Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale

by Robin Lloyd

  The men on watch, led by Mr. Pratt, struggled up the rigging, the wind flattening them against the shrouds and the ratlines as they tried to fasten and tighten the tangled ropes. To further strengthen the masts, Morgan ordered them to catharpin the shrouds by means of capstan bars lashed just below the futtock shrouds. These were then tightened by means of blocks on lines passed through bars placed on the opposite end of the ship.

  “Keep tightening, Mr. Pratt. Pull on those lines and make ’em fast. We’ll need all the support we can. Looks like this is one of them hurricanes from the West Indies.”

  Rain was slicing down even as the winds accelerated and the skies turned black. Jagged branches of lightning could be seen in the distance. As the storm intensified in strength, the ship began to steer wildly with the rudder slamming to one side. Morgan gave the order for more men to go aloft, this time to furl almost all the sails. He yelled out to Icelander at the helm to dig his knees into the wheel box and hang on.

  “Starboard! Starboard! Meet her quick! Steady! Now. Port, a spoke, port!”

  “Fall off! Fall off!”

  The ship was riding headfirst into a rolling wall of waves, climbing upward and upward. She soared up swiftly like a bird taking flight and then, on the downward slope, dove into another mountainous wave, the water sweeping across the decks. Morgan watched as a big roller caught the bow under the weather side and the ship lurched to leeward. It looked like she was toppling over to one side. One of the lifeboats had broken loose, crashing against the deckhouse, almost hitting Ochoa, before being swept overboard. Some of the sailors in the foredeck were knocked off their feet and were slipping to leeward, trying to clutch on to anything as they slid toward the leeward bulwarks.

  Morgan struggled to stand up as he held on to the windward stays with both hands. He could feel the ship trembling under the weight of the seas toppling on the deck. The tips of the windward yardarms were now pointed upward and the tall masts were leaning over to one side, reaching out to the horizon. The barely visible Mr. Nyles standing amidships, his oilskins streaming with water, yelled something, but Morgan couldn’t hear him over the terrific howl of the wind, the straining of canvas, and the rattling of blocks.

  He turned to Icelander, “What did Mr. Nyles shout?”

  “I believe he wants you to bear off!”

  Icelander’s face was now a pale blue color. Morgan pulled out a cigar and began rolling it back and forth in his mouth to calm his nerves. He ordered Rasmussen to alter their course in the direction the seas wanted to take the ship. Icelander swung the spokes of the big wheel over so the waves were lifting the Philadelphia from the stern and propelling her forward. The ship now moved like a wide-beamed toboggan speeding downhill over broken terrain. Their new course was southeasterly, somewhere to the south of the Azores in the direction of North Africa. It was all open ocean for hundreds of miles. The waves were rising up and cresting behind them now. The ship steadied herself, but the new danger lay in being swamped by a fast-moving wave looming up unseen over the ship’s stern. He turned to the man on watch on the weather side of the poop deck and told him to hold on to the mizzen rigging and look out for pursuing seas.

  Then he shouted a warning to Icelander, who was standing rigidly still, his arms moving crosswise to check and then urge the wheel’s rapidly moving spokes.

  “Watch yerself, Rasmussen. Don’t get us pooped. We’re heavy loaded with freight like a sand barge. We only have about eight feet of freeboard, and I don’t want to lose you to a wall of water.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  As night fell, flashes of lightning revealed the chaotic scene. Crashing seas swept across the deck, lifting anything and everything not tied down. Morgan stood by the helm and looked ahead at the whole battered length of his ship as she propelled herself forward in a rolling rush. He could see the cabin below decks was now in total blackness and guessed that all the hanging lanterns were shattered. Breaking seas were thudding and whacking the topsides of the ship like a battering ram hitting a castle’s thick doors.

  He wondered what Eliza was doing. He gulped at this thought. There was nothing he could do to help her. It was all he could do to hold on and try to help Icelander steer a course. He imagined her huddled below clutching one of the iron supports, the chairs upturned, broken plates all over the cabin floor. He hoped Lowery was keeping a clear head.

