The Merlin

By Ron Atlee

The Merlin is the tale of Nathan Cross, raised in the hard case life of Londons canals and rivers in the late 18th Century who has risen to the rank of gunner in Nelsons Navy through a combination of ability with a dash of thieving and smuggling on the side. Accidentally viewed as something of a hero, he knows better and avoids getting into anybodies line of ? re if possible.

From his early involvement in the Spithead mutiny he has become a member of the outlawed reform societies in England and has a sneaking sympathy with the politics of his enemy, the French.

His life is cast into turmoil by the slightly demented Miss Sarah Norton, whose father, Inspector of Customs for the colonies, is none to keen on his wayward daughter associating with a common seaman, and Nathan is not to sure it is a good idea either, but our Sarah has plans for him and he doesnt stand a chance.

We also meet the Squire a chubby little lieutenant with polite killer instincts, Bosn Sweet, fat, merry and ruthless, Danny Mendoza, bare knuckle prize ?ghter, and Simon Gragani, failed rabbi on the run from Jews, Christians and Atheist alike of half a continent.

With sarcastic cockney humor, Nathan views the a?airs and people around him with a cynicism that includes his own activities in the rigid social structure at the turn of the 18th century and he tells of the false adulation of the hero and learns the terrible price of success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450294805

Ron Atlee

Ron Atlee was born in London, England and served with the Middlesex Regiment in Austria, Cyprus and Egypt. He graduated with a degree from the Institute of Design, Chicago and as a partner in the Mirandi Studios created clothing for the entertainment industry, one of which is now part of the permanent exhibit in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London He has held the position of Director of Exhibits at the Buffalo Museum of Science and participated in the construction of the trimaran MOXIE which took first place in the 1980 Single Handed Trans-Atlantic race. After a time as lead draftsman for the cryogenic division of Union Carbide Corporation, he is now semi-retired to Whidbey Island where he occasionally constructs sets for the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts. The Merlin is his first Novel

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Stepney Morning

March 2, 1805

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Old Tad’s rooster woke me up as usual, strutting an’ crowing like the bad old cock he was, but I was in no hurry to get my head out from under the warmth of the soft quilted cover that Gran had made last year.

Last year…. Her sitting ‘round the stove, peerin’ an’ mumblin’ at the intricate stitchery that formed under her hand, old and arthrickety as they was.

And Me ?………….Yours truly, Nathan Cross, was frigating around under Blackwood, off the Port of Brest, tacking up and down the Bay Of Biscay like some doomed soul condemned to purgatory. Two bloody years of that lark, on the same piece of water, with rotten grub and worse weather was more than enough. Polishing the Cape we called it, and we put a shine on Ushant that’ll last a century.

Not that I lacked for company though. There was close to ten thousand English doing the same quadrille, dipping and curtseying to our partners in thirty knots of wind and a lee shore, inviting the French to come out and join the Party, but they stayed in their berths like sensible lads. I reckon as how they didn’t fancy their music, and for one, I don’t hardly blame ‘em. A broadside from a three-decker ain’t my idea of accompaniment to trip the light fantastic neither.

Well then, a couple of years of that carrying on was enough to last me a lifetime, and when the sticks fell out of the Argyl we all staggered off home, a good bit older, a lot tougher, and none the wiser. The timber butchers at the Falmouth Yard started to peel the hide of the old barky and they quickly came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth the bother to put it back. Rotten she was, dry rot through and through. Under the planking they found rotten ribs so they pulled a few ribs and found rotten floor timbers, and sure enough, when they pulled the floors, the very keel itself was so far gone I could have pocked a hole in it with me dick. There was a few pieces of decent lumber on board though, and they included my two sea chests which I got ashore right sharp. Actually, getting those chests ashore was a bit dodgy as they was crammed to the lids with assorted goods I’d picked up like over the past few years, most of which would be of interest to any Customs and Exercise Officers that happened to be in the neighbourhood. Navy pay ain’t all a fellow could wish for, and I’d got into the habit of supplementing it here an’ there as circumstances permitted. A bit of silver slipped to the Sentry one night induced a certain lack of concentration on his part, and I was off like a ghost with the chests in a wheelbarrow from the yard which I flogged the following day just to top up the account. If their Lords of the Admiralty ever came up with all my prize money, I’ll buy them a new ‘barra.

With the Argyl down rated to a sheer hulk, I was posted to the Merlin as of 2nd March, 1805 at Blackwall. I was coming up golden. Five days to spare at home with my family Stepney, an’ I hadn’t set foot in England since the Peace of Amiens back in ’02.

