Guns to the Far East (19 page)

The clerk's eyes held pity. “A number, yes, sir. They're published each week. The Cawnpore casualty list isn't complete—I mean, all the lists are being added to and occasionally some names are deleted. Usually the officers and their wives who are known to be at each station are listed and the newspapers state that their present whereabouts is subject to confirmation, I … there are copies in our files, sir. It would not take me very long to extract any copies you wished to see and bring them to you.”

“Thank you,” Phillip managed. “Then the Cawnpore list, if you please.”

He waited for twenty minutes, pacing restlessly up and down the office, watched curiously by its other occupants, and then the boy who had attended him returned and silently handed him copies of two Calcutta newspapers, folded open to reveal the list he had requested. He took them, his hands not quite steady and almost instantly the name he had been hoping not to see leapt out at him from the printed page.
“Hill, Lieutenant and Mrs T. F., H.M.'s 32nd Regiment …”
So Harriet's information had been correct, he thought dully. Tom and Lavinia were both dead, both … murdered.

He returned to the ship like a man living a nightmare, savage anger in his heart. His mother and father would have to be told, of course, but he postponed writing to inform them, unable to bring himself to commit what he had learned to paper. As the clerk had said, the lists of casualties had to be confirmed—it was possible that, at the last minute, Tom had been transferred, sent to join his regiment in Lucknow, perhaps or … He lay down on his cot without undressing and remained there, not sleeping but staring into space, his thoughts unbearable torment.

Next day, Captain Peel announced to his assembled ship's company that Lord Elgin had instructed him to place both
Shannon
and
Pearl
at the disposal of the Indian Government. “Arrangements are being made for the formation of a Naval Brigade to assist in quelling the mutiny, my lads,” he told them. “The first four hundred men will leave here for Allahabad within a week, all being well, under my command. We shall be taking some of the ship's guns with us.” The men, who had heard the story of the Cawnpore massacre, cheered him until they were hoarse.

Events moved rapidly after that. On 10th August, the troops were disembarked; on the 11th, the three hundred marines from the
Sanspareil
marched ashore to do duty as garrison troops in Fort William, and the
Pearl
—held up in the river—made her appearance to disembark the two hundred men of the 90th Light Infantry to whom she had given passage from Singapore. Two other transports arrived, bringing a wing of the 5th Fusiliers and two companies of the 59th Regiment, all of whom were dispatched up country by rail and road.

Phillip's hopes of a rapid journey to Allahabad by the same means were dashed when William Peel told him that it had been decided to send the Naval Brigade up by river, taking with them ten of the
Shannon
's sixty-eight-pounder guns, with four hundred rounds of shot and shell for each gun, brass fieldpieces, a twenty-four-pounder howitzer and eight rocket-tubes. On 13th, a large flat-transport, the
Gamma,
came alongside and the guns were hoisted out and loaded aboard her, together with medical and clothing supplies, tents, haversacks, waterbottles, and boots furnished by the military authorities. The men were issued with waterproof capes and cotton covers and sun-curtains to attach to their straw hats, and Minié or Enfield rifles, bayonets, and ammunition.

At 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 18th August, a ninety-horsepower steamer, the
Chunar,
was waiting in readiness for departure, with the straw-thatched flat in tow. Lord Elgin came on board the
Shannon
to address the men about to proceed on service and, an hour later, the first division of the Naval Brigade, three hundred and ninety strong, embarked in the steamer and the flat. As the
Chunar
got under way, those remaining aboard the
Shannon
and the entire company of the
Pearl
lined the decks or ascended the rigging to exchange cheers, the
Pearl
saluting with seven guns.

Progress was, however, extremely slow. The
Chunar
developed a faulty feed-pipe and, on 20th August, unable to make any headway against the current for lack of steam, she was compelled to anchor off Barrackpore and Peel wrathfully sent the cutter, with Lieutenant Hay, to demand that she be replaced.

“Damned ineffciency!” Peel complained, to Phillip. “Devil take their so-called engineers! I'm going to put young Bone to supervise the engine room, if and when they manage to rake up another steamer for us. We're not having this again.”

