Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale

by Robin Lloyd

  “I warrant that be a slave ship, Captain,” Mr. Nyles said as he looked through the spyglass. “Yup, that’s a guinea ship, Cap’n. No doubt about it. That’s the slave cargo we’re looking at.”

  Morgan didn’t reply. He was too horror stricken by the sight of men and women, their wrists and ankles still manacled together jumping into the water to almost certain death. He looked around for any signs of telltale fins. In these warm waters, there would be a danger for sharks. There was not much time left. In fact, they were too late to offer much assistance. The damaged ship began a slow spin downward as if it were caught in a whirlpool. The stern sank first, disappearing under the waves as the bow pointed upward. Morgan looked at the rapidly sinking bow, and then, amazed at what he saw, he raised the spyglass, again pressing it closer to his eye. It was unmistakable. There, underneath the bowsprit, was the ship’s figurehead, a carving of a sea serpent. It was just like the Charon’s figurehead.

  Parts of the sinking vessel now shot upward, broken spars, hatch covers, pieces of doors, even brown bodies burst to the surface. There were shrieks for help, all in a strange tongue Morgan couldn’t understand. He could see heads tossed about in the waves, hands clutching upward momentarily, then disappearing. The ship was now swallowed up by the ocean. All that was left was floating debris, and about four dozen survivors who were clinging to pieces of the deck or hatch covers as they rose and fell amidst giant ocean swells.

  Morgan gave the order to round the ship up into the high waves and wind and lower the quarter boats. The screaming had been replaced with an eerie quiet, interrupted only by faint pleas for help. He and Icelander went out with four other sailors in one of the boats and began rowing through the debris, pulling aboard the survivors who were clutching pieces of the yards and the spars. Their gaunt, anguished faces were filled with fear as they were hauled aboard. Along with the other quarter boat, they were able to save about thirty people before they gave up the search as futile and rowed back to the ship. It was one of the ship’s younger sailors who spotted a board with some writing on it and snared it as they went by. It appeared to be the ship’s name, Serpente Preta. Morgan wondered if the Charon’s name had been changed or maybe this was another ship owned by Blackwood. Once aboard the packet, he instructed Mr. Nyles to mark the latitude and longitude of this place.

  “That will be the only marker these poor souls will ever have.”

  With the weather now improving, the Philadelphia raised half of its sails to head north toward the Canary Islands and then England. The ship’s crew continued to repair the rigging so the going was slow. Morgan quickly assessed the situation. He had Whipple examine the survivors, who were sprawled out on the deck in the center of the ship. Fortunately there was no sign of disease like smallpox. Many of them had been branded like sheep with a scalding-hot iron. A large O was burned into the men’s skin, and the same brand was imprinted on the women’s breasts. A few of them had welts and scars on their backs. They’d been shackled in pairs, and some of them were still wearing leg irons and handcuffs.

  Morgan ordered Whipple and Icelander to try to remove these shackles. He told Scuttles and Lowery to make sure that these people were clothed and fed. The still-weary cabin passengers, who had not yet recovered from the trauma of the storm, stood on the quarterdeck looking down in amazement at this surreal sight of survival at sea. Without asking anyone, Eliza helped Scuttles and Lowery bring towels and clothes to the Africans. Morgan could see she was wiping away tears as she moved from one survivor to the next.

  He was wondering what he should do with these unexpected passengers when Lowery approached him, his face tense and serious.

  “I been talking to some of the survivors, Captain.”

  “Some of them speak English?”

  “No, sir, Captain. Seems as though I can speak their language. It ain’t exactly the same as what my mother taught me, but it’s similar enough. She was Igbo, and these people must be from the same area. They say they are Ndi Igbo from west of the big river.”

  Lowery’s face twisted with anger as he explained what they told him. “They were captured, their villages burned, and sold off by a rival chief to a slave trader called Cha-Cha. Then they marched ten days to the coast with yokes around their necks, gagged, put in canoes, and taken to a place called Whydah, where they were kept in a barracoon with hundreds of other Africans and then loaded onto that ship.”

