By Bish Denham
“I am loathe to have you leave, but your father insists you go to him.”
“I’ll be fine, Mother.” Jacques was impatient to board Le Rôdeur, the ship that would carry him to his father on the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. His father owned a sugar cane plantation there and the boy was eager not only to be with his father, but to learn about the running of the profitable business. He wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps.
His mother turned from him and spoke to Captain Boucher, a burly man well into middle-age. “You will look after my son?”
Before the gentleman could answer, Jacques said, “I am not a child, Mother.” Though only twelve years-old he had, since his father’s going to Guadeloupe, considered himself the head of the household.
Captain Boucher laughed and placed his large hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Be assured, Madam Romaigne, young Jacques will be well taken care of. And, if he is interested, I will teach him the ropes of sailing the ship.”
Jacques saw that his mother’s eyes glistened as she nodded slightly. “My husband, in his letters to me, assured me you are an honorable man and your ship seaworthy.”
“Indeed, Madam. Your husband and I are well acquainted. If something should happen to Jacques, I would be held responsible and so I take him into my charge knowing he is the most precious cargo I will have on board.”
Jacques worked hard to keep from fidgeting, uncomfortable with being discussed by the adults as if a mere child of six. Despite the chill of January, the docks at Le Havre, a port in the Normandy region of northwest France, were noisy with men loading or unloading cargo from the numerous tall-masted, wooden sailing ships. All the activity heightened his senses and Jacques wanted to run about and explore like a puppy. The air smelled of sea, animals, sweat, and human refuse. Though he thought of this journey as a grand adventure, he knew his mother feared for his safety.
His mother turned back to her son, “Mind your manners,” she said as she brushed imagined dust from the shoulder of his jacket. “And obey Captain Boucher.
“Of course, Mother.”
“I have something for you.” She handed him a book. It was a journal, bound in fine Moroquin leather of a deep gray with gilded fleur de lis at each corner of the front cover. “I want you to write in it every day and describe your journey. If I follow you next spring, I would like to read it.”
“Thank you, Mother.” Jacques turned the journal over in his hands. It was a perfect gift. “If you follow?”
“You know I am afraid of the ocean, Jacques. And, there are other issues that make me uncomfortable about leaving France.”
“But Father misses you!”
“As I miss him and as I will miss you. But…”
“It is time,” Captain Boucher interrupted. “The tide turns and we must be away.”
Jacques saw it was all his mother could do to keep from weeping out right and so he didn’t mind that she embraced him tightly and kissed him on the cheek.
* * *
The journey from France and along the western coast of Africa was uneventful. Despite a calm sea and favorable winds, Jacques was seasick the first few days and teased by some of the crew, even Captain Boucher. But most particularly by Cook, who placed savory meals in front of him which only caused Jacques to excuse himself from the table.
Jacques wrote in his journal, The ship’s surgeon, Monsieur Gagne, has assured me I will feel better soon, but at the moment I could throw myself overboard.
He had difficulty sleeping as he was not used to the noises the ship made: the creaks, squeaks, and moans of the wood, the slap of sails against the masts, the slosh of waves against the hull, the calling and talking of sailors on deck.
But by the third day he felt well enough to venture out of his cabin. The fresh, windy air quickly revived him and he soon gained his sea legs.
M. Gagne was right! I am now quite well and am looking forward to the rest of my journey. You must not worry about me, Mother.
* * *
On March 14th, we anchored at Bonny, a port on the Niger Delta in the Bight of Biafra. Captain Boucher expects to be here at least three weeks.
Bonny is an island nation ruled by a Negro king. It is a busy port. Tomorrow Captain Boucher is taking me to the home of Monsieur Dumont where I will be staying while Captain Boucher conducts his business.
M. Dumont was a wealthy man and Jacques relished sleeping in a real bed with clean sheets and eating off plates that didn’t slide around on the table. M. Dumont’s son Hugo, a young man of 18, entertained him and took him about town and showed him many interesting sites, including one of the slave markets.
I did not care for the slave market, Mother. I cannot help but feel the Negros are human beings and not cattle. They weep and cry and suffer just as terribly as any of us. I saw a mother have her child, a boy no older than myself, pulled from her arms. She and the boy were both quite distraught. I have tried to imagine how I would feel in that situation and it is quite beyond me. After seeing that I asked Hugo to take me back to his house. I did not sleep well last night because of vague dreams of being carried away against my will.
