The Late Guardian

Excerpts from the journal of Mortimer S. Harrow, Legal Clerk of The Old Bailey, 1791.

April 27: 

The Guardian was ever late. She could never arrive where she was needed, when that need was greatest. A small tragedy, inevitably eclipsed by the more spectacular tragedy of her final chapter.

The Guardian: a 44-gun Roebuck-class warship of the Royal Navy, bristling with the Empire’s martial spirit, ready to reaffirm Britannia’s rule of the waves around those recalcitrant colonies of the Americas…and launched in 1784. One year after those colonies won their independence. One year too late to make a difference.

She lay in ordinary for years, a useless warship without a war and by the time someone had the notion she could be used to transport convicts to the Empire’s latest colony of New South Wales, she was again too late. Too late for her to join the First Fleet, whose ships were destined for the pages of glorious history. Instead, she joined the ill-fated Second Fleet in 1789. Along the way, she was late leaving Cape Town, taking almost two weeks to resupply for the second leg of the journey. Two weeks, enough time for that strange Southern Ocean to send icy winds from the bottom of the world to batter any vessel brave enough to venture forth. When the iceberg appeared, Lieutenant Riou was late in deciding to veer away, and the ever-late Guardian’s fate was finally sealed. 

Her story should have ended there. Stricken by a mountain of ice in the Southern Ocean and sunk to the sea floor. All souls lost. 

The reason that was not the end of The Guardian’s tale is the reason I am here on this stinking whaler, tracing the same voyage. I have sailed on The William and Ann for one month exactly and I must admit severe distaste for my surrounds. Yet I bear with me an important document. The Royal Pardon for the convict Hugh Lowe, the man Lieutenant Riou commended to the Crown with the very highest of approbation. The lowly convict. The saviour of 62 souls aboard The Guardian. The ones who abandoned ship are the ones who died. The ones who stayed the course survived.

…

May 2: 

Riou called The Guardian the most beautiful ship he ever sailed, and perhaps that beauty moved beyond the aesthetic to the moral. A commander true and brave, and sailors the likes of which made our Empire great. Certainly, her holds must have held a better breed of criminal. She must have done, else how do you explain Hugh Lowe?

I doubt there can be any Lowes huddled below in the hold of the William and Ann. This sad hulk, as unlovely a vessel as ever to be graced with the King’s flag. A 370-tonne whaling ship, squat and ugly and well-suited to the ugly task of transportation, groaning with spite and misery. The phantoms of her past haunt the William and Ann – the stink of rotting blubber and burning whale oil seems soaked through the very wood, and no amount of scrubbing can scour it. She holds 188 convicts below deck, 34 sailors and one legal clerk above it, all under the command of Eber Bunker. I confess to an instant dislike for the loud American that the subsequent five weeks at sea have done little to assuage. He seems to delight in questioning my beliefs. I also hold a suspicion as to why he is here in the first place. Why is he in the employ of his new nation’s enemy, transporting convicts to another new colony? It is not so long ago our criminals were being sent to the Americas.

…

May 5:

When may a crime be forgiven? How long does atonement last? How great an act must a man perform for his society to deem his sins absolved? It is a line of questioning with which I am uncomfortable. I believe the Rule of Law to be paramount, the very foundation of our civilisation. A man commits a crime, he is found guilty and must pay the penalty imposed by an impartial court. That is a world that makes sense. How can any subsequent act of the criminal overwhelm the justice of the court and supersede the Rule of Law?

On the other hand, who am I to argue with a Royal decree? The crimes of Hugh Lowe, expunged by the King’s Pardon through conspicuous heroism. I wonder how many of the wretches below are praying for disaster to strike the William and Ann, such as struck The Guardian. Hoping to receive the opportunity to perform their own acts of heroism, to win their own freedom. Should such an opportunity arise, I wonder how many would truly grasp it? Is Hugh Lowe uniquely worthy of the pardon I carry to the farthest edge of the Empire, or was he merely fortunate?

May 6:

Captain Bunker thinks me mad.

