Traveling the Chao Phraya YesterdayPrepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International
Last posting I wrote about a Greek sailor being shipwreck on the coast of Thailand. I an enclosing the second chapter of my book The Love of Asia to show how difficult it once was to reach Ayutthaya via the Chao Phraya before, that is before vessels had mechanical power.
He lay in the sand, face down, and a voice came from far away. “Wake up,” it called. “Wake up.” Slowly he awoke like one does when coming out of a trance. It was a pleasant dream and he didn’t want to wake up. He was a boy again, back in Greece, long before he ran away and went to sea. It was all peace and quiet. But, as he slowly recovered his senses, the dream became a frightening nightmare with terrible screaming in the night and the terrifying sounds of rigging crashing down and timbers splintering. The ship was going down. There was the hatch, with the line tied to his wrist. It all came back to him, except it was not a nightmare, nor a bad dream. It was real. He was shipwrecked, cast up on a forbidden shore. But a shore, which shore? The voice he heard was Malay. The ship went down in Malay waters, pirate waters. He heard the voice again, and now he felt a nudge on his shoulder. “Wake up,” it demanded, and a hand forcibly rolled him over on his back. The sun had yet to rise and against the soft glow of the gray sky he brought into focus not one but two faces staring down at him. He gave a faint smile and a hand reached down to pull him up to a sitting position. The men were not Malay. They were Portuguese, two deck passengers he had seen from time to time aboard Putra Siamang.
He had fleeting glimpses of them in the storm, not together but singly, each at his own endeavor to save the doomed ship. The taller of the two, the older one, labored frantically to lash down the main boom to keep it from swinging dangerously out of control. The other man, with the wind tearing the shirt from his body, struggled at the wheel along with the helmsmen to keep the ship on course. His too, like his mate’s, was a losing battle. The Greek saw them, and then he didn’t, until now. The men must have thought he was Malay, or Javanese. The Greek was often mistaken for an islander. He was dark, not from birth but from his years under a tortuous tropical sun which had turned him the color of mahogany. He answered them not in Malay but in Portuguese, a tongue he had learned while working with the East India Company out of Goa. He introduced himself. “Constantine Gerakis,” he said. They shook hands. The older of the two men called himself Diego, and the other, Christoph. They too were en route to Ayutthaya, to cast their luck with the British there, rather than remain with their Dutch masters in Batavia from where they came.
The three men took stock of their situation. They were happy to have survived the storm and, like lost old friends, slapped one another on their backs. But their merriment was short-lived. They heard shouting coming from down the way. They stopped and turned in that direction.
All along the shoreline was the shattered wreckage of the ill-fated ship: bodies had washed up on the sand, along with the debris, bits of rigging and splintered masts, tangled with torn sails and lines. They then saw the soldiers, a patrol of about a dozen men, brandishing long lances. By their dress they knew instantly they were Siamese, for they wore wrap-around baggy breeches and leather hats, like skullcaps, except these hats extended down to their shoulders and covered their ears. As they worked their way up the beach, they prodded the bodies with the butt-ends of their lances, checking if any were still alive; they rummaged through the debris, lifting pieces of planks and boards with their lances, turning some of them over. They were delighted at their discovery of the wreck, as though it was their doing, shouting and frolicking like victors after winning a sporting event. They suddenly turned solemn when they saw the three castaways up the beach, standing there, very much alive. It was too late for the three men to run and attempt to make good an escape. The soldiers bore down on them, swinging their lances like war clubs. They charged as wild animals charge, circling the three helpless men, knocking them down to their knees.
Gerakis attempted to calm them down by speaking to them first in Malay, next in Portuguese, and finally in English; but his endeavor only tended to fire their anger more and make the situation far worse. The soldiers turned upon him and mercilessly pounded him across his back with their lances, knocking him flat into the sand. Gradually the soldiers, finding their prey helpless, eased off and, after conferring with one another, blindfolded the captives and bound them with their arms secured behind their backs. They then herded the prisoners up the beach a few hundred meters to where an inlet of water flowed to the sea. When the men found it was fresh, they fell to their knees and began lapping up the water, like craved animals, as the soldiers kept prodding them to move along. They kept stumbling through the shallow water until they bumped against the bulwark of a vessel.
