‘Just look at that,’ said Silas to me one day when we were both on deck, eight weeks out at sea. ‘Strutting around like he owns the ship. I bet he’s only just stopped sucking his thumb.’ He was staring at a young midshipman whose name I did not know. Immaculately dressed in a smart blue coat, similar in style to that of a lieutenant, he was handsome and dark-haired, although his creamy skin was flecked with a few spots and the beginnings of a moustache. I noticed a shiny new dirk dangling from his belt. This was unusual – even among the senior officers. Such was the expense of purchasing a new sword that most officers often carried their father’s or even their grandfather’s.
Midshipmen were an aspect of the Navy I had known little about. Silas told me they were officers in training – hoping after six years to pass their examination to become a lieutenant. Despite their age and inexperience, they had the same authority as any other ship’s officer. Seeing small boys, some with voices not yet broken, cursing and even striking hulking tars, seemed faintly comical. When I first saw this, with Vengeful Tattoos no less, I expected the man to pick up the boy, and hurl him thirty yards out to sea. But he didn’t. Any sign of insolence towards a midshipman met with swift retribution. As we discovered.
Silas stared a little too long, and a little too disrespectfully. The midshipman noticed, and stared back with ill-tempered disdain. This was a clear case of dumb insolence. He turned to a bosun’s mate, then pointed at Silas and demanded, ‘Bosun, start that man,’ his voice wavering unsteadily between treble and tenor. In an instant, the bosun stepped forward and delivered a swift lash with his rope.
Silas winced a little, and for a second I thought he was going to utter an oath. I grabbed at his shoulder and hurriedly dragged him away to the bow. ‘Say nothing,’ I whispered, fearful that a bad-tempered outburst would earn Silas a flogging. He angrily pulled away from me, teeth clenched tight.
When we were out of earshot, Silas seethed quietly to himself. ‘The little shit, I’ll have him for this.’
That evening I was walking from the forecastle down to the mess deck for supper when I heard a voice right behind me hiss, ‘Thief.’ It was Michael Trellis, along with a couple of his friends. They all started. ‘Thief, Thief, Thief,’ in a low hiss. All three of them were Marine Society boys, street urchins sold into the Navy by a parent who could no longer afford to keep them. They stuck together like a tight outlaw family, and unsettled me with their hard stares and brutal manner.
The taunting continued. I walked ahead, trying to shake them off. They followed just behind me, keeping up their whispering. Now my crewmates were beginning to turn and look. ‘Thief, Thief, Thief . . .’
I knew I should have ignored them, but I fell into their trap. My temper snapped, and I turned to face them. ‘What are you talking about?’ I said angrily. ‘Why are you calling me a thief?’ I tried to sound threatening, but I suspect I sounded more hurt and upset than I intended.
Michael Trellis, sure now he had an audience, spat out his poison. ‘Him, he’s the thief. I heard tell it’s him that’s been thievin’ them trinkets. Where you got ’em hidden then, Witchall? Somewhere in the hold I’ll bet . . .’
I was so surprised by what he said, I could think of no sensible reply. Then Trellis and his boys started to dig their fingers at me. ‘Thief, Thief, Thief . . .’
I snapped. ‘Get off me, you wretch.’ I pushed Trellis in the chest, and he threw himself at me. Before any blows could fall, Silas stormed in to separate the two of us.
Lewis Tuck, the bosun’s mate Silas and I had crossed in our first moments aboard the Miranda, arrived like a bad penny. He thwacked all three of us with his rope.
‘There’s no fighting on this ship. What’s happening here?’ No one said anything. ‘Right,’ said Tuck. ‘Let’s take the three of you aft.’
We were swiftly taken to the quarterdeck, where Lieutenant Spencer held sway. He seemed annoyed by this intrusion on his time.
‘Now, don’t mess me about. I want to know why you two boys were fighting, and why you, Mr Warandel, were involved in this unseemly scuffle.’
Trellis spoke up. I was astounded at his gall. ‘Witchall, sir, he’s the one who’s been stealing things around the ship.’
