The Lazarette of the "Huntress."

Name: The Lazarette of the "Huntress."
Author: W. Clark Russell

A penniless stowaway desperate to sail to Australia boards a vessel in 1853 and hides in its lazarette. After enduring long hardships and bitter indignities at sea, he finds himself concealed among cargo in a dark, cramped space. A friend from his past, working as an under-steward, advises him to remain hidden until the vessel is well out to sea, so he may avoid detection and punishment. While concealed in the lazarette, the stowaway becomes aware of a furtive visitor—a man who stealthily makes his way into the hold with a bull’s-eye lamp and a small brass mechanism with an attached black line. This man, later identified by ship officers as a steerage passenger named John Howland, painstakingly fits a slow match to a barrel of gunpowder, concealed among the ship’s cargo. The ticking of the clockwork-like device signals an imminent threat to the ship as the mechanism appears designed to ignite the powder and cause a catastrophic explosion. Realizing the gravity of the situation, the stowaway, filled with horror yet driven by desperate courage, acts immediately. He scrambles clumsily over the casks in the darkness, risks injury from sharp edges and obstructions, and seizes the infernal device. In a frantic struggle against time and terror, he removes the burning match, silencing the deadly ticking and thereby averting what might have been an explosion that could have cost many lives. Once he escapes the suffocating blackness of the lazarette—climbing out amid collapsing shadows and foul air—the stowaway reaches the deck. There he encounters ship officers who, alarmed by his account of the sabotage, gather to inspect the mechanism. The captain, calm yet decisive, examines the device and orders a search. As events unfold, the suspicious passenger, initially implicated in the nefarious plot, is found dead in his cabin with a grievously slashed throat, suggesting that his own hand had brought about his end. Subsequently, the story of the narrowly averted disaster is corroborated by newspaper reports. One account from a prominent local paper credits the stowaway with heroic actions that saved the ship and its two hundred and ten souls, rewarding him with money and free passage. Another report, published in a respected nautical journal two years later, presents a narrative in which the dead passenger himself—revealed to be an ex-convict driven by a desire for vengeance against a man who had condemned him to Norfolk Island—described his scheme for obliteration before his death. This later narrative implies that his underlying motive was a personal vendetta, explaining the calculated placement of the sabotaging device. The incident weaves themes of desperation, courage, and retribution into a tightly spun account of life at sea. The stowaway’s tale is one of narrowly escaping calamity and inadvertently capturing the attention of the ship’s officers, culminating in a dramatic confrontation with fate. In a world of hard living and harsh justice, his actions underscore both the potential for ordinary individuals to perform extraordinary deeds and the strange, unpredictable interplay of human ambition and misfortune that defined maritime adventure in the mid-nineteenth century.

By W. Clark Russell · First published 1878 · Genre: Nautical Fiction, Adventure, Historical Fiction · 8,637 words

First lines

I stepped into the Brunswick Hotel in the East India Docks for a glass of ale. It was in the year 1853, and a wet, hot afternoon. I had been on the tramp all day, making just three weeks of a wretched, hopeless hunt after a situation on shipboard, and every bone in me ached with my heart. My precious timbers, how poor I was! Two shillings and threepence-that was all the money I possessed in the wide world, and when I had paid for the ale, I was poorer yet by twopence.

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The Lazarette of the "Huntress." is listed on Textopian as a short story by W. Clark Russell, dated 1878 CE.

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Work type: Short story
Author: W. Clark Russell
Date: 1878 CE
Language: English
Genres: Nautical Fiction, Adventure, Historical Fiction, Thriller, Mystery
Length: 8,637 words
Structure: 1 section, 92 paragraphs
Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)

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Genres

Nautical Fiction — The narrative is set aboard a ship and revolves around maritime life, detailing seafaring routines and shipboard tension.
Adventure — The plot follows a daring stowaway story with high-stakes escapes and life-threatening situations on the high seas.
Historical Fiction — Set in 1853, the work vividly recreates the social and maritime atmosphere of its time.
Thriller — The suspenseful buildup, the threat of explosion, and the constant peril contribute to a tense, thriller narrative.