by Robin Lloyd
“You should keep the journal, Josiah. I will leave it up to you whether or not you share this with our mother, but I’m guessing you’ll decide to keep it private for now. No one wants father to start raging again. Until we find out more about what happened to Abraham all those years ago, maybe it is best to stay silent.”
PART IX
I have learned early to understand that wherever there is an Englishman in the question, it behooves an American to be reserved, punctilious, and sometimes stubborn.
—James Fenimore Cooper, Gleanings in Europe
22
1843
Morgan pulled himself out of his cabin berth, walked over to a small looking glass hanging from the bulkhead, and stared at his face. In the glass he saw a still-youthful man, although he was thirty-seven years old. Not in bad shape, after more than twenty years on the North Atlantic. No gray hairs on his head, a brown, weathered, clean-shaven face framed by well-trimmed whiskers, a few furrows above his nose, but a mostly smooth forehead. As he soaped and lathered his face with the hog-bristle brush to begin shaving, he could hear the creaking of the horse carts carrying hundreds of workers into St. Katherine’s Docks. A chorus of stern dockmasters began shouting out orders for more men. The docks would soon be filled with the familiar squeal of rope and tackle as the men began the labor of loading and unloading cargo. It would be another hot August day on the docks.
As he scraped the straight razor across his soapy cheeks, his thoughts turned to Abraham. After all these years, the horrifying words in his brother’s journal still shocked him. There hadn’t been any further clues. The mysterious Englishman who had approached Josiah in Lyme had not resurfaced. Morgan had concluded that the man must have been either misdirected or misinformed. There had been no sign of John Taylor despite his repeated inquiries in the New York boarding houses frequented by sailors. He had almost given up hope. He had spent the last twenty years of his life on the North Atlantic, trying to solve the mystery of his brother’s disappearance. It still sickened him to think that Hiram Smith was probably dead, all because of his quest. Yet he had continued with his mission, uncertain about his destination, drawn ever forward by some unseen, unknown force.
As a boy, he had always told himself he would find Abraham for his mother’s sake, but she had died in March of last year with the snow still on the ground. His father was also gone. He had passed away in 1839 at the age of eighty-three. He thought of his mother’s quiet, melancholy face. He knew that his decision to go to sea had caused her much worry and sadness. He and Josiah had never shared with her what they knew about Abraham. They both felt it would cause her too much anguish. He still wondered if they had done the right thing.
Then Josiah had written that when they discovered her body in the morning they found the old letter from John Taylor clutched firmly in her hand. He remembered how he had cried that day. She had never given up hope. Maybe that stubborn determination was what was still driving him.
He stared at himself steadily in the looking glass, not so much out of vanity as out of self-examination. His features may not have changed that much, but as he looked into his own eyes, he wondered if he was looking at a stranger. As often happened when he was alone, his thoughts turned to Eliza. They had two children now. The eldest, William, was five years old. Ruth was two. With the children to take care of, Eliza was no longer accompanying him across the Atlantic. The turning point for her came with the sudden death of her father in March of 1837. Morgan had tried to console her, but she would often sink into somber moods and worry about her mother.
After the arrival of William a year later she had told him that she was staying ashore in their home on East 22nd Street. The thought of Eliza brought back the painful memory of their parting before this last voyage. The vision of her tears, and their two small children’s mournful eyes, had stayed with him. She was now pregnant with their third child. He had promised he would be back in time even though he wasn’t sure he would be. She had pleaded with him to stay, but he had refused, saying the shipping line needed him. These first voyages of his new ship were too important, he told her. The truth was he often sailed with a heavy heart, feeling guilt for having left and lost in dark thoughts about himself. He wasn’t sure what he wanted anymore. He was a man who was drawn to the sea. But he was also a father and a husband.
