Meanwhile in England.

An alternative history of late Victorian England.

Part one – meanwhile in the English Channel.

The western portion of the English channel is no place to be, in a winter gale, with the wind blowing hard from the west – just where you want to go and where neither the wind or the strong tides will allow you to get to – unless of course you are a very good seaman which he wasn’t. Shivering heavily now and deeply tired inside several layers of soaked wool and with the rain and spray coursing down his old and leaky oilskin to pool in his lap or run down his legs into his sodden sea boots. Hans Eric Vesterman, the skipper, braced both feet against the lip of the steersman’s foot well to leeward and pulled hard against the heavy wooden tiller as gust after gust tried to force the smack to round up into the wind. He strained to look forward while trying to shelter his eyes from the blinding spray thrown aft every time the old smack kicked hard into a wave.

Cold, tired and very sick now he wanted to be anywhere that wasn’t here : his problem though was he didn’t even know exactly where he was and with the compass glass broken he could only guess at the direction they were sailing in and then only when they could catch a rare glimpse of the sun : they hadn’t seen a clear sun for three days now as they came around England’s north Foreland and worked their way out into an increasingly grey and boisterous English channel. Now, nearly three days since they last saw land they were all exhausted and the hull of the smack was flexing and twisting so much that it was leaking heavily and one crewman out of the four on board had to work at the pump almost continuously to keep the boat from flooding and foundering.

Last time he had felt able to go below, ostensibly to take a turn at the pump and to check on the boy, but actually to get out of the cold wind for a while, he had been violently sick again and again such that he could feel his stomach heaving painfully even when there was nothing left to bring up. He was almost tempted to give up the entire enterprise and put into an English port for shelter but then there would be discovery and difficult questions to answer : now, the best he could hope for was to put into shelter somewhere on the French coast, anchor and rest in some river or creek for a while even if it meant being quarantined. Most of the time now he was so far beyond normal tiredness and so cold and sick that he couldn’t even think clearly.

Had he been one of the smack’s original crew, an Essex smacksman. then he would have known how to make the over pressed vessel jog along slowly under storm trysail and backed staysail ; like that he could even have hove to for a few hours and gone below with the crew to light the galley stove and get warmed up and dried out a little. He wasn’t though, in fact he wasn’t much of a seaman at all especially in these waters and these conditions : if asked he wouldn’t be able to explain why he had taken on the job in the first place.

When he threw back the hatch to get away from the fetid interior, which now stank of wine and spirits from the broken bottles sloshing around the bilge with their own piss and vomit, he felt that the smack was moving through the waves better than it had been doing. On deck the paid hand had thrown a short length of stout line over the tiller and was using that to ease the weight in the tiller caused by the unbalanced sail plan.

Extreme tiredness and cold do strange things to a man’s mind : once back on deck in the wind and rain he’d pushed the hired hand away from the tiller although he now used the relieving line as though he knew how to do that all along. Often now his nodded and drooped as his mind tried to drop into an uneasy sleep but he would be jerked instantly awake by the dash of an icy wave against his face. For his part it was a snatch of bar room music playing the same notes over and over and yet interspersed with part of a sermon he once had to listen to : something about Saint Peter and the keys to heaven repeating again and again.

Now though he was vaguely aware of the paid hand shaking him by the shoulder and shouting in his ear something about land while he pointed forward. When he could make his eyes and mind focus in the gloom of a late winter’s afternoon he just make out ahead the grey rocks of a shoreline with the white of surf breaking over them and behind that a hint of higher land with perhaps the suggestion of a square building behind.

What saved them was a huge gust that forced the smack to broach into the wind while at the same moment causing the heavy wooden yard to snap clean through and was now waving around uselessly but dangerously over their heads. What they would have hit unknowingly was a small reef of mostly submerged rocks and the strong tide now pushing them towards the west : the problem with the tide though was that it was running directly against the wind so the whole area in front of them was now a confused mess of tidal race and surf from the rocks to windward.

