The runners’ victims were brought ashore and delivered to the crimps, who would ply them with drink and drugs, surround them with whores, part them from their wages and often ship them out again the same night. A few waterside boarding-houses had trap-doors through which the unconscious victims could be lowered into a waiting boat without even leaving the building. Seamen just returned from a year or more away might open their eyes to discover themselves outward-bound once more on another hell-ship with no money in their pocket and their first two or three months’ wages lost to the crimp’s commission.
Some operators were not above passing off a dead body, pulled from the harbour, collected from the street after a fatal brawl, or bought from the custodian of the Dead House — the morgue where unclaimed bodies were stored: soused in gin or rum, it would be delivered to a ship, just one more unconscious crew member, and the deception would not be discovered until the ship had sailed, the crimp’s commission safely secured.
Many of the tailors fitting out seamen for ocean voyages also operated practices that were as venal as those of the crimps. They would lend money against a sailor’s advance note — a letter of credit given by a ship’s captain to enable his crewmen to equip themselves for the voyage. The note was not cashed until the ship had sailed, but the tailors would lend money against it, and once more ply the seaman with whores and drugged drinks. The comatose victim would be carried to his ship by the tailor’s runners and wake to find that his advance note had disappeared. All he had to show for it was a sore head and — if he was lucky — a sea-chest full of often worthless second-hand clothes, which might even have been stripped from dead bodies. The ship’s captains who cashed the advance notes would often share the proceeds of the tailors’ scams.
So many seamen were victims of the crimps, boarding-house masters and tailors that the ceremony of ‘selling the dead horse’ was a feature of most voyages around the Horn or the Cape. A symbolic wooden horse whittled by one of the crew was pitched into the sea to celebrate the end of the time that the seamen had worked for nothing to pay off the commissions and advance notes.
Long after the press-gang had been outlawed, crimps continued the forced recruitment of seamen; well into the twentieth century men were still being delivered to ships unconscious, or comatose through drink or drugs.
Tom steered well clear of the crimps and boarding-house masters of Southampton, preferring to find a crew that was both willing and able by spreading the word around the boatyards, yachting agents and dock-side taverns. He had little difficulty in finding the men he wanted. Although not comparable with earnings on a good racing yacht, the rates of pay he was offering were above the norm for ships on the Australia run, and food, which was often charged against the men’s wages, was included. It was also of much better quality than that likely to be supplied on most merchant ships.
The ship’s articles specified that each man was to receive a weekly ration of six pounds of beef, three and three-quarter pounds of pork, one pint of peas and seven pounds of ‘hard tack’ — ship’s biscuit. In addition there was one and a half pounds of flour per week, used for the fresh bread baked on Sundays, one-eighth of an ounce of tea, two ounces of sugar, and a daily water ration of three quarts. There would be no alcohol on board. Although not a teetotaller, Tom was a moderate drinker who preferred a sober crew, unfortified by grog.
He also offered the customary arrangement of finding return voyages for his crew aboard British vessels at standard wages, or paying the cost of their passages home, though there was the promise of work for all of them in Sydney if they wanted to stay.
Edmund ‘Ned’ Brooks was the first to sign, engaged as able seaman and ship’s cook at five pounds ten shillings a month, with the offer of continuing work at the same rates on the Mignonette in Sydney. He heard about the berth through the shipwright at Fay’s Yard, where he worked as a rigger between jobs at sea.
A native of Brightlingsea, just up the coast from Tollesbury, he had been at sea since the age of twelve and had known Tom since the early 1870s, when they had crewed rival racing yachts. He was three days short of his thirty-eighth birthday when he signed the ship’s articles, but whether through error or befuddlement with drink, he gave his age as thirty-nine.
He had been in steady work for a number of years, spending the summers as a yacht hand and the winters on the steamers of the Union Lines, most recently the Athenian, and it surprised Tom that Brooks did not have better accommodation than his dingy lodgings at the County Tavern in Northam, run by Mary Egerton.
Brooks was taller and more powerfully built than Tom, and his dark eyes and brooding expression, framed by his jet-black hair, gave him a permanently sullen air; but he was a highly regarded yacht hand, and had raced for four seasons under Captain O’Neill, one of the most successful skippers of racing cutters.
A lavish new yacht was nearing completion at Fay’s Yard, which O’Neill was to skipper that season. Brooks had the offer of a berth on her and the prospect of a share in her prize money, but he preferred to cast in his lot with Tom and the Mignonette, telling him that he wanted to make a new life for himself in the colonies.
He was a heavy drinker, as many seamen were, ashore or afloat, but there were also rumours in Northam and Brightlingsea that he had abandoned a wife and children. Tom had heard the stories and charged Brooks with them, but he vehemently denied it on his oath, and Tom felt he had no option but to trust him. Whatever the question marks over his domestic arrangements, Brooks was a first-class yacht hand and Tom knew he was lucky to have secured him for the voyage.
He chose James Haines as mate, offering him seven pounds a month. Originally from Turnchapel in Devon, where Tom had met him while living in the neighbouring village of Oreston seven years before, Haines was now based in Southampton. He had held a Master Mariner’s certificate for six years and his last ship had been the Lord Elsington out of Newcastle.
The last crew member to sign up was also the youngest. Richard Parker came from Itchen Ferry, in the parish of St Mary Extra. It was just over the water from Fay’s Yard, on the far bank of the river from Southampton. He was engaged as ordinary seaman at one pound fifteen shillings a month. Like the others, he had the option of continuing as a crewman on the Mignonette after they reached Sydney.
Tom liked him at once and would not have disagreed with the description of the boy later volunteered by one of his peers: ‘Honest, civil and obliging, whilst his physique gave promise of his becoming a smart man.’
Richard was slightly less than honest in one respect, however. He was so keen to take the berth on the Mignonette that he lied about his age, claiming to be eighteen, when in fact he had only just turned seventeen.
He was the youngest of four sons of Daniel Parker, a fisherman and yachtsman, master of the yawl Medora. Richard’s brothers were all sailors too. The eldest, Daniel, was a hand on the yacht Marguerite, Stephen worked on the Itchen ferries and William was another yacht hand. Richard also had a younger sister, Edith.
His father, known as ‘Old Chick’, had been a well-known local character and a noted batsman with the village cricket team, ‘a regular old Itchen ferryman, fishing in the winter and yachting in the summer, and he was the champion in wielding the willow on the village green’.