Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale

by Robin Lloyd

  Sailors were now on the yards bracing around the topsails of the foremast and the mainmast. The anchor was up, and the foredeck sailors were securing it to the cat head, ready for the next order. One of the men started singing “New York Girls,” and soon the yards and the foredeck were filled with song. All around were other transatlantic packets getting ready to weigh anchor, some already leaving New York harbor under full sail.

  “Ely, look over there.”

  Morgan’s head snapped up from the cat head. He watched as a small transatlantic packet fought its way toward the East River.

  “Look Ely, it’s the old Cadmus. Remember two years ago when that Havre packet brought in General Lafayette?”

  Morgan nodded. Hiram was right. It indeed was the Cadmus, a smallish snub-nosed packet on the Havre–New York run flying the tricolor. She must have just arrived from France. The sailors were high up on the yards furling the topsails. The sight of the old Cadmus brought back poignant memories for Morgan. He began thinking of Old Jeremiah, black cats, and that fateful voyage two years ago that had seemed cursed from beginning to end. He thought of his traumatic encounter with John Taylor. Immediately after that voyage he had written his brother to tell him the good news that he had found Taylor, but then four months later when he had returned from London he found that the man had vanished from the boarding house where he had been delivered.

  His mind wandered back to that boarding house. He had walked up Cherry Street, noisy with drunken, rowdy sailors spilling out into the snow-covered cobblestone street. It was freezing cold and the snow was crunching underneath his boots. He had found number 39 easily enough, a wooden two-storied building, with a nondescript blue door. The boarding house lady, a harried middle-aged woman with her hair tied up in the back, had poked her head out the door. At first, she had threatened to have her husband pummel him if he didn’t leave, but then she recognized him when he pulled his woolen cap off and invited him inside.

  “Take off your coat, sailor, and come over here by the fire. I am right surprised you came back. Your Mr. Taylor disappeared soon after you left.”

  Morgan had raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  “What happened? Where did he go?”

  “Can’t say,” the woman replied as she looked at him expectantly.

  “As soon as he was strong enough to walk, he just left. Look’d to me like he were a man who didn’t care much for himself,” she said simply as she offered him a piece of pound cake and then poured him a cup of tea.

  “He a relative of yours?” she had asked inquiringly.

  “No, ma’am,” Morgan had responded matter-of-factly. “Just a fellow mariner, that’s all.”

  Then he remembered how her face had become animated, her eyes widening. “I ask ye ’cause I’m curious. A big English fellow came looking for him just after he disappeared,” she had said. “Scary-looking fellow with tattoos and puffy eyes. He said Taylor was his brother, but I knew that weren’t the case.”

  Morgan asked her for his name.

  “He gave no name,” she had replied, “and no address neither, but he was an Englishman.”

  She had paused and looked at him again inquisitively. “You sound like you might know him? Friend of yours, sailor?”

  Morgan shook his head, thanked the woman, and left, disheartened and preoccupied by what he had just heard. It sounded to him like an English bloodhound with no kind intentions was hot on Taylor’s trail. He wondered if this Englishman could be connected to Abraham.

  Those thoughts were passing through his mind when the first mate yelled out, “All hands aloft.” As Morgan climbed the ratlines of the main mast, he looked back toward the East River and could just barely make out the tips of the masts of the fast new Swallowtail packet, the York and the Canada of the Black Ball Line still loading freight and passengers. Morgan was busy unfastening and unfurling the topgallants from the yards when he heard the order for more sails. He looked down from the yard on which he was perched and noticed that the new cabin boy, Dalrymple, was already down on his knees, holystoning the decks. The second mate, Mr. Brown, was yelling in his face.

  “Look at me boy when I talk to you,” the mate shouted derisively, his face scowling underneath his black leather hat. “Stop skylarking and clean the decks, boy, so they’re as smooth as your little pup’s face.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Mr. Brown caught Morgan’s glance and saw him staring down at him from the yard. Morgan quickly looked away, but not before he noticed the mate’s lips curl with an expression of malice. At first he thought that Brown was looking at him, but then he noticed that his churlish face was turned in his friend’s direction. Hiram was on the royals yard just above him.