This was too much. ‘That’s not true,’ I shouted before Tuck cut me short with a smack around the head.
‘You’ll speak when you’re spoken to.’
Spencer looked at Trellis with utter contempt. With some relief I realised he had no regard for the boy’s story at all. ‘And on what basis do you make this assertion?’ he said coldly.
‘Somebody told me . . .’ said Trellis, ‘and I seen him sneaking around.’ He was losing his nerve by the second.
Spencer turned to me. ‘And what have you got to say, Witchall?’
‘This is all a complete lie, sir. I’ve never stolen anything in my life.’ I tried to sound as reasonable as I could.
Spencer turned on the bosun’s mate. ‘Mr Tuck, why are you bothering me with this schoolboy scrap?’
Tuck began to look flustered. ‘I don’t think we can count on Witchall’s word, sir. I think we ought to search his hammock and his ditty-bag.’
‘You couldn’t count your balls and get the same answer twice,’ said Silas under his breath.
‘What was that?’ said Tuck, and hit Silas on the back with his rope.
‘I said the boy couldn’t count on Trellis to answer truthfully, Mr Tuck.’
Tuck looked unconvinced. I had to stifle a huge grin. Silas was really sailing close to the wind with that one.
Spencer had heard enough. ‘Mr Tuck. Have these boys clapped in irons for the night. Fighting between seamen will not be tolerated. And you,’ he turned to Silas, ‘can join them for talking out of turn.’
Tuck and four marines marched us to the gun deck. Close to the main hatchway several shackles had been fitted to the floor, and we were forced to sit on the deck right next to each other while an iron bar was placed around each left leg. When this was done, Tuck gave Silas another belt with his rope and said, ‘You can all stay there till the morning watch. And you, Witchall, if I catch you fighting again, you’ll be in serious trouble.’
I knew there was no point arguing, and besides, I was uncomfortably close to Michael Trellis. Tuck left, and a single marine brandishing a bayonet stood over us. Trellis started his ‘Thief’ taunt again, right in my ear, but the marine kicked him hard in the back.
‘And that’ll go for any one of you who feels like making conversation,’ he said.
Spending eleven hours on a draughty wooden deck with one leg locked tightly in irons was a miserable experience, but it was not a flogging. In the dead of night I even managed to snatch some sleep. When we were released at four the next morning, I found I could barely walk for the next few minutes, and my leg ached for days afterwards where it had been held by the iron. But whenever I began to feel sorry for myself I thought of Silas’s remark to Tuck and smiled.
At breakfast I told Ben what had happened.
‘Trellis and his mates seem to have it in for me, and Tuck. I’ve been doing my best to keep out of trouble, and get on with everybody, so I can’t understand it.’
‘There’s no sense in it,’ said Ben. ‘Maybe Trellis doesn’t like you because you’ve got a mother and father who looked after you? Maybe it’s because you can read and write? Lads like him, they’ve had a rough life, and they’re little more than beasts, Sam. I’d keep out of his way if you can help it. As for Tuck – maybe he’s got his eye on you because you’re a friend of Silas, and he’s got him down as a troublemaker.’
The day got worse. When I was out on the upper deck, Lieutenant Spencer beckoned me over.
‘You should make more of an effort to keep out of trouble, Witchall,’ he said mysteriously. ‘Report to the Captain’s cabin tomorrow at eleven o’clock.’
I began to shiver, although I did not know whether it was from cold or fear. Did Spencer think I was a thief after all? I felt sick with worry. The morning dragged terribly before I could pour out my fears to Ben over dinner. He was quite calm about it.
‘He can’t think you’re the thief, so you can stop worrying about that.’
Edmund had overheard. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure. Maybe someone’s pointing the finger at you. Maybe the officers just want a culprit and they don’t care whether he’s guilty or not. If they think it’s you, you’ll be flogged for sure.’
Ben kicked Edmund under the table. ‘Shut it, and stop worrying the lad. I’ll tell yer what I think. I think they’ve found out about your false address.’
