With this post Siss and Barbaria are launching their newest adventure. We hope everyone likes it.
It is the 16th of May, 1834 and our 27th day out of Bristol aboard HMS Malevolent. We had been making good progress early in our journey, but for the past week we have languished in the doldrums … enduring day after day of baking under the sun on a placid sea with scarcely a breeze to fill the sails.
But now the wind is behind us and we are moving again. Nonetheless the long spell in the doldrums has put us well behind schedule. Food and water have begun to run short and our meager rations have been cut.
Hunger gnawing mercilessly at our stomachs eventually drove me and my girlfriend to break into the ship’s larder late at night. We simply wanted to steal something extra to eat. Unfortunately we were caught, and now we have to face punishment for our greed.
Ours is a prison ship, a three mast Barque engaged by the Crown to carry transportees’ to the notorious Australian penal colony at Marquarie Harbour on the west coast of Tasmania. We are just two of more than 150 convicts … both men and women … held deep in the cramped bowels of the ship.
Most of us are guilty of common everyday crimes against property, but which … because of the notorious “bloody code” … carry the death penalty. By agreeing to be transported to a penal colony, we have escaped ... at least temporarily… being executed for our crimes.
My girlfriend’s name is Catherine, although I like to call her Siss. I am Barbara. We are both from Cornwall, the wayward daughters of poor local tenant farmers recently resettled in London’s teeming East End.
Since having been caught late last night with pieces of hardtack bread stuffed both in our pockets and mouths, we have been confined to the small brig in the forecastle of the ship, our ankles and wrists in irons.
Whiling away the night, we try to raise our spirits with some light-hearted banter, but we know full well that we are in trouble and are worried about what form it might take. The men who shackled us and left us here were close-mouthed about it. They just shook their heads when we asked.
But now they have come back for us. The barred door to the brig swings open with a groan, and in come four sailors, led by a mean-looking man who seems to be in charge.
“Get the little whores on their feet and move them out of here; step lively now me lads” he growls. We are pulled roughly to our feet and shoved out the door, shuffling along as best we can with our shackled feet.
Never at a loss for words, Siss sasses them back, “Alright there love; you wouldn’t want to damage this merchandise would yah, now?”
Jumping a moment later after a pinch on her bum, she cries, “Hey, Guv! Want to get your mitts on these sweeties, don’t yah?”
We emerge on the main deck, which is filled with people tightly packed. All of the prisoners have been brought up from below to bear witness to our punishment.
They gawk at us, and we even hear a few titters, hoots and lewd remarks as we are pushed along through the crowd toward the quarterdeck.
Siss swings her hips and calls out to them saucily, “Gawk! You spineless lot! This taint just going to happen to us. You’ll all be next, you bastards!”
Atop the quarter deck stands a very different looking crowd … the military and civilian passengers who occupy the cabins above our wretched prison quarters deep below.
As I stumble … prodded by the sailor behind me … up the steps to the quarter deck, I gawk at their finery – at the linens and silks, elegant shoes and powdered wigs. Siss follows close behind me, cursing the sailors following close behind her.
Once on the quarter deck the two of us are lined up side by side, facing the crowd below. My eyes scan their upturned faces, searching for any I might know and wondering what they might be thinking of me standing forlornly before them in shackles.
The sailors unfetter our hands and we are told to remove our outer garments. We look at each other uncertainly, and then at the steely eyes of our handlers. Seeing no recourse, we bend resignedly and lift our tattered worn dresses up and over our heads. They are quickly taken from us and cast aside.
We are left wearing only a thin cotton shift, held up by narrow shoulder straps and reaching to just above our knees; feeling terribly exposed, we instinctively cover ourselves with our arms.
Siss snorts through the side of her mouth, “This lot don’t appear to be the marrying type!!! Know what I mean?”
Grabbing the shoulder straps of our shifts, the sailors roughly strip us to the waist; we both try to cover our bare breasts as the crowd below gapes and the sailors …many of them high above in the rigging …cheer lustily.
On the quarter deck, some of the civilians, especially the women, look nervously away. “Bloody bastards,” I hiss to Siss, under my breath.
