“I understand, sir.”
“Then, Mr. Yeakel, once we start up the Malacca Strait, I will set you a task. I will desire you to set your sails in a slovenly way. Spill a little wind. But set them only slovenly enough that you can trim them up for fighting at a moment’s notice. Can you do this?”
“Certainly, sir.” He grinned suddenly. “But it will require some skill, in the same way that a good singer must play a character who sings badly.”
“Exactly. I did not know you to be a man of the theater, but the comparison is apt. We may be too large a vessel to trick anyone into thinking we are a commercial ship, but I am wagering that some pirate will be overcome by his greed. If he suspects we might be a merchantman, he will think us an uncommonly big one, and we must be carrying a great amount of cargo to steal. Let us hope that he is as unwise as he is greedy.”
“What about our fighting tops, Captain?” asked Fleming. “Will they not give us away as a warship?”
“I have worried about that. Fortunately, they are smaller than the great broad fighting tops of a frigate, so with the sails set they may not be too prominent. I considered asking you to dismount them, but I do not want to diminish the ship’s readiness for battle if a serious fight is pressed upon us. So then, paint the masts and fighting tops the same dun color as the hull; maybe they will blur together from a distance.”
Fleming nodded. “Aye, sir.”
“Now, gentlemen”—Bliven sat up straighter in his makeshift bed—“you know, for us to take a ship this size into such narrow waters, I feel a little like my grandfather’s brother. He once crawled into a cave with a torch and a musket to kill the last wolf in Connecticut. I believe there is one further precaution we should take. We are entering these narrow waters with the intention of provoking an ambuscade. If we succeed, the attack will come swiftly and from close quarters. I wish to be able to repel it with decisive force, delivered quickly. Now, pirate ships here as elsewhere are lightly armed, and the weight of our broadside will be so excessive, I wish you to remove the twelve-pounder bow chasers to the stern. Cut new gunports for them there. Then I want you to hoist our forwardmost twenty-fours up to the bow as chasers. I believe that their additional few hundred yards of reach may serve us better there than in the broadside, which is adequate already. But you must inspect the deck and the knees beneath them: Reinforce the deck if necessary to support the weight of the guns.”
There was a knock at the door and Jackson entered. “Excuse me, Captain, there is a small boat coming alongside. I believe it is the gentleman you are expecting.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jackson. Take him down to the wardroom, if you please, give him coffee, and ask if he needs breakfast. I will come fetch him when I am dressed. Mr. Ross?”
“Sir?”
“Ready the other guest compartment for him, if you please.”
“At once, Captain.”
The following day they saluted the battery, Union Jack from the foremast and American flag from the spanker boom, and stood out regally, on a heading of west-southwest. Once alone, however, they made a swing to the south, slowed by constant soundings but still unobserved, into a small sound between Batam and Bulan Islands, far enough to be screened from the sea-lane.
Their transformation into a large and heavily laden merchantman required four days, even allowing for extra touches such as painting white squares and rectangles on the cream-colored sails, to appear from a distance as though they had been patched. They were just able to squeeze through the sound to its southeastern mouth, and made a wide starboard turn between Bulan and Tjombol, standing northwest into the Strait of Malacca. As they began their run, Bliven on the quarterdeck heard Yeakel ordering men to set the sails in ways that were not entirely proper, and smiled when he heard him bark at them for questioning why they were to do it wrongly.
They proceeded as slowly as a trolling fisherman, and were approached, still only distantly, by native proas, but otherwise excited no curiosity. In this attitude they sailed as far north as Penang, more than three hundred miles, before putting about and returning south under easy sail. Their disappointment was palpable, and Griggs, their interpreter, could offer no explanation or guess whether they had been discovered.
It was where the strait was constricted to less than six miles wide between Kukup and Karimunbesar Island that they began to be pushed southerly to the edge of the narrow channel.
“Damn this wind,” said Bliven. “If we haul any closer we shall be blowing sideways!”
