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PRAISE FOR BOOK OF WAR There is no doubt that James Whyle is an accomplished, accurate, forceful writer. Ken Barris, Cape Times The Book of War is a stunning debut novel, well written and therefore powerfully disturbing. John Boje, Pretoria News A brilliant, unforgettable debut. Andrew Donaldson, The Times Candid, compelling, at times engagingly droll and written with a subtlety that packs powerful effects into simple-seeming prose, Whyle’s book is a triumphant mix of evocative period detail and modern social and political resonances. Anthony Stidolph, The Witness Whyle’s novel is a masterpiece of exquisite prose depicting one of the many times in our country where faceless violence ruled … Whyle’s strength as a writer takes the novel to heights of its own … The Book of War is a great book, in every sense of the word. Janet van Eeden, LitNet This is a strangely poetic book and strangely gripping … Whyle’s writing show[s] moments of pure beauty – and often so in the most unexpected circumstances. Hadrien Diaz, africanbookclub.com i
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For anyone who savours the mystique of our history, this novel will take you there and then some. Jane Rosenthal, Mail & Guardian The novel is sparingly written – lyrical words and imaginative metaphors are herded into terse, pragmatic sentences. Sarah Laurence, Wanted at Large
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Walk James Whyle
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First published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2013 10 Orange Street Sunnyside Auckland Park 2092 South Africa +2711 628 3200 www.jacana.co.za © James Whyle, 2013 All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-4314-0920-4 Also available as an e- book 978-1-4314-0921-1 d-PDF 978-1-4314-0922-8 ePUB 978-1-4314-0923-5 mobi file Cover design by publicide Set in Cochin 11/14.5pt Job no. 002090 Map on p vii from Crampton, H. 2004. The Sunburnt Queen, Johannesburg: Jacana Media Maps on pp 130–32 from Kirby, P. R. 1953. A Source Book on the Wreck of the Grosvenor East Indiaman. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za iv
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Preface Historical truth is as elusive as an electron in its orbit. If a writer can get a spanner on one aspect of an event, he can be sure that he has, by that very action, rendered an equivalent aspect unknowable. That said, what follows is not a fiction dreamt up by a scribe. It is a treatment, a version, a re-presentation of ‘The Journal and Evidence of William Hubberly’. The journal was written some years after the appalling events described in it, but it is supported by the extensive supplementary material collected in A Source Book on the Wreck of the Grosvenor East Indiaman. The Source Book contains, besides the journal, the official English East India Company reports on the wreck, including that from the Heligert Muller party which searched for survivors. No names or dates have been altered in the writing of Walk. Hubberly’s account has, however, been expanded on, as though a painter had produced a version of a previous work, portraying in detail areas only sketched by his predecessor. Outside of these liberties, Walk might almost be described as a documentary. It is, in its bones if not its flesh, a true story.
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© Hazel Crampton
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Map 1 – Southern Africa
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One may travel 200 or 300 mylen through the country, without any cause of fear from men, provided you go naked, and without any iron or copper, for these things give inducement to the murder of those who have them. Neither need one be in any apprehension about meat and drink, as they have in every village or kraal a house of entertainment for travellers, where these are not only lodged, but fed also . . . Dutch survivors of the wreck of the Stavenisse, 1686
In the night John Howse, a seaman . . . died through great weariness. William Hubberly’s journal, A Source Book on the Wreck of the Grosvenor East Indiaman
The limit of man’s knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest, which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination. Charles Darwin
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The Wreck Part 1
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Sunday the 4th of August 1782 At eight o’clock at night the Grosvenor was standing to the west before a fine fresh gale. The main topgallant was on deck to ease the mainmast which was not tight above and the vessel sailed under single reef topsails and fore-topgallant. The gale increased during the first watch and when the boy went on deck at midnight it had veered to the south-west and was blowing hard. There was a high sea running and the boy climbed up with the watch to take in the topsails. The wind moaned in the ropes and as they swayed and lurched there at their precarious labour they saw two large and spreading orange lights which glowed and shifted in the west. The mate, Mr Logie, lay ill in his cabin with his pregnant wife, and Mr Shaw, the second mate, was called up. The luminescences were strange to him and he surmised that they were phenomena of the air, perhaps akin to the radiance which sometimes casts green skeins through the night sky in regions close to the Arctic Circle. The lights were erased, first one and then the next, from their dark canvas and the gale increased and the seas with it. Despite his opinion on the lights, Mr Shaw thought it prudent to lay the ship eastwards. Captain Coxon came on deck before the order could be given. He reminded Mr Shaw that the Grosvenor could not possibly be within three hundred miles of any land. They were riding a fair gale and the ocean was empty before them. They had hopes of reaching Saint Helena soon. Waiting
