Freed at last from the clutches of the reef, Endeavour plunged full of confidence into the open sea. Isaac stood with Young Nick on the foredeck, faces whooping to the wind, as the ship surged, rejoicing with deep, safe water beneath her.
They were out of danger! They were going home! Just a short sail from Possession Island off Cape York to the shipyards at Batavia. A few repairs to Endeavour’s leaks. And then . . . what tales they’d tell of adventure in the far South Seas when they walked the streets of London again arrayed in robes of triumph!
If only the boys had known they’d come wearing dead men’s clothes, for greater perils than the reef still lay ahead of them. If only their Captain knew how damaged his ship really was. Her keel torn; teredo worm in her timbers; two bottom planks almost sawn through by the coral. It was a wonder Endeavour hadn’t broken up beneath them already. But happy in their ignorance, the voyagers pitched into the Arafura Sea – and even detoured out of curiosity to see something of New Guinea.
The coastal waters were shallow, however. The pinnace only made one brief landing: and then the gentlemen had to wade two hundred yards ashore. They had time, like Robinson Crusoe, to see a human footprint in the sand, and look at the coconuts, before they were attacked and chased back to the boat by armed warriors.
They left New Guinea alone after that. Besides, the Dutch and Portuguese had already explored these parts, and after two years away almost everyone aboard Endeavour was yearning for home. Even Mr Banks started to calculate the distance to Old England and fame.
So Cook set his course for Java, for men were also feeling the want of fresh food. They hooked a couple of sharks, which Henry Jeffs butchered and one-handed John Thompson turned into a stew. Everybody ate it with gusto – a far cry from those early days when old Ravenhill had warned against ‘man-eaters’ as vittles.
‘We’ve met real cannibals in New Zealand,’ Isaac whispered to Nick, and the whole mess table sniggered.
Supplies remained a problem for the few who were sick. Tupaia, after so long on a ship’s diet, was constantly ill – and began to irritate everyone with his complaints and demands. He even abused Taiata, when the boy was himself suffering. Astronomer Green had long fought symptoms of scurvy, which he exacerbated by drinking more heavily than usual: but then, most of them did, overcome with fatigue or homesickness. Isaac more than once had to help a drunken Molineux into bed.
‘By the mark . . . shoal water. Eh, boy?’
A hungover steersman one afternoon set the ship on a wrong tack and the sheet lines, which held the corners of the sails, went slack so that the canvas flapped uselessly about.
‘Look at ’im!’ Young Nick nudged Isaac in the ribs. ‘Letting the ship drift like that, three sheets in the wind, just like them boozy tars down below.’
Nick was calling himself a ‘tar’ now, letting his hair grow long like the adult sailors, with a pigtail plaited and dabbed with tar to keep it in place. Isaac had a plait too – but without the tar. Mother wouldn’t have liked it.
Endeavour passed Timor, but when the ship reached the small, fertile island of Savu, the temptation to go ashore could not be resisted. Lieutenant Gore was sent ahead, and returned with word of safe anchorage. The local chief or rajah was hospitable. He gave the gentlemen and officers a feast of pork and rice (with enough left over for Isaac and the other servants), and offered to sell them buffaloes if the Dutch Governor agreed.
The Governor was willing – at a steep price. But when Sydney Parkinson innocently asked if any cloves or nutmegs grew on Savu, the Dutch became very defensive about ‘their’ spice islands and tried to stop trade altogether. Only when Captain Cook presented an old broadsword to the rajah, who began waving it at the native troops, did business resume: and Endeavour left Savu with nine buffaloes, a crate of fowls, and a stock of sweet palm wine syrup.
Thus provisioned they ran with the trade winds, fragrant with cinnamon, until they reached the southern shores of Java. And just before sighting Java Head on 1 October, the Captain collected their logbooks and journals, and swore everyone to silence.
‘The right of our discoveries belongs to King George,’ he said. ‘But the Dutch are suspicious. If they hear we’ve been to New Zealand and New Holland, they might well make claims of their own, and detain us at Batavia longer than I wish.’
‘And those of us who were there with the Dolphin know that Batavia is not a place to stay a moment longer than necessary,’ remarked Dick Pickersgill.
To which Molineux added, ‘The air is most unwholesome, and the people sickly with fever. The only way to survive is to lay in a plentiful store of arrack liquor.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Isaac.
