Читать книгу David Thompson - Tom Shardlow - Страница 15

2

Rupert’s Land

The day David had hoped would never arrive was here. He placed his grey uniform on his cot and gathered his meagre clothing and belongings. He rushed down the hall and burst into the classroom where Thomas Adams sat alone reading the Bible.

“I’m being sent to Rupert’s Land today and must leave straightaway!” he gasped.

“So I’ve been told,” replied the teacher, putting his hand gently on David’s arm. “Don’t be too disappointed, lad. Keep working hard. You never know what good advantage this setback may bring. Now quick to the kitchen and see what the cook has for you. Goodbye, Davie, I’ll miss you.”

“Goodbye, Sir.” David raced to the kitchen.

Nonsuch, the famous ship that in 1669 returned to London with a fortune in furs. The voyage spawned the Hudson’s Bay Company and the creation of Rupert’s Land.

A time of excitement at York Factory. Hudson’s Bay Company ships offload trade goods and take on the valuable cargo of fur bound for London.

The cook slipped him a biscuit and a little salt pork. “For the road. God bless you lad.”

David followed at a quick trot behind his escort. The rough-looking crewman was in a hurry to return to his ship. His instructions were to bring back two apprentice boys, but one would do. He didn’t want to keep his captain waiting. “Captain Tunstall he wants us aboard early he does. Cap’n don’t like things left t’ last minute,” he warned, as David began to lag behind. The Prince Rupert was rafted on the outside of two coal barges on the Thames. It was a fine Hudson’s Bay ship, and its bright gunnels and new rigging seemed a good omen to David.

“There should be two boys!” Captain Tunstall insisted from the quarterdeck as the crewman and David climbed the shipside ladder.

“Bloody hell!” the crewman hissed. In panic he turned to David, demanding an answer. “Where’d the little bastard go!”

“Don’t know sir, he’s been gone six months,” David answered carefully.

“Damn, damn, damn!” the captain growled. “Back to the school and see if you can’t find where the mutinous beggar went. And you, my young fellow!” he ordered, “follow the mate to your quarters below.”

David followed obediently, hoping the crewman might somehow find Sam. The headmaster would never tolerate a runaway and even less a deserting apprentice, David reasoned. Maybe the headmaster knew of Sam’s whereabouts all along.

Captain Tunstall ordered that David be kept in his quarters until the Prince Rupert was put to sea. The second mate led him to the lower deck.

“Not a proper place to sling a hammock,” the seaman confessed. “No portals or vents, but ‘tis dry and warm enough. Mind don’t soil the sailcloth with your shoes or the master sailmaker ‘ll stitch ye to the top gallants,” he said, latching the door as he left. David sat silently and listened to a chorus of rumbles and shouts while the last of the Prince Rupert’s provisions were stowed away. Eventually he struggled into a hammock and half-heartedly ate some of the cook’s hard biscuit. He saved the remainder in his coat pocket, but there was faint hope of sharing it with Sam. The scent of Stockholm tar and new sail-canvas filled his nostrils as he drifted into sleep inhaling the ship’s stale air.

Next morning he woke to the clanging of the ship’s bell and the sway of his hammock. He was still alone, and the Prince Rupert was rolling her way to open water. “Show a leg! Out and down!” a great and terrifying voice called. “Up all hammocks!” the first mate ordered, and David rushed to his feet.

“Seven bells.’Tis morning watch in half an hour, lad. Quick. Come to the table,” summoned a gentler voice, as the ship’s cook peeked around the bulkhead and handed David a bowl of thick porridge. “Take a place at that last table there,” he said, motioning to a crowd of men already huddled over their gruel at the mess tables. David and the men ate in silence, and no heads lifted to acknowledge the newcomer.

“Third watch on deck!” the first mate’s command boomed down the main hatch. David raced to finish his breakfast as the crew scurried to place their bowls in the cook’s washtub. He joined the rush up the main hatch ladder. On deck, each seaman hustled to his station while David remained awkwardly wondering where to go.