So there I was, all cozy under Gran’s quilt in the old trundle bed I’d known as a youngster, enjoying my last days of liberty. Tomorra I’d be back servin’ His Majesty, Old Farmer George, that poor addle-brained bugger we had for a King, and I’d be doing it as the Gunner on some vessel called the Merlin. Depending on the quality of the ship and the officers, the next few years could vary from miserable to tolerable, with a bit of sudden death thrown in to season the puddin’. The Admiralty was always a bit reticent about informing us warrant officers concerning our future, but I’d managed to suss it out a bit in Falmouth. She had been a privateer, taken as prize and was being recomissioned into our lot at the big navy yard at Blackwall, convenient to the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. Now, if our Lords of the Admiralty was running true to form, she was some handy little brig, smart and fast, that was being loaded down with more guns than she could carry, more stores than she could hold, more men than she could berth, and more sail than she could fly. By the time it was all finished, she would be wallowing out to sea like a drunken sow, hard put to catch up with her own wake. I’d seen enough ships treated that shabby over the years that I cease to wonder at it. Young Nat Cross keeps his head down, make sure the drag ropes run easy, and keeps his opinions to hisself.

So I thought on it, that crisp March morning, snug in me bed, with me feet hung over the end. Now I love a good bed, an’ I’ll tell you as to why. A fella has to spend a few years swinging in a hammock to appreciate a bed. See, first off, beds is generally dry, an’ that’s a rare luxury. Hammocks on the other hand are a whole bleedin’ orchestrations of wetness, symphonies of mildew and choruses of clammy twine probing at salt water boils as you toss in proximity to sleep. Then again, beds is warm, hammocks – never. Your regulation hammock is either a web of knotted icicles, or if you ship to the tropics, it is instanter transformed nigh unto flashpoint, ready to go up in smoke any second. Well you can’t blame a hammock for its shortcomings. Hammocks is like us gunners, if you want comfort, you had no business aboard a man-o war in the year five.

I laid meself back and ran me eyes along the oak rafters, seeing the familiar old grain, those narrowing swirls and tight little knots that years ago my young mind had transformed into rivers and horizons, roads and castles on which to play out vast battles and stirring adventures as me and Jack lay wide awake in the high summer days when it was past bedtime but the sun was still ten nicks up an’ going down slow. The battered work bench was piled high with scraps of wood and papers, and the half finished ships model I had worked on. All the paint pots and brushes were lined up neat on the shelves along with the tools, small sharp knives and drill bits, rulers and protractors.

Over in the corner lurked the old figurehead we had salvaged from the flats that still stared at me from the corner gloom, her painted eyes following me about the room with a creepy malevolence, an’ the wattle walls, covered with river charts made at Greenwich for the Admiralty were stained with grubby finger marks and scribbled bearings interspersed with all sorts of rummage and interesting articles picked up on the Lee marshes or the Thames beaches that showed at low tide. The light, what there was of it, came in through the bottle glass panes of the small dormer, the dust flecks doing their merry dance in the pale wintershine. Old Percy Cross had built a small gantry into the dormers ridge beam that jutted out past the roofline, and long ago we had rigged up a piece of inch line with plenty of knots off that gantry. It wasn’t much good for getting in, but a kid could for certain leave in a hurry without the formalities of the front door, especially if urged by a guilty conscience and coming retribution.

The oak rafters rose into the gloom of the ridge beam, glossy with wax a century old, and on that beam was carved the initials CP, big and bold, where Old Percy had signed his mark when he built the place. There was other initials carved all over the rafters, There was HC, done in strong sure chisel strokes, There was MC hacked out with a blunt kitchen knife, an’ DC in a smooth script bordered by a trellis of vines and flowers. That would have been the work of Gran’ma Mag. There must have been thirty assorted initials carved up there, including a nice tidy piece of work, NC&JC for me and Jack.

Close on two hundred years of us, four generations of the Cross family had grown up in this little attic since Great Granddad Cross, him as was known as Percy, moved from the Shire to the Lee, about five miles upstream from where it enters the Thames close by the Isle of Dogs.

Now the way it was told in the family was that over a hundred years back, this here Percy Cross had a nice bit of freehold a couple of miles north of the Limehouse Pool the ownership of which was based on some dodgy papers printed up back when the Republic went down and another Charlie Stewart strolled back in, and there we was, a kingdom again.

