At night, when the hatch was closed on the orlop deck, Evangeline felt entombed. But she came to welcome the time in her coffin-like berth; it was her only privacy. She’d tuck in her knees and pull the rough blanket up around her ears and shut her eyes. Resting her hand on the bulge of her stomach, she’d feel for a flutter of movement beneath the taut skin.

On mild afternoons in Tunbridge Wells she used to grab her bonnet from a peg in the foyer and wander down the rutted path to the stone bridge over a stream, passing tangled nettles, butterflies hovering above foxgloves, a field sprinkled with orange-red poppies, listening to the willows rustle in the wind. She made her way to a hill near her house, an easy ascent along a well-trod trail through spiky purple thistles, sheep so intent on grazing on clover that she had to push them off the path to continue on her way. When she reached the top, she’d gaze down at the terracotta roofs of the houses in the village, conjuring lines from the poets she read with her father—Wordsworth, say, or Longfellow, whose words enhanced her own observations: As lapped in thought I used to lie, / And gaze into the summer sky, / Where the sailing clouds went by, / Like ships upon the sea . . .

In the darkness of the orlop deck, she retreated to that mountain trail. Sidestepping small rocks and avoiding mud puddles, she breathed in the damp earth and the sour-sweet grass, felt the prickle of brambles on her legs and the sun on her face as she made her way toward the summit. She drifted to sleep to the distant bleating of sheep and the sound of her own beating heart.

Most of the women on the ship were familiar with the accommodations of desperation, the compromises and calculations that went into staying alive day to day. Stealing, haggling, deceiving gullible children, trading a place to sleep or a bottle of rum for sexual favors; many had long since overcome any squeamishness about what they considered necessary transactions. Their bodies were just another tool at their disposal. Some simply wanted to make the best of a bad situation, finding protection wherever they could. Others were determined to carve a good time out of the rough timber of the trip. They laughed raucously, drank with the sailors, and made bawdy jokes, toeing the line of insubordination.

A few convicts, Evangeline noticed, had disappeared from the orlop deck.

“The sailors call it taking a wife,” Olive explained.

“Taking a . . . wife?” She didn’t understand.

“For the duration of the trip.”

“Isn’t that immoral?”

“Immoral,” Olive chortled. “Oh, Leenie.”

Though the surgeon did all he could to discourage it, there were clear advantages to taking up with a sailor, so long as he wasn’t sadistic or downright repulsive. You were spared the hell of the orlop; you could sleep in his relatively comfortable berth, or even, depending on his rank, a private room. You might get extra rations, blankets, special attention. Your alliance protected you from other brutish crewmen, and even, to an extent, the threat of punishment from above. But it was a dangerous gambit. There were few repercussions for sailors who were cruel or sadistic. Women crept back to the orlop deck with welts on their legs, scratches on their backs, gonorrhea and syphilis and all manner of other diseases.