Day 15. A voyage to Barbados

For  Sarah Crichlow Gall 1816 was a terrible year. Her two young sons left home and were going to Barbados where there had just been a slave rebellion. The auguries  for the year were not good - this was the year without Summer which followed the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies and the crops in North America and Europe failed. It must have been a great adventure for the boys but for the mothers a great worry. This is how I imagine the beginning of the voyage.

_____________________________________________________________                            

The two mothers, Sarah Gall and her sister-in-law Mary Benjamin came  down to the harbour side to see off their sons. They heeded the advice of Captain Benjamin not to go with them on board. The women therefore bid their farewells as the boys got into the short rowing boat, not knowing whether they would ever see them again. The three boys didn’t want to be seen being hugged by their mothers-they were far too old.

The boys would have seen the schooners and other ships coming in and out of the harbour and they could have kept an eye on the lists of ships as they arrived in Demerara, especially the ones which were carrying cargoes for their father’s shop. They would have recognised the Falcon which they had seen many times before. It was however their younger cousin who knew that she was a brigantine, square rigged on the foremast and fore-and-aft rigged on the main mast unlike the more numerous schooners that had no square rigged sails. When the Benjamin family had left their upriver plantation to visit the Galls in town, the boys were able to get together to watch the loading of the ships anchored off shore. The Gall brothers were interested in the barges full of long timbers of tropical wood. The lighters used for loading the barrels of sugar and rum. The elder Benjamin examined the different construction of the ships. His younger brother, the future poet, had dreamily admired the beauty of their lines and the different colours of the sail cloth. 

As the rowing boat approached the side of the Falcon they were hit by the smell; the dank clingy smell of the seaweed, swirling below the waterline. And the smell of human sweat and filth that hung around the deck and seemed to emanate from the bilges.

The captain’s mate checked their tickets – the licences to leave the colony- and took possession of them so that they could be returned to the harbour master before the ship set sail. There was a hefty fine for the captain and the ship’s owners for transporting any white man or boy without a licence. The Falcon, a trading ship, was not fitted out for many passengers and the sailors were harsh and unruly old tars. The deck became a flurry of activity as the ropes became taut and screeched through the blocks to raise the sails; there was no-one in sight to bid the boys bon voyage. Their younger cousin was in his element as he described to his audience all the noises and activities that were taking place before them. He appeared to have an intuitive understanding of the purpose of each rope; and the dangers of each rope when the ship was making way.

The anchor was pulled out of the muddy river waters and a cloud of even muddier water followed the anchor up from the depths, accompanied by a smell that made the boys want to wretch. The anchor landed on the deck and the mud oozed away from it. The three boys were commandeered into hurling wooden buckets over the side, hauling them up and then swishing the mud from the deck with the help of the black cabin boy and his broom. The ship sailed passed the sandbar at the mouth of the River Demerara which was only passable at high tide.

In the first afternoon of the voyage the brothers were in their uncle’s cabin reading the prayer books which their mother had given them for their confirmation the previous week. Their lips moved with the words as they read a familiar prayer for those at peril on the seas; this activity took their minds off the movement of the ship as the wind caught the sails and the deck was angled at a frighteningly steep slope before easing back. They did not look up as their uncle came in as this would have meant looking at the precarious position they were in.

“Why don’t you join my William? He’s having the time of his life. You don’t want to have your noses stuck in those books the entire voyage. There will be plenty of time for that when you are in Barbados”. 

William would not be moved but Henry Beckles followed his uncle out of the cabin and busied himself with some of the lighter tasks of tidying up the ropes from the deck and making them fast on cleats.

That night the wind whipped up the sea. The wind was against the tide and these resulted in short, steep seas which made coastal navigation difficult because of the reduced visibility. The boys had been used to the heavy rain at this time of the year but the effect at sea was quite different to what they had been used to on land. The mist seemed to rise right out of the sea.

Family prayers