Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale

by Robin Lloyd

  Brown’s lips turned up slightly at the edges, giving his mouth a cruel expression. His lips were stained with tobacco juice that trickled down his stubbly chin.

  “I want no more scuffling, men. If you have a mind to make trouble, I’ve a right to flog anyone I’ve a mind to. Now throw your bundles in the fo’c’sle. This packet sails with the tide. Remember tide and time wait for no drunken sailor.”

  With that vivid demonstration, Mr. Brown squirted another stream of tobacco juice, this time in Morgan’s direction, narrowly missing his head as the squishy, brown gob flew over the side of the ship. Morgan caught the man looking at him with a predatory stare that seemed to hold little hope of good tidings to come. He cast his eyes downward, as he could already tell that Mr. Brown was the kind of man who expected others to submit to his will. He thought of his father at that moment. He followed behind the sailors as they walked to the front of the ship. Morgan watched as the men heaved their wooden chests and duffels into the dark hole in the deck, which was the entrance to the fo’c’sle. It was too late to run now.

  Cautiously he stepped down the steep ladder, his hands gripping the man rope tightly until his feet finally touched the floorboards. He groped his way forward into the darkness. He felt clammy and uncomfortable, overwhelmed by the smell of old ropes and tar, mixed with the musty odors of unwashed men and alcohol. Someone lit a lantern. Finally he could see where he was going. Amid the boxes, duffels, and bundles of bedding, the old hands greeted one another with bursts of laughter, slaps on the back, and gruff calls. Someone else tried to light another lantern, even as another silhouetted figure bumped his head, cursing at the darkness. Morgan put his hand into a black corner of his new sleeping quarters, reaching out until he found a bunk with no mattress. He started to throw his canvas bag onto the simple wooden bunk when a voice cried out.

  “Don’t you put your bundle thar’, you worthless critter. Move away!”

  Startled, Morgan jumped back. The unseen voice continued.

  “You better pull foot out of here now or I’ll slash the hide off you.”

  Morgan stammered an apology. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t see anything.”

  The light from another passing lantern revealed a boy his age, or slightly younger, who was stretched out on the wooden planks. He had auburn hair, freckles, a round face, and a snub nose with a few stubs of hair growing from his dimpled chin and over his upper lip. In the flickering light, he was glowering at Morgan as his hand clutched a piece of wood.

  “This here bunk is mine,” he said defiantly, lifting up his makeshift club.

  “Where can I throw my duffel?” Morgan asked, backing away quickly.

  The boy shrugged with cold indifference, and then pointed upward at the stacked bunk above him.

  “Just stay out of my way, you hear. You can’t be too careful in a ship’s fo’c’sle. Some of these old tars are a bunch of sodomite codfish and there’s nothing they like better than to land a young mackerel.”

  Morgan quickly dismissed this as an exaggeration and decided he would try to be friendly even if this gesture wasn’t reciprocated. He clambered up into the upper bunk. Right over his head was a piece of glass inserted into the deck to provide light. He thought to himself that at least he might be able to read on sunny days. He had brought along a tattered copy of William Cowper’s poetry which included his favorite, the comic ballad John Gilpin. The book had been given to him by his old tutor, Margaret Carpenter, a year earlier. He looked down at his new bunkmate.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Smith,” was the curt reply. “Hiram Smith.”

  Morgan nodded to himself. “My name is Morgan, Ely Morgan.”

  The next frightening encounter Morgan had was with the first mate, a big man with a powerful chest, arms like tree trunks, a squashed nose broken down the middle, and a prominent beard covering most of his face. His name was Tim Toothacher, a Connecticut man from Middletown who had sailed since the age of thirteen to China with the old-timers. He was a firm believer in young sailors learning the hard way, or as he would say, “coming in through the hawse holes and not through the cabin doors.”

  It was Toothacher, with his chest thrown out in a disciplined military manner, who addressed the entire crew once they’d all come aboard. He and the second mate, Mr. Brown, divided the men into watches that first day. At the end of the selection process, Morgan was alone on the deck, a solitary figure and last to be chosen. He suddenly felt the unfriendly stares of his new shipmates. Who would have him? The first mate or the second mate? Did he care?

