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?’
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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.