The Convict Ship

Front matter

THE CONVICT SHIP BY W. CLARK RUSSELL LONDON CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 33 BEDFORD STREET THE CONVICT SHIP b\ W. CLARK RUSSELL LONDON CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 33 BEDFORD STREET Prmte.i in U.S.A. CONTENTS. CHAPTER *AGK I. Her Father's Oath, i II. Her Memories, ----... 4 III. Her Mother Dies, g IV. She Meets Captain Butler, ..... it V. She Visits the "Childe Harold," .... 23 VI. She is Asked in Marriage, 29 VII. She Parts with her Sweetheart, - - - 37 VIII. She Receives Dreadful News, .... 45 IX. She Visits Newgate, ....... 50 X. She Attends her Sweetheart's Trial, ... 59 XI. She Visits H. M. S. " Warrior," .... 69 XII. She Rambles with her Cousin, - 82 XIII. She Conceives a Strange Idea, - - - 87 XIV. She Dresses as a Boy, ...... 93 XV. She Takes a Lodging at Woolwich, - - - 104 XVI. She Hides as a Stowaway, - - - - 116 XVII.

Her Sufferings in the Hold, 127 XVIII. She is Taken before the Commander, - - 133 XIX. She is Questioned by the Doctor, . - - - - 145 XX. She Converses with her Cousin, .... 157 XXI. She Enters upon her Duties, ..... 164 XXII. She Sees her Sweetheart, ..... 172 XXIII. She Visits the Barracks and Listens to a Lecture, 179 XXIV. She Alarms her Cousin, 187 XXV. She Delivers her Letter and Sees a Convict Punished, 194 '7\ CONTENTS. CHATTSK PAGE XXVI. She Attends Church Service and Witnesses a Tragedy, - 201 XXVII. She Listens to the Conversation in the Cabin, 210 XXVIII. She Overhears two Sailors Talking, - - 216 XXIX. She is Alarmed by what is Said by the Officers, 221 XXX. She Converses with her Sweetheart, - - 227 XXXI. She Describes a Storm, 236 XXXII. She Describes the Seizure of the Ship by the Convicts, 242 XXXIII.

She Describes the Behavior of the Convicts, - 255 XXXIV. She Witnesses the, Departure of the Officers and Soldiers, ------- 263 XXXV. She Listens -to the Convicts Debating, - - 277 XXXVI. She Sups with her Sweetheart, - - - 290 XXXVII. She Describes a AA'ild, Drunken, Uproarious Scene 298 XXXVTII. She Escapes from the Convict Ship with her Sweetheart and Others, 311 r XXXIX. She Relates how her Sweetheart Resolves to Hide in an Island, ------ 324 XL; She Helps to Keep Watch, .... 332 XLI. She Views the Island of Tristan d'Acunha, - 339 XLII. She Meets the Tristan Islanders, - - - 349 XLHI. She Sees Captain Rotch and Mr. Nodder Again, 361 XLIV. She Witnesses Nodder's Confession, - - - 382 XLV. She Concludes her Story, 394 Postscript, ...-••-- ROMANCE OF A TRANSPORT.

Chapter I. Her Father's Death

I was in my twenty-fourth year when I underwent the tragic and amazing experiences which, with the help of a friend, I propose to relate in these pages. I am now seventy-seven : but I am in good health and enjoy all my faculties, saving my hearing ; my memory is brisk and my friends find it very faithful, and what is here set down you may accept as the truth. It is long ago since the last convict ship sailed away from these shores with her horrid burden of guilt and grief and passions of a hundred devilish sorts ; I don't know how long it is since the last of the convict ships passed down Channel on her way to colonies which were like to become a sort of shambles — for they were hanging half a score of men a day for murder in those times — if this horrid commerce in felons had not ended ; when that ship weighed and sailed she passed away to return no more as a prison craft.

When she faded out of sight she was a vanished type, and when she climbed, moon-like, above the horizon under full breasts of shining can vas, she was an honest ship again, never more to be debauched by opportunities to tender for the transport of criminals. Before I lift the curtain upon my ship, the Convict Ship in which I sailed, I must hold you in talk concerning some matters which go before the sailing of the vessel ; for I have to explain how it came about that I, a woman, was on board of a convict ship full of male malefactors. I was born in the parish of Stepney in the year 1814. My father was Mr. Benjamin Johnstone, a well-known man, locally, I mean, in his day. He had been put to sea as a boy very ROMANCE OF A TRANSPORT. young ; had risen steadily and made his way to command, saved money with a liberal thriftiness that enabled him to enjoy life modestly and to hold the respect of his friends.