  “What’s your name, boy?” the burly first officer asked. “I don’t think I know you.”

  “Morgan, sir, Ely Morgan.”

  “Morgan, Morgan.” He paused with a smile on his face. “Or did you say Organ?” At that, he began to laugh at his own joke, and most of the sailors joined in. “What do you say, my hearties? From now on we’re calling this young bumpkin over here monkey, the organ boy. Maybe I’ll just baptize ye monkey boy for short.”

  Morgan’s face was petrified by this humiliation, but there was more to come. The second mate with the black porkpie hat strode over to him with a hostile swagger and began picking at his clothes with his large hands, his breath smelling of rum.

  “Lookee here,” said the second officer with a gleeful smirk, “a piece of straw.” He picked it up and looked at it closely. “It appears like this yokel brought a bit of the farm with him on his duds.”

  Mr. Brown walked around Morgan, inspecting him like he would a farm animal or a Negro slave. “Nobody wants you, it seems, boy.” He spit out a wad of tobacco juice over the side, then turned to his fellow officer in what seemed like a rehearsed bit of choreography. “I reckon I’ll do you a favor, Mr. Toothacher. I’ll take the young pup this time, but I don’t mind saying I don’t like his name. From now on I’m going to call him Hayseed.”

  Morgan’s last memory of his former life was looking back at the fading outline of Staten Island as the ship coasted by the highlands of the New Jersey shore. He gazed ahead of him at the sandy strip of land called Sandy Hook and then out toward the wide ocean that lay beyond. He could see angry whitecaps and what looked like some rough seas ahead.

  During those first few days, Morgan was sick as a dog. The water swashed over the decks and over him. The second mate amused himself by tormenting him, forcing him to walk on the deck as the ship was rolling. Morgan staggered like a drunk man, falling down on the slanted deck repeatedly. Mr. Brown beat him with the end of a rope and told him to stand. When he couldn’t get up, the mate threw buckets of cold water over him. Morgan was desperate for someone to save him. He looked over at the first mate, who was watching them as he walked by. Morgan thought for sure that Mr. Toothacher would put a stop to this abuse, but he just looked the other way.

  The shipboard cruelty wasn’t just confined to the mates. Some of the veterans jeered at him, but one old sailor kindly offered to give him a remedy for seasickness. Morgan was sent to the center of the ship where the farm animals were kept and came back with the sailor’s medicine, a pail of fresh sheep dung. The old veteran told Morgan to wipe this all over his face, and if he did that, he would never get sick again. Morgan did as he was told, and soon the entire ship was laughing at him, holding their noses as they avoided getting too close to him.

  A few days into the voyage, some of the sailors were muttering that heavy weather was coming. He remembered gray clouds and green seas. The ship had fallen into a deep valley between two ridges, hiding the horizon. Just then came the order from the second mate to shorten sail.

  “All hands aloft! Reef the topgallants! Reef the topsails! That means you, Hayseed!” Brown lunged at him and pushed him up the ratlines.

  Morgan clambered up the shrouds as best he could, squirreling his way through the lubber’s hole, the less risky way to climb to the topmast platform. The captain was driving the ship hard with all sails and gear taut and straining. Morgan looked around
him at the hundreds of feet of heavy rope lines that wove their way through the masts like a spiderweb, and wondered how he would ever learn their names. The Hudson had more than fifteen sails, most of which were fastened onto the stout yards. Each of the three masts was divided into three sections. At the deck level was the lower mast, to which was fastened the topmast, which in turn supported the topgallant mast. That much he already understood. However, he knew nothing about the pulleys and blocks that ran to other blocks on the mast, and then further down to a row of belaying pins around the foot of the mast and extending out to the bulwarks.

  He continued crawling upward, slowly and awkwardly, his hands clutching the shrouds, his feet treading on the ratlines. He couldn’t look down. It was too frightening. The wind felt much stronger now, and the roll of the ship was quite pronounced. His heart was pounding. He could hear the second mate yelling at him. He stepped out onto a rope slung under the yard, gingerly pulling himself out onto the swaying topgallant yard eighty feet or so above the deck. His arms were wrapped around the yard so tightly he could feel the pain from the pressure on his biceps. He had a knot in his stomach when he heard another order.

