Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale

by Robin Lloyd

  Above decks, the ship was rolling and pitching, the winds gusting over thirty knots. Morgan was met in the foredeck by the ugly, threatening stares of Old Jeremiah and Curly Jim. They seemed to be the ringleaders, but there was a motley group who stood right behind them. Morgan had been around these sailors long enough to know that the mood of the crew was in a dangerous state.

  “You the Devil, ain’t ye,” cried out Curly Jim with an ominous tone in his voice. “You saved Jonah, the sinner. He should have drowned in the sea.”

  Morgan didn’t answer. He jumped down into the dark forecastle and walked toward the area where Dobbs kept his clothes. The same group of six sailors who’d met him at the foredeck followed closely behind. They stood there holding two lanterns as he collected the small bundles of clothes and personal effects around Dobbs’s bunk. He saw a letter that he had been writing and decided to put it in his pocket. He could feel the men’s cold, hostile stares, and knew that trouble was ahead.

  It was Old Jeremiah who spoke first.

  “The man needs to be thrown into the sea.”

  “If you won’t do it, we will,” another cried out.

  Old Jeremiah then continued, his voice sounding like a prophet. “Jonah fled from the Lord. He must pay the price. Those are the Bible’s teachings. It is the Lord’s will.”

  A low murmur reverberated in the gloom.

  “Aye, aye, ’tis the Lord’s will.”

  Morgan looked at the weathered faces of these older men who were his shipmates, the scruffy beards and the sagging, haggard cheeks. Despite oil skins and boots, they were soaked, their faces and beards streaked with water. The anger and fear in their bloodshot eyes told the story. Morgan had no weapon. For a brief moment, he thought of trying to run through this gauntlet of men. Instead he spoke up in a stronger, more authoritative voice than he thought possible.

  “Maybe this man is a Jonah,” Morgan said, looking Curly Jim squarely in the eye. “That’s not for me to say. It’s the first mate who wants Dobbs’s possessions and I’m here to collect ’em. Now I mean to do what I was ordered to do. If you have a quarrel with that I reckon you will want to take that up with Mr. Toothacher.”

  Morgan put his shoulders down and stepped into the press of men, who now seemed intent on seizing him. They moved forward, arms outstretched like a lynching mob. It was the huge form of Icelander who emerged to pry him away from the clawing clutches of this small mob. At six foot four, he towered over most of the other sailors. They all knew that his calm, cool demeanor masked a powerful anger that they were all afraid of.

  At that moment, a trumpet sounded and a cry went out from above deck. “Icebergs ahead! All men on deck!” The sailors sprang from their berths, buttoned their pants, grabbed their caps, struggled into their jackets, and bolted up the stairs of the forecastle companionway. As suddenly as that, Morgan and the Jonah were forgotten. He scrambled up on deck with the rest of the men, only instead of going aloft he dropped off Dobbs’s possessions below decks in the galley area and made his way back to the chaos on the foredeck.

  The crew had been battling heavy winds for days now, but no one had bargained on anything like this. On its northwesterly course, the ship had sailed into a field of icebergs. They were now north of 40 degrees latitude but still far enough away from the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and the Labrador current so as not to expect to encounter the southerly drift of ice fields. All around them they could see these large mountains of ice, some two hundred to three hundred feet high, rising out of the water like white cathedrals. Most were still half a mile away. The danger was clear, but eager to make up lost time, Champlin pressed ahead, ordering Mr. Brown to station lookouts aloft as well as on deck.

  That night Morgan was placed on the foredeck watch. The Pleiades were still visible on the eastern horizon and the Dipper beckoned to the north. He looked back at Icelander, who was on the opposite side of the ship, a thin speck of light from the lantern highlighting his face. Watchful and mute, he stood there in the dark, his jacket flapping and fluttering in the wind. Over the years he’d gotten to know more about this mysterious man of so few words. Icelander, or Olaf, had grown up as a fisherman’s son. His father had drowned in a storm, leaving only him and his mother. When she eventually remarried, her new husband constantly beat her. One evening when his stepfather raised his fist, young Olaf came to his mother’s defense. The fight ended with his stepfather falling backward, hitting his head on a ship’s anchor with a fatal thud. That was not only the end of his stepfather but also the end of Olaf’s life in Iceland. His mother told him to leave home and never come back. He never understood why she didn’t want him to intervene. He eventually found his way to Denmark and finally to London, where he’d shipped on board one of the Griswold ships.