The
Chunar
was replaced by the
River Bird
the following day but her Commander contrived to foul the flat when endeavouring to take her in tow. After this had been dealt with, Peel had fresh reason for annoyance when, due to an error, a double ration of grog was issued to the seamen and Marines aboard the flat, and none to those who had transferred to the newly arrived
River Bird.
Led by a petty officer named Oates, a number of men came aft to demand aggrievedly that they be issued with their ration and the young Swedish officer, Lind, who had the deck, perforce refused their request, since no supplies had yet been received from the
Chunar.
The man replied insolently; Peel, who had been within earshot, promptly placed him under arrest and next day disrated him to able-seaman, with the forfeiture of his two Good Conduct badges.

“We may have a month of this,” Peel said, when Oates and his escort had marched away. “The men have got to be made to work off their impatience—they're all so damned keen to come to grips with the mutineers and avenge Cawnpore that any delay upsets them. Well, we'll turn the inevitable delays to our advantage.” He turned to Phillip, grinning boyishly. “I've been wondering what to do with you, Commander Hazard, but now, by heaven, I've got the answer! You shall take charge of training.”

“Certainly, sir,” Phillip agreed readily. “I take it you want your seamen transformed into soldiers?”

“Into
good
soldiers, Phillip. I want them to march and form square, exercise with the bayonet, learn to repel cavalry and to manhandle the guns, use the rifles effectively and, by God, drill like Marines! Above all, I want them to sweat, so that we'll have no more trouble from lads like Oates, due to inaction and boredom. They'll have to perform their routine duties, of course—hump stores, coal ship, and man the boats—this will be in addition. They shall have their grog all right but they'll earn every last drop of it … will you see to it that they do?”

“I will, sir,” Phillip assured him. “Very gladly.” He, too, was anxious to be distracted from the torment of his own thoughts and to regain fully his physical fitness, and he found release and a considerable measure of satisfaction in the results of the training programme he organised.

Each day, at first light, as steamer and flat steamed slowly up the broad and, at times tempestuous River Ganges, he exercised the small-arms men in rifle and infantry drill, dividing them into sections. The deck of the broad-beamed flat provided sufficient space for most of the drills, and he encouraged friendly rivalry between the various sections and the 50-strong Royal Marine contingent, whose two officers ran an unofficial “book” aided by the seamen's Divisional Officers, Edward Hay and Nowell Salmon.

During the heat of the day, lectures on military tactics occupied the men in batches, alternating with others covering such subjects as hygiene and first aid to the injured, given by the medical staff, and basic Hindustani and general talks on India and its people, contributed by one of the
River Bird
's officers. At sunset, when both steamer and flat dropped anchor for the night, parties were landed to drill with field guns, practise infantry manoeuvres and make route marches and, before long, the
Shannon
's “Jacks” became almost as competent in their military duties as they had previously been at sea.

They grumbled, as all British seamen will, but they worked hard and kept fit and, even when Phillip made attendence at certain lecture sessions voluntary, the numbers did not noticeably diminish. Breaches of discipline became fewer and finally almost ceased and William Peel's greatest anxiety was the number of men struck down by cholera, nine of whom died during the long, slow voyage up river. On reaching Dinapore on 10th September, a number of men had to be put ashore for hospital treatment and the
River Bird
—proving, in her turn, unserviceable—was replaced by the steamer
Mirzapore.
That evening, after transferring stores to their new ship, the entire Naval Brigade marched through the city headed by their band, to drill on one of the regimental parade grounds before an enthusiastic audience of British residents and troops, the bandsmen exchanging their Enfields for musical instruments for the first time since leaving Calcutta.

Phillip was pleased with the way the men acquitted themselves. They might still make mistakes in wheeling and other more complex manoeuvres, but their small-arms drill and their smart handling of the six-pounder brass guns evoked numerous compliments from the senior army officers who witnessed it. Disappointment was, however, in store for them—there was now no possibility that the Brigade would reach Allahabad in time to catch up with the troop reinforcements being pushed forward in a final attempt to relieve the hard-pressed Lucknow garrison. General Havelock, whose gallant little force had been reduced by cholera, dysentery, sunstroke, and rebel bullets to a mere eight hundred bayonets, had been compelled to retire to Cawnpore where, after defeating the pick of the Nana's army in a bravely fought battle at Bithur, they were now waiting for reinforcements to reach them.