  “Ease the sheets! Haul on the buntlines and furl!”

  All this was a foreign language to Morgan. He watched as another sailor on the adjacent mast started gathering in the sail. He had never even helped furl a square sail before, much less one eighty to ninety feet above the deck, but he set about his task as best as he could. He clumped together the sail, pulling at the heavy canvas from all directions. Suddenly, the first mate’s voice was directed at him.

  “Hayseed, gather the bunt up onto the center of the yard.”

  Morgan had no idea what the bunt was. He looked around and below to see if anyone would help him. There was no offer of assistance. Hiram was sent aloft to show him how to furl a topgallant. Reluctantly, his bunkmate took on the role as his teacher. Hiram showed Morgan how the buntlines and the clewlines were used for hauling up the foot of a square sail, and how, once the sail was furled, a gasket was used to tie it in place. Despite the helpful instruction, Hiram offered no sympathy.

  “I reckon the second mate’s gonna beat you when you get down on deck. I’m glad I’m not in your shoes.”

  When Morgan landed on deck, Mr. Brown boxed him in the ears and set him to work cleaning off tobacco stains on the decks. On that first voyage as the new cabin boy, Morgan was already getting used to being kicked and cuffed by every bully on board, particularly the second mate. Sailors held the belief that the more punishment they gave a cabin boy, the better sailor he’d become.

  The worst job he was given was to clean up after the farm animals on board. Day after day, Mr. Brown chose him for this lowly task. Most of the packets had an outdoor area on deck in the middle of the ship where they kept a cow for milk. The sheep, pigs, ducks and hens were all destined to end up on the table for the cabin passengers. Morgan mostly showed deference to Mr. Brown, but one day he made a big mistake of talking back when the mate took away the small wooden shovel he had been using to scoop up the manure.

  “I need a shovel to do that job,” Morgan said with some conviction, his fists clenching. “At home on the farm we do this kind of work with shovels.”

  Brown locked eyes with Morgan and Ely noticed that they were twitching.

  “Is that so, Hayseed? You hear that men? Hayseed here is making demands.”

  Brown grabbed Morgan by the ear with one of his large, calloused hands.

  “What do you think this is, Hayseed? Your ma’s flower garden? We’re here on a ship. We don’t use shovels to clean the pigpens. We use our hands. That’s why we need a farm boy like you. So start cleaning up the pig shit. Then you can move on to the sheep dung, which we know you like to wipe all over your face.”

  He laughed and pushed Morgan into the pen, knocking him down onto a mound of wet, oozy manure. As he heard laughter from the men nearby, Morgan’s spirits sank even lower.

  4

  Shivering with the November cold and wet as he helped reef the main topsail, Morgan wondered what he was doing in the middle of the Atlantic. The bell had just struck as it did every half hour. He still had several hours to go before the end of the first watch at midnight. The mast swayed from one side to the other while he hauled out the reef tackles for the topsails. He climbed higher out onto the more challenging and dangerous topgallant yards, resting for a moment on the crosstrees before climbing higher to tend to the royals. He was slightly more comfortable climbing the ratlines and wrestling with the sails now, but it still terrified him to look down.

  He was now in his second week at sea, and he had gotten to know his way around the 106-foot-long ship. The lower hold below the waterline was where the heaviest freight was stored. Above that was the upper hold area, where fine freight and the low-paying steerage passengers went. He had already been sent below to the bleak steerage compartment to distribute wooden buckets to the seasick passengers. It was a dank, windowless, enclosed space some twenty by forty feet with stacked, narrow, wooden bunks made of rough, unplaned boards. He remembered the distressed faces. The smell was putrid, making him want to vomit. He had quickly dropped the empty buckets, scrambled up the ladder to get on deck, throwing his head over the bulwarks as he emptied his stomach into the ocean.