The next few minutes were confused, to say the least : young Tristan, the paid hand, ran forward to the mast to let go the two halyards that were used to hoist and then support the big yard except one of them caught around a cleat so only the outer end, the peak of the yard, came down and was thrashing around at deck level threatening to knock anyone overboard that got too close. What Tristan did in error was to also throw off the outer jib halyard so most of that sail went overboard and was now dragging through the waves. From being very nearly in the shelter of high ground the smack was instead swept into the rocky channel by the strong west going ebb and with what little control remained was veering from side to side of the narrow channel. Finally, having got too close to the southern side of the channel so as to avoid the beacon on yet another rock the bow of the smack ground up against the sand and mud at the edge of the bay known locally as Kernoc and with the tide ebbing strongly now, started to settle there.

If the skipper thought that they were somewhere near the Island of Guernsey and that they had somehow sailed into the channel leading up to Saint Peters port then he was wrong by about fifty miles : they and the big smack having passed that island without seeing it or it’s outlying rocks and reefs during the previous night.

2. Enez Vaz

Enez Vaz, or to give it it’s regular French name : l’ile de Batz, is a small and rocky Island off the coast of northern Brittany, just opposite the coastal town and port of Roscoff. Between the island and the mainland is the fiercely tidal and rock strewn Batz channel. Home to a few dozen Breton fishermen and their hardy families. Most of the tiny homes there are low lying cottages built from local granite : many of them fitted out with boxed in beds in little alcoves like the foc’sle of a seagoing ship and, as with many seagoing ships an iron stove is the only source of heat for warmth and meals.

The island forms one of the important barrier or quarantine stations administered by the Marine National of the French navy and the quarantine board of that region of France : the main administration point of the island – little used nowadays – centers around the small chapel dedicated to one of the local saints and is run largely by an order house of poor friars. The other barrier islands on the Brittany coast : Ile d oessant (Ushant) and the smaller Ile de Seine being also lot less active now that the highly contagious and once lethal plague has mostly been eradicated in this north western corner of France.

For most of the day the island is completely cut off from the mainland by the strong tides of that coast except for the boatmen and fishermen that live on either shore and who run the local ferry twice daily. The small port of Roscoff and the Morlaix estuary are used as anchorages for the smaller steam powered patrol boats that operate on this coast and vessels that are stopped, boarded and arrested are detained in the deep tidal pool near the harbourmasters office : nowadays the deep water port : the port de Bloscon.

The Franciscans, or more properly, the order of friars minor, choose to live and work communally from a plain and simple formation house. The brothers rise early and pray together before taking a frugal breakfast and then go about their work for the day, gathering again for their main evening meal and more reading and prayers before retiring for the night. One of the brothers, brother Henri, had family locally – his older brother having recently returned from a life at sea had married a local widow who had lost her first husband at sea and the pair of them had made a simple life living in the old family cottage. Brother Henri always made time, when he could, to visit his older brother who would often tell him tall tales about his time aboard a square rigged tea clipper racing across the great southern ocean.

This night, brother Henri was restless : with the weather being cold and stormy from the west it hadn’t been possible to row across to the mainland for most of the day and that was where he worked with the local apothecery and herbalist. After dinner he excused himself and with his superior’s permission walked the short distance to his older brother’s cottage where he sat with his brother and his wife, obviously pregnant now, to talk while heavy squalls blew through overhead.

Later on, after a particularly heavy squall rattled the tiles, he bid his extended family blessings and wished them a peaceful night and then got up to leave. As he went back into the dark night he glanced briefly to seaward where he caught a brief glimpse of a sailing vessel of some kind out to sea and making for the eastern end of the island and that end of the Batz channel although with some apparent difficulty in the large inshore waves. Instead of leaving he knocked on the door of the cottage again to rouse his older brother whom he know owned a fine telescope with which to view whatever vessel it was : brother Henri assumed it to be local and possibly in some distress as it heaved and plunged through the steeper inshore waves.

