Prince Rupert to dine. As they prepared to retire to the captain’s table the wind shifted and pungent smudge from all five kilns drifted across the bay, blanketing the ship’s deck. Day was turned suddenly to night as the suffocating fumes enveloped Prince Rupert’s dinner party. Captain Tunstall ordered the boatswain ashore to demand the kilns be extinguished at once. The boatswain, however, was met with an adamant refusal by the islanders.
“Then we shall turn the ship’s guns on you and have our cannonballs put an end to your kilns,” threatened the boatswain.
“You may as well take our lives as our means,” they said stubbornly, “We will not put them out.”
The boatswain had dealt with Orkadians before. They were as tough and hard as the islands on which they scratched out a living. He would have to try something else.
“How much do you make a day from these kilns?” he asked.
“Ten pence.”
The boatswain reached for his money pouch.
“Each,” added a soot-faced kilnsman.
The boatswain handed each man a shilling and the kilns were out before his launch had rowed back to the ship.
They set sail for Rupert’s Land on July 3. Over the next few weeks conditions grew steadily worse. North Atlantic squalls battered the ship. Treacherous icebergs, looming and ominous, threatened to rip through her belly timbers. The food became maggot-ridden and foul. But maybe worse than maggots, for David, was the ill-tempered crew. Mistrustful of anyone who didn’t drink, they excluded him like the runt in a wolf pack, and he was as alone as he had ever been. Even the captain, whose attention David must have longed for, seemed not to notice him at all.
He consoled himself by observing the stars and the wind. With daily readings sneaked off the binnacle, he tried to guess the ship’s course. David desperately wanted to help navigate the ship. He had learned the skills for it. He was sure he could calculate Prince Rupert’s position to within a minute of latitude, given a chart. But that was not to be.
August 30 finally brought a calm evening after nearly two months of heavy seas. David, alone on deck, searched skyward for Polaris, the North Star. Prince Rupert was nearing land, some crewmen had said. David reckoned, as best he could with no chart or sextant, that they were well into Hudson Bay. The day before, he had overheard the master’s mate call out their position as 59 degrees and 03 minutes north latitude. Being able to find his way was everything to him. It meant he could not be lost, would never be left adrift not knowing where home was. His schooling had taught him that no matter where he might be on all the worlds seas, he could know his position by the stars and by degrees and minutes. But he could only guess where he was now, and he would likely never navigate a ship. He was destined to be a clerk, to waste away counting blankets, buttons, and company tokens in some forgotten outpost. The prospect of his bleak future, the strain of the voyage, and the memories of London, were being held off by great effort and were about to crush him.
“Fine evening, Master Thompson,” Captain Tunstall remarked as he tugged indifferently on the mizzen halyard, his back purposely turned to David.
“Yes sir,” recovered David.
“Watching the stars again, I see.”
“Aye sir.”
“How far to Churchill by your reckoning?” asked the captain.
“Two days sir, give or take.”
“So it is, so it is,” nodded the captain. “Two days with this southeast wind in our favour.” The captain paused, giving David ample time to speak, then turned his gaze seaward. “I’ve spent many years at sea and have seen many a man and boy pass over my decks,” said the captain, as though thoughtfully addressing the waves. “Most were good men, all and all. Oh, they had their frailties, mind you, some for gin, some for worse, others just lazy. And some, some was lower in nature than hag-fish – mean and hateful. And I can say now that the measure of these men was not known ‘til seen in adversity. The sea throws up her hardships sure enough. And some can weather a storm, float’n easy like petrels fly’n in a gale. Others, loud and brassy in the calm, why they can crawl into themselves and shrink from the wind and fury like a snail hiding in its shell. Aye, and there’s no telling. I’ve seen some starts like snails and become stout hands and others, veterans of the bloodiest battles on land or sea, take to trembling uncontrolled at just the sound of a hatch slammed shut.”
“It’s not bloodlines. Nobleman or foundling makes no difference. God knows our very own King is bound for Bedlam. They say Mad George is at present strapped to a gurney and wailing at the moon. If he were on this ship I’d be putting him in leg irons for his own safekeeping. Half the Royal Family is mad. Sheltered too long, I think, from real hardship and lost the ability to cope. But it’s not hardships either that makes the man, David. Why if that were so, you are all the man you ever needs be now. What worse can befall a boy than to lose all his kin, hav’n everything safe and familiar stolen from him when he needs it most? Now you stand here hale as any, yet that other lad, same age, same Grey Coat boy, same orphan, he ran.”
“No, I’m think’n it’s like each man’s heart is a bucket with a slow leak. The heart can hold only so much trouble and misery. Given time, disappointments will gradually drain away. But too much and it fills a heart to flood’n over and not the bravest man can stand it. He brims over with anger, or hate, or shuts himself off, or shrinks away, each in his own way. But by God, Master Thompson, I can see you’ve already grown a barrel of a heart, lad. Stay open to it, keep it big, and you’ll make this New World yours, all right. Aye, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ll be the best damned apprentice the company’s ever put ashore.”
On September 2, 1784, Prince Rupert slipped her way into the wide mouth of the Churchill River. They sailed past the ruins of Prince of Wales Fort where charred granite walls and rusting guns stood as mute guards on the low-laying north bank. The fort, destroyed in the war with France, was never rebuilt. Captain Tunstall steered his ship on the rising tide, eight kilometres farther upriver to the new post at Churchill Factory. His destination reached, he ordered the factory’s provisions offloaded. This done, he commanded, “Make ready for loading,” and the crew began to take on the forty-kilogram bales of pressed beaver, muskrat, and marten pelts, which were stacked on the dock ready for London’s fur market.
The captain gave David a friendly nod as the apprentice disembarked to the longboat. Ashore, David followed the well-worn footpath that led to the factory. Part way up, he turned and stared back at the ship. He put his hands into his coat pocket and discovered the hard biscuits and the rock-hard piece of salt pork given to him by Grey Coat’s cook five months earlier. He tossed them into the marsh grass by the trail. Then, as hungry gulls descended noisily on the offering, he walked up the path to the factory.
No friend of Thompson. Samuel Hearne, the embittered Hudson’s Bay Company chief factor at Churchill.
Guns for fur. Firearms and alcohol would forever change the way of life of the Aboriginal Peoples.