  “How many were on that ship?” Morgan asked.

  “I’m not sure, Captain. They told me ‘O hiri nne.’ In their language, that means ‘many.’ I am guessing maybe as many as three hundred. Could be more.”

  Morgan shook his head as he pondered this figure of lives lost.

  “What happened on board, Lowery? They are without crew or captain. Do they know who the slavers were?”

  “They ain’t saying much, Captain, but I think they rebelled and took over the ship. Maybe when the storm rose up and the sailors were busy tending to the sails. Maybe that’s when they escaped and attacked. I’m just speculating. When I asked them if there was fighting on board ship, they didn’t say anything, but some of them have knife cuts and bruises. They say the captain and crew punched holes in the ship’s hull before they fled in the quarter boats.”

  “Those slavers left them to drown on board a sinking ship?”

  “I believe so, Captain. They ask if we are going to take them home. They keep saying, ‘Ala Ndi Igbo.’ What do I tell them, Captain? They plenty scared. They think all white people want to eat black people and make powder from their bones.”

  “For Lord’s sake, Lowery, I hope you told them we aren’t cannibals. Did you tell them they are safe now?”

  “Yes, sir, Captain.”

  Morgan looked down at these abused and frightened people he’d saved. They were squatting on deck looking around them with fear and amazement. The two Irish priests were blessing each of them as they walked through the small huddled group of shivering survivors, who were clutching towels they’d been given. Eliza and Whipple were ladling out water into tin cups from a wooden cask as they gulped down the water. He was going to have to bring them to London. There was no other choice. His ship was in need of repairs and he had passengers to deliver and a schedule to keep. He estimated they would be arriving in London at least a week to ten days later than their schedule. The Africans were now shouting and singing and Morgan stopped walking to listen.

  “Onye na nke ya!”

  “O di ndu onwu ka mma!”

  “Anyi na-acho ila ala anyi, ala ndi Igbo!”

  “They are calling for their freedom, Captain,” Lowery said. “They say to be enslaved is to be part of the living dead and they want you to take them back to their homeland.”

  Morgan asked Lowery to walk with him so he could talk to some of them. Thirty pairs of intense dark eyes were now trained on him and Lowery as they stepped into the steerage area. He could feel their attentive stare and sense their fears and desperation. He felt uncomfortable as he looked at the huddled naked bodies with only towels covering their waists, the recently scarred and raised flesh from the branding all too visible. For the first time in his life, he felt in a most profound way the unspeakable horror of slavery with all its indignity and cruelty.

  As he walked amidst the thirty survivors, he looked down at the bent back and sharply ridged backbone of one crouched man who sat at his feet. He was a young fellow, probably no older than seventeen, tall and slim, long necked with scuffed, bony knees. Morgan took a closer look. The young man was fondling something in one hand, a talisman, perhaps. He had opened what looked like a small round sundial compass made of bronze about three inches in diameter.

  “Mr. Lowery, ask that man if I can have a look at what he has in his hand,” Morgan said. The African, his face suddenly mistrustful, closed his fist over the compass, shaking his head. Lowery persisted, coaxing the man in his language to let the captain see this small treasure. He promised he would give it back so the young man relented
and handed it over reluctantly. Morgan’s eyebrows rose as he examined the brass container. He flipped the lid open and focused on the engraved lettering on the inside cover.

  “Hold on. What is this?”

  He read it aloud with a clear note of anxiety in his voice.

  “William Blackwood, Shipmaster, Charon.”

  “Mr. Lowery, ask this man how this container came into his possession.”

  The man’s eyes were now wide with fright. He began to speak in the singsong tonalities of the Igbo language. Lowery translated.

  “Captain, he said he found it in the room on the big ship, the prison ship, he calls it, in a room with the big sleeping bed. He said he found it after all the white men fled the ship. I think he means the captain’s cabin, sir. He thinks it will give him power like the white man who owned it.”