“To the holystones!” ordered the captain. A seaman jumped smartly into action. David watched him take a bucket of sea water and a pumice stone and begin to scrub the forecastle decks along with several other men already on their knees. He followed the men’s hands, scrubbing in small circles, grinding the wooden deck into milky grey puddles until the sweeping of their hands melded with the dizzying roll of the ship. Before the Prince Rupert entered the Channel swell, his stomach was knotting in nauseous pulses. He fought the sensation until involuntary convulsions finally sent him for the rails, where he spilled his porridge into the English 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 far to Churchill by your reckoning?” asked the captain.

“Two days sir, give or take.”

“So it is, so it is,” nodded the captain. “Two days with this southeast wind in our favour.” The captain paused, giving David ample time to speak, then turned his gaze seaward. “I’ve spent many years at sea and have seen many a man and boy pass over my decks,” said the captain, as though thoughtfully addressing the waves. “Most were good men, all and all. Oh, they had their frailties, mind you, some for gin, some for worse, others just lazy. And some, some was lower in nature than hag-fish – mean and hateful. And I can say now that the measure of these men was not known ‘til seen in adversity. The sea throws up her hardships sure enough. And some can weather a storm, float’n easy like petrels fly’n in a gale. Others, loud and brassy in the calm, why they can crawl into themselves and shrink from the wind and fury like a snail hiding in its shell. Aye, and there’s no telling. I’ve seen some starts like snails and become stout hands and others, veterans of the bloodiest battles on land or sea, take to trembling uncontrolled at just the sound of a hatch slammed shut.”

“It’s not bloodlines. Nobleman or foundling makes no difference. God knows our very own King is bound for Bedlam. They say Mad George is at present strapped to a gurney and wailing at the moon. If he were on this ship I’d be putting him in leg irons for his own safekeeping. Half the Royal Family is mad. Sheltered too long, I think, from real hardship and lost the ability to cope. But it’s not hardships either that makes the man, David. Why if that were so, you are all the man you ever needs be now. What worse can befall a boy than to lose all his kin, hav’n everything safe and familiar stolen from him when he needs it most? Now you stand here hale as any, yet that other lad, same age, same Grey Coat boy, same orphan, he ran.”

“No, I’m think’n it’s like each man’s heart is a bucket with a slow leak. The heart can hold only so much trouble and misery. Given time, disappointments will gradually drain away. But too much and it fills a heart to flood’n over and not the bravest man can stand it. He brims over with anger, or hate, or shuts himself off, or shrinks away, each in his own way. But by God, Master Thompson, I can see you’ve already grown a barrel of a heart, lad. Stay open to it, keep it big, and you’ll make this New World yours, all right. Aye, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ll be the best damned apprentice the company’s ever put ashore.”

On September 2, 1784, Prince Rupert slipped her way into the wide mouth of the Churchill River. They sailed past the ruins of Prince of Wales Fort where charred granite walls and rusting guns stood as mute guards on the low-laying north bank. The fort, destroyed in the war with France, was never rebuilt. Captain Tunstall steered his ship on the rising tide, eight kilometres farther upriver to the new post at Churchill Factory. His destination reached, he ordered the factory’s provisions offloaded. This done, he commanded, “Make ready for loading,” and the crew began to take on the forty-kilogram bales of pressed beaver, muskrat, and marten pelts, which were stacked on the dock ready for London’s fur market.

The captain gave David a friendly nod as the apprentice disembarked to the longboat. Ashore, David followed the well-worn footpath that led to the factory. Part way up, he turned and stared back at the ship. He put his hands into his coat pocket and discovered the hard biscuits and the rock-hard piece of salt pork given to him by Grey Coat’s cook five months earlier. He tossed them into the marsh grass by the trail. Then, as hungry gulls descended noisily on the offering, he walked up the path to the factory.

No friend of Thompson. Samuel Hearne, the embittered Hudson’s Bay Company chief factor at Churchill.

Guns for fur. Firearms and alcohol would forever change the way of life of the Aboriginal Peoples.