‘Rather formidable native spirits, boyo,’ said Francis Wilkinson, ‘made from palm or rice wine.’
‘Sounds good,’ cheeked Young Nick. ‘More sheets in the wind.’
‘Aye, and we are mostly in the pink of good health,’ observed Cook. ‘I hope to repair Endeavour and leave as soon as possible. Meantime, say nowt to anybody.’
They saw Princes Island, lying like a pulled tooth at the entrance to Sunda Strait. Before making the passage, a boat went ashore to get fresh coconuts for Tupaia and feed for the buffaloes. Endeavour was hailed by several Dutch ships. Zachary Hicks, who went aboard, was circumspect – saying only that they’d come ‘from Europe’. Yet he returned with much news of his own. ‘They tell me that Captain Carteret in the Swallow called at Batavia nigh two years ago!’ he exclaimed to cheers in the wardroom.
The Swallow had sailed in company with Captain Wallis and the Dolphin in ’66; but the ships had become separated off Cape Horn, and Swallow was feared lost. Now, the Dolphin men who knew her – Molineux, Gore, Pickersgill and Wilkinson – celebrated to think she’d survived.
‘Why, she might have reached home!’ cried Robert Molineux. ‘Come Isaac, bring another bottle to drink her health!’
Swallow did get safely home, six months after Endeavour left England. And Mr Hicks brought other news. The American colonists were refusing to pay their taxes, and King George was proposing to send a force to suppress the rebels. It was the first time that Isaac – or any of them – got wind of the conflict in which, years later, he would serve as a Lieutenant and be promoted to command his own ship.
Endeavour spent the best part of a week making her way along the north Java coast, until she came to anchor in Batavia roads – the city’s outer harbour – on 10 October. Where they discovered it was actually 11 October.
‘Why the difference?’ Isaac wondered.
‘We forgot,’ explained Mr Molineux. ‘Sailing westward around the world we gained an extra day.’
After paying his respects to the Governor-General, Cook sought leave to have Endeavour properly heaved down in dry dock.
The Dutch were everything the Portuguese authorities at Rio were not. Permission was readily given to repair the ship in the yards at Onrust Island across the bay. Fresh supplies were sent aboard, including a cask of arrack. It went down a treat as Molineux foretold, and they later took on a hundred and fifty gallons more.
The Indies were heading into the rainy season, and as a precaution Cook had the crew attach a lightning chain to the masthead. It was as well he did, for an electrical flash split the topmast of a Dutch ship, and one night Endeavour was shaken by a thunderbolt. Isaac later came to see it as a premonition – a warning of what was to happen: though at the time Batavia seemed to promise all they wanted.
A vessel was about to sail for Holland, so Cook wrote a brief letter to Secretary Stephens, informing of their safe arrival. Also at anchor were three British ships, and his crew had much joy drinking with their fellow jack tars again.
It was impossible not to say something over the arrack of the Venuses at Tahiti or the terrors of the reef. But what struck Isaac and all Endeavour men was the pallid, spectral look of the sailors – and of every other European they saw at Batavia.
‘Look at us, hale and bonny after two years at sea!’ Nick jeered. ‘But you’re as thin and white as ghosts, like dead men waiting for your shrouds.’
‘Fever,’ they replied in mournful voices. ‘The ague. This place be rife with it, mates. Stay here too long, and ye’ll be haunted by it y’rselves.’
It seemed nonsense to Nick and young Isaac. True, the night breeze carried foul smells and mosquitoes from mangrove swamps along the coast. But apart from Mr Green, Lieutenant Hicks was the only crewman who ailed, and he was allowed to take quarters in Batavia. Mr Banks and Dr Solander also took lodgings with their servants, and soon sent for Tupaia and Taiata to join them.
The Tahitians revelled in their first experience of a town. They wandered amazed among crowds on paved streets beside broad canals, staring at fine churches, mosques and pagodas. Taiata trotted with delight beside small horse-drawn carriages, stopping outside rich shops and houses. People riding animals! Never had the boy imagined it! He stood marvelling with Tupaia at the fortress guarding the entrance to the canal. No marae was ever built like this!
Such a variety of people and costumes! Wealthy Europeans in velvet brocades and full powdered wigs. Chinese merchants, clothed in white taffeta. Javanese artisans and Malay slaves in sarongs and coloured cotton shirts. Tupaia insisted that he, too, appear in proper Tahitian dress, and a length of tapa cloth was sent ashore from Endeavour.
