‘Then I am perfectly certain that the Commodore would like to see him.’
‘He could hardly ask better. Whewell was born in Jamaica, the son of a ship-owner: he first went to sea in one of his father’s merchantmen, carrying goods and some slaves, and then Dick Harrison took him into the Euterpe, on the quarterdeck. During the peace he served in one of the Thomas’s regular slavers as a mate, but he sickened of it and was glad to get back into the service, into John West’s Euryalus, and then with me.’
‘I did not know that Captain Thomas owned slavers.’
‘It is a family concern; but he is extremely sensitive about it since the law abolished the trade – don’t choose to have it known.’
Whewell was aboard within ten minutes in spite of having had to shave and change into his best uniform. He was a short, straight, round-headed man of about thirty-five, far from handsome: the smallpox had marked his face terribly, and where it was not pitted by the disease an exploding twelvepounder cartridge-case had covered it with a dense sprinkling of black dots; furthermore his teeth were very bad, gapped and discoloured. Yet this positive ugliness did not account for his present position in the Navy – perhaps the most uncomfortable of them all – since as Jack knew very well midshipmen worse-looking by far had been given a commission on passing for lieutenant at Somerset House. No: the trouble was the yellow tinge in what complexion Whewell could be said to possess – the evident legacy of an African great-grandmother.
‘Sit down, Mr Whewell,’ said Jack, rising as he came into the great cabin. ‘You are no doubt aware that our squadron is intended to put down the slave-trade, or at least to discourage it as much as possible. I am told that you have a considerable knowledge of the subject: pray give me a brief account of your experience. And Dr Maturin here would also like to know something of the matter: not the nautical side or the particular winds in the Bight of Benin, you understand, but the more general aspects.’
‘Well, sir,’ said Whewell, looking Jack straight in the face while he ordered his thoughts, ‘I was born in Kingston, where my father owned some merchantmen, and when I was a boy I used often to go along in one or another of them, trading in the islands, up to the States or across to Africa, to Cape Palmas and right along into the Gulf, for palm-oil, gold if we could get it, Guinea pepper and elephants’ teeth; and some negroes if they were offering, but not many, since we were not regular slavers, fitted up to deal with them by wholesale. So I came to know those waters, particularly in the Gulf, tolerably well.
Then after some while my father told his old acquaintance Captain Harrison that I was wild to go aboard a man-of-war, and he very kindly took meon to his quarterdeck in Euterpe, lying in Kingston at the time. I served in her for three years and then followed my captain into the Topaz, where he rated me master’s mate. That was just before the peace, when the ship was paid off at Chatham. I made my way back to Jamaica and took what I could find – my father had left off business by then – mostly small merchantmen to Guinea and south right down to Cabinda or over to Brazil. A few negroes, as before; but although I was thoroughly used to slavers and their ways, particularly the big Liverpool ships, I never sailed in one until I went aboard the Elkins in Montego Bay; and then, although the owners had made out she carried mixed cargoes, I saw she was a high flyer in that line the moment I set foot on deck.’
‘How could you tell that, sir?’ asked Stephen.
‘Why, sir, her galley overflowed in every direction: ordinarily a ship has coppers enough to cook for the crew – in this’ case say thirty hands – but here they were calculated for keeping four or five hundred slaves alive for the four or five thousand miles of the middle passage: say a couple of months. And her water was in proportion. Then again she had a slavedeck, which was perfect proof.’
‘I do not think I know the term.’
‘Well, it is not a deck at all, in the sense of planking, but rather a set of gratings covering the whole space set aside for the slaves and letting air into it; and about two or two and a half feet under these gratings they sit, or squat, usually in rows running athwartships, the men forward, chained in pairs, and the women aft.’
‘Even in two and a half feet they could barely sit upright, let alone stand.’
‘No, sir. And it is often less.’
‘How many might there be, at all?’
‘Broadly speaking, as many as they can cram in. The usual reckoning is three for every ton the ship gauges, so the Elkins, that I was in, could stow five hundred, she being a hundred and seventy ton; and that may answer for a quick passage. But there are some that force them in so tight that if one man moves all must move; and then unless there are leading winds most of the way, the result is terrible.’
‘When are they let out?’
‘Never at all when they are within swimming distance of the land; at sea, by groups in the daytime.’
‘What of cleanliness by night?’
‘There is none, sir; none whatsoever. Some ships turn a hose on the filth and man the pumps in the forenoon watch, and some make the negroes clean up and then wash on deck
– they are all stark naked – with vinegar in the water; but even so a slaver stinks a mile and more to leeward.’
‘Surely,’ said Stephen, ‘with such filth, such crowding in such foul air and this heat, surely disease must ensue?’
‘Yes, sir, it does. Even if the blacks have not suffered very much when they are captured and then marched down to the coast and kept in the barracoon, and even if they don’t have to sit waiting cooped up on the slave-deck for a week or so until the cargo is completed, the flux very often starts the third or fourth day, about the time the seasickness stops, and then they generally start dying: sometimes, it seems, of mere misery.
Even in a reasonably careful ship where they whipped the slaves that would not eat and made them run about the deck for the air and exercise, I have known twenty a day go over the side, a week out from Whydah. It is not reckoned extraordinary if a third of the cargo is lost.’
‘Do no intelligent masters calculate that a more humane policy might be more profitable? After all, a stout negro fetches from forty to sixty pounds at the auction block.’
‘There are a few, sir: men that pride themselves on presenting prime stock, as they put it. Some even have fattening farms, with medical care. But most find it don’t answer.
The profits, even with a third loss, are so great now the trade is illegal, that they think it best to cram full every time, whatever the risk; and there is always the chance of a fair wind out of the Bight and a quick and healthy run.’
‘What kind of vessels are they are present?’ asked Jack.
‘Well, sir, after the passing of the act abolishing the trade and the coming of the preventive squadron, most of the ships gave up. There are a few fast-sailing brigs on the Bahia or Rio voyage from the Bight – I say nothing about the old-fashioned Portuguese south of the line, because they are protected – but most of the slavers now are schooners, faster on a wind and more weatherly, from quite small craft up to the new threehundred-ton Baltimore clippers, sailing under Spanish colours, often false, with a more or less American crew and a master that says he is a Spaniard, the Spaniards not being subject to our law. But now, since the preventive squadron was withdrawn, some of the old hands have come back, patching up their old ships, more or less, and making the Havana run.
They usually know the coast very well, and the chiefs, and sometimes they run in where a stranger would not dare to go. Yet the larger craft have to load through the surf by canoes
in many places. It is all inshore work on a very low coast all the way down to the Bight of Biafra, mangrove swamps and mud for hundreds of miles and mosquitoes so thick you can hardly breathe, particularly in the rainy season:
though every now and then there are inlets, little gaps in the forest if you know where to look, and that is where the smaller schooners go, sometimes taking a full cargo aboard in a day.’