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for them would be the first mail from England which they had seen in two years. They must speed west with the good wind. At four the watch was relieved and the boy went below and slumbered in his swinging hammock. At half past the hour, a seaman, Thomas Lewis, was aloft on the foretop masthead when he saw surf on the starboard bow. He climbed down to the forecastle and reported it. Those who were stationed there were divided. Some were certain that they could see land. Others saw only a heavy squall in the fogginess of the predawn. A seaman named Mixon ran aft and told the third mate, Mr Beale. Beale reminded Mixon that there was no land for waves to break upon at that latitude. Mixon suggested that Mr Beale cross the deck and look to starboard for himself. Mr Beale would not. Mixon then went into the roundhouse and woke Captain Coxon, who came on deck and gave immediate and energetic orders to turn the ship. The boatswain called all hands and the helm was put a’weather. They worked the Grosvenor round and some hands were in the act of hoisting the mizzen-staysail when the boy heard an extended tectonic rending. Standing there with his bare feet upon the planks, he felt the resonance of the collision in his bones and knew that it signalled a prodigious shift in the nature of things. The ship’s motion ceased and the boy stared up at the masts in the expectation that they would fall. The crew looked about, one man at another. If the captain’s calculations were correct, they were fast
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upon an uncharted rock in waters south of Africa. A period of despair and confusion ensued. Some ran about to no purpose and others fell to their knees and prayed to their various gods to deliver them. More practical minds turned to the boats, but the ocean was running mountains high in violent squalls of wind and rain. Flashes of lightning revealed creamy surf roaring all about as great surges of energy ground the Grosvenor against stone. At half past five the wind shifted and blew off the land. Captain Coxon had hopes that he could keep the vessel above water until daylight and run her aground in a more convenient location. She lay broadside to the reef, and so he ordered the crew to cut loose the headsail, sheet home the fore-topsail and hoist it with the jib. The work was quickly done and the sails filled and the Grosvenor twisted her head off the rocks. Her stern, however, hung fast and the vessel began to fill. She was now in danger of sliding head first into six fathoms. Within ten minutes there was water on the gun decks forward and the gunner stood staring at the powder he was too late to save. Captain Coxon reversed his strategy and the foremast and mainmast were cut away. The mainmast toppled clear of the ship, but the crew had neglected to remove the lanyards of the foreshrouds. The foremast was roped to the ship and it began, with each incoming wave, to batter her bows in. A greyness eased the gloom of the eastern horizon and a small measure of relief spread about the vessel as the reef revealed itself to be attached
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to a sandy beach to the north. Low hills became visible. They were dotted with domed huts. Further inland were higher hills that were blackened by the fires which Mr Shaw had misinterpreted on the evening previous. They were aground upon the main continent of Africa. The crew’s aim was now to get ashore and the boatswain and several hands set about casting loose the jolly-boat. A swell rolled in and curled up high above the Grosvenor and it shattered on her bows and it roared up her sloping decks and its white water picked up the jolly-boat and reduced it to kindling against the wheel. The captain stood there drenched with Mr Logie and the distraught passengers. The children cried out in panic and clung to the women and Coxon stared at the steering gear as if in hope that a miracle might yet render its mechanisms useful. The boatswain and his men started to collect shattered spars with a mind to constructing a raft. The boy ran aft and looked toward the land. He saw, across a stretch of churning water, men and women with tall conical headdresses who gathered on the rocks. They gesticulated among themselves and observed the ship. The boy waved his arms and cried out. Help, he called. Help us. Other sailors shouted in Italian and French and English and Portuguese and Hindi and Spanish and Malay. They stood and shouted in many tongues and they were like sacrificial victims upon a crumbling tower in some cataclysm in Babylon. The people on
