Wellingborough Redburn Esq., seaman on board the Highlander, merchantman out of New York City, otherwise ‘Buttons’, is granted shore leave in Liverpool. He exchanges pigpen duties for a brief period of liberty:

Among the ships lying in Prince’s Dock,

none interested me more than the Irrawaddy, of Bombay,

a ‘country ship’, the name

Europeans give to the large native vessels of India.

Forty years ago, these merchantmen were nearly the largest in the world. They still

are larger than most.

Built of teak, the oak of the East.

chait maase chunari rangaibe ho Raama

The Irrawaddy had just arrived from Hindostan with a cargo of cotton.

She was manned by forty or fifty lascars, the native seamen of India,

who were governed by a countryman of higher caste.

While his inferiors went about in strips of white linen,

this dignitary was arrayed in a red army coat,

brilliant with gold lace,

a cocked hat, and drawn sword.

But the effect was spoiled by

bare feet.

chait maase chunari rangaibe

His business

flagellating the crew with the flat of his sabre:

an exercise in which long practice

had made him expert.

The poor fellows jumped away

with the tackle rope elastic as cats.

ho Raama

One Sunday I went aboard the Irrawaddy

this Oriental usher

accosted me at the gangway, his sword at my throat

I gently pushed it aside, making a sign

that my motives in paying a visit to the ship

were pacific

He considerately let me pass

baajuband khul khul jaye

Strangely woody the smell

of those dark-coloured timbers, odour heightened

by the kayar rigging

The lascars on the forecastle deck among them Malays

Mahrattas Burmese Siamese Cingalese seated round

‘kids’ of rice from which

they helped themselves with one hand the other being reserved

for quite another purpose

khul khul jaye

They were chattering like magpies in Hindostanee, but I found

several who could speak very good English.

They were a small-limbed, wiry, tawny set:

excellent seamen, though ill adapted

to northern voyaging.

They told me seven of their number had died on the passage

from Bombay two or three after crossing the Tropic of Cancer.

The rest in the Channel, where the ship had been tossed about

in violent seas, attended by cold rains.

Two more had been lost overboard from the flying jib-boom.

sainya ko le gaye

I was condoling with an English cabin boy

on the loss of these poor fellows

he said their own fault:

They never wear monkey-jackets cling to their thin India robes

even in the bitterest weather.

He was a farmer and they

were so many sheep he’d lost on the mountain

sainya ko le gaye thanedar

The captain was an Englishman.

The three mates, master and boatswain were Englishmen.

Officers, they lived astern in the cabin

every Sunday read the Church of England’s prayers.

At the other end of the ship, the heathen

prayed to their false gods.

Christianity on the quarter-deck