  Morgan looked at the square pale face of the melancholy sailor with the thin lips and the strange, white eyelashes. He wondered about his own family. His decision to go to sea left him isolated like Olaf Rasmussen, a wandering sailor who, like a piece of driftwood, never comes farther inland than the shoreline.

  As the early morning sky lightened on the horizon, Morgan had run up the ratlines to help with the foremast topgallant sail. The air was strangely filled with the smell of mountain lake water, not the salty smell of just the day before. All around the ship were white mountaintops peeking out of the ocean waves like frozen pyramids. It was from his high perch that he spotted something enormous and bluish. It was just a vague shape concealed in one of the black cresting waves. At first he thought it was a shark or a whale. He rubbed his eyes with his fist. It was still there, a pale, translucent blue object coming directly at them. He didn’t want to believe what he was seeing. One of the bluish edges of the object broke the surface. It was sharp and jagged, and then he knew for sure what it was. Morgan sounded the alarm, which was echoed back to the mate. The helmsman spun the wheel around so that the ship narrowly missed the sunken block of ice, its uneven edges scraping up against the ship’s sides with a wrenching sound. Had it occurred an hour before in the dark of the night, nothing could have saved the Hudson. The underwater iceberg would have punctured a hole in the bottom of the ship’s hull. Champlin approached him later and personally thanked him. It was the first time that had ever happened. The captain had actually spoken to him and congratulated him, something he rarely did with the younger, less experienced sailors.

  “What do you think, Morgan, does prayer bring good luck?”

  “I don’t know, Captain,” he replied, somewhat surprised by his question.

  Champlin pushed his hand through his disheveled head of hair as he looked out at the cold blue ocean. He seemed strangely shaken.

  “One thing’s certain about this life, Morgan. It comes to an end. Out here in the ocean, the Creator reminds me of that fairly regular. Thank you for your vigilance.”

  With that comment, he walked away.

  The next day dawned with bright sunlight and light air. Looking back to the north, there were no signs of the lethal icebergs. The forecastle was alive with storytelling and chanteys. The dark tension of the past few days seemed to have lifted, and Morgan joined a small group of sailors on deck who began singing “Fire Down Below.” He watched as Ochoa pulled out his guitar and began playing, his calloused, ring-covered fingers strumming the chords lightly and quickly. Along with Hiram and Icelander, Ochoa had become one of his closest friends on the ship. He supposed the common bond they shared was that they were all the favored targets of the second mate’s rages. They had banded together to help one another. He didn’t know much at first about Ochoa, but then when he realized that the Spaniard understood and spoke more English than he let on, he came to hear the man’s tragic story. When he was only ten years old, his family traveled from Cadiz to Cuba. Their ship was only one day away from reaching Havana when a pirate ship boarded them. All aboard were shot or hung. He had watched as his parents were killed, shot at close range while they were on their knees. His sisters were taken by a few of the m
en on board the prize ship and he was forced to join the pirates. He never forgot their fear-stricken faces just before they were pushed down the companionway into the hold.

  It was then, amidst much foot stomping, singing, and yelling from the sailors, that Morgan remembered the letter that he had stuffed into his pocket. He’d asked earlier about Dobbs, the jumper, and he’d been told by another sailor that the sick man was still talking incoherently in a semiconscious state. He went off to a dark corner on the other side of the livestock shed and sat down to read the letter he’d picked up from the man’s bunk area. He was always happy when he could slip away and read in seclusion, and this was one of his hideouts. There was no way to describe the extent of his astonishment as he unfolded the piece of paper. The handwriting was shaky and jagged, the lettering uncertain, a sign of the writer’s weak and trembling hand. Dobbs had not finished it, but that wasn’t what left Morgan speechless.

