A British ship, not one of the settler vessels, was moored nearby. Its boat approached, carrying the ship’s mate, who came aboard the Kennersley Castle. Thomas Philipps commented: ‘It is rather a delicate question to ask him what island it is and the Lieutenant takes him into the cabin.’ The sailors were laughing: their captain may not have had any idea of where they were, but the crew told the passengers that it was the island of Boa Vista, a day’s voyage from Santiago.
So it turned out that they were off schedule. They had lost time unnecessarily and would not get to Santiago until the next day.
The island of Santiago eventually came into sight and the Kennersley Castle tried to approach the harbour. As Philipps noted: ‘As the wind blows out of the bay we [were] obliged to tack and pass again near the eastern battery: when pretty close we are astonished with a cannon shot whizzing through the rigging. An officer with two epaulettes and a tawdry uniform comes alongside in a boat manned with Blacks. As soon as he is on board the Lieutenant takes him by the shoulder and pointing to the British flag, says: “How dare the port fire at that?”
“I assure you that it shall not occur again,” the officer says. “By your tacking the soldiers thought you were going away again. We have been so annoyed by pirates and insurgent privateers that orders were given to fire at all vessels that hovered about.”’
The officer was repentant. Philipps continued: ‘We find the officer is a harbour master and lieutenant in the navy, and is come to pilot us in, and soon brings us to anchor. When finished he takes some oranges out of his pocket … What a prize it is considered!!’
Aside from the incident of the cannonball, the Kennersley Castle’s visit to Santiago was a pleasant respite for the passengers. Philipps concluded his account of the episode: ‘Our cabin is hung round with oranges, sweet and sour lemons, limes, pineapples, bananas, plantains, eggs, gourds, pumpkins and coconuts. What a treat you must suppose all this must be to people who had been a month at sea.’
The Ocean also had an unfortunate experience on reaching the Cape Verde Islands. As if the collision with the Northampton weren’t adventure enough for her passengers, there was more to come. During one of his talks about the early days of the settler experience, William Howard told his audience of an even more terrifying incident than the one in Portsmouth harbour.
After several weeks without seeing land, the ship arrived at the island cluster. On the afternoon of 10 February they entered the harbour of Porto Praia, on the island of Santiago, and the ship dropped anchor.
The sea was calm, tranquil and blue. The settlers crowded the deck to enjoy the weather, made perfect by a cool breeze. The children played, the adults chatted and there was laughter all around: it was an atmosphere of well-being. As the passengers looked on while brightly coloured tropical fruit, green vegetables and fresh water were brought on board, it seemed as though all the fears, discomforts and hunger of the voyage so far had been an illusion. They went to bed that night, snuggling down in dry bedding, something they had not done since leaving home.
Then, at about one o’clock in the morning their sleep was shattered by a deafening bang and a large cannonball ripped between the masts of the ship. The settlers were immediately awakened. The passengers below joined those who had been sleeping out in the cool of the decks, and watched the flickering lights on the fort where there was a battery of guns.
As they debated what was happening, some hysterical, all afraid, ‘the sound of a large discharge from the fort rolled fearfully on our ears,’ William Howard wrote. ‘The noise on board as the ball struck our ship was so tremendous that I considered the masts were certainly carried away (not supposing that it had entered the ship so near to me and my family as it really had). In about a quarter of an hour afterwards, however, a third discharge was heard from the same quarter and the ball, I am confident, came in the same direction with the one previously alluded to, but it fell into the sea at a short distance from us for, as my cabin window was open, I distinctly heard it go down into the sea, making a noise resembling hot iron put into water.’
In the morning Howard asked the ship’s carpenter and its second mate for an assessment of the damage done: ‘The noise which I had supposed was made by the carrying away of masts, was the effect of a ball, weighing nine pounds, entering the side of the ship into the storeroom, about three feet only below the floor of the little cabin in which I then was, with part of my family.’
Howard went ashore. As he was rowed towards the fort, he was concerned that he was going to have difficulty in communicating with the Portuguese officers who had been responsible for the attack. To his surprise, though, he found that the officer in command of the fort was an Irishman.
With a laugh, the Irish commandant made some kind of an apology. It wasn’t his fault, he assured Howard – his men had acted in good faith. He explained that the cause of the trouble was a schooner that had entered the bay before the Ocean. When challenged, it had refused to hoist its national colours or give any information. Three weeks before, a similar vessel carrying eighteen guns had discharged a cannonballs into the town, put out to sea to recharge and returned to repeat the attack. The governor had therefore ordered the military to be on their guard, and if they saw the schooner, to make a show of force. That night the sentinels had seen a well-manned ship approaching and had directed one of the guns to fire a warning shot. They had misdirected the shot, and it had hit the Ocean. It was a simple error, the Irishman explained to Howard. The other vessel was a smuggler ship: it had got the message and disappeared, so it had ended well, he concluded.
The journey was not all bad weather and misery, however. As the fleet sailed away from the violent North Atlantic Ocean and the rough equatorial seas, and voyaged further south towards the Cape of Good Hope, the conditions became generally better, sometimes even to the point of allowing the voyage to be pleasurable. For example, on 5 March William Shaw made the following entry in his diary: ‘The fineness of the day, calmness of the sea, the advantage of the awning spread over our heads which screened us from the burning rays of the sun, the harmony of the voices in singing the praises of God, the comforting promises of God’s word, and the still more consoling influences of His Spirit, all combined to produce an effect upon the congregation which can be better conceived than described.’
At those times, the settlers were able to regenerate both body and soul. They promenaded on the decks, mingled with people from all areas of the ship, and the children ran about, climbed, and helped the sailors fetch and carry, clean and repair, and paint and swab the decks. The fearless young Tom Stubbs was one of the children who relished those times, in all weather: ‘I and my brother John were always among the sailors,’ he remembered.
The voyage held a mixture of joy and unforgettable terror for the youngest passengers. One of South Africa’s best-known settlers was William Guybon Atherstone – doctor, naturalist and geologist. (Later he would identify a crystal found near Hopetown as a diamond, which led to the establishment of South Africa’s diamond industry.) Guybon Atherstone was a five-year-old when he travelled on the Ocean. He captured those moments in his unpublished memoirs: ‘All was new and strange to us – the porpoises so huge and ugly were wonderful and played “leapfrog” round our ship – flying fish came splashing and fluttering on to the decks with such loud bangs like guns firing, giving us children lots of fun trying to catch their slippery bodies to throw them back into the sea. Then suddenly we saw some huge fish with horrid mouths which came quite close to the side of the ship. The sailors told us they were called sharks and that they were very bad things and would eat anyone who fell overboard. One of the sailors called some of the mothers and told them to keep us away from the rails for fear any of us might fall overboard when the horrid sharks would catch and eat us before