January of 1787

until

January of 1788

At dawn the tranfportees were culled, a total of 60 men in their habitual groups of six, leaving another 73 convicts looking vastly relieved at being passed over. Who, how or why the ten groups chosen to go from the Ceres orlop had been selected no one knew, save that Mr. Hanks and Mr. Sykes had a list and worked from it. The ages of those going varied from fifteen to sixty; most of them (as all the old hands knew) were unskilled, and some of them were sick. Mr. Hanks and Mr. Sykes ignored such considerations; they had their list and that, it seemed, was that.

William Stanley from Seend and the epileptic Mikey Dennison were hopping from foot to foot in glee because they were not on the list. Life on the Ceres orlop was comfortable, there would soon be fresh fleeces.

“Bastards!” Bill Whiting hissed. “Look at them gloat!”

The door opened; four new convicts were thrust inside. Will Connelly and Neddy Perrott squawked simultaneously.

“Crowder, Davis, Martin and Morris from Bristol,” explained Connelly. “They must have been sent from Bristol just for this.”

Bill Whiting gave Richard a broad wink. “Mr. Hanks! Oh, Mr. Hanks!” he called.

“What?” asked Mr. Herbert Hanks, who had been liberally greased in the palm by Mr. James Thistlethwaite and had promised to do his utmost to favor Richard’s and Ike’s groups if they were among those to go. That he was inclined to honor his promise lay in the fact that Mr. Thistlethwaite had whispered of additional largesse after they had gone if his spies informed him that what could be done had indeed been done. “Speak up, cully!”

“Sir, those four men are from Bristol. Are they going?”

“They are,” said Mr. Hanks warily.

The old, merry Whiting looked sideways at Richard, then the round face assumed an expression of diffident humility for Mr. Hanks. “Sir, they are but four. The thing is, we do so hate being parted from Stanley and Dennison, Mr. Hanks, sir. I wondered. . . ?”

Mr. Hanks consulted his list. “I see that the two who were to go with them died yesterday. They is four too many or two too few, whichever way youse looks at it. Stanley and Dennison will round it off real nice.”

“Got you!” said Whiting beneath his breath.

“Thankee, you bugger!” said Ike through his teeth. “I was looking forward to life without that pair.”

Neddy Perrott giggled. “Believe me, Ike, two craftier shits than Crowder and Davis do not exist. William Stanley from Seend will meet his match and more.”

“Besides, Ike,” said Whiting, smiling angelically, “we will need a couple of workers to mop the deck and do the washing.”

The convicts to go were fitted with locked waist bands and locked manacles, but no extensions to their ankles; instead, a long chain was passed from one waist to the next and fused each six men together. Weeping and wailing because they had not sufficient time to gather all the things they needed, Stanley and Dennison were hitched to the four newcomers from Bristol.

“That makes sixty-six of us in eleven groups,” said Richard.

Ike grimaced. “And at least that many from London.”

But that, as they found out later, was not the case. Only six groups of six were chosen from upstairs, and by no means confined to the true flash coves of an Old Bailey conviction and the London Newgate; most were from around London and many of those from Kent of the Thames, particularly Deptford. Why, no one knew, even Mr. Hanks, who simply followed his list. The whole expedition was a mystery to all who had dealings with it, whether a part of it or whether remaining behind.

His box and two canvas sacks by his side, Richard told the orlop transportees off: one gang from Yorkshire and Durham, one from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, one from Hampshire, three from Berkshire, Wiltshire, Sussex and Oxfordshire, and three from the West Country. With an occasional oddment. But Richard’s puzzle-loving mind had long ago made certain deductions: some parts of England produced convicts galore, while others like Cumberland and a large tract of counties around Leicestershire produced none at all. Why was that? Too bucolic? Too sparsely populated? No, Richard did not think so. It depended upon the judges.

*    *    *

Two big lighters lay alongside. The three West Country groups and the two groups from around Yorkshire were loaded into the first—a tight fit—and the six remaining groups were squeezed perilously into the second boat. At about ten o’clock on that fine, cold morning the oarsmen stroked off downriver toward the great bend in the half-mile-wide Thames just to the east of Woolwich. Traffic was light, but the news had gotten around; the denizens of bum boats, dredges and other small craft waved, whistled shrilly and cheered, while the men on the dangerously overloaded second boat prayed no one sailed past close enough to create a wake ripple.

Around the curve lay Gallion’s Reach, an anchorage for big ships occupied on that day by two vessels only, one about two-thirds the size of the other. Richard’s heart sank. The larger vessel had not changed a scrap—a ship-rigged barque standing about fourteen feet from gunwales to water, which meant she had no cargo aboard—no poop and no forecastle, just a quarterdeck and a galley aft of the foremast. Stripped for speed and action.

His eyes met those belonging to Connelly and Perrott.

“Alexander,” said Neddy Perrott hollowly.

Richard’s mouth was a thin line. “Aye, that’s her.”

“Ye know her?” asked Ike.

“That we do,” said Connelly grimly. “A slaver out of Bristol, late a privateer. Famous for dying crews and dying cargoes.”

Ike swallowed. “And the other?”

“I do not know her, so she ain’t from Bristol,” said Richard. “She will have a bronze plate screwed to her hull at the stern, so we ought to be able to see it. We are going to Alexander.”

The nameplate said she was Lady Penrhyn.

“Out of Liverpool and built special for slaving,” said Aaron Davis, one of the newcomers from Bristol. “Brand new, by the look of her. What a maiden voyage! Lord Penrhyn must be desperate.”

“No sign of anyone going aboard her,” said Bill Whiting.

“She will fill up, never fear,” said Richard.

They had to get themselves and their gear up a rope ladder to an opening in the gunwale amidships, a twelve-foot climb. Those ahead of his group were not encumbered by boxes, but even when their chains became entangled in the rungs and supports no one appeared in the gap above to help.

Luckily the chain connecting them ran free and distance between each of them could be expanded or contracted. “Bunch up and give me all the chain,” said Richard when their turn came. He tossed both his sacks up, used his manacles to cradle his box, and scaled those few feet in a hurry to make sure no one already up had the presence of mind to pinch one of his sacks. Once aboard, he gathered in his stuff and took the boxes his fellows handed up to him.