Thus attired, Tupaia was walking with Mr Banks one day when he was stopped by a man who came running from his house to ask the priest if he’d not been in Batavia before.
‘No, sir, he has not,’ Banks replied. ‘Why so odd a question?’
It turned out that, some eighteen months earlier, the French commander de Bougainville had been in Batavia with his two ships. On board was a Tahitian man, Aotourou, who appeared very similar to Tupaia.
‘I mistook your Indian for him, sir,’ the Dutchman responded. ‘I do apologise.’
At least it explained the mystery of the strange ships that had visited Tahiti before Cook. And it gave the Captain something else to think about as he wrote a longer report for the Admiralty, to be sent with a copy of his charts and journal by the next ship to Europe. The French were busy in the Pacific, too! Their Lordships would be most interested.
Cook was modest enough about his own achievements. Altho’ the discoveries made in this Voyage are not great . . . Their Lordships’ heads must have been spinning when they looked at his work for the first time. Yes, and read that no one, other than Forby Sutherland, had died of sickness during the voyage. In that, however, James Cook spoke too soon.
They had to wait two weeks before bringing Endeavour alongside the Coopers Island wharf. Stores were unloaded; tents pitched for the crew; topmasts and rigging taken down. There were further delays before the ship moved to the careening yards at Onrust. Still . . . all seemed well.
But Batavia deserved her reputation as one of the unhealthiest places in the East. The Dutch may have built the town with pristine memories of Holland, yet into its canals the citizens poured all their filth. Human excrement, garbage, offal, even dead animals were tipped into waterways which became like cesspits, choked with silt. They constantly had to be dredged, and the black, oozing muck was piled in heaps to dry, before being carted off.
The stench in the monsoonal heat was appalling. It hung over Batavia like a sickening vapour – a miasma – that everyone thought was the cause of disease. Mosquitoes swarmed in stagnant backwaters, attacking soft human flesh by night.
Malarial fever quickly spread. Every year, some three thousand people died of it – mainly Europeans who had no immunity, half of them within twelve months of their arrival.
No wonder they had a spectral look. And no wonder that, within a fortnight, Endeavour men also began to sicken.
Dr Monkhouse, at his quarters in town, was the first to suffer. Then Taiata and Tupaia became ill: seized with a sudden shaking cold, followed by violent sweating that lasted for hours. They seemed to improve for a day or two. But the fever returned, and Tupaia pleaded to be taken back to the ship.
‘I do not think a town is good for Tahitian people,’ he said. ‘We need to breathe fresh winds blowing off the sea.’
So Joseph Banks took them out to Cooper’s Island, and pitched a tent near the Endeavour crew. Tupaia seemed happier, as if he could sense faint perfumes borne from Ra’iatea to the east. Better in mind but not in body, for fever recurred to grip him and Taiata, as it did young Isaac Manley.
He was in the tent, writing a letter home. ‘Dear Mamma and Papa, I trust this finds you well as it leaves me . . .’ But Isaac hadn’t got far when he realised that he wasn’t very well at all. His head began to throb. The lines on the page blurred, the ink turned into dark pools, and his words lost all meaning.
He was cramped, and every limb felt as if it had turned to lead. Isaac lay in his hammock for days, alternately shivering and burning. His letter had fallen to the ground and was trampled into the mud, unfinished and forgotten, until at last it blew into the sea and was lost.
Isaac wasn’t alone. Almost every voyager was struck by malaria. Even Mr Banks was seized with such pain at his lodgings he could barely crawl downstairs.
His people were bled by physicians, trying to rid the body of malignant humours: purged with strong emetics, and their skin blistered with a hot glass. Banks was fortunate to have with him some bark of the South American cinchona tree, known as a remedy for the ague, when drunk as an infusion like tea. Others were not so lucky. Dr Monkhouse grew worse: and even as Endeavour was taken to Onrust in early November, the ship’s surgeon died and was buried at Batavia.