The ship lurches as it crosses a deep swell and rolls into the lee of a mountainous wave; spray shoots over the gunwales and across the decks, soaking everybody and everything with briny seawater, including our cotton shifts… rendering them semi-transparent. The clammy thin fabric clings revealingly to our hips and thighs. Our damp unkempt hair is matted on our faces and shoulders. Beads of sea water form on our pale bare skin, and run in tiny rivulets down our naked chests and backs.
Stepping in front of us, two sailors quickly bind our wrists with lengths of stout rope. We grimace as the knots are pulled tight, and Siss openly curses them, earning herself a stinging slap across the face, and a sailor hissing in her face, “I’m sure you know how to do all of those things better than I. You little whore.”
The sailors toss the rope ends up to the waiting hands of others perched on the spar above our heads, who then wrap it over the spar and toss it back down to the sailors waiting below.
A ship’s officer steps forward to address us and the waiting crowd, which quickly hushes. In a clear voice he reads from a sheet of paper,” The captain of His Majesty’s ship Malevolent, having reviewed the criminal actions of the two ship’s prisoners standing before you … decrees that they receive 40 lashes each … as just punishment for stealing food from the ship’s store.”
This sets off a wave of murmuring on the deck below. Forty lashes is a lot! Siss gasps in horror, and cries out to me, “Sweet Jesus that will kill us!”
I hear whispered comments of righteous satisfaction and approval coming from the gentle folk gathered behind us on the quarter deck. I distinctly hear one matron behind me saying to her husband, “Oh! This should be delicious … See if you can move closer, my dear.”
Stepping out from amongst them, holding a small prayer book aloft, a clergyman calls for the officer’s attention.
Everyone turns to take in this skinny, awkward and homely looking man with a long beak nose, and deep-set narrowly-spaced dark little eyes.
“If I may please sir, just a few good words of our Lord to ease the fears of the prisoners. I wish to offer them comfort,” he squawks in a prissy shrill falsetto voice. The officer seems annoyed, but nods and bows curtly.
The man of the cloth inches forward and pulls himself up to address us, as well as the onlookers below and on the quarter deck behind.
“Dear children of God,” he begins placing his hand first on my bare shoulder.
I watch as his beady little eyes dart hungrily over my breasts, fixing for a moment on one of my partially exposed nipples, before dropping lower to take in the rest of me. He repeats this little ritual with Siss.
His wife, an ungainly looking, mean shrew of a woman, glares at him with deep malice in her eyes.
“Remember that your Lord is a just and loving God, who will take you in and forgive your transgressions once you have both taken your punishments and beg his divine grace. Be brave and stalwart and true now my two children, and enjoy holy redemption on the morrow. Amen.”
“What a bunch of bilge,” I think. Siss rolls her eyes, and says, “If you ask me … the two of them seem like poofters!”
He finishes by touching us each again, this time drawing his fingers symbolically across our chests in the sign of the cross, but coming close enough to lightly brush and linger a bit too long over the swell of our breasts.
I glare at him, suspecting all along that he just wanted to take a closer look and steel a little fondle. Siss looks disdainfully away. His wife looks like she will kill him later, much to the mirth of the assembled.
As the clergyman retreats to the side of his sullen-looking wife, I notice the ship’s officer conferring with the captain. The officer steps forward to announce that on the advice of the captain – who wishes to deliver all of the ship’s deportee passengers to Marquarie Harbour in fit condition to work – our sentence has been halved to just 20 lashes each.
He nods to the sailors, and barks out their orders, “Prepare the prisoners! Step lively now!”
Strong arms heave on the ropes, and our breasts fall free as our arms are raised above our heads. We are stretched upward to the point where our heels of our bare feet are lifted off the wet slippery planks of the quarterdeck.
We hang there helplessly, the muscles in our arms, backs and legs straining as we struggle to balance on our toes. As the ship rides the swells we sway back and forth, hips touching, breasts wobbling, our bare upper torsos glistening with ocean spray.
One of the sailors approaches us, offering us each a worn strip of leather to clench between our teeth. I shake my head. He looks at me quizzically, “You’d best take it; it will keep you from screaming and biting off your tongue.” I reconsider and open my mouth. Siss accepts her leather strip without comment.
