Captive Wife, The (3 page)

At sea, August 1826
     

I was born in the Parish of St Marylebone 1792. I remember Mother, she had a face that was pale and decent, and hands that held me kindly and there was food on the table when she was there. I still see the way her wedding ring cut into her finger. Father kept a strict house, he believed it is the duty of a man to set a good example, and the wife to do as her husband tells her. My mother was such a woman. But that is about all I can tell of her for she died when my brother was born, the 1 time she disobeyed Father for he pleaded something dreadful that she would not go and leave him. I never saw my father so unhappy. Father's sister, she was a hard woman, stayed in the house after Mother was gone. She cooked us gruel and meat and veg., but it was never the same again. Father made us learn to read and write though my brother young Charles took to it more easily than I did. And then Father died and that was that and we found he had no money left. I have wondered what my aunt knew of it but what is gone is gone. Before he died he gave me a book he said
was as good as the Good Book itself and had much in it that I could learn from, it is all I have of the old life. The book is called
The Whole Duty of Man
and lays out all the things a man should do in life. I took to looking after Charles who I call Charley. We had not much stuff, no blankets to speak of for they had gone to the bed of my aunt who had left by then and good riddance. I took a quilt from a house that was open 1 day, meaning to give it to my brother for he felt the cold, that boy. That is 1 thing I will say about him coming to Australia, his chest is strong now, the heat has done him good.

That was when I was arrested and put on charge. 7 yrs transportation for a bloody quilt, and not much of a 1 at that. 1st I stayed aboard a hulk moored in the Thames for 2 yrs before they took me to Australia.

I was stripped of all my clothes. We was issued with slop clothing, very coarse upon the skin, grey and marked with broad arrows, hemp shirt, jacket and breeches and a cap, double irons on our legs. You is felons now they reminded us, as if we needed reminding. Then we got sent to our deck. Things were not so bad on the upper and middle decks. This was where they sent you if you did their bidding. But at the beginning all of us men and women together were sent to the bottom of the hulks where there were no portholes so it was dark and the air smelt foul. The hammocks was slung close together, elbow to elbow, in rows each side of the deck. At the head of the lower deck was a black hole, a punishment cell where prisoners were kept in solitary if they broke the rules. It is hard not to break the rules when you cannot move for the press of bodies. People broke down and cried for where they were and that was enough to go to the hole. I swore I wd never get put inside the black hole. I learnt to please the masters. Some of the other prisoners I beg your pardon felons said you are a crawling bastard Guard but when I got more rations for them they stopped their name calling and gave thanks to have me speak on their behalf.

I will get out of this malarkey early on I said to myself. And that is what I did.

I got ready to put to sea as soon as I was a free man. I planned to go to India, to pick up spices and all that trade, but that was when I get word that my brother was coming to do his 7 yrs. Keep it in the family. I thought I cannot go to sea until I have seen my brother. 7 yrs had passed too since I last set eyes on him. Charley was not happy but there was naught I could do for him and at least I had seen him.

It was the girl who made me think of writing things down. The day I took Betsy to pick oysters, the day I said she had to go to school, I wrote down what had happened. It is the kind of thing my Father wd have had me do. He was never a man of greatness but he worked in the city and he read books. When I think of him, I think it should not just end here with me dead, which could happen any time, the life I lead. I could be left behind on some Godforsaken island along with the circling birds and the seals and my bones picked clean and nobody wd know who I was but perhaps this book wd remain. Somebody needs to know something of us, my bro. and me, and where we come from.

Perhaps my brother will have children, it is not too late.

I wd have liked to have a son but as I have not found a woman who pleases me, it might be that it will never happen. In my Father's book, the 1 he gave to me, it says women should have quietness about them, for all the ill fruits of a wife's unquiet-ness are notorious and few neighbourhoods free of them. By that I suppose it means men are driven to drink and other women by their noise. All of this was written 100 yrs or more ago by a man who wd not have known that Australia was in the world. What wd he know of the noise of a forward wife if he had not seen the things I have and heard the things I have heard? No it is better left. The book has no advice strong enough for the wives of the Rocks and I am a man who likes silence more than company.

