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  Bloody Rain – Murder, Madness and the Monsoon

  Copyright © by Richard Spilman 2013

  ISBN : 978-0-9882360-2-8

  Publisher's Note: This a work of historical fiction. Certain characters and their actions may have been inspired by historical individuals and events. The characters in the novel, however, represent the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  Bloody Rain – Murder, Madness and the Monsoon

  The Queen Charlotte was anchored fore and aft off the Calcutta wharves in the Hoogly River, waiting for cargo. She was a fine, three masted iron bark; trim, low and fast on a reach - in all respects, the perfection of the shipbuilder's art. If she had a single great flaw, it was on her quarterdeck in the man that the owners had chosen as captain.

  Captain John McPherson was tall and broad. He carried himself with his shoulders squared away like the yards of a well trimmed ship. His black hair, cut short, was streaked with gray. The years of exposure to the wind and sun showed on his face, but he hadn't seemed to age so much as to have been hardened, with any trace of softness worn away by wind and weather.

  McPherson was, without question, the master of his ship. He saw to it that she was sailed smartly, whether the crowd before the mast were real sailors or just a mix of worthless gutter sweepings and farmers who didn't know a sow's ear from a scupper. The 1880s was a hard time for square riggers and the owners needed a hard man to squeeze out the last penny and the very last mile. That's what the owners wanted, and that was what Captain John McPherson gave them.

  It was the middle of June and the heat was like the very hobs of hell. The Queen Charlotte's black iron hull became its own oven in the pitiless sun. Even with tarpaulins rigged over the deck, there was hardly a breeze and the heat rose up from the ship itself to slowly cook the crew.

  Many masters would have gone easy on the men in the fo'c's'le under those conditions, but to Captain McPherson, it was just another port, and sailors who weren't kept working only caused trouble. He kept them all turned to - scraping, scrubbing, tarring, painting and seizing from dusk till dawn; the heat be damned.

  He lorded over them from the quarterdeck, wearing a linen jacket over a cotton shirt, choosing to ignore the heat, neither sparing himself nor the crew. If he could take it, so could they. He could see the look of loathing and fear in the eyes of the fo'c'sle hands as they glanced furtively aft. McPherson only smirked. It was as it should be.

  Order and discipline were all that mattered and order and discipline would be maintained on his ship, even if it meant, from time to time, pushing aside the mate to personally instruct a dawdling sailor with his fist or an iron belaying pin between the eyes. Sometimes he carried his pistol in his jacket pocket, just visible, peaking out above the linen, to serve as a warning to any sailor who thought to raise his voice.

  Some mates and captains were brutal because they believed that they had to to be for the good of the ship. Captain McPherson just happened to like it. You could see it in his eyes. Often as not, the ships he commanded made fast passages, which pleased the owners. They also appreciated the likelihood that many of his crew would desert before completing the voyage, which kept the wage costs low. In the owner's eyes, Captain McPherson was a fine officer indeed.

  The real sailors aboard saw him for who and what he was. To a man, they despised him. They would keep their heads down and jump to, for that was their only choice. One of the reasons that the Queen Charlotte had so many greenhorns and clerks was because the good sailors gave it a wide berth, arriving aboard only if they had been shanghaied, were drugged or insensibly drunk.

  Abaft the mast, everyone from the mates to the steward also feared the captain's wrath. That was the way it was on the Queen Charlotte. The Old Man was like the weather – to be borne and grumbled about, but not likely to change.

  It was another day on the muddy river. Captain McPherson paced the quarterdeck. Outwardly, he retained his composure, while inwardly he fumed. The cargo was late. They should have been loading by now. He had spent the morning in the agent's office listening to the longshore wallah, a short round man, who kept wiping the sweat from his brow with a dirty rag, as he made his whining excuses. The lightering barges were not available. The cargo had not been delivered. They couldn't load cargo that hadn't arrived onto barges that were not there.

  “Be assured, saab, we are doing every thing we can to expedite. Everything in our power. As soon as the cargo is arriving and the barges are free, we will be loading double quick. Worry not, saab.”

  McPherson grabbed the man by his collar. “Don't you address me as saab, you worthless heathen. You are to call me Captain. You get the barges and load the cargo, or I'll make you sorry that you were born a man and not a cockroach.”

  McPherson released the man's collar. The longshore wallah mumbled “Yes, sir, captain,” and fled the office. McPherson straighten his coat and walked to the landing to be rowed back to the Queen Charlotte. In his breast pocket was the latest telegraph from the owners asking for a sailing date - a date he could not give until he knew when the cargo was to be loaded. “God damn the Eastern Telegraph Company,” he thought. Life was far better when information traveled no faster than a ship and a ship's master could manage his affairs without the office in London pestering him.

  From the quarterdeck, Captain McPherson watched the mate, Robert Johnston, make his way aft from the t'gallant fo’c’sle. He had the rolling gait of an experienced seaman. He was a decent mate, probably the best seaman aboard the ship, but he was weak and McPherson loathed a weak officer. Johnston went too easy on the hands and no good could come of that.

  The mate climbed the quarterdeck ladder. “Yes, Mr. Johnston,” McPherson drawled.

  “Sir, I was thinking we might knock off during the afternoon watch. We've a good jump on the work and the heat is something dreadful.”

  The Captain looked over at the mate. “Are you getting soft on me, Mr. Johnston? Do you think that I am unaware of the heat?”

  “No, sir,” Johnston replied.

  “Keep 'em working. And if you can't handle the job, I'll find someone who can.”

  It was such an oft repeated threat that the mate saw no need to respond.

  “Did you search the fo'c'sle?”

  “Aye, sir. Six bottles, sir. All tossed into the river.”

  McPherson was a stickler for keeping liquor out of the hands of sailors. On his orders, the mates searched the fo'c'sle daily for the little black bottles of hootch smuggled aboard from the Hooghly bum boats. There was nothing worse, in his eyes, than a drunken sailor. It was a weakness he hated in others and secretly despised in himself. The captain, however, was no fo'c'sle hand. He drank, but that was a captain's prerogative and, at least, he kept it under control.

  After a week of unrelenting labor, the crew seemed only a day or two short of mutiny. The officers and warrants were no happier. Captain McPherson finally had them all where he wanted them. It was time to give them all a run ashore. European sailors were overpaid, anyway. If some didn't come back and he had to replace them with lowly paid Lascars, well, so much the better. They would forfeit their wages and save the owners' money. It would also would give him a crowd of new green hands to instruct in the finer points of seamanship. And teach them, he mos
t assuredly would.

  The captain gave everyone leave to go ashore, except for Miguel Silva, the ship's carpenter known by all as Chips. The skylight in his cabin, hit by a boarding sea on the trip north, was still leaking, and he would be damned if the lazy carpenter went ashore until it was fixed.

  Chips had been working as hard as everyone else. Perhaps harder. As he watched the crew troop down the gangway and board the waiting sampans, soon to disappear into the bars, bazaars and brothels that lined the dark alleys of Calcutta's Sailortown, Chips just got more angry. He started yanking out the old caulking, driving in new oakum with his mallet, cursing beneath his breath at the worthless bastard who kept him working when everyone else was ashore. The longer he worked, the angrier he became.

  After about an hour's work, sweating in the heat, though the sun had set two hours before, he had had enough. He stowed his tools in his canvas carry-all and went to his cabin to clean up. He put on his shore-going togs and headed to the gangway.

  Captain McPherson, drinking in his private cabin, noticed the lack of sound coming from the skylight. He went on deck to find the work