Adam & Benjamin: The Story of the Seal Island Band

By Jeff Hopkins

Rufus Enterprise chooses Seal Island in King George Sound in the Southern Ocean of Western Australia as the site for his sealing operation. He appoints Tom Elder as his leader with four ex-convicts, Bob Beater, Dick Dental, Harry Heeler, and Sam Scullion to assist him. A group of boys are shanghaied, press-ganged, and purchased to make up the unpaid workforce on Seal Island. The boys are worked hard and treated badly, but some learn invaluable skills under the tutelage of Harry Heeler and Sam Scullion.

A sudden fierce storm sees an East Indiaman ship flounder and founder near Seal Island, but efforts to get a line out to her prove futile. The ship sinks, but there is one survivor, a ‘boy in fancy togs’ called Adam. Adam is a problem for Rufus Enterprise. He might be worth a ransom or reward, but he also may have seen enough to bring the operation on Seal Island undone. Adam befriends Benjamin and shares with him the dream for a better life. When Rufus Enterprises hears of this so-called dream, he is furious and decides to deal the problem in a wicked way, through a ritual castaway. He retells the terrifying tales and legends of ‘Old John’ Sullivan to frighten the boys into submission and stamp out all talk of dreams and dreamers.

Benjamin shares the dream with six others who become ‘outcasts’, when a ‘snitch’ called Jake, brings them undone. Rufus Enterprise, now infused with a black miasma, is teetering on the edge of madness, and his unstable state explodes into death and destruction. How all this is resolved is the story of the Seal Island band.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Apr 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922912831

Jeff Hopkins

Jeff Hopkins (1950) is a retired schoolteacher. He lives in Walyalup, Western Australia. Walyalup which means 'lungs' is the Whadjuk name for Fremantle, and is part of the Noongar Nation. As the drama master at Hale School in Perth, he wrote ten original musical plays and produced and directed them at the school.In 1992, he researched and wrote a family history, 'Life's Race Well Run', and after retiring in 2006 he has written twenty novels, a memoir, and three 'faction' biographies.

Book preview

JEFF HOPKINS

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO Box 4363

Penrith NSW 2750

https://www.indiemosh.com.au

Copyright 2023 © Jeff Hopkins

All rights reserved

Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

Disclaimer

All characters and events in this book, other than those historical explorers clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons living or dead is accidental and unintentional. The author, their agents and publishers cannot be held responsible for any claim otherwise and take no responsibility for any such coincidence.

Cover concept by Jeff Hopkins

Cover design and layout by Ally Mosher at allymosher.com

Cover artwork by David Lin through the auspices of ‘Whataportrait’

Other cover images used under licence from Adobe Stock

‘A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.’

Charles Dickens, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’

Chapter 1: Seal Island

Where Rufus Enterprise finds an island in King George Sound that would be ideal for his sealing operation.

Seal Island in the Great Southern region of Western Australia is located at thirty-five degrees, four minutes, and thirty-one seconds, south latitude, and one hundred and seventeen degrees, fifty-eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds, east longitude. The island is approximately eight and a half kilometres, five miles, southeast of Albany, formerly Frederick Town, and three kilometres, two miles offshore from Frenchman’s Bay in King George Sound. It is a small outcrop in the sea and has a total area of about three hectares which is approximately seven acres. The island is composed almost entirely of granite and is only accessible at the western end. In 1791, Captain George Vancouver visited King George Sound in the vessels ‘Discovery’ and ‘Chatham’ and named the waters after King George III. The ships stayed in the sound for two weeks. George Vancouver named Seal Island in 1791, along with Breaksea Island, Michaelmas Island, and other features around the sound. Although they found fish traps and huts around the harbour area, they did not contact the Indigenous people. The famous English circumnavigator, Matthew Flinders, landed on Seal Island during the voyage of the ‘Investigator’ in 1801, searching for items that were reportedly left by George Vancouver. After staying for one month, Flinders left behind a bottle containing a parchment with details of their own arrival and departure. During this period Flinders reported that relations with the First Nations’ people were relaxed and his sailors found it possible to trade with them.

At King George Sound, on his forty-third birthday, Major Edmund Lockyer of the Fifty-Seventh Regiment claimed Western Australia for the British Crown on the 21st of January 1827. He named the settlement Frederick Town or Frederickstown, after King George III’s second son. This town later became Albany. Major Lockyer arrived on the brig, ‘Amity’. It was an important part of his orders from Governor Ralph Darling in New South Wales to secure the western portion of the continent for colonisation before the French could do so. They anchored in Princess Royal Harbour at daybreak on the 26th of December 1826. However, Major Lockyer’s garrison was not the first group of people to make King George Sound their centre of operations.