  One time he had peeked through a glass skylight into the passenger cabin below the quarterdeck at the stern of the ship. The captain was lounging over a decanter of wine. This area was called the saloon. There through the skylight he had seen finely carved mahogany pillars, polished tables, and sofas. One of the stateroom’s ventilated doors opened out onto the dark saloon area, and he could see a small berth with shiny silk curtains, a washbasin, and some drawers. A woman’s figure disappeared into another cabin, a forbidden territory for sailors. Only the captain and occasionally the first mate mingled with the first-class passengers. Mr. Brown had yelled at him before he could see much of anything else.

  The ship’s masts were now swaying back and forth, making him dizzy and sick. To keep himself from falling, he grabbed hold of one of the lee braces for support. With his other hand, he pulled his pea jacket tighter around him even as he shuddered in the cold wind. The winds had switched to the north and it had started to sleet. The yard he was perched on was already icy and slippery. Down below him on the frozen, ice-covered decks, he could see men slipping and falling as they tried to make their way forward. He thought of his mother and the warmth of the kitchen fireplace, the reassuring smells of freshly baked bread and roast turkey, his three older sisters giggling as they ladled a creamy filling into a pie crust. This work aloft in the rigging was frightening enough in calm seas, but in stormy weather it was deadly.

  Morgan wondered if this was what could have happened to Abraham so many years ago, falling, falling. He looked down some eighty feet to the deck below, then to the ship’s plunging bowsprit, diving, slicing the water like an axe splitting a log in two. Suddenly, he felt as if an unknown force was pulling him downward. He clung to the slippery, cold jackstay, his feet resting precariously on the foot rope slung under the yard. A destructive urge seemed to be pulling him downward and telling him to let go.

  Morgan shook his head, calmed himself with deep breaths, and followed the example of some of the old veterans who controlled their nerves by singing. He would conquer this wave of fear, he told himself. He thought of the terror he’d experienced when those British Navy sailors had fired on him and Abraham. He thought of the angry, scowling face of his father. For some reason, his mind flashed back to that first year after Abraham left home. He and Abraham had always gotten into trouble, letting out the neighbors’ pigs, or scaring the girls next door by pretending to be Indians on the warpath. With Abraham gone, the pranks seemed less fun and he had gotten into fights. After one of those scraps in the center of town, one of the deacons, Squire Ridley, had come out of the meetinghouse to break up the fight. News of that shameful rebuke made its way back to the Morgan farm and E
ly was given a thrashing by his father. The old man had met him with his whipping belt in hand. He marched him into the barn where he was forced to drop his pants and lean over. He whipped him until the skin was raw and he cried for mercy.

  “Maybe that will beat the freewheeling nature out of you,” he had yelled. The memory of that beating and how it had stiffened his defiance of his father strengthened him now. He started to climb down the ratlines, more confident than before. If he couldn’t control his fears, he told himself, the only alternative was to return to the Connecticut River Valley to work as a farmer. That image of a life shackled to a horse-drawn plow helped him overlook the new hardships he was enduring at sea.

  On that first voyage, Morgan soon got used to a sparse diet of salt beef or pork and weevily sea bread. In fact, the Hudson’s cook, whose name was Scuttles, was the first to befriend him. He told him that if he ate a pound of cold salt beef he wouldn’t get sick. Scuttles had escaped from a Maryland plantation when he was eight years old. He’d then found a life with the small Negro community living on Staten Island. When he got older he realized that there were few good opportunities for him in New York. Like so many colored men, he’d ended up choosing the sea as a way to escape the severe discrimination he faced ashore. Generally speaking, the sailors accepted most everybody once they were on ship, though when they didn’t like the food, some of the sailors called him “that no-good Guinea nigger-cook.”

  Morgan had never come into close contact with a black man before, so with food as the primary incentive but curiosity a close second, he befriended Scuttles, whose real name was Samuel Cuttlefish. Hiram had the same idea. As a result, the ship’s galley and pantry became a meeting place for the two boys, a refuge from the mates and the constant abuse they received from many of the other sailors. It was there as they ate their burgoo porridge after their four-hour watch, among scattered pots and pans, that Morgan and Scuttles heard how Hiram came to be on the Hudson.