by Robin Lloyd
Captain Foster looked over at the leering faces of the two sailors and the cook, then filled Morgan’s glass with a generous shot of rum. He’d come across many runaway boys in his thirty years at sea. “Rackety youngsters sowing a considerable crop of wild oats” was what he called them. He thought most of them were no better than chicken thieves and liars.
“Tell us all about yourself, lad. That story your brother told about you going to visit your widowed aunt is nothing but a bunch of palaver. Don’t bother telling us that.”
The only light came from a hanging lantern overhead. It shone directly in Ely’s eyes and made him feel weak and vulnerable. To try to appear like one of the crew, he took a sip of the rum and immediately regretted it. He made a face but swallowed it anyway. There was no point in trying to keep a secret. First he told them about his two older brothers, the dream they shared of going to sea, the special bond he’d had with Abraham, and how the letter they’d received had devastated his family.
Ely took another sip of rum and felt the alcohol burn the insides of his throat. He told the captain and his crew how he had given up his dream of shipping out to sea. How he’d resigned himself to a life on the farm, but then he’d run into an old sailor down at the docks in Essex who had surprising news about his brother Abraham. When he heard this man’s story it changed everything.
Morgan took another sip and began his story.
“His name was William Marshall. I thought he was just a drunken sailor looking for a free tot of rum. He introduced himself, and explained he was in a boarding house now waiting for a new Griswold ship to come off the yards. He was one of them Maine boys from the Penobscot, a little place called Camden where there’s not much of anything, just a few houses scattered about where the mountains meet the sea.”
“Get to the point, boy,” shouted Captain Foster, picking up the rum bottle and pouring out another generous glassful for himself. “There’s hundreds of no-good sailors like that. What did he tell you about your brother?”
“He caught me by surprise when he said, ‘Are ye Ely Morgan? Brother of Abraham Morgan?’”
“Go on,” said the Captain abruptly.
“He said he sailed with my brother and his friend John Taylor. They were two young pups, he said, as green as the first shoots of grass in April. They were sailing from Montevideo with a cargo of jerked beef when one of them hurricanes struck about four hundred miles south of Cuba. He told me it’s a wonder that the ship wasn’t dashed to pieces on some shore. Anyway, they put into Barbados, the crew all the time pumping and bailing. He said the ship was so badly damaged the captain dry-docked her, and after looking at the worm-eaten planking in the hull, sold her directly. The captain thought she was a cursed ship. Then he told me that the last he saw of Abraham and Taylor was the sight of them disappearing on a fast British ship. It looked as if they didn’t have much choice. A couple of the mates on board were beating on them with belaying pins and ropes.”
Foster piped in, interrupting Morgan. “Sounds like they were shanghaied by John Bull.”
Morgan nodded. “That’s what the old tar told me. He never laid eyes on my brother again, but he’d seen Taylor three years later in one of them grog shops on Cherry Street. He described him as a much-changed man, old beyond his young years. Said Taylor looked like he’d seen the Devil himself. He was fired up pretty well with the grog.”
Morgan had a rapt audience at this point, with Captain Foster and his men settling into the small cabin for a night of storytelling. The air was moldy and the wooden cabin sole was still wet from all the seawater that had poured in through the hatchway. They had no fire to warm themselves so the men kept passing the rum bottle.
“Did that old tar ask Taylor about your brother?” Foster inquired.
“He did,” Morgan replied. “He said he flat out asked Taylor whatever became of Abraham.”
“So . . .”
“Marshall told me that when he asked about Abraham, Taylor got all scared and shaky and started to whisper, ‘I ain’t supposed to tell, but I tell ye what, it was foul play of the worst kind, the Devil’s own mischief.’ Marshall said Taylor kept holding his hands over his ears and talking about the voices he was hearing, voices from hell he called them. He said something about how Jonah should have been cast forth into the sea.”
Morgan pulled his coat more tightly around him.
“Sadly, that’s all I know,” he said shaking his head despondently before continuing with his tale. “I know I need to find out more. Abraham would have wanted that. Whether my brother’s dead or alive, I need to get some answers. And if by some miracle he’s alive, I need to go find him and bring him back home.”