  The Philadelphia was now sailing into the darkness with just two sails, the reefed main topsail in the center of the boat and one small jib on the ship’s bowsprit. Fearful sailors in their boots and oilskins clambered up the rigging to escape being swept away by immense volumes of water sweeping the decks. Others crouched by the windward rigging amidships staring upward at the swaying masts above them. Morgan held on to the wheelhouse and yelled out to Mr. Nyles to tighten the lines between the shrouds, but even he couldn’t hear his own voice. Another bolt of lightning illuminated the sky. Morgan turned his face streaming with water to windward and nervously looked at a big, foaming wave climbing and rising high up over the ship’s stern. It seemed at any moment the ocean would swallow the ship and all who were aboard.

  The next morning the winds and the rain had slackened, but the ship was still in the midst of the gale, riding enormous waves, and flying along at thirteen knots. Morgan knew the sun had risen because the sky had turned a lighter shade of shadowy gray. He could see the drained faces of the sailors around him, ragged and beaten men looking back at him with bloodshot, sleepless eyes. He wondered if he looked like them. He felt numb and cold. He was soaked through and shaking. They had all gone without sleep or food for twenty-four hours. Many of the men were gripping rails for support. Others had lashed themselves to the rigging. They were silent, tight-lipped, awe-stricken by the ocean’s power. He knew all of them dreaded any call by the mates to go high up into the yards with the masts swaying back and forth from horizon to horizon. Mr. Nyles reported to him that the jib boom on the bowsprit had broken off overnight, ripping the jib to shreds. Morgan nodded. It could have been much worse. The wind and rain had also carried away one of the yards on the foremast. Otherwise, the ship appeared to be sound. No one had been lost either off the deck or from the yard, and they had avoided a demasting.

  It was shortly after Nyles gave him that largely positive report that the sailor on watch yelled out a warning. Wild, startled eyes turned toward the stern of the ship in stunned disbelief as a dark green wall of water rose up behind them like a giant curtain blocking out the light. “Grab hold and look out for yourselves,” Morgan yelled. Moments later, a towering wave some thirty feet high crashed over the stern with a loud boom and swamped the boat. Morgan felt his feet give way as he fell with a bang on the deck, the water sweeping him toward the leeward bulwarks on the port side. He felt himself being carried by the rush of water. The heavy weight of tons of water plunged the ship downward to a wrenching stop. The three masts whipped back and forth, threatening to snap and break off. Morgan’s head was submerged. He was powerless to help himself. He felt sure that he was going to be swept out to sea.

  The ship lurched to starboard and amazingly he found himself washed backwards onto the ship’s deck. He got up and struggled back toward the wheelhouse, his hands grabbing ropes to pull himself up the slanted deck. He fell again as another wave of water swept over the ship, He would have slid overboard, but someone grabbed him and helped him up. Just as he reached the poop deck, he felt something give beneath him around the sternpost. The next thing he heard was a shout from below that water was coming in. It wasn’t just the normal weeping. Water was actually coming through the timbers. Leaks had sprung up everywhere, and streams of water shot into the lower cargo hold, overflowing the bilge of the ship.

  With the wind screeching through the bare rigging and much confusion on deck, Morgan yelled at the first mate to start jettisoning some of the cargo to lighten the ship aft. It was important to find out where the ship was leaking. He ordered all of the remaining canvas taken down. Th
e ship was now scudding along under bare poles carried along by fifty knot winds and a huge following sea. All this time the ship was taking in more and more water.

  Morgan shouted, “All hands! Man the pumps on deck! Buckets below!”

  Through it all, Icelander remained at the wheel, his knees forced in between the spokes, his feet braced in the wheel box, his thin lips twitching. Morgan went down below to warn the passengers about the leak, many of whom were lying in their staterooms, nauseated in their rolling berths and moaning in misery. He went looking for Eliza. He could hear the water splashing. The force of the wall of water had poured through the companionway into the main saloon. Everything inside had tumbled from one end of the cabin to the other. Lowery and Scuttles were huddled in a heap on the cabin sole in the galley clutching one of the fastened legs of the tables, their teeth chattering. The two Irish priests were now shaking convulsively and down on their knees praying for merciful forgiveness.

