Description
A country ship: Bombay-built, teak, about three hundred and fifty tons, ship-rigged. Owned out of Calcutta and working the Red Sea season — up to Mocha and Jeddah on one monsoon, home to Bengal on the turn of the other.
She is not an East India Company vessel and answers to no Company officer, which is the entire reason she was available at Suez. Teak-built and better found than anything European of her size — Bombay yards outbuilt the Thames for durability and everyone in the trade knew it.
But she is a working merchantman, not a passenger ship. Coffee in the hold, hides stowed above it. The whole vessel smells of both, in every cabin, in every garment, permanently.
As Played — Session 7
Chartered at the Suez Waterfront gangplank at dawn, minutes ahead of a column of Ottoman soldiers: one hundred pounds for eight passages to Calcutta, the passengers sharing the ship’s cabin, Aratoon keeping his coffee and hides.
Life aboard settled into a rhythm over the following weeks. The party took the single large cabin with its curtained berths and paired off for sleeping. Georgiana buried herself in her arcane studies and filled pages with notes. Holt practised knife throwing on deck; Freddy, generous and paying no attention whatever to the boy’s age, kept Jumman well supplied with drink. Ashby moved easily among the crew and spoke to them in Bengali, which nobody else aboard could follow a word of. Sona Mia sat outside the cabin polishing his buckle and telling a different story about it every time. Faraj sang low and continuously in the galley and produced a heavily spiced stew that was, against all expectation, genuinely good.
The passage’s one formal event was a friendly duel on deck — Thomas’s sabre against Holt’s cutlass, with a gentleman’s wager attached: the loser buys the drinks on the first night ashore and owes an apology to the ladies. Thomas slipped inside Holt’s guard, caught his blade and sent the cutlass to the deck, stepped back, said “Well thought, sir,” and offered to continue — and was cut off by Ismail’s hullabaloo as Socotra came up off the port bow.
She anchored in the sheltered bay to water, lost two men to what lives in the cliffs, got both back, finished the run, and sailed. See Socotra Cave Rescue.
Notable Features
- The stern cabin. The passengers’ entire world: one space partitioned with canvas screens and curtained berths. Eight people in it — six investigators, Thomas, and Ashby, paired off for sleeping. Meaningfully worse than La Speranza’s after cabin, which the party already found intolerable. Canvas is not a wall. Nothing said in it is private.
- The deck. Run absolutely by Serang Ismail. Aratoon gives orders to the serang and never to the men.
- The crew. Around thirty lascars — Bengali and Chittagonging, with a few Arabs shipped at Mocha and one Goan — under the serang and two tindals. A permanent gang who ship together season after season, working with quiet efficiency behind a battered surface. They went into the caves at Socotra alongside the party, supplied the ladders and rigging, carried the torches, and made themselves into climbing frames to reach the cocoons.
- Named hands: Sona Mia (seacunny), Jumman (sixteen, first voyage), Faraj (bhandary — sings continuously), Domingo Rozario (topass).
- Water. Casks, and the reason she stops at Socotra at all.
Connections
- Chartered at Suez, late September 1814 (Session 07 Plan, Scene 2; played Session 7).
- Carried the party to the sheltered bay at Socotra and is running on for Bengal.
- Aratoon is the party’s introduction to Calcutta’s Armenian community before they ever reach the city.
- Socotra Cave Rescue — what the watering stop cost her.
Appearances
Relationships
- Serves Manoug Aratoon — Master and part-owner
- Located at The Island Stop — Anchors in the Socotra bay; her crew go ashore for water
- Succeeded La Speranza — Replaces La Speranza for the Suez → Calcutta leg after the Egypt overland crossing
- Located at Suez Waterfront — The Shah Alam made the bay at dawn and was chartered at her own gangplank