His brother, Michel, joined him outside in the lee of his cottage and got his younger brother to stand in such a way and in a position that allowed him to rest the fore end of the heavy instrument on his younger brother’s shoulder. Not one of ours, he said, after studying the sailing vessel for a few minutes. How do you know ? asked Henri. It’s not one of the island vessels – I know them all and they’re all pulled up onto the sand here for work and repairs – I don’t think it’s from Ros, over the water, in fact I don’t think it’s a French boat at all. Here ! swap over and take a look : i’m going to fetch captain Gaspard.

With that, Michel jogged off to the cottage where one of the older seamen lived which left brother Henri to study the stranger with his telescope resting on the nearby wall. Just a few minutes later his brother reappeared with the older seaman in tow struggling into a stiff old oilskin against the foul weather. Henri balanced the heavy telescope on his shoulder again while his brother, Michel, pointed towards where the vessel was appearing and disappearing again just as quickly again in the confused seas of the inshore tidal race.

I have him muttered the older man, his mainsail is down – ripped I think – and it looks as though his yard is down and his boom broken : it looks as though they are trying to rig a trys’l (small triangular sail used in heavy weather).

What do you make of him ? asked Michel…..one of ours or a Brest boat ?

Definitely not a local boat – it’s difficult to make out in this sea what it is but for a moment I could make out it’s ensign which I thought to be the Dutchie tricolor but it’s odd because it don’t look like no Dutch boat…..looks more like one of those English fishing smacks I seed that time I went up the big Thames river that time with old man Cretien (his late father and a former sea captain)

What must we do ? asked brother Henri.

Well, you know how it stands with our quarantine law : if he anchors behind the headland – in front of the harbor master’s place – and hoists his yeller flag then he can leave when he likes. Last thing I saw before he went out of view behind our headland he seemed to be making that way. What you should do is go back and tell your superior to use the station semaphore to send a signal to the harbor master, what me and him – indicating Michel – is take a walk down to the bay and shelter in the lee of my boat and we will see what we will see !

With reports of plague re emerging in the British colonies relations between France and the British isles haven’t been amicable since France declared it’s waters closed to maritime traffic except via it’s ports of entry : the nearest being the port and city of Brest off to the west and, St Malo to the east. It is for this very reason that the quarantine laws were being applied more vigorously and it must be said with good effect so far.

Plague, or to be more precise, the Black Plague burnt itself out several hundred years before but then re emerged in the south and east of the country on the trade route from southern Europe and it was in France that not only was the connection made between the then more common black rat (Rattus Rattus) and the plague but also the means of preventing it using strict quarantine at it’s ports. It was also in France that it was discovered that it is only the black rat that carries the plague flea and not the larger brown or Norway rat which is now used to control the disease because a population of resident brown rats will out compete the smaller black rats which is why brown rats are now actively bred and encouraged to thrive being regarded as quite clean animals.

That very fact is now said to be one of the main reasons why the British in the form of it’s government and jingoistic press actively and vociferously hate the French. In the English press cartoons a Frenchman is often depicted as rat in a beret. It is also why England has an active black rat population and the deadly plague once again with the main culprits most likely coming straight into the heart of the country at the Isle of Grain via grain carrying steamers from eastern Europe.

Readers whom are familiar with the British government and it’s play-along press wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that the Catholic church in France is hated and villified because it was and is mostly their work in the natural sciences that made the scientific connection. More politically it is the French Catholics that support the Free Eire or Free Irish Republican movement rather than the Engish Royalist loving and more powerful Ulstermen in the north. At the time of this story there is a new Bill being put before through the English parliament, vociferously by the same Ulster contingent that seeks to further restrict the freedom of all Catholics on the mainland as they are often portrayed as rebels and religious fanatic traitors that support the roman Papacy.

Meanwhile in England 1, from a work party to a ship board burial party.

The Work Gang.