“Fortunate?” he cried, when I put my line of questioning to him over supper. “You think anything about The Guardian was fortunate? The iceberg ripped a hole the size of a longboat in that ship and within minutes, 16 feet of water had filled the hold. They were finished. And your man Lowe saved them. Dived into that freezing water and plugged that rent with every bit of floating debris he could find. He should have died down there – do you have any idea how dangerous it is to stay under water in a sinking ship? Heavy irons, crates and caskets floating around, any one of which could trap him with any heave of the waves? He bought them enough time to tear down one of the sails and wrap it under the hull, but even then, his work was not done. The sail caught on the splintered hull and who was it to swim down again to free it? Your man Lowe. And even after that, what was left for him? 60-odd men on a crippled ship, held together with cloth and caskets, supplies ruined and 400 leagues back to dry land. 400 leagues, slowly sinking into the Southern Ocean, Lowe and the rest of the convicts manning the pumps around the clock. Nine weeks, back to the Cape of Good Hope. Nine weeks on a sinking ship. And after that – straight back onto another convict ship to complete the journey and take up his sentence, splitting rocks in Sydney Cove. If you call that fortunate, you’re even more of the daft Imperial pen-pusher than I took you for!”

…

June 3:

A convict died tonight. Beneath our feet, down in the hold. The captain and I took our supper in his cabin to converse over a tote of rum, as has become our custom. I believe neither of us really thinks much of the other, but any conversation after months at sea is better than none. Our supper was set to the sound of low, broken moans. The sounds of a man who knows death is upon him. 

“What great crime do you suppose that man committed, to die like that?” Captain Bunker asked. “In the dark, in chains and stinking bilge water, a thousand miles from anyone who ever gave a damn about him! Where is the justice in that? Where is the justice in your precious rule of law now?”

I admit, the question bothered me long after I returned to my bunk for the night. The dying convict moaned along with the ship all through the small hours, seemingly desperate to see one last dawn. Alas, the dawn arrived too late.

…

June 7:

Another convict died today. It was troubling, but I believe I have a satisfactory answer to Bunker’s question. It resides in the very document I carry to New South Wales. While the law can be harsh – must be harsh, to safeguard all that is good about this Age of Progress – it is also just. The pardon of Hugh Lowe proves it. It proves that a man, no matter his station, may improve his lot. Even a convict may win his freedom, should he act in a manner which demands it. Hugh Lowe rose above his lot, in a moment of panic and pain and he saved many lives. Now I carry his freedom in my satchel, all the way from London to Sydney Cove. I carry with me nothing less than the proof that our very system makes sense.

…

June 8:

Bunker disagrees, of course. 

“Just?” he exclaimed. “If it were truly just, your man Lowe would have been pardoned on the very spot. On the very spot!”

I know the captain for an excitable man, but even so his vehemence on this matter took me by surprise.

“Is it not reasonable for matters of law to be considered and ratified in their appropriate place?” I asked. “Lowe has his pardon, under the Royal Seal, ratified by the courts and mentioned in Parliament. No-one may now take it away from him. It may not have arrived immediately, but it arrives secure, with all the weight of the pillars of civilisation behind it. Surely, that is worth it. It will only be a year’s wait, by the time we arrive in Port Jackson. What is one year, compared to that security?”

Bunker stared at me, as if I were some newly discovered species of man. 

“You don’t know, do you?” he asked. “You don’t know what life is like for these convicts. You have listened to them dying beneath you, yet you haven’t seen. I tell you, life does not get better for them once they get off these ships. Life under the lash is no life at all. A life of splitting rock, hauling stone and timber to build your own gaol. A life of starvation, disease, thirst and constant pain. A life of dodging strange animals in a strange land, as well as the spears of the native warriors. And ever the fear of the lash – the retribution of petty tyrants in red coats who demand a man look down as they pass. Only a year, say you? A year of that might change a man. A year of that might break him. The Hugh Lowe who saved The Guardian might not exist, by the time you arrive with that pardon.”

