Authors: David Donachie
He also realised quickly that, for all his height and need to shave, Dobree was weak in the article of discipline, more interested in peace, food and a good pipe than any exercise of authority. Two of the others, Rivers and a fifteen-year-old called Makepeace, exerted whatever terror was going in the berth. This mostly extended to stealing victuals from the plates of those too young, small or cowardly to challenge them. Like all societies of youngsters, they revelled in vulgarity, never using a proper expression where slang, preferably larded with filth, would do. And for all the books he had brought, none referred to nautical vernacular so that initially a lot of the conversation went over his head.
And then there were the ceremonies by which boys initiate others into their group. It was in these that Rivers and Makepeace showed that their attitude wasn’t entirely harmless. In an undermanned ship at anchor, some of the usual jokes could not be played. But fertile minds found plenty with which to tease. Dobree sent the new arrival to the Bosun, to ask for a long weight; to the yeoman of the sheets to demand a skyhook. Midshipman Buckle, only a year older than him, gave him a kid and sent him to the wardroom to demand that it be filled with the midshipman’s daily ration of claret. On the first day that the breeze blew with any strength, Midshipman Foley, the same age as Nelson but with two years’ experience, challenged him to a pissing competition, with a sixpence for the winner, which was when Midshipman Nelson discovered the inadvisability of urinating to windward. They were embarrassing but harmless pranks. Slightly less comfortable was the ritual stripping of the new boy, initiated by Makepeace and enthusiastically carried out by the entire mess. Horatio Nelson was a scrapper by nature, but faced with ten pairs of hands his efforts were useless. He was therefore forced to undergo in silence the humiliation of having his breeches pulled off and his parts, hairless and undeveloped, examined and disparaged. He squirmed the most when Rivers fondled them, aware and ashamed of the instant erection as the older midshipman’s face leered over his.
‘We’ve got a Jemmy Jessamy here, by the feel of things,’ Rivers crowed. ‘What’s stirs ain’t much, but it do stir.’
The curses he emitted, and the names he called his attackers before a hand stopped his screaming, earned his groin and belly a double dose of boot-black. Restored to his feet he tried as hard as he could to make light of his humiliation, rubbing hard at his blackened genitals with a piece of tow, half laughing in an attempt to hide his upset. He could not weep before this
group: to do so was to invite another drubbing. And there was no good to be had from a display of anger.
Such rituals were commonplace and, though not so violent or thorough, he had received and administered them himself at his old school. He knew that a few amiable curses and insults allied to a display of acceptance would do more to endear him to this mess than protest. Likewise no complaints could be passed to a higher authority.
In the next few days he experienced the first stirring of acceptance: the jokes dried up, there being only so many to be played on a fellow now deeply suspicious of anything. His name was changed to Nellie, which he knew from his past was a good sign. Inclusion in conversation became automatic instead of forced, and he began to comprehend some of the vernacular jokes of this particular berth. He knew he had arrived when he was included in the ‘cocks on the table’. Not that he was up for a prize, but he put out what he had for display and his examination of the opposition was furtive but fascinating.
His problems started when Rivers got him into the lower holds to hunt for rats. It was an entertaining game, played in the faint light from a single lantern, since the older midshipman knew well how to stir them from their hiding places. That gave the tyro, strategically placed, a chance to club them as they emerged. They changed roles, Rivers and he so close as they poked the crevices that Nelson could smell the musk of the older boy’s sweat. Inevitably, as the number increased, it ended with the pair of them racing around as best they could bent near double, squeaking rodents running in all directions from their swinging cudgels.
Breathing heavily they collapsed, their gasps for air mixed with mirth and comments on each other’s hunting prowess, Rivers’s arm over Nelson’s shoulder in a firm grip. It was a strange sensation, that hand on the back of his neck pulling him forward suddenly to be kissed, to feel a strange tongue forcing itself into his mouth and a hand running slowly up the inside of his thigh. Horatio Nelson didn’t react for several seconds, not sure of what he should do, aware that there was excitement in this as well as danger, that there was a delicious sensation in his groin. Rivers was at his breeches buttons, opening them just enough to slip his hand inside.
He pushed away the older boy as soon as Rivers reached his goal. ‘It’s a good game, Nelson,’ he whispered. ‘Better than Rat and Trap.’
In the half-empty holds, with no one else present, the older boy felt free to unbutton his own breeches without being observed, his voice hoarse as he invited the other boy to do likewise. ‘One hand clapping is all very well, Nelson, but this is better, as you will find when you grow a bit.’