So Great Granddad Percy builds hisself a fair sized house, about ten paces a side to give hisself a bit of space on the freehold plot for a barn and a bit of a yard. To get living space out of such a small footprint he went up two and a half stories, countin’ the attic giving the building a tall an’ narrow appearance which some critics of a more discriminating taste might consider a little strange.

To tell the truth, Old Percy had overreached himself in the architectural line, and the building came out looking like a small puny tower perched in the middle of nowhere. Naturally enough, he never had enough silver for materials, and a load of green wood did interesting things to the floors. Later on, they built big lean to sheds on either side, and behold, overnight it was transmogrified into a miniture cathedral.

This was in the time of the second German George, an’ England was picking up spare bits of islands and continents all over the shop, in consequence of which the City had a surge in population that was rapidly approaching starvation level, so Old Percy an’ and a couple of his mates got some brass together to lease a few acres to have a nice little earner going in the vegetable trade. Being close to Limehouse Basin was handy since it was one of the few closed docks on the river. Most everything else was open wharves stuck out in the flow where it was double hard to unload on account of the ten foot tide fall, and surges that came with the ebb and flood. It was a brave man or a fool who would try to run the starlings of London Bridge or trusted to the moorings in mid river on a full moon ebb, but inside Limehouse Basin you had a decent bit of shelter from the inconveniences of nature. Old Percy and his Merrie Men could cart their produce down to the basin and send it up to The City on one of the lighters. Later they branched out, buying cheap from some of the small local farms, topping up thier business with a nice bit of extra.

They had a good trade going, running the produce fives miles up The River, but while they was going to London, London was coming to them.

By the mid1700s there was an explosion of trade on the river and the traffic was wharf to wharf and sheer to sheer. There was no chance of booking a mooring and even the coastal shipping carrying coal from up north couldn’t find a berth to unload, and London froze. In the West End, they was burning fine furniture to stay warm. In the East End, they just stacked the bodies in the streets.

Along with that, The City burst free of it’s traditional boundries like a hungry beast creeping out to the north and east, gobbling up the farms and hamlets of Wapping, Shalwell, Bethnell Green and Shoreditch, driving roads through fields that have never seen nothing but the plough, and burying ancient villages under warehouses, workshops, and cheap housing that wasn’t much better that rabbit hutches.

In time this frenzy of dislocation came to Stepney and the land Old Percy Cross had on lease was worth more to the builders than farming could ever bring in, so the Landlord stiffed him on the lease, leaving Percy skint, except for the house that he had freehold. By this time our house wasn’t siting out in the middle of open land. The old wagon track it was built beside was opened up to a wide road, named after the White Horse Tavern, and the town crept out all along the road ‘till we had neibours on both side all the way east to Whitechapel and west to Limehouse.

Now, Percy had a son Harry, my Granddad. He started out lumpin’ on the Docks, which at that time was run by a couple of villains whose speciality was a thumb on the scale, and a fiddle on the books. It was casual labor on the docks and if you wanted work, you had to come up with a backhander. If you was light, there was always more hungry men willing to take the job. It all ended in a strike, a riot, two men hung and things got a little better.

Grandad didn’t mind a bit of hard work, an’ being a steady reliable sort of cove, eventually became what the called the "Snapper’, sort of a foreman running a gang of rowdies who spent most of the day carrying large heavy objects about, some of which ended up at the intended destination, and some of which got sort of lost in the process of moving from ship to warehouse.

Now about this time, plans were going forward to cut a canal from the Limehouse basin north east to the Lea at a point where it was navigatable, about five miles up river from the estuary marshes, so Granddad thought he would jump in early at that lurk, and bought a barge.

Most people who buy a boat for the first time are sort of dazzled, and in their imagination transpose some clapped out piece of nautical disaster into a gilded pinnace and Granddad ran true to form. It leaked from the bottom up in good weather and from the top down in bad. Just about every piece of ironwork was beyond saving, so he ended up running the docks by day and spent most of his spare time trying to stop this floating woodpile from sinking at the Warf. Eventally he gets into some sort of bother with the dock owners and they toss him out.

Still, Harry’s doing alright. He‘s got the house freehold, he’s got a barge which by this time was no longer in imminent danger of sinking, and in fact was looking pretty sharp with a lick of fresh paint and some of the fancy carpentry Grandad was handy at but he needed a horse which he promptly nicks from the Dock Company.

He was just setting things square after they held onto his back pay. Fact of the matter was, he planned it before he left by fiddlin’ the companies books, that way a paper horse disappeared from the records about the same time the real horse disappeared from the yard.