  Dear Morgan,

  When I first Spied you high up in the yards after we cleared Margate and headed into the North Sea, I thought I had seen a Ghost. I thought it was Abraham as your appearances are similar. Then when I heard your name spoken, I realized you must be his Brother. It was then that I knew the heavy hand of Fate had directed me to this Ship for a purpose. It was my Time. I know that I failed to fulfill my Promise to write your Mother, and now I embrace this Opportunity to inform you. Your brother deserved better from me, his friend John Taylor. I find myself unable to easily relate to you what happened, but I must try to make you understand. I did all I could . . .

  Morgan sat stunned at what he was reading. He turned the page back and forth, but found nothing more there. His mind raced ahead. The two anchors and the words tattooed on the man’s back, “Bosom friend and Brother”; it suddenly came to him. Those were the words John Taylor had used to describe Abraham in the letter he had sent. Even the odd use of capital letters was the same. How could he have forgotten that? Each sentence was imprinted in his mind like a phrase from the Bible.

  Now it was clear. Dobbs was Taylor, the man he’d been searching for. Here he was lying in a bunk below him. He allowed himself to think that perhaps Abraham was alive. Taylor had not mentioned any details, only that his brother had been surrounded by wickedness, and that they would not see each other again. He must keep this man alive. The mates had told him that he now had a recurring fever with severe chills and sudden sweating. Scuttles thought it was one of the African fevers.

  Days later, Morgan was draped over the fore topsail yard tying off the gasket to secure the sail to the yard when he spotted the line on the horizon several miles to the northward of them. At long last, they’d arrived across the Atlantic. They passed one of the emigrant ships carrying a full boatload of three hundred passengers. Two or three outward-bound ships with their cathedral-like towers of white sails were heading south en route to the Caribbean, South America, or even further to China. By afternoon, he could hear the faint booming of the surf even before he could see the white line of breakers rolling onto the sandy shoreline of Long Island. The voyage had taken a punishing six weeks. Most of the steerage passengers had pale and hollow looks. He looked down at a small group of them who had gathered on deck near the barnyard area to sing a hymn of thanks, their voices drifting upward, blending in with the murmur of the breakers in the distance. The melodic singing made him think of home and the Sunday service at the Lyme meetinghouse. He wondered if he would ever see his mother again. He clenched his teeth to fight back a muted sob, shook his head and looked out to sea. Soon he spotted the narrow spit of land called Sandy Hook that marked the entrance to New York harbor, and the first mate gave the order to back the yards. From his perch in the topsail area, he could see the pilot boat and the speedy news schooners sailing quickly toward them, black-backed gulls riding the air currents around the hulls.

  As one of them came closer, Captain Champlin shouted out, “What’s the news?”

  A man at the bow of the boat shouted back that General Marquis de Lafayette had arrived safely.

  “He’s back! He’s here in America.”

  It was August 15, 1824.

  The sixty-seven-year-old Lafayette had come back to the United States for the first time since the revolution. The next day New York’s streets were filled with the sounds of patriotic Yankee Doodle marching bands and men dressed in military uniforms on prancing white horses. With the sight of Lafayette waving at the adoring crowds from his horse-drawn carriage, Morgan and Hiram carried the semiconscious John Taylor off the ship and put him on a cart. The captain had told them to get the man off his ship. He never wanted to see him again, and he didn’t care what they did with him. At the sight of a sick man, the crowds parted, giving them plenty of space. They took him to a sailor’s boarding house where a doctor eventually confirmed that Taylor had come down with a recurrent form of malaria. The doctor treated him with quinine, and over the next two days Taylor improved considerably. By the time Morgan came to see him, just before the ship sailed for London, Taylor was conscious, although extremely weak.

  At the sight of Morgan walking through the door into his room, the sick man began shivering uncontrollably. His eyes opened wide with fear.

  “No, Abraham,” he shouted. “Have mercy! Have you come for me?”

  Morgan didn’t reply. He shook the man strongly and slapped his face.

  “Pull yourself together, man. I’m not Abraham. For God’s sake, tell me what has happened to my brother. Is he alive or dead?”