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land shouted also and then, as if upon a signal, they dispersed and began to pick with concentration among the wreckage that was washing up. Full daylight revealed that the Grosvenor had struck a reef of rocks parallel to the edge of the continent and some two cables’ length from the shore. Waves crashed against sheer cliffs to the south. To the north was the sandy bay. The vessel was being hammered shoreward inch by inch. Her aft sections were fast upon the wall of a jagged basin, a confused wash of white water where surges thrown back by the rocks collided with those incoming in great churns and spouts. To gain dry land, this maelstrom would have to be crossed. The boy squatted among the ruins of the wheelhouse and watched as the passengers conferred with the captain. Mr Hosea was most concerned about his wife and baby and wanted to know how his diamonds would be got ashore. Merchants Taylor and Williams had similar questions pertaining to their small chests of Madras pagodas and Arcot rupees. The officers stood off to one side and all about there were groups of sailors in consultation upon their own survival. The captain then offered a substantial reward to any man who would carry a line to the shore. The various groups consulted further and from one of them two Italians, Pandolpho and Burkini, stepped forward to accept the contract. Each man took the end of a log-line between his teeth, lowered himself over the stern, and launched into the waves. The boy watched with the rest and he saw the Italians
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disappear into white water and rise up again and swim strongly. They reached the rocks after much struggle and a wave came and it carried Pandolpho with it but Burkini was smashed against an outcrop of barnacle-studded granite which ripped open his skull. He went down with the receding water and did not come up again. Pandolpho clung to a slanted slab and climbed a little but a wave came and dislodged him and left him lower than before. Some paces above him a group of men stood and watched. Their faces were painted with red ochre and their hair stood tall in the strange cones and they were all but naked. Three Lascars, having seen that it was possible to reach the shore, now threw themselves into the water and all gained the rocks and clambered out and were surrounded by the men standing there so that they disappeared from view. They emerged again with Pandolpho and they pulled in the logline and the rope to which it was attached and then a seven-inch hawser. They made the hawser fast to the rocks and a hauling line with it. Sailors on the Grosvenor slung a thimble on the hawser and bowsed the chain taut. A wooden graton was roped by its four corners and hung from the thimble. Isaac Blair, the captain’s servant, climbed aboard the slatted platform and was pulled ashore with a large bundle of necessities. As the graton was hauled back the Grosvenor shifted shoreward and the hawser sagged. The graton snared on an outcrop and then it shattered and dispersed piece by piece into the surge.
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A number of sailors now mounted the hawser and attempted to warp along it with a new line. The hawser hung so slack that the surf broke over it at its lowest point and the sailors were swept from their hold. Only three strong swimmers were able to gain the shore and none of them was carrying a line. Some men made lines fast to casks and pieces of wood and leapt into the sea in the hope that they would be washed to the rocks but they were not. A mood of despair now gripped the vessel. Sailors sat where they were and declared themselves lost and urged that all should pray together and accept their fate. Others went about and plundered the passengers’ belongings and broke into the lazaretto for the liquor stores and two became so intoxicated that they drowned there. By noon the boatswain’s group had lashed a substantial raft together and a larger wave came and John Hynes, a foremast man, was jammed between the raft and the stump of the mast and lucky to escape intact. The raft was cast over the side and a rope made fast to it. A throng with bundles of possessions stood ready to embark. It was agreed that crew members should be the first to test the craft. William Millbourn, a midshipman, Simon Griffiths, boatswain’s mate, and Christopher Shear, a poulterer, climbed down. They clung there and the raft rocked and wallowed and white water crashed over it and swept their belongings from them. Those observing on deck now changed their minds about disembarking. The raft was cut away
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and three big waves took it quickly to the rocks and others battered it against them so that it started to break up. Millbourn and Griffiths and Shear sank from view amid the wreckage. The Grosvenor was giving way in several places and turning slowly onto her side. At half past twelve she parted into two halves at the main hatchway and the sea rushed into the roundhouse and the women and children were moved to the starboard quarter gallery. This little sloping balcony was soon crowded and even there the water started to come over and threatened to wash survivors from their handholds. The boy looked to the hawser and he saw that its sagging middle was blocked by three sailors who had become entangled there. He stripped down to his trousers and he waited with Mr Shaw and Jeremiah Evans. The sea washed the tangled sailors off and they swam and the boy looped himself to the hawser with a length of rope around his middle. He slid down the cold, rough chain and gripped with his legs and pulled himself forward with his arms. He heard surf crash behind him and then he lived in the churn of white water and when it had passed he was clinging beneath the hawser with arms and legs. He struggled to right himself and the next wave came and with his limbs looped about the chain he was washed shoreward. He focused his wits upon breathing when his head was clear and he kept a strong loose grip that allowed each rush of water to wash him along the chain. Once he was left clinging with one hand and half drowned but he