So he’s into a new lurk, towing on contract up and down the Limehouse Cut, everything from coal to flowers. Freight off the coasters going up, and farm produce coming down, a ‘round trip a day in the winter, two in the summer, hauling sacks and bales on a leaky old barge. It was a hard lay an’ long hours, but it was an earner, an’ that was how my Dad and Uncle Dan spent their youth, working the barge on the Lea an’ lighters on the Thames. Eventually at the end of a couple of long busy season they managed the next shrewd move in building the Mighty Cross Empire, they bought a wagon.

Now they could unload off the barge and deliver it with the wagon right into the city proper. Dad and Dan were grown up by then and when Granddad Passed away in ’75 he left the barge to Dad and the wagon to Dan, thinking they’d both have a start on something of their own.

Trouble was, they only had one horse.

Old Harry Cross let them sort that one out for themselves.

The Horse was Stevie. No show horse was he. He had a head like a shovel, hooves like platters an’ the heart of a hero. He pulled the barge from the Lee to Limehouse, then they’d brush him down, give him a long drink and a bag of oats and he was rattlin’ the wagon off to the markets of Whitechapel and Shoreditch. They was workin’ him hard, knew it, and treated him proper. At the end of each day before supper they dried him off and brushed him till his coat shone like mahogany, washed the city dust out his ears and nostrils and dug the clods out of his hooves. They even had special shoes made for him, cast with a cleated bottom for pulling over soft ground. Uncle Dan did a thorough job on his hooves too, filed the edges smooth so they wouldn’t crack and even rounded off the edges of the nail holes ‘till he had a fit so good you couldn’t get a paper between horn and iron. He got a fancy rig too, did our Stevie. Got a shoulder piece for the towrope that was out of a whole hide, a good half inch thick with shiny brass rings and buckles. The inside where he took the strain was padded like an old ladies chair with horsehair under a covering of red carpet. He was sort of an upholstered horse was Stevie. Mum and Aunt Dosh combed and braided his mane with colored ribbons and hung bells on his harness to give warning when the morning mist hung low on the towpath. He would get a girded up for the days work knowing he was part of the business, an’ he showed willing. Stevie was doing a heroes work pulling the barge two miles up the Limehouse cut and back down to the Pool. They started at first light, in all kinds of weather and were back by midday. Then Stevie got a rest while Dad and Danny lumped the load from the barge into the wagon, and then, with Stevie in his new role between the shafts, off they rattled down the Radcliffe Road to Aldgate.

About this time every two years or so there was a few additions to the Cross tribe in the shape of Jack, Me, Liz and Rupert in that order. Stevie was getting on in years and a full loaded barge was getting too much for him, though he was still good for the Wagon, so my father bought Rupert, who was a big shire horse from up north, and Uncle Dan pretty much took over the retail runs into The City while Dad ran the barge an’ as soon as Me’n Jack were big enough, we were put to work. We started to make deliveries, local from the basin. We even had our own wagon. Well, it was actually a big box mounted on two axles and four wheels, but we could load it up with sacks of grain or bolts of cloth and trundle it off a few miles to some nearby customer. To a pair of spirited teenagers, a cart can be an infinite source of entertainment, and often, coming back with the cart empty, me and Jack would get her going downhill, the iron rims throwing sparks from the cobblestones, the rain whipping at our faces as we rattled between the houses whooping and hollerin’, much to the annoyance of the local residence and earning a frequent clout from Dad. Sometimes we would go with Dan an’ Stevie to unload in the busy streets of Stepney enjoying the bustle and excitement of big city life, dodging ‘round the traffic and stalls, braced hard against the footboards, whip crackin’ in the chill air beneath the solid grey clouds that hung low over the rain shined roofs. The Old Radcliffe Road which had once run open along the waterfront to Wapping was now built up on both sides.To the north was a patchwork collection of shops and houses all built fast and cheap so that some were already leanin’ a bit, helped on by the fact that taxes were paid on the foundation size, in consequence of which the second floor always had as big a overhang as the structures would bear, and frequently a sight more. The temptation to add a balcony to this looming structure was hard to resist so that in places there was almost a roof over the street, and up on the wagon you had to watch your head. It was all a-bustle in daytime and you could buy anything along the Radcliffe, including a mort of things that you shouldn’t. On the south side, fronting the Thames was endless warehouses where the City was taking a bite out of the River, the wharves reaching out into the water like teeth but the back of the warehouse, where they faced the road was built defensive like, sort of wooden castles to repell the enemy. No windows or doors broke those walls, black and shiny with rain soaked tar, and the local villains pined like lost lovers thinking of all the lovely loot just waiting to be redistributed, and spent many a night and many a jar concocting all sorts of barmy ideas to breach the fortress. ‘Screwneck’ one of our more imaginative residents even invented a mechanical saw to do the job. Didn’t work, though. If it had, the south side would have looked like the sack of Carthage. The Radcliffe was dangerous after dark. Still is. Go in there after sundown, and you came out without your money, perhaps without your clothes, and sometimes missing a part of your hide. Some didn’t come out at all.