Still blindfolded, Gerakis and the two Portuguese were forced aboard and made to sit three abreast in the bilge amidships. Gerakis reasoned the vessel was a longboat of sorts, large enough to be sea going. He had heard seamen talk about these boats, men who had sailed the River of Kings, or the Menam as some called it, to Ayutthaya. They spoke of them as remarkable vessels, some more than a hundred feet long, with finely carved bows and sterns that rose high into the air. Gerakis surmised this was the same type of vessel, propelled not by sail power but by oars, or in this case, paddles.
As they sat in the bottom of the boat, water sloshed against their buttocks each time one of the crew came aboard or disembarked, causing the boat to heel to one side. Helpless, all they could do was listen to the sounds and wonder about their fate. They heard the crew take positions along the port and starboard sides and then the thumping of their paddles against the hull. The boat backed down the waterway, and once free from the channel, turned and faced the onslaught of an incoming sea. The crew took up a chant to a cadence set by a drummer stationed somewhere aft, and in unison, they dipped their paddles and the longboat moved forward, slowly at first. But with each thrust of their paddles, and with an increase in tempo of the beat of the drummer, it gained momentum and was soon gliding over the surface of the water at what seemed to be above the waves. When the sun rose above the horizon, the sun’s rays fell on their starboard and Gerakis determined they were heading northward toward the River of Kings, the waterway that would hopefully carry them upriver to the Siamese capital. At last, he was going to Ayutthaya, not exactly by a method he had in mind, but, nevertheless, to Ayutthaya.
For three days and three nights the crew labored at their paddles. Every few hours they changed relief with the boat constantly kept in motion. On the morning of the second day, a crewman freed their hands and removed their blindfolds. He handed them wooden bowls, and from a bucket he ladled out watery rice mixed with seaweed. When they finished that, he refilled their bowls with hot water floating with a few tea leaves. Once done, he blindfolded them again and bound their hands, and the voyage continued.
On the morning of the fourth day, the captives awoke to find the sea had calmed. Gerakis was certain they were nearing the mouth of the great river. He remembered hearing about a sandbar far out at sea that served as the first line of defense for the Siamese capital. Ships had to negotiate a narrow passage through the bar, a passage which only experienced pilots could navigate with certainty. If a ship ran aground, it might take weeks before a rising tide could set it free and there was always the chance that the ship might break up before that happened, especially when sudden storms swept down from the China Sea.
Gerakis saw it all before him in his mind’s eye. He had listened, over and over, to sailors tell tales about their passage upriver to Ayutthaya, a voyage that carried them for thirty leagues through a dazzling world of temples and spiral domes that sparkled in the sun, and where elephants came down by the hundreds to the water’s edge to cool off in the river. He wondered if there were Dutch gunboats still blockading the river. The Dutch had first arrived in 1604, built factories and warehouses, and, for nearly a half century, controlled a lucrative, flourishing trade, until the British and French made their way up the river to the capital. The Dutch believed they had the sole right to the trade, but when the king refused them special commercial privileges, they blockaded the river. That was a dozen years before Gerakis arrived and he now wondered who had control of the river.
Gerakis had never traveled the river, and yet he knew it well. He knew that the mouth was as wide as a lake, making it difficult for the Siamese to guard the kingdom against foreign intrusion. To counteract the threat, the Siamese loaded junks and barges with stones and sank them at marked locations in the river, forcing ships to enter a narrow passageway which they could control with their batteries of cannons on the shore. There was a fort there too, at a place called Pak Nam. Gerakis, with his head buried in his knees, listened intently for a sound he knew would come. With each dip of their paddles, they came closer and closer, and then, sure enough, the sound he waited for was clear and certain. It was the rattle of a chain. The seamen whose tales he had listened to were right. The Siamese placed huge chains across the entrance, and these they could lower and raise at will. He was certain now that cannons on the shore were trained at them as they passed.
The boat arrived at a dockside and Gerakis could hear shouting and movement from a gathering crowd above.