* * *
At last we are on our way, he wrote a few days later. Le Rôdeur is 200 tons and we now have on board 160 Negro slaves.
Jacques reread his words. He had already commented on the fair weather carrying him toward the Caribbean. He tried not to think about what lay in the close dank, dark quarters of the hold. It was enough that he could hear their muffled moans and cries through the decking.
He took up his quill and continued writing.
I know you will miss me while you tarry in France, but father needs me on the plantation. Besides, I long to see the green hills of Guadeloupe and the blue waters of the bays. Take heart, Mother, soon you will follow and we will be together once again.
At dinner a few days later, M. Gagne and Captain Boucher spoke of shipboard issues. Jacques, as a paying passenger, ate with the men. They talked over his head, as if he wasn’t there.
“The slaves have brought ophthalmia on board with them,” said M. Gagne.
“Ophthalmia?” asked Jacques. “What is that?”
“An eye disease that causes blindness.” said M. Gagne. “At worst the blindness is permanent. Most often, if treated properly, vision will return, though in some cases one’s sight will be impaired.”
“How bad?” asked Captain Boucher.
“It is spreading at a frightful rate. There are already more than I can manage.”
“I cannot afford to lose my cargo, Gagne. Every slave cured is worth his value.”
“I would request,” said the surgeon, “that I bring them on deck where I can more easily attend them.”
Captain Boucher agreed. “But only twenty at a time, for fifteen minutes.”
The next morning the human cargo was brought up from the hold.
Even though he was not an officer, Jacques was allowed on the quarterdeck provided he kept out of the way. From there he could look over the stern and watch the mesmerizing wake or gaze towards the bow across the upper deck and marvel at the agility of the sailors or see the naked misery crawling out of the dark depths. The women and children were brought up first.
They were at first confused and disoriented, huddling together and squinting in the brightness of the sunlight. But soon they basked in the sun as sailors threw buckets of seawater over them and M. Gagne examined them.
When the third group came on deck, Jacques noticed a woman with a young child in her arms. It was obvious the child was either dead or unconscious as its limbs hung loosely from its body. The mother, in a state of hysteria, wept and wailed in a way that made him shiver even as the sun beat down on his head.
The mother wrenched herself free from a sailor who tried to pull the child from her arms and ran to railing of the ship. She paused, looked back over her shoulder at the other women, then threw herself, child clutched in her arms, over the side. Her dark form disappeared beneath the foam. It happened so quickly the sailors couldn’t stop her.
Jacques heard a scream.
“Get the boy below!” Captain Boucher bellowed. Before he could be half dragged, half carried below deck, three more slaves followed the first into the sea. Only when tossed on his bunk did Jacques realize the screams came from him.
Several days passed before Jacques ate or came out on deck. His dreams were nightmares that revisited what he had witnessed. He debated writing about it in his journal, but in the end found comfort in imagining his beautiful mother listening to his pain.
They would rather plunge to their deaths than be in chains, Jacques wrote. I try to imagine if it were you and me in that position and cannot even bear to think of it. Captain Boucher has ordered that all the slaves remain in the hold.
The next day he wrote: The disease is spreading at a terrifying rate. M. Gagne declared the cases are already so numerous as to be beyond his management. The sailors sling down provisions to the wretches from the upper deck as they are afraid of coming in contact with the disease.
Dinners with Captain Boucher and M. Gagne became tense, silent affairs. Jacques took to eating in the galley where Cook told him wild stories of pirates and buried treasure, shipwrecks and haunted islands. But none of his stories eased the sickening misery in the hold which multiplied a thousand times when M. Gagne announced all the slaves had the disease.
Mother, both Captain Boucher and M. Gagne are complaining of blurred vision and some of the crew have already lost their sight. I dread going to sleep at night and dread waking in the morning because I know the day will only bring more suffering. And what if the disease begins to affect me?
The waves rolled on carrying the ship on their endless heaving backs. The sunlight and wind no longer refreshed or felt clean to Jacques. He no longer enjoyed looking out over the stern of the ship to be mesmerized by the wake. All he could think of were the people who littered the waves.
I rose this morning, Jacques wrote, to find Captain Boucher, M. Gagne, and the first mate completely blind! So far, I have been spared. But will it always be so?
