Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale

by Robin Lloyd

  With the Black X packet now sailing hard to the wind back across the English Channel, Morgan heard the steamship passing them off to port a half mile away, still holding her course. He told Lowery to douse the lights below decks, and told the bow lookout to shutter the lantern on the bowsprit. He could just make out the faint sparks of coal embers rising up from the ship’s tall funnel. He could hear the British sailors’ agitated voices shouting through the stormy night, causing him to travel back in time. Suddenly he was a terror-stricken boy again, immobilized, lying flat on the wet floorboards of the rowboat, waiting for the lead bullets to tear through his skin. The hushed voice of the first mate, asking him for the course, snapped him back to the present.

  “North-northwest,” he whispered back. “Full sail to Falmouth.”

  He was expecting the Royal Navy ship to change course, but the paddle wheels kept moving in the same direction. Amazingly, they hadn’t spotted them. For the longest time, he stood at the stern of the ship listening to the churn of the paddles fading away into the dark gloom of the night. Finally, there was silence. Morgan wondered if Stryker was confused at his exact position. He knew well enough if the Royal Navy ship did not change her course, she would run ashore on the deadly rocks off Ouessant and Molène.

  28

  At first light, Morgan scanned the horizon off to the east for any sign of smoke, but there was nothing, only a few coastal schooners working their way up and down the English Channel. The storm had cleared and the sky was clear. A few hours later, the Southampton finally coasted into Falmouth harbor. The passengers were celebrating with a chorus of hip-hip-hoorays. The sailors threw their hats in the air. The stewards banged pots and pans and waved their white serving jackets over their heads. It was not just a fast passage, but a transatlantic record for a sailing ship. Captain Morgan had crossed the Atlantic, going from New York to England, in thirteen days, twelve hours. Despite all the problems in the voyage, the Southampton could claim to be the fastest of the transatlantic wind packets, at least for the moment.

  But Morgan had little time to celebrate. He was worried the Navy ship would soon surface on the horizon. He told his first mate, Mr. Moore, to keep his spyglass focused on the English Channel and notify him if he saw any signs of smoke on the horizon. With all the singing and laughter going on in the quarterdeck and the center of the ship, Morgan lost no time in pulling Hiram aside. They both walked over to the wheelhouse, where they found a quiet corner by the stern rail.

  Morgan looked at him expectantly.

  “Time is short, Hiram. That Navy ship will be here before you know it. What do you have to tell me?”

  Hiram fidgeted back and forth, stroking his beard. He shuffled his feet as he seemed to be thinking how to respond. Morgan tapped his finger impatiently on the rail.

  “They are still looking for Abraham.”

  “What?” Morgan gave a start of disbelief. “Who do you mean?”

  “Blackwood. Blackwood and Stryker. When they were searching for me in Jamaica, my mates in the taverns told me their men were also making inquiries about Abraham.”

  Morgan stared at Hiram with a perplexed, incomprehensive look.

  “How is that possible, Hiram? Abraham’s dead. John Taylor told me what happened.”

  Hiram seemed genuinely surprised.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “I thought maybe . . .”

  “No, he’s dead. That’s what Taylor said. My brother was trapped in that cursed ship along with those slaves. There was no way out. He drowned.”

  Hiram pulled at his beard, giving Morgan an uneasy stare.

  “I am sorry. I am sorry, Ely.”

  Hiram coughed into his fist in clear discomfort.

  “Is there something you need to tell me?” Morgan asked.

  “I wanted to . . .”

  Hiram looked at him, and gave a nervous shrug.

  “This is hard for me. Don’t get riled, Ely.” His voice became hushed. “When they captured me at the White Bull that night all those many years ago, I met Blackwood.”

  Morgan’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

  “He wanted to know what you knew about his operation. I told him you didn’t know much of anything, but he said I had to come with him. I wish I hadn’t but I did.”

  “You sailed with Blackwood?” Morgan asked in a state of incomprehension. He looked at his friend and shook his head in dismay.

