Prison Ship (29 page)

It was a high-born young man who got us out of this mess, I thought, but I wasn't going to argue. ‘I'll miss you Richard. You're the brother I always wanted.'

‘Enough of the soppy stuff,' said Richard. ‘Anyway, why don't you come back to Boston with me? A bright lad like you. You'd make your fortune soon enough. You'd like it out there, and they'd like you.'

It was an enticing idea. But then I thought of my mother and father, and our house in Norfolk. And Rosie. Had she caught the eye of another boy? Of course she had. She was too pretty and kind-hearted not to have. As for the Navy, I had had enough of burgoo for breakfast too, and the rest of it. The only thing that would get me back on a Navy ship was a press gang.

I said, ‘Maybe, one fine day, I'll come and see you in Boston, when I'm captain of my own merchantman!'

‘Hey, we aren't going just yet,' said Richard, and for now, we said no more about his leaving.

Doctor Dan brought dinner to the guardroom. He seemed unusually pleased with himself. I supposed he had just been spared from certain death. We told him about our meeting with King and he told us what was happening.

‘The New South Wales Corps are a law unto themselves around here. They know it and so does King. Gray has friends right at the top of the Corps, so the Governor won't be questioning him about what he was up to with the three of us last night. It might provoke a mutiny. We should just be grateful King arrived when he did.

‘Now I have some interesting news of my own! The Governor has ordered me pardoned and tells me there's need for doctors out in Parramatta, Richmond Hill and Green Hills. I can take my pick. What do you think of that! I think he just wants me out of the way of the New South Wales Corps and Lieutenant Gray. That suits me fine. I've had enough of the Rocks now.'

We were delighted for him. ‘You could do worse than Green Hills, that's for sure,' I said. ‘It's a beautiful spot. Will Tuck give you any trouble?'

Dan shook his head. ‘He's always been very respectful to me. I don't see why that would change. Green Hills it is then. The Governor tells me I should go as soon as I can.'

* * *

Dan left to make his arrangements, promising he would be back to see us the following Saturday. In my quiet moments I thought a lot about Oliver Pritchard, how I had detested his sneering face, and how my hatred for him had been part of my determination to survive out here. In a strange way, he had given his own life to save ours. I wished he had been spared. Now he was dead, I could forgive him. I also wondered what had happened to Nathaniel Pritchard's accomplice, John Giddes. He too had almost cost us our lives. Had that strange man been hanged or had he escaped? I would dearly love to find out what fate had befallen him and discover who he really was.

On the Friday, the Governor sent one of his officers to talk to us.

‘There's a merchantman leaving tomorrow. The
Orion
, she's called. We've had a word with the Captain, and he's sure he can make use of the two of you.'

‘What about me?' said Richard. ‘I wanted to get an American ship.'

The officer smiled patiently. ‘His Excellency feels that the sooner you are both away from Sydney, the safer you will be.'

‘Damn that,' said Richard. ‘I'm quite happy to wait.'

The man dropped his diplomatic façade. ‘This business with you both and Lieutenant Gray. It's a running sore between the Corps and the Governor. You might have to
wait months for an American ship. The sooner you go the better. The
Orion
is stopping off at Coupang, I dare say, so you could pick up an American ship there.'

Richard nodded. ‘Thank you, sir.'

So that was that. I was pleased he was coming with me.

‘Now, is there anything I can do for you?' said the officer.

‘I want to say goodbye to all the people here who've been kind to me, and who I lived with in Sydney.' I especially wanted to bid farewell to Doctor Dan. We could not have found a better friend, and I knew I would miss him greatly. Then there were our neighbours on the Rocks, Mad Bet at the Sailor's Arms, and James Lyons and Orlagh, and all the people at the Navy office.

He sighed. ‘Witchall. You don't understand the seriousness of the situation. We're going to have to take you to the
Orion
with an armed escort, probably in the middle of the night. If you go out on the streets, Gray and his men will kill you. There's no doubt about it.'

He agreed to bring me writing paper and envelopes. I filled the last day writing letters of farewell.

The day of our departure arrived. I spent the night thinking of all the people and the things I would miss, Doctor Dan especially. I envied him his life in Green Hills, it was beautiful there. The stories were true. This land was full of promise for anyone with ambition and determination. But then there were the thugs of the New South
Wales Corps, there were the seething resentments among the convicts, there were the natives and their unhappy lot… It was a long way off paradise when you stopped to think about it.

We were taken down to the quayside at dawn, and got our first glimpse of the
Orion
, sitting in the bay. She was a large, handsome three-mast vessel and I knew at once I wanted to sail on her.

Our marine escort rowed us over and we were introduced to the Captain, Henry Evison. Towering, unsmiling hands clasped behind his back, he was a forbidding figure. I watched him closely when Richard made it plain he would only be part of the ship's company until Coupang. ‘You can stay on ship as long or as short as you like, lad,' he said dourly. ‘I'm always happy to have Navy men in my crew.'

Then, soon after noon we weighed anchor. Standing in the rigging, making sail, Richard and I had a splendid view of the harbour as we moved towards the open sea. The sun shone hot on our faces. It was a glorious day. Richard called over to me, ‘Psst! Psst!' Then he lowered his voice. ‘Look. It's Lizzie Borrow. What's she doing here?'

I looked down on to the deck. There she was, half hidden by her bonnet, come to see the last of Sydney. This was going to be an interesting voyage.