During the early years of the 19th century, a fleet of small boats was slowly edging its way along the southern coast of the continent of Australia. The first of these vessels made their way into the usually calm waters of King George Sound by the 1820s. The boats were manned by sealers; men who made a living from slaughtering the seals found on the islands, and shores along the coast, and selling their skins and biproducts. Seal Island soon became a misnomer after the sealers reached King George Sound. These men were largely the remnants of penal settlements in eastern Australia who brought with them press-ganged boys and teenagers to do the work on the seal hunt during the season between September and December. Historical reports indicate there were groups of these sealers indulging in an unrestrained way in sensuality and brutality in the coves from Wilson’s Promontory, in Victoria, to King George Sound in Western Australia. Australian sealing measured its output in terms of the value of skins, over the other biproducts. Although highly profitable at times and affording New South Wales one of its earliest trade staples, sealing’s unregulated character saw its self-destruction. By 1830 most seal-stocks had been seriously depleted.

When Rufus Enterprise first spied Seal Island while anchored in Frenchman’s Bay he was convinced he had found exactly what he was looking for. It was far enough away from any fledgeling settlements, and a sufficient distance off the mainland coast to keep intruders out, and more importantly to keep the inhabitants of Seal Island confined by the expanse of shark infested waters of the sound. During the initial years of his possession of Seal Island, Rufus Enterprise had only Tom Elder, as his leader, and four ex-convicts, the lowest dregs of society from the colonies on the eastern seaboard of the continent of Australia, namely Bob Beater, Dick Dental, Harry Heeler and Sam Scullion.

Whether these were the actual names of these men is problematical. Escaped or former convicts with a ‘Ticket of Leave’ or ‘Certificate of Freedom’ often changed their names to rid themselves of any connection to their past lives. They adopted some extraordinary ‘monikers’ relying on puns or plays on words and sometimes cockney rhyming slang, or alliteration, that expressed some aspect of their personality, abilities, or the distinct lack of them. No one cared much. In the far-flung sealers’ nests, a long way from any form of civilisation, names were simply not relevant.

Bob Beater had been tried and convicted in the Middlesex Sessions in London for ‘fencing’ stolen goods and was sentenced to seven years transportation. However, Bob was a brutal man, and had a history of unprovoked and wild attacks on other convicts during the twenty years he was incarcerated in New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, and Norfolk Island. Dick Dental, hailed from the Yorkshire Dales before he fell afoul of the law. He had a terrible and almost constant stutter and was an obsequious and sycophantic man. As a result of his fawning to commandants and soldiers alike, he did just the seven years of his sentence before he gained his ‘Ticket of Leave’ and then his ‘Certificate of Freedom’. With his constant stuttering, most people dismissed Dick Dental as a person with impaired intellect. This was not so, as many later found to their detriment.

Harry Heeler was an East London carpenter who received a sentence of seven years for forging documents. He did not waste his time as a convict, after his transportation from England. He learned new skills that saw him complete his sentence as an outstanding carpenter, and a skilful boatbuilder and repairer. Sam Scullion, also from London’s east end, received a seven-year transportation sentence for larceny, and he picked up some culinary skills during his four months on a convict transport ship, and was then allowed to work in the kitchens at Port Arthur in Van Diemen’s Land while serving out his term of incarceration. He had an aptitude for communal cooking, and although he prepared plain meals, they were always wholesome. Sam Scullion had an inquiring mind when it came to matters of food and its sources, and he was always keen to learn and try new things. This became an important attribute in an isolated location like Seal Island. From the various groups for whom he cooked, there were few complaints about Sam Scullion’s cooking abilities, whether they were farm workers, shearers, or ships’ crews who were whaling or sealing. Rufus Enterprise gave these four, led by Tom Elder, the task of setting up the settlement on Seal Island. This was not an easy assignment.

Access to the island could only be made from the western end where there were some stretches of sand between the rocky outcrops of granite. Rufus Enterprise secured two old whaling boats as the result of a dubious card game in Hobart Town, in which he almost certainly cheated. He had the former double-ended whaling boats, transported, with other essential supplies, on a ship he commissioned to sail to King George Sound. Using these whale boats, Elder, Beater, Dental, Heeler, and Scullion were given the difficult task of ferrying supplies to Seal Island. Under Harry Heeler’s direction, Tom Elder’s cabin was the first building erected. Later came a galley lean-to for Sam Scullion. To accommodate the two former whaling boats, two jetties were built out from the protected beach on the western side of the island. These were wooden structures that stretched about twenty feet into the deeper water. The shore fell away quickly, and the jetties accommodated the needs of the sealers perfectly.

