Confessions of a Preteen Powder Monkey - Part 5
Created | Updated Jul 2, 2006
The bloodthirsty pirates were charging all around me. Clutching my dagger in my teeth, with one heroic leap I fled to the sleeping quarters. My plan was simple, but ingenious; I would hide beneath the table until the scary people went away.
Wait a minute- isn’t this where you came in?
Looking back on my various voyages and ship-based adventures, my greatest regret is that I never fulfilled my greatest ambition; to grow an Errol Flynn moustache. Reflecting on this however, it was not that surprising, as I was only twelve at the time. Now aged thirteen, I can look back at my youthful idealism and naïveté with nostalgia, and even a slight disdain.
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, being captured by the infamous captain Williamson and being forced at knife point onto his ship.
You know, this sounds like a contender for the Stating-the-Bleeding-Obvious world championship, but jail cells are rarely as nice as you think they would be. Completely lacking in homely touches. If you are by some chance an inhabitant of Denmark and reading this, the word least associated with jail cells to you would be hugge. Jail cells on ships especially so. (Or alternatively: Yail keelus en flereb cëptinal dur.) I have been in several in my time, but this one would easily win the award for Jail Cell Most Likely to Cause Early Madness and/or Suicide. But not that bad once I had added the potted plant and poster, although they were technically a twig and a postcard won in a game of “one up” (the rules are simple; take a stone (“one”), throw it “up,” and then have a huge, pointless fight. This will provide hours of good clean fun). I had a lot of opportunity for this as I spent the night in the cell with the rest of the crew (normally hiding under the table while they played one up), and fortunately with a lot of effort we completely failed to come up with an escape plan. The next day I was let out because their ship’s boy had caught the pox, and they needed a replacement. You can’t get the staff these days.
“Dave” Williamson was the third best captain I’ve ever served under. Then again, he was also the worst. He was polite, apologetic, orderly, timid, and a vicious, murderous maniac. I was given the task of cleaning his quarters. The good side of this was that they were always spotless and immaculate anyway, so I had plenty of spare time to accidentally glance at a book that may just have happened to be his private diary, and which had completely spontaneously fallen open on the table. I felt rather disappointed about the content of the diary, which was less interesting than I had hoped, considering the fact that it had taken me several hours searching the room to find the wretched thing. A sample entry ran like this:
Tuesday
Woke. Got out of bed. Got dressed. No land in sight. Sailed North. Walked around ship. Breakfast: Hard tack, half teaspoon salt (flavouring for hard tack), nine tenths cup water. Strolled around ship. Lunch: Biscuit, half teaspoon salt (flavouring for hard tack), nine tenths cup water, half lime. Wandered around ship. Dinner: Hard tack, maggot (found in hard tack) half teaspoon salt (flavouring for maggot), half cup water. Lit candle. Opened diary. Wrote “Tuesday. Woke. Got out of bed. Got dressed. No land in sight. Sailed North. Walked around ship. Breakfast: Hard tack, half teaspoon salt half teaspoon salt teaspoon salt teas half spoon…
Towards the end of this his writing appeared more frantic, growing steadily smaller and messier. This was clearly the diary of a man driven mad with cabin fever. A murderous man driven mad with cabin fever. Who would shortly be returning to see what I was doing.
I gulped.
I heard a knock on the door. I desperately tried to remember where the position I had found the diary. I had just remembered that it had been either open, or shut, and on its front, back or one of its sides when the door opened. It was the captain. He stared at me, standing holding his diary open, pages facing the floor and looking at it with great interest and bewilderment. He looked at me with a bemused expression. “I was…” I scanned my mind for any believable excuse. Any excuse at all would do. “I was, uh, just, uh, airing the books.”
As is always the case, it would have been better if I said nothing.