  “Your men should pray with us, Captain.”

  Morgan ignored their entreaties and walked by quickly.

  “Join us as we ask the Lord for mercy, Captain.”

  Morgan turned back to the two men of the cloth, and uncharacteristically addressed them in a curt manner.

  “You pray, Fathers. The rest of us will pump.”

  Just then he spotted Eliza. She was lying on the wet cabin floor in the Ladies Cabin, her hands holding onto the legs of the piano fastened to the floor. Like the other passengers, she was sick and barely seemed to see him. Morgan helped her up to a dry spot as the cry ran through the cabin that the ship was sinking. Much of the crew had already started handing up the cargo and throwing it overboard. The expensive American clock cases were on top so they had to be thrown out first. Two hundred cases of these finely made and expensive mahogany clocks from Connecticut went to the bottom before the cheese boxes eventually followed them overboard. That allowed the sailors to access and jettison some of the heavy cargo where the real weight was. Morgan told Whipple to get rid of all the furniture in the saloon. He then gave the order to toss the piano as well. He watched as Whipple took an ax to the finely tapered legs of the five-by-three-foot piano, allowing the sailors to carry the cherrywood case up through the companionway onto the deck. Eliza only managed a hoarse whisper of protest. She lay on the wet cabin sole, the fantasy of a romantic life at sea draining out of her as fast as the seawater was seeping into the ship’s cabin.

  Most of the weary cabin passengers were now standing in ankle-deep water as a hastily organized bucket brigade got underway. He rushed topside to find two men already working hard at the pumping station just forward of the main mast, their hands moving the two wooden handles in unison, pumping back and forth frantically, up and down like a seesaw. Torrents of water were being sucked up from the bilge in the bottom of the ship’s hull and spewed forth on the deck, seething and gurgling, as the flow of water escaped through the freeing ports into the ocean. Hours passed, and the ship was now emptied of all the cargo in the upper hold. Morgan noticed with satisfaction that the Philadelphia was riding higher than it was before. The pumping continued nonstop at a rate of three thousand gallons per hour. The men worked in shifts, their stringy hair matted with sea salt, black pouches under their swollen, red eyes. Knowing how tired his men were, Morgan drafted some of the more stalwart male passengers, warning them that they “had to pump or drown.”

  All this time, the gale and the towering, rolling waves were driving the ship southward toward the African coastline, hundreds of miles off course. Fortunately, the jettisoning of the cargo helped the ship even its trim and ride the waves better. Morgan estimated they had lightened the ship by nearly one hundred tons after a full day of pumping. Whipple was the one who found the leaking area after crawling inside the dark, rank bilge area. Most of the water was gushing in from a small hole, which they quickly packed with old sails and the passengers’ blankets and then plugged the seams in the planking with oakum. Morgan thought one of the ship’s ribs had cracked as well, but he hoped the emergency measures would hold until they could reach England.

  The storm began to subside after another twelve hours of heavy seas. Amazingly, they had lost no one overboard, but there were several men who had injuries, including Icelander, who cut his leg. Whipple bandaged him up and then tended to some of the other injuries. Morgan ordered two men to begin replacing the jib boom and the missing yard on the foremast. Down below in the cabin, he found more serious problems. When he walked down the stairs to the wreckage, he was met by a profound silence, punctuated by groaning and sobbing coming from one of the staterooms. Accusatory eyes and pinched cheeks turned slowly to stare at him. He could hear mutterings of displeasure. He felt terrible and tried to reassure the passengers that the worst was now over. Most of the fatigued and weary cabin passengers were blaming him for endangering their lives. In his own cabin he found a teary eyed and stony-faced Eliza. “This was our honeymoon, Captain Morgan. This was our first voyage as husband and wife. It was supposed to be special. Instead, we almost died.”