Harry Heeler designed a seal skin store tower, and with the help of the other sealers, built and clad it. This was a tall round tower on top of which was a signal lantern to warn other boats in the area of the dangers of the rocky outcrops in the channel, and to indicate to them that this was not an uninhabited island. Finally, the processing platform was built and the various pieces of equipment for washing and treating the seal skins, rendering their fat, boiling the resultant oil, and decanting it into liquor crocks or jug containers were installed upon it. Also on the processing platform, there was an old mangle for wringing out the skins before they were put in the skin store for drying, curing, and eventually packing in bales covered in hessian and bound with coarse rope. During all this construction phase, Rufus Enterprise made only irregular visits to the island to check on progress. His arrival was never forewarned, and he simply appeared unannounced, rowing himself in the ship’s tender across to Seal Island.

Rufus Enterprise was an enigma. He was of indeterminate age, and those who guessed at his years were often off the mark, by at least five years either way. Like his age, his history was all conjecture. Some people thought he might be an English aristocrat, one of the younger sons of a Lord, who had been forced to leave England and travel to the antipodes to escape his dubious past. Others thought he was a ‘conman’, from humble beginnings, who had invented his persona, and now simply believed in the identity he had created for himself. Whatever the case his personal details were well hidden, and he never spoke about that ‘other country’ which was his past, and where he no longer visited.

Rufus was a tall and imposing man and was always dressed beautifully in the height of early 19th century fashion. He preferred long three-quarter length coats and full-length trousers, and he always wore a waistcoat and colourful cravat tied expertly around his neck. His boots were hand-made and often matched the colour of the various suits of clothes he wore. He had an excellent tonsure, which he wore swept back off his forehead and there were tell-tale signs of greying at the temples, which made people guess that he was older than he really was. His head was the classical egg shape, and the features were sharp. The stare from his penetrating blue eyes sometimes mesmerised those who were forced to eyeball him for whatever reason. The thin lips almost always had an appearance of a snarl of superiority and contempt. Mr. Enterprise was not a man with which to trifle.

As construction of the buildings proceeded on the difficult granite terrain of Seal Island, a brigantine, named ‘Cyprus’ anchored in King George Sound on a day that featured a cloudless cerulean sky, a fierce antipodean light, and the promise of a scorching summer’s day. When the ‘Cyprus’s’ tender was lowered, Rufus rowed himself to Seal Island. He brought with him in the tender, three boys. They were little more than unkempt urchins and when Bob Beater and Dick Dental helped secure the tender at the southern jetty, they immediately noted that the three boys were wearing metal collars around their necks and were linked by a chain that ran through a ring at the front of each collar and was padlocked to a metal eye bolted to the internal ribs of the dory. Mr. Enterprise unlocked the padlock on the chain and released the urchins from their linked metal rings, but the neck collars remained in place. Then the four people in the tender climbed up onto the jetty.

‘Good morning, Beater, Dental.’

‘Mornin’, Mr. Enterprise.’

‘I have brought you some extra hands to help with the work. They probably have limited skills so you men will have to teach them.’

‘‘W-W-W-Why the c-c-c-chains and n-n-n-neck collars, Mr. Enterprise?’

‘To stop them absconding, Dental. I don’t think any of them can swim, so they have no way of getting off the island, but we don’t want them roaming free either. So, they keep the neck collars on, and each night insert the chains and padlock them securely in a ‘line’.’

‘A line, Mr. Enterprise?’

‘An ever increasing one as I bring more boys to Seal Island. They can help in construction. Then you will train them as sealers’ boys when all the buildings are complete. There should be plenty of time to achieve all that, and we will be ready for the seal hunting season when it begins next spring in September, or thereabouts, in a year’s time.’

Bob Beater and Dick Dental both nodded as if what Mr. Enterprise had just announced was to be expected, even though both men were a little taken aback by the prospect of a small army of boy slaves that was about to descend on the granite outcrop. Then Rufus Enterprise became particularly intense and menacing.

‘Oh, and Beater. Discipline is to be strictly enforced. Any talking back, cheek, laziness, or recalcitrant behaviour is to be severely punished. Give the offenders a sufficiently good thrashing on the breech to make sure they will not be keen to reoffend.’

As he gave this instruction Mr. Enterprise focussed on the unfortunate boys who dropped their heads in fear and submission.

‘I will not spare the rod, Mr. Enterprise.’