He took the younger boy’s hand and pulled it on to his prick. Nelson, not looking, was aware of dry soft flesh and wisps of thin hair but most of all he was conscious of the size, so much greater than his own.
‘No.’
‘Come on,’ Rivers insisted, pulling hard to restore contact.
Nelson stood up and tried to edge past him, only to be grabbed and pushed until his back was against the end of a barrel, with Rivers, now upright, trapping him.
‘It’s nowt but a bit of play.’
Nelson pushed him hard, to little effect. ‘Go play with yourself, damn you.’
Rivers laughed, a throaty sound. His square face and button nose were so close that the saliva on his lips gleamed. The fist that took him on the ear didn’t inflict much pain, but it surprised him, and he took a half-step back.
The follow up blow caught him on the lip, which split and began to bleed. Rivers had his hand to it, which muffled the string of curses aimed at the back of his escaping victim.
Breeches fully undone he couldn’t follow.
The rest of the day had an endless, surreal quality, full of confused imaginings, not least about what might have happened if he hadn’t fled. Part of him had wanted to stay, he knew that; to experiment with what had only ever been the subject of hushed discussions or inaccurate jokes. He couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that part of Rivers was still there, in his hand, which induced mixed emotions.
Nelson felt even worse in company than he was alone. He was convinced that every member of the berth had an inkling of what had occurred, which made him examine every remark to try and glean if it was innocent or barbed, which made him appear moody and suspicious. Rivers, subdued at first, soon latched on and proceeded to heap on his head a stream of insults.
Nelson had yet to learn that the berth was split: a few liked Rivers and actively encouraged him; the rest laughed at his sallies for fear of seeming weak. Dobree remained aloof: he just smiled at the references to pretty blond catamites being perfect for the Captain’s servants, to jokes about being stretched across a gun for a thick whip, or the best way to trim the wick on the Captain’s candles.
Faced with a silent, stone-faced victim, Rivers grew bolder. Allusions to ‘bum boys’, and the pleasure they gave their superiors, came thick and fast. The others watched the victim closely, supposing through his occasional shudders that he was taking it badly, unaware that in reality he was wondering if Rivers’s slurs were true. There had been pleasure mixed with terror in the depths of the ship, and he wasn’t sure where one had begun and the other ended. He tried to block the images from his mind, glad that the table hid the effect of memory, but he couldn’t block out the abiding question: had he run from fear of Rivers or for fear of his own inclinations?
Examining the faces of the others produced a confused answer to that question. His shipmates refused to meet his eye. Was that from disgust? He couldn’t know that they were waiting for the inevitable outcome: a sobbing plea to be left in peace.
That didn’t happen. When Nelson’s self-control shattered, he dived across the table to attack his tormentor. For the second time Rivers was taken by surprise and absorbed half a dozen blows before he could retaliate.
But, given their respective height and weight that mattered little. Nelson was soon knocked to the floor, with his opponent stepping in to boot him. ‘You snivelling little shite,’ Rivers spat, as his foot swung.
Trapped by the bulkhead, Nelson tried to rise, only to be knocked back by another blow, more of a heavy slap than a punch. Following through, Rivers called for the others to join in. His friends, especially Makepeace, had already moved forward. Nelson grabbed Rivers’s foot and pulled hard, sending the older boy flying. That gave him enough room to begin to rise until Makepeace landed a punch that felled him again, forcing him to curl up into a ball, with his hands around his head. He began to feel the impact of the kicks now raining in on his body.
It was odd listening to the sounds of anger and excitement, feeling the strength of the blows without much pain. His senses, except his hearing, seemed numb, as though the assault was being inflicted on another. Each voice was clear: Rivers spluttering as he cursed and swore; Dobree calling feebly to them to let Nelson be. He guessed that Makepeace, a silent attacker, was inflicting the greatest hurt, his boot beating a tattoo on his unprotected back. Everyone, it seemed, had joined in, Rivers’s deep growl set against a background of high-pitched squeals. But many seemed token in their efforts, careful as they added their contribution, using the confined space and ample noise to amplify the apparent extent of their labours.
