by Robin Lloyd
“Ever heard of William Blackwood?”
“What if I ’ave? What’s it to ye, Yank?”
“I heard he was looking for sailors,” Morgan replied quickly, too stunned to say anything more.
“Why yer asking about Blackwood,” another man asked suddenly, clearly suspicious. “’Ow’s it yer know about my old China Bill? Ye be a copper’s nark?”
“What’s a copper’s nark?” Morgan asked innocently.
“A Blue Bottle’s blower? Is that what ye are, Yank?”
The man with the pigtail glowered at Morgan with undisguised disdain. His one good eye seemed clearer, a sharper, more intelligent tool than moments before, as if suddenly it had spotted an opportunity.
“If ’e’s in London you might find ’im down by Wapping Old Stairs,” the man volunteered with a malevolent grin. “’E’s got some ale’ouses there ’e frequents. One of them is called the Frying Pan Tavern on Vinegar Lane just north of the ’ighway in Shadwell.”
9
The drizzle was now a drenching rain. Lightning flashed to the west over Tower Hill, illuminating London’s skyline off in the distance. Morgan watched from the sodden foredeck as several burly constables with the Marine Police kicked and shoved their prisoners off the ship onto the London docks. The river pirates who could walk slinked and shambled in the steady rain past the stern of the ship, their heads down and their hands manacled. The other three were thrown into a small wagon and carted away. Morgan spotted the man with the pigtail who had told him where he might find Blackwood. He whispered softly as he went by, “Say ’ello to Bill for me when ye find ’im.”
A horse-drawn wagon waited to carry them away to what some of the sailors said would be a dark hole in a watch house, probably in White-chapel or Bethnal Green. Morgan had heard about these places, narrow dungeons with dirt and gravel floors steaming with stagnant air reeking of human feces. Poor wretches, Morgan thought to himself, even as he recognized them for what they were, mean and squalid creatures from London’s unforgiving streets.
Morgan knew well enough that these crime-ridden places surrounding the docks were haunts where sailors sometimes disappeared forever. Still, he fully intended to go there to follow this latest lead. Before that, he wanted to talk to Hiram about his suspicions. He hadn’t had a chance to talk with his friend since the attack on the ship. He watched the wagon loaded with the prisoners lurch and rattle its way out of the well-guarded dock area into the streets, the heavy-set truck horses straining at their leather harness. Once it had disappeared, and the heavy, creaking iron gates had closed behind them, he found Hiram and told him what he’d seen during the attack.
Hiram wanted to confront Brown and report him to the captain, but Morgan convinced him that he wouldn’t get justice that way. “The captain would never believe you,” he told Hiram, “and besides, Brown would just deny it.” They decided to confide in a few other sailors. The Spaniard, once he was given a translation of what Morgan had seen, wanted to slit the mate’s throat, “Cortarle el cuello come el cochino, hijo de puta que es.” Icelander wanted to keelhaul him or string him up in the yardarms. It was Whipple, the ship’s carpenter, who gave Morgan the idea of what to do.
Henry Whipple was a Connecticut River man, an old sea dog who had been on many deepwater voyages and was full of just as many stories as the days he’d spent at sea. He had a simple face overloaded with a wild, unkempt growth of graying whiskers, a dull, gauzy shade of blue in his eyes, and a wide sloping forehead, cracked and uneven like a New England stone wall. His hair was thinning at the top of his head, so he’d drawn it back in a Chinaman’s pigtail. After the suddenness of the river attack, Captain Champlin had told Whipple he wanted a way to hear what was happening on deck in the privacy of his cabin. Whipple mentioned this casually by way of making conversation. A group of sailors were drinking water at the ship’s scuttlebutt when Whipple volunteered the latest task he was doing for the captain.
“He’s got me building a speaking tube contraption with one end in his cabin and the other end coming out by the cabin house at the stern of the ship,” Whipple said dolefully as if he were making a confession.
“That so,” one of the sailors replied. “What’s that for?”
Whipple explained that his hollow tube would allow the captain to hear everything going on at the helm area, and if necessary, make his voice heard from his cabin if the sails were shaking or luffing. It was also a good protection against a mutiny or a surprise attack by river pirates.