The girl is naught but a child. Still I tell her you must learn to read and write. Perhaps it will change something in her and things that might befall her.

Meanwhile I write as if I am telling her this story that is mine. What follows is an account of where I have been and what I have done since they set me free from my captivity.

After I waited for Charley to arrive, I had to give away the idea of sailing to India and find another ship. This I did. I sailed with Captain Siddins on a sealing expedition aboard the
Lynx
. We headed for Deception Island which is in the South Shetland Islands south of Cape Horn. Word had got out of a giant seal ground there. We took ourselves there for the season which is very short with high hopes for a rich catch and not too long at sea. But dangerous. Mountains of sea all about. Gale force winds continuous. Deception Island is a mountain, about 9 miles across with a harbour which is landlocked but for a narrow entrance. At least it offers shelter if you make it without running aground, as many do. This is where we put down anchor. We got there in December when a blood red sun come up out of the dark which is as close to summer as it gets. The harbour was filled up with ships come from Nantucket and Britain and none of the crews too friendly towards each other. Think on it. All of us thinking we would be the 1st.

Blood is all about and precious little else. Each 1 of us takes a thick wooden stave studded with nails. We go to the rookery and there we club the fur seals and sea lions till they die. Birds above scream and whirl. The creatures bark and roar. There is a stink that no man can describe of the rotten carcasses of 1s clubbed and skinned in the days before. But a man gets skill at this. You learn quick how to kill with 1 blow.

That year we come back with 5000 sealskins worth a guinea a piece. Sounds v. good. We expected more. At least I know then how to kill a seal.

Life at sea suits me. I can stand the waves without a sickness in my stomach and the masters told me straight up that I am quick to learn. That is the difference between me and my bro. Charley is good at reading and talking but he wd be no good at sea. I
have always had a quickness about me. A man at sea needs to read the way weather will turn in the blink of an eye, and which way the fish and animals of the sea will run. Or when a man will turn ugly. These are things you do not find in books, not even the good book Father gave to me. They are what a man knows. Next I tried out whaling for I heard there is good money to be made, there being high demand for oil for lighting and bone for corsets. I set off aboard the
Woodlark
.

The mastheads at sea are manned from sunrise to sunset. Every seaman takes a turn of 2 hours standing on the cross-trees. Some days in the tropics it is a good feeling, 100 ft above the water in the balmy air. I feel closer to the Lord, and far above the muck of men who live like pigs in the straw below. In winter it is colder than a frog's tit.

The 1st day we caught a whale was about midday. It was a good day, fine and sunny. I was on the top gallant cross-trees. About a mile leeward I saw the spouting of many whales. Thar she blows I shouted, the whalers' cry. A pod of sperm whales heaved before us.

The captain ordered the lookouts down to the deck to help launch 3 boats from their davits. Then the Captain told 1st mate to take over the ship while he went headsman for 1 of the whaleboats. I was ordered into it to take an oar with a man called Rangi. He was a savage from New Zealand. I found it strange for though he was strong and a good sailor he was not the same colour as me and at first I was afraid to touch his skin, but there are worse things under Heaven, and aboard that ship, and I grew used to him. Everyone kept a very civil tongue when talking to him for he was considered the best harpooneer.

We hit the water hard, and rowed towards the whales. Within striking distance we laid up our oars and turned on the brute. Rangi stood up steady against the thwart a lance in his hand. He raised his arm above his head and thrust it deep in the whale's shiny black side. The whale lashed the sea with its tail. Its huge head came up out of the water as high as Tower Bridge. It was
frenzy and madness out there. We stood in danger of being sucked beneath the waves. The Captain ordered Stern All and gave the harpoon line 2 turns around the loggerhead. The line rushed out. The Captain and Rangi changed places, the Captain in the bow holding another lance. That whale took us all near to damnation. The Captain lunged with the lance. The whale dived deep and we went racing along holding fast on the line. I thought we would be taken to the bottom of the sea.