  That night, the winds began to pick up sharply. Morgan was on watch aloft, squatting in the crosstrees and holding on to one of the stays for support. He had grown to like sitting high above the deck at night. The tangy smell of the sea and the freshening breeze filled his lungs and invigorated him. He looked up into the blackness around him and marveled at the immensity of the star-filled skies. The tip of the mast swayed from side to side as the ship’s bow plunged into the waves. The melancholy whistle of the wind caused his mind to wander. He reached his hand out into the blackness as he pretended to pluck one of the brighter stars out of the sky. It reminded him of picking apples. He thought of home at that moment and felt a sudden sadness. Just then, a sharp gust of wind caused the ship to heel over sharply. He grabbed onto the mast to steady himself. His eyes searched for Hiram, but he was nowhere to be found. Lately his friend had been slipping away, mysteriously disappearing. The mates were always looking for him, particularly Mr. Brown.

  As his glance fell to the deck, he noticed the shadowy figure of the second mate climbing over the futtock shrouds heading up the mast toward him, and he braced himself for the worst. Moments later, Brown had climbed up the ratlines and thrust his face inches from Morgan’s nose, his foul-smelling breath almost making him gag.

  “Where’s your chum, Morgan?” asked the second mate, his voice growling with hostility. The reflected light off the white canvas sails revealed the man’s yellow teeth and shiny black eyes. Morgan thought he knew the answer. On one of the voyages a year ago, Ochoa had taken him and Hiram down into the dark corners of the main hold and shown them where the rum barrels were kept. This was the black belly of the ship, where rats scurried over crates and barrels and the cross beams creaked and cracked with the ship’s movement. To Morgan, the place seemed like a musty tomb with the smells of rank bilge water filling his nostrils, but despite the unattractive surroundings, trips to the rum barrels soon became a welcome diversion for him and Hiram.

  Ochoa taught them the sailors’ trick of sucking the rum directly from the barrels with long quills. Once the novelty had passed, Morgan still enjoyed numerous forays into the rum barrel area on each passage, but he noticed that Hiram was always pushing to go again. He was probably down there now. His friend was fond of the grog, no matter what the risks of being caught, no matter how stormy the weather.

  “So where is he, Morgan?” Mr. Brown asked again in an even more menacing tone.

  “I reckon he’s out on the jib boom tending to the sails,” Morgan lied, in as convincing a voice as he could muster. As a sailor, he had learned how to lie with a straight face and a forthright voice. That answer seemed to partially satisfy the second mate. Brown had already caught Morgan and Hiram below decks around the rum barrels before on an earlier trip. They had been busy sucking the rum out of one of the barrels with quills when they heard footsteps. The second mate had been snuffing around below decks when he heard voices and saw the glow of their lantern. When he yelled out, they’d been quick to come out of the shadows with a story about how Scuttles had sent them down there to look for more flour. The cook was making biscuits and didn’t have enough, they’d said. Mr. Brown had been suspicious, but fortunately for them Scuttles had backed up their story.

  Like many in the crew, Morgan trie
d to stay away from Brown. The man was edgier than usual on this trip. No one seemed to know much about his history. It was rumored that he had gone to sea at an early age because of a crime he committed, but no one knew where he came from or what the crime was. He clearly enjoyed inflicting pain on any sailor who crossed him or failed to do his job. Morgan had also heard other unsavory things about Mr. Brown and some of his activities when he was on shore leave.

  On that early summer passage, the Hudson had taken a more southerly route to stay clear of possible ice fields. One of the Black X packet ships on the London to New York run had never arrived in port and was presumed lost. The Crisis had not been heard of now for more than two months. The talk on board ship was that the captain had been given orders to look for any signs of wreckage.