It took the senior midshipman a good minute to begin a vain attempt to stop the fight. Given the ballyhoo, this allowed time for Mrs Killannan to arrive, her shout bringing immediate relief to Nelson. Nearest the door, and between the gunner’s wife and the fray, Dobree took a thudding clout, which threw him out of the way. Her hands and forearms were not all fat and she had little difficulty in dragging or punching everyone back from the boy still huddled on the floor. ‘You miserable swabs,’ she cursed, dragging Nelson upright and hauling his face into the apron that covered her ample bosom. ‘Don’t you surmise no better’n to batter the Captain’s nephew?’
The bloodied face was pushed back for examination, the note in Mrs Killannan’s voice carrying more than a trace of desperation. ‘And who’s to excuse this away when the Pig comes aboard?’
She caught her breath, as if to try to cover her inadvertent use of the Captain’s nickname. But the boy wasn’t listening. He was wriggling to get free. Nelson knew he was hurt, but could still feel no pain. The salty taste of blood in his mouth seemed quite pleasant. That didn’t last the distance between the mid’s berth and the gunner’s quarters. Agony came as the force that had animated him subsided and his hurts were not aided by the less than gentle ministrations of Mrs Killannan and her neat rum.
Her husband sat through this, chewing on his tobacco, a glint in his eyes, which twinkled every time he moved the quid to one side so that he could repeat, ‘You’re fer the ’igh jump now, me girl. It’ll be roast Sow, stuffed and trussed, when the Pig comes up that there gangway.’
Which he did the following morning, the ceremony of piping the captain aboard attended by everyone. To avoid any further trouble his battered nephew had spent the night in the gunner’s quarters. Captain Suckling spotted him right away and his all too obvious wounds. But the needs of his office took precedence and the formalities were punctiliously observed. Only when they were complete was his nephew summoned, first to account for his presence but much more for his condition.
Stepping into the great cabin of HMS
Raisonable
for the first time terrified him, almost as much as the stern look in his uncle’s eye. Pacing back and forth, Captain Maurice Suckling was silhouetted against the casement windows that ran across the rear of the ship. Thus, the angry look he wore was apparent each time he turned to retrace his steps. Yet there was something else, a similarity to the memory of Nelson’s mother. This meant that the boy’s eyes, which would have been better cast down in shame, were occupied in close scrutiny of his relative’s features. That made his uncle stop and growl. As Nelson didn’t know him well, it was impossible for him to deduce if the wrath was genuine or contrived, but the voice was certainly peppery when he spoke.
‘I come aboard only to find you already here when you’re not supposed to be.’
‘My father was eager to return to take the waters at Bath, sir.’
‘You mustn’t interrupt me,’ his uncle insisted, though in a tone less abrupt. He was slim, like his nephew, and shared in some measure the Suckling gentleness of feature, which made it hard for him to sustain outrage. ‘Being blood makes no odds.’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘And try to remember the correct form of response to a superior. You’re supposed to say, “Aye, aye, sir.”’ Nelson complied immediately, just as his uncle was about to continue, which earned him a searching stare. The older man was clearly wondering if the boy was baiting him. ‘How am I going to explain to your father the condition I find you in?’
It was lucky that his uncle Maurice couldn’t see the bruises that covered his body and legs. They were well hidden by his breeches and blue uniform jacket. But the marks on his face bore ample testimony to the beating he had taken. Every time the youngster moved his tongue he could feel the extra thickness of his lips and rock the tooth that had come loose on one side. He had a black eye that was turning yellow at the fringe, plus a prominent lump on his forehead, the result of Rivers’s most telling punch.
Captain Suckling was no fool. He had been a midshipman himself once, so knew what a bear pit the berth could be, even if he was careful of the quality of the youngsters who occupied his. He wondered if that word ‘youngsters’ was accurate. Those aboard
Raisonable
ranged from a pair of children of even more tender years than his nephew, to Dobree and Rivers who were so long serving that they had grown to be men of eighteen.
‘Am I to be granted an explanation, sir?’ Suckling demanded.
Nelson hesitated, partly because he had no idea of what to say but more because he was so struck by his uncle’s looks. Take away the wig and replace it with a cap, add a touch more flesh, though less colour, to the cheeks, and he might have been facing the wrath of his late mother.
‘Well, boy?’
‘I f-fell down a companionway, sir. It was an accident.’
There was no doubting the nature of the family likeness as Suckling digested that, and Nelson saw the rage coming long before his uncle delivered his response. ‘Fell? Do you take me for an idiot, nephew?’
‘No, sir,’ he replied.
‘Then you will explain to me who is responsible for this. And I will point out to you that I command here and that every member of the berth you occupy is here because I have taken them on.’ His fingers clicked loudly. ‘I can have any one of you off this ship in an instant.’
