Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

my men out, as I may say.’

‘Had the squeezed-out men none then?’

‘None, sir. As men died, their hammocks were used by other men,

who wanted hammocks; but many men had none at all.’

‘Then you don’t agree with the evidence on that point?’

‘Certainly not, sir. A man can’t, when he knows to the contrary.’

‘Did any of the men sell their bedding for drink?’

‘There is some mistake on that point too, sir. Men were under the

impression – I knew it for a fact at the time – that it was not

allowed to take blankets or bedding on board, and so men who had

things of that sort came to sell them purposely.’

‘Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink?’

‘They did, sir.’ (I believe there never was a more truthful

witness than the sergeant. He had no inclination to make out a

case.)

‘Many?’

‘Some, sir’ (considering the question). ‘Soldier-like. They had

been long marching in the rainy season, by bad roads – no roads at

all, in short – and when they got to Calcutta, men turned to and

drank, before taking a last look at it. Soldier-like.’

‘Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who sold clothes for

drink at that time?’

The sergeant’s wan eye, happily just beginning to rekindle with

health, travelled round the place and came back to me. ‘Certainly,

sir.’

‘The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must have been

severe?’

Page 52

Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

‘It was very severe, sir.’

‘Yet what with the rest and the sea air, I should have thought that

the men (even the men who got drunk) would have soon begun to

recover on board ship?’

‘So they might; but the bad food told upon them, and when we got

into a cold latitude, it began to tell more, and the men dropped.’

‘The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am told,

sergeant?’

‘Have you seen the food, sir?’

‘Some of it.’

‘Have you seen the state of their mouths, sir?’

If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, had spoken

the amount of this volume, he could not have settled that question

better. I believe the sick could as soon have eaten the ship, as

the ship’s provisions.

I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss, when I had

left the sergeant with good wishes, of asking Pangloss whether he

had ever heard of biscuit getting drunk and bartering its

nutritious qualities for putrefaction and vermin; of peas becoming

hardened in liquor; of hammocks drinking themselves off the face of

the earth; of lime-juice, vegetables, vinegar, cooking

accommodation, water supply, and beer, all taking to drinking

together and going to ruin? ‘If not (I asked him), what did he say

in defence of the officers condemned by the Coroner’s jury, who, by

signing the General Inspection report relative to the ship Great

Tasmania, chartered for these troops, had deliberately asserted all

that bad and poisonous dunghill refuse, to be good and wholesome

food?’ My official friend replied that it was a remarkable fact,

that whereas some officers were only positively good, and other

officers only comparatively better, those particular officers were

superlatively the very best of all possible officers.

My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my record of this journey.

The spectacle of the soldiers in the hospital-beds of that

Liverpool workhouse (a very good workhouse, indeed, be it

understood), was so shocking and so shameful, that as an Englishman

I blush to remember it. It would have been simply unbearable at

the time, but for the consideration and pity with which they were

soothed in their sufferings.

No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is worthy of the

name when set against the guilt of this transaction. But, if the

memory of it die out unavenged, and if it do not result in the

inexorable dismissal and disgrace of those who are responsible for

it, their escape will be infamous to the Government (no matter of

what party) that so neglects its duty, and infamous to the nation

that tamely suffers such intolerable wrong to be done in its name.

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