It was the pitiful crying and then screams of the teenage girl next door that first kept him awake and that eventually caused him to abandon his cold bed and head out into the tail end of a dark night and maybe go on the usual search for work that day. Billy, as he called himself, the son of Irish parents that had come over to England during the bad years of the famine back home in county Sligo. The parents had both tried and failed to find regular work, then any work at all, around the docks of Liverpool where they had landed. Eventually moving across the country to try their luck in London they’d found only grinding hardship, gnawing hunger and the sheer squalor of living out of one room in a house that had been cheaply divided and divided again by a grasping landlord to cram more families into an already tiny space.

By ‘next door’ we really mean the room next to theirs where the sobs and screams carried through the cheap hardboard ‘walls’ : the screams being those of that families teenage daughter who’d had the misfortune to get preyed upon, plied with cheap Gin, essentially raped down some stinking alley and to fall pregnant as many under aged girls did. He only hoped that the family had money to pay for a midwife but he doubted it : a competent midwife being very high status and highly paid – at least when compared to the destitute poor that comprised most of the local population.

The one useful thing about having been brought up around Liverpool is that he’d acquired a noticeable accent and his now long dead father had advised him to call himself by an English sounding name rather than the one he’d landed with : so now he was Billy Kimber rather than Brendan ‘O’ Malley and that had already proved useful when he first joined the early morning queue for hired labor that day at the dock gates. He was doubly lucky in that the gate foreman was also Liverpudlian and quickly pocketed his small offered bribe to get prime place in the line of men desperate for work and what’s more remembered him.

This early morning there was already a crowd of some fifty men so he had little hope of getting a place that day, instead he decided to move on and see what else might be on offer when be noticed the foreman that he knew emerging from a side gate of the dockside complex and starting to walk along the line watching out for members of the east end London gangs or even worse the Brummy gangs that were trying to muscle in on the ‘protection’ payments taken from the would be temporary labor : the foreman he knew hated the gangs with a vengeance and regarded them as little more than chancers and parasites.

Billy joined the back of the line just before the foreman came by occasionally nodding at a man to indicate that that man at least would be in luck that day. He almost walked straight past Billy as he’d almost made his numbers for that day – everyone else would be dismissed – when he stopped at Billy, gave him ‘the nod’ and walked back to the dock gate with his chosen men. It might not be much, in fact all it would guarantee would be 12 hours or more of hard physical labor down in the stinking hold of some rusty steamer : but it was work and that meant that he could buy food for several days and maybe go to bed with a full stomach for once.

Tum-Tum and the Physicians.

What on earth have you been up to ? the king exclaimed. I summon you to a high level meeting and I hear that you’re running around London arresting foreigners ! – anyway whom have you collared this morning eh ?

Sir Edward Henry, London’s very own commissioner for crime and it’s chief of chief policeman felt that his leg was being pulled a little as the king was want to do that when questioning him about some police affair in the capital. Well sir, oh and good morning my lords to Lords Kitchener and Jellicoe : in turn head of the British army and Royal Navy – both having briefed the king on their services part in the developing crisis.

The police commissioner knew many of the physicians now gathered in the king’s drawing room and he knew the military men by sight even if he’d never had to deal with them : both services also had a provost that dealt with policing in the military. Henry was just about to answer the first question when one of the other physicians fired another question at him – ” and how is crime generally in our great city this morning” he asked. There was a general air of jocular good humor in the room although it seemed to have a rather forced and desperate nature : lord kitchener later observed that it was an atmosphere like that of the officers mess on the eve of a battle – and a battle that many would not survive. Sir Henry thought for a few moments while he wondered which thing to bring first to the attention of those present but as protocol demanded he chose to address the king first and answer his question before attempting to impart his stranger and more disturbing observations from his morning’s work.

First, your majesty, I happened to have to arrest a foreign gentleman this morning whom was reported as being in the act of interfering with some of the dead bodies in the reporting constable’s borough. What on earth was the man doing ? retorted the king. Well sir, the man claims that he was moving some outer layers of clothing so that he could closely inspect the skin of the deceased : what the constable reported and the way he reported it I suspected that there was a petty act of pilfering going on – although having given it some thought I now doubt it, he added.

Nothing but a corpse looter then said Kitchener – we used to court martial them shoot them in my day.

