The afternoon brought with it kinder waters and the shallop moved closer to Boon Island. Deane and the crew of the shallop were now within shouting distance of each other. Deane told the New Englanders most of what had happened to him and his crew since the shipwreck. He made a point of not mentioning that the survivors were in want of food. The implication of Deane’s omission was that if supplies were delivered to the island then it might become evident what Deane and the men had had to do to avoid starvation. There was no way of predicting how the fishermen might respond to that knowledge. It was best, in Deane’s eyes, to avoid difficult questions for the time being.
The one thing Deane did request was the means to make a fire. The crew of the shallop agreed and dispatched a man in a canoe. The canoe reached Boon Island safely and Deane helped drag it ashore. The fisherman, standing face to face with John Deane, couldn’t speak for a moment. He was shocked to silence by Deane’s emaciated form and wasted appearance. Deane asked him questions and the man found his voice. Deane wanted to know what day it was. He wanted to know about the Swede.
The fisherman didn’t know anyone called Swede. Someone had found the remains of a raft on the mainland shore. They had found a dead man on shore, frozen solid with a paddle tied to his wrist. It wasn’t the Swede. The Swede, whoever he was, must have been lost to the ocean. But the presence of the raft meant a shipwreck and the prospect of survivors. The local government had been moved to send a search party to seek out the marooned.
Deane led the fisherman across Boon Island toward the tent. On the way, the fisherman spotted a pile of raw meat on the rocks. He expressed pleasure that the survivors had had a ready source of food to eat during their ordeal. John Deane agreed but didn’t elaborate on the true nature of the meat, allowing the fisherman to walk to the tent comforted in his ignorance.
Once again the fisherman was stunned when he saw the physical state of the rest of the men. He helped them to build a fire and then talked to John Deane about how best to get them off the island. It was agreed that Deane would return to the shallop with the fisherman in the canoe. Then the canoe would come back, the plan being to empty the island of survivors one or two at a time. John Deane climbed into the canoe and nature’s black comedy played itself out once again when a wave forced the canoe into a rock and John Deane and the fisherman went into the sea. Deane barely had the strength to swim back to shore. The canoe was retrieved. It was relaunched but without Deane. The fishermen promised to return the next day if the weather wasn’t too dangerous. The shallop sailed back toward the mainland.
The sky turned black. A storm blew up. The storm lasted the night and the length of the next day. Nobody came back for Deane and his men that day. It was too dangerous to sail. The survivors’ spirits were low but the fire made a difference.
The fire was never to be left unattended. At any time, during the day or night, two or three of the crew were given the task of feeding and stoking the flames. But to begin with the fire was more of a hindrance than a blessing. There wasn’t any kind of vent for the smoke within the tent. The men had failed to pre-empt this and asphyxiated themselves until a tear could be made in the roof to let the smoke out. The other obvious benefit of the fire was cooked food. That evening the carpenter’s flesh was broiled and the men had their first hot meal on the island. Cooked flesh inflamed the men’s desire for more. Deane was pragmatic. He increased their ration in the hope that it would sate the men’s hunger somewhat.
During the night John Deane was lying on his side, unable to sleep. Two members of the crew were tending to the fire. They were talking in a furtive manner. Deane couldn’t hear what they were saying but inferred mischief by the tone of their conversation. One of the two men crawled out of the tent. He returned with a piece of carpenter’s flesh and began to cook it in the fire. John Deane erupted. He grabbed the meat and publically denounced both men before the rest of the crew who had been rudely woken up by the violent disturbance. Deane was angry. He was fully intent on punishing the thieves. But his fury seemed to dissipate as soon as it had risen and he merely reprimanded them instead.
On the morning of 4 January some kind of moral semblance seemed to have reinforced itself in the routine of the men. The men were praying when their devotions were interrupted by the sound of a gunshot, a musket fired into the air to get their attention. Deane and the men left the tent. A shallop was anchored near the island. A canoe disembarked from the shallop. Aboard the canoe were two friends of John Deane: Captain William Lang, an Englishman; and Captain Jethro Furber, a native of New England. The captains were accompanied by three more men. The weather was good enough to effect a rescue.
In comparison with the drama of Deane and company’s trilogy of abortive attempts to leave Boon Island, Lang and Furber’s rescue was comparatively mundane in its efficacy. It took two hours to transfer the crew from the island to the shallop. Talking with his rescuers it became evident to Deane that, had the survivors left with the fishermen on 2 January, they might not have survived. During the storm the shallop had struggled to get back to shore. But the fishermen got word to the authorities in Portsmouth who had made haste to get to Boon Island as quickly as they could.
John Deane was taken aboard the shallop first. The rest followed in twos and threes. Many of them had to be physically carried onto the boat.
On board the shallop, on the way to Portsmouth, the survivors were given a bit of bread to eat and a dram of rum to drink. It was a deliberately small ration followed up a short while later with a bowl of gruel. The sea took a rough turn. The men threw the gruel up. The effect of the vomiting was twofold. It cleansed the men’s stomachs but also intensified their hunger. The crew of the shallop, for health’s sake, had to take extra care to control their guests’ intake of food, now that food was more freely available.
The shallop sailed up the Piscataqua River. It docked at Portsmouth. The men were delivered into the care of the locals. There were numerous amputations of gangrenous toes and frostbitten fingers.
Once they had convalesced awhile, the crew members that weren’t directly embroiled in the feud that was to flare up between Deane and Langman drifted off, ‘some sailing one way and some another’.
3
The First Mate’s Tale
What follows is based on Christopher Langman, Nicholas Mellin and George White’s version of events.
The Nottingham Galley sailed from Gravesend on 2 August 1710 with a cargo of rope.
Christopher Langman was displeased with the state of the ship. Four of the ten guns didn’t work and of the fourteen-man crew, Langman would claim that, ‘not above six were capable to serve in the ship, in the case of bad weather.’
On 7 August the Nottingham Galley joined a convoy of merchant ships headed for Scotland. The convoy was protected by two men of war. The Nottingham Galley enjoyed the safety of the convoy until Whitby. A gale blew up. The convoy refused to sail during the bad weather. Captain John Deane left the convoy, deciding to chance it and made for Ireland where he was to pick up the rest of his cargo.