And, a few days later, All the crew, save one, a sailor named Louis, is blind. Captain Boucher preserves what order he can, and M. Gagne still attempts to do his duty, but we are in a frightful situation. The crew works under Louis’ orders. They move about like unconscious machines. Captain Boucher stands by with a thick rope, which he sometimes applies to the back of a pitiful sailor if Louis tells him the man is unfaithful in his duty.
Jacques took it upon himself to serve Captain Boucher and M. Gagne. As Cook was also blind, he fixed what meals he could, or helped the two men to the quarterdeck. With him and Louis the only ones still able to see, he used his eyes to the best of his ability. He guided sailors from chore to chore and lent a hand where he could, washing the deck or coiling rope.
In the hold the slaves groaned and cried.
* * *
Jacques woke one morning terrified, for he found his own vision blurry. In a little while I shall see nothing but death, he wrote. I will write as long as I can, Mother, but I, too, could go blind.
Something must be done for the misery in the hold.
The stench from the conditions below deck wafted up through the decking, permeating the air and sticking to everything from wood to clothes. Jacques wondered if there would ever come a day when the odor left his nose.
His eyes failing, Jacques felt his way to the upper deck and went to Captain Boucher, who stood with rope in hand. Louis stood by his side and bawled out orders to the blind crew that shuffled listlessly about.
“Captain,” said Jacques, “Can nothing be done for the Negroes in the hold?”
He turned his sightless eyes towards the boy. “What would you have me do when we can scarcely care for ourselves?”
“Could not some of them be allowed to come up on deck? Perhaps the fresh air would ease some of their agony.”
“My crew is as blind as those creatures. Should we bring them up they might well throw themselves off the ship as they did before, and we would not be able to stop them. Is that what you want? Better to leave them where they are. At least a portion of them will be saleable, if we have the good fortune of reaching Guadeloupe.”
“But sir…”
“Away from me, boy! I must try to save my ship and crew.”
Jacques and the crew despaired of ever seeing the light of day again.
Each lived in his own dark world of misery. Jacques felt his way about and managed to find biscuits, dry and hard as stone, which he softened in a cup of water. He considered himself fortunate knowing unfed cargo suffered below.
One morning, Louis, the only one with eyes to see, gave a dire warning. “I sense a storm brewing.”
He yelled at the men to prepare as best they could. They stumbled and groped blindly for ropes and hatches.
By evening the storm came down upon them. Captain Boucher ordered everyone below. Only Louis remained at the helm to somehow pilot the blind ship as it got tossed on the heaving waves.
Jacques clung to his bunk to keep from being thrown to the deck.
“This is how it ends,” he thought. “The ship will sink and I will be drowned at sea. I am sorry, Mother.”
They flew like a ghost ship, the masts cracking, sails snapping and bursting from their bonds. The noise was like the sharp report of muskets. One moment they were swallowed in the troughs of the angry sea, the decks awash with livid spray. The next it cast them up to the crests as if vomiting the ship out of its bowels.
Jacques prayed fervently for it to end, that their lives be spared.
Hours and hours later, dawn broke over a dull, dark gray sea, and the wind began to die. The ship wallowed, floundering and directionless. Louis reported most of its sails were in tatters and a forward mast broken. He had not slept or rested in more than 24 hours.
Late in the afternoon, Louis yelled out words Jacques thought he’d ever hear. “A sail, I see a sail!”
He steered the ship towards it as best he could.
Jacques, like many of the crew, stumbled blindly to the side, his heart bursting with hope they would be saved. He heard noises upon the sea, the sound of water sloshing against a wooden hull that was not their hull. A cry went out from every mouth on deck, echoed by those lying in their hammocks below.
And from deep within the hold, the human cargo cried for rescue.
Their cries were answered, voices carried on the wind as if on the wings of birds.
Captain Boucher was the first to recover his speech.
“Ahoy! Ship ahoy! What ship are you?”
“The Saint Leon from Spain,” a voice called back. “Help us, for God’s sake. We are dying of hunger and thirst. Give us provisions, name your terms.”
“We need help ourselves!” Captain Boucher cried in disbelief. “We will give you provisions if you will give us some of your men.”
“Money! We will pay you money, a hundred times over for food and water. But men we cannot give for we are all stone blind and would be useless to you!”