That must be it, I told myself. I had written letters to Rosie and my parents during the voyage, and on the previous day the ship’s post had been passed over to a homebound British frigate that had crossed our path.
‘Don’t look too pleased with yerself,’ said Edmund. ‘Y’ can be flogged for lyin’ too.’
I spent the rest of the day worrying about what would happen to me, and slept barely a wink that night. Eleven o’clock came round, and I duly reported to the Captain’s cabin. Spencer was there, and the Captain, and one of the bosun’s mates, who was carrying a rope, broom and shovel. I thought they were going to hang me, and the blood drained from my face.
Mandeville looked at me sternly. ‘Why does your parents’ address in the muster book not tally with the address on the letters you write to them?’
I stammered an apology, although I tried to keep my dignity. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I was confused. It won’t happen again.’
‘It won’t,’ said Mandeville plainly. ‘There’s no more to be said here, Mr Spencer. I’ll leave you to deal with the boy.’
I looked at the rope and could imagine it tightening around my neck. My legs began to tremble and I had to strain every muscle to walk as I was brusquely marched out of the cabin. Spencer told me sternly I was to be hoisted up to the main yard with the rope tied around my waist, and the broom and shovel tied to my back.
‘My waist?’ I blurted out. ‘You mean I’m not going to be hanged?’
Spencer looked at me with some irritation. ‘Don’t be stupid, Witchall.’
So half an hour before the noon sighting I was hoisted up the mainmast with the rope around my chest. There I was left to dangle for half an hour, whilst anyone passing by was obliged to shout ‘Liar, liar’ at me. It was cold, and my arms began to ache after ten minutes, but, as I had told myself when I was clapped in irons, at least it wasn’t a flogging. In fact, there was more flogging going on beneath me. Most of the ship’s crew could not be bothered to shout ‘Liar, liar’ at me, and a bosun’s mate was placed beneath to beat any man with his rope if he did not shout as he passed. When I came down, I was told that this punishment had a second part. I was to clean the heads every day for a fortnight.
‘It was probably Spencer that spotted your address,’ Ben told me. ‘The miserable sod should have let it be. He could have just changed the record, but you must have caught him on a bad day. Probably his piles playing up, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Ben picked up all sorts of scurrilous information from the officers’ servants, which he would occasionally drop into the conversation with us.
Despite having to clean the heads, I was keenly aware I’d got off lightly, not least because Mandeville had a reputation among the crew for being cruel. The previous Sunday evening, two men from the starboard watch had drunk more grog than was good for them, and were arguing loudly about the merits of various loose women in Portsmouth. Mandeville ordered both men to be gagged and tied in the mizzen rigging, faces to the wind. There they spent the next two hours in the teeth of a freezing autumn gale, an iron bit tied tightly across their mouths with a piece of dirty canvas. I thought it an horrendous thing. But Ben pointed out that the Captain could have had both men flogged. They were, after all, clearly drunk.
Silas wasn’t having that. ‘Listen to God’s representative on Earth,’ he sneered. ‘Is there anything Mandeville would do that you wouldn’t excuse him for?’
Ben bristled with anger. He didn’t like to have his judgement challenged – especially not in front of the rest of his gun crew. ‘What would you know about it, y’ lanky streak of piss?’ he hissed. ‘You’re heading for a sticky end, mate. The bosun’s mates and the officers have already got you down as a troublemaker, and they’re just itching for an excuse to have you flogged.’
This stopped Silas in his tracks. Ben went on, trying to justify himself. ‘I don’t like Mandeville any more than any other men on our ship. All I’m saying is I’ve seen far worse.’
We expected random cruelties from the officers. Because they came from a different world than ours we almost accepted it as their natural right. Not so the bosun’s mates. They were the most openly despised men on board the Miranda, because they were ordinary men like us. We always tensed up when we saw one of them coming. Lewis Tuck was the worst. If he were dimmer I would have said he reminded me of a fairground boxer – the sort who fight allcomers for money, and whose chosen profession has knocked what little sense he had in the first place clean out of his head. But Lewis Tuck was brighter than that, and ambitious. He was young enough to believe he might catch the Captain’s eye, and win promotion. But as he could neither read nor write we all knew this was unlikely.