Suddenly they heard a deep, crunching groan as the bow lifted up and they felt their forward speed arrest and then grind to a halt. Without waiting on order Yeakel screamed to drop all canvas lest they be driven farther onto whatever it was.
“Captain,” said Miller, “I believe we have hit something.”
“Quartermaster, how is the tide?”
“At its ebb, sir.”
“Well, that is one good thing. What is the sounding?”
“Six fathoms midships, sir, and aft.”
“Then what have we hit? Mr. Miller, do you think we are aground?”
“I don’t know, sir. It was not sudden, as if we hit a rock. It was more as if we drove onto a sandbar, but that could not happen within half the length of the ship.”
“Captain?” It was the lieutenant of marines.
“Mr. Horner, what are you doing?”
Horner had pulled off his boots and stockings and was unbuttoning his coat. “I am a good swimmer, sir, I will go have a look. I have given command to my sergeant until I return.” He pulled his shirt over his head, revealing a vast white chest, and before Bliven could respond, he jumped over the side vertically, feet first.
“I think you should grant him permission, sir,” said Miller.
“Everywhere I look I seem to be confronted with initiative. Mr. Quarles!”
The midshipman ran up and saluted. “Sir?”
“Run below and bring us towels.”
“Aye, sir!” He trotted toward the waist and disappeared down the ladder.
The officers gathered on the landward side of the ship, peering into the green water forward toward the bow, noting after a moment a string of bubbles breaking the surface. Presently Horner came up, heaving deep breaths, and before he could be hailed, he dove again.
When next they saw him he was coming nimble as a spider up the ladder. He took a towel from Quarles and rubbed himself vigorously. “You have hit wreckage, Captain.”
“Wreckage? But we just came up this channel a week ago. How did we miss it then?”
Horner was quickly back into his shirt and pulling on his stockings and boots. “It is not an old wreck, sir. In fact, I would say it has been there less than a week.”
“The wily bastards: they have sunk a hulk in the channel to hang us up. By God, that is why we have had no interest. We haven’t fooled anybody. They have been watching the whole time and known exactly what we were about. Wily bastards! Mr. Miller?”
“Captain?”
“The next time you detect that I am underestimating an enemy’s intelligence and abilities, you are to slap me on the back of my head. Do you understand?”
“I will be happy to, sir. But the question is, what now?”
“Deck! Deck ahoy!”
“What do you see?” called up Miller.
“A ship, sir, coming around the next island! Holy Christ, what is that?”
The officers crowded to the port rail on the channel side and raised their glasses. What became visible in almost aching slowness beyond a screen of mangroves was a gigantic barge, boldly painted in yellow and green and red.
It had not one but two outriggers, not for flotation or stability, as he had seen in Hawaii, but the outriggers themselves were large canoes attached to the main vessel with stout spars, and each containing twenty men pulling at sweeps, oaring the craft ma
jestically from the cover of the island. It bore a single tripod mast bearing a huge crab-claw sail that was being raised even as it became visible. Both bow and stern swept up and terminated in peaks forty feet above the water, with a steering oar descending from the stern, and a single large gun projecting from the bow. In its waist stood a spacious open pavilion crowded with armed men who must have numbered a hundred, with a hundred more standing and gesturing on its roof.
“My God,” whispered Griggs, “that is a karakoa. I have heard of them, seen drawings—never seen one. I did not know they still existed; the Spanish banned them centuries ago.”
“The Spanish!” cried Bliven. “For God’s sake, man, make sense!”
Griggs continued staring at it in disbelief. “It is a style of warship native to the Philippines. It is essentially the capital ship of the Boogis. They could overwhelm the Spanish galleons of the day, not with superior firepower, but by crashing into them and cutting down the crew in hand-to-hand fighting.”
“Mr. Horner!”
“Sir!”
