Halfhyde Outward Bound

on deck of Captain McRafferty, but knew beyond a doubt that he had started off by making a dangerous enemy. In an ominously quiet voice, Bullock ordered him for’ard. He obeyed. He went through the door beneath the break of the fo’c’sle into the space that was home to the twenty or so deckhands, a filthy compartment enveloped in a filthy smelly fug, its sides surrounded by tiered bunks which Halfhyde could only make out when his eyes had accustomed themselves to the gloom. The stench was appalling, a mixture of bilgewater and damp, of foetid human breath and sweat, of dirty clothing and bodies. Many of the hands lay on the bunks or on the deck, men recently returned from the shore, as drunk as lords and not yet fit to stir. Vomit lay around. A moment later the light filtering in from the door lessened and, turning, Halfhyde saw the threatening bulk of the First Mate. Bullock’s voice cut like a knife through the murk of the fo’c’sle messroom, shouting the hands on deck and never mind the alcohol-drugged brains and limbs. As he left, he made room for the ship’s bosun, who started dragging the men out and dumping them on the deck, where the hoses were turned on them.

BY SAILING time it was a thoroughly wet day, with the Mersey rain teeming down in earnest; and the decks were still filthy, not yet cleared of shoreside grease and muck, the patina of Liverpool Town. Liverpool was a sailor’s town; none quite like it anywhere else on God’s earth. Solid and prosperous like the good old Queen herself, the buildings tall and imposing as they loomed over the crowded shipping in the port, worn with the soot and damp of Merseyside. And the smell: a smell made up of a magic mixture of mist and soot and tar laced with the fragrance of spices from the Orient, laced again with the smoke from the steamers so abominated by Captain McRafferty. But those steamers brought trade to the Mersey’s acres of docks, its thirty-six miles of quays; the total tonnage, sail and steam, owned in Liverpool exceeded, as Halfhyde had learned, the tonnage of all the German Empire and amounted to three times the tonnage owned by all the United States of America. Halfhyde was glad enough to be a part of this challenging commerce, one of the cogs that would keep the wheels of Empire grinding on as much as had been the case when serving in Her Majesty’s Fleet. Britain depended for her very survival on her seaborne trade, and thus upon her ships and the shellbacks who drove them through the storms of wind and water. These were the sinews of her being, of her current expansion into the greatest Empire the world had ever known. From Liverpool and other British ports her armies overseas in India and elsewhere were kept supplied and in good heart to fight the battles of the Queen-Empress who, from Windsor Castle, ruled a quarter of the world’s inhabitants; the ships of England were the lifeline that kept an Empire and a way of life in being.

As sailing time approached, more drunken seamen drifted back aboard to be set to work immediately by the First Mate. Bullock sent his powerful voice for’ard from the poop to travel angrily along the wet deck and among the bleary-eyed seamen struggling through the haze of liquor to identify the myriad ropes, the braces and downhauls, the sheets and tacks, leechlines and buntlines. One man, the last aboard, brought his stomach up in vomit on the deck and was seen by Bullock.

Bullock roard, “O’Connor!”

The bosun turned. “Aye, sir?”

“See to that man, and quickly.”

“Aye, sir,” the bosun said again and moved for’ard. He laid hold of the offender and upended him, pushing the screaming face into the pool of vomit, rubbing it hard up and down the deck planking. Blood mingled with the vomit. The man started a dry retching; when he was allowed to stagger messily to his feet there was murder in his eyes, but the bosun gave him no chance before landing a heavy blow that put him down like a log. Then O’Connor swung round on Halfhyde, breathing heavily.

“Turn to, damn your eyes, and look busy,” he ordered. “There’s no skulking aboard a windjammer, not ever. Been to sea before, have you?”

“Yes,” Halfhyde said.

“Stand by to take the tug’s line, then.”

Halfhyde looked away to starboard. From across the far side of the basin, a steam tug was to be seen approaching and as Halfhyde climbed to the fo’c’sle deck the tug used her steam whistle to give a monotonous blast of warning, a melancholy sound beneath the lowering, wet skies. Halfhyde reflected that this was to be a very different departure from that of a battleship or first-class cruiser leaving the south railway jetty in Portsmouth dockyard, with the guard and band of the Royal Marine Light Infantry paraded with its buglers to salute the Commander-in-Chief on proceeding outwards for a foreign commission.

CAPTAIN MCRAFFERTY climbed the ladder running up from outside the saloon through the hatch to the poop. Once again he was wearing his tall hat, but removed it as he went to the ship’s side. Lifting it high, he cast it into the scummy water of the basin, then, dusting his hands together, turned away. Halfhyde had seen this performance from the fo’c’sle head; and made an enquiry of one of the apprentices, a youth who had served two previous voyages under Captain McRafferty.

“Same each voyage,” the apprentice said, grinning. “Buys a new one on each arrival home, chucks it into the basin on each departure.”

“For what reason?”

“He says it clears the mind of thoughts of the shore and is an excellent mental preparation for the voyage ahead.”

Halfhyde gave a shrug: ships’ captains, be they Navy or Merchant Service, were often enough an enigma. He looked again towards the poop. Behind Captain McRafferty an officer of