Consider contested views of ‘culture’ – indigenous, anthropological, migrant, settler –

in any of the novels in this course you have not already written on –

Annamarie Jargosse’s Slow Water is a novel whose voyage narrative embarks upon a sea
of speculative retrospection. It is the fate of the historical novel to concern itself the
currently dominant opinions of the past and its people, and to provide new insight where
it sees value in doing so. Slow Water does just this with a cross-selection of ‘cultures’
prevalent in the colonial world of the early to mid eighteen hundreds. Jargosse’s primary
focus is that of the colonial sailing to new lands; a microcosm of individuals who carry
the baggage and flair of their cultural conditioning onto their ship the ‘Prince Regent’. To
do this Jargosse has mined journals written by passengers of the real Prince Regent on
this journey, as well as journals of other voyagers of the same era (Jargosse 342). Her
narrative melds the slowly developing human relationships with details of the ship’s
realities – like the weather - to create a novel whose style reflects the argument it creates:
that life on board a migratory vessel was patient, careful, and not concerned with
abstraction but rather the trivial and the sexual. In an act of the egalitarian-isation of
history, Jargosse gives voice to all of those on board, not just the gentry who were soon
to arrive in New Zealand to dictate policy and join the annals which all too often place
individual merit over collective efforts. In a similarly egalitarian move Jargosse places
emphasis on the homosexual activities of the Prince Regent, asking us to reconsider what
history may have hither unwittingly subverted. What has not been suppressed though is
the righteous indignation against homosexuals at the hands of the power brokers.

The separation of classes aboard the ship does not fail to pass under the gaze of the
historically accurate Jargosse. Endeavouring to create a realistic periphery of characters
around the central character the missionary William Yate, Jargosse sometimes falls back
upon often used typologies of people of the period. One such character is undoubtedly
captain Button, the pariah of all that is an orderly English gentleman; a passenger of the
ship and in the employ of the monarch as a “military man” (Jargosse 39). Button is
painted as “a dour and private man” (Jargosse 39) whose successful career has seen him
find a wife in the “lively” and “elegant” (Jargosse 39) Mrs Button. His relation to the
female members of his family is the classic form of the officious husband who is
deliberately naïve to amorous actions of the strong-willed female members of his family -
those females having adopted the recent French conventions of romantic love and lust
who were abetted by the romantic poets of the ilk of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Thus
when Mrs Button is fornicating with Mr Armistead she thinks briefly of Mr Button as
“dear indulgent husband” (Jargosse 130), but does not fear his wrath or mourn her
immoral infidelity. We assume their is a sex-less marriage - likely maintained by the
materially and socially advantageous conditions; a common mode of the ruling class of
the period. Jargosse makes explicit at the beginning of the novel that this family is to be
looked upon as an expression of the upper class. During the scene in which the ship is
boarded, Mr Armistead comes aboard and makes quite a display with his dandy clothing,
but Mr. and Mrs. Button pay only a little attention, “accustomed as they were to seeing to
their own comforts before giving anyone else their consideration” (Jargosse 24). Jargosse
presents this greed as an inevitability of those who would travel in such a position of
advantage, as by the middle of the novel a fellow passenger is “thoroughly sick of the
Buttons and their troublesome ways” (Jargosse 154) – the Buttons having taken up
paying a boy of the ship to deliver to them more than their fair share of food and drink
(Jargosse 154 – 155).

Social caste was surely a dominant organizational method of the period this novel
considers, and our recorded histories are thus biased toward all that served to preserve the
sanctity of this order. Slow Water attempts to subvert this traditional conception by
attributing a sense of nobility to the ship’s crew – that group who so often serve only the
typology of the savage and rapacious fiend of the ocean. As the Prince Regent is boarded
the reader is introduced to the resident underclass through the lens of young Samuel Hall,
himself a fresh-faced sailor. One of Hall’s first interactions with his fellow sailors is with
the aged Launcelot Busby. Hall asks Busby of his new Captian’s character, to which
Busby responds “Well, he’s a man, like any another” (Jargosse 13). That Busby will not
comment on his fellow man is a value of the sailors that recurs at the end when
Armistead comes back aboard the Prince Regent to elicit depositions from all aboard.
Armistead receives the men one by one, and as Mr. May leaves the room he casts “a wink
to his men that a gentleman oughtn’t try and roister a sailor on his own ship” (Jargosse
312). As the questioning continues, the omniscient narrator says that Armistead “hadn’t
enjoyed the success he had hoped, the men grinning and stupid, quick to agree to
whatever he put to them and shy of anything else” (Jargosse 312). The men’s failure to
comply reasonably cannot be taken as simply indicative of stupidity, but rather the fact
that the culture of these sailors makes no allowance for the passing of judgement on their
fellow man. They do not question a mans nature, simply his effect on their company and
whether they are slovenly workers (Jargosse 13). The Prince Regent’s culture of
deliberate naivety toward authority is encapsulated by the cook Louie when he says to
young Hall that when questioned by Armistead he should say “Whatever you like”
(Jargosse 312). To not care about the repercussions of external agency is certainly one
way of constructing the eventual dismantling of its existence.