He built a little ship for a venture, did well, bought or built a second, and at the age of forty-five owned a fleet of four or five coasters all trading out of the Thames. He purchased a house at Stepney for the convenience of the district. At Stepney in my young day lived many respectable families, and I don't doubt that many respectable families still live at Stepney ; but it is true that all that part of London has sunk since I was a little girl, and the sort of people who flourished in the east in the beginning of the century have now gone west with the jerry trowel and a six-inch wall. My father's house in Stepney might have been a lord's in its time. It was strong as a fortress, cozy and homely, rich within doors with the coloring of age. It still stands ; I visited it last year, but it is no longer a private house.

I was about twelve years old when my father died. The manner of his going was very sudden and fearful, and, old as I am, when I think of it I feel afraid, so haunting is youthful impression, the shock of it often trembling through the longest years into the last beats of one's heart. My cousin, Will Johnstone, had been brought over from his house near the Tower to spend the afternoon with me. He was between six and seven years of age, a fine little manly boy, the only son of my father's brother, William Johnstone, a lawyer whose house and office were near the Tower. This little Will and I sat at the table in the parlor, playing at some game, and very noisy. It was a November afternoon, the atmosphere of a true London sullenness ; the fire burnt heartily and the walls were merry with the dance of the flames, and the candle stood un lighted upon the mantelpiece.

My father sat in an armchair close to the fire ; -he smoked a long clay pipe, and his eyes were fixed upon the glowing coals. He was a handsome man; I have his image before me ; he had the completest air of a sailor that is to be figured ; I seldom see such faces as his now. But then faces belong to times. My father's belonged to his century ; and you would seek for it there and not be fore nor after. He sat with his legs crossed and his eyes upon the fire. Suddenly looking round, he cried out with some temper, " Not so much noise, little 'uns, not so much noise, or you'll have to HER FATHER'S DEATH. 3 go to bed ! " Then his face relaxed and I, with my child's eyes, saw that he was sorry for having spoken sharply. " Little ones," said he softly, " let's have a game. Let's see who can go to sleep first and keep asleep longest," and dropping his hand so as to bring the pipe from his mouth, he sank his chin and shut his eyes, and snored once or twice as a make-be lieve.

I sank my head and closed my eyes as father had, and little Will shammed to be asleep. We were silent a minute or more. The pipe then fell from my father's hand and lay in halves upon the floor. There was nothing in this. It was a common clay pipe, and father would break such things pretty nearly as often as he smoked them. I now peeped at Will ; he was peeping at me. The child giggled, and burst into a little half suffocated laugh. " Hush ! " said I, and now being weary of this sort of sport, I looked at father and cried out, " I can't sleep any longer." He never answered, so I stepped round the table to his chair to wake him up, and pulled him by the arm, and still he would not answer. I climbed upon his knee, and just then a bright gas flame spurted out of a lump of coal and I saw his face very clearly.

What was there in it to acquaint my child ish sight with the thing that had come to him ? I fell from his knee, and ran to the door, and shrieked for mother. She was in the next room or back parlor, talking with a woman hired to sew. " Mother," said I, " father can't wake up." " What do you mean, Marian ? Where is he ? " " We have been playing at sleep, and he can't wake up," said I, and I began to cry. She went into the room with a fear and wildness in her manner, stopped to lean upon the table and look at her husband, and in that pause I see her now, though it did not last beyond the space of a few heart beats. She was about thirty five years of age, a very fine figure of a woman indeed, with a vast profusion of yellow hair, of which she was exceedingly vain, often changing the fashion of wearing it two and three times in a week.

The firelight was upon her face, and she showed like marble as she ga-ed at father with a hand under her left breast. Then running up to him she looked close, cried out, and fell in a swoon upon the floor. Will and I were horribly frightened, and screamed together. This brought the servants and the sewing woman to us ; a doctor was sent for, ROMANCE OF A TRANSPORT. and when he arrived and examined father he pronounced him dead. It was characteristic of my mother that she should faint when she looked at my father and believed him dead, though for all she knew he might have been in a fit, wanting instant attention to preserve him from death. She was a tender mother, and I believe did her best to be a good wife ; but she had not strength of character ; she was pretty and thought herself beautiful, and was more easily tc be cheated by flat terers than any woman that ever I met in my life.