Then there were the golden times………Summer times……With the barge loaded light, our gang would all go for a ride up the Limehouse Cut, Mickey an’ Russell an’ Jack ‘an Me all sprawled atop bales of oats and spuds as we floated between the tall trees that met overhead like a great green cathedral half a mile long, with wildfowl soaring through the flickering sunlight an’ geese in the choir.

‘Course there was other times, not quite so ducky, when I led Rupert down the towpath in a freezing rain, the towrope dripping with ice an’ me an’ Rupert trudging on numbed by the cold, just one foot in front of the other till it was time for Jack to take his time, an’ fixing a broken wagon wheel in the middle of the street when you are holding up half a mile of traffic with drivers cursing us Bloody stupid kidscalls for a certain degree of careful diplomacy and a thick skin too, especial if you was bone weary from unloading half a ton of mixed veggies for the second time.

And then there was Papa Joe.

Now us cockney folk are wonderfull particular pertaining to our clobber, in fact Londoners are fair dapper any season, and what with the fine wool and linen available in the city, there was a righteous amount of tailoring being done, an’ when the cockney starts dealing in cloth, he’s hand in glove with the sheeny. There’s a long tradition of friendship between the East Enders and Yids. We share the same hard-headed cynicism, tempered with sarcastic humor, and are both wise in the way of giving lip service to survive the endless series of misfortune that the Lords of this land seem to inflict with such casual ease.

Papa Joe was in the tailoring game, but he also sold cloth retail, so when me ‘n Jack was running our hand cart into town, we often had bolts of schmutter to deliver to his shop in Aldgate. Joe Cohan was a stocky old fella with a square face that was both kind and craggy, topped off with cropped grey bristles who lived with his two married daughters, big round ladies, and a gang of grandkids. Before I met Papa Joe, the only schooling I had was the morning lessons at St Katherine’s, just enough to at least be able to read and do simple add and subtract. Papa Joe filled in with geography and history. He liked to tell stories and us kids listened for hours as he told us stories of his peoples history and the Judas I knew didn’t take no pieces of silver. Our Judas was the Macabee who led his people in revolt against the legions of Antioch. In Papa Joe’s stories the old Greeks and Romans came to life as he spun out in poetry and legend the lives of Pericles, Sculla, Marcus Aurellus and other gents of strange times and stranger ways, or he would run his blunt fingers over a piece of cloth and be off with a long dissertation on styles of weaving or where the best sheep were raised high on the plateaus of Anatolia. He even let me do a bit of sewing, under the hem where it didn’t show, but real gift of knowledge came from Simon Dragani.

In truth, Simon was a nasty old cove, having neither time nor inclination to teach. He sort of just threw information at me with scornful disinterest. He stood tall and skinny with big hands and wrists hanging out from elegant cuffs, always in a fresh shirt and polished boots. Simon had studied Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Leiden in the Dutch Provinces along with some notable toffs in that trade, but on account of being a yid, he was forbidden to hold a teaching position in England. How he came to be working for Papa Joe I never got to know, but he used his natural authority to run the ladies who worked to his direction doing the sewing.

Simon laid out the patterns and one day, I must have been twelve or thirteen at the time, and as he chalked up a topcoat I was bothering him with silly questions until he cut me off.

Look He said, and wrote on the cloth in chalk 2, 3, 5, 8,13,21,34.

Fibonocci Extension. Each number is the product of the two previouse. he continued The ratio between them is the Golden Mean. Before I could catch my breath, he had drawn a rectangle with ratio of the golden mean, divided it down into a square and continued on getting smaller squares and rectangles until, with one swift stroke, he joined the corners.

Logarithmic Spiral He hissed, and strode over to a shelf, picked up a book and slammed it down in front of me opened to a drawing of a cut open snail shell…….. By the way, all of this was done, formula and drawings with a draftsmans skill with clean white chalk on charcoal grey broadcloth. He slices the piece of cloth off with one slide of his shears, bundles the book up in it and shoves the parcel into my hands, his wicked green eyes glinting.

Copy it. He said, and walks off………So I did.

