Chapter 1

Sir Richard Hendricks had been assigned a position as Governor of the entire continent of Australia and the nearby island of Tasmania. He had been in the Foreign Office for thirty years, but this was his first posting as a Governor. He had been a member of the British peerage system his entire life. As was his right as a member of the Foreign Office, he had booked passage to his new posting in New South Wales, Australia on the naval ship going indirectly to his destination His Majesty’s Ship (HMS) Hermes. He was of course accompanied by his immediate family, his wife Geniabeth, and his daughters, Elizabeth (Beth), and Penelope (Penny).

Richard was an officious snob that almost everyone disliked. He had been assigned to this post to get rid of him once and for all! Those people he believed beneath him he would order about as if they were his personal slaves, and those above him he would lick their boots as if they were Masters of the Universe! And it was rumored that he licked much more than just boots!

His wife, through an arranged marriage, was a sweetly disposed lady who loathed and hated her husband, but enjoyed the benefits of his station. She managed to stay away from him as much as possible by being on numerous committees, and being involved with her children as much as possible. As a result both girls were as sweet as she was and just as beautiful.

Both girls very much disliked being uprooted from their circle of friends, and the school they had been attending. However they loved their mother and knew the reason they had been included in the move was to be her companions. They too, loathed their father and questioned whether he was actually their biological father. They knew with certainty that their mother had lovers, both male and female. They also knew that their “father” also had lovers, all of them were young boys that he buggered and they returned the favor to him.

The weather had been pleasant as they sailed from Portsmouth on the tide of September 6, 1835 then across the Channel and down the coast of France and Spain. They stopped at Gibraltar for a day before resuming their trip down the coast of Africa. The temperature and humidity rose after passing the Tropic of Cancer and continued to rise as they became nearer to the Equator.

Several of the sailors and one Officer had not crossed the Equator before and were initiated in The Line Crossing Ceremony where King Neptune extracted his fee for Griffin’s entrance into his Southern Ocean. The initiates were dunked three times before then running them around the deck on planks while the rest of the crew threw buckets of water on them. It had been great fun and had relieved the tedium of the passage. For a time at least. The girls and their mother had participated, their father had steadfastly refused.

After the Equator the heat and humidity became more bearable, it was spring as they approached the Cape of Good Hope they stopped at Cape Town for provisions and water. Sir Richard delivered some dispatches to the Government house and received some to be taken to Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

As they left Cape Town, the crew began stringing safety lines across the length of the decks. The hold containing supplies and cargo were checked and re-secured as necessary. The passengers were told to stay in their cabins and to remain there until the ship arrived in the calmer seas of the Indian Ocean.

The Cape lived up to its original Portuguese name Cape of Storms, high winds accompanied by huge waves thirty to forty foot high at times. Rain fell not in drops, but in sheets. At midday lighting, of which was almost constant, was the only light. Even with the safety lines rigged they lost five crewmen.

Below in their cabin all of the Hendricks family were violently seasick. Up to that point the girls and their mother had been fine, only Sir Richard had been sick. But being cooped up without a visible horizon and the ship struggling into the monster waves before cresting the tops and rushing down into the troughs, then repeating the same, over and over again for over a week. Even some of the experienced crew were getting seasick.

When they reached the Indian Ocean everything calmed and the family were once again allowed to come on deck. The crew’s carpenter was hard at work supervising the crew in replacing spars and some railing that had succumbed to the ravages of the Cape. Some of the rigging and sails had to be mended or replaced too.

While repairs were being made the Captain set sail to the northwest toward the Sunda Strait and Singapore. It was over five and a half thousand miles to Singapore, their next stop. It would take just over a month to get there, if the weather remained good and they had good winds. But the Indian Ocean was its unpredictable self. The ship became caught in the doldrums, an area of windless, flat, sea that had them measuring the ship’s progress in feet and inches per day.

The ship’s boats were launched and the men worked in shifts to pull the Hermes through the calm water. Twenty four hours a day, they labored to gain a few hundred feet per six hour shift. Everyone was tired, hot and irritable. Water was being rationed, fights broke between best friends over trivial things. The Captain had relaxed the strict dress code and let the men in the boats strip to their pants, even letting the men cut the legs of their pants short. In a week they had moved a scant two nautical miles. The barometer continued to show that they were in a high barometric pressure dome. The lookouts in the crows nest high on the main mast continued to report dark and menacing clouds on the far horizon, some twenty miles away. Of course the clouds could have been high in the atmosphere and could just as easily been fifty miles away.

The girls and their mom stayed in their cabin and had removed almost all of their abundant amount of clothing. While not nude, they certainly felt that way because almost twelve pounds of clothing were off of their bodies, bodices, petty coats, pantaloons, and a girdle in their mothers case, were stowed away in chests. Elizabeth hadn’t seen her sister’s naked breasts nor shown her her own since they were ten years old. But here they were, in a British warship, almost naked with over two hundred men who would give a month’s pay to look at them dressed as they were dressed at that moment. Sweat had made the thin flax dressing gowns they wore transparent and their breasts and nipples were on visible display. Those of their mother were visible too!

Elizabeth tried not to stare, but looking upon those delectable looking morsels of human flesh made her wet between her legs, over and above that amount of sweat that could also be found. Unknown to Elizabeth, her sister Penny also found the sight to be quite titillating!

Their mother cried in despair and took off the sweat soaked gown and became completely naked. She urged the girls to follow suit! It did feel much cooler as she indecently spread her legs and arms and used a hand fan to create a breeze that hardened her nipples! Both girls removed their gowns and also felt the cooling effects of their self generated breeze bring a modicum of chill that made their nipples pop. As they two spread their legs, like their mother had done, the hand fans’ breeze did the same thing to the button at the top of their kitty’s. But not just as a result of the chill, but also from the view presented by their cabin mates!