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John Franklin Masters His Craft

       6

       To the Cape of Good Hope

      Sherard Philip Lound, ten-year-old volunteer on the Investigator, wrote home: ‘Sheerness, 2 June 1801. Dear Parents.’ He licked his lips and wrote without any ink spots – probably Master Wright-Codd, the teacher, would read the letter to them.

      ‘For the ship, it will be the longest voyage she ever made. I’m happy to be part of it, and above all as a Volunteer First Class. The captain refuses all thanks, saying that John Franklin had spoken for me. I’d like to be a captain, too, some day. I was in London with John. He’s become even slower since Copenhagen and broods a great deal. At night he dreams of the dead. John is a good man. For example, he bought me a sea chest just like his own. It’s cone-shaped, very deep, and has many compartments. On the bottom it’s ringed with a rubbing-strip. The handles are loops made of hemp. The lid is covered with sailcloth. I’m writing on it.’ He propped the sheet of paper higher, licked his lips, and dipped his pen into the ink. The page was only half filled.

      ‘I got a shaving kit, too, because John said that somewhere in Terra Australis it’ll be time. Also, he showed me around the city. People don’t say hello there because they don’t know me at all. John’s aunt Ann (Chapell) is also on board; she’s the captain’s wife. He’s going to take her along to the other side of the earth. She sometimes asks me if I need anything. I’m eager to know how it all comes out and I’m happy. I’ll stop writing now because there’s lots to do on board.’

      The ship’s captain was none other than Matthew, who had come home at last after he had been given up for lost. John Franklin had just turned fifteen.

      ‘He isn’t all that well,’ even Matthew said, and since he was now John’s uncle he expressly took his side against the others – Lieutenant Fowler, for example.

      A lot of the time John just stood around, not knowing what to do and always where he was in the way. ‘That fellow’s really no great shakes,’ Fowler remarked. ‘He’s not a bad sort,’ said Matthew, ‘only he’s a bit hard of hearing just now from the battle.’ Fowler thought to himself: ‘That’s a month ago by now.’

      One deck below, Sherard was talking: ‘B’cause John’s incredibly strong. He strangled a Dane to death with his bare hands. But he was my friend even before that.’

      When John got a whiff of that talk he suffered even more. True, they meant well, and he didn’t want to disappoint them under any circumstances. But he didn’t know how to help himself, still less what to do with such praise. At night, when the slain men on the bottom of the sea didn’t reappear, he dreamed of a strange figure: symmetrical, smooth without sharp edges, a friendly, well-ordered plane, not quite a square and not quite a circle, with an evenly proportioned drawing inside. Suddenly, however, it would transform itself into something tangled and splintered. It exploded into an ungeometrical grimace and became so nasty and threatening that John awoke bathed in sweat and was afraid of going back to sleep, in dread of its return. In the end, he feared the smooth, geometrical figure almost more than the dreadful one it turned into.

      The Investigator – formerly named the Xenophone – was a sloop which had suffered honourable wounds. In the middle of the war against France, the Admiralty couldn’t spare a better ship for exploration. ‘As soon as I hear the word exploration,’ said Master Gunner Colpits, ‘I know at once: clear the pumps.’ If only they hadn’t changed the ship’s name. That provoked fate even more. Mr Colpits believed in the magical significance of certain days. In Gravesend he had had all days of misfortune recorded for the next three years. The woman who read his fortune in the stars had told him: ‘You must watch out that you don’t perish with the ship. If you get away when she runs aground, you’ll have a long life.’ It didn’t speak well for Mr Colpits that the crew knew this by heart as early as Sheerness.

      When Matthew read out the Admiralty orders before the start of the voyage, he stuck out his lower jaw so that his teeth showed, and said sharply, ‘The stars tell us only where the ship is located – nothing else.’

      Almost the entire crew hailed from Lincolnshire, as if Matthew had collected on one single ship those few among the farmers’ sons of the county who weren’t afraid of the sea. The twin brothers Kirkeby came from the city of Lincoln and were famous for their muscles. With their own hands – the oxen had collapsed – they had pulled a fully laden cart over the Steep Hill up to the church. The two of them looked very much alike; one could tell them apart only by the phrases they used. Stanley’s comment was usually ‘That’s just what the doctor ordered.’ Olof said only ‘Beastly good!’ – about the weather, the tobacco, the work, the captain’s wife: ‘Beastly good!’

      Then there was Mockridge, the cross-eyed helmsman with the clay pipe. He had one talking eye and one listening eye. If John looked into the long-range, listening eye, he often understood Mockridge’s words before they were out. Most of the time, though, it was safer to look into the short-range, talking eye.

      Mr Fowler and Mr Samuel Flinders were lieutenants and arrogant like so many of their kind. The crew called them ‘luffs’ because they were windbags. Seventy-four men, three cats, and thirty sheep made up the ship’s population. After two days John knew them all – even the sheep, and especially the scientists: one astronomer, one botanist, and two painters. Each of them had his own servant. Nathaniel Bell was also a midshipman, and not yet twelve years old. He suffered badly from homesickness immediately on the pier in Sheerness, although his three older brothers were with him and reassured him. Even the familiar smell given off by the sheep didn’t help: it merely increased his suffering.

      Sheep dung, according to Mr Colpits, could be extremely useful. ‘For caulking small leaks, the best thing you can get,’ he announced lugubriously. ‘Alas, we must expect bigger ones.’

      The Investigator was a warship, so there had to be ten Marines and a drummer on board. They were commanded by a corporal, and he, in turn, by a sergeant. In port, they had already drilled diligently and marched up and down on deck until they got in the cargo officer’s way. Mr Hillier let them know that he needed the space for more important work; loading and storing of provisions was a job to John’s liking. Where should they stow two spare oars? Where to put fifty boxes of soil for plant specimens? Was it true that zwieback and pickled meat would last one and a half years, and the rum for two years? John calculated. The books in the cabin – if one included the Encyclopædia Britannica – contained enough material for a solid year. Where to put the presents for the natives: five hundred axes and hatchets, one hundred hammers, ten kegs of nails, five hundred pocket knives, three hundred pairs of scissors, innumerable pieces of coloured and transparent glass, ear and finger rings, glass beads, colourful ribbons, sewing-needles, and ninety medallions with the King’s picture on them. Every item was noted carefully on double-entry lists, and Mr Hillier knew in his sleep where each could be found. Matthew replaced some of the great guns with light carronades, and even those he stowed where they were least in the way. When Mr Colpits’s face showed that he was going to make a remark about that, Matthew was before him: ‘We’re researchers. We’re getting a pass from the French government.’

      The first annoyance. For a time no one could talk to Matthew, and everyone stayed out of his way: scientists, midshipmen and cats, even the cook.

      In Sheerness two high officials of the Admiralty inspected the ship. Most of Matthew’s requests had been granted: brand-new sails had been hauled up the rigging, looking like thick sausages; new ropes of good Baltic flax were put in where the old ropes had turned brittle. The bow shone with copper up to the hawse-holes, for they had to count on drift ice. But then the great gentlemen noticed women’s washing on a line. A woman on board? On such a long voyage? ‘Impossible!’ they said, and Ann, to whom no one in the crew bore the slightest ill will, had

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