Did you get a name from the foreign gentleman asked doctor (sir) James Reid ?

When I got there he had already been arrested by the constable and was being questioned by one of my senior sergeants : name, where he was from and what in gods name was he doing ? usual kind of thing. Anyway, he continued, fella turns out to be Swiss or French, claims that he is a physician, at least in his own country and claims to go by the name of M’sieu Yersin. As to what he was doing he claimed to be inspecting the bodies for signs of the plague of all things : how crazy is that ?

Something seemed to ring a bit of a bell with doctor Reid so he asked the police commissioner if he could describe him.

Indeed so answered Sir Henry : young chap, about 30 years old and I would say quite intense – but that could have been because he’d been manhandled by one of my constables, apparently while committing a petty, although despicable, crime.

I would like to meet him answered doctor Reid, with the king’s permission of course : if it’s the real doctor Yersin then I may recognize him as I met him once at the Pasteur institute several years back – wouldn’t have thought he had changed much !

Yes of course, answered the king – waving his cigar airily – we can deal with this quickly : either he is whom he says he is and maybe learn what he is thinking or perhaps we will just hand him over to field marshal kitchener here whom I suspect would have him up against a wall and shot ! – I am joking of course added the king.

I shall go and fetch him from where I left him to cool his heels a little said the police commisioner.

Really no need, we have servants that can do that for us : where did you leave him may I ask ?, replied the king.

In the servant’s stable tack room with my driver keeping an eye on him in case he tried to scarper.

The king indicated that his footman in the room should go and fetch the man so while that was being done sir Edward thought about his answer to the second question that he had been asked and for this he consulted his notebook as he hadn’t had the time to commit everything to memory.

Before he could even begin to speak though the manservant arrived with the suspected miscreant in tow and the moment they entered the room doctor Reid jumped to his feet and warmly welcomed the man. Ah, the excellent physician Yersin, he began, we met in Paris when you were giving a paper at the institute : heard that you had gone off to China or somewhere in those parts….how are you sir ?. So disarmed by the doctor’s manner that Yersin immmediately went from high dudgeon over being arrested and manhandled out in the east end slums to surprise at having landed in front of the English king and several men that he already knew or knew by reputation : even if that reputation was that of being stuffy and old fashioned.

With a knowing and sardonic smile proved that he had an excellent sense of humor and comic timing by using Yersin’s apparent discomfort to introduce the other men in the room, starting with the king of course but swiftly passing on to the one man that he had already met : ‘I believe you have already met with our excellent commissioner of the London police’ he said.

Just as well that our excellent police commissioner found you first, the king said although with an almost imperceptible wink to his most senior general : had it been one of lord Kitchener’s men that found you interfering with bodies then they would most likely have shot you on sight. Lord Kitchener, quick to catch on with the joke kept, momentarily, a straight face and then added ‘we haven’t started shooting looters yet……but we might’.

Have you already instituted martial law ? asked the young French physician – I hadn’t heard that it was that bad.

The king stated, rather dryly, that he was just pulling the young physicians leg and then added that the police commissioner was just about to brief them all about crimes in the city but before that they should maybe have some tea or something stronger should anyone need it.

Refreshments appeared, not by magic but by the hands and feet of attentive servants, the police commissioner waited until everyone in the room had something – he noted that physician Yersin chose coffee over tea – and then began his brief.

Your majesty, my lords he began. I will start with the east end, the docklands in fact because that was where I was when I took the good doctor into our custody. Firstly the whole borough is unearthly quiet and almost nobody is moving around those streets and lanes : the reason for that is that most of them are dead, in fact iv’e never seen that many bodies in one place and at one time.

I have exclaimed lord Kitchener, although that was forty years ago in the Crimea when I was still a wet behind the ears lieutenant : but please continue Edward.

There’s no obvious crime going on there which is why one of my constables apprehended doctor Yersin, his first thought was that M’sieur Yersin was merely pilfering the dead although I suspect none of them were carrying anything valuable – that being one of the poorest boroughs in the entire city. The crime that is happening, mostly petty, is in the wealthy areas – a few break ins, thefts and some looting although what’s being taken isn’t what we would usually expect.

