Final Voyage (2 page)

At 6pm, as the sun set and a fresh storm mounted, its cloudbank blocking out the moonlight, Shovell sent his signal to the rest of the fleet. A light frigate usually led the way, but those were the ships Shovell had dispatched to Falmouth. As night fell, and it became so dark the ships could only see each other – when the weather permitted – by their lights, the
Association
took the lead position.

According to local account, one of the crewmen aboard the
Association
was from the Isles of Scilly. Apparently he smelt burning kelp (a practice that had become something of an industry on the islands in the previous 20 years, the soda ash produced from burning seaweed being used in the production of soap, dyes, glass and gunpowder). Realising the captain of the
Lenox
had been right, and the fleet was nearing the Isles of Scilly, he warned Shovell to change course. In one version of the story, Shovell hanged the man from the yardarm. Regardless, the story is
undoubtedly apocryphal, not least because nobody on the
Association
survived to have reported it.

Crewmen on the third-rate ship of the line HMS
Monmouth
were the first to spot the rocks to leeward. The captain of the
Monmouth
ordered evasive manoeuvres and the ship narrowly avoided collision. He didn't have time to warn the rest of the fleet.

The
Association
was only 10 years old. A second-rate ship of the line, she was 165ft (50m) long and had 90 guns (by comparison, fifty years later HMS
Victory
was commissioned with 100). In 1703, whilst anchored off Harwich, the
Association
was caught in the Great Storm that wrecked 13 Royal Navy ships and killed almost 1,500 seamen. Some of the strongest winds ever recorded carried the
Association
almost as far as Sweden. But she survived, going on to assist in the capture of Gibraltar less than nine months later. When she smashed into Outer Gilstone Rock she sank in only three minutes.

Too late, Shovell must have realised his mistake. Before the
Association
finally broke apart, three of her guns were fired.

Too late, Shovell must have realised his mistake. Before the
Association
finally broke apart, three of her guns were fired. The crews of some of the other ships heard and immediately changed course. For some of those ships it was also too late. The captain of HMS
St George
didn't know which way to turn, and when he did, the ship also struck rocks, which caused serious damage to her stern. (The damage didn't prove fatal, and the
St George
did eventually make it to Portsmouth.)

The most westerly part of England is Crim Rocks, which is infamous for the ‘tearing ledges' hidden just beneath the surface in the waters all around the islets. Onto these jagged spiked rocks sailed HMS
Eagle
, a 165ft (48m) third-rate ship of the line. The storm dragged the
Eagle
over a mile further north before she finally sank.

Meanwhile other ships in the fleet had lost sight of the lights from the
Association
. Now even the crews who had not heard her gunfire, the sound lost behind the roar of the storm, realised what must have happened, and fired their guns too. This didn't save HMS
Romney
, however. The 130ft (40m) fourth-rate ship of the line hit Bishop Rock and sank not far from where the
Eagle
had gone down only minutes before.

The final ship to founder was the fireship HMS
Firebrand
. Her smaller size made her no more manoeuvrable than the
Association
, and probably more susceptible to the strong storm winds. The
Firebrand
smashed into Outer Gilstone Rock, just like Shovell's flagship before her, but the
Firebrand
struck with such ferocity that she became stuck on the rocks. A large wave eventually lifted her off, but she started sinking fast. With nothing to lose, her captain steered the flooded ship for St Agnes, though of course he had no idea where he was, or where he was going. The
Firebrand
sank just offshore, close to Menglow Rock.

The
Firebrand
's captain's quick thinking may not have saved the ship, but it saved the lives of 12 of his 40 crew, including his own. As the ship disappeared beneath the tumultuous waves, the captain and six of his men managed to board a small boat, which they used to reach the shallows of St Agnes. Another five men made it to the shore using
pieces of floating wooden wreckage from their smashed vessel. As the 12 men later discovered, from the other three ships that sank, they would be joined by only one more survivor.

Shovell's body was discovered on the beaches of St Mary's the next morning. Another local legend claims he was still alive when he reached the shore and that a couple of women murdered him to steal his emerald ring. It is just as likely to be apocryphal as the story of the local crewman aboard the
Association
, and for the same reason. Everyone on board the
Association
drowned, between 800 and 900 men. In better conditions some of the men might have been able to swim to shore, but in the heaving seas of the night before they were quickly overcome. The storm current had been strong enough to carry Shovell's body to St Mary's, after all, seven miles from where the
Association
sank. There had never been any real prospect of rescue by the other ships in the fleet. They were too busy saving themselves.

In better conditions some of the men might have been able to swim to shore.

Another 400 to 500 men died after the
Eagle
hit Crim Rocks, and as many again when the
Romney
sank. By almost miraculous luck, one crewman from the
Romney
, a former butcher serving aboard as quartermaster, managed to survive. He was the thirteenth and final survivor of the Scilly Disaster. Whilst the exact number of dead is unknown, the lowest estimate stands at 1,400, and a more realistic figure would be much higher. For days afterwards bodies and wreckage washed up on the beaches of the Isles
of Scilly, but most of those who lost their lives were swept out to sea, their remains never found.

For the British government the loss of so many ships and men in one incident represented a double blow, seeing as it followed Shovell's fleet's failure to take Toulon. This was not yet the Royal Navy that ruled the waves for Britannia, and the government realised that becoming the dominant naval power in the world wasn't simply a matter of the number of ships or their firepower. The investigation into the disaster concluded that the navigators' inability to work out longitude to a sufficiently accurate degree was the principle cause. Finding a new way of calculating longitude was already of growing importance, especially with the increasing frequency of transatlantic crossings.

For days afterwards bodies and wreckage washed up on the beaches of the Isles of Scilly.