  He moved toward her with his hand outstretched, but she turned her back on him. He had never seen her so emotionally upset. He tried to comfort her again as he reached for her hands, but she recoiled from his conciliatory gesture.

  “You threw out the piano! My one pleasure on this hateful ship!” she cried out passionately, her morose and reproachful eyes glaring at him. “I heard you give the order. Why? Why did you do that?”

  “Rest and quiet is what you need now,” he said in an effort to reassure her, even as he covered up his uneasiness. “We all need that. We can talk later,” he added with fatigue in his voice. Again he reached out to touch her, but she jerked away and walked to the other end of the cabin.

  “You know what they are saying in the saloon, don’t you?” she said with a note of disapproval in her voice. “They are saying you took unnecessary risks. You should have turned back to New York.”

  Morgan was shaken to the core. He understood why she was so upset, but all he could think of saying was how much worse it could have been. They had been lucky. He wanted to say it was amazing that the ship had withstood the force of the storm. He wanted to hug her and comfort her. Instead he said nothing, fearing he would only make her more distraught. He cursed himself for not preparing her for the worst. He should have warned her about the dangers, but he hadn’t wanted to scare her away. He thought how young and inexperienced she was. He thought back to the high-spirited young woman who had climbed the ratlines to the top platform. She had seemed to love the ship and relish risk and danger. Now she seemed changed. He slumped into a chair, his body beaten and exhausted, his face in his hands. He blamed himself. He had allowed her to think that each passage would be as smooth and fine as their first together. He had deceived her.

  Eliza seemed unaware of his distress as she continued to voice her own anxieties.

  “And now we are headed for the desolate shores of Africa, where I have no doubt we will be shipwrecked. If this is to be the life of a shipmaster’s wife, Captain Morgan, I want no part of it.”

  19

  When the sun finally came out four days later, Morgan was able to shoot the solar meridian and make his calculations. He had carefully synchronized his watch to the ship’s chronometer down to the second, a habit he had developed since that first voyage as shipmaster when he had almost wrecked the ship. The sky was clearing, but the seas were still producing rolling ocean swells. Eliza helped him do the calculations in the cabin with the ship swaying back and forth. He hadn’t dared ask her if she still meant what she said.

  He had inquired about how she was feeling after her ordeal of being tossed around the cabin. Was she stiff? Did she have any bruises? She had shook her head.

  “I am fine. I am really a very strong woman, you know. Whatever happens you must know that.”

  They looked at the charts of the mid-Atlantic together, drawing latitude and longitude lines, discussing their likely location. Fr
om the calculations it looked as if the ship was several hundred miles off the African coast to the north of the Cape Verde Islands. Even without much canvas, they’d clocked close to eighteen hundred miles in less than seven days. That was when the lookout at the top of the mainmast called out that there was a ship off the starboard bow.

  Morgan grabbed his spyglass and put it up to his eye. Sure enough he could see a vessel wallowing in the waves less than a mile away. She was extremely low in the water. They hadn’t seen her because the waves were still high. Each time the ship’s bow rose, Morgan looked for a sign of the ship. It was hard to see and keep the spyglass steady, but it looked like a ship in distress. The boat was partly dismasted. He could see the remnants of the stump of the main mast. The decks appeared to be covered with people, madly waving their hands.

  Despite the high waves, Morgan was able to bear down on the doomed vessel on an emergency rescue mission. He could now make out what was happening. Men and women were clinging precariously to the rigging, hanging over the ship’s sides, and crawling on their hands and knees on a slanted deck. Everyone was sliding and slithering as if they were on a pitched roof. He watched in horror as a fierce gust of wind pushed the foundering ship over on her beam ends as waves crashed over the windward rail. It was clear that ocean water was pouring through the hatches. The masts cracked and the yards snapped as a large wave hit the ship broadside, hammering the cabins. They were close enough to hear the cries of desperation, the shrieking and yelling. He could see dark men and women jumping off the ship holding onto pieces of wood. It was only then that he realized none of the passengers had any clothes on. They were naked, men and women alike, and they had heavy chains around their ankles.