  For the first one thousand miles they sailed along the North American mainland, leaving the dangerous Nantucket Shoals to the west, and passing over the Great South Channel. They endured several days of stormy weather with heavy rains, thunder, and lightning. Despite more vigilance than normal, there was no sign of a shipwreck. The Crisis, with its twelve passengers and two dozen sailors, had disappeared without a trace. The Black X Line now only had one other remaining ship besides the Hudson. Morgan once again thought of Abraham and looked out at the sea from high atop the masthead, where he was tightening one of the stays. For a moment, he imagined that he was looking at a battlefield cemetery, the foaming whitecaps extending to the horizon like luminescent marble gravestones. He felt humbled, and he thought of the captain’s words about the reminders of death out on the ocean. He looked up at the stormy, black sky crackling with lightning and listened to the roll of the thunder. He murmured a small prayer.

  Among the cabin passengers on board was the famous American author James Fenimore Cooper, who was traveling to England with his wife and five young children. Cooper was already well known as a successful and widely read author after publishing The Pioneers. Some even referred to him as America’s Sir Walter Scott. He was headed for Europe on an extended stay to give his young children the benefit of learning French and Italian. He was also trying to secure English rights for his books.

  For Morgan, that June voyage was memorable because Captain Champlin brought him back to the quarterdeck to take the helm. Like all the sailors, Morgan was required to take his turn at the wheel, but usually he was given the early morning or night watch. This time his watch occurred in the late afternoon, when the cabin passengers were being served tea and refreshments in the quarterdeck area. A dense fog had rolled in, and the air was cold.

  Morgan walked back to the stern of the ship, shifting his weight effortlessly from one foot to the other. The repetitive motion of the waves, the slant of the deck, and the wind on his face all spoke to him now in a wordless language. He waited respectfully until the captain signaled him to replace the man at the wheel.

  “Your turn at the helm, Morgan.”

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n.”

  Morgan stepped up to the wheel and wrapped his fingers around the well-worn, braided twine on each of the spokes. He looked over at the man standing next to the captain. He had unruly dark hair and a high forehead with deep-set eyes. His squared-off jaw hinted at a proud, determined character. His formal dress, a white cravat and a dark jacket, made him appear to be a landed gentleman, but the way he stood with his legs straddled wide for balance, caused Morgan to think he was a seafaring man.

  He stood silently at the helm, first looking up at the trim of the sails, then glancing down at the binnacle to check on his course, north-northeast. The fog was thickening and the wind was strengthening. He could feel the tug of the rudder as the ship began to heel over more sharply. The two men were studying the performance of the ship, and he could feel their eyes on him. He kept waiting for a critical comment, but none came. Champlin was boasting that two new ships were being built for the Black X Line. They would soon have four ships, which would help make the London Line more competitive with the Liverpool shipping lines. Morgan soon realized that it was James Fenimore Cooper. He was quite familiar with Cooper’s work as Scuttles had given him a copy of The Pioneers from the ship’s library, as well as Cooper’s highly successful seafaring novel, The Pilot.

  At one point, the topic of conversation switched to the Crisis, and the author began asking questions about what could have happened to the Black X packet. Morgan watched as Champlin’s mood darkened even as he shuffled his feet on the deck defensively.

  “Most likely she ran into a floating iceberg at night.” Champlin replied sadly. “Being as you were once a sailor and a midshipman in the United States Navy, Mr. Cooper, you well know the ocean gives and she takes. She is both kind and cruel.”

  Cooper nodded soberly. Sensing the captain’s discomfort, he changed the topic to ask about the fast-growing packet trade with England and France. It was well known that American packet ships were now carrying over not just the mail, but ninety percent of the freight going both ways, as well as most of the passengers. There were now four sailings a month from New York to Liverpool, two to Havre, and one to London.

  “Some of my shipping friends in New York say steamships are the future on the Atlantic. What do you think of that notion, Captain?”

  Champlin laughed.

  “Those stinkpots?” he snorted in disgust. “I venture to say that if I were a passenger, I would not risk my life crossing the stormy Atlantic on one of those smoky tinder boxes.”