Behind us now, stand two brawny sailors. Each is wielding a long cruel looking leather whip. We hear the swish and sharp whack of leather against the planks of the deck as the two men each take a couple of practice swings of their muscular whip arms.
Siss looks over her shoulder and then at me with wide fearful eyes and cries, “Oh my God, Barb! Those things look like they could rip us apart!”
To my right a little drummer boy, who appears to be literally drowning in his oversize uniform jacket and baggy pants, begins to beat out a martial cadence on his drum. Tension fills the air.
The ship’s officer surveys the hushed crowd, pivots and nods to the two sailors with the whips, “Flog them!” he commands.
The moment has come. My muscles tighten as I prepare myself for the inevitable. We exchange grim glances. One hundred fifty faces look up at us from the deck below with deep anticipation in their eyes. The beat of the drum quickens. It is going to happen.
“Get ready Siss”, I call, “here it comes!”
The swish and sharp crack of two whips breaks the silence. The first lashes catch us both across our bare backs at just below the shoulder blades, while the tips of the lashes wrap around to bite at the softness of our breasts.
The searing, stinging pain is far worse than I had imagined. I bite down on the leather strap and grunt. Next to me, I hear Siss let out what sounds like a muffled yelp.
A young sailor standing off to our left, not much older than a child, calls out “one”, and makes a straight chalk mark on a blackened board.
Before I can catch my breath, I hear the swish and crack of braided leather zinging through the air and nearly simultaneously feel the biting sting of the whip as it cuts crosses my back at an angle, the slashing tip wrapping around to graze my ribs just below my breast.
I bite down hard again; my face screwed up in pain, but I refuse to cry out. I hear Siss gasp as though the wind has been knocked out of her. She too is trying to be brave.
The young sailor with the stubby piece of chalk calls out “two” and marks his board a second time.
For what seems an interminable amount of time, the lashes keep coming. We jump and scream; both of us have lost the piece of leather given to us to clench in our mouths. We twist and writhe...close enough together to bump into each other as we try to avoid the next lash.
I turn my body from side to side in my desperate attempts to escape the unerring lash of the whip. My breasts sway wildly, and are caught from time to time by the cruel the tip of the whip. Our backs are crisscrossed with angry red stripes, with little flecks of blood forming along the deeper slashes.
As I twist and turn, my shift falls from my hips, leaving me naked. The next lashes find new targets on my bare ass and the backs of my thighs. The crown is aroused, and cheers and catcalls break out at the sight of my new nakedness, both from the prisoners below and from the sailors perched in the rigging above.
Moments later, Siss’s shift falls away too, evoking renewed cheers and catcalls from below and above.
The Victors wife is clearly agitated and grasps her spindly husband’s arm with more than just horror over the screaming and the blood.
The boy calls out “20” and makes a final chalky mark on his board with a flourish. It is done. Siss and I hang from our wrists, exhausted and sobbing; our bodies lean forward limply, our heads hang, hair falls over our heaving chests. My legs feel like water as I balance as best I can on my toes.
As I swing around, my eyes focus on the clergyman’s shrew of a wife. She has his arm in her vice-like grip, and he looks like he is in pain, but I am shocked by the look in her eyes…. I see animal lust…. She is aroused, her other hand presses tightly against the front of her skirt, the lips of her mouth part as she emits a deep throaty growl that I shall never ever forget.
Siss has seen her too, and says to me, “The powder puff’s wife sees something she likes!”
The officer nods at his men, who release their grip on the ropes. No longer suspended; Siss and I fall face-forward to the deck; my naked whip-lashed body on top of hers, my bare ass sticking up in the air.
“Show is over”, barks the officer, “return the prisoners on the main deck to their quarters below. Take these two little whores back to the forecastle; clean them up, and leave them there in chains. They have two days to recover before we reach Australia.”
With that he turns abruptly on his heel and leaves. The genteel folk on the quarter deck linger a while longer to gawk at us as we are pulled apart by the sailors, lifted by the arms and dragged away like sacks of potatoes to the forecastle, our feet dragging behind on the wet deck.