He was succeeded by his assistant, William Perry, only in his early twenties, and barely able to cope with the number of sick. Nick Young was appointed his servant – the lad’s first proper job on Endeavour’s muster book. Apprentice to the doctor. In truth, with nearly all her crew ill, those between bouts of fever did what they could to nurse their fellows. Some days there were not twenty men fit for duty. And when the full extent of the damage to the ship’s keel was revealed, the Captain was glad to let the skilled Onrust workmen do the repairs. His own crew were just too sick . . .
‘Isaac . . . Issy . . .’ The boy heard Young Nick’s voice through a feverish dream.
‘What is it?’ Isaac sought to rouse himself.
‘It’s Taiata. He’s got worse . . . he says he’s dyin’ . . .’
‘He can’t!’
‘Come and help me . . .’
Nick got Isaac to his feet, and the lads made their way to another tent. It had been raining again, but in the cool dawn there were a few hours respite from the steamy heat. Isaac’s aching body felt some relief – as if this would be a better day.
He would need his strength. For they found Taiata crying out in delirium, ‘Tupaia . . . master . . . save me . . .’ Just as he had done that day he’d been seized at Cape Kidnappers. Then, as now, the boy struggled for his life – floundering in a sea of memory, until he fell back exhausted into the arms of the astronomer, Charles Green.
The man had been close to the boy: had taught him English and even a little science during those long days at sea, when the other lads were about their duties. Now he sponged Taiata’s brow, and encouraged him to drink the medicine Young Nick held to his lips.
‘Laudanum . . . Mr Perry says it will do you good.’
‘Aye, and we’ll soon be out together on the beach again collecting coconuts, as we did at Tahiti. Remember . . .?’
The name conjured such visions of home. Taiata swallowed the opiate, as if the taste of it would carry him there; and for a moment Isaac saw his eyes dance as they had when playing his flute at a heiva.
‘Purea . . . Tutaha . . .’ More names on Taiata’s breath, before the light in his eyes faltered and he sank cold as morning ashes on the straw mattress.
Fever was followed by more chill spasms – and Mr Green, who had been up all night and felt his own ague returning, asked Isaac to hold Taiata for him. So were the sick attended by those in remission. And so Isaac sat during the torrid day: through the boy’s incoherence, and brief moments of lucidity talking in his native tongue . . . Te pohe nei au e tou mau hoa . . .
‘I am dying, my friends.’
‘No, Taiata! Look, here’s Nick with more laudanum. We’ll see Matavai Bay again . . . and the spangled lagoon.’ Yes, and in Isaac’s heart the hope of whole being rose again with remembrance of Heimata, radiant in pearl shell.
‘For you maybe, Tire. Not for me. I wanted to see the world with Tupaia, and tell them all at home. But I will not journey now beyond this place.’
Their tears fell together with the night, and the rain, and the veil on Taiata’s brief sum of years. For the boy died during the dark hours, as Isaac and Nick Young sat watch with him – and travelled with him, too, next day, to a cemetery where they buried prisoners on nearby Eadam Island.
Tupaia was distraught when told of Taiata’s death, for he loved the boy and felt responsible for his passing. The priest had refused all William Perry’s remedies; but now not even the scented winds brought any help for his sickness, or comfort for his sorrow. They made it worse, reminding Tupaia of all he had lost.
He lay in his tent weeping, ‘Taiata! We should never have left our islands with Toote. Oh, Taiata!’
Becoming weaker and more inconsolable, until he was beyond anyone’s help. Two days later Tupaia himself died, and was interred near the boy.
There was little time to mourn them, for others were also dying. Green farewelled Taiata, then buried his own servant, John Reynolds. Tim Reardon went, lamenting his native Cork. Even as the ship was finished and returned to Coopers Island, Cook himself went down with fever.
Here was disaster in the making, for what if the Captain should also succumb? Mr Banks sent what help he could, and Cook slowly recovered his health. It was intermittent, however, like all of them: a day or two of wellness, followed by periods of cold and terrible fever. Sometimes a mere dozen men were able to muster for duty, and the business of reloading the ship was painfully slow.
The only one who showed no symptoms of disease was old John Ravenhill, the sailmaker, who was almost perpetually drunk on arrack. Not that the others were especially sober; but they struggled to carry stores aboard, haggard as the walking dead they’d mocked among their fellow British tars. And the silent dead as well, for two more Endeavour men went to their graves.