Whipple’s uneven brow furrowed as he realized that he was talking too much.
“The cap’n didn’t want me to tell a soul, so don’t let on you know anything about it,” he said anxiously, his voice noticeably distressed.
When Morgan heard what Whipple was doing, the outlines of a scheme to get rid of the second mate slowly began to take shape in his mind. The plan was set in motion days later when the captain returned and Mr. Toothacher left the ship. Whipple had finished installing the new speaking tube. That night Champlin retired to his cabin after dinner as was his custom, and Morgan and his cohorts gathered on the quarterdeck. Morgan and Hiram weren’t the only ones who wanted to get rid of the second mate.
At eleven o’clock, Morgan began his preparations. He picked a spot right next to the helm where he could speak into one end of the hollow tube, the other end of which was right next to the captain’s berth, just several feet away from his head. Morgan and Hiram then began speaking in a hoarse whisper, knowing that their voices would be sufficiently loud enough for the captain’s benefit.
In a dramatic hushed tone, Hiram described the unspeakable horrors he’d seen down in the rum barrels, sparing no details, adding a few revealing sounds he hadn’t actually heard. Morgan played along as if he’d never heard this salacious story before. He also piped in with his own story of foul dealing about Brown. He told how the mate had contacted the scuffle hunters in Portsmouth, striking a deal with them, and then, once they’d boarded the ship, directed them toward Hiram, their intended victim. This was part fact, part guesswork, and pure theatrics.
Soon other sailors joined in on the discussion. A mock fight ensued as the sailors pretended to argue about what they should do to Brown. At that point, down in his cabin, the captain would have heard muffled shouts, the stomping of feet on deck and a plethora of cursing. All this was being done for his benefit. In actual fact, there were now about six or seven sailors who were pretending to have a fight, all in the interest of luring the volatile mate back to the helm area. Right on cue, Mr. Brown showed up wielding his favorite weapon, a belaying pin, and began hitting and striking any and all of the sailors involved in the fighting.
“Mr. Brown!” Morgan shouted directly into the hollow tube above the din of the shipboard brawl. “Why is it that you didn’t fight like this when the scuffle hunters came over the side of the ship? One of them told me it was you who invited them on board.”
An irate Brown lunged at Morgan with his long, powerful arms raining him with blows of the belaying pin. As Morgan raised up his elbows to fend off the blows, Hiram started shouting into the hollow tube again.
“What is it that you did down in the darkness of the hold, Mr. Brown? Did I hear what I thought I heard amongst them rum barrels?”
Brown’s face became beet red, and he flew into an even more intense rage, wheeling and turning on Hiram like a wild animal, growling and snarling. He had Hiram by the throat with his head up against the helm. He was strangling him when the captain, dressed in his silk pajamas with his head still bandaged, emerged from the companionway wielding his two pistols.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Champlin shouted as he rushed into the melee. His eyes fell on Morgan and he demanded an explanation.
“Is this a mutiny, Mr. Morgan?”
“No, Cap’n, there is no mutiny. Just a difference of opinion with the second officer.”
“What might that be, Mr. Morgan?” the captain asked sharply.
�
�There are certain of us who believe that Mr. Brown had something to do with the scuffle hunters that boarded us.”
The captain looked around at some of the other sailors from Connecticut whom he trusted, Horace Nyles and Ezra Pratt, two of the more experienced seamen from the river. They were nodding at him, acknowledging that they agreed with Morgan. He turned to his second mate and addressed him directly.
“Mr. Brown, what explanation is there for these libelous statements?”
Brown had by now released his hold on Hiram’s throat and was standing over him like a cat with a mouse, his explosive anger still red hot.
“It’s nothing but malicious gossip, Captain,” the mate said with an authoritative voice, his restless eyes moving about the deck. “Pure tattle and obloquy.” He gestured angrily toward Hiram and Morgan saying, “These sailors should be cobbed and then manacled below decks. They deserve a proper floggin’, sir.”
Morgan held his breath. It looked like the plan had failed.