Please explain further said Reid.

I’m sorry yes, my mind is all over the place this morning.

All those bodies quite literally laying in the streets and we don’t understand why – doctor Reid again.

The police commissioner continued, I got the distinct impression that the upper classes are abandoning their big houses in the city and fleeing to the country. Furthermore it’s as though the middle classes are in a panic and buying up anything and everything that they can : if I may I will recount the small example I have from this mornings little adventure.

The king sighed heavily and, gesticulating with his unlit cigar said : I’m sorry to interrupt but this morning when I summoned my senior ministers none of them were available and then later when my private secretary was inviting the usual people for dinner and some light evening entertainment they had all disappeared to their own places out in the country…..anyway, do carry on and what’s this you are saying about the middle classes in a panic ?

It makes sir, replied the police commissioner : from what iv’e seen and heard this morning then in that anyone has the means to do is abandoning the city and scurrying off to the country – this morning, as an example, we saw that St Pancras and Kings Cross were notably busy with people travelling out of the city and many of those were on the heavy side with large suitcases, trunks and portmanteau’s.

Hmph….interjected field marshall Kitchener : sound just like Paris back in the 60’s when they were in a state of siege from the Prussians : bodies in the streets, nothing in the shops and anyone that could do so getting out of the city any way they could.

You saw that sir ? asked physician Yersin : how did you escape the city yourself.

Simple, retorted Kitchener with a snort : dress up in me best khaki’s and marched straight up to one of the young Prussian officers and addressed the man in English – young fella snaps to attention and salutes me, checks my papers and sends me on my way. All in all, simple if you’re wearing the uniform of a British officer : I was only a captain back then of course but the Prussians recognized that I was in the field uniform of a British officer.

Anyway, M’sieur Yersin I have answered your question : now sir please answer the question on all of our lips – what exactly were you doing studying English corpses in the east end and crucially, what exactly were you looking for – may I ask ?

Physician Yersin thought for a moment and replied that he was in London because he had been sent by his superior at the Institut Pasteur and he was studying corpses because that’s what he had been sent to do – “In short sir to do what I did in Hong Kong, which was to look for signs of Plague”

Plague ! exclaimed one of the English doctors in the room – surely you don’t believe that what we have here is Bubonic Plague ?

I said Plague sir, I didn’t say Bubonic plague retorted Yersin.

But surely it’s basic medicine angrily replied the Englishman : it ain’t the plague because there are no signs – no Buboes, no plague. At least that much is plain fact.

What’s the difference Doctor ? are you now claiming that we have an outbreak of the plague but without the normal physical signs, adding, oh for goodness sake Sir Edward apprehend this idiot and send him back to France – perhaps we should also complain to the French authorities that they kindly keep their beaks out of this affair if this is all they can do.

The institute sent me – Sir – because they believe that the doctors in England are either deeply stupid or totally incompetent, retorted Yersin icily.

There was a moment of complete silence and then everyone (except the king and his senior military men) seemed to be shouting at once. The King waved his unlit cigar for silence and then said , can you give us proof – or at least credible evidence that what you claim has any truth ?

Calming a bit, Physician Yersin replied that yes he could although to do so he would need his own notes and photographic slides and ideally one of his own assistants.

The king thought for a moment and then asked, and are those notes back in Paris at the institute or do you have them right here in London ?…..and if so how soon could you get them here ?

Sir, i’m sorry – I mean your majesty – in France we are rather unfamiliar with using that term, my notes and slides are with me although at the house in north London where I am staying with a medical colleague : about an hour sir, at a brisk walk.

The king turned to one of the manservants in the room – ah, young Jenks I see, prepare a carriage for this man to wherever he needs to go. The king thought for a moment and then, glancing at the handsome clock in the room said, Gentlemen, I invite you all to supper here at Marlborough house and after supper I propose that we hear this young man out and examine his evidence.