I lie awake once more. It cannot be so. Hugh Lowe will not have been broken by the year past. Even if it were so, the pardon I carry will restore him. It must.

…

June 29:

Another convict died today. I went below, in the stinking dark and witnessed his passing. I asked him how he came to be here. He said he stole a pig, that he might eat, and now he will feed the sharks. Gallows humour, but later that afternoon the man’s body went over the side and the dark shapes in the water flowed in fast. That night, I did not sleep. The nights are long, and my eyes do not leave my satchel. It is all I have, to guard against the barbs of Captain Bunker and the groaning misery of this godforsaken ship. In that satchel is Hugh Lowe’s salvation, and my guardian. I must stay the course.

…

July 11:

Another convict died today.

…

July 15:

Another convict died today.

…

July 21:

Another man died today.

… 

August 22:

The nights grow shorter and the days are warm. The sun soothes The William and Ann, as we draw ever closer to Sydney Cove. Even Bunker has brightened.

“Only seven!” he tells me. Seven men have died in the five-month journey, and Bunker calls this a triumph. When I consider that one quarter of the 1006 convicts transported on the Second Fleet did not live to see New South Wales, I cannot help but agree.

Oh! The captain has finally told me why he is here, skippering a British whaler, stuffed full of convicts bound for the colony built to replace his homeland.

“The problem with the old world is that it is all stuck in place,” he told me over a double measure of grog. “The people are all held in place by the inertia of centuries. The Americas were a way out. People could suddenly rise to wealth and land and influence their forefathers could only dream of. And this place, it will be the same. Only there will be even more opportunity, because less people will come. A journey of six months will keep them away. I am only a whaler, Master Harrow, but I tell you this: I will not die a whaler. I will die like one of your Lords in this new land, in a fine house and a grand estate I could not see the end of, even if I stood atop a tower.”

The rum and the fine weather must truly have softened the man’s disposition, for he continued most charitably:

“Even your man Lowe might die a Lord in a place like this. After you give him that pardon, he could rise considerably in the new colony. By all accounts, he has the constitution for it. Once he has his freedom, a man like that could be anything he wants, in a place like this. I might even hire him myself,” he said.

“Are you not concerned that we will find him a broken man?” I asked.

“Ah…” he smiled infuriatingly, “…it has only been one year.”

…

August 28:

We have arrived. The clear blue water of Port Jackson and natural beauty of the harbour give way to a deep unease when I see the people of Sydney Cove. The marks of starvation are upon them. Deprivation and desperation. I clutch my satchel as I fly off the William and Ann with nary a word to Captain Bunker. I make much haste to the Governor’s office, stumbling over rough-hewn stone steps, holding salvation in my arms.

…

August 29:

Late. 

Late. 

Hugh Lowe, saviour of The Guardian in December 1789. Executed in Sydney Cove, July 1791. He stole a sheep, that he might eat. The clerk in the Governor’s office told me the sentence was carried out a month before my arrival. 

“The preservation of our stock was an object of so much consequence to the colony, that it became indispensably necessary to protect it by every means in our power. Every means! Had any lenience been extended to this offender on account of his previous good conduct, it might have been the cause of many depredations being made upon the stock, which it was hoped his punishment would prevent...” he trailed off this lengthy, over-officious justification for killing a man, perhaps seeing something in my eyes.

Late. One month. One year. One life.

Late.

I wandered off alone into a land that makes no sense, below trees I do not recognise. 

Somewhere above, a strange bird sounds a mocking call.

…

For this story and more, you can read Explorations: a combination of poems and short stories.

Available on Amazon in paperback and ebook.

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… 

The Late Guardian was the winner of two categories in the Thunderbolt Prize 2020 for crime writing, and can be found on the official competition website here along with all the other winning entries in other categories: http://www.newc.org.au/thunderbolt-prize-2020_winning-submissions.

You can also read the judges’ reports.

(My personal favourite out of the other winning stories is The Dead Thing by Eva Mustapic. Reminded me a little bit of Shifting Sands).