Many of the accused men made impassioned speeches, but these did not interest him much, either. The accusations of ill-treatment and brutality sounded wrong in the elegant and airy great-cabin of the line-of-battle ship where the trial was held. The captain of the Welfare, quiet and restrained in splendid silk and blue, would look down modestly, breathe on his nails and polish them, as wild-faced, inarticulate men spluttered out their hate-filled ‘evidence’, or told crazy-sounding stories of how he was a monster. It was those who kept their mouths shut, in the main, who pleaded madness and confusion, the heat of the moment, who avoided the rope. They could not hang them all, indeed; but prisons there were in plenty.
Broad, the ringleader, the villain, the scoundrel, declined to speak at all. He smiled wanly when they said he had to die.
The day of the executions was fixed, by accident no doubt, on Bentley’s fifteenth birthday. This time there was no escape. He was much fitter, his father had made the position very clear as to the financial future, and my Lords of the Admiralty required it with equal insistence. If he did not present himself on board the Duchess in Portsmouth harbour on that bright morning, he would stand alone in the world. All right, he had said at first, then alone in the world I shall stand. As he was rowed across the waters of the harbour, the harbour at its most freshly beautiful, his eyes were blank. He tried to keep them so throughout.
The officers were mustered on the quarterdeck, and the affair was very formal and correct. He did not see the ceremony, did not hear the last words, did not hear the guns, most of all did not watch the bodies as they swung suddenly from deck to yardarm, throttling as they rose. Until it came the time for Jesse Broad, the biggest villain, the last to hang.
Jesse Broad could not go to his death unaided, try as he might.
He stood between two seamen, his legs like dolls’ legs, his crippled shoulder hunched. He fought desperately to stay upright on his own, but he could not. He had to be held. Even his head had to be lifted up so that the noose could be slipped over it. It was then his eyes met Bentley’s.
They stared at each other for what appeared to be eternity. As if there was no one else on board, as if they were utterly alone. They stared and stared, their faces clenched and rigid. It was like an age.
Then Broad’s feet swung out and upwards with a jerk.
His eyes met Bentley’s just once more, and they were bulging, filled with pressured blood. Then away, high up in the air he flew, twitching on his rope. The sightless eyes, bulging out obscenely, passed across the island as he turned, then seemed to scan Spithead. Then the Gosport shore, the hill, and then he spun round back again.
William Bentley could look no more. His eyes had seen enough.
Author’s Note
I started writing historical sea books because I thought another point of view was long overdue. All the ones I’d read and loved were about a certain sort of hero, and followed a well-worn path – roughly, the real-life transformation of Horatio Nelson from a weedy, sea-sick boy to a towering strategist and hero. I was born and raised in Portsmouth, from where Nelson sailed for many a battle, had strong family naval connections, and studied the sea and ships from the moment I was old enough. I spent many childhood hours crawling about in the lower decks of the Foudroyant – now renamed the Trincomalee – when she was moored out in the harbour. I also spent hundreds of hours, and most of my money, on visiting the Victory in her drydock.
The more I read fictional accounts of marvellously brave and noble young midshipmen doing barely credible things to defeat the evil French, the more I felt it was by no means the whole story. There were villains and cowards among British naval officers, as there are in any body of fighting men. And many upstanding young midshipmen started as brutes, and grew only into greater brutishness. Hugh Pigot is a single name that might stand for this counterview. He was murdered by his crew in the bloodiest single mutiny in British navy history.
The premise for A Fine Boy for Killing, then, was to portray a young midshipman who was neither a decent person nor a hero. He ships on board his uncle’s frigate Welfare, and buys into that man’s cruelty and failure of empathy. He brings on board the two people who become the greatest targets of Captain Swift’s regime, and is in the vanguard of their appalling treatment and misuse.
It seemed a simple narrative that I had undertaken, but it turned out very differently. As many writers have pointed out before, characters have a habit of taking over their own lives. Vile as William Bentley was, I began to feel for him, to pity him, to understand what made him tick. Which did not make his actions less reprehensible, but made them horrifyingly inevitable. At times, to me, he seemed to be a person without hope.
The conclusion of A Fine Boy for Killing is necessarily bleak. But Bentley, who started out severely damaged, has begun to grow. Over the next books, his rejection of the givens of his life becomes more complex and more urgent, and in The Wicked Trade, he meets the girl who is his destiny. Deb’s is another life formed by pain and horror, and in The Spithead Nymph and Undertaker’s Wind their journey continues. For them, the 18th century navy is not a romantic, easy, place. But they will fight on, clear-eyed and with unquenchable hope.
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