Champlin paused, his two pistols still at the ready. He’d heard all the accusations through the hollow tube into his cabin, but it was very difficult for a captain to rebuke one of his own mates in front of the men, and these accusations were severe. At that point, he might have backed down if it hadn’t been for the sudden surprise appearance of Dalrymple. The new cabin boy stepped into the light of the lantern at the helm, immediately drawing the eyes of all the others. The boy’s pasty-white face was stricken with fear. A silence suddenly fell on the quarterdeck. No one expected what happened next. Dalrymple spoke clearly and in a straightforward fashion.
“All of that is true, Cap’n.”
“What’s that, boy?” Champlin asked with astonishment.
“It is true,” the boy repeated in a quiet, restrained voice. “I was made to be an accomplice to Mr. Brown. When the ship was off of Ramsgate on that last night before we sailed into the Thames, Mr. Brown ordered me back aft to send a signal with the lantern on the port side of the ship. He told me to tell no one, but some men would board the ship in the morning and they would take care of things.”
Champlin pulled on his earlobe, rubbed his nose, and then fired off a question to his second mate.
“Mr. Brown, why did you have the boy send a signal, and who were you sending it to anyway?”
Clearly flustered, his face reddening, Brown stammered a response as he stepped away from Hiram.
“I was just signaling other ships in the area, Cap’n,” he stammered. “The fog was so thick. I was just trying to avoid a collision.”
Champlin’s eyes passed from the smooth, hairless face of this blond-haired boy to the scruffy, weather-beaten face of his second mate. He looked at the silent faces of his crewmembers. Justice was never easy to determine on board a ship, where truth was a frequent casualty. As a veteran shipmaster, he couldn’t always tell when a man was lying, but he had learned to sense fear and guilt in a man. He saw both of those emotions in the weaselly black eyes of his second mate. He turned to Nyles and Pratt.
“Put Mr. Brown in irons and bring him down below.”
Brown tried to make a run for it, but a dozen tattooed arms restrained him and forced him facedown onto the deck. Icelander and the Spaniard helped manacle the second mate and bring the enraged man down below.
“Put him in one of the passengers’ suites for now,” Champlin said. “Mr. Morgan, you and Mr. Smith will stay here on the quarterdeck. I think we have some matters to discuss.”
The next morning the American consul came on board with a number of soldiers and, after a long conversation with Captain Champlin, a manacled Jack Brown was led off the ship for the last time. The crew was told later that Brown would be shipped back to New York, where he would stand trial for mutiny and attempted murder. No mention was ever made of the rum barrel incident. That was one of the secrets that stayed on board ship. Champlin did not want to run the risk of a scandalous story like that becoming known. His ship’s reputation was at stake.
During those last days in port, stevedores were busy loading cargo onto the Hudson, everything from Kendall cottons to blankets to bundles of pans and spades. The sailors attended to more last-minute repairs, fixing the rigging and mending the sails. At dusk, on one of the last days in port, Morgan and a small group from the packet walked out of the garrisoned London Docks to the freedom and danger of the city’s crime-infested East End. Morgan persuaded them to head for the Shadwell area, where sailors liked to say there was a whore for every twelve men. He was determined to get to the Frying Pan Tavern, even though he realized they were now walking through the roughest part of London.
Once they’d done several twists and turns through squalid riverside streets and crumbling stone archways, they found themselves in the alleyways near Prince’s Square, not too far from Wellclose Square. Morgan watched as men, women, and children lined up to pump water into pails close by the common privy, its foul-smelling contents spilling into the streets. A woman dressed in rags lay in a heap on the street, her baby crying and screaming. A thief was picking through the pockets of a drunken man lying unconscious at the foot of some stairs. Morgan yelled at the robber, shaking his belaying pin, which he had brought along for protection. A good-looking middle-aged woman hung out a second story window in a suggestive, revealing way and laughed at him derisively.
“Ain’t you the gentleman now sailor boy. Ye be my knight in shinin’ armor, my own sweet prince,” she cried out in a throaty voice. Then she leaned further out the window, her face breaking out into a lurid smile. “Come up ’ere and I’ll make ye a king.”