“Oh. Good. Do go on,” he said, leaving and gently closing the door behind him. It was at this point that I really started to worry. Something, as they say, was up. “Dave” (the gentle diminutive really deserving inverted commas when used to describe him) may have been insane, but he wasn’t mad. He must have known what I was doing, but for some reason he did not comment.
Wait a minute- isn’t this where you came in?
Looking back on my various voyages and ship-based adventures, my greatest regret is that I never fulfilled my greatest ambition; to grow an Errol Flynn moustache. Reflecting on this however, it was not that surprising, as I was only twelve at the time. Now aged thirteen, I can look back at my youthful idealism and naïveté with nostalgia, and even a slight disdain.
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, being captured by the infamous captain Williamson and being forced at knife point onto his ship.
You know, this sounds like a contender for the Stating-the-Bleeding-Obvious world championship, but jail cells are rarely as nice as you think they would be. Completely lacking in homely touches. If you are by some chance an inhabitant of Denmark and reading this, the word least associated with jail cells to you would be hugge. Jail cells on ships especially so. (Or alternatively: Yail keelus en flereb cëptinal dur.) I have been in several in my time, but this one would easily win the award for Jail Cell Most Likely to Cause Early Madness and/or Suicide. But not that bad once I had added the potted plant and poster, although they were technically a twig and a postcard won in a game of “one up” (the rules are simple; take a stone (“one”), throw it “up,” and then have a huge, pointless fight. This will provide hours of good clean fun). I had a lot of opportunity for this as I spent the night in the cell with the rest of the crew (normally hiding under the table while they played one up), and fortunately with a lot of effort we completely failed to come up with an escape plan. The next day I was let out because their ship’s boy had caught the pox, and they needed a replacement. You can’t get the staff these days.
“Dave” Williamson was the third best captain I’ve ever served under. Then again, he was also the worst. He was polite, apologetic, orderly, timid, and a vicious, murderous maniac. I was given the task of cleaning his quarters. The good side of this was that they were always spotless and immaculate anyway, so I had plenty of spare time to accidentally glance at a book that may just have happened to be his private diary, and which had completely spontaneously fallen open on the table. I felt rather disappointed about the content of the diary, which was less interesting than I had hoped, considering the fact that it had taken me several hours searching the room to find the wretched thing. A sample entry ran like this:
Tuesday
Woke. Got out of bed. Got dressed. No land in sight. Sailed North. Walked around ship. Breakfast: Hard tack, half teaspoon salt (flavouring for hard tack), nine tenths cup water. Strolled around ship. Lunch: Biscuit, half teaspoon salt (flavouring for hard tack), nine tenths cup water, half lime. Wandered around ship. Dinner: Hard tack, maggot (found in hard tack) half teaspoon salt (flavouring for maggot), half cup water. Lit candle. Opened diary. Wrote “Tuesday. Woke. Got out of bed. Got dressed. No land in sight. Sailed North. Walked around ship. Breakfast: Hard tack, half teaspoon salt half teaspoon salt teaspoon salt teas half spoon…
Towards the end of this his writing appeared more frantic, growing steadily smaller and messier. This was clearly the diary of a man driven mad with cabin fever. A murderous man driven mad with cabin fever. Who would shortly be returning to see what I was doing.
I gulped.
I heard a knock on the door. I desperately tried to remember where the position I had found the diary. I had just remembered that it had been either open, or shut, and on its front, back or one of its sides when the door opened. It was the captain. He stared at me, standing holding his diary open, pages facing the floor and looking at it with great interest and bewilderment. He looked at me with a bemused expression. “I was…” I scanned my mind for any believable excuse. Any excuse at all would do. “I was, uh, just, uh, airing the books.”
As is always the case, it would have been better if I said nothing.
“Oh. Good. Do go on,” he said, leaving and gently closing the door behind him. It was at this point that I really started to worry. Something, as they say, was up. “Dave” (the gentle diminutive really deserving inverted commas when used to describe him) may have been insane, but he wasn’t mad. He must have known what I was doing, but for some reason he did not comment.