“Where you reckon you’re going to find him, boy? The world is a mighty big place.”
Morgan was silent. He looked down at his feet, and then his jaw tightened and his face took on a more determined look. “I don’t rightly know how I will find him, but make no mistake, I will. I got me a berth on a John Griswold ship going to London.”
The captain shook his head, spitting a squishy wad of tobacco out a porthole into the water. “Sounds like one of them new American ocean packet ships. You know about them packets, don’t you, boy?”
Morgan felt intimidated, but managed to stammer a response.
“They’re mail boats, ain’t they?”
“That’s right, but these new ships are full rigged with three masts. Square-riggers on a schedule, that’s what they call ’em. The Black Ball Line is sailing regular each month with fixed dates from New York to Liverpool these past few years. They’re carrying cargo and passengers as well as the mail. I seen the letter bags with the packet’s name on it hanging down by the Tontine Coffee House. No serious man of business is relying on those slow British brigs to deliver the mail anymore. The smart merchants are sending their packets of mail on ships flying the stars and stripes.”
Morgan had no idea about any of this, but he nodded knowingly.
The man paused and looked at him with a bemused expression on his face. “Speaking truthfully boy, if I was you, I’d turn around and go back where you come from. Your brother, he’s probably long ago dead. That’s just my cogitations, mind you. You rackety youngsters always do as you please.”
Morgan shook his head. “What if my brother is out there? He could still be alive. Maybe he’s hurt? Maybe a prisoner somewhere? Or he could be sick? Ain’t that right, Captain?”
The Block Island captain paused in thought as he ran a calloused hand through his bushy head of silver hair, then turned to Morgan with a smile. “You might be lucky, boy. Who knows? You might find that critter John Taylor down in them quim houses along Cherry Street in New York, or the alehouses on the East End of London. I venture to say sailors and sewer rats never stray too far from those two hellholes, no matter how much they roll and tumble around the world.”
After that bit of sage advice, the captain punctuated it with another stream of tobacco juice he squirted, into a spittoon this time. He then hitched up his pants and picked up the rum bottle, giving all hands another round. The next day, with the wind dead aft, the coastal schooner sailed with the tide into the East River. For Ely, who had only gone as far as New London and Hartford, the great booming port of New York was a wonder. The masts of ships were stacked up like a leafless forest. Hogsheads of sugar, chests of tea, and bales of cotton, wool, and merchandise were strewn all around the wharves. Swarthy stevedores pushed squeaky wheelbarrows loaded with outbound barrels of flour and corn. He could hear the shouts of wagon drivers blending in with the noisy clatter of horses’ hooves on cobblestones. He began to despair. How could he possibly hope to find any trace of John Taylor in the midst of all of this confusion?
At Peck’s Slip, Captain Foster hired two wharf rats for five cents each to help unload the cargo. Ely swung his duffel over his shoulder as he said good-bye to the captain and his crew and stepped ashore. When he looked back to wave, Foster gave him one last word of advice.
&nbs
p; “Remember what I told you, son: life shipboard ain’t near as nice as what it looks like from shore.”
Nearby at the new fish market on Fulton Street, a vendor yelled at him: “Heh boy, you want a job scalin’ fish?”
Morgan looked at the grinning face of the grizzly fish salesman and then down at the scaly table filled with fish heads. Flies were buzzing around the vendor. The lifeless eyes of one large, dull, gray codfish seemed to be staring at him. The fetid smell of the old fish overwhelmed him and he gagged. He quickly turned away. His destination was 68 South Street, the new address of the offices of Griswold & Coates. There at the corner of Pine Street, he was to meet Captain Henry Champlin, his new employer. For one awful moment he wondered what would happen to him if Champlin wasn’t there. He had no place to go and only a quarter in his pocket. He put that unpleasant thought out of his mind. His eyes scanned the docks, gazing at the long line of ships with their graceful bowsprits pointed upward over the walkways. There were so many ships he couldn’t even count them.