It wasn’t until the second week of December that the ship was ready and they stood into Batavia to take on water and fresh supplies. The fourth pump still wasn’t working, and the Captain wanted it repaired before facing the lonely wastes of the Indian Ocean. That took another fortnight: and only on Christmas Day was Mr Cook able to take his leave of the Dutch Governor-General and Council.
They’d arrived so well and hearty! Now, as Endeavour weighed, she was leaving like a hospital ship. Seven of her company had died at Batavia – and nineteen new men were signed on to replace them and those lost earlier in the voyage.
Another one went before they departed. Still brooding on the unresolved challenge to his authority six months earlier, Captain Cook offered a reward of fifteen guineas to anyone who could prove who’d cut the ears of his clerk, Richard Orton – and fifteen gallons of arrack if anyone could show who’d cut his clothes. The reward was never claimed; but on Christmas Day Pat Saunders took advantage of a shore boat and deserted, never to be heard of again. Most men took that as an admission.
Mr Banks also hired another servant, for Jim Roberts and Peter Briscoe were still sick, and he was missing Tupaia. Still, the Tahitian’s death brought him some consolations. The finest dog skin cloaks from New Zealand, the most important carved and pounamu treasures the Maori had given to the priest of Oro, now entered Banks’s own collection – eventually to adorn museums throughout Britain.
For the rest, as Endeavour made her way along the Java coast, sad little auctions were held on deck as crew bid for the dead men’s clothes and personal effects. It was a way of raising money for the families of the deceased.
‘What’ll ye gi’ me, mates, for Tim Reardon’s red neckerchief?’
‘Fourpence,’ from Nick Young, who’d long admired it.
‘And Johnny Woodworth’s sea knife, good as new.’
‘A shilling.’ Isaac bid high, to replace the knife he’d given Heimata.
‘One shilling and threepence!’ from the back.
‘One and sixpence, then.’
‘’Tis your’n, Master Manley.’
‘A nice pair o’ canvas britches . . . and two shoe buckles, belonged to young John Reynolds . . .’
The pathetic little sums were entered in the dead men’s pay books.
So they went, Isaac thinking his lot unhappy enough as the year turned. But it was only a rehearsal for what was to follow. His health grew worse, as did the health of them all. Dr Solander even saw mosquitoes breeding in the drinking water of the scuttlebutt on deck, though he did not realise the significance. So many were sick, it took Endeavour a week to get through Sunda Strait and anchor off Princes Island, for the Captain wanted to load more water before the long voyage to Cape Town.
It’s unclear why he stopped there. He’d been warned the water was bad, though good on the Java side. Yet the ship stayed at the island for nine days. And every morning Cook gave his weakened shore crew their orders: ‘You must take particular care to avoid brackish water near t’ coast, and fill your casks from higher up t’ stream.’
Whenever Isaac told the story in after years, he always said, ‘We did try. I know we did.’ Whether the blame for what was to happen lay at Princes Island, or with foul water taken aboard from the sewers of Batavia, no one ever knew. Yet Isaac’s heart broke anew with the thought of it.
Endeavour left Java Head on 16 January 1771, carrying dysentery – the bloody flux – as an extra passenger.
The symptoms showed themselves within a few days of putting to sea. Fever. Vomiting. Agonising pain. Diarrhoea running crimson with blood.
Isaac was stricken. Seized with a burning in his gut he doubled over, feeling as if his bowels had been ripped from him. He struggled down to his hammock, and lay in his own mess. Stinking, helpless, expecting any moment to die.
‘Nick . . .’ he whispered, as his friend came by with laudanum, and a wet cloth to sponge him. ‘Nick, I want . . .’
‘Don’t distress yourself, Issy . . . The medicine helps . . .’
‘In my sea chest . . . under the shirts . . . a small black bag . . . give it to me . . .’
‘Later, Issy. There’s a lot for Mr Perry to attend. Let me clean you up a bit.’
‘Now, Nick. Please . . .’
So Nick brought Isaac his little bag of treasures. The boy lay clutching it, as Nick wiped him. He was frightened and barely conscious – yet found some comfort in sensing his mother’s locket and Heimata’s dark pearl beside him.
The people he loved were there. He could feel them, enclosed in velvet. Safe. Present. And gradually through his darkness, Isaac glimpsed a small candleglow of will to see them again. He was young. And strong. He would survive.