Morgan finished washing up and dressed quickly after brushing his hair and smoothing his coat. His thoughts turned to his business life as he sat down in his chair where a pool of sunlight had gathered. His life had certainly changed beyond his wildest imagination. He was a top packet ship captain, well known and well respected in both New York and London. He picked up the copy of the Illustrated London News from earlier that month. The August 12 article had referred to his new ship, which had made its first passage in April, as a “magnificent vessel” and a “superb work of structure and design.” The lavish Saturday luncheon on the ship’s quarterdeck had been well attended by leading English nobility, including the Duke of Sutherland, Lord Blantyre, several members of the corps diplomatique from the continent, as well as the American minister, Edward Everett. The event had been a great success and the newspaper reporter had given his new ship a rave review.
Morgan sat quietly and allowed his mind to wander back in time. So much had changed since the arrival of the ocean steamships in 1838, when the Sirius and the Great Western had steamed into New York harbor. Two years later the steamships of Samuel Cunard, financed by the British government, inaugurated service from Liverpool to Halifax and Boston. A new era had begun. The ocean’s horizons were now filled with the funnels of steamships belching out black, coal-fired smoke. The mails now mostly came by steamship, and the cabin passengers were increasingly lured away from the sailing packet lines by the promise and hope of the quickest way across. Paddle wheelers, particularly the British Cunarders, were often beating the American sailing packets. The steamships could keep up a steady speed and travel in a straight line. They weren’t dependent on the wind.
He thought again how fortunate it had been for him to meet Charles Leslie all those years ago. That friendship had changed his life. This past May after the opening of the annual Royal Academy exhibition, Morgan had been surprised as all his artist friends in the London Sketching Club had voted unanimously to make him an honorary member of their club. It was a heartfelt gesture. He sensed he had won their friendship and their trust, which had touched him. This was the only time in the exclusive London Sketching Club’s forty-year history that, not only had a nonartist been chosen, but an American. He remembered Leslie’s kind words when he made the announcement with all the club members present in his studio.
“Fellow members, we have in our midst a cousin from across the Atlantic who is from another England, a New England.”
“Hear, hear!” they had shouted.
“Although it is not our club’s custom to admit foreigners or nonartists, I believe we should break our rule and admit our own ship captain into this fine family of artists. Are there any objections?”
“Nay. Nay.”
“Then with no objections, I hereby welcome Captain Morgan into the distinguished ranks of the London Sketching Club.”
“Hear, hear! Drinks all around!”
He’d been invited to dinner later that week at Clarkson Stanfield’s house at 49 Mornington Place along with several of the other artists in the Sketching Club. Leslie’s friends from Punch, Tom Taylor and William Thackeray, had come as well, as had the prickly but witty Sydney Smith, who was then railing about money he’d lost by investing it in Pennsylvania bonds. He had appeased Smith by bringing him a barrel of Connecticut-grown apples and assuring him that, unlike Pennsylvania, these New England apples were from a solvent state. The imposing, hawklike Duke of Wellington was there. So was the jolly Lord Nanvers, who had recently been commissioning work from some of the club’s artists.
Charles Dickens, who was a good friend of Stanfield’s, had shown up unexpectedly. Dickens was
in high spirits as his American Notes had won huge acclaim on this side of the Atlantic, and he was just finishing a new Christmas story. His keen blue eyes darted about the room until they landed unexpectedly on Morgan. He remembered how Dickens had started walking toward him, catching him off guard. Here was the man who had just written so critically of Americans, questioning their character, their morals, and their manners in his latest book. Many thin-skinned Americans had taken serious offense at his biting commentary, particularly on the topic of American equality. Here he was coming to introduce himself.
“You must be Leslie’s good friend, the American captain?”
Morgan nodded. “Indeed, I am.” He held out his hand. “Captain Elisha Ely Morgan of the Black X Line at your service.”
Dickens extended his hand with a sardonic smile spreading across his face. “Pleased to meet you. Charles Dickens of the Royal Stinkpot Line.”
Morgan was at first taken aback, but when he looked at Dickens’s grinning face, he realized that the man was being facetious.