Horatio Nelson didn’t know much about the Navy as yet, but he knew that that was stretching the truth. Maurice Suckling had filled his mid’s berth with the relatives of people to whom he either owed a favour or from whom he sought one. Even if one or two were no-hopers, who might sit the lieutenant’s examination till Doomsday without passing, he was obliged to keep them on his books, so that their relatives or patrons would look favourably on any request the captain of
Raisonable
put forward. In his own case, he prayed that the family connection would exert too much pressure on his uncle for him to take any precipitate action.
‘It is, sir, the truth.’
Suckling responded slowly, his voice a good octave deeper than it had been previously. ‘How long have you been aboard my ship, nephew?’
‘This is my third day, sir.’
‘And has anyone had the presence of mind to point out to you the masthead?
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then you will oblige me, Mr Nelson, by making your way to that station, and you will stay there until I call you down. I would advise you to contemplate the folly of your response, and reflect that with a father who is a clergyman, and myself as your relative, I have the right to expect from you the complete truth.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Suckling observed the stiff way his nephew turned and left the cabin. He knew little of the boy. Given the size of the Rector’s brood occasional visits to Burnham Thorpe had tended to cause all the nephews and nieces to take on a single personality. According to his father, Horatio was the terrier of the bunch, as well as the runt, never content to let an older sibling hold sway. He had questioned in his letters the Rector’s notion of sending him to sea, which by its very nature was a hard, dangerous life. His brother-in-law had informed him that if anyone was inured to a world of rough and
tumble, it was his third boy. The long-suffering cleric had tried and failed to calm the beast of transgression that lay within the child’s breast.
The Captain smiled as he recalled the last lines of his final letter. It had been a warning, in some sense, to the Rector of the worst he might expect: ‘Let him come, and the first time we go into action, a cannonball may knock off his head and do for him at once.’ The smile evaporated as the recent memory of his nephew’s swollen face swam back into his mind. Given the state of him, it looked as though he might not survive long enough to face a day’s sailing, never mind a proper sea fight.
‘Mr Fonthill!’ he yelled. ‘If you please.’
The first lieutenant, seated in the wardroom below the captain’s feet, heard the faint sound of his name through the deck beams. But he was the senior officer on the ship – barring the Captain – and with a proper sense of his place in the scale of things, he didn’t move until the officer of the watch sent a messenger to fetch him. He entered Captain Suckling’s day cabin with a degree of confidence, since the man behind the desk was not only his own patron but had a deep appreciation of his subordinate’s efficiency in running the ship. ‘Sir,’ he said, removing his hat in the required fashion.
Fonthill was not received with the civility he had come to expect. He was subjected to a baleful look, and there was a rasping note in his superior’s voice. ‘What in the name of God has been going on in the mid’s berth, Fonthill? My nephew looks like he’s come off second best in a cockfight.’
The Captain’s nephew looked aloft to the tiny platform called the top foremast cap, over a hundred feet in the air. The drawings he had studied had done nothing to show the dimensions of these great lengths of fir. Had
Raisonable
been at sea, he would have seen, several times a day, men make their way up to that place with an ease born of long habit. No sail could be set without it. So it was effortless, in a rational way, to look at the task as one that presaged no danger, a mode of thought an idle mind might contemplate when not required to do likewise. But rationality be damned: he was scared stiff.
He knew he was being watched by the very people he had failed to name in the great cabin. Not all of them were ill disposed. But even those who sympathised with his plight would do nothing to aid him, fearing, as much as he did himself, the ridicule that must ensue from being thought soft. He was on his own, faced with a direct order he dare not disobey, required to go aloft by a route that was something of a mystery to him.
Grabbing one of the taut lanyard ropes that held the shrouds, he jumped up on to the bulwark, his first thought to look down at the grey tidal waters of the Medway estuary. It was an unpleasant sight. Flotsam, the filth of the thousands of ships that used the Thames, had been brought up by the tide, and was drifting beside the warship. In a flash he saw his body floating among that nautical debris, a corpse that would, for years to come, be washed in and out by the continuous ebb and flow.
‘Take your time, Nelson. Never look down. Don’t try going up by the futtock shrouds, use the lubber’s hole. And always keep one hand clapped on.’ He turned at the soft voice, partly in response but more in
mystification
, only to elicit, for his pains, a harsh whisper: ‘Don’t look at me, in the name of Holy Christ.’