He made it clear he had a special dislike of me. Ben was right. Like Michael Trellis, he seemed to resent the fact that I could read and write. One late afternoon, when I was sitting with a book on the deck, he crept up to me, and gave me a stinging whack with his knotted rope.
‘Aren’t you a clever boy,’ he sneered.
The next morning, when I was making repairs to the deck planking, I accidentally spilled some tar on the deck. As I cursed and began to scrape it off I caught sight of Tuck staring right over at me. His eyes narrowed and he sauntered up to me with a humourless smile upon his lips.
‘My dear fellow,’ he said, with a mock gentility no doubt inspired by Lieutenant Middlewych, ‘permit me to point out that you are spilling tar upon His Majesty’s quarterdeck.’
I said nothing in my defence. There was no point enraging him further. I could guess what was coming. Most of the ratings aboard had heard this routine before, and my body started to tense up. I could feel my legs beginning to shake and I fought hard to stop this happening. I was determined not to let him see how afraid I was. He carried on with his speech, looking around with a smirk to see whether or not he was gathering an audience. A few of the crew had indeed stopped to watch. Some were laughing with him.
‘This is a deck, I may venture to observe, which has been scrubbed spotless not an hour before.’ As he spoke, his voice began to rise in both volume and fury. ‘And now, you worthless lubberly dog, I am obliged to do my duty with as much attention as you have failed to do yours.’ With that I felt the sharp sting of his rope on my back. Three times he hit me hard. On the third stroke I fell to my knees with the force of the blow. ‘Damn you to hell!’ he bellowed. ‘If I catch you spilling tar again, I’ll slice you starboard to larboard with my cutlass!’
When he’d gone, tears flowed down my face. It wasn’t the pain of the beating that had upset me, but Tuck’s sheer malice. Ben came over and spoke sharply to me.
‘Come on, Sam. Y’ can’t let a brute like that upset you. You’ll just encourage him. Dry them tears quick and try to look like you don’t care.’ Then he started to help scrape up the tar, and his voice softened. ‘You don’t need other people thinking you’re an easy target either, Sam. Plenty o’ men on this ship’ll make y’ life a misery, just to make themselves feel a bit better than you.’ I thought of those few others who had stopped to snigger at my plight, and knew he was right.
That night, round the mess table, we talked of Lewis Tuck in hushed voices. Tom Shepherd, as ever, seemed to have the measure of the man.
‘He’s ambitious, all right, but I’ll bet he knows he’s going to be a bosun’s mate for the rest of his Navy life. There’s a bright man and a thug inside Tuck, and the thug always wins.’
Ben butted in. ‘He’s bound to get his promotion. Mandeville needs men like him to run his ship.’
But Tom was sure of his ground. ‘No, the Captain’s too smart. Like him or not, Mandeville always punishes a man for a good reason, and with clear intention. Not Tuck. He takes too much pleasure in handing out his thrashings. If you made him a midshipman or an officer, you’d have a mutiny on your hands before you could say “Bligh and the Bounty”.’
A few days after Tuck had beaten me, Richard came running up with momentous news.
‘They’ve caught the thief! It’s Joshua Leverick, one of the starboard forecastle men. Caught him red-handed!’
‘What’s going to happen to him?’ I said.
‘I dread to think,’ said Richard, and he was off.
We found out soon enough. The whole crew were summoned on deck to watch Leverick run the gauntlet. All thirty or so of the forecastle men lined up facing each other. Each carried a length of frayed rope, with the loose ends tied in little knots. In among the line were Lewis Tuck and another bosun’s mate, each carrying a cat-o’-nine-tails. When Joshua was brought out on deck, with a marine clutching him tight by the arm on either side, he looked terrified. Unlike some men who faced punishment, there was no pretence of courage or contempt. Another bosun’s mate ripped his shirt from his back with sadistic relish. At this moment I began to suspect that all the bosun’s mates were as loathsome as Lewis Tuck. Every last one of them seemed to enjoy the cruelty in their work.