I brought back my paper copy a few days later, clutched proudly in a grubby mitt, and he silently took the sheet, and with a scornful flick of his pencil, made half a dozen corrections and circled places that needed attention. Still without saying a word, he took the book on Natural History back to the bookshelves. He paused for a second, then took down another and brought it back to me. It was old , well fingered with broken binding and on frayed cover I read Euclids Elements of Geometry It was the edition printed by John Day with the cut-outs to illustrate the proceedures, which in my case was almost necessary.

Try this. Sais Simon…….So I did…..

And I met Danny Mendoza at Papa Joe’s. He’d come to pick up some shirts he’d ordered. Now you imagine me, a small boy, looking up to the local hero.

Danny Mendoza………..

Danny Mendoza…….Mendoza the Jew he was billed as, an’ he took the world championship from Richard Humphries, forty rounds up to scratch, bare knucks with ten thousand watching, but he was from Whitechapell, an’ he one of us. The day he was invited to take a stroll with The King in the gardens of Buck House, half the East Towns was at the gate to cheer him in and out again, and there he was looking down at me, the black curls framing a rock cut face, scarred and fiercely handsome. He grinned at me and dropped into a low sparring crouch. So I went at him, throwing wild childish blows that he either slid away from, or took on his forearms. Then he would flick out a hand that tweaked my nose or a hard finger prodded my chest……………To this day I can brag that I went one round, bare knucks with Danny Mendoza, the Pride of Whitechapel.

There was learning just oozing out of Papa Joe’s, and I was lucky enough to be sort hanging about and got caught in the general flow of things, and ever since, Papa Joe had been investing my back pay and prize monies whenever the Admiralty saw fit to issue it .

Lying half asleep, the attic brought back the bright memories of youth. Three generations of Cross lads had grown up in that attic, and we all knew how to tell the seasons of the year and the time of day by the light from the dormer which threw a bright square moving in a slow arc across the floor planks. Years later, on a rolling deck with a sextant I came to understand the mechanicks that drove those arcs, except the floor was a lot bigger. My forefathers like me imagined faces in the plaster cracks an’ spent hours carving model ships like there was on the Big River, sleek frigates and the mighty 74’s …….

Breakfast Nathan…….Almost ready My Mother called up the stairs, breaking my half-dreams and jolted me fully awake.

Coming Mum….Be right down.

Here we go then. I muttered to myself in a grim attempt at humor as I rolled out of bed. That day I would leave the comforts of home, and report five mile down river at Blackwall to join the Merlin and to sail out to the big greenies for as long and as far as their Lords of the Admiralty saw fit. It was off on the old merry-go-‘round this morning, and I put off my town clothes, and dressed in a fair semblance of Warrant Officers uniform, the white shirt and civilian coat in dark blue with the gold crested buttons, white canvas trews, all topped of with tarpaulin hat with black silk gunners band.

It was all a little worse for wear after two years on the Argyl, all worn and musty, the coat dye faded in patches and the cloth threadbare on the shoulders was patched and stitched while the shirt had had so many dousing with salt water it was beginning to feel like I was doing penance in a monastery. There were stains there too, faded by endless cleanings,and other stains that I could never scrub clean.

I clattered downstairs and almost knocked over my mother as she turned from the table.

Mornin’ Mum, what’s for brekker then? and I sniffed the air. Smells a bit of allright.

She started to reply, and then stopped to look me up and down, biting her lip a bit as she always does when she gets upset. It was the uniform that did it. I was no longer her laughing son, but some strange creature from another world, an’ it was a world she didn’t like. When I put on that uniform I had put on the character and face of Warrant Officer that went with it

And then there was Jack.

Jack had disappeared into that world and we never heard from him again. He’d got into a bit of bother with a sergeant a few years back an’ knocked him down. Put the boot in too. Jack could dance and Jack could sing, but Jack in a punch up was right nasty. A couple of soldiers dragged him off, and it was a quick trial for assault, a choice between twenty years hard in Australia or enlist. Three years passed and we had never even received a letter to this day.

He never came back.

He was just gone.

And there I was, all chuffed up with myself, with the thought of going back to sea where life seemed more real, there is no past or future, only the immediate now, where excuses and apologies don’t matter and nothing can be talked away. I was thinking of great arcs of canvas splashed gold by the sunset and playfull beasts rolling up out of the depths. I was so full of myself at going; I had no idea of the sadness at my leaving.

I took her by her arms an’ turned her square to me

Mum. I aint reckless and I aint Jack. I am a warrant Officer now. I’ll be alright…….. I’ll be around to see you a grandmother.