So it went. The whale came up over and again, another lance. If I was a soft man I might have wept. For when it comes close I look for a moment that seems like eternity into the whale's eye, it is big and plummy and soft like a cow's and full of agony I cannot describe. It is animal and human at the same time. I am a little lad again and I seen my Mother's face flash before me and I silence a cry inside me.

But I was there to kill a whale not cry about it. Next thing the creature rose beneath the 3rd boat, smashed it to pieces, and while we were busy getting ready to finish off this bastard, the other boats were picking up the men. The whale was done for, blood and froth coming out of its blowhole. The Captain put it out of its misery.

It was left to Rangi then to put the blubber hook in its side so the whale could be winched up on the deck. The weight of the whale was very great. The ship heeled over as it was lifted on board.

And that was my first whale. We cut the head off while it was still in the sea, and brought this on board on its own, the jaw and teeth taken out. A whale has 42 teeth. And inside the head there is the most valuable oil which is spermaceti, it is v. fine oil. We lowered our buckets over and again into the head and casked it before we tried the blubber. After the excitement of the chase it is dirty work, stripping the blubber. It is like peeling an orange. We collected the bits from the Mincer, wielding his long and dangerous knife, and passed them to the try-pots. The try-works is between the foremast and main mast, a brick kiln that heats 2
pots that are near the height of a man. The furnace is underneath the pots.

We used wood to start the fires but after the 1st oil had been boiled out we used some of it as fritters to keep the fires going. Darkness had come upon us by then and it took us all the whole night long of cutting and passing the whale and stoking the fires. The sky was lit up by the roaring fires and some of us kept watch lest the sails should catch alight. It must be like that in hell. The noise went on and on until it was morning. Some men were complaining of their backs and asking for rations of rum. They were slackers and I could not be bothered with them. I said you may take your rest but I want my pockets full of gold when I put into port and the master will not pay us if you put yourselves to bed. After awhile they came around and kept on working. When the day broke we decanted the warm oil into casks, then closed them up for sealing and storing in the hold. The filth of what we had done was everywhere. There was no getting away from sweat and blood and the whole ship covered in soot which we must clean before we could rest.

Afterwards we had double rations of rum and I give Rangi a cuff about the head as meant for a comrade. And now I look back and see the look that passed through his eyes. I am a chief he says to me, I am related to Te Rauparaha.

And who may he be when he is at home I said.

You are fortunate he said that we are at sea and you do not know any better but I am a chief among Maoris and you do not touch the head of a chief. He sounded like a missionary the way he talked. As if he was an Englishman. Not surprising, for he had lived some while with the Reverend Samuel Marsden in Sydney who is a pious kind of bastard though it is not for me to use profane words when speaking of men of the cloth.

And why is that I asked not taking him in a serious way.

His head is tapu he said, not to be touched by other men. It is a sacred place. If you was to do that when you was among my people it would be an insult that would carry death and
those with you would be killed as well.

But I would not know this I protested.

That is no excuse said this savage and I was close to felling him for this was silly talk but there was a look in his eye that told me it would be just as well to hold my wrath. I did not say that I had seen the head of many a Maori chief or otherwise dried up like old leather and bartered for souvenirs in Sydney streets. There is a move to stop this trade. I have never thought to buy 1 for myself, not finding in them the kind of decoration I fancy. Instead I asked him who is this Robulla or whatever his name is.

He told me that I must not say his name like that. Te Rauparaha he said. You say it. And he wd tell me nothing more until I said it to his liking and then he spelled it for me too. Te Rauparaha is the big chief, the biggest of them all, a fighting man who has beaten all the other tribes around him in war. You should meet him Rangi said for he wants to do trade and barter with English ships. He told me how Te Rauparaha had made his headquarters on Kapiti Island (which I have heard sailors speak of, I think it the same one they call Entree Island). This island is near Cook Strait that runs between the 2 big islands of New Zealand. Te Rauparaha has food and flax to barter for white man's goods and muskets in particular. I am making a note of all of this because I know there is a big demand for flax in Sydney right now for making sails and coarse cloth to dress the convicts in their uniforms and the best rope that money can buy with which to hang them. Well business is business and I want to make my fortune quick. I like the sound of this place New Zealand. I think I will have a look at it before too long.