There were general nods and thankyou’s except for Yersin himself who explained that, while he had his notes and other materials with him he hadn’t traveled with formal clothes suitable for dining with the English monarch. The king chuckled – i’d lend you a dinner jacket except I don’t think it would fit -patting his ample stomach for emphasis. Tell you what though he added, lots of things my damned useless ministers are keen to tell me I can’t do but I can change protocol for dinner dress at my own house. Here’s what we’ll do – we’ll have an informal supper so we won’t dine in the usual state dining room and I declare that i’d be happy to dine any man this evening in his working clothes – there, hows that sound ?

The Burial Party.

Burial at sea has a kind of romanticism to it and most of the world’s navies have a written procedure for it. Given the choice many old time seamen prefer to be buried in the earth although in the great days of sail and war at sea that wasn’t an option and it was only high ranking officers such as Admiral Nelson that would be transported back to land for a state burial : in Nelson’s case his body was stored in a barrel of spirits to preserve it during the long voyage home.

Today though, in the river Medway, it was much more a case of convenient quick disposal as space was running out in the local graveyards. At sea there would be a prayer a few words perhaps about the deceased and some ceremony, the final part of which is that the body, sewn into it’s own hammock would be tipped over the side with some weight in the form of round shot or whatever could be found already sewn into the simple canvas bag. In the days of the sea fighting Royal Navy, the tradition was that the deceased sailor would be sewn into his own hammock by the sailmaker or bosun and the last act of tipping the body into the deep would be performed by the dead man’s mess mates.

This cold grey morning aboard the hospital ship – a decommissioned warship – the Royal Naval doctor had already been aboard and on briefly examining the line of bodies already laid out on what remained of the once foredeck had declared death and signed his name in the ship’s order book, thus allowing the ‘burial’ to go ahead. Standing around under the slight shelter afforded by the overhang of the built up accommodation space although staying as far from the dead bodies as possible, the small group of orderlies just waited for the duty officer to declare the turn of the tide and that disposal could be completed. The idea was quite simple : if the bodies were put over the side, unweighted, at the height of the tide then they would drift out to sea on the ebb and hopefully sink in deep water rather than being washed up on the Kentish marshes.

In this time of great technological and design change in warships of the Royal Navy a relatively newly built warship might be already obsolete by the time it was launched and completed so after a short time of active duty it might be ‘hulked’ by having it’s weapons, ammunition, rig and machinery all removed and put to use for some other purpose. Thus, some old warships might become depot ships, accommodation ships, wrecking hulks, prison ships or in this case a hospital ship – often referred to as a fever hulk as it was various forms of contagious fevers that saw off many sailors.

Now, with this as yet unrecognized and undiagnosed fever rampant in the Naval dockyard and the main London docklands just to the west the Admiralty had reluctantly allowed those with the fever to be transported down the Thames or across from Chatham to one or other of the hulked accommodation ships or prison ships still moored in the river Medway.

Aboard the old Ajax, now renamed HMS Tribune, the duty officer – Chief Petty Officer Blake stepped through the forrad accomodation door just in time to catch the three orderlies having a crafty smoke before doing their first task of the day. Blake, as usual, was in a foul temper and he particularly hated the men lounging about and smoking while there was work to do. Snatching one of the dowps straight out of one of the orderlies mouth, flicked it over the side to help him see which way the tide was running and satisfied that it was running to the east he barked out the order to start dumping the dead bodies over the side.

The normal routine would now have been to enter the names of the deceased into the ship’s day book and mark them as discharged deceased but now most of the bodies had no identification whatsoever and when brought aboard were too scared and too sick to give a name so were simply recorded as male, female or child and deceased. With that day’s tally, nineteen bodies so far, written up that was his work for the day done until one of the navy launches arrived with yet another fever ridden crowd aboard. He locked the ship’s office from the inside and took his first drink of many with his old service revolver set out and loaded on the desk in front of him. Hours later a single shot rang out aboard the old Ajax and when the orderlies finally managed to break down the door they found the old chief slumped back in his chair with most of what had been his head spattered across the aft bulkhead.