The bosun’s mate who had ripped off Joshua’s shirt took a cutlass from his belt and held it, at arm’s length, to his chest. At first I thought they were going to kill him, but Silas told me it was to stop him running down the line too quickly. Then, on the command of the Captain, the two of them – mate and victim – began to walk slowly down this row of men. As the punishment began, the whole crew, and especially the men in the line, started to jeer and hiss like a crowd booing a pantomime villain. The mate walked so slowly that each man in the line landed several heavy blows before Joshua was able to move on. When he passed the first bosun’s mate with the cat, I winced as it cracked on his back. This was a blow too many. He collapsed, and the jeering line waited for him to recover and stagger to his feet.
By now Joshua could hardly stand. His face was contorted in pain, his body was covered in cruel weals, and his chest was bleeding from cuts inflicted by the mate’s cutlass. He staggered towards the end of the line, but quailed when he saw Lewis Tuck waiting for him with another cat. That blow was the final one. He fell down on the deck, and did not move. ‘Throw a bucket over him,’ commanded the bosun. Joshua was drenched with stinging saltwater. This did not stir him, so a second bucket quickly followed. His hands began to clench and he tried to stand. Two men came forward and carried him off.
Ben turned to me and said, ‘He’s off to see Dr Claybourne. His punishment’s not over yet. Claybourne’s got to put vinegar to them wounds to stop them festering.’ All of us near to Ben – Tom, Silas, James – we all winced with mock sympathy.
It was a vicious beating and we had all behaved like a crowd at a Roman circus. Joshua seemed to be a conduit for all the anger and resentment and frustration the crew had kept bottled up during the voyage. Afterwards, when the men had dispersed, I felt guilty about being so callous, but there was something about being in an angry crowd that made it difficult to act differently.
A week later Joshua Leverick threw himself overboard and drowned. When a man died at sea, the crew usually auctioned off his clothes and possessions, and the money raised was sent back to the man’s family. Not for Joshua, they didn’t. He had broken a sacred rule. Seamen in a Navy ship have so little to protect them from the cruelty of the world, they depend on each other for help. Any man who broke that trust provoked a truly awful vengeance.
The evening after, I was sitting with Richard and Tom Shepherd in the mess. They began to talk, in hushed tones, of a book they had both read. It was called The Rights of Man, by someone called Tom Paine. Their discussion filled me with unease, as it seemed quite treasonous and certainly disrespectful of our king.
Tom went on to tell Richard about a reverend called Richard Price, and his Newington Green chapel, of which Tom used to be a member. ‘He’s dead now, bless his soul,’ said Tom, ‘but he changed my way of looking at the world.’
Tom and the reverend held views which shocked me, especially their support of the French Revolution. To me, and everyone else in Wroxham, the revolutionaries were worse than a pack of wolves. Instruments of Satan, the Reverend Chatham had called them, especially when they rolled out their guillotines and began to execute all the French nobles. We in the village all believed the rich man at his castle and poor man at his gate were part of God’s preordained world.
But when I listened to Tom, who spoke in such a quiet, reasonable way, I couldn’t help but think some of his ideas were undoubtedly true. ‘The Reverend Price is a man of God too, Sam, so how can he be preaching the work of the Devil?’ I had to agree. ‘If a king is a bad ruler, then he doesn’t deserve to be king. Have you studied your history, Sam?’ I had to admit I hadn’t, much. I could recite the English kings back to William the First, but I didn’t really know much about them.
Soon afterwards, Tom gave me a beaten-up-looking book, which he kept hidden among the supplies in the hold. It was the very same book: Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man. ‘He’s from your part of the world, Sam. Born in Norfolk, but moved to Philadelphia. I hear he lives in France now. I picked this up in New York, on my last trip,’ he said, ‘so take good care of it.’
