The Star of the Sea (58 page)

Authors: Joseph O'Connor

I said my wife had passed away a number of years ago now; and in truth would not always have considered herself lucky to be married to a foolish doctor with too many patients. But she did not laugh or even smile. ‘Were you happy, sir?’ she asked me. I said yes; very happy.

‘Did you have children, sir? Yourself and your wife, God rest her.’ I answered that we did: two daughters and a son, all now married with little ones of their own. She enquired as to their names and I told them and she nodded.

‘I will say a prayer for your family, sir. Thank you. It was good of you to think of me. I will never forget the kindness you have shown me today.’

Words quite failed me for several moments. Then I said the honour of the meeting had been entirely my own, which I truly
meant; and I wished her every good fortune. I gave her my calling card with the Dublin address and said that if she ever needed a friend she had only to let me know of it. We shook hands and she left, returning to her work. But I noticed she had left the card on a table. I felt I had been in the presence of a very exceptional person.

Examined the Countess Laura Kingscourt last of all. She is 31 yrs and in absolutely perfect health; particularly for a lady who is in her expectant condition.

As with her elder son, we discussed confidentiality; though perhaps in a more concentrated and intensive manner.

CHAPTER XXXV
THE WARNING BEACONS

A
N UNUSUAL INCIDENT FROM THE LAST DAY OF THE VOYAGE
.

Friday, 3 December, 1847
This one night remaining at sea

L
ONG
: 72°03.09′W. L
AT
: 40°37.19′N. A
CTUAL
G
REENWICH
S
TANDARD
T
IME
: 02.47 a.m. (4 December). A
DJUSTED
S
HIP
T
IME
: 10.17 p.m. (3 December). W
IND
D
IR
. & S
PEED
: 42° force 7. S
EAS
: rough. H
EADING
: S.W. 226°. P
RECIPITATION
& R
EMARKS
: Air temperature falling. Very strong n. easterlies all day. Gaining strong speed. Sighted Nantucket Island Leading Light this morning at 3.58 a.m. Watch reported warning beacons at Newport, Rhode Island visible by tscope off the starboard by noon.

Our intrepid old lady is in poor enough health this night, and creaking along wearily and sorely through a blasting squall; but more of that anon.

This afternoon, just after two o’clock, a thunderously loud sound was heard all over the ship, followed several moments later by another, the latter sending a great reverberation up through the decks so that the masts shook like trees in a gale. When I left the wheelhouse I looked overboard and the water was full of thick bubbling blood of an astonishing redness, several hundred yards around. It was immediately obvious that we had been struck by a whale, and a large specimen at that, to judge from the force of the blow and the copiousness of the blood.

And several moments later my suspicion was confirmed, for the
great bloated body was seen in the scarlet water seventy yards to starboard, still thrashing ferociously and spouting and making terrible sounds like human screams, the poor magnificent beast. It was a mature male razorback,
Balaenoptera physalus
, in excess of eighty feet in length, its tail the size of a yacht, its body covered in great tufts of weed and small shelled creatures, and its noble head gashed quite open from its encounter with the hull. Its tortured spoutings were fully fifteen feet in height. Some of the passengers appeared on the deck and were very greatly alarmed. Others asked me to arrange for it to be netted out of the water so it might be chopped up and eaten but I said that would not be possible. I tried to send them away, but the Maharajah had come among them and he told them to rest their gaze on the ocean for a moment if they wanted to see something they would never forget in their lives. Soon the sharks came up to take their quarry, the poor creature now being weakened almost to death, and the water appeared as though it were boiling all around. I very much wish His Imperial Imbecility had considered his advice a little more carefully; given the principal use to which the ocean has been put on this voyage.

Myself and Leeson and some of the engineers hurried below to the downhold and saw that a fissure of about three feet in length had been cracked on the starboard side, and we were taking on water at a fast rate, and soon were up to our bellies. A baling party was quickly deployed and the damage put to rights, though not without the Herculean efforts of the men, the pumps being rusted and in some cases broken and the hold quite alive with many large rats.

Repairs having been effected, a survey was made of the cargo. Thirteen bags of the Royal Mail had been destroyed beyond salvage and I called down George Wellesley the Mail Agent to swear a report. (A most bumptious oaf of a man, maddening arrogant.) Two very large barrels of pork had gone rotten in the downhold and were infested with maggots so I gave orders for them to be thrown overboard. They were hauled up from the hold but in the ten minutes they remained on deck while the men went to fetch the tally-ropes, they were broken open by persons unseen and completely emptied of their contents.

That was not all the adventure we experienced this day, for later this afternoon there was a small fire in the steerage section which
very briefly caught the overhead spars and threatened to engulf the maindeck. Seven passengers and two of the men were injured in extinguishing it, not badly. Surgeon Mangan has seen all of them and given opiate treatments for their burns. Considerable damage has been sustained, particularly to the overhead and portside bulkhead, but is capable of being repaired.

More disturbingly it was brought to my attention by First Mate Leeson, following his inspection, that some of the steerage passengers have been breaking planks off the inner cladding and removing portions from bunks and deck boards in the stowage section, in order to use them as fuel for their fires. In one section near the stern almost all of the internal wainscot has been torn away with several large holes hacked in the outer boards also, through which the elements now have unrestricted ingress.

At this impartation I had Leeson go down into steerage again, and gather all the passengers up on the quarterdeck, where I reminded them in the strongest possible terms of the regulations regarding fires, candles and other naked flames below decks. Also, that destruction of any part of the ship was a very serious offence punishable by imprisonment. We might yet have but one short day at sea but the rules on this matter would be vigorously enforced, for a ship may be lost half a league out of harbour as quick as she sinks in the ocean.

Mr Dixon was standing nearby with Lady Kingscourt, who, despite my entreaties to remain in the First-Class quarters, is lately in the habit of visiting the steerage passengers to attempt good works among them. He made several unhelpful interventions, asking me loudly and in full hearing of everyone were the people expected to be cold and wet at night and so on, and generally stirring up their already substantial disaffection.

‘What the H*** would you do yourself in their situation?’ he exclaimed.

I said profanity would hardly assist their situation, nor would loutish execrations keep them warm or dry; and whatever I might do I would not
destroy the very vessel which was preventing my own destruction
, for such would be the doing of the
emperor of Bedlam
.

He went above with a veritable fanfare of blasphemies and returned shortly afterwards with a blanket from his bunk and another
from Lady Kingscourt’s, insisting I take them for some of the steerage passengers. This I did. But I thought it curious, I cannot help but own it, that he should feel so easeful removing the coverings from a married lady’s bed and apparently without so much as a by-your-leave.

Our American friends have achieved admirably in many fields of endeavour, but in the aspect of manners are often sorely lacking.

11.53 p.m. Beacons burning at extreme easterly point of Long Beach near South Oyster Bay. Getting stormy.