling pairs
of sailors and their lasses. Some of the women wore ribbons, which the men took
and threaded into their own jackets and hats.
Groups gathered near the fore-mast
playing dice, perched on mess-tubs; others tried to read or write letters. The
whole was a babble of conviviality and careless gaiety.
Kydd looked about: there was drink,
mainly dark Kent beer but not hard spirits. So far there was no sign of real
drunkenness - that would come later, no doubt. Groups of men, probably from
other ships, were in snug conversation at mess tables further aft.
Ship-visiting was a humane custom of the service and even if liberty ashore was
stopped acquaintances with former shipmates could be pleasantly renewed.
But as he moved towards
them, the talk stopped and the men turned towards him warily. 'Lofty.' He
nodded to Webb, a carpenter's mate.
The man looked at him,
then the others. 'Tom,' he said carefully.
'Nunky,'
Kydd greeted an older able seaman.
There
was the same caginess. 'Yes, mate?'
The seamen looked at
him steadily. The visitors were clearly long-service and showed no emotion.
Kydd shrugged and moved down the fore-hatchway to the gundeck, the lower of the
two lines of guns, and to the screened-off areas for the married men along the
sides of the deck between each pair of cannon. There was an air of an unexpected
domesticity, ladies gossiping together on benches along the midline of the
deck, brats scampering about. A dash of colour of a bunch of flowers and the
swirl of dresses added an unreality to the familiar warlike nearness of the
gundeck. Kydd answered the cheery hails of some with a wave, a doff of his hat
to others, and passed aft, happy there would be no trouble there.
A final canvas screen
stretched the whole width of the deck. Kydd lifted it and ducked beneath. In
the way of sailors, girls they had taken up with in this port before became
'wives' again for their stay. But in deference to real wives they were not
accorded the same status or privacies. In hammocks, under hastily borrowed
sailcloth between the guns, the men consorted with their women, rough humour
easing embarrassment
Kydd moved on, eyes
steadily amidships, alert for the trouble that could easily flare in these
circumstances. Then down the hatchway to the orlop — the lowest deck of all. In
its secretive darkness anything might happen. He kept to the wings, a walkway
round the periphery, hearing the grunts and cries from within the cable tiers.
It was a harsh situation, but Kydd could see no alternative; he would not be
one to judge.
On deck again he was
passed a note by a signal messenger. 'Fr'm offa bumboat, Mr Kydd.'
It was addressed to the
officer-of-the-watch. Kydd opened it. It was in an unpractised but firm round
hand:
Dere Sir,
I humblie pray thet yuo
will bee so kind as too allow my dere bruther, Edward Malkin, be set ashor on
libbertie. Whyle he was at see, his muther dyed an I must aqaynt him of itt.
Iff yuo find it in jor harte to lett him on shoar to the atached adress he will
sware to repare back on bord tomorow afor cok-crow.
Yor servent, sir
Kitty Malkin Queen Street Sheerness
Kydd's heart sank. There had not
been so many deaths on
Achilles's
commission, but Ned Malkin's had been
one, a lonely end somewhere in the night after a fall from a yardarm into an
uncaring sea. His pay had stopped from that hour; Kydd hoped that the family
were not dependent on it.
The captain had not yet
returned with the admiral's sanction to shore-leave, and no one could go
ashore, except on ship's business.
He stared across the
grey sea to the ugly sprawl of Sheerness at the tip of the island. The least he
could do while he was delivering the dockyard demand was call and gently
extinguish false hopes. As he gazed at the land he imagined a forlorn soul
looking out across the stretch of water, silendy rehearsing the words of grief
she would have to impart.
Folding the paper and
sliding it into his coat, he said, 'Tarn, you have th' ship. L'tenant Binney is
in the wardroom. I'm takin' a boat to the dockyard.'
As he watched the modest ramparts
of the garrison fort rise above grey mud-flats, the low marshy land stretching
away on Sheppey island as well as across the other side of the Medway, the
isolation of the place settled about Kydd. Even when they rounded the point and
opened up a view into the dockyard, the bleakness of Sheerness affected his
spirits.
The dockyard itself was
concentrated at the Thames-ward tip of Sheppey, the usual features easily
apparent — a ship under construction on the stocks, a cluster of hulks further
along and countless smoky buildings of all sizes and shapes. An indistinct
clamour of activity drifted across the water as the cutter went about and
headed in to a mud-dock.
The
last of the tide had left the stone steps slippery with weed, and Kydd stepped
carefully ashore, finding himself to one side of a building slip. His
experience in a Caribbean dockyard did not include new ships and he looked up
at the towering ribbed skeleton with interest.
Direcdy ahead, across
the dusty road, were the dockyard offices. These had seen many a naval demand
and Kydd was dealt with quickly. He was soon out again in the scent of
fresh-planed timber and smithy fumes.
He gathered his
thoughts. The dockyard was not big: he would find where the Malkin family lived
fairly quickly, then get it over with. While still in the boat he had seen a
sizeable huddle of houses just outside the gates, and guessed that this would
be where most lived.
It was not far —
between the saw-pits and clangour of the smith's workshop, past more graving
docks, one holding a small frigate with cruel wounds of war, and then to the
ordnance building with its gun-wharf adjacent. Finally there was the extensive
mast pond and, out from it, half a dozen sizeable hulks close to each other.
The gates of the
dockyard were manned by sentries, but they merely looked at him with a bored
expression. A master's mate would never be asked for a liberty ticket. 'D' ye
know where I c'n find Queen Street?' he asked.
One man scratched his
jaw. 'Doan think I know that 'un,' he said, after a pause. 'This 'ere is Blue
Town, yer knows,' he said, gesturing to the mean streets and ramshackle
dwellings that crowded close after the drab burial ground. 'Ye c'n get anythin'
yer wants there,' he said, eyeing Kydd curiously.