He wondered if Abraham’s ship had docked here before it left for South America. He began to reminisce about his brother. The truth was he still missed him. They were five years apart, but unlike the other brothers, they had enjoyed a special friendship. Ely was small for his age, smart and quick with his studies, and the bigger boys at school had constantly picked on him. They pushed and shoved him and called him names. Feisty and strong willed, he’d return their taunts. It was Abraham who had always stepped in to protect him. In return, Ely had frequently helped his older brother with spelling and punctuation, which Abraham hated. But it was their mutual fascination with the sea and the oceangoing sailors that had bonded the two boys; that, and the harsh treatment they had both received from their father, had served to pull them together. They saw each other as kindred spirits with a shared destiny.
Ely looked at a group of burly men heaving and hauling thick lines as they pulled their ship into dock. Maybe one of those men knew John Taylor. He ran up to one of them to ask if he’d ever heard of Abraham Morgan or John Taylor.
The bearded sailor, who towered over Ely, looked down at him with a scornful expression.
“Can’t say that I have, son. No, no Taylors or Morgans on this ship, boy.” Just then the man paused and started stroking his beard.
“Now hold on a minute, you say Taylor?”
“Yes, yes. John Taylor,” Morgan said excitedly.
“Why don’t you try over there,” the man said, pointing to an adjacent ship. “I hear tell they got a Taylor on board.”
Ely’s heart was beating rapidly as he rushed over to the ship. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. Maybe Abraham was alive after all. Taylor would know. The letter to his mother had been so cryptic, its words so puzzling. Now the mystery would be solved.
Those few moments of euphoria were soon cut short by the awful sound of deep belly laughter coming from behind him. He stopped and looked back at his helpful informant, who was now laughing and joking with his shipmate, pointing in Ely’s direction as he made fun of “that stupid country bumpkin boy yonder.”
“Need some stichin’, do you?” the man asked. “That why you lookin’ for a tailor?”
“Where’s your mother, boy?”
Ely turned away, suddenly feeling small and alone.
PART II
We were again set to work, and I had a vile commission to clean out the chicken coops, and make up the beds of the pigs in the long-boat. Miserable dog’s life is this of the sea! commanded like a slave, and set to work like an ass!
—Herman Melville, Redburn: His First Voyage
3
On a cold, drizzly November morning, Ely took the first tentative steps onto the gangway of the Hudson with great trepidation. Like many landlubbers, he was nervous and worried. The newly built 360-ton ship was sailing to London that same day on its inaugural voyage, and the seriousness of what he was about to do was just beginning to dawn on him. He looked around as he clambered aboard, awestruck at the smooth decks and the hundreds of feet of heavy lines that extended upward like intricate cobwebs. The ship was 106 feet long, about four times as long as it was wide. There were several hatches that led down below, but otherwise the decks were open spaces framed by the green bulwarks on the sides of the ship and the sweeping curve of the rails at the stern. The nine passengers in cabin class, all finely dressed, had already arrived with their crates and boxes. They were clustered together on the quarterdeck. Bundled-up stevedores wearing stained and patched woolen sweaters were loading barrels of apples and hogsheads of turpentine into the cargo hold at the center of the ship.
There were ten other sailors who came aboard at the same time he did. Some of them were dandied up, wearing tarpaulin hats with long black ribbons streaming behind them. Others had uncombed hair with untrimmed beards. They wore an assortment of stained woolen jackets and dirty canvas trousers that looked and smelled slept in. Morgan swung his small duffel over his shoulder. He suddenly had the urge to turn and run as fast as he could. But then he thought, he had no place to go. That sobering thought kept his feet anchored to the deck.