“Get your marines forward, with muskets and all the pistols there are, and send some men down to the gun room for more. Mr. Evarts!”
“Sir!”
“Get yourself down to the gun room, break out all the pistols and ammunition to the marines. Do you understand? Go!”
Miller came and stood by. “What are you thinking, Captain?”
“I am thinking I wish I had those paddle wheels from the Constitution right now.”
“Yes, I quite agree.”
Bliven’s glance darted from starboard at the mangroves, to the channel that lay to port, up to his now furled sails, and forward to the gruesome-looking craft that was turning into the channel to bear down on them. “Mr. Miller, the next time you hear me disparage new inventions, you are also to slap me on the back of my head.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hard. That is an order.”
“I understand, sir.”
Bliven cupped his hands and shouted forward. “Mr. Rippel, point your chasers, maximum elevation. Be ready to fire!”
“Captain, may I suggest something?” It was Yeakel, come back to the quarterdeck.
“I wish to God somebody would!”
“Sir, when we struck this wreckage, we were hauling as close as the ship would bear. If now we were to reverse the yards, as though we were tacking—wear ship, essentially—the wind should swing our stern around, and that might pull the bow free.”
“Yes, and it might pull the bow off!”
“Yes, sir, there is that risk.”
“Captain?”
“Mr. Griggs!”
“I need to tell you, sir, a karakoa is a big ship but it has a very shallow draught. I repeat: their purpose is not to make a pass and engage with guns. They will come right over the wreckage and spill their men onto your deck. You must pull off this wreck and get your heavy guns on them.”
“Very well, then: Wear ship, Mr. Yeakel, wear ship!” It was essential to get a salvo off before the ship could move from where the bow chasers were pointed. “Mr. Rippel!”
“I have them, sir!”
“Fire, then!”
Rappahannock shuddered behind the twin booms of the two twenty-fours, and watched a hole pop open in the karakoa’s single sail, followed by the ball’s splash beyond; the second ball, they witnessed the splash even farther beyond—a good ranging salvo, but there was no time to follow it up before the ship would begin to shift. “Mr. Rippel!”
“Sir!”
“Roll your guns back! Get the weight off the bow!”
Through their glasses the officers witnessed the muzzle flash of the karakoa’s single forward gun, and the sound reached them almost the same instant they heard and felt a sickening concussive crunch on their bow and a chorus of cries and shouting. “Miller! Get forward and find out what has happened!”
“Aye, sir!”
Bliven looked up to see the spread of men aloft, the yards turning even as the canvas of the courses and topsails fell and almost instantly filled with wind, and—the wind being against them—saw them billowing back against the masts.
Barely perceptible at first and then more by degrees, they felt the ship backing beneath them, and then with a deep rumble felt the bow slide off the hulk on which she had beached herself. “Starboard your helm!” roared Bliven. With the lieutenants at quarters, it was the quartermaster at the wheel.
Rappahannock began to cut a backward arc, increasingly changing her angle into the wind until it began to luff the sails. “Wear ship again, Mr. Yeakel; get some wind behind them where it belongs! Helm amidships! Mr. Jackson, ready on the starboard battery! Rolling broadside; fire as your guns bear!
“I understand, sir!”
“Hold your carronades until they are within range! How are they loaded?”
“With grape, Captain!”
“Good!”
The sloop crept to a halt and then slowly started forward. It was apparent as they moved away from the island that they would cross the course of the oncoming grotesque of a ship, now three hundred yards distant. It was the happiest turn of events that now they could deliver a raking broadside down its whole length.
“Captain!”
“Mr. Miller?”
“Their one shot has carried away our figurehead, and this deflected the ball. It came through the railing and knocked one of the chasers off its carriage.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“Two men hit with splinters. Lieutenant Rippel was hit with a chunk of railing and may have a broken shoulder. Dr. Berend has them in the cockpit now.”
“And Mary Washington?”
“I fear she did not survive.”