And in truth, as time passed the lad did begin to recover. He was able to keep down water. It was the likely cause of their ailment . . . but you had to drink! Isaac sipped a little broth that Nick brought him in a mug, and ate a slice of beef, without his bowels splitting. Slowly the nausea eased, his head cleared, sensation returned to his limbs. At long last Isaac could crawl up on deck to wash himself again with seawater, and buy clean clothes from the slops store.
He even borrowed Mr Molineux’s old razor to shave himself. For at fifteen, a downy beard and stubble had grown during his illness; and it was time to begin a man’s ritual.
Others also had the will to live. But that didn’t save them. One by one they began to die. Corporal Truslove of the marines was the first, on 24 January – ‘a man much esteemed by everyone,’ the Captain said, as he read the burial service.
High or low alike, they were not spared. The next day Herman Spöring died, an assistant naturalist in Mr Banks’s party. Two days later Sydney Parkinson went to his maker, bequeathing to posterity his artist’s record of the voyage and the first beautifully accurate paintings of botanical species unknown in Europe.
Hard liquor didn’t preserve old Jack Ravenhill in the end, or the astronomer, Charles Green. Bloody flux killed them both. Cook admired Green’s skill, but sniffed like a Quaker at his boozing and erratic way of life – which seemed to promote his disorders, in the Captain’s view! As if getting dysentery was the man’s fault!
For the disease was quite undiscriminating. Drunk or sober. Virtue or vice. Some lived. Some didn’t. By the end of the month six more seamen died, among them the one-handed cook, John Thompson, and Archie Wolf who’d been flogged at Tahiti for stealing spike nails to buy love – and never told on the others.
‘A calamitous situation!’ cried the Captain, as well he might. Sometimes they could muster barely enough hands to tend the sails. Watches were reduced to only four men; and those who were well enough shared every duty.
Isaac went aloft with the call. He served his trick at the wheel, and stood to his lines as Endeavour hauled herself seaward. Below, on a putrid mess deck, he became by turn cook and nurse, patient and orderly. They scrubbed the ship with vinegar, and tried to sweeten her water with lime. To no avail. The muster of the dead went on . . .
Dan Roberts, the gunner’s servant. John Thurman, press-ganged at Madeira, flogged at Rio and Tahiti, and now never to see home again. John Gathrey, the Boatswain. Midshipman John Bootie, who once called Nick Young ‘a son of a bitch’, comforted in his last hours by the self-same lad.
We therefore commit his body to the deep . . . Cook reading his Bible. And always the same grieving auctions of dead men’s clothes.
‘Sam Moody’s blue jacket, mates, what’s it worth . . .?’
‘A straw hat Frankie Haite got at Rio . . .’
Isaac bid his small shillings and sixpences. Then on the fifth day of February he was called to the Great Cabin. Cook was there, with his Lieutenants and the Master, each as wasted as the other. Molineux in particular had been very ill, and taken to drinking even more heavily.
‘You sent for me, Captain.’
‘Mr Manley, I don’t have to tell you our plight. So many dead . . . and more to come, I fear. Mr Bootie died yesterday. I doubt Mr Monkhouse will recover. We need another Midshipman, and Mr Molineux speaks highly of you.’
‘Aye, sir, I do,’ said Molineux, unsteady in his voice, but managing. ‘I told him to learn his ship. He has been a good pupil. And . . . he has looked after me well.’
‘The young gentleman’s mathematics are still weak. Nevertheless,’ the Captain smiled thinly behind his table, ‘I can help him there. I remember telling you on your first day aboard to show willing and jump to thee orders. You have done that, Isaac. I am pleased with you. Do you accept the promotion?’
‘Captain, with all my heart!’ A heart that was bursting.
‘Let it be recorded. Now, Mr Manley, on the quarterdeck if you please. We have a ship to steer for Africa.’
The Captain was right about Jon Monkhouse. The young man, who had saved them on the reef, now joined his brother, the surgeon, on the ledger of those who would not come home. The same muster book enrolled Isaac in his stead. And it showed that Mr Manley spent the very large sum of fifteen pounds eighteen shillings and sixpence from his wages buying the deceased Midshipmen’s uniforms . . .
A royal blue frock coat, with white lining and cuffs, detachable velvet collar, and brass buttons. Two pairs of white breeches. Silk stockings. An embroidered waistcoat. And a proper naval three-cornered hat with gold trim.
Dead men’s clothes, indeed.