Channel.
“Seasick? N’er mind,” jibed a seaman while continuing to scrub. “The admiral himself spends some time bent over the rails till he gets his sea legs. Welcome aboard, your bloody Lordship,” he scowled. David leaned over the railing again to the laughter of the crew and spent the remainder of the watch imitating the admiral. At nightfall, he fell exhausted into his hammock.
The next day he had thankfully given himself to the motion of the ship and was put to work doing some of the normal shipboard activities like cutting sail patches or scraping varnish from weathered yards. Toward afternoon, a small ship sailed to within hailing distance. It was a Dutch lugger, and by the shouting between ships, David understood the Dutchman was selling contraband gin. The ships steered off, putting a safe distance between them. The Prince Rupert’s gunner and four eager deckhands climbed into a boat that was lowered over the side. Smooth and synchronous strokes on the oars had them to the lugger in a short time. On board, the gunner was quickly handed a taste of gin from a bottle snatched by the Dutch captain from a full case. “Hurry!” said the captain in rough English. “De Revenue Cutter he’s cruising near at hand! Ve must luff off. You must go!” The gunner hastily paid a guinea for the whole case and the men loaded their prize into the launch.
“Better ’n pay’n London prices,” remarked the second mate on the Prince Rupert’s main deck as the precious cargo was hoisted aboard. The case of gin bottles clanked safely onto the grating, but the satisfaction of the gunner was soon spoiled when the old carpenter suspiciously uncorked a new bottle and took a short swig. “Sea water!” he spat. “You try another.”
“All bloody sea water!” cursed the gunner as he spat out another mouthful. But it was too late. The Dutchman had gone on a fast tack more than a kilometre off Prince Rupert’s stern. The gunner and his men were in a fighting mood, but Captain Tunstall ordered a steady course. Although the crew would be irritable and restless without their gin ration, he wanted to put in at Stromness by June 1. The latest Company dispatch from London would be waiting. It contained his final instructions before their Atlantic crossing.
Davids mood lifted as sunrise revealed the hills of Scotland lying blue on the horizon. This was his first glimpse of anywhere outside of London. The crew scrambled aloft and let out sail at the mate’s sharp command, and the Prince Rupert rolled into the steep choppy seas off the Islands. A fresh wind kept them tacking as they laboured to windward until nightfall.
At 9:00 p.m. the dark silence was broken by the clattering chain as Prince Rupert’s anchor plunged toward the muddy bottom of Stromness harbour. David found the stillness of the harbour a relief after the constant sway and roll of the last six days and nights under sail from London. He climbed into his hammock wondering what the light of next day would reveal about this quiet place. He was wakened in the morning by smoke. By its smell, it was not from the galley fires, but an acrid sweet smoke from some different fire. David went on deck to investigate and was struck by a barren landscape.
“No trees,” he said aloud to no one in particular.
“That’s so people here won’t spoil their clothes trying to climb them,” a sailor answered.
On the treeless shore, David saw the smoke’s source. Five stone kilns were bellowing black clouds from smouldering seaweed as the wet green harvest was rendered by fire into fertilizer. He watched men and women struggling back and forth on the distant foreshore, carrying baskets of dripping seaweed to the kilns. Somehow harvesting seaweed made sense here, for nothing else but short green stubs of grass seemed to grow on the rocky grey landscape. Even the tiny cottages dotting the shoreline of small islands in the bay were made of rock and had sod covering their roofs.
Other ships were anchored in the bay. All were Hudson’s Bay vessels waiting at this remote station tucked into the Orkney Islands on the west coast of Scotland. They too waited for the last dispatches from London. The village of Stromness was a customary stopover for Hudson’s Bay ships bound for the New World. Over the next few days they would take on water, buy fresh-caught herring, and stow away their final provisions. At the head of the bay, just beyond two small islands, was a friendly cluster of small brick houses with slate roofs. Smoke from peat fires rose lazily from their chimneys and drifted down over the stone seawall at the harbour’s edge. Behind the village, the hills lay low and misty.
At a warehouse, Prince Rupert safely bought genuine contraband from the steady supply smuggled into Stromness harbour from Holland. The crew loaded several kegs of “Comfort” for the cold Atlantic nights. Late that afternoon, Captain Tunstall had the other captains and some gentlemen from the island brought aboard the Prince Rupert to dine. As they prepared to retire to the captain’s table the wind shifted and pungent smudge from all five kilns drifted across the bay, blanketing the ship’s deck. Day was turned suddenly to night as the suffocating fumes enveloped Prince Rupert’s dinner party. Captain Tunstall ordered the boatswain ashore to demand the kilns be extinguished at once. The boatswain, however, was met with an adamant refusal by the islanders.
“Then we shall turn the ship’s guns on you and have our cannonballs put an end to your kilns,” threatened the boatswain.
“You may as well take our lives as our means,” they said stubbornly, “We will not put them out.”
The boatswain had dealt with Orkadians before. They were as tough and hard as the islands on which they scratched out a living. He would have to try something else.
“How much do you make a day from these kilns?” he asked.
“Ten pence.”
The boatswain reached for his money pouch.
“Each,” added a soot-faced kilnsman.
The boatswain handed each man a shilling and the kilns were out before his launch had rowed back to the ship.
They set sail for Rupert’s Land on July 3. Over the next few weeks conditions grew steadily worse. North Atlantic squalls battered the ship. Treacherous icebergs, looming and ominous, threatened to rip through her belly timbers. The food became maggot-ridden and foul. But maybe worse than maggots, for David, was the ill-tempered crew. Mistrustful of anyone who didn’t drink, they excluded him like the runt in a wolf pack, and he was as alone as he had ever been. Even the captain, whose attention David must have longed for, seemed not to notice him at all.
He consoled himself by observing the stars and the wind. With daily readings sneaked off the binnacle, he tried to guess the ship’s course. David desperately wanted to help navigate the ship. He had learned the skills for it. He was sure he could calculate Prince Rupert’s position to within a minute of latitude, given a chart. But that was not to be.
August 30 finally brought a calm evening after nearly two months of heavy seas. David, alone on deck, searched skyward for Polaris, the North Star. Prince Rupert was nearing land, some crewmen had said. David reckoned, as best he could with no chart or sextant, that they were well into Hudson Bay. The day before, he had overheard the master’s mate call out their position as 59 degrees and 03 minutes north latitude. Being able to find his way was everything to him. It meant he could not be lost, would never be left adrift not knowing where home was. His schooling had taught him that no matter where he might be on all the worlds seas, he could know his position by the stars and by degrees and minutes. But he could only guess where he was now, and he would likely never navigate a ship. He was destined to be a clerk, to waste away counting blankets, buttons, and company tokens in some forgotten outpost. The prospect of his bleak future, the strain of the voyage, and the memories of London, were being held off by great effort and were about to crush him.
“Fine evening, Master Thompson,” Captain Tunstall remarked as he tugged indifferently on the mizzen halyard, his back purposely turned to David.
“Yes sir,” recovered David.
“Watching the stars again, I see.”
“Aye sir.”
“How