  “You were on a slaver?”

  “No, no, not exactly. He put me on Stryker’s ship, the H.M.S. Resolve. You see, they were in it together. They still are.”

  Morgan shook his head in amazement.

  “How can that be, Hiram? I don’t understand.”

  “I swear, in the beginning I didn’t know what I was doing. All that blackbird chasing we did on the Resolve was a cover. We all would have been hanged if the admirals had discovered what we were really doing.”

  “Which was . . . ?”

  Hiram could not bring himself to meet Morgan’s stern gaze. Instead, he looked beyond him as he continued his startling confession.

  “Every three months or so we would rendezvous on the African coastline with one specific slave ship. This meeting was as regular as the comings and goings of one of your packets. Stryker seemed to know where to sail the Resolve. We would find the slave ship, somewhere between Lopez and Benguela in a hidden lagoon or up some river. The Bonny River area with all its many hideaways was a common destination.”

  “Was it Blackwood?” asked Morgan.

  “It was. The ship always had a Portuguese name, but it was the same ship with a snake figurehead under the bowsprit.”

  “Was that the Charon we spotted years ago in the West India Docks, only with a changed name? Do you remember, Hiram?”

  “I can’t say for sure. I suspect there were many slave ships that were all made to look the same. They were all topsail schooners built in Baltimore. We would watch as canoe loads of guinea slaves were loaded onto that ship like human cattle, the overseer’s whip cracking through the humid air, that whistling sound always followed by human cries. Blackwood was usually there on the deck, examining the walking cargo like a farmer examining his livestock.”

  Just then Morgan heard shouts coming from the quarterdeck. He looked nervously over his shoulder, shading his eyes with his hands, expecting to see a Royal Navy paddle wheeler steaming their way. Instead, he saw Lowery and Junkett passing out more champagne to the passengers. He shouted out to Mr. Moore.

  “Any sign of that steamship?”

  “No, sir, not as yet.”

  Morgan turned back to find Hiram looking forlornly down at his feet.

  “Go ahead,” Morgan said as he stepped up to stand closer to Hiram at the rail. Hiram squirted a mouthful of tobacco juice over the side.

  “Once we set sail we would chase this ship, or I should say escort it, all the way to the West Indies. When any other Royal Navy cruiser patrolling the Caribbean would come close, we would flag them off, pretending like we were on a chase. In the early years, we would drop off our cargo in Jamaica, secretly at night. But once the English abolished all slavery, our destination was always the same, one of them bays between Cienfuegos and Trinidad on the south coast of Cuba. We would come in at night and stand watch as that slave ship would unload its human cargo. Nothing was said to those of us in the crew, but days later, all of us would get a special compensation in gold coins and Stryker would tell us to stow our blabbers.”

  “How many of these passages did you make?” asked Morgan, stunned that his friend had been part of a slaving operation for so many years. Hiram seemed to be his own worst enemy with the decisions he made and the company he kept.

  “Two to three passages a year, sometimes as many as six hundred crammed into a ship half the size of the Southampton. Word was that most of them would end up on American plantations in the South going through New Orleans. Sometimes to avoid suspicion we would on occasion hand over that slave ship to the Royal Navy authorities in J
amaica with a story about all the slaves drowning and the blackbirders killed. It helped polish Stryker’s record and reputation as a successful slave catcher. Then Blackwood would show up months later with a new ship.”

  Morgan was silent, troubled by what he was hearing. Where was Hiram’s conscience? Where was his moral compass? It seemed like trouble was the man’s constant companion, and bad luck was his lot in life.

  “So why did you desert, Hiram? Was that story about an English blockade all a pack of lies?”

  Hiram seemed almost relieved to answer this question.

  “No, I had heard that rumor, but it was only that, hearsay.”

  “So what was the real reason?”

  “I knew too much. They didn’t trust me I suppose. I’d seen Stryker’s eyes, cold and dark, looking at me. I knew I was in trouble if I didn’t get away. I had seen names and dates, information that made me a potential threat to the operation.”

