I DO NOT PROPOSE to recount in detail my life as a sealer, whaler and merchant seaman over the next seven years. Suffice to say that I suffered no great injuries, profited well from each voyage and earned my first mate’s ticket. Sadly, I was never reconciled with my father and was greatly grieved when he was killed in an accident in the mill in the year 1800 when I was at sea. My brother Robert and I remained on good terms and my mother was dear to me although she deplored what she called my ‘heathen trade and way of life’. My sisters married worthy, if dull men, and the Corkill family was firmly established in its Boston respectability, with only myself as a volatile member.
Despite my mother’s fears, I by no means led a riotous life. When ashore I drank in the taverns with my shipmates but never to excess and although I occasionally went to the brothels, especially after a long voyage, I took pains to visit only the reputable houses and to protect myself from disease. I saved my money with a view to buying an interest in a vessel and becoming a master and trader in my own right. In my own way, I had the same ambitions as the other members of my family, although exercised in a different sphere.
I sailed several times more with Careful Keaton and with Cotter the Manxman and learned something of the history of the Isle of Man and picked up from him a smattering of the language which we used among ourselves occasionally when we wanted to annoy our shipmates or keep a conversation private. But our ways eventually parted when he took a berth on a northbound vessel for which I had no inclination. Another ambition had risen within me; I had tired of the cold and, having read accounts of the voyages of Captain James Cook, I longed to go round the Horn and sail the Pacific Ocean.
My chance came when a mate’s berth fell vacant on the whaler Emerald, sailing out of New Bedford. Her captain, Eli Tarpone, had been in Boston and had been heard to lament the scarcity of whales in the northern waters and the Atlantic and to speculate about the prospects in the Pacific. When I heard of the vacant berth I was visiting with my family. I borrowed a horse from the mill and hastened to New Bedford to apply for the post. As it happened, Captain Tarpone was at the rail of his ship when I pulled my horse up close to the dock and requested permission to come aboard.
‘Did you get the bow legs from riding nags?’ he asked when I had presented my papers. We were standing aft with gulls wheeling around us, and sailors busy with ropes and canvas.
I was sensitive about my slightly bowed legs but tried not to show it. ‘No, sir. A family trait I believe, but one which has given me good balance aboard many a pitching ship.’
He laughed. ‘A good answer, and I see you have the years and the sea miles to your credit. Four voyages with Keaton – a good apprenticeship. What would you do with a man who thieved aboard ship, Corkill?’
I made a fist. ‘For a first offence I would knock him down and have him make restitution. For a second, I’d knock him down twice and impose double restitution. There’d not be a third.’
He nodded his dark, shaggy head. He was a tall, spare figure, pock-marked and ugly and somewhat ill-kempt, but I’d noticed that his vessel was as clean as I’d ever seen any whaler which was no easy thing to achieve. He folded my papers and handed them back to me. His black eyes seemed to pierce me through.
‘Ye could have taken a coach and been here in ample time. I sense an urgency in you, Corkill. It’s not usual in a Manxman. Ye are a Manxman? I know the name.’
‘An American. My father hailed from the Isle of Man.’
‘Whence your colouring then?’
I trotted out the story of the Spanish ancestor from the Armada, not yet having heard my sister’s sounder explanation.
‘But your passion is not to slaughter whales, I fancy.’
‘Not that alone, sir, I admit it. I yearn to round the Horn and enter the Pacific.’
‘Do y’now? And what makes you think the Emerald’s bound that way?’
I told him that I had people placed in taverns along the coast alert for talk of a Pacific voyage, and that I’d undertaken to pay for the information. He laughed, took a snuff box from the pocket of his bedraggled jacket and sniffed and sneezed and spat overt the side. He then fell into a fit of coughing from which it took him some little time to recover. ‘And have you paid?’
‘The arrangement is, I pay when I get the post.’
He extended a hand wrinkled like a parrot’s claw and spat again. ‘Pay up then, man. The berth is yours.’
Eli Tarpone was an experienced and canny sailor and, what’s more, one who knew how to pick and handle his men. Also, unlike other merchant sailors, he read the journals and memoirs of naval men and others who had sailed before him and learned by their experience. Consequently, he knew that the early months of the year were the best time for rounding the Horn. Later, the storms and tremendous seas made the route dangerous if not impossible. Taking care not to appear better informed than he, I let him know that I too had read Cook and others and had absorbed some of their wisdom.
