A formal inquiry found the captain guilty of gross, culpable negligence. As a subordinate notionally carrying out the captain’s orders at all times, Stephens escaped direct criticism, but he knew that his guilt was at least as great as his captain’s and admitted as much at the hearing. He was never employed by the Union Line again.
He subsequently served on the ships of G. T. Harper and Company in the Black Sea trade and also worked for his father’s old employers, the Isle of Wight Steam Packet Company, but his pay was barely half that of a chief officer on the Union Line. The work was also irregular — he was unemployed when Tom offered him the berth on the Mignonette — and with a wife and five children to support, he was already thinking of emigrating to Australia to make a fresh start.
Whatever Tom’s reservations about a man who had made such a disastrous navigational error, he found Stephens’s blue-water experience very attractive. Although Tom had served as a sailing master for years, his own ocean-going experience was very limited and he had never practised the complicated process of establishing longitude at sea.
He was also impressed with Stephens’s honesty. He made no attempt to minimize his errors and freely admitted his own culpability in the sinking of the European.
‘You are willing to take me on despite that?’ Stephens said. ‘And entrust me with the navigation?’
‘I am. I’ve made enquiries about you in Southampton and heard nothing but good about you. The European was a terrible mistake, but as far as I can ascertain, it is the only one of your career.’ He smiled. ‘I have made mistakes myself and I would not wish to be judged for ever because of an error I had made years before.’
Before beginning to load the supplies for the voyage, Tom set his new crew a hard, dirty but necessary task. Every door and hatch below decks was opened and the ship’s stores, tools, spare sails and spars were either removed or spread out to allow air to circulate around them.
He built a slow fire of charcoal on an iron hearth laid on the ballast of the keel, covered it with damp bark, then poured a mound of sulphur on to the smoking fire. Every open seam on the boat had already been caulked, but now the hatches and the slide over the companionway were also closed, battened down and sealed. Tom and his men went over the ship, caulking any chink from which smoke still issued.
They spent the night ashore and the next morning the hatches were opened again, allowing the cool spring air to circulate through the below-decks and blow away the last lingering stench of sulphur. As he walked the length of the yacht below decks, Tom saw tiny yellow sulphur crystals in the cracks of the timbers, glowing in the faint light like primroses in the dark soil of a forest floor.
Along with the cold, spent ashes of the fumigating fire, they found and removed five dead rats. Tom also felt confident that any lice, fleas and other vermin were now equally dead.
He set the crew to work loading the ship with supplies for the voyage and supervised the stowing of the stores himself. In storm conditions, a yacht lying to under a small headsail is often thrown on to her beam ends. It may happen as often as three or four times an hour, but no harm comes to the ship providing the cargo and stores do not shift. If they have not been properly stowed, however, they will be thrown to the side as the yacht rolls and the additional instability may make her founder. The majority of ships that foundered and sank did so because the cargo or the ballast had shifted under the stress of weather. Those carrying loose cargo were particularly at risk, and a part-cargo of any sort was always more dangerous than a full hold.
The Mignonette’s lead ballast was fixed to the keel and could not move but the hold would only be half full of stores. As a result, provisions were stowed with particular care. Once the huge water butts and the other heavy stores were in place, the four men laid stout planks across the top of them and fixed them in place with stanchions extending from the planks to the beams supporting the deck. The stanchions were then wedged and braced until they were locked so solidly into position that even a hurricane would not have shifted them.
By Friday morning the job was complete, but wanting to allay some of the anxieties aroused in Philippa by their rough and leaky passage from Tollesbury, Tom decided to postpone sailing until the Monday, to enable him to return one last time to Sutton. A watchman from Fay’s Yard was recruited to guard the ship and its stores, while the men dispersed for a final weekend at home.
Tom arrived back at eleven thirty on the Monday morning, 19 May, after a sleepless night and an uneasy parting from his family. He was a solid, practical man, not much given to shows of emotion, but as he had closed the garden gate that morning and looked back at his wife and children, his eyes had filled with tears. If anything went wrong… He dug his nails into his palms, driving the thought away. He forced himself to smile and gave a confident wave as he turned away from the gate, though the sight of his children’s tearful faces tore at his heart.
By the time he reached Southampton his mood had shifted to his customary stolid acceptance of whatever fate had in store for him. He had prepared himself, his boat and his crew as well as he knew how, and he was in God’s hands now.
The senior members of his crew were sharing little of his enthusiasm for the voyage and all of his misgivings. Continuing rumours circulating around Fay’s Yard about the state of the ship’s timbers had now unsettled Ned Brooks, who was trying to withdraw, though he later claimed: ‘I did not consider there was any risk in undertaking the voyage. Having always been brought up to the sea and small yachts and boats, I did not think there was any more danger in going to Sydney in the Mignonette than there would be in crossing the Channel. My friends, however, or everyone who spoke to me on the subject, tried to persuade me not to go.’
Tom went straight to the County Tavern in Northam, where he found Brooks surrounded by a number of cronies and already reeking of drink. It took two hours of argument and the threat of prosecution for desertion to persuade him to board the Mignonette.
Stephens also had to be fetched from his house twice, but in his case it was his wife who was the obstacle to be overcome. He had taken the berth on the yacht much against her wishes, and on the day of sailing she tried all she knew to persuade him not to make the voyage.
Stephens did not share his wife’s doubts, although he seemed frightened to argue with her, and hung back behind Tom, as if he, not Stephens, was married to her. Tom reasoned with her, and in the end prevailed. Stephens left his wife and mother sobbing on each other’s shoulders and followed Tom down to the mooring.
He later said: ‘I never had the least anticipation that the Mignonette was not seaworthy. Not being a yachtsman, I made enquiries before I shipped whether it would be safe and they all said that if she was properly handled, we should ride better than in a big vessel.’
The sole enthusiast among the crew was Richard Parker, who was so excited about the journey that he left home at five that morning, although he showed some regret as he said his farewells. ‘As he said goodbye, he kissed us both and hung upon our necks for several minutes,’ Mrs Matthews said. ‘I shall never forget it. He seemed then sorry that he was going to leave us and this was the first time he showed any regret for the resolve he had taken. That was the last I saw of him for I did not see the Mignonette leave the river.’