Finally the three captives were led ashore and their blindfolds removed. Gerakis had his first real glimpse at a Siamese town, but only briefly. Unaccustomed to the glaring sun, he had to keep his head lowered. Soon more prisoners, a mob of unruly ruffians, all shackled together, were brought to the dock and Gerakis and his two shipwrecked mates were shoved with them aboard a large riverboat. They were placed amidships, and forced to keep their heads down. Without further delay, their voyage upriver continued. Gerakis lost count of how many times they changed crews. Judging by the sun’s rays that bore down on them, he was aware that the river snaked around numerous bends and more than once nearly came back upon itself. It was, as he had been told, a winding river. Huddled in the bottom of the boat, he could hear sounds from the shore as they passed villages; he heard elephants trumpeting along the riverbanks where their mahouts brought them to bathe; he listened to the crew calling out to other crews as their vessels passed one another on the river. Everywhere there was activity of some sort, most of it strange and unfamiliar. Although he was bound, and feared raising this head for want of another beating, he still found it exciting. As uncomfortable as he was, he was very much at ease. He felt confident he would have no difficulty explaining his circumstances to the authorities and they would grant him permission to remain in the capital. After all, he reasoned, he had done nothing wrong.
Even confined as he was, he put his time to use. He picked up words from the crew and put them to memory. It would take him no time to master the Siamese language, he thought. The excitement of the voyage, with the thought of arriving in the Siam capital, enabled him to endure the pain. He tried not to think of the rattan cords that bound his hands and cut deeply into his flesh, nor about his body that ached from the cramped position he was forced to keep. For two nights the captives slept in the bottom of the boat, slouching in water. On the third day they reached their destination. Finally they were permitted to sit upright when soldiers boarded the boat and removed their blindfolds. They had arrived at the walls of Ayutthaya. Beyond was the great Eastern city, claimed by sailors and merchants to be greater than Genoa and Venice. The truth was at hand.
Things happened quickly now. Soldiers pulled the prisoners from the boat and shoved them onto the dock, forcing them down to their knees. But they were not alone. All about them other boats were crowding the dock and their crews and passengers too—men, women and children—hurried frantically to get ashore, and they, like the prisoners, fell to their knees. No one moved; they uttered not a sound. Everyone faced in the same direction, away from the city, and down a wide unpaved road flanked by towering shade trees whose branches formed a kind of tunnel. Gerakis glanced in the other direction toward the city. A massive arched portal, with a drawbridge that was lowered over a moat, was opened by troops of soldiers guarding the entrance.
Then, from down the road, came the sound of a trumpet and, at the signal, every person along the roadside and on the waterfront threw himself or herself down, prostrate to the ground, their arms stretched out before their bodies, their foreheads touching the ground. For a moment Gerakis remained with his body upright, baffled, uncertain what to do. Diego quickly came to his aid, and with a hand on his shoulder, cried, “Down, my friend, get down.” Reluctantly Gerakis lowered his head. As he did he could see armed soldiers approaching the crowd with their lances at port arms.
Gerakis had hardly lowered his head when he felt the earth beneath him tremble, ever so slightly at first, and then more violently. It was more than he could endure. His curiosity got the best of him. He slowly raised his head, and then his body to a half-sitting position to where he could see over the crowd. A sight befell him that he never, not in his wildest imagination, expected. It was a sudden explosion of color and grandeur. And he alone was the only one among the mass of people to witness it. All others, as far as he could see, remained with their bodies prostrate and their heads down.
Coming toward him was a magnificent elephant procession. It was dazzling beyond his comprehension. Dozens of elephants, no, hundreds, all brightly painted from their trunks to their backsides, and adorned with fancy ornaments and garlands of flowers, and upon these magnificent beasts were carved carriages fringed with gold filigree, shaded from the sun by bright canopies with trailing silk banners. The procession of elephants wobbled forward in a column of twos, shaking the earth beneath their feet as they trod ever so slowly and effortlessly along.
Astride one of the leading elephants rode a bejeweled noble of high rank, and Gerakis knew instantly he had to be His Majesty the King, the ruler of Siam. So splendid was his raiment, so regal did he appear, that there could be no mistaking who he was. Indeed, he was King Narai himself. On another elephant at his side sat an officer of high rank, which Gerakis learned later was General Phetracha, King Narai’s close friend since childhood. They were coming from the field and about to enter the city.
The procession drew closer, and was about to pass but a few meters away from the prisoners, when the king caught sight of one prisoner who stood out from all the others, one whose head that was not lowered. It was Gerakis. For a brief moment their eyes met—the king in his entire fine splendor, and the prisoner, a white man, unkempt and in torn rags. That glimpse of the king, and their eye-to-eye contact, would be the last thing that Gerakis would remember. So engrossed was he in seeing the king that he took no notice of the soldier approaching from behind with his lance raised high above his head. The solider brought the butt-end of the weapon down hard on the prisoner’s head.
All the rest was blanked out from his memory. When he next awoke, he was in prison.
Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. | |