The Longitude Act of 1714 established a prize fund of £20,000 (nearly £3 million in today's money) for anyone who could find a way to determine longitude accurately whilst at sea and out of sight of land. Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley (the mathematician and astronomer best known for working out the orbit of the eponymous comet) both attempted to find a solution, but were ultimately unsuccessful.

The problem stemmed from the fact that to work out a precise bearing, navigators needed to know the time at a fixed point. Out of sight of land this became especially difficult, not least because for every 15 degrees a ship travelled east or west, the local time moved either forward or back an hour. What was needed was a timepiece that
could keep the time at sea, but unfortunately the most reliable means of keeping time on land was the pendulum clock, and the motion of the sea meant they couldn't work on ships, least of all in the rocky conditions Shovell's fleet experienced.

It wasn't until 1773 that self-trained clockmaker John Harrison claimed the prize (though having already received interim payments from the Board of Longitude, the final sum was much reduced from the initial reward offered). Harrison's chronometer was just a little larger than a pocketwatch, and used a wind-up clockwork mechanism rather than a pendulum to keep track of time. Though it took many years before the chronometer became a standard piece of onboard equipment, by the mid-19th century many captains (let alone ship owners) considered them essential for long distance voyages. Harrison's first four prototypes can be seen on display at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. All but one of them continue to run.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, China was growing rich off the back of ever-increasing British demand for what was becoming one of China's core commodities: tea. In 1793 the Chinese Emperor proclaimed that henceforth only silver would be accepted from foreign merchants who wanted to buy Chinese produce. Buying tea, which only had one use and no intrinsic value, with a precious metal that could then be traded with anyone anywhere, gave the Chinese economy a massive boost, but proved a massive drain on the British economy, especially
because the British had insufficient silver, so had to buy it from other countries with gold.

Everything changed when the British East India Company, already so successful with its trading monopolies on the Indian subcontinent, turned the tables on the Chinese. The Company flooded China with opium, which was legal for European merchants to trade, even if it was illegal in China. The Chinese economy suffered on two fronts. Not only was the British East India Company using its opium profits to buy the silver the Chinese demanded for their tea (essentially getting the Chinese to pay for the British to take their tea), but that silver then bled out of the economy as it was used to buy the illicit opium. These events would lead to the First Opium War in 1839, but even by 1822 China's economy was already in free-fall, hardship was widespread, and many sought to leave the country.

The sugar cane fields of Indonesia offered the promise of stable employment to Chinese coolies and others who risked starvation if they stayed in China. Desperate emigrants descended on ports like Amoy (now Xiamen) and crowded onto junks heading for Java. On 14th January 1822, more than 1,600 of them boarded the
Tek Sing
.

At 165ft (50m) long and displacing over 1,000 tons, the
Tek Sing
was one of the largest ocean-going junks operating in the South China Sea. Constructed almost entirely from wood, she had a square bow, a high stern and three masts, the tallest of which was over 90ft (27m) high. Her name meant ‘true star'. For her latest voyage she carried a cargo comprising over 350,000 separate pieces of porcelain, from teapots to opium containers and urinals, plus raw silk, bamboo furniture, brass, bronze, mercury and much
more besides. She bore so much cargo, in fact, that there wasn't room for all of it in her holds, and some of it was strapped to the outside of her hull.

Merchants, couriers and students joined the 1,600 emigrants and between 200 and 400 crewmen on board. Entire families travelled together, ranging in age from six years old to almost 80. The junk was so overcrowded that most of the passengers spent the voyage outside on deck, where each person had room only for their rolled-out bamboo mat. Everyone on board had to bring enough food to last them the journey, which was expected to take a month.

Three weeks into the voyage, on 6th February, the
Tek Sing
's captain, Io Tauko, decided to take a shortcut through the Gaspar Strait, going to the west of Belitung Island rather than the usual route, passing it to the east. Tauko was considered an experienced and knowledgeable master, having made this journey with the
Tek Sing
numerous times. Why he made the ultimately catastrophic decision to take this shortcut when he knew the dangers of the Belvidere Shoals has been much speculated upon in China since. He may have been trying to escape pirates, or he may simply have been concerned that the supplies of fresh water aboard would run out before reaching Java if he took the longer route to the east of Belitung.

Entire families travelled together, ranging in age from six years old to almost 80.

As the
Tek Sing
passed through the Gaspar Strait her crew had to contend with a strong northwesterly monsoon wind, which created a considerable swell on the surface of the sea. This made the foamy crests of the wind-swept
waves indistinguishable from those breaking over the reefs of the Belvidere Shoals until it was too late for the crew of the
Tek Sing
to avoid them.

The
Tek Sing
struck the barely hidden reef at such speed that the impact would have felt like an explosion to those on board. The junk's planked hull broke open in much the same way as the
Titanic
's iron hull split apart at the seams when she struck the iceberg. Water rushed into the
Tek Sing
's holds, and as she slipped lower and lower into the sea, the rising tide and the monsoon wind dragged her over on to her side. Only an hour after running aground, the
Tek Sing
's wreck lay 100ft (30m) below the surface, and the stormy waters above were full of debris, cargo, and over a thousand passengers.

The
Tek Sing
struck the barely hidden reef at such speed that the impact would have felt like an explosion to those on board.

The next day, the British merchant vessel
Indiana
passed the Belvidere Shoals on her way from Batavia (now Jakarta) to Borneo. That her captain, James Pearl, also opted to go through the Gaspar Strait – despite it being the less direct route for him – lends credence to the suggestion that he was smuggling half a million pounds worth of opium into Borneo. When the
Indiana's
crew first spotted the floating debris from the
Tek Sing
at a distance, they thought what they could see was the reef breaching the surface. But as the
Indiana
drew nearer, the scale of the previous night's disaster became clear.