Her weakness in this way was the cause of much unhappiness to me, of many a bitter secret tear some years after my father's death, as I will explain a little way further on.

Chapter II. Her Memories

I missed my father out of my life as though the sun had gone out of the heavens. I had been far more of a companion to him than my mother. I had venerated him as something superior to all created beings ; which, I dare say, was not a little owing to his stories of the sea, to the various wonders he was able to recount, and to his descriptions of distant lands, as remote as the stars to my young imagination. The company he kept was nearly wholly composed of sailors, sea captains, either retired or actively employed. My mother would often be out visiting, passing an evening at a card party, or at a dance at some neighbor's when our parlor, which was long and wide, but low ceiled like a ship's cabin, would be half full of father's nautical friends ; I'd sit and listen then to their talk ; for mother being absent there'd be nobody to bid me go to bed — for as to father he would have let me sit until he went to bed himself.

Thus it was I heard so much talk of the sea, that I was able to discourse on ships and rigging, on high seas and gales of wind, on icebergs, whales, and uncharted shoals, as though I had never lived out of a forecastle. Indeed I knew too much ; I was often pert, lifted up my shrill voice in correction of some old captain, and so would raise a very thunder of laughter and applause in the room. Again I was often my father's companion in the trips he made in his own coasters down the river. Those excursions HER MEMORIES. s were the golden hours of my childhood. We'd row on board a little brig weighing from the Pool, and stay in the ship till we were off Gravesend, where we'd land. Mother never joined us. When the wind caused the vessel to lay over she said it made her sick. I dare say it did.

Father's little fleet was mainly composecf of coasters, as I have said, grimy of deck for the most part, with a strong smell of the bilge in the atmosphere of their darksome cabins, waggons in shape and staggerers in their gait, with a lean and coaly look aloft as they heeled, black and gaunt, from bank to bank of the river over the smooth stream of ebb or flood. But those trips made choice hours to me, and are sweeter than the memories of sport in the summer grass and of hunts in the rank growths of ditches and the country hedges. I remember that during one of these trips we nearly ran down a large boat when we were not very far from Woolwich, lying over with the wind ahead and the water spitting briskly at our forefoot. I went to the side to look ; she was a big boat with soldiers in her, and full of strange looking men in gray clothes and a sort of Scotch cap.

I saw the irons upon those men as the boat swept close past and heard the clank of the gyves or chains as the wretches shrunk or started in terror at the sight of the mass of our bare, black hull, rolling like a storm cloud almost right over them. Father was below. I asked Mr. Smears, the master of the brig, who stood close alongside of me, in a tall rusty hat and a stout coat that descended to within a foot of his heels, what boat that was. " A convict boat, missy," he answered. " What are those people in her ?" " Rogues all, missy, rogues all." " Where are they going to ? " said I. He pointed to a great wooden bulk that lay off Woolwich, the hull of a man-of-war, made hideous by a variety of deck erections, and by rows of linen fluttering betwixt the poles which rose out of her decks. " That's where they're a-going to," said Mr. Smears.

"And shall I tell 'ee who's the skipper of that craft ? 'Taint no government bloke— let ne'er a man believe it. The skipper's name begins with a D and ends with a hell. I'm not going to say more, missy. Father '11 supply ye with the missing letters. Yonder skipper's name begins with a D and ends with a hell, and them livelies -in gray," said he, nodding toward the boat we had nearly run down, " are his ROMANCE OF A TRANSPORT. young 'uns, and they do credit to their parient, if looks aint lies." Then, starting up, he cried : " Ready about, lads ! " and a moment later the helm was put down and our canvas was wildly shaking, and then the brig heeled over and with steady sails ripped through the yellow lustrous surface of the river's breast on her slanting course down Woolwich Reach. I did not long look at the great hull of the old man-of-war and her hideous deck erections, and her flapping prison linen.

I was a child, with a child's eye for beauty, and my gaze would quickly wander from the prison ship which I was altogether too young to quicken and inform with the loathsome fascina tion one finds in all such abodes of human crime and miser able mortal distress. I say my eye would quickly turn from that horrible floating jail to the fifty sights of movement and color round about ; to the hoy with its cargo of passengers from Margate, and a fiddle and a harp making music in the bows, lazily stemming London-wards ; to the barge going away with the tide, sending a scent of rich country across the wind from its lofty cargo of hay on whose summit lies a man on his back sound asleep ; to the large ship fresh from the other side of the world with sailors dangling aloft, and a merry echo of capstanpawls timing a little crowd of men running round and round her forecastle ; the wife of the captain aft talking to a waterman in a wherry over the side, and the captain himself, baked brown by the suns of three or four great oceans, excitedly stepping from rail to rail in a walk of impassioned anxiety and impatience athwartships.