Ignoring the authority was indeed a means by which sailors would escape the
contamination of their own environment by that of Armistead’s ilk, but it is one based on
an existing balance of power. The sailors are empowered by their absolute necessity on
vessels the world over, as a functional part of its machinations in performing a job that no
others would have the mettle for. Individual vessels then face their own balance of power,
in the captain. Slow Water argues retrospectively that these sailors were likely not
unaware of the vulnerability of their disunion. When Hall is speaking to Busby in that
first interaction, Hall asks Busby if the captain has a beard; “No, he’s got not beard. The
older man [Busby] stepped heavy on the last word as if the absence of a beard signified
much for the captain’s character” (Jargosse 14). Aboard the ship the captain is the
connection between the unitary lives of the crew and the dangerous maze of pretensions
(think of how Yate is treated in Sydney: Jargosse 317) of those who live in the market
and religion based society ashore. The lack of a beard could be taken as an indicator that
the captain was more involved in the ‘clean-cut’ sentiments of gentry than sailors – that
he is ambitious and domineering rather than respectful of the sailor’s code; an overly self-
interested captain would mean the potential for descent into blind-crowd-driven conflict
like we see infecting the throngs of Sydney (Jargosse 325). The Prince Regent is graced,
for their captain Aitken strives to preserve the integrity of those aboard his ship and
comments on Armistead’s witch-hunt as “nothing but envy” (Jargosse 313).

Slow Water possesses conflicting cultures, but also seeks to portray how those differences
would merge into a separate and temporary sub-culture. What physically and thus
culturally brings together the society which the Button’s head, and that of the sailors, is
the Prince Regent. The vessel is their shared fate. One aspect of that fate is subjection to
the ocean, the Slow Water. It seems though Jargosse has chosen the speed of her story to
recreate the feelings of confinement and claustrophobia that those on board migratory
vessels at this time in history would have felt. The novels opening chapter occurs after
the voyage would have ended and tells us of destruction, death, and scandal (Jargosse 1-
2). We are left in anticipation of shocking events to come, and the expectation that the
reader feels could be compared to the eagerness that those aboard would have felt before
such a voyage. Excitement soon wears off though, however, and dissatisfaction is soon
reflected in the narrative when the “ship had been becalmed the last two days (Jargosse
117). The text here weaves its way around a laconic feeling, again that the reader might
share: “Not a breath discomposed the water’s surface. The heat below nearly
insupportable, the passengers were all on deck, the cabin class beneath the poop awning,
steerage wherever they could take their relief” (Jargosse 117). When the ship is becalmed
in the heat, the intense unifying is expressed thus: the “vessel is held back for hours,
days, and lies inert on a lifeless sea, then all on board contract her sluggishness and feel
themselves becalmed in an endless day” (Jargosse 117), and so does the reader, and this
laconic feeling arguably remains in the readers conceptions for the remainder of the text.