“They've appointed General Sir James Outram to command this Division, which includes Cawnpore,” a grey-haired Colonel stated with a shrug. “Recalled him posthaste from Persia, to supersede poor old Havelock, who's done as well as any Commander could, with the few regiments they gave him. But Outram has taken the Fifth and the Ninetieth from here and, if I know anything about him, he won't rob Henry Havelock of the glory if they succeed in relieving Lucknow. And Sir Colin Campbell's now Commander-in-Chief, which means there'll be no more dragging of feet in Calcutta. If we could just hear that Delhi's been recaptured, morale would soar sky-high. It's been a terrible business, though … and we've had our anxieties here, under a Commander who … well, I won't say any more, since he's been replaced. But firm action with the native regiments here would have given Havelock both the Fifth and the Ninetieth at the time he asked for them.”

On Saturday, 12th September, the
Mirzapore
cast off with the flat in tow but, six miles above Dinapore, she was compelled to anchor, being unable to stem the current with her heavy tow. Phillip, accompanied by Lieutenant Nowell Salmon, returned to the city they had just left in the cutter to request the aid of a second steamer. The
Koel
was sent the following day, lashed alongside the flat to assist in towing and then, within two hours, the
Mirzapore
ran aground on a sandbank. She was got off, after some strenuous work, only to find that the
Koel
's hawsers had parted and the flat was adrift. By 16th September, they had progressed no further than Durnapur and all three vessels were compelled by fading light to drop anchor.

Three more men died of cholera and fifty-one fell sick during the next two days; the
Koel,
her bunkers empty, returned to Dinapore to replenish them and Captain Peel ordered the flat to be lightened by transferring shot to the
Mirzapore,
but no sooner had this operation been completed than the steamer again took the ground. Finally when the
Koel
returned, she was refloated, but not before her worn hawsers had twice more parted and the extra shot, moved to her from the flat, had been loaded aboard the
Koel.

On 22nd September, a wind of almost cyclone force struck the river from the westward and continued from 2:30 in the afternoon until dawn on the 23rd, again compelling the three vessels to anchor as it blew across the flat countryside on both banks, bringing a heavy rainstorm in its wake. The rain swelled the river to a muddy torrent, with every sort of flotsam hurtling down on the current, including native bodies in various stages of decomposition, which the
Shannon
's seamen studied with growing excitement until informed by one of the steamer's officers that—far from being casualties from a British victory— they were the bodies of poor villagers, dead of natural causes, whose families were too poor to provide sufficient firewood for their funeral pyres.

On the 24th, with another man dead and 47 still sick with cholera or dysentery, the Brigade landed at Ghazipore, spending the next four days in barracks there and—on Peel's insistence—continuing with a full programme of training. On the evening of the 27th, the shore parties re-embarked in the
Koel
and the flat, leaving Lieutenant Wilson with the sick in the charge of an Indian Army surgeon and, after more frustrating delays caused by the inability of the two small steamers to make any headway against the current of the river, finally anchored off Benares City at three o'clock on the afternoon of 30th September.

Phillip had heard and read much about Benares and, at first sight, was as impressed by its size and extent and by the beauty of its graceful minarets and swelling domes as by the numerous flights of stone steps descending the river bank, which seemed always to be crowded with native pilgrims, come to bathe in the sacred waters of the river they called “Mother Ganges.” On landing, however, he found it to be much less attractive than it had appeared from the deck of the flat. The magnificent mosques and temples were still imposing, but the approaches to them were filthy, the streets narrow and ill-kept, bordered on each side by mud-built native houses and teeming with people, with animals roaming at will, both in and outside the buildings. Although the fires of mutiny and rebellion had only recently been extinguished, the
Shannon
's landing party met with no hostility from the populace in general; a motley throng of beggars—many of them hideously deformed and crippled—followed them with plaintive cries, but the people seemed, for the most part, apathetic and indifferent to their presence, passing them by without a second glance. Only the hordes of monkeys in the vicinity of the Hindu places of worship displayed any animosity towards the new arrivals, their vicious assaults matched by that of the swarms of stinging flies brought out by the monsoon rain.