I have the words you see ! Does the language of the deep sound strange in the mouth of a woman ? The wives and daughters of military men may deliver themselves in the speech of the barracks and nobody thinks anything of it. Why should not the daughter of a sailor and the wife of a sailor possess the language of her father's and of her hus band's profession, and talk it whenever the need arises with out raising wonder ? After my father's death his little fleet of ships was sold in accordance with the direction of his will. The thing was bungled ; my mother was a poor woman of business ; she fell out with my uncle William Johnstone over the sale of the ves sels and put the business in the hands of a broker who robbed us. Yet when the estate was realized we were pretty well-to do. The freehold in Stepney was to come to me at the death HER MEMORIES. 7 of my mother.

Under my father's will there was a settlement that secured me three hundred pounds a year ; the trus tees were two sea captains. My mother was well provided for ; but one saw by the terms of my father's will that he had no confidence in her. Yet he did not stipulate that she should net marry again, though had I been older at the time I should have looked for some condition of the sort, for he was very jealous. In fine, and what I have to relate obliges me to dwell upon these trumpery particulars, my father's will gave me his house at my mother's death, and secured three hundred pounds a year to me in any case when I should come of age, or on my marriage, the interest meanwhile to grow and be mine ; and then at my mother's death a portion of what had been willed to her was to revert to me, and the remainder was to be distributed amongst two or three poor and distant relations, and a few charities, all of them maritime.

Thus at my father's death I might fairly have been described by a forward looking eye as what you would call a tolerably fair match, and at the age of seventeen I deserved to be thought so, not only because of my money and the pleasant old house that would be mine, but because of my good looks. At seventy-seven there can be no vanity in retrospect. More over, since this story is to be told, you shall have the whole truth. At seventeen, then, I was a tall, strong, well-made'girl, broad, but in proportion, and they used to tell me that I carried my figure with the grace of a professional dancer. I was exactly opposite to my mother in color. My hair was black as the wing of a raven ; my eyes very black and filled with a strong light which brightened to a look of fever in times of excitement ; my complexion was pale, but clear ; my teeth large, white, and regular, and I showed them much in talking and laughing.

I'll not deny that my charms — and handsome I truly was — inclined to coarseness ; by which I mean that they leaned toward the manly, rather than the womanly side. My voice was a contralto, and when I sang, I would sink to a note that was reckoned uncommonly deep for a girl. My father had been dead about five years when one after noon ray mother came to me in my bedroom. She was in her bonnet and outdoor clothes, and I instantly noticed an agita tion in her manner as she sat down beside the dressing table and looked at me. I forget what I was about, but I recollect ROMANCE OF A TRANSPORT. ceasing in it and standing up before my mother with my hands clasped, while I viewed her anxiously and with mis givings. " Marian," said she, with a forced smile, " I have come to give you a bit of news."

" What, mother ? " " My hand has been asked in marriage, dear, and I have accepted." I felt the blood rush to my face, and then I turned cold, and pulling a chair to me sat down, but I did not speak. " Do you hear me, child ? " "Your hand has been asked in marriage," said I; "by whom, mother ?" " By Mr. Stanford," she answered, lowering her voice and sinking her eyes. " Mr. Stanford ? " I cried, " the doctor ?" " Whom else ?" she replied, looking at me again and forcing another smile. I was thunderstruck. Never for an instant had I suspected that there was more between them than such commonplace, matter-of-fact friendship as may exist between a medical man and those whom he attends. Mr. Stanford was the doctor one of the servants had run for when my father died. He had attended us during the preceding year, and he had prescribed for mother and me since, so that at this date we had known him six years.

He was a widower, and childless, and lived within ten minutes' walk of our house. Occasionally he had looked in upon us, and sat during an evening for an hour or so ; sometimes he had dined with us and we with him, but never had I observed any sort of behavior in him or mother to hint at what was coming, at what indeed had now come. I should be needlessly detaining you from my own story to repeat all that passed between my mother and me on this oc casion. I was beside myself with anger, mortification, jeal ousy — for I was jealous of my father's memory, abhorred the thought of his place being taken in his own house and in the affection of the wife whom he had loved by such a man as Mr. Stanford. Nay, but it would have been all the same had Mr. Stanford been the greatest nobleman or the first character in Europe.