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regained his breath and his grip and the next wave took him to the rocks. He clung for a moment and then he slipped the knot that bound him to the hawser. He reached for a handhold on the stone and a wave came and washed him up and pulled him back but he gained a hold and climbed a little and then a hand came from above and he took it and he was hauled up and staggered out and dropped to his knees. After a time he stood and went back to the hawser and saw Jeremiah Evans being pulled onto the rocks. He searched for a sign of Mr Shaw and as a wave receded he saw him hanging strangely upside down with his loop of rope tangled about his knees. He jerked about there like an inverted marionette upon the strings of a drunken puppeteer. The boy took a length of rope from a sailor and tied it to his waist and climbed down. He took Mr Shaw’s hand and a wave came and covered them and Mr Shaw’s knees came free from the rope. Man and boy were scraped against the barnacles as the wave receded but they were held by the boy’s rope and they were hauled bleeding to dry land. Between three and four o’clock the stern of the Grosvenor went all to pieces with a hundred persons still on it. A few were washed ashore on segments of the wreck but the majority clung to the starboard quarter which was still fast to the hawser. This segment held together and was quickly driven shoreward and lodged in a gully. Sailors bowsed the hawser taut again and the women and children were all got safe across and by five o’clock every
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person who was still living had reached the land. Throughout the day the red-painted people had been searching and picking among the wreckage and taking what they found to great fires which they made just above the high-water mark. There on the sand they burnt free the metal they coveted from the wood which they did not. As the sun set over the burnt hills they departed for their dwellings and they displayed no more interest in the castaways than they would in outcrops of rock scattered upon that coast and barely changed since the time when apes first mastered fire. The shivering castaways gathered around the deserted flames. A sailor found a mizzen topsail washed up with the mast still attached and these were formed into a tent for the women and children. The rest of the survivors removed to a small wooded dip where a stream of fresh water dissipated into rocks and sand. They dined upon charred goose and fowl which had drowned and washed up and then they huddled on the sand about their fires. The Grosvenor had been a world to them and that world was gone. They were like somnambulists who struggle to wake from a nightmare and cannot. Nor ever will.
Monday the 5th of August With the coming of daylight the mates mustered all hands. Although there was some confusion as to the exact numbers of the Lascars, it was surmised
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that fifteen souls had been lost. The boy was sent out with a party which found a washed-up mizzen topsail with its yard. They conveyed this to the place where they had slept, and erected a tent. In the small bay to the north they found a pipe of wine and a barrel of arrack and casks of flour and a tub of salt beef and pork. These were carried to the tent and placed under Captain Coxon’s supervision. By midmorning most able-bodied castaways were searching the seashore for items of use. The boy looked up from the rocks and saw groups of men and women approaching. They were tall and powerful and they moved easily across the hillsides and their faces were painted in ochre masks. The men were armed with iron-tipped lances and they carried oval shields of hard cowhide. They consigned their arms to the care of their women and then they commenced to search along the tide mark. The boy’s party found some copper saucepans and carpenter’s tools and two small firearms. They came to the northern end of the beach and they turned back and they were intercepted and surrounded. The boy was holding a saucepan and a man reached out and grasped it. The boy held fast and swore. The agitation became violent and some of the ochre men darted off and returned with their lances. The sailors were ready to do battle wielding whatever they had in hand. The boy stood with his pan held like a club but Mr Shaw shouted that their spoils should be given up. The sailors were reluctant but Mr Shaw insisted