She turned away to hide her face and set the platter down on the table where she had done our last meal together up right with sausage rolls, thin and flaky crusted, star apples, beets and fresh baked bread, all topped of with kippers, the lively odor I smelled coming down the stairs so I tucked in proper aware that within a few days it would be salt-horse, hard-tack and burgoo.

So Dan’s gonna be ‘round ‘bout mid afternoon at Papa Joe’s, get you into Blackwall early evening. Said Dad from where he sat over by the stove which was a gleaming black monster covering a whole side of the room, a good twelve feet across with fireboxes at each end and a centre oven you could roast half an ox in. hoofs an’ all.

I nodded with me mouth full, keeping one eye on Gran as she came down to join us. Gran was a rare ‘un so you had to keep an eye on her or she’d have you all aback in no time.

Well my little sailor boy is a tiddlied up for his cruise. Ooo Nathan, aint we smart then, Warrant bleedin’ officer are we now? Long way from that snotty nosed bugger we used to have around here a few years back. Her wicked dark eyes, hidden deep in the wrinkled face peered sharp at me. Handsom devil you are Nathan, and she playfully ruffled my neckerchief.

How’s you boyfriend doing Gran? I asked, innocent as you please.

Me an’ Mister Harris is just friends. She replied with ponderous dignity, all prim and respectable. Suddenly she grinned, more gums than teeth.

Can you imagine me an’ him going at it at our age? Likely I’d get indigestion and he’d put his back out…..What about yourself, Nathan? When you gonna settle on some nice decent lass instead of hoppin under the blankets with those hot toed little tarts you seem to favor?

Well I’m just looking for the right one Gran

Dad chimed in… Well you’re looking in the wrong bleedin’ place mate. That bit you bin see at the ‘Duke of York’ now, she’s well over the hill an’ frayed at the edges. I mean it’s alright coming the randy tar bit but……

Father My Mother interrupted, Our daughter is hearing some talk at this table that is not proper.

She’ll hear a darn sight more if she don’t start getting ‘ome before the watch. He growled at her in mock ferocity. He was good at it was Dad, keeping the chuckles going to bury the tension that lurked about us, the tension writ clear on my mother’s face. She couldn’t take her eyes off me, and I understood the turmoil that was going on in her mind, but it was my father spoke first

You’re mother’s right worried at you goin’ orf agin son. ‘Tell the truf, I’m a bit concerned meself. You got hurt bad last time. I wouldn’t want to see you commin’ ‘ome in like condition agin.

Dad,. I never want to see another of those fleet battles for the rest of my life. For Crissakes, Dad, we fired on the town. We blew up shops an’ churches an’ houses…… There was women and kids buried under the rubble……an’ the Lords poncing around in their silk britches and gold braid……. called it a victory……a soddin’ victory…with the dead piled up waist deep on the deck…….That aint the juice of it. The bleedin joke of it l was that the Czar of Russia died two weeks earlier and the new Czar was partial to our lot, so he changed sides in the war, and naturally the Dutch did the same. If Nelson had obeyed his orders from the Admiral an’ waited a few days we could have walked into Copenhagen without firing a shot. It was all for nothin’…….All that Blood for nothin’. Well they got a few pints out of me on that day, but no more if I can help it…… See here now, I dropped the posting agent a few nicker to get this berth. She’s a small ship, about twenty guns. She’ll never be put in the line of battle. That’s for the big 74’s, it’ll be convoy duty, messages, that sort of run, an’ I got a bit of rank. That’ll help. Honest, I’ll stay safe as houses.

My mother gazed hard at me, to find the reassurance I was trying to give but could not. To tell the truth I could be off in a coffin ship with the Bounty Bastard himself. or some other glory dazzled idiot happily leading us to destruction

Dad changed the subject.

Time to get off to Papa Joe’s he said and we all rose from the table to say Goodbye, and I gave Mum a last kiss. It was a lot easier saying goodbye to Gran and Liz. All Liz could see was her big brother Nat off sailing the wide world and having all sorts of exciting adventures, and I wasn’t about to tell her no different. Gran knew the way of it though, in spite of my careless airs and banter. Brother and Grandson she had lost to this conflict, blood of her blood swallowed by this glutton of war, and not even the bodies returned to bury decent. What’s more, there weren’t hardly a family in London Town, no, nor in the length and breadth of England that hadn’t empty chairs at table and empty beds where widows slept alone. That was the way of it in the year five, and for my proud strut and careless talk, I was just more cannon fodder like the rest in this madman’s game, an’ that’s a fact.