  The bedridden man was taken aback by this sudden attack.

  “Why did you sail under a false name?” Morgan continued with his interrogation. “What have you got to hide?”

  The sick man looked up at him, his eyes only half open. “It was the Englishman who did it. It wasn’t me. It was the Englishman, William Blackwood, that’s his name, the captain on that blood boat. He and his curly red-haired mate, Tom Edgars. Big Red, they called him, but it was Blackwood who done it. He hated and resented Abraham, and now he wants me dead.”

  “What blood boat?”

  “The Charon,” he replied with fear in his eyes. “That’s the English ship that conscripted us. The Devil’s own ferry, that one.” Old memories of the British raid up the Connecticut River suddenly resurfaced in Morgan’s mind. His childhood fear and anger toward the British Royal Navy rose up like unwanted phlegm in his throat.

  “Why does he want you dead?”

  “I know too much about them and their foul dealings.”

  “What foul dealings? Where do I find this Blackwood?”

  The bedridden man paused for some time before he answered, and then he mumbled, “The East End of London.” He said something else, which Morgan couldn’t hear well. He shook him again, but the shivering sailor didn’t respond. His eyelids flickered and closed, his body starting to shake as he slipped back into unconsciousness.

  PART III

  And the muddy tide of the Thames, reflecting nothing, and hiding a million of unclean secrets within its breast, — a sort of guilty conscience, as it were, unwholesome with the rivulets of sin that constantly flow into it, — is just the dismal stream to glide by such a city.

  —Nathaniel Hawthorne, Our Old Home

  7

  1826

  An early summer wind was blowing hard from the direction of Staten Island that June morning, pulling the Hudson’s anchor chains taut like the strings on a fiddle. Morgan stood by the windlass on the ship’s foredeck, ready for the order to weigh anchor. He was chewing a quid of tobacco, enjoying the bitter taste and the way it sharpened his mind. A couple of steam tugboats were puffing around the harbor. The jib sheets were pulled tight and the crew at the stern of the ship was busy raising the spanker. He could hear some of the sailors singing the “Sally Racket” chantey.

  “Oh Sally Racket, pawned my peak jacket, hi-oh!”

  Just then, the big, square-shouldered first mate strode forward from the quarterdeck with his rigid, military-like posture.


  “Heave up the anchor, let’s get it aweigh,” yelled Mr. Toothacher gruffly.

  Morgan and Hiram joined in the singing as they took their places along with the rest of the crew heaving on the windlass, their bodies’ movements matching the rhythm of the chantey song. They were now considered full-fledged seamen, or “jacks of all trades” as the sailors liked to say. After four years at sea, the tasks on ship strangely soothed Morgan like the monotony of the ocean on a calm day. He could toss the lead from the forechains, tie a cuckold’s knot around a spar, or take the helm during the night. All were as familiar to him as combing his hair or trimming his thickening reddish whiskers. He was twenty years old, but he felt much older.

  Morgan looked over at Hiram, whose bearded face was now aglow in the morning sun. His teeth flashed. His eyes sparkled. He was stripped to the waist, revealing a sinewy white torso that gleamed and shimmered as he strained and heaved away. He now looked like a Yankee tar, a true foredeck sailor. His muscular arms and shoulders, tattooed with his busty mermaids and a trident-holding Neptune, flexed and tightened as he sang the chantey with the rest of the sailors. Icelander and the Spaniard, along with several of the Connecticut River men, were still visibly feeling the effects of taking too big of a “swig at the halyards” the last few nights of shore leave. Morgan noticed that they were having a hard time keeping up with the rhythm of the song as they heaved against the wooden capstan bars.

  There were many new men in the crew. Old Jeremiah had left after the Jonah voyage, vowing that “he wouldn’t sail no more on no cursed ship.” Many of the other old-timers like Curly Jim had gone as well. Morgan had been glad to see most of those troublesome sailors leave. In their place, the captain had hired on some Cape Horn veterans from Salem and Newburyport, a couple of river men from Connecticut, and a colored man from New Orleans who’d been working on coastal packets.