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and the man ripped the pan from the boy’s grasp like an indignant citizen retrieving an object from a thief. The people moved off with their spoils and the castaways stood and watched. One man held a flintlock pistol which he turned in his hands and examined and then he shook it next to his ear and listened for anything it might contain. He lifted it by the barrel and held it close to his right eye and he stared keenly down the bore. He shook it again next to his ear. He felt at the frizzen and seemed puzzled by its action back and forth above the pan and he tried to twist it off and failed. He handed the weapon to a companion who turned it in his hands and shook his head and returned it. The man took the pistol by the barrel and squatted and hammered it against a stone until the wood splintered. He picked the shattered woody fragments from the mechanism and then he weighed the remaining metal in his hand. The castaways made their way along the beach. The boy was despondent and failed to watch his feet and he kicked his toe against a protruding rock. He dropped down onto the sand and clasped his foot and cursed. Mr Shaw stopped and turned and watched him. After a time the boy rose and they proceeded. They reached the tents and found there a group of Lascars and sailors who shouted and sang and the boy could smell on their breaths the liquors they had consumed. Other parties returned with stories of disturbing encounters with the people. Many castaways argued for immediate reprisal
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and the encampment became a maelstrom of fear and shouting and complaint and threat. Mr Shaw spoke with Captain Coxon and the captain gave the order to muster all hands and some kind of official assembly was achieved. Captain Coxon offered an urgent warning against provoking any misunderstanding with the natives. All provisions and implements useful to the commonweal were then handed in and placed under guard in the tent. The shoreline was dotted all about with burst bales of silk and cotton and from these bales and their contents more tents were erected so that the castaways could spend the night in one consolidated position. The officers distributed to each survivor a small portion of flour and some arrack and some salt beef. Two saucepans which had been hidden from the people were used to make a stew for the women and children. At eight o’clock more arrack was shared out and the able-bodied men were divided into watches and a guard was set over the provisions. Throughout the night the Lascars discussed their intention to part from the company and proceed by themselves to the Cape of Good Hope.
Tuesday the 6th of August At sunrise the captain assembled the crew and addressed the Lascars whose demeanour was much changed. Many were suffering from an aching of the head and they squinted and shaded their eyes
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from the light. Coxon stood in his bedraggled coat with his hair all awry and he gestured with passion. If you leave us and walk to the Cape the Dutchmen will thank you for delivering yourselves and accept you as slaves. You will become the possessions of the Dutch and you will not experience liberty again in this world. If you stay with me and accept my authority, I will provide you with a passage to Bengal when we reach the Cape. The Lascars spoke among themselves and reached a swift consensus. They would remain. Coxon then ordered all uninjured males to search the shoreline for items of use. The boy went out with Mr Shaw’s party and they scrambled over the rocks where the silks and cottons lay twisted and draped in bright swathes in the gullies and black crabs scuttled over them. They found two pieces of salt beef in the remains of a cask and they moved onto the beach and the boy saw a shape on the tide mark. He stepped towards it and it moved and he saw that it was a hog from the ship. He shouted to Mr Shaw and ran towards the animal which stood and stared about as if astonished and then hobbled on three legs up the beach and scrambled up a bank and into a fringe of dune forest. The boy followed and came through the trees and saw the hog standing at bay in the undergrowth. He turned to shout again and heard a sound and when he turned back there was a lance that protruded from the hog at the point where the neck met the shoulder. The boy stared at this wonder and the hog shrieked and sought escape. The shaft
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moved with it and struck a tree trunk and the hog froze. Five men came out of the trees with lances held ready at the shoulder and they surrounded the hog. It shrieked as the lances went in and its spasms had not entirely ceased when they turned it on its back and eviscerated it. That’s ours. One of the men lifted the red mask of his face towards the boy. He held his lance close to the blade and blood ran down it and onto his hand. That’s not your hog. It came from the ship. The man turned to his companions and he spoke and some of them smiled in their red faces and grunted in affirmation and then they continued with their work. Mr Shaw came up with Mr Taylor and Mr Williams. They stood with the boy and they watched the butchering of the hog and then Mr Shaw took the boy by the shoulder and they went back onto the beach and carried their pieces of salt beef to the tents. In the afternoon the captain consulted with the officers and the passengers and they decided that given the disposition of the people and the scarceness of provisions obtained, the party would set forward towards the Cape next morning. They were confident of reaching the first Dutch settlements within sixteen days. They would walk.
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