I should have abominated him as an intruder, and have yearned for the hands of a man to toss him out o' window should he dare to possess himself of a house in which my father was as real a presence to my heart as though he were HER MOTHER DIES. ? still alive, and could kiss me, and make me presents, and carry me away out of the gloomy streets into the shining holi day road of the river. My mother reproached me, and pleaded and wept. The weakness of her poor heart, God rest her ! was very visible at this time. She clung to me and held me to her, imploring me as her only child to consider how lonely she was, how sadly she stood in need of a protector, how good it would be for us both to have Mr. Stanford to watch over us. I broke away from her with a wet scarlet face and heaving bosom, and told her that if Mr. Stanford took my father's place I would cease to love or even to think of her as my mother.

We both cried bitterly, and raised our voices and talked together as most women would at such a moment, not knowing what each other said. I do not condemn myself. I look back and hold that I was right to stand up for the memory of my beloved father, even to rage as I did against my mother's resolution to marry Mr. Stanford. I wondered at her ; indeed, I was shocked. I was young, and ardent, and romantic, had a girl's notions of the loyalty of love and the obligations of keeping sacred the memory and the place of one who had been faithful and tender, who had nobly done his duty to his wife and child.

Chapter III. Her Mother Dies

At the age of seventeen I considered myself qualified to form a judgment of men, and I was amazed and indeed dis gusted that my mother should see anything in Mr. Stanford to please her. He and my father were at the opposite ends of the sex, as far removed as the bows from the stern of a ship. He was a spare and narrow man, pale as veal in complexion, sandy, the expression of his countenance hard and acid, his eyes large and moist and the larger and moister for the mag nifying spectacles he wore. But my mother would lave her way, and a week after she had given me the news of the doctor's offer they were privately married. My life from this date was one of constant and secret un happiness. I could never answer Mr. Stanford with any approach to civility without a violent effort. He strove at first to make friends with me, then gave up and took no more heed io ROMANCE OF A TRANSPORT. of me than had I been a shadow at the table or about the house.

Yet, sometimes, I would make him pretty rudely and severely feel that he was an intruder, an abomination in my sight, a scandalous illustration of my mother's weakness of nature ; and that was if ever he opened his lips about my father. I never suffered him to mention my father's name in my presence. He might be about to speak intending to praise, designing every manner of civility toward the memory of the dead ; I minded him not ; if he named my father I in sulted him, and on two or three occasions forced him to quit the table, so strong and fiery was the injurious language I plied him with. My mother wept, threatened to swoon, did swoon once, and our home promised to become as wretched and clamorous as a lunatic asylum. As an example of my hatred, not so much of the man as of his assumption of my father's place : he brought his door plate and his lamp from his house, and when I saw his plate upon the door that my father used to go in and out of I ran to a joiner who lived a few streets off, brought him back with his tools, and ordered him to remove the plate, which I threw into the kitchen sink for the cook to find and report to her master.

Well, at the end of ten months my mother died in childbed. The infant lived ; it was a girl. My mother died, and when I went to her bedside and viewed her dead face, sweet in its everlasting sleep, for the look and wear of ten or fifteen years seemed to have been brushed off her countenance by the hand of death, I thought to myself : If she has gone to meet father how will she excuse herself for her disloyalty ? And then the little new-born babe that was in the next room began to cry, and I came away from that deathbed with tearless eyes and sat in my bedroom, thinking without weeping. I have spoken of my uncle, William Johnstone, a lawyer, who lived in the neighborhood of the Tower, and whose office was in his own dwelling house. He, like my father, had but one child, Will Johnstone, that little fellow who was play ing with me when my father died.

Mr. Johnstone's was a very comfortable house : it afterward passed into the hands of a chart seller. His clients were nearly wholly composed of sea-going people ; he was said to be very learned in maritime law ; he was much consulted by masters and mates with griev ances, and at his house, as at my father's formerly, you'd meet few people who did not follow the ocean, or did not do business with seafarers. HER MOTHER DIES. 17 Mrs. Johnstone was three or four years older than her husband. She was a plain, homely, thoroughly good-hearted woman, incapable of an ill-natured thought ; one of those few people who are content to be as God made them. During my mother's brief married life with her second husband I was constantly with my aunt, and I believe I should have lived with her wholly but for my determination that my stepfather, the doctor, should not flatter himself he had sickened me out of my own home.