  After the two men tired of talking about ships, Champlin left the quarterdeck to go below and tend to some of his more demanding passengers. Morgan remained quiet, feeling awkward with so important a man as Cooper standing next to him. He looked over at the flush-cheeked author, who was clearly enjoying the motion of the ship and the cool, misty fog on his face. Finally he broke the silence and told Mr. Cooper that he had enjoyed reading his sea novel.

  Clearly surprised by this sudden remark from the quiet young sailor at the helm, Cooper smiled at Morgan skeptically.

  “A keen-eyed critic of the sea, are you?”

  “Yes sir. I liked the part about them escaping through the Devil’s Grip, and I greatly admired Mr. Gray, the pilot. Reminded me of some of the American privateering captains who fought the British in the last war.”

  Cooper’s dark eyebrows lifted slowly as he studied Morgan’s face more closely.

  “You seem a little young, sailor, to know much about that war. What did you say your name was?”

  “Morgan, sir. Ely Morgan. I was a farm boy from the Connecticut River, a little town called Lyme, during the war. My brother and I, we were there when the English torched our fleet in old Potapoug. We saw those redcoats close up. We were fortunate we didn’t get killed.”

  Cooper’s smile broadened as he listened. He wanted to know more about this young sailor’s life. Morgan told him about his search for Abraham. He told him about John Taylor. He didn’t know why he divulged all of this, but the author’s deep-set eyes, although stern and inquiring, seemed trusting. Perhaps he just needed someone to confide in.

  Cooper’s interest was piqued at the mention of the mysterious Englishman named William Blackwood.

  “What will you do if you find this man, Blackwood, Mr. Morgan, what then?” asked Cooper provocatively.

  “I will make him tell me what happened to Abraham,” Morgan replied with conviction.

  “And what if this Englishman tells you he killed your brother?”

  “Why then, I . . .” Morgan bit on his lip, looked up at the sails, and didn’t say anything. At that point, Morgan was leaning against the wheel, concentrating on Cooper and not the ship’s progress. He hadn’t noticed a sudden shift in the wind. Champlin emerged from below decks and looked up at the fluttering sails that were snapping back and forth in the gray fog.

  “Fall off, boy, damn you, the fore-topgallant is luffing.”

  When his watch was over at eight o’clock, Morgan rushed to tell Hiram that he had met the famous author James Fenimore Cooper.
He found his friend spinning yarn in the forecastle with some of the other sailors. The sailors, half undressed, were reclining on their sea chests or sitting on their bunks smoking their small half pipes and chewing wads of tobacco. They were listening to one of the old-timers, who was in the middle of a tale. Hiram didn’t even know who Cooper was. His eyes were bugged out of his head, his face red and splotched, and his breath was hot like a panting dog. He was in a blurred stupor that Morgan recognized only too well. He pulled his friend out of the smoky, steamy forecastle into the cool, foggy night air. They walked over to the far forward section of the bow where they could talk in private.

  “You been quilling rum again?” Morgan asked under his breath.

  Hiram nodded with a satisfied smile, and then started to speak in a hoarse, slurred whisper.

  “Yeah, I’ve been quilling that sweet Jamaican grog fairly regular on this passage. You won’t believe what I seen down there in the hold last night. I thought I was all alone with them rats scurrying all around me. I had just put the quill through the gimlet hole in the head of the barrel when I heard some commotion in and around the crates. At first, I thought it was just the rats, but then I started hearing rustling noises, and some heavy breathing. I never been so frightened, I thought it might be a ghost or something. I started to run back through the dark, bumping my head on the stores hanging from the heavy timbers. I was dodging and weaving through the maze of crates. I almost made it to the ladder, but I tripped on a coil of rope. Then I seen this lantern light swinging toward me in the darkness. I couldn’t see nothing more than that light running at me like a horse coming at me full gallop. Then I heard a voice yell out, ‘Who’s there? Who’s there, damn ye!’”

  “Who was it?” Morgan asked excitedly, wondering if there was a stowaway on board.