  “Who else was involved?”

  Hiram squirted another gob of tobacco juice over the side as he looked toward the shoreline, and then finally, awkwardly turned to face Morgan.

  “Stryker sent me down to his cabin one day to fetch the chronometer, and that’s where I spied the shipping papers and the contracts he kept on his desk along with his ledger book. As you know I am not much of a book learner, but I did look them over. I suspected he was cheating us tars. Stryker had a record of all the trips we had made and the number of Africans dropped off. There were lots of signatures, including those of some American plantation owners from Mississippi and Georgia, some Spanish or Portuguese names. I couldn’t make much of them numbers and fancy words except that all of the papers referred to the business as Ophion Trading Partners. I knew that Blackwood was supplying manufactured goods from Britain to barter for the slaves, but what I didn’t know was how big a network it was. There was a list of all the people involved, the Portuguese agents in Cape Verde and Africa, Cuban customs officials, even manufacturers in England, the ship captains and the crew, and the money. The records went all the way back for decades. All the names were there. I opened the ledger with the company’s name on it and it looked like the same ship took weapons, textiles, and brass hardware from Liverpool to West Africa, then slaves to Cuba, and then sugar and tobacco back to England. Here is the surprising part. The ledger showed the financing came from England. This whole devil’s plan is operating under the noses of the Foreign Office and the Admiralty.”

  “Did Stryker find out you read these papers?”

  “He barged in his cabin door, all scary looking and mad. I reckon he must have just remembered he had left all those papers on the desk. Fortunately, I wasn’t reading nothing when he walked in, but he looked me up and down real suspiciously. Sometimes I wonder if he wouldn’t have killed me then and there if it weren’t for a cry for all hands on deck right at that moment. I think he always wondered how much I knew about his partners and this company. He was downright hostile to me after that.”

  “Is that when you decided to jump ship in Portsmouth?” asked Morgan frowning.

  “That’s right, Ely,” he said with a sigh.

  “Why didn’t you tell any of this to me before?”

  “I couldn’t, Ely. I just couldn’t. I was too scared to tell you about the slaving.”

  “That sounds like pickled nonsense to me,” Morgan said tartly, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.

  “I’m sorry. I knew you might not have helped me if you knew about my slaving. That’s why I couldn’t tell you before. I needed your help. If I had told you, you would have refused to take me.”

  Silent and brooding, Morgan began walking around. He was getting a clearer picture. This was not just a small operation. This was a slaving syndicate with international connections. If Hiram had talked, he was a threat to their business. Maybe that was why they were after him too. He suddenly realized he was a target now. Hiram had seen too much, and now he had all the same information.

  Hiram looked at Morgan for a moment, his face revealing some regret. He raised an eyebrow and then began examining the thick calluses on his hands, picking at them nervously before continuing.

  “Before I go, I should tell you something else. Blackwood made a prediction. He told me I would hang and he said you would die in Neptune’s locker. He laughed at me. I asked him why he was laughing and he told me, ‘’Yer friend Morgan don’t even know. One of ’is fine acquaintances in London is the one who ’as ordered ’im dead.’”

  “Acquaintance of mine? What did he mean by that?”

  “That’s all he said, Ely, before that varmint devil handed me over to Stryker, and they shoved me down into the coal furnace of that steamship.”

  Morgan was silent. Some of the anger and indignation he felt began to surface as he slapped the packet’s stern rail.

  “I know you didn’t have any choice in the beginning, Hiram, but why did you continue slaving?”

  “I don’t know why, Ely. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was good money, but I wouldn’t go back to it. Doesn’t that speak in my favor? I am truly on the bench of repentance now and intend to overhaul my life.”

  “Look Hiram, I’m not going to turn you in. You are a wanted man. My ship is going to be boarded as soon as that steamer arrives. I can ill afford to protect you. My advice to you is to hightail it out of here and get yourself on the first boat you can out of England.”