A horrid silence fell between the ships. It was as if death had thrown his shroud over them, muffling all sound.
But then, one the crew on Le Rôdeur began to laugh. It spread like the blinding disease itself and soon the ship was in a state of awful merriment. Laughter gave a morbid kind of release, for the coincidence was more than they could bare.
Jacques, too, laughed. He found himself down on the deck, doubled over, clutching his belly. He could not stop himself.
The Spaniards cursed them as the blind ships drifted apart.
* * *
Mother, your son was blind for ten days! But now I am able to see well enough to write. We have lived in a world peopled by shadows. We could not see the ship or the heavens or the sea or the faces of our comrades. It has been a horror, yet somehow we are only a day or so away from Guadeloupe.
While on the quarterdeck this morning I overheard a conversation between the first mate and Captain Boucher. They did not take notice of my being there.
‘Are you quite certain the cargo is insured?’
Captain Boucher said, ‘I am. Every slave that is lost must be made good by the underwriters. They have cost us enough already. Do your duty.’
The next day Jacques was horrified to learn what that duty meant. In the dead of night, Captain Boucher had ordered 39 blind slaves tied with weights and thrown into the sea.
Perhaps, if I had known, I could have said or done something to stop it, he wrote. I dread having to look Captain Boucher in the face, but I intend to ask him why.
“Because,” Captain Boucher replied without emotion, “they were unsalable and it was senseless to keep them.”
“If they had all become blind would you have thrown all of them into the sea?” Jacques asked.
“These issues are none of your concern nor will I have a mere boy question my decisions and authority.”
* * *
It is due to Louis alone that we are now only a few leagues from Guadeloupe. What a brave and gallant soul he is. Captain Boucher has lost an eye. M. Gagne and eleven of our 22 crew are blind for life and five are able to see but dimly. Among the slaves were those 39 who were drowned for being sightless. The rest are either blind in one eye or their vision is impaired.
As for me, I seem to be recovering.
I have heard you talk, Mother, when you did not think I was listening, with some of the ladies who visit you. I have heard you speak against slavery. I did not think anything of it at the time. I thought it was silly woman’s talk. I thought you did not understand how Father makes his money and that if we did not have slaves to work the plantation on Guadeloupe, we would not be able to live as we do.
“But now I think I understand why you have been so hesitant to come to the island. It is not because you do not love my father, I know you do as I know he loves you. It is because of slavery. You do not want to witness it. You do not want to seem to condone it when your heart tells you it is wrong.
You are right in your beliefs. Slavery is an evil that must be abolished.
I know I am just a boy in the eyes of many, but I have seen things no man should see.
Mother, as God as my witness, I will try to convince Father to sell the plantation and return to France. If he refuses, know that I will return to you as soon as I can. Perhaps together we can find a way to put an end to this madness called slavery.
* * *
Jacques stood at the bow of the ship and watched the green hills of Guadeloupe rise from the sea. As the battered ship made its way into the harbor of Pointe-a-Pitre, he was grateful to God to be able to pick out his father where he stood on the dock. He was anxious to set foot upon solid ground and smell the clean sweet air.
Yet even as he stood, wildly waving, a dark shadow hung over him, for he dreaded the confrontation to come. And under his feet, deep in the hold, he heard the slaves’ muffled moans. He knew their journey and ordeal was not over, would never be over, and that his life would never be the same.
Author’s Note: Though I have taken great liberties, this story is based on actual events as experienced and written down in the journal of twelve year old Jacques B. Romaigne between January and June of 1819. In June the following year Benjamin Constant, a French politician and author, gave an impassioned speech against slavery to the French Chamber of Deputies, quoting from Jacques’ dictated account of what he witnessed on board Le Rôdeur, including the slaves being thrown overboard. The poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, was also inspired by Jacques’ account, and wrote the anti-slavery poem “The Slave-Ships.” Opthalmia was a general term used to describe a variety of highly contagious eye diseases which caused inflammation of the eyes that could lead to blindness or impaired vision. As for the Spanish ship, the Saint Leon, she was never heard from again.
The End
Bish Denham is from the U.S. Virgin Islands, where her family has lived for over a hundred years. The author of two middle grade novels and a collection of retold Jamaican Anansi stories, she says, “Growing up in the islands was like living inside a history book.”
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