Then he began to explain, in an excited whisper, what the book was about. ‘Paine says we shouldn’t be ruled by people just because they’re aristocrats. Being the son of a king or a duke don’t make you any more fit to rule a country than being the son of a coal miner or a mill worker. True, they’ve got an education, these people. But we should all have education. Everyone should be able to vote, men and women. Then we’d be able to vote for Members of Parliament who would support ordinary people, instead of that lot now in the House of Commons, who are just looking after themselves. And what do we need the House of Lords for? They’re all fat and old, and drunk on port for most of the time.’
I was horrified. I didn’t want to offend Tom, but I knew enough about what he was saying to know this was treasonous talk. Didn’t this man Paine live in France, after all? Besides, I barely understood what Tom was talking about. Parliament, the House of Lords, the House of Commons, these were words I had heard but little understood. I stared at him, almost speechless, while he talked. I took his book out of politeness, hurriedly placing it inside my shirt.
‘Keep it to yourself, mind,’ he said.
Later, at the end of the afternoon, when we were resting before the evening watch, I sat down in a corner of the forecastle, took it out and began to read. Engrossed as I was, I did not notice Lewis Tuck creeping up behind me.
‘Got your nose in a book again, clever-clogs,’ he sneered. ‘And what’s this you’re reading?’
I knew he could not read himself, but still my mind went blank. I opened my mouth to speak, but could think of nothing to say.
Tuck seized on my discomfort.
‘Seditious, is it? Treasonable material intent on undermining the morale of His Majesty’s Navy?’ He thwacked me round the head with his rope. ‘Well, that’s a floggable offence, lad. I think I’ll have that,’ and he snatched the book from my hand.
Help came from an unexpected quarter. Lieutenant Middlewych had been observing the whole incident. He came closer and spoke in an angry whisper.
‘Leave the lad alone, Mr Tuck. Being able to read is not a punishable offence.’
Tuck sprang to attention. ‘Yes, sir, at once, sir.’ He tossed the book back to me and went on his way, giving me a look of seething rage that told me exactly what to expect the next time he caught me alone.
‘Carry on, Witchall, carry on,’ said Middlewych. ‘Too few of our ratings can read. You should be congratulated.’
By now I had turned bright red, and my hands were sweating so much I feared the book would slip from my fingers. Please God, I thought, don’t make him ask me what I’m reading.
‘What is it you’re reading?’ said Middlewych.
A thought flashed into my head. My maker had not completely deserted me.
‘It’s Captain William Bligh’s account of the Bounty mutiny, sir. And his extraordinary fifty-day voyage across the Pacific Ocean to Kupang Harbour, on Timor Island, sir.’ I began to gabble. ‘The men on the little boat, sir, they had to eat raw seagull – beaks, feet and all, sir.’
‘Good lad,’ he said. ‘Did you know Mr Nisbit was a member of Captain Bligh’s crew? I’m sure he’ll be able to vouch for the authenticity of the account. I’d be curious to read that myself. Perhaps you’d be good enough to let me borrow it when you’ve finished?’
Without waiting for a reply he turned and walked back to the quarterdeck. It was a full five minutes before I stopped shaking enough to feel I could trust myself to stand up and walk away.
Down on the mess deck I bumped into Ben and told him what had happened. ‘Sam,’ he said, ‘where did you get that book? You could be flogged for reading that.’ He snatched it from me and went to find Tom Shepherd. He and Tom were good friends, but I could see them both having a quietly furious argument. Had the bosun’s mates not been present, I didn’t doubt that they would have come to blows.
I did feel angry with Tom, after that.
‘Ben says you nearly got me flogged!’ I said when I saw him next.
‘Sam,’ said Tom firmly, ‘you’re a bright lad. There are things I’d like to teach you about the world. That book’s the best start I can think of.’
I forgave him soon enough, but I still thought about how close I came to having the cat lashed across my back.