1979 - Bruce J. Hawker #3: Press Gang - Pg.6

Page 6 of Bruce J. Hawkers album"Press Gang", which is the third album of the series, pre-published in Le journal de Tintin n° 207 of August 28, 1979 and in Femmes d’aujourd’hui.

Signed bottom right

The stories we experience with Bruce J. Hawker aren't limited to the captain's cabin; we also experience the daily life below the deck.
This page here is all about the "Powder Monkeys" and the human "cannon fodder" hired by forced recruitment, who could be deployed so nimbly in the cramped ships.
"Powder monkeys" were tasked with taking gunpowder from the ship's powder chamber during battle and delivering it to the gun crews. They also had the important task of immediately neutralizing spilled powder with water or sand and thus preventing explosions. Boys between the ages of 10 and 14 were often used for this task. They were still too small or too weak for the regular duties of a ship's boy. Their small size was an advantage in the narrow, low gun decks.

"Powder monkeys" were at the bottom of the hierarchy within the ship's crew and were often defenseless against sometimes violent sailors, boatmen, and officers. The boys in question – often orphans or runaways – were sometimes brought onto ships by recruiters using tricks, empty promises, and sometimes even force, similar to the widespread practice of shanghaiing or the pressuring of sailors. Sometimes they were given to the ship's captains by their parents out of financial need, or even sold.

This is, what Vance shows on this page, he puts the boys in the centre of the large panel, surrounded by man, who are focussed on loading their cannons.

This is no page that bursts of beauty, action or romance, like excellent pages of this album that you can find here at 2DG.
This page is dedicated to the grim, brutal reality below the deck, the hierarchy from top (captain, who is not seen) to messengers (who brings the order below the deck), to the lieutenant, who adresses the chiefs of the division, who shouts out to the pressed sailors, who stand above the powder monkeys without sunlight and hope.

Vance excels here on this page (and in the whole album) in terms of details and inking. A dense tension, that you can find on his darker albums in the middle period of Ramiro and later albums of Bob Morane.