At that moment, he saw the wavy black hair of Captain Champlin emerge from below decks. He remembered how frightened he had been at Fickett’s shipyard on that first day in New York. He had been told to go there by a man at 68 South Street. He had waited for hours standing by the sawpits, watching men with two-handed saws slice through huge oak beams. Showers of sawdust filled the air. He had asked several workers if they knew Captain Champlin, but no one paid much attention to him. He was about to give up when he felt a firm hand on his shoulder. He had turned around quickly, almost jumping out of his pants at the sight of a big-headed man with a black top hat, bushy, arched eyebrows, and a large, protruding jaw. For one frightening second he had thought Champlin was his father and he had come to take him home. Instead, he’d reassured him that he was a lucky sailor to be going out on the maiden voyage of John Griswold’s newest ship.
“You know the difference, Morgan, between this here ship up on the ways and a transient ship?”
Ely had shaken his head.
“Quick voyages with no delays in port. That’s the difference between this ocean packet and a transient ship. Sailing on a schedule, that’s what people want now, son, no matter what the weather or the season.”
Morgan had smiled weakly.
Champlin had patted him on the back as he pointed to the large looming sides of the ship up on the ways. The hull, made of live oak, had just been painted; some of the workers were now varnishing a strip that ran across the middle, from bow to stern. Riggers were busy installing the three masts.
“No shipping firm is providing regular packet service yet from New York to London, and Mr. Griswold aims to do just that. This will be his flagship. Imagine that son, we’ll be haulin’ the mailbags from New York to London and back again with all the important correspondence and all the news! I reckon we’re like a stagecoach on the Atlantic highway. A floating bridge from New York to London, you might say.”
Morgan had nodded as Champlin laughed and slapped him on the back. With the lecture over, he had then sent Ely over to the sawpits. For the next month until the ship was launched, he had worked at the shipyard, sleeping on the floor of a temporary work shed along with many of the workers, and some of the sailors who would soon be his close companions.
All that flashed before him as he saw the captain greet his cabin passengers with a ready smile and a handshake. As Ely surveyed the flushed deck of the Hudson, he turned to look at some of his new shipmates. He already knew some of them from the yard. Most of them were Americans from New England. Some of the men near him were laughing about a girl named Molly. Most of the sailors loved to talk about the grog shops they’d been to, the quantity of spirits they’d drunk, and the saucy women they’d encountered ashore.
“Like a cat that’s ketched a mouse, that g’hal can’t help thievin’, but this time I fooled her,” said a snub-nosed
, red-faced man.
“How so?” asked a bald-headed sailor, whom the others called Curly Jim. “Why, I hid my money in my boots. I didn’t give her any opportunities.”
“That so,” said Curly Jim as he pulled out a quid of tobacco. “I reckon she gave you plenty more than just opportunities.”
“What do you mean by that?” replied the leering sailor.
“A case of the French pox.”
The men laughed and hit one another, continuing their banter and carousing. Morgan’s unease grew with every step he took onto the ship’s deck. He could see his shipmates were a hardened, tough group of men, most of whom were still drunk from shore leave. He jumped suddenly at the sound of some commotion behind him. Crouching up against the bulwark, trying to make himself as small as possible in case there was a fight, he watched as two sailors started to push and shove each other.
“You stole it! That’s where you got the money, you hornswoggling scalawag.”
“I ain’t stole nothin’.”
A short, muscular man with eyes that gleamed like black river stones was accusing another with a pockmarked face of being a thief. Pretty soon the two men were exchanging blows, and the surly sailors were cheering on the fight. A curly haired man wearing a blue jacket and a black leather porkpie hat, who was checking off the sailors’ names by the foremast, quickly stepped in to break up the scuffle. He lunged at the men, beating them with a belaying pin, and kicking them after they fell down. Morgan remained crunched up against the bulwarks, terrified by this display of raw brutality.
“Go forward, you two no-account rum-holers,” the man with the porkpie hat said as he kicked the two men again. “You two nancy boys can kiss up in the fo’c’sle.”
The other men all laughed at this homosexual reference, and the curly haired man continued his lecture as he squirted tobacco juice on the two men’s shoulders. This was Morgan’s introduction to the ship’s second officer, Jack Brown. He was a short, stocky man with a red face framed by black whiskers. He had piercing gray-black eyes that darted about the deck. His broad frame, long arms, and hairy chest made him look like more of an animal than a man.