“Well, damn.” Bliven knew without having to see that Jackson had run forward to point and fire the twenty-fours himself, and order them reloaded as fast as they fired. It was the Number Two starboard gun that boomed first, Number One having been moved to the fo’c’sle.
“It looks like we’ve got him,” said Miller.
Eleven guns fired in succession, five to seven seconds apart; they had no time to loose the gun in the captain’s compartment.
“Starboard your helm; come into the channel and make to pass him! Yeakel, reef our courses! Miller, take command of the carronades. Tell Jackson to open him up between wind and water as soon as we are abreast of him. You aim above the rowers in the outriggers; they are likely just slaves. Aim for the soldiers in that pavilion. You should have time to get off two salvos before they give up or sink.”
“Yes, sir!”
Moving only under topsails, Rappahannock slowed, and once their length was even with the karakoa, the gun deck beneath them erupted with the unified broadside from the twenty-fours, the very muzzle blasts almost reaching the outriggers. Miller used that as his signal to discharge the grape-loaded carronades into the men who now sought cover, only to find none.
Before a second salvo could be prepared, the alien craft gave a great, almost animal-like groan, began to list, and then foundered to lie on its side in the shallow water, its port outriggers high in the air as though skewered on their yards, those men who had been rowing dropping off one by one. Blood and bodies rolled out of the pavilion, and from its roof the green water was streaked with red. Most of the men who could swim stroked for the shore and away from a British hangman. Only those nearest the sloop, or who were too injured to do more than float, permitted themselves to be rescued.
Bliven lowered two boats, with sailors to pull the injured from the water, and marines to cover them against any treachery. At the end he had thirty in his custody, whom he had confined in the cable tier, bound securely even as Dr. Berend saw to their wounds.
The lieutenants joined Bliven on the quarterdeck as the wrecked karakoa fell astern of them. He pointed to a green line on the horizon t
o the northwest. “Look there, gentlemen. I must admit my errors. I had thought that if pirates attacked us, it would be because we fooled them into accepting our disguise. Rather, they fought us because they thought to defeat us, and with the gall to do so in plain sight; Singapore is just right there. Who knew they would be so brazen?”
12
Jade, and Slops
SINGAPORE
20TH MAY, 1822
My Ever Dear Love,
There is a British vessel, the trading schooner Eurydice, Capt. Blythe, leaving on the morrow for the Sandwich Islands, and he has kindly agreed to carry a letter addressed to you, and hand it to Mr. Jones our consular agent, who should if God is willing and all the connections be made, hand it to Rev. Bingham who will hand it to you.
I have now been in these environs long enough to have heard, a couple of times from different people, an old Malay adage: the first ship in the world was built to catch fish; the second ship was built to steal them. Piracy among the Malays has gone on for that long.
It is surprising to contemplate it, that piracy around the world should be so prevalent that it has grown into different shapes in different places. In our own part of the world, the buccaneers of the Caribbean were outlawed by all nations, even considered themselves to be a sort of nation, albeit a nation with no land to stand on—at least until the recent independence of the South American countries. They adopted pirates as ready-made navies, and those pirates are delighted to shield themselves under these new national flags. In North Africa, corsairs acted as an arm of the Mohammedan state.
Here in Malaya it takes on a subtly different complexion. Here there exists no unifying government. There are many competing little princes, each one in his silks and jeweled turban, each one ruling mightily over a realm the size of a few American counties, each one plotting and counter-plotting to pull down his neighbors before they can topple him. And into this free-for-all of native warfare come the pirates, selling their protection to the highest bidder, plundering the ships of his enemies, or of foreigners equally—until he should meet the pirates of his master’s enemy, at which time the whole fracas moves from land onto the sea—which at least spares the hapless civilians who are slaughtered whenever some town is sacked. Human life here is held cheap, cheaper even than in Barbary.
The Devil in Paradise--Captain Putnam in Hawaii Page 30