‘Good! Inform Scullion of the extra mouths to feed and tell him from me that the boys are not to be overfed. He is to provide me with a list of supplies he requires for about a three-month period, and I will deliver the rations and requirements to the island each time I sail this way. We sail on the evening tide so I will need his list before then. He should anticipate a work force of about thirty boys when my ‘recruiting’ is complete and cater for them accordingly.’

‘Yes, Mr. Enterprise.’

‘You can put these three to work straight away. They might as well start earning their keep without delay.’

Tom Elder emerged from his cabin and walked smartly down to the jetty to greet Rufus Enterprise.

‘Welcome back to Seal Island, Mr. Enterprise.’

‘I am afraid it is just a brief visit, Tom. Do you like the cut of my brigantine?’

Tom Elder looked at the brigantine lolling at anchor with the morning light coruscating off the waters of King George Sound. He ran an experienced eye over her lines and spent some silent time trying to assess the ship. He noted a two-masted sailing vessel with a fully square-rigged foremast and at least two sails on the main mast, a square topsail, and a gaff mainsail, behind the mast. All the sails had been furled. The main mast was the second and taller of the two upright posts. There was no doubt the vessel was a smart and well-maintained brigantine.

‘At a distance, she looks ‘ship-shape’, Mr. Enterprise.’

‘She is called the ‘Cyprus’ and I purchased her and hired her crew in Van Diemen’s Land. You will be seeing her on a regular basis from now on.’

With that Mr. Enterprise climbed back into his brig’s tender and was rowing with a strong, easy stroke towards the anchored ‘Cyprus’. His ability as an oarsman suggested Rufus Enterprise had been well trained in the expertise of rowing at some time, at some other place. His sculling skills were superior, and Beater and Dental watched him pull away from the island and admired his ability to make a boat answer to his wishes. Everyone and everything were made to do what Rufus Enterprise wanted.

Once Mr. Enterprise was gone, Beater and Dental directed their attention to the three new arrivals.

‘W-W-W-What’s your n-n-n-names?’

For the first time the boys looked up and focussed on the stuttering man, the first who had taken any interest in them in many days. Bob Beater toughened the expected exchange.

‘Well, speak up. Or do you want a thrashin’ straight up to get you to talk?’

‘I’m Billy, this is Zack, and the short arse is Freddy.’

‘That’s better. You see it is not too ’ard to co-operate.’

‘Why have we been purchased and brought here, Mister? What is this place?’

‘Speak when you’re spoken, boy. Otherwise, you will feel the back of my hand straight up!’

The boys cowered once more. Dick Dental assessed the boys.

‘T-T-T-They’re f-f-f-filthy dirty, Bob and they don’t half s-s-s-stink.’

‘I agree. They can do a day’s work and then we will let them clean themselves up in the shallows tonight. You take them up to Harry, straight up. They can ’elp ’im with the processin’ platform construction. Then I will see Sam in the lean-to and tell him he has three extra mouths to feed, and a supplies’ list to prepare.’

‘O.K., B-B-B-Bob.’

With purpose Tom Elder and Bob Beater strode up to the newly completed cabin. Tom disappeared inside, and Bob Beater veered around the cabin to the lean-to galley at the back of it, which was Sam Scullion’s kitchen and cooking area. Dick Dental signed to the three boys to follow him, and he marched them up to where Harry Heeler was engaged in strenuous manual labour building the processing platform. In the hot morning sunshine, Harry had stripped to the waist and was working hard in just his heavy-duty trousers, held up by a wide leather belt with a prominent buckle. He wore substantial work boots, and had a red kerchief, featuring an indeterminate white pattern, tied around his neck. The beads of sweat on his brow and torso, were strong evidence that Harry knew how to stick to the job at hand and throw himself into all his tasks. He was an exceptional carpenter and boat builder, and he never cut corners when his carpentry skills were being put into practice. Harry paused in his hammering.

‘What’ve you got there, Dick?’

‘T-T-T-Three s-s-s-sets of hands to help you, Harry.’

‘Where did they come from?’

‘Mr. Enterprise r-r-r-rowed them across from his brig just n-n-n-now.’

‘What’s with the iron collars?’

‘Mr. Enterprise s-s-s-says they’ve got to w-w-w-wear them. They are to be chained up each night.’

‘That won’t do on my work site, Dick. Get those collars off them!’

‘Are you s-s-s-sure Harry?’ Mr. Enterprise s-s-s-said …’

‘If they are going to work for me, they are not going to wear metal collars. Just do it Dick!’

Harry Heeler put down his hammer and jumped down from the skeletal outline of the emerging processing platform and approached the three potential sealers’ boys.

‘I’m Harry Heeler, who are you?’

Harry pointed in turn to each boy.

‘Billy.’

‘Zack.’