  Hiram’s shoulders seemed to sag and wilt. His face was forlorn and he seemed older.

  “Let us hope I can find out who is behind this Ophion Trading Partners before they find me.”

  “I am sorry, Ely.”

  Squinting his eyes at the sparkling sunlight on the water, Hiram looked toward the harbor and took a deep breath.

  “What will you tell Stryker?” he asked.

  “I will simply tell the truth, or I should say, something close to the truth. You were being rowed away to shore to be handed over to the authorities when you escaped.”

  Hiram smiled. For a brief moment, it felt like they were friends again as they shook hands uneasily. They both knew it was probably for the last time. Morgan reached into his coat pocket and brought out six gold sovereign coins.

  “Take it. You may need it. Good luck.”

  Morgan watched as Hiram climbed over the side and jumped into one of the quarter boats. His eyes followed him as Icelander and two others pulled their oars through the waves, carrying Hiram Smith to shore. He kept on looking until the sunlight shining on the water blinded him and he lost sight of the boat.

  Morgan looked over at the quarterdeck. The celebrations on board were still going on. A noisy squadron of seagulls was hovering and squawking overhead. There were calls for more champagne and a speech from the captain, but Morgan politely declined and went back to his cabin to think about what his next step should be.

  As he tried to distill all the information he’d just heard, Hiram’s conversation with Blackwood kept coming back to him. One of his friends had ordered Blackwood to kill him. This was too shocking, too amazing, to even comprehend. He wondered how much he could believe of Hiram’s story. It made no sense. Surely this was a fabrication. It just didn’t seem feasible that a thug like Blackwood would know any of his London acquaintances.

  He stopped to think of all his friends in the Sketching Club. They were gentle spirits incapable of harming anyone. Thackeray and Dickens were both so witty and socially adept at traveling the London social world. They were all sympathetic to the abolitionist cause and hated the slave trade, or at least that’s what they professed. Of course, over the years he had met dozens of other acquaintances in London, many of whom were high up in the social order, or influential in politics. Some were unsavory shipping contacts. He remembered that repellent stockjobber named Fleming who had tried to charter the Philadelphia as a slave ship. He wondered if there were other acquaintances of his who shared Fleming’s views about the acceptability of slavery.

  Just then he heard a shout
from his first mate.

  “Steamer ho!”

  A plume of black smoke billowing up from a ship signaled trouble. A steamer flying the British colors headed straight for them, her bow covered with armed British sailors. Morgan picked up his spyglass, fearing the worst. He looked for the faces of Stryker and Blackwood on the ship’s deck, but he couldn’t find them. The ship steamed into the harbor at close to her full speed. Morgan could now see the figure of the ship’s captain standing up on the arched paddle wheel, the smoking funnel directly behind him. He expected the steamship to come alongside, but instead the frigate steamed by, hardly noticing them. It wasn’t Stryker’s ship, the Hydra. It was another Royal Navy paddle-wheel frigate built to the same specifications. Once all the passengers were brought to shore, Morgan wasted no time in calling for the Southampton’s anchor to be raised.

  29

  Morgan arrived at Pine Apple Place just as his friend Charles Leslie was coming in from the garden. After a three-day-long passage from Falmouth, he had docked the Southampton at St. Katherine’s that morning, and had decided to consult with Leslie about the events in this last horrendous passage to London. The cheery, beaming face of Leslie greeted him at the front gate. He had a basket of fresh lettuce and tomatoes from his garden under his arm. The artist was busy painting a scene from Much Ado About Nothing, one of several Shakespearean-inspired paintings he had been commissioned to work on that year. Leslie showed him the almost completed portrait of the Morgan family and promised him that it would be done when he returned in the fall. Leslie was eager to hear the captain’s news about his record-breaking passage. He said they would throw him a party to celebrate his accomplishment. But it was Leslie’s news that filled most of their conversation. Had Morgan heard about the shipwreck of a Royal Navy steam paddle-wheel frigate off the coast of France?