Among the crew were several who had been to the Dutch East Indies as pressed men aboard British naval vessels, though none who had taken the direct route. Tarpone himself had sailed from English ports and into the southern oceans but only via the Cape of Good Hope. To use a woodsman’s phrase, he considered himself to be blazing a trail for whalers. Not that others hadn’t worked the Pacific, but none had published accounts of their voyages. I often had occasion to see him working long and late at his log, chewing his pen. Eli Tarpone yearned for the immortality of print.
His mastery of men extended further than picking experienced tars. As we made our way swiftly south to the Horn, as luck would have it we sighted whales in the southern waters. But Tarpone had convinced his crew that the pickings in the Pacific would exceed anything to be got in the accustomed grounds and that they would return to New Bedford with money enough to buy a tavern rather than just drink in it. Consequently, we sailed past the great, spouting monsters and the weather grew colder and wilder as we neared the Horn.
‘Hard to believe that people live in these climes, Corkill,’ the captain observed as we bore towards Tierra Del Fuego.
‘Indeed, sir, although the same might be said of the northern frozen wastes – Greenland and such.’
‘Ye’ve ventured there, then?’
‘I have, captain, and for the last time I trust. I believe the Pacific will be more to my liking.’
He glanced sharply at me. ‘Ye’re not a sensualist, Corkill?’
‘I’m unfamiliar with the word, sir.’
He coughed and spat and fought briefly for breath. He seemed to have lost some flesh and had little to spare. ‘Do ye lust after the brown maidenly bodies described by Cartaret and Cook?’
‘You have the better of me. I have not read Cartaret closely. And Cook’s fate makes me think caution rather than boldness might be the mark among the natives of the Pacific, whatever allurements they may offer.’
‘Aye. I doubt we’ll venture north to those paradisiacal islands, anyway. Our prey lies further south, typically.’
There I had the greater knowledge, for I’d talked to some Pacific whalers and knew that the beasts went north to calve and feed before returning to the colder latitudes. Depending on the time of year, we could find ourselves chasing them as far north as New Zealand and Botany Bay. But Captain Tarpone had read me aright in part. The drawings of the natives, their dress, weapons, houses and so on, in the published accounts fascinated me and I longed to see them. And if some bare-breasted maidens should come into view and show themselves willing, so much the better.
As the Captain had anticipated, we rounded the Horn in conditions which, if not calm, were manageable for a good crew in a good ship. We had clear skies for most days and the wind held fair, not driving us towards the treacherous rocks around that forbidding shore. The Emerald was a sober, well mannered ship, by which I mean there was little sky-larking and no fighting. Every man aboard had crossed the line so there was the bare minimum of ceremony when we did so. It occurred to me that we should have had some ceremony to mark rounding the Horn and when I mentioned this to the captain he nodded and ordered an extra ration of meat and rum per man. That sufficed for the captain and crew of the Emerald.
And so I sailed into the vast Pacific which, as we bore north to pick up the forties, belied its name. We ran for days before howling winds that threatened to shred the sails under dark skies that prevented the taking of any readings. Good navigator though he was, and now somewhat skilled at the craft myself, the captain and I had no way of determining our precise location. The ship was sound and the crew in good health. By rights we should have been in no danger, but the spirits aboard sank day by day for two reasons. One, sailing blind as we were, there was always the chance of running into a reef or rock. Two, if there were whales in these wind-tossed seas, we were too busy manning the ship to spot them and no one would have wanted to enter a boat if we had. The swells were high and unpredictable and there was water enough across our decks without seeking more.
‘’Tis uncommon strong,’ the captain said to me as we shared a dawn watch. ‘In days gone by the sailors would have thought us likely to be blown off the edge of the world.’
‘There’s no talk of that, sir,’ I said. ‘Only of a wish to know where we are and to do our business.’
‘I share both wishes, Corkill. At least there can be no talk of mutiny.’
‘Captain?’
‘It’s been known to happen in these circumstances. A man like yourself might decide he could do better and recruit others to his cause. Ye’ll have heard of that scoundrel Christian, the fool Bligh and the Bounty.’
I laughed. ‘The British Navy. My father told me something of it. We’re not subject to such tyranny. There’s nought to do but run before this wind, and every man aboard has confidence in you.’
Almost as I spoke the wind seemed to drop. A light appeared in the east and the sun gradually rose into a clearing sky.
‘Land, ho,’ called the lookout in the crow’s nest.