Brought together on the Prince Regent for such an excruciatingly long period of time,
Jargosse’s research of journals eventuated in her portrayal of the behaviour of those
aboard as straying from ordinary contemporaneous (in terms of modern historical
judgement) conventions of proprietary behaviour. Sexual relations form a good part of
that deviation. Slow Water serves to place some sexual taboos that have been
contemporarily defused into their rightful places, where history has thus far been silent on
the matter. In one such case of enlightenment we are offered the case of the Parkers who
habitually fornicate loudly at night, while with a similar regularity Mary Ford “often lay
awake waiting for them to come to bed, her hand between her own generous thighs”
(Jargosse 71). The satisfaction of a governess s dictate by the literature as being left either
to adultery with the master or simply a godly abstinence; here Mary Ford performs an act
quite normal for women but rarely spoken of openly until post-modernism. Breaking
down barriers of class as well as sexual taboo’s is Yate in his sexual relations with the
cook. Yate is our very likeable central character, and as the voyage draws on he becomes
capable of walking among the crew at work “inconsequentially… there was some tame
wildness to him that each man hoped to husband to himself a moment” (Jargosse 145);
Yate has managed to break down the clash-of-worlds animosity that might exist. While
walking he comes across the cook, Louie, in the middle of relations with Hall. That he is
a missionary of some station does not possess Yates to report this morally dubious act to
the judgement of his peers. Rather, Yate succumbs to the passion of the situation – that
solely male passion that have often been purported to exist on ships – and takes Hall’s
place with the cook (Jargosse 146 – 148). Indeed Yate’s involvement in the affair and the
kind familiarity in the relationship between Hall and cook (Jargosse 312) invite the
reader to reassess in some small way this form of sexual relationship that wasn’t then an
issue but is contemporarily.

Homosexual behaviour is expected historically of those who crewed the vessels – the
sentiment that men at sea gratify each other is one which still exists in our notion o fthe
navy. The nature of such behaviour amongst reputable members of society is something
less known due to the fact that it was frowned upon and indeed legislated against at the
time (Jargosse 317) at the time, and so its history died with those involved – until people
like Jargosse deciphered the journals of the time. Jargosse thus chooses to revive this
silent aspect of history through the relationship between Yate and Edwin Denison. The
two fall in love as the voyage goes on, enjoying the sailors freedom of action afforded on
the Prince Regent. Indeed, out with his sister Sarah and fledgling romantic partner Edwin,
Yate comments “Could you ever be happy not at sea, Mr Denison?” (Jargosse 174). The
men spend much time in each others cabins (Jargosse 223, 235) and share a bed (Jargosse
223), this being a common practice among men of the era (Jargosse 317). Jargosse’s
narrative suggests to the modern era that men sharing small beds was not simply the sign
of vivacious camaraderie. Edwin and William engage in at least some degree of sexual
activity (Jargosse 204), and the narrative aboard the Prince Regent portrays this
relationship in romantic terms. In accordance with the sailors code, or rather the simple
human notion of personal freedom, to express fleshly life, the depiction of romance never
once reflects on the disparity in their societal stations. When ashore and subject to
investigation this becomes paramount as “Considering their disparity of rank and
education and moral deportment, said Mr Taylor, nibbling his teeth, there was an
unbecoming intimacy between Mr yate and Mr Denison” (Jargosse 317). That which
occurs on shore in Australia is indicative of the most vile aspects of colonial civilization.
When word of Yate’s deeds spread “his horse was shot and all his possessions burned”
(Jargosse 337) and he is barred from returning to that place that seems to possess so much
magic for him (Jargosse 174, 333).

Whatever degree Jargosse’s romanticisation of the homosexual affairs of Yate might

achieve, the dark ending of the story pays once again the morbid debt such men risked
incurring. Slow Water weaves pre-existing cultural concepts that serve to attribute her
novel integrity in the mind of the modern reader. Mrs. Button and her officious husband
engage in a relationship that we modern people perceive, however correctly, as being a
very common mode of marriage of the day. They also display the ego and greed of class
which are so easily fallen back upon by an author. On top of such cultural norms we are
offered a window into homosexuality. When considering cook Louie, Jargosse adopts the
already common meme of the sexual sailor while developing it in a new and interesting
manner. Jargosse offers us a homosexuality which does not shun care and concern and is
not driven by rum-crazy sexual urges. Rather the acts occur with subtlety, discretion, and
peaceable affection. Their necessity is borne of the long journey which does not drive the
men to exaggerated bouts of emotional display, but rather an almost jaded resignation to
their place coupled with a desire to live in the moment free of ideological shackles.
Jargosse weaves many different cultural concepts into the Prince Regent, and the
outcome is the culture of the migratory vessel yearning for transcendence.

Johno Ormond

Bibliography
Jargosse, Annamarie, Slow Water, Victoria Universtiy Press, Wellington: 2003