“You must excuse me, Captain. I have been wallowing in delightful sarcasm as I am in the midst of writing my American novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. I find it hard to restrain myself sometimes. Steamships are not my favorite vessels. I traveled on the Cunard liner to America and I was never happier to come back by sail.”
“So I understand, Mr. Dickens. I read your lively account in American Notes of your stormy passage on the steamer, the Britannia, with great amusement. I am heartened by the brisk sales of your book as your descriptions of the dangers of traveling by steamship will no doubt mean more business for my shipping line.”
“Indeed,” Dickens exclaimed delightedly, his eyebrows arching upward. “With all the vitriol I have received of late from your countrymen, it is welcome to hear a rare endorsement from an American. My good friend Stanny has told me all about you, naturally only good things. I had expected you to have a mahogany face with a red bandanna on your head and rum-and-water teardrops in your eyes.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Dickens, I hardly ever spit tobacco on the floor.”
The author laughed.
“You seem to have won a place in this small club of theirs, Captain Morgan. Everyone has told me that I must meet you. They all say you are quite the salty storyteller.”
Morgan nodded. “Maybe so, but in that case, Mr. Dickens, you must have considerably more brine in you than I do.”
Dickens laughed again. “I’ll take that as a compliment, Captain.”
“You must come with us on a cruise down the Thames, Mr. Dickens. Leslie has already done this, and he says his friend Thackeray is eager as well. Uwins, the Chalon brothers, and Stanfield have all said they’ll come with me. We will drop you off at Gravesend. Even old Turner may come.”
“Did I hear the name of Turner? What is that madman painting now?”
Slightly startled by this sudden interruption, Morgan and Dickens turned to face the stout-chested Lord Nanvers, who introduced himself to Dickens even as he nodded to Morgan.
“In The Slave Ship you can barely see the vessel. Everything is a blur. Do you know that painting by Turner, Captain? I must say I far prefer the realistic maritime scenes of our host, Clarkson Stanfield. What about you, Mr. Dickens? Do you ever understand what Turner is depicting?”
“I would say that paintings are somewhat like human beings,” replied Dickens with the faintest of smiles. “They’re not always what they seem.”
The sound of oak barrels being rolled up the gangway interrupted Morgan’s reverie. He noticed that the pool of sunlight had shifted from his chair to an old chessboard he kept on a small table. He picked up one of the ivory pieces and began squeezing the smooth surface. The worn ivory board had been one of the many gifts he had received from Joseph Bonaparte, the former King of Spain, who had chartered his ship to cross the Atlantic three times. The chessboard had been used by Bonaparte’s brother, Napoleon Bonaparte, during the fallen emperor’s imprisonment on St. Helena. Morgan prized this possession. He often touched these ivory pieces with a certain awe as he tried to imagine the figures being moved around the chessboard by the man who had once conquered Europe. He put the bishop down and picked up the king, and his mind flashed back to the last trip with old Joseph Bonaparte on the Philadelphia in the fall of 1839. That’s when he had heard about the French slaver Le Rodeur, a story that had troubling similarities with the last snippets of information he had read in Abraham’s journal.
On that September passage, the Philadelphia’s cargo hold had been loaded to capacity with crates and boxes of Bonaparte’s treasured art, works from some of the great European masters like Titian, Murillo, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa. Bonaparte was leaving Point Breeze, his estate on the Delaware River, for good. He had fled to America in 1815 when he made his escape from Europe, and now he was returning. They had favorable westerly winds across the Atlantic and the Philadelphia’s saloon had been filled with memorable discussions about America. De Tocqueville’s De la Démocratie en Amerique had recently been published in English under the title Democracy in America. Morgan pointed out how the book’s optimistic views about the country differed sharply from Frances Trollope’s merciless descriptions of America.
