Women Sailors & Sailors' Women Read Online Free PDF Page B

Gravesend. It was eleven o’clock in the evening by the time she reached the ancient city of Rochester, huddled on the riverbank beneath its Norman castle and cathedral. She hurried down to the waterfront and found a boatman who had a cargo of garden produce for Sheerness. He agreed to take her with him early the next morning.
    At four o’clock in the morning on the day set for the execution, the boatman helped Mrs. Parker aboard his boat and they set off downstream with the outgoing tide. As the winding river broadened out into the estuary of the Medway, the first light of dawn from an overcast sky revealed mile upon mile of marshes and mudflats on either side of them. There was a fresh easterly breeze, and even at that early hour, there was considerable activity on the river. 4 Local fishing boats headed out to the fishing grounds in the Thames estuary, and trading sloops and brigs set off for the ports of Kent, Suffolk, and farther afield.
    By six o’clock, they could see the distant forest of masts marking the anchorage of the fleet at the Nore. This was the name given to the final stretch of the Medway before it joined the Thames. More than twenty warships were anchored there that morning, protected by the guns of Sheerness fort. It was nearly seven o’clock when they came alongside HMS
Sandwich.
The massive wooden hull of the 90-gun ship towered above them. Normally she was the flagship of the fleet, but the admiral had recently removed his flag to HMS
L’Espion,
leaving the
Sandwich
under the command of Captain Mosse. Mrs. Parker asked permission to speak to her husband, but the marine sentries on duty refused to allow her on board and ordered the boatman to pull clear, threatening to fire into his boat if he did not do so.
    The boatman had no intention of endangering himself or his boat, and in spite of Mrs. Parker’s desperate pleadings, he headed for the low fortress and the dockyard at Sheerness, which lay a few hundred yards away across the water. He assured her that no execution would take place that day because the yellow flag was not flying from any of the anchored ships. This flag was the signal to warn the fleet and onlookers that an execution was imminent.
    As soon as they landed, Mrs. Parker spoke to another boatman on the garrison dock-stairs and persuaded him to take her back out to the
Sandwich.
At exactly eight o’clock, as she was being rowed up to Blackstakes, where the leading ships were anchored, a single gun was fired from the flagship
L’Espion.
Looking across she was horrified to see the fatal yellow flag hoisted to the masthead, and immediately afterward another yellow flag was hauled up on the foremast of HMS
Sandwich.
As they came alongside for the second time, she frantically renewed her entreaties to the sentries to let her come on board so she could speak to her husband. With the recent mutiny in everyone’s minds, all officers present were aware that the execution of its ringleader might spark off more trouble. The sentries were under strict orders that no one should board or leave the ship, so once again they refused her permission. The boatman told her that he could not wait because he had promised to collect some people who had booked his services earlier.
    The waterfront was now swarming with an expectant crowd of men, women, and children who were gathering to see the execution. Scaffolding had been erected on the shore of the Isle of Grain for spectators, and an increasing number of yachts, cutters, and rowboats were collecting in the vicinity of the
Sandwich.
Pushing through the curious onlookers on the shore, Ann Parker hired a third boatman and once again headed across the water toward the ships at anchor. But as she neared the
Sandwich
she saw a procession of men heading from the quarterdeck toward a platform that had been erected on the cathead, the heavy beam that supported the anchor near the bows of the ship. In the center of the procession