TO BE CONTINUED.
1834
Episode 1. The Flogging
Episode 1. The Flogging
It is the 16th of May, 1834 and our 27th day out of Bristol aboard HMS Malevolent. We had been making good progress early in our journey, but for the past week we have languished in the doldrums … enduring day after day of baking under the sun on a placid sea with scarcely a breeze to fill the sails.
But now the wind is behind us and we are moving again. Nonetheless the long spell in the doldrums has put us well behind schedule. Food and water have begun to run short and our meager rations have been cut.
Hunger gnawing mercilessly at our stomachs eventually drove me and my girlfriend to break into the ship’s larder late at night. We simply wanted to steal something extra to eat. Unfortunately we were caught, and now we have to face punishment for our greed.
Ours is a prison ship, a three mast Barque engaged by the Crown to carry transportees’ to the notorious Australian penal colony at Marquarie Harbour on the west coast of Tasmania. We are just two of more than 150 convicts … both men and women … held deep in the cramped bowels of the ship.
Most of us are guilty of common everyday crimes against property, but which … because of the notorious “bloody code” … carry the death penalty. By agreeing to be transported to a penal colony, we have escaped ... at least temporarily… being executed for our crimes.
My girlfriend’s name is Catherine, although I like to call her Siss. I am Barbara. We are both from Cornwall, the wayward daughters of poor local tenant farmers recently resettled in London’s teeming East End.
Since having been caught late last night with pieces of hardtack bread stuffed both in our pockets and mouths, we have been confined to the small brig in the forecastle of the ship, our ankles and wrists in irons.
Whiling away the night, we try to raise our spirits with some light-hearted banter, but we know full well that we are in trouble and are worried about what form it might take. The men who shackled us and left us here were close-mouthed about it. They just shook their heads when we asked.
But now they have come back for us. The barred door to the brig swings open with a groan, and in come four sailors, led by a mean-looking man who seems to be in charge.
“Get the little whores on their feet and move them out of here; step lively now me lads” he growls. We are pulled roughly to our feet and shoved out the door, shuffling along as best we can with our shackled feet.
Never at a loss for words, Siss sasses them back, “Alright there love; you wouldn’t want to damage this merchandise would yah, now?”
Jumping a moment later after a pinch on her bum, she cries, “Hey, Guv! Want to get your mitts on these sweeties, don’t yah?”
We emerge on the main deck, which is filled with people tightly packed. All of the prisoners have been brought up from below to bear witness to our punishment.
They gawk at us, and we even hear a few titters, hoots and lewd remarks as we are pushed along through the crowd toward the quarterdeck.
Siss swings her hips and calls out to them saucily, “Gawk! You spineless lot! This taint just going to happen to us. You’ll all be next, you bastards!”
Atop the quarter deck stands a very different looking crowd … the military and civilian passengers who occupy the cabins above our wretched prison quarters deep below.
As I stumble … prodded by the sailor behind me … up the steps to the quarter deck, I gawk at their finery – at the linens and silks, elegant shoes and powdered wigs. Siss follows close behind me, cursing the sailors following close behind her.
Once on the quarter deck the two of us are lined up side by side, facing the crowd below. My eyes scan their upturned faces, searching for any I might know and wondering what they might be thinking of me standing forlornly before them in shackles.
The sailors unfetter our hands and we are told to remove our outer garments. We look at each other uncertainly, and then at the steely eyes of our handlers. Seeing no recourse, we bend resignedly and lift our tattered worn dresses up and over our heads. They are quickly taken from us and cast aside.
We are left wearing only a thin cotton shift, held up by narrow shoulder straps and reaching to just above our knees; feeling terribly exposed, we instinctively cover ourselves with our arms.
Siss snorts through the side of her mouth, “This lot don’t appear to be the marrying type!!! Know what I mean?”
Grabbing the shoulder straps of our shifts, the sailors roughly strip us to the waist; we both try to cover our bare breasts as the crowd below gapes and the sailors …many of them high above in the rigging …cheer lustily.
On the quarter deck, some of the civilians, especially the women, look nervously away. “Bloody bastards,” I hiss to Siss, under my breath.