Her laughter echoed into the small courtyard. A few blocks later there were more women, standing by doorways, calling out to these men like seductive sirens. One by one, the sailors disappeared; even Hiram left him when two young buxom women with dark seductive eyes approached them, their loose-fitting, wide-necked blouses leaving little to the imagination. It was too much for Hiram to resist.
“I’m sorry, Ely,” he said as he walked off with a grin, the two women laughing on either side of him. “These two beauties have given me a glimpse of paradise.”
Morgan walked on, exhaling deeply, fighting his own temptations. He was alone by the time he reached Vinegar Lane and spotted the sign for the tavern, which was hanging outside the ground floor of a blackened brick building with a dark green door. Underneath the sign, a drunken sailor was belting out a lover’s ballad, his sonorous baritone voice rising above the noisy din around him. Across the street there were various lodging houses and brothels where he could hear the sounds of raucous laughter, but a few others seemed to attract a more dignified clientele seeking anonymity amid the squalor. These were small hotels for the toffers who catered to the amorous needs of discreet gentlemen from the West End. He looked up at one of the two-storied houses and caught the eye of a striking young brunette looking down at him, his starved eyes transfixed as he paused for a moment to look at her.
With his mind still on the pretty woman in the window, Morgan stepped inside the tavern and began to assess the kind of place he’d walked into. The air was stagnant and stale, not unlike the ship’s moldy forecastle. The bar was lined with sailors, each with their hands squarely around a mug of ale. Several dusty lamps swung overhead. The smoky blue walls were filled with sailors’ drawings of ships and mermaids, sea chanteys and poems. Sailors were belting out lusty ale songs as they stared dumb-eyed and dim-witted into the blousy, loose tops of the bar maidens delivering them ale swipes.
“I put me arm around her waist
Sez she, young man, yer in great haste!
I put me hand upon her thigh,
Sez she, young man, yer rather high!”
Morgan soon found the owner of the establishment, a portly man by the name of Stillwell, who was behind the bar. His puffy red face and piggish eyes told the story of a tavern owner who patronized his own grog far too generously. Morgan introduced himself as an American sailor off a New York packet.
“What will ye
’ave?” he asked.
“A tankard of swipes,” Morgan replied.
“Not that often that we get Yanks in ’ere,” said Stillwell. “What brings ye to this part of London?”
Morgan asked if he knew an English sailor named William Blackwood, and Stillwell put his hand to his bulldog jaw and double chin as if he was thinking, and then nodded his head slowly.
“Sure, I know of ’im. Bill, yeah I know ’im. ’E comes in ’ere from time to time. A right fine sailor is Bill.”
“Where do I find him?” Morgan asked abruptly.
Stillwell seemed to ignore the question as he reached for a bottle off the shelf.
“Not that often that I get to serve a Yankee tar. ’Ave some of our own grog, our own special recipe. This one ’ere is on the ’ouse.”
He poured the clear liquid into a cup and handed it to Morgan. Ely drank it down in one gulp. It had the flavor of musty gin with a bitter lemon taste. He didn’t like it much, but he asked for another anyway. Normally he would have shown more caution, but he convinced himself that he needed to get on the bartender’s good side. He saw the man beckon one of the girls over and whisper something into her ear.
“How do I find him?” Morgan asked again, his speech now strangely slurred.
“Well now, I was just talking to pretty Susana ’ere and she says yer friend Blackwood may be in the ’ouse. She can take you to ’im. You might be in luck.”
Morgan followed the young woman up a rickety staircase to a long hallway lit by tall brass candlesticks that emitted a thin thread of smoke rising to the ceiling. The old wooden boards groaned and creaked as he took the first steps down the narrow hallway. Susana beckoned him to follow her. She pointed to a room at the end of the smoky hallway and said he should go in there. Morgan hesitated before stepping inside, a chill penetrating his clothes, his head starting to swim, his vision beginning to blur. Something was happening to him. He shook his head and slapped his face, but he still felt like he was sailing into a North Sea fog. With little to no ventilation, the stagnant air hung heavy in the room. A petite young woman sat on the bed with a candle flame flickering on the table beside her. She was stark naked, motionless and voluptuous.