We were nearing Ireland, and the voyage had been good, with a fair breeze and moderate waves that Captain Williams and the crew of the Albion found easy to handle. I saw Maud and her son daily and welcomed their company. I might have been lonely without them, since the Captain was busy with his duties, and Mr. and Mrs. William Drayton Blackwell and Mr. and Mrs. Samuel C. Ellis were insufferable with their puffed-up platitudes.
On cloudless, windy days, the Captain ordered the steerage passengers to bring up their clothes and air them, and I was happy to assist Maud in this task, finding for her an overturned lifeboat on which she could spread her belongings. At first, she seemed embarrassed at the damp, fetid stench of her clothes, but gradually my insouciance reassured her. On this day, as we were keeping guard over her possessions airing in the breeze, I noticed that she was wearing the gown my Aunt Elizabeth had given me and which I had passed on to her.
“How pretty you look in that costume,” I told her.
“Oh, ma’am, I want to look like a lady when I meet my English relations one of these days. In that land where me and Henry lived”—here she made a dismissive gesture towards the stern of the ship indicating, I guessed, the land from which we had come—“I be nothing but a slut in the opinion of those nobs I worked for. But in a new land, I be able to start again by telling everyone lies.”
“Lies?”
“Yes, ma’am. In the house of my relations, I intend to say that Henry’s Papa be dead.”
I understood her completely. I, too, intended to block out my past life in that gossipy society where I had lived for thirty-two years of my life. Like her, I intended to start again, far from the narrow strictures of marriage and child-rearing imposed on the upper classes. In truth, I looked forward to never hearing again the drone of Papa’s voice urging me to conform, to be proper. I knew I’d miss Eliza, Mary, Lucy, Jacques, and my generous New York relatives. And, since learning more of Mama’s true nature, I knew that I would miss her too. But all was behind me now. I turned my head in the direction of the ship’s prow and reflected for a moment on my good fortune.
Thinking of Papa served as a reminder of a decision I had made earlier in the day. Dear Uncle George had given me enough money to finance my trip to Tolpuddle and any emergencies along the way. But I knew that Maud and her son must be in need of what she called “brass.” At that moment I was wearing a cameo brooch given to me by Papa on my eighteenth birthday. Knowing Papa, I realized that the brooch was perhaps of no great value, but still it would be of some help to Maud in financing her new life. I took it from my bosom and gave it to her.
She immediately pinned it to the bodice of Aunt Elizabeth’s gown. “I be wearing this with my fine costume. Do I not now look like one of them city swells I see putting on airs on the deck?” She laughed, then burst into tears.
Her gratitude for this paltry gift embarrassed me, and I was grateful at that moment for a diversion. A hen came fluttering about the deck, cackling loudly, no doubt exulting in her escape from somewhere in the hold. Her noise attracted one of the crew, who attempted to catch her, at which point she flew overboard into the sea. We watched as she struggled upon the waves and disappeared from view. A failed attempt at freedom, alas
* * *
.
That evening, as I lay in my narrow bed reading a book Aunt Elizabeth had given me, I noticed that the ship had begun to heave from side to side. In a few minutes, there was a knock on my door, and Captain Williams called out to me from the saloon corridor where we had eaten our supper earlier.
“Storm coming up, Miss Powell,” he said. “I have ordered the crew to trim the sails. I think all will be well. Please do not worry.”
I had no idea what he meant by trimming the sails. But “storm coming up” was clear enough, and I could already feel a pain in my head, perhaps a precursor of the seasickness that had plagued me on my earlier trip to England with Papa. Happy I was that Lucy had stolen some of Mama’s laudanum for me on the night she freed me from my prison in York. I swallowed the contents of the bottle and soon fell asleep.
* * *
Next morning when the effects of the laudanum had worn off, I awoke to find that the situation had worsened. My trunk was moving across the room from side to side, banging against the small table and upsetting the washbasin and pitcher. They crashed to the floor and the pieces of pottery joined with the trunk in the procession across the room. I dressed hastily and ran out the door just in time to avoid a collision with the sliding debris.
On deck I became one of the reeling, staggering people observing the horror of the scene in front of us. The waves seemed mountains high, and their noise was deafening. I looked around for Maud and Henry, but one of the crew told me that the Captain had ordered the locking of the trap doors to steerage. My God, I thought, my friends will be unable to escape if we run aground.
A scream arose from one of the passengers who had slipped and fallen on the water-soaked deck. It was a woman. Her body came rolling towards me and the other passengers, all of us clinging to anything we could grab hold of. As she came closer, I saw that it was Mrs. William Drayton Blackwell. All of our best instincts immediately came to the fore, and we stopped the woman in her onward roll and hoisted her to her feet. She was red-faced and shaken and her stiff demeanour completely eroded. “Dear Miss Powell,” she said, “I thank you and these other kind people for saving my life.” For how long? For how long? These were my unspoken thoughts as the ship nosed its way into the mountains of water. If she didn’t make it, I could imagine the inscription on her tombstone: “Relic of William Drayton Blackwell.”
“Man the pumps!” It was a screamed order from Captain Williams, and I watched the sailors rush to obey.
“What is he talking about?” I was at the moment standing beside Mr. Samuel C. Ellis, and for once in the voyage, I found myself in urgent need of information from him.
“The ship has taken on too much water during the night, and the bilge must be pumped out or the excess water may sink the ship.” This information he delivered in his best noblesse oblige voice, but I was glad to receive it. Now I understood.
I ran up to the crew. “Let me help you!”
They welcomed me without preamble. In a moment I saw what I must do. The pulley was turned by hand with an implement I didn’t know the name of, not that it mattered. As I turned it, discs pulled water up one of the vertical tubes that ran down into the bilge. As each disc reached the top, the water spilled over into channels that directed it overboard.
It was work requiring supernatural strength that I somehow, in my desperation, summoned. The bilge water smelled foul, but I persevered, remembering for a fleeting moment my long-ago complaints to Mama about the mordanting of the dye on my gown with urine. How childishly trivial those complaints seemed now, when I thought about the pleasant garden and summer sunshine of those bygone days.
I toiled, hoping that we would survive. Then came a shuddering thud as the ship hit the rocks. The sails keeled over with an aching screech. I had a moment’s vision of people on shore watching, their faces contorted in horror. As the ship lurched to portside, the sailors and I left the pump, scrambled to the edge of the railing and, like the hen, flew into the sea.