The ship lurches as it crosses a deep swell and rolls into the lee of a mountainous wave; spray shoots over the gunwales and across the decks, soaking everybody and everything with briny seawater, including our cotton shifts… rendering them semi-transparent. The clammy thin fabric clings revealingly to our hips and thighs. Our damp unkempt hair is matted on our faces and shoulders. Beads of sea water form on our pale bare skin, and run in tiny rivulets down our naked chests and backs.
Stepping in front of us, two sailors quickly bind our wrists with lengths of stout rope. We grimace as the knots are pulled tight, and Siss openly curses them, earning herself a stinging slap across the face, and a sailor hissing in her face, “I’m sure you know how to do all of those things better than I. You little whore.”
The sailors toss the rope ends up to the waiting hands of others perched on the spar above our heads, who then wrap it over the spar and toss it back down to the sailors waiting below.
A ship’s officer steps forward to address us and the waiting crowd, which quickly hushes. In a clear voice he reads from a sheet of paper,” The captain of His Majesty’s ship Malevolent, having reviewed the criminal actions of the two ship’s prisoners standing before you … decrees that they receive 40 lashes each … as just punishment for stealing food from the ship’s store.”
This sets off a wave of murmuring on the deck below. Forty lashes is a lot! Siss gasps in horror, and cries out to me, “Sweet Jesus that will kill us!”
I hear whispered comments of righteous satisfaction and approval coming from the gentle folk gathered behind us on the quarter deck. I distinctly hear one matron behind me saying to her husband, “Oh! This should be delicious … See if you can move closer, my dear.”
Stepping out from amongst them, holding a small prayer book aloft, a clergyman calls for the officer’s attention.
Everyone turns to take in this skinny, awkward and homely looking man with a long beak nose, and deep-set narrowly-spaced dark little eyes.
“If I may please sir, just a few good words of our Lord to ease the fears of the prisoners. I wish to offer them comfort,” he squawks in a prissy shrill falsetto voice. The officer seems annoyed, but nods and bows curtly.
The man of the cloth inches forward and pulls himself up to address us, as well as the onlookers below and on the quarter deck behind.
“Dear children of God,” he begins placing his hand first on my bare shoulder.
I watch as his beady little eyes dart hungrily over my breasts, fixing for a moment on one of my partially exposed nipples, before dropping lower to take in the rest of me. He repeats this little ritual with Siss.
His wife, an ungainly looking, mean shrew of a woman, glares at him with deep malice in her eyes.
“Remember that your Lord is a just and loving God, who will take you in and forgive your transgressions once you have both taken your punishments and beg his divine grace. Be brave and stalwart and true now my two children, and enjoy holy redemption on the morrow. Amen.”
“What a bunch of bilge,” I think. Siss rolls her eyes, and says, “If you ask me … the two of them seem like poofters!”
He finishes by touching us each again, this time drawing his fingers symbolically across our chests in the sign of the cross, but coming close enough to lightly brush and linger a bit too long over the swell of our breasts.
I glare at him, suspecting all along that he just wanted to take a closer look and steel a little fondle. Siss looks disdainfully away. His wife looks like she will kill him later, much to the mirth of the assembled.
As the clergyman retreats to the side of his sullen-looking wife, I notice the ship’s officer conferring with the captain. The officer steps forward to announce that on the advice of the captain – who wishes to deliver all of the ship’s deportee passengers to Marquarie Harbour in fit condition to work – our sentence has been halved to just 20 lashes each.
He nods to the sailors, and barks out their orders, “Prepare the prisoners! Step lively now!”
Strong arms heave on the ropes, and our breasts fall free as our arms are raised above our heads. We are stretched upward to the point where our heels of our bare feet are lifted off the wet slippery planks of the quarterdeck.
We hang there helplessly, the muscles in our arms, backs and legs straining as we struggle to balance on our toes. As the ship rides the swells we sway back and forth, hips touching, breasts wobbling, our bare upper torsos glistening with ocean spray.
One of the sailors approaches us, offering us each a worn strip of leather to clench between our teeth. I shake my head. He looks at me quizzically, “You’d best take it; it will keep you from screaming and biting off your tongue.” I reconsider and open my mouth. Siss accepts her leather strip without comment.