‘Freddy.’

‘Ever done any carpentry before?’

Zack answered for the three.

‘Nup!’

‘Right, for a start, it’s ‘no, Sir’ when you speak to me. I am the master here, and for a while, anyway, you will be my apprentices. Do you know anything about tools?’

Billy smirked.

‘Nup.’

Harry Heeler stared hard at the boy who looked to be about fourteen or fifteen years of age and was well-developed in the upper body and arms.

‘No, Sir.’

‘No, Sir,’ said Billy rather reluctantly.

‘What sort of work have you done before?’

This time Freddy, the shortest of the boys, spoke.

‘I have never really worked at anything in my life, Mr. Heeler, that is if you don’t count boarding school lessons.’

‘Boarding school, eh? How did a boy given that sort of privilege, manage to end up here?’

‘It’s a long story, of which I am not proud.’

‘A foolish mistake, or are you a genuine juvenile criminal?’

‘I made a terrible mistake, that’s all, but if you give me a chance, I will prove to you that I am no criminal, and I am prepared to work hard.’

‘Hmm! Interesting. Well you will certainly get a chance to do some strenuous manual labour here, and I am a fair man, and I am willing to give you another chance. You can all make a start by helping me build this processing platform.’

None of the three boys had the confidence to ask what the platform would be processing when it was complete, so they just listened. Dick Dental examined the metal collars they wore, and with Harry Heeler’s input, he worked out the snap-lock mechanism behind each boys’ neck. Using more force than he expected to, Dick Dental released the boys from their collars. The sense of release and relief was expressed on each of the boys’ faces. Harry then explained their initial duties.

‘It’s not too hard to learn how to fetch and carry. I will introduce the tools to you and explain them as we go along. Shirts off and get some sun on your shoulders. It is going to be a long hot day.’

The boys didn’t argue. They each stripped off their shirts and Harry was surprised by their physical appearance. They were thin and probably undernourished, but they all looked wiry and potentially strong. The shortest of the boys, Freddy, had a fine upper body physique, which suggested he had participated in a training regime of some kind, at some stage in his short life. The other thing Harry noted was they were filthy and had probably rarely washed or bathed. Behind the dirt and grime their skin was milky pale and had probably rarely been exposed to long periods in the sun. The carpenter made a mental note not to allow the boys to keep their shirts off for too long, because their skin would burn under the fierce antipodean light. He determined the boys should have short periods of exposure only until their skin began to turn a brown or darkened shade. Harry knew from experience that would happen eventually after sensible and limited exposure to the sun.

Harry Heeler pointed to the pile of timber planking that was stacked not far from the northern jetty and gave instructions that the lumber should be carried up to him at the construction site. The individual pieces of timber presented no problems for the boys who managed the weight and size well, and they soon looked happy enough in performing the task. When Harry Heeler turned away from the boys for the first time, they immediately noticed the tell-tale scars on his back, which indicated he had been flogged more than once as a transported convict. Freddy took particular notice, but he never asked about the physical punishments Harry had clearly endured, and the carpenter never offered any explanation.

After a good number of planks had been brought up to the construction site, Harry Heeler showed the boys how to place the timber on the skeletal framework, align them correctly, and then nail them into position. He demonstrated, and then let each boy in turn repeat the process. Billy being slightly taller and apparently stronger had no difficulty in aligning the boards, but it was Freddy who showed superior dexterity and he handled a hammer and nails with aplomb.

‘Don’t choke your hammer, Freddy. Move your grip further down the handle and use a fuller swing. It will give you extra power.’

Freddy adjusted his grip and smiled at the feeling of extra force as he drove the nails home. Later Harry showed how the uneven ends of the planks were to be sawn off to give a well aligned finish to the edge of the processing platform. Harry was giving a demon­stration of how to use a ripping saw, and the important notion of letting the saw do the work, when Sam Scullion struck the old metal triangle hanging in his lean-to galley to indicate that the midday meal was ready. Harry wiped down his saw and put his own shirt back on.

‘Shirts on boys. That is enough sun for one day!’

Then the group walked down to Tom Elder’s cabin and proceeded around the back to the lean-to galley where they sat on benches around a wooden trestle table that Harry Heeler had also crafted, and Sam Scullion served a thin soup, that had obviously been watered down, to cater for the increased numbers. The soup was fish based and quite tasty, but the highlight was the fresh bread rolls which came with it.

Then Tom Elder appeared. Tom was of medium height and had a head of jet-black hair that was beginning to grey at the temples. Even on a warm day like this Tom still wore a white polo neck pullover and his work trousers were tucked into well-kept black wellington boots. Tom had a kind face,