  Morgan was silent as he turned to look southward toward the horizon. It was as if he somehow expected to see the longboats that had carried Blackwood from the sinking slave ship. He took in a deep breath and pulled out one of his cigars. He thought of Hiram and he became remorseful. Then his thoughts turned to Abraham and he felt a rising tide of anger sweep over him. Ever so softly he murmured to himself, “I will find you, Abraham. I will find you. At the very least, I will find out what that man did to you.”

  One day later, it was Ochoa who spotted a sail on the horizon.

  “Where?” asked Morgan anxiously as he held the spyglass up to his eyes.

  “A estribor, Capitán. Todavía lejos.”

  The first mate soon spotted the tiny white sail to starboard. It was nothing more than a speck on the horizon.

  “On the starboard beam, sir. She’s got her hull down, Cap’n.”

  “How’s she headed?” Morgan asked.

  “The same course as us, northeast.”

  “How far away?”

  “Maybe ten miles, but she’s moving up quickly.”

  What concerned Morgan the most in these waters was that the pursuing ship could be a British Royal Navy gunship. The British had been increasing their patrols off the West African coast in search of slaving ships ever since the Emancipation Act was approved by royal decree. He had heard of several cases where English warships had seized American merchant ships and their legitimate cargoes off the African coast. The British Navy claimed “right of search” and “right of seizure” even though the Americans didn’t recognize these rights. He watched through his spyglass as the distant ship tacked once to get to the weather side of the packet and then to resume her line of pursuit. She was still miles away, but a sailor’s instinct told Morgan this ship was coming up too fast to be another merchant ship.

  “Mr. Nyles, I trust the necessary repairs have been made.”

  “Yes sir, Cap’n. What do you propose, Cap’n?” asked the first mate anxiously.

  “We’ll wait and see if he can outsail us. Make ready the topgallant staysails as well as the jigger topmast staysail and the jigger topgallant staysail.”

  Sail after sail was raised as Morgan tried to boost his ship’s speed by as much as a knot. He was taking a risk as the rigging had been severely strained by the storm. He could tell that despite the extra sails, the pursuing ship was gaining ground. He climbed up into the rigging with the spyglass and looked at the triangular sails that were headed his way. An unusual ship, he thought to himself, with the elegant look of a French corvette. She had three masts and lateen-style sails that rose to the highest point, and she appeared to be moving along to windward as fast or faster than a Baltimore clipper. He turned to Mr. Nyles.

  “Whoever that is, he’ll be on top of us soon enough, and I warrant it’s not a merchant ship.”

  The breeze was still relatively mild and Morgan called for more sail. He looked through his spyglass and gulped as he spotted the British colors flying off the mizzen sail.

  “That’s a British sloop of war, Mr. Nyles.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nyles replied. “Lately the British navy ships seem to have a particular fondness for anything flying the stars and stripes, no matter what the cargo.”

  Morgan looked again through the spyglass, admiring the ship’s sleek hull steadily carving her way to windward.

  “What kind of sloop of war is that, Mr. Nyles? I don’t recognize it.”

  “I reckon that’s one of the Royal Navy’s experimental fore and aft rigs. They call it a ballyhoo. They were named after the garfish in the West Indies, hard to spot and hard to catch. Well named I would say.”

  Morgan had never heard of these ships.

  The three-masted sloop of war was coming up fast, heeled over sharply, the lee rail buried and the spray flying over the windward rail. He could now see that she was reasonably well armed. There was one long gun on a pivot in the ship’s bow, from the looks of it a long-barreled nine pounder. He could see the shiny epaulettes on either shoulder of the captain’s blue coat glittering in the morning sun. On the sides and the bow of the ship he saw the dull glare of the black cast-iron carronades mounted on slides fixed to the deck. From the looks of them, he thought there could be as many as six twelve pounders. Mr. Nyles had made the same observation. Suddenly a puff of white smoke emerged from the port bow off the British warship, followed quickly by a boom of cannon and then a splash of water one hundred yards in front of them.

  “Looks like we have trouble here, Mr. Nyles.”

  “Yes, sir. They’re firing that bow chaser. What are you aimin’ to do, Captain? As you can see, as soon as they come broadsides, they got the smashers ready to fire at close range.”