Bonaparte had shrugged off the English criticism and said something in French Morgan couldn’t understand: “Il faut faire le dos rond et laisser la pluie tomber.” Morgan asked Bonaparte’s personal secretary, Monsieur Louis Mailliard, what that meant. “It means, Captain Morgan, that sometimes you have to resign yourself to take criticism. Literally in French, you have to round your back and let the rain fall.”
Morgan had smiled at this image.
“That’s one I should remember, Monsieur Mailliard.”
He recalled that night well. His first mate was tending to the ship. Lowery had just served an entire meal in French, showing off his New Orleans roots. They had potage de tortue, côtelettes de veau, quenelles de brochet avec une sauce de crème et de caviar Américain, and a distinctively American dessert, apple fritters with maple syrup. The moody Bonaparte had retired early after losing several games of backgammon, but Morgan had stayed up with Mailliard to continue their discussion and finish off a decanter of sherry from Spain. They were talking about whether the French would soon abolish slavery. Under Louis Philippe, the French government had recently made the slave trade a crime, but they had not freed their slaves despite a growing clamor to do so in the Chamber of Deputies. That was when Mailliard brought up the horrors of the infamous French slaving ship Le Rodeur. He explained how the dramatic story of that ship’s voyage had been a rallying cry of French abolitionists for years.
“Ecoutez-moi, Capitan Morgan, c’est une histoire triste. Le voyage commençait à Le Havre en 1819. Le Rodeur picked up a full load of 160 Africans on the Calabar River in West Africa and set sail for Guadeloupe. Somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, the slaves in the cargo hold started to go blind. Imaginez l’horreur! Even though the crew was lowering food down to the Africans in slings, the mysterious disease began to quickly spread. The men’s weepy eyes burned and crusted over, swelling shut. The captain and his mate soon became stone blind, as did most of the sailors. The slaves were left below, writhing in misery in a dark world. They were all infected with ophthalmia.”
The similarity with his brother’s journal was uncanny.
“What happened to that ship?” Morgan had asked as he poured himself and Monsieur Mailliard another glass of sherry.
“Le Rodeur arrived in Guadeloupe, but most all of the slaves and their captors were either blind or partially so. Had you never heard this story before, Captain?”
Morgan shook his head, but then added, “I have heard a similar story about a different ship in 1816, but I don’t know what happened to it.”
The Frenchman nodded soberly before speaking again.
“It is stories like Le Rodeur that j’espère, I hope, may one day persuade the French to finally end this horrible practice of human bondage.”
<
br /> Morgan rubbed the ivory figure in his right hand as he looked at the same pool of sunlight that had now shifted to his mahogany desk. He thought again of his brother, and the troubling words in his journal. The story of Le Rodeur had given him a faint hope that Abraham might still be alive. The Charon, a British ship, had been a slave trader. That was clear. His brother had been infected with ophthalmia, but that didn’t mean that he had gone blind like some of the others. He knew that John Taylor had not; nor had Blackwood. Maybe there was hope. He put the ivory figure of the king down and got up out of his chair to look at himself again in the small mirror. He heard the mate’s voice pierce the early morning air, and he knew he would soon be needed on deck. His important visitor would be arriving soon. He straightened his cravat and told himself that today he needed to look his best.
23
Hours later, Morgan stood nervously on the ship’s quarterdeck, scanning the docks. All the preparations had been made. He had been told that his special guest would arrive in her own closed carriage at eleven o’clock. The church bells in the distance had just struck the hour. He looked up above him at the ship’s masts. All the sailors were dressed in their red shirts and were standing erect in the yards. Then he heard the scraping of the heavy metal gates open. He spotted an ornate black and yellow carriage drawn by a handsome pair of grays glide through the gates at St. Katherine’s. Moments later, another carriage, pulled by two high-stepping bays, followed. The horses clip-clopped their way toward his ship. Morgan had never been so nervous. He could just make out a young woman’s face inside the carriage, peering out at the ships. Seated next to her was a man in a high-collared black coat. Within moments, the two carriages had drawn up adjacent to his ship.