Richard and I were due a rest period that afternoon. We found Lizzie soon enough, out on the deck with her pretty
dark-haired maid. She was so delighted to see us she incurred the stern eye of the Captain.

‘What are you doing here?' we both said at once.

‘You first,' she insisted.

We sat in the forecastle and told her our tale.

‘And what about you?' said Richard.

‘I called off the engagement to Lieutenant Gray just after the incident that got you sent to Green Hills. I thought he was going to kill you on the spot.'

We told her what had happened when we got back to Sydney, and how Gray had intended to kill us at night in the woods.

‘He's angry with me, for refusing him. I don't think he cares about me, he's just lost face. I think he blames you both too. That's why he was so keen to have his revenge.'

The
Orion
passed round the headland and out into the vast sweep of the ocean. Today was the 15th October. If we were lucky, we would reach Coupang in eight weeks, and England by the spring. I would see my parents again, I kept telling myself. But half a year at sea lay between me and home. I had survived so far, but who could tell what storm, accident or misadventure lay ahead?

In Sam Witchall's previous book
Powder Monkey
, all the characters, ships and events were fictitious. Here, in
Prison Ship
, fact and fiction occasionally intertwine.

Sam's ship HMS
Elephant
was a ‘74' of the period and took part in the Battle of Copenhagen on 2 April, 1801. Among her crew Captain Foley was the actual captain of the ship, Captain Hardy (of ‘Kiss me Hardy' fame) was also present, and took a party of sailors out to the Danish line to test the water's depth. Vice Admiral Nelson joined the
Elephant
for the Battle of Copenhagen and is widely claimed to have spoken the words quoted on page 55.

Captain William Bligh also took part in the battle as commander of HMS
Glatton
, as did other ships mentioned in the text, and Vice Admiral Hyde Parker was the commander of the fleet.

In 1801 Australia was known as New South Wales, but also referred to as New Holland and Botany Bay. Matthew Flinders was the first person to call the continent Australia, in 1804, but it took several years for the term to come into common use. Philip Gidley King was the Governor of the colony from 1800 to 1806. Green Hills, where Sam and Richard were sent to work on
Charlotte Farm, was the original name for the town of Windsor in New South Wales. It took its new name in 1810.

The character Thomas Ferring was partly inspired by the ‘Wild White Man' William Buckley, who lived for thirty-two years with the Wathaurong people after escaping from Port Phillip in 1803, near to modern-day Melbourne.

Of the old Rocks and old Sydney from this story there is virtually no trace. Among the gleaming glass towers close to Circular Quay and the quaint Victoriana of the Rocks it is difficult to imagine life in the new settlement of 1801. The bush, though, is but a short train ride away from central Sydney, and still alarmingly dense and deserted.

Although I've tried to base these characters and their circumstances firmly on historic reality, I hope readers more familiar than me with both Nelson's Navy and early colonial Australia will forgive any factual blunders. (In his book
Down Under
, Bill Bryson wryly noted that there was rarely a written fact about Australia that wasn't contradicted somewhere else.)

Most of the information in the Australian section of the story came from books and journals found in the Mitchell Library at the State Library of New South Wales, and in the Royal Australian Historical Society Library. The Museum of Sydney, the Mint Library, Sydney, and Elizabeth Farm, Parramatta, also provided very useful material. In England I'm especially grateful to the staff of the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and the reference library staff at Birmingham and Wolverhampton Public Libraries, for helping me unearth useful sources.

For any reader wanting to find out more about the real history of colonial Australia, I can recommend any of the following:

Transported: In Place of Death (Convicts in Australia)
by Christopher Sweeney (Macmillan, 1981). This is a
very readable introduction to the topic of convict transportation in Australia.

The Fatal Shore
by Robert Hughes (Vintage, 2003). Although some of its content is controversial, this is an evocative and moving account of Australia's convict beginnings.

Pig Bites Baby – Stories from Australia's First Newspaper, Volume 1, 1803–1810
edited by Michael Connor (Duffy and Snellgrove, 2003). A compendium of clippings from
The Sydney Gazette
, it gives a vivid flavour of life in Sydney in the first decade of the 19th century.

Great Convict Escapes in Colonial Australia
by Warwick Hirst (Kangaroo Press, 2003). A rollicking good read, it includes a fascinating chapter on ‘Wild White Men'.

I'm very grateful to Dilys Dowswell for her valuable advice on all my first drafts, and my agent Charlie Viney for his support and encouragement. Thanks also to Peter Rayner, Alex and Louis Costello, and Charlie James for their help.

At Bloomsbury, Ele Fountain patiently steered the story in the right direction, and she and Isabel Ford made valuable improvements to the text. Ian Butterworth created the evocative cover and Peter Bailey's fine line drawings enhance the inside pages.

My trip to Australia to research this book was a wonderful adventure. My landlady, Bobbie Burke, made me very welcome, and Fiona Campbell took me out to visit Richmond and Windsor. On my travels, Ken and Kathy Taylor helped me out when I got lost in the bush, and Lynne Iverson and Stephanie Kaye introducing me to Australian wildlife at Sydney's Taronga Zoo.

Thank you too to Liz Bray, Inara Walden, Karen Bromley and Stephanie Donald for their help and advice. Finally, I'm very grateful to Warwick Hirst, archivist/curator at the Mitchell Library, Sydney, both for the advice he offered when I was researching the book and for his valuable comments on the manuscript.

Writing a novel can be an all-consuming task, so special thanks are due to Jenny and Josie Dowswell for their patience and support.

Powder Monkey