  The sloop of war soon rounded up into the wind with her sails flapping in the light, early morning breeze like a swan’s wings. Her short, smooth-bore carronades amidships were now clearly visible and pointed directly at them, the gunners ready to fire. They were twelve pounders. He knew a broadside swipe from these powerful short-range guns would reduce the starboard side of the Philadelphia into a rainstorm of deadly wooden splinters.

  “Back the yards, Mr. Nyles!”

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n.”

  The English captain held a trumpet and began speaking in a stiff and official voice.

  “I am Captain James Stryker of His Majesty’s sloop of war the Resolve with the West African Squadron. Stand by for boarding.”

  Morgan grabbed the trumpet from his first mate and stepped to the rail.

  “I am Captain Elisha Morgan, and this is the American packet ship, the Philadelphia of the Black X Line, and we are bound for London. What is your business, Captain?”

  “I am sorry to inform you that we must search your ship,” Captain Stryker replied formally.

  “Might I ask why, Captain?”

  “Yes, you are a suspected American slaver.”

  Morgan had anticipated this accusation, just because the Africans were clearly visible on the Philadelphia’s deck, but it still infuriated him.

  “Mr. Nyles. Lower the ladder. We have no choice but to allow the lion and his bloodhounds on board.”

  Soon enough, the six-oared boat from the sloop of war pulled alongside the Philadelphia. The sailors and some of the passengers were leaning over the rails to see what was happening. Morgan watched the armed English sailors wearing man-of-war caps and the captain with his blue coat and silver buttons begin climbing the ladder. He knew this was unusual for a Royal Navy captain to leave his ship. Normally the captain would delegate the boarding of another ship to the first lieutenant. Morgan wondered why he was breaking with the Royal Navy’s customary procedures, but that question was left dangling as the faces of the English sailors emerged over the bulwarks.

  On the quarterdeck, the two ship captains stood, each taking careful measure of the other. Stryker was a slightly older man than Morgan, but he was a handsome man with square, broad shoulders, a well-defined, chiseled face framed by curling whiskers, and black hair cut short to reveal a smooth, wide forehead. Morgan thought he was the picture of an English ship commander with his stance and poise both disciplined and haugh
ty. He was no doubt a highly ambitious naval commander eager to carry out his orders to seize slave ships with biblical zeal. Stryker’s eyes, small and restless, scanned the decks as he began to address Morgan.

  “Good day to you, Captain. By orders of the Crown, we will be searching your ship. I would ask you to let me see your ship’s papers.”

  He gave Morgan a cold stare.

  Morgan was incensed, but he kept quiet. He had learned to dislike this show of force by the British Royal Navy ever since he was a boy, but he was well aware he had few options.

  “I regret delaying you on your long voyage, Captain, but we have orders to pursue and seize any slaving ships, and as you well know the foul ships that carry on this illegal trade all too frequently fly the stars and stripes of your country from their masts.”

  As if to emphasize the point, Stryker looked up scornfully at the American flag flying off the spanker. Morgan was indignant. The cigar moved from one side of his mouth to the other as he fought to control his anger. He explained the situation as best he could, describing the sinking of the ship and their efforts to save the few survivors. He patiently showed the cocky British captain the ship’s papers along with the manifest and invited the captain to interview each and every one of the passengers separately to see if his story matched theirs. After reviewing the ship’s papers, searching the ship, and interviewing the passengers, Stryker examined the Africans on deck, taking note of the scars from the branding, and at last seemed satisfied. He walked up to the fife rail where Morgan was standing with Eliza by his side. Stryker tipped his hat to Eliza.

  “By all rights, I should seize your ship, Captain, but it appears you are telling the truth. I will be taking these liberated Africans to Freetown in Sierra Leone.”

  Stryker’s eyes bore into Morgan’s face with an interrogator’s intensity.

  “What was the name of the slaver, Captain? Did you see the name?”

  “It was a Portuguese name,” replied Morgan.

  “Serpente Preta?” Stryker inquired.