Morgan`s Run

by Pat Broderick | Nov 2, 2000

"Morgan`s Run," by Colleen McCullough; Simon & Schuster; 608 pages; $28.

Sick `n` tired of the same old seafarin` curses, are ye? Well, listen up and learn. Here are some of me favorites from "Morgan`s Run":

"Ye thievin`, rum-swilling, twiddle-poops!"

"Ye elephant`s arse!"

"Suet-face!"

"Ye cheeseparing bile bag!"

"Ye fat flawn!"

If you were to plunk down 18th century Richard Morgan onto the set of "Survivor," he would gather the hapless denizens around him, demanding, "Do ye have a proper drip stone? Nay! Oil of tar? Do yer not have even a dollop of asphalt ointment for what ails ye? And ye call yerselves survivors? I`ll tell ye a thing or two about surviving!"

Believe it. In Colleen McCullough`s latest epic saga, we meet our handsome hero as a young husband and father, the son of a tavern keeper in Bristol, England, trained as a master gunsmith. As the American revolution heats up, Morgan keeps the extended family solvent by making weapons, helping out with his parents` struggling business and planning what he expects will be a fine middle-class life, by 18th century standards: a home of his own, a dozen healthy children and the respect of his peers. But early on, we sense doom. Initially, it comes in the form of disease and financial calamities.

"Is it because as we grow older we are incapable of sustaining the vividness of our youthful dreams?" Richard ponders as his life starts to crumble. "Does life itself snuff them out? I used to have such wonderful dreams - the cottage in Clifton amid a garden full of flowers, a handsome pony to ride into Bristol and a trip to take my family up to Durdham Down for picnics. ... Yet here am I turned two-and-thirty, and none of it has come to pass."

Richard has his own way of coping: "Long ago I learned that trouble comes when one makes too much of a song and dance, that the best way to avoid trouble is to be quiet, draw no attention to oneself."

His lifelong credo fails him when he decides to blow the whistle on a tax-fraud scam brewing at a distillery where he`s found employment. Betrayed, Morgan ends up in a hellhole of a prison, where he gradually breaks from his shell.

Morgan`s most grueling test will be the harrowing voyage aboard a slaver bound for Botany Bay, Australia, England`s great human experiment designed to rid her soil of undesirables. Convicts are crammed together in a stench-filled hold, devoid of light and, for many of them, hope.

Again, Morgan not only manages to survive, but thrive, becoming the reluctant leader of his scruffy band and winning the grudging respect of his keepers. He does this with a combination of quick wit, practical skills and some modern wonders introduced by his cousin the druggist. Here, McCullough devotes much time detailing how the men dealt with hunger and hygiene, vermin and vomit (most of them suffered terrible bouts of seasickness, along with the sailor`s dreaded nemesis, scurvy).

The water was contaminated, a major cause of disease and death on board, but cousin James the druggist issues Morgan and his mates drip stones. As his cousin explains it, "The stone part ... is a slightly conical-bottomed dish which holds about three pints of water. The water soaks through the stone and drips from its bottom into the brass dish below it. Whatever magic happens within the stone I do not know, but the water in the collecting dish is as sweet and fresh as the best spring water."

This sort of detail sets McCullough`s epic apart from your standard swashbuckling, seafaring adventure. By the time Morgan and his mates disembark at Botany Bay, readers will have experienced the queasiness, the claustrophobia and terror that beset these men. Her prose is that vivid, aided by diagrams of the interior of the ship Alexander:

"The prison was almost pitch-black; its only light came from the open hatch to the deck above. And the stench was frightful, a stale foulness that was a mixture of rotting flesh, rotting fish and rotting excrement. ... Another stream of convicts dribbled in, voices muffled, attenuated; many wept, a few started to scream and were suddenly silenced - with what and by whom, the six in Richard`s cot had no idea."

Finally, having sailed 17,300 land miles in 251 days, 177 of the 225 convicts survive to land at what has become known to them as the ends of the Earth. Here, McCullough focuses much of the story on the divisive factions - among the government bureaucrats and navy officers, as well as the volatile convicts - that threatened to end the experiment (which eventually would include shiploads of female prisoners) before it had even begun.

But Morgan endures. As his old friend Jem Thistlethwaite sums him up, "Richard had spent his life in Bristol as a raft, pushed and pulled at the direction, sometimes the whim, of others. Despite his griefs and disasters, he had remained that passive raft. ... Prison had given him a star to steer by, and his own will had swelled sails he did not even know he possessed. Because he was a man who had to have someone to love more than he loved himself, he had undertaken the task of saving his own people ... ."

And, for Morgan, irony does indeed abound. His best friend tells him:

"`Tis true, Richard, ye do have luck. It seems odd to say that of a man unlucky enough to have gone down for something he did not do, yet ye do have luck.`

"`Morgan`s run,` said Richard, nodding. `Luck runs.`

"`Ye have had your runs of bad luck, too.`

"`In Bristol, aye. As a convict I have had very good luck.`"

(Turn off that !@#&* cell phone, yer bilge rat!)

- Pat Broderick

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