Behind us now, stand two brawny sailors. Each is wielding a long cruel looking leather whip. We hear the swish and sharp whack of leather against the planks of the deck as the two men each take a couple of practice swings of their muscular whip arms.
Siss looks over her shoulder and then at me with wide fearful eyes and cries, “Oh my God, Barb! Those things look like they could rip us apart!”
To my right a little drummer boy, who appears to be literally drowning in his oversize uniform jacket and baggy pants, begins to beat out a martial cadence on his drum. Tension fills the air.
The ship’s officer surveys the hushed crowd, pivots and nods to the two sailors with the whips, “Flog them!” he commands.
The moment has come. My muscles tighten as I prepare myself for the inevitable. We exchange grim glances. One hundred fifty faces look up at us from the deck below with deep anticipation in their eyes. The beat of the drum quickens. It is going to happen.
“Get ready Siss”, I call, “here it comes!”
The swish and sharp crack of two whips breaks the silence. The first lashes catch us both across our bare backs at just below the shoulder blades, while the tips of the lashes wrap around to bite at the softness of our breasts.
The searing, stinging pain is far worse than I had imagined. I bite down on the leather strap and grunt. Next to me, I hear Siss let out what sounds like a muffled yelp.
A young sailor standing off to our left, not much older than a child, calls out “one”, and makes a straight chalk mark on a blackened board.
Before I can catch my breath, I hear the swish and crack of braided leather zinging through the air and nearly simultaneously feel the biting sting of the whip as it cuts crosses my back at an angle, the slashing tip wrapping around to graze my ribs just below my breast.
I bite down hard again; my face screwed up in pain, but I refuse to cry out. I hear Siss gasp as though the wind has been knocked out of her. She too is trying to be brave.
The young sailor with the stubby piece of chalk calls out “two” and marks his board a second time.
For what seems an interminable amount of time, the lashes keep coming. We jump and scream; both of us have lost the piece of leather given to us to clench in our mouths. We twist and writhe...close enough together to bump into each other as we try to avoid the next lash.
I turn my body from side to side in my desperate attempts to escape the unerring lash of the whip. My breasts sway wildly, and are caught from time to time by the cruel the tip of the whip. Our backs are crisscrossed with angry red stripes, with little flecks of blood forming along the deeper slashes.
As I twist and turn, my shift falls from my hips, leaving me naked. The next lashes find new targets on my bare ass and the backs of my thighs. The crown is aroused, and cheers and catcalls break out at the sight of my new nakedness, both from the prisoners below and from the sailors perched in the rigging above.
Moments later, Siss’s shift falls away too, evoking renewed cheers and catcalls from below and above.
The Victors wife is clearly agitated and grasps her spindly husband’s arm with more than just horror over the screaming and the blood.
The boy calls out “20” and makes a final chalky mark on his board with a flourish. It is done. Siss and I hang from our wrists, exhausted and sobbing; our bodies lean forward limply, our heads hang, hair falls over our heaving chests. My legs feel like water as I balance as best I can on my toes.
As I swing around, my eyes focus on the clergyman’s shrew of a wife. She has his arm in her vice-like grip, and he looks like he is in pain, but I am shocked by the look in her eyes…. I see animal lust…. She is aroused, her other hand presses tightly against the front of her skirt, the lips of her mouth part as she emits a deep throaty growl that I shall never ever forget.
Siss has seen her too, and says to me, “The powder puff’s wife sees something she likes!”
The officer nods at his men, who release their grip on the ropes. No longer suspended; Siss and I fall face-forward to the deck; my naked whip-lashed body on top of hers, my bare ass sticking up in the air.
“Show is over”, barks the officer, “return the prisoners on the main deck to their quarters below. Take these two little whores back to the forecastle; clean them up, and leave them there in chains. They have two days to recover before we reach Australia.”
With that he turns abruptly on his heel and leaves. The genteel folk on the quarter deck linger a while longer to gawk at us as we are pulled apart by the sailors, lifted by the arms and dragged away like sacks of potatoes to the forecastle, our feet dragging behind on the wet deck.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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