So it’s off to the wars again, my brave little hero, and with me small bag slung over me shoulder and the women gathered in a forlorn knot on the doorstep waving goodbye, me and Dad stepped of to Papa Joe’s to pick up my sea chest. On the way over, I couldn’t help noticing long stretches of street where businesses and houses I’d known since I was a nipper were now rows of rubble or just open spaces where the wrecked buildings had been cleared away.

What’s this about then I asked Dad

You bin gorn awhile, Son. Bin some changes the past few years. The City Corporation is building roads to the docks. Pulling the old manor dahn ‘round our ears they are.

Docks, what docks?

The one they’s abuildin’ ‘cross the Isle of Dogs. Nafan, you know as how it is at the pool. Every bloody mooring tied up for days unloading to the lighters an’ all the rummage dumped on the quays, ‘alf of it getting nicked before you can blink, the whole bleedin’ river tied up from Shadwell to Canning Town waiting for a free mooring, and wait they do, sometimes weeks before they can unload. I tell ya, son, in the summer, when the West Indiamen come in, it get chock a block, no joke. The Corporation won’t allow them up river no farther than Blackwell, close to the Mast House. It’s a right old lash up and trade’s getting choked so they’re diggin’ out a dock on the Isle of Dogs……. Cut a Canal right across it too, big enough to float one of them Indiamen…….. Six fathoms down they dug……. Cuts a couple of miles of the river route…… Had a nasty accident over at the docks last year…… Bulkhead gave way….. Drowned six men….. Irish they was…. Rowdy bunch of sods, but I’ll say this for the Irish, they sure can dig.There’s anuvver dock goin’ up at Wapping……. Rennie’s building it….Anyway, the long an’ short of it is the old Radcliffe Highway can’t carry the traffic so Corporation is building a new one, Grand Commercial Road they call it, runs dead straight from Aldgate to Limehouse. Well wiv all this ‘ere goins on, looks like the old manor gets dusted like you see ‘ere. ‘Whitehorse Lane is gonna get the chop next. I’ve got me notice.

You mean they gonna pull down our House? I asked him

Easy Son He told me. I got plans, and we’ll do fair out of it. Papa Joe did a bit of negotiating’ for me. Better than some of the poor sods who didn’t know no better, and got a right reamin’ from the council shysters

So where you gonna live then?

Dad gave me one of his crafty winks.

Let’s take a little stroll an’ Ill show ya." And we took off towards the Cut through a couple of miles of them ruined streets that was all that remained of the Limehouse waterfront. What had once been a roistering clout of shops and cribs with every kind of trading and some very dodgy lurks was now an endless row of dust and ruble, mounds of bricks with shattered planks and beams poking up like tired old gravestones. There was big changes coming, not just to the East End but all of London, and mayhap to the whole island, and although it promised a better future, a lot of people was gonna get hurt bad in the process, pushed out of the way like, and I wasn’t too chuffed about it. Our manor looked like the frogs had sailed a fleet of 74’s up the Thames and had a go with a couple of broadsides. It was a relief when we turned of the Radcliff into Limehouse Basin where Dad’s old barge was tied up at it’s usual berth, but he walked me right past it to one of the big one up near the Cut, a good fifty footer with with about ten foot of beam and a saucy little cabin aft with The Fair Rosemond painted on the cabin side

There we go, Son He chuckled, proud as Prinny. Home Sweet Home.

It’s ourn?

Too right. I sold the old one to young Dave Skillin. He’s just starting out in the trade.Got a fair nick from the council for the house, and Papa Joe gave me a loan to make up the difference. Crafty old bugger wanted a share, but I wasn’t ‘aving none of it, so it’s a loan.

Papa Joe’s fronting you some credit? I asked. Coming up in the world a bit aint he?…… Well, he’s done right by me, made some nice investments with my brass and now he’s into the shylock game with you."

Not just me. Said Dad "He’s got brass out with a few of the bargies that I know of. Tell ya the truth Nafan; I know for a fact he had shares in the Barnaby to Amterdam an’ back."

Amsterdam, I thought Boney had closed all the Continent to English ships.

What Boney sais and what Boney does is two different things Dad told me. "He aint got the troops or the ships to enforce that idea and Mynheer never did pass up a good bit of business. You know as well as me that half the good coming up the Thames gets off loaded before the Pool and His Majesties Customs. ‘Course it’s a bit dodgy at both ends but a run like that is an earner no doubt about it an’ I reckon as how Papa Joe’s got his piece.