China Flyer by Porter Hill

Author:Porter Hill [Porter Hill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780285642133
Publisher: Souvenir Press
Published: 2013-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

At the age of ten, Lothar Schiller had been hired out by his father as a cabin boy to the Prussian merchant ship, the Melanchthon. After sailing back and forth from the North Sea to the Baltic, he learned on his return to Hamburg that his father had died in his long absence, and that his mother had married a Hanoverian apothecary, leaving no word of where her son could find them.

Lothar Schiller had grown up under many flags. Hanoverian. Austrian. Prussian. He had lived, too, in many towns. Bremen. Cassel. Hamburg. Consequently, at the age of thirteen he felt no loyalty to any king or country, only a kinship to the race whose language he spoke—German.

Finding himself homeless, Schiller had lied about his age in order to fight as a mercenary foot soldier with the French Army commander, Maurice de Saxe, against the Duke of Cumberland’s Allied Army in Flanders. Knowing little about the War of the Austrian Succession, and not caring to know, he only worried about the money pouch he would receive as his soldier’s pay.

Attached to the Irish Brigade under de Saxe, Schiller met British soldiers of fortune who taught him his first words of English. He learned, too, that careers could be made in Europe’s professional armies.

Fired by the hope of joining such a force, he travelled to England, but there was no market for his services at that time. Instead, he signed on with a succession of merchant ships plying between England, Scotland, and Denmark. As much at home on the sea as he had been on land, he quickly graduated from deck hand to helmsman’s mate, making friends with men below decks as well as with young officers.

Then came a chance to sail to Madras aboard the HEIC Indiaman, Castle Bukeley; Schiller seized it, secretly hoping to find work in India as a mercenary soldier in the struggle between the French and the English. He disliked the orderliness of Company merchantmen and longed for the rough-and-tumble life of soldiers for hire.

Although the Seven Years War had not officially ended in Europe, fighting had ceased in India by the time Schiller arrived at Fort St George. Rather than return to England on the Indiaman’s home voyage, he signed on with Company ships trading between the East Indian islands.

Work proved to be scarce, an increasing number of Lascar sailors taking jobs usually reserved for European seamen. Schiller spent months unemployed, scouting for work in Madras’s Black Town.

In February of this year, he had heard a rumour of employment being offered by an Englishman organising a private venture to China. He had several meetings with Fanshaw, convincing him of his ability both to command a ship and to keep silent about the voyage. The promise of gold influenced his decision to work for the unlikeable man.

The harbour noises of Macao brought Schiller’s attention back to the present. Looking in the direction where Fanshaw’s boat had disappeared through the crowded sampans, he regretted having taken this job on the China Flyer.

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