service. You will be apprentice clerks to the fur trade and posted in the New World for seven years. I trust you will find Rupert’s Land agreeable and will represent your school well.”
The headmaster’s words could not have been more disappointing. David was heartbroken, but he knew there was no use in complaining. He remained silent.
“There is plenty of time to prepare before you are to be taken to the Hudson’s Bay ship, Prince Rupert. Your vessel doesn’t depart till June, which is six months from now.”
The headmaster rose from his chair, reached forward, and briefly shook both boys’ hands. “Be sure you are ready and God be with you.”
Six months was a long time to brood over their disappointment. For Sam, it was too long. He had slipped off quietly in the night, choosing the perilous life of a London street orphan over the uncertain fate waiting for him on the frozen shores of Rupert’s Land. David knew the cruel streets of London as well as any of the boys did. He hoped Sam would change his mind and somehow find his way to the Prince Rupert before she sailed. David put these memories and these hopes from his mind and returned to his books.
There were only eighteen to twenty days out of a year that David and the other boys were allowed time of their own. Most often David spent his free time in the old abbey at Westminster where Grey Coat housed its students. There, in one of the many ancient stonewalled cloisters, he could curl up and read. He loved reading adventure books like Gulliver’s Travels, Arabian Tales , and Robinson Crusoe. Books like these were scarce, and the few the school had were only there by the good will of charitable donors.
From the abbey he sometimes walked to nearby London Bridge or St. James’s Park. If he felt adventurous, he could find his way across the market square in the morning when the rumble of wooden handcarts and the crow of roosters were just beginning. Vendors would be starting to set up stations with live poultry and fresh produce stands. He could bump past a cheesemonger arranging his stall and, leaving the market, slip down narrow lanes. He could wander toward the docksides where the morning fog from the river was pungent and still held the scent of the night before. It was thick with the smell of alcohol and stale tobacco that drifted from empty drinking cellars and alehouses. The stench of urine seeped out of dark alcoves and slatternly lanes. The docksides were a place of violence and misery, notorious for drunkards, thieves, and press gangs, but early morning would find most incapacitated or asleep. Yet, some would lay on doorsteps and others still swayed and faltered aimlessly in the street, victims of “Kill Grief” or “‘Comfort,” as the cheap gin was called.
These docksides and the gauntlet of drunkards and cutthroats were dangerous places for boys like David. Sam McPherson was probably here now, alone and hiding somewhere in a back alley. Maybe David’s schoolmate had already been abducted by a press gang looking for a ship’s boy. Maybe he was murdered the first night he ran away or maybe he was kidnapped and sold to a Mollie house where men dressed as women. Here brutish sailors aroused by drink, or finely dressed noblemen numbed with opium were using homeless boys to satisfy their sexual appetites. David and the other orphans at Grey Coat knew they had little protection once outside.
David stayed close to the relative safety of Westminster and away from the drunken masses in some of the city’s poor districts. His mother was most likely somewhere among them. Unable to support her children after his father died, she had been forced to make some difficult choices. Although he missed her, he was thankful she had given him, at age seven, to the school, and he prayed he would never fall victim to drink.
The curse of alcohol seemed limitless to David, and in some of London’s worst districts like Whitechapel or St. Giles, he would have difficulty finding anyone sober. Watered-down wine, beer, and poorly distilled gin were a daily diet and sometimes the only sustenance taken by the city’s poor. In St. Giles one in every four houses was a gin shop. These were open to anyone of any age, and David could see men, women, and children drink themselves into oblivion. That alcohol had become a plague was obvious, but still its use was widely endorsed. The visiting physician would prescribe spirits for sick Grey Coat boys and, often as not, would take the cure in liberal amounts himself.
Alcohol was prescribed for all manner of ailments. It thinned the blood when it was deemed too thick. It warmed the bowels and aided in digestion. Spirituous liquor warded off the flu and cheered melancholia. Drink was also a mainstay of the British fighting forces. It fortified the disposition and helped soldiers quell their fear of battle. The navy’s daily ration was eight ounces of grog, and sailors were sometimes given double rations before naval engagements. Many seamen were so dependent on their daily ration of rum and water that they re-enlisted into the dreadful hardships of the lower decks just to find a steady supply. To the rest – the poor masses of that crowded and dirty city – alcohol was an escape.
David was thankful for his school. There he could find his escape, not into alcohol but into the Epitome of the Art of Navigation, a large book from which he studied trigonometry and the techniques used to plot a ship’s course. David worked hard at trigonometry. He knew that without it he couldn’t navigate, and the ability to navigate a ship might still be his passport out of the city’s poverty. Even though he was going to a Hudson’s Bay Company apprenticeship, if he could navigate, he might yet make it to the navy’s upper decks. His only other choice was to run for it like Sam and maybe find a kind skipper of a merchant ship to take him aboard.
The day David had hoped would never arrive was here. He placed his grey uniform on his cot and gathered his meagre clothing and belongings. He rushed down the hall and burst into the classroom where Thomas Adams sat alone reading the Bible.
“I’m being sent to Rupert’s Land today and must leave straightaway!” he gasped.
“So I’ve been told,” replied the teacher, putting his hand gently on David’s arm. “Don’t be too disappointed, lad. Keep working hard. You never know what good advantage this setback may bring. Now quick to the kitchen and see what the cook has for you. Goodbye, Davie, I’ll miss you.”
“Goodbye, Sir.” David raced to the kitchen.
Nonsuch, the famous ship that in 1669 returned to London with a fortune in furs. The voyage spawned the Hudson’s Bay Company and the creation of Rupert’s Land.
A time of excitement at York Factory. Hudson’s Bay Company ships offload trade goods and take on the valuable cargo of fur bound for London.
The cook slipped him a biscuit and a little salt pork. “For the road. God bless you lad.”
David followed at a quick trot behind his escort. The rough-looking crewman was in a hurry to return to his ship. His instructions were to bring back two apprentice boys, but one would do. He didn’t want to keep his captain waiting. “Captain Tunstall he wants us aboard early he does. Cap’n don’t like things left t’ last minute,” he warned, as David began to lag behind. The Prince Rupert was rafted on the outside of two coal barges on the Thames.
