by James Nelson
She was dressed in a hooded caraco jacket over a silk dress that flared out at the waist and draped down off the wire hoops of her false hips. Her hands were thrust into either end of a fur muff to defend against the cold winter air. From beneath her hood and cotton mobcap her brown hair tumbled down around her ruddy face, her girlish smattering of freckles, her playful smile. Biddlecomb could see the toes of her old and well-worn riding boots peeking out under the long skirts. Despite himself and his assumed air of detachment, he smiled as well.
‘I am pleased that I can be of some comfort to you, Miss Stanton,’ Biddlecomb said, smiling broader still at their sham of formality. He wanted to rush across the deck and grab her in his arms and kiss her, a long, lingering kiss, and would have done so had they been alone. ‘With any luck at all we’ll shake them off through Hell Gate or around Long Island,’ he said instead.
‘Hell Gate, is it?’ said William Stanton, Virginia’s father, who stood beside her at the leeward rail. Stanton squinted at the hilly shoreline of Connecticut, ten miles north of them, then at Long Island, ten miles south. The Charlemagne was running nearly dead downwind in a fifteen-knot breeze, running west southwest through Long Island Sound toward the point where that bay narrowed into the East River, with its cluster of islands and the wild dogleg turn through Hell Gate.
‘Tide’s on the ebb now,’ Stanton observed. ‘Water’ll be running like a son of a bitch through Hell Gate by the time we get there.’
It was an observation by an experienced mariner, and Biddlecomb could hear no implied criticism in Stanton’s tone. Stanton, he knew, understood the situation perfectly.
There was every chance that the frigate would not dare follow them through the treacherous passage. Big ships rarely went through that way; indeed, it was rare for any ship, big or small, to risk itself among the rocks, islands, and back eddies of that twisted passage, particularly at the height of the ebb when the water crashed through the Gate like a flash flood.
And even if the frigate did dare to follow them, and assuming they both made it, on the other side were any number of rivers and bays around New York in which they could hide or at least keep ahead of their enemy until nightfall. Once it was dark, the Charlemagne could disappear. Virginia’s confidence was not misplaced, or so Biddlecomb assured himself, and her obvious admiration of his boldness bolstered in turn his own confidence.
‘Did I ever tell you, Isaac, of the time I took the old Providence through Hell Gate, back in the winter of ’64 … or ’65, one of those?’ Stanton asked.
‘No, sir, I don’t believe you did,’ Biddlecomb lied, running his eyes over the Charlemagne’s rig and her waist as Stanton launched into the story, as well-worn as Virginia’s boots. From long experience Biddlecomb nodded and smiled at the appropriate spots, but his thoughts were on the condition of the vessel under his command. To any observer a mile or so away, or to anyone unfamiliar with the way of ships, she was a lovely sight, well proportioned, her sails set and drawing, her rig taut and blacked down.
But a closer look would reveal the crazing in that facade. Her mainmast was fished five feet above the deck; stout lengths of timber were lashed around the circumference of the mast to take the strain where the actual wood had been nearly shot through. The red paint on the inboard side of the bulwarks and the linseed oil on the outboard side were variegated shades of dark and light where sections of the brig’s side had been knocked flat and then repaired and freshly finished. The main topgallant sail and the fore topsail were brand-new and stood out from their worn and much patched brethren aloft. The Charlemagne was a tired vessel.
Over a month before she had fought a running battle with the two-decker Somerset, racing across Boston Harbor, and was nearly beaten to death before Biddlecomb ran her aground at the feet of the American army encamped in the hills surrounding the city and laying siege to the ministerial army there. Along with the Charlemagne, Biddlecomb had brought in a prize, the Mayor of Plymouth, loaded to the deckhead with gunpowder, that precious compound of which the American forces were in desperate need.
The praise, bordering on adoration, that had followed that feat had been overwhelming. For the next month, after working the battered Charlemagne up the Charles River to Cambridge, Biddlecomb had seen to the Charlemagne’s repairs during the day and allowed himself to be toasted in all circles by night. In a year of novel situations he found himself in the most novel, and most pleasant, of all. He was a hero.
They did the best that they could, setting the Charlemagne to rights, but Cambridge was not a maritime center and the facilities for repairing a vessel were less than adequate. So rather than hope for a new mainmast they split their damaged spars into long fishes and bound them with rope to the mast and patched their sails in those instances where there was material enough left to patch.
And in those cases where the canvas could not be patched, or the lines long spliced or the spars fished, they tried their best to wrest stores from the few chandlers in the area, but acquiring new supplies, it turned out, was even more difficult then repairing old.
The General Court of Massachusetts had passed an act to issue letters of marque to ship owners with a thought to go privateering, and these private men-of-war were gobbling up stores at a prodigious rate. So confident were the privateersmen in the profitability of their ventures, and so eager were they to get to sea, that they were quite willing to give the chandlers three times the asking price for needed materials, a largess that the beleaguered Continental Army could never hope to match. And so the poor Charlemagne, commissioned by General Washington, whose authority over naval matters was at best questionable, had to settle for the scraps left by the privateers.
He had written to William Stanton in Bristol, informing him of his whereabouts and the events that had led him there. He had written to Virginia as well, and if he had not, at the last instant, been able to pour out his affections with as much abandon as he had intended, he nonetheless made it clear that he was not writing with any sense of mere platonic affection.
A dozen times at least he had informed Ezra Rumstick, his longtime friend and the Charlemagne’s first lieutenant, that he would be leaving for Bristol forthwith. And every time something – an unplanned meeting with General Washington, crucial negotiations with a chandler, some aspect of the Charlemagne’s repair that required his attention – had come up and stopped him. So he planned and waited and fretted about Virginia’s feelings for him.
Midway through their third week in Cambridge, Biddlecomb resigned himself to the idea that he would not be going to Bristol anytime soon, and that there would be no new mainmast. The next morning he began fishing the old.
He was supervising the job personally, and by midafternoon it was all but done. ‘Vast heaving!’ he called out to the men on the capstan. The line running from the mainmast to the capstan was hauled nearly to the breaking point. He put his hands on it and tried to flex it back and forth, but it was unyielding. Along its length drops of tar were oozing from the strands.
‘That’s well,’ Biddlecomb said. He glanced over at the wooden wharf to which the Charlemagne was tied. William Stanton was standing there, and beside him Virginia, familiar faces from another place. He stared for a minute, confused, trying to place those faces with this location. Then Stanton leapt onto the gangplank and ran aboard, arms outstretched, and embraced him, unaware of or unconcerned about the tar with which he was liberally splattered.
Biddlecomb squeezed the old man in turn and looked over Stanton’s shoulder at Virginia, still standing on the dock. She smiled, her wide smile, in parts amused and mocking and affectionate, and gave him a tiny wave.
He was about to call out to her, his mouth was open, when Stanton released him, grabbed him by the shoulder and half spun him around, shouting, ‘Rumstick!’ as the hulking first officer stepped up, grinning, hand outstretched. There followed half an hour of introductions, congratulations, and technical discussions, during which Virginia stood off to the side,
smiling to mask her boredom, and Biddlecomb was able to get no more than a ‘Good to see you so fit, Captain Biddlecomb’ from her by way of conversation.
At last Biddlecomb was able to pull Stanton from the boisterous camaraderie and invite him and his daughter below. ‘There was some fine Madeira, wonderful stuff, in the great cabin of the Mayor of Plymouth that I reckoned to be fair spoils of war,’ he said. ‘Won’t you join me in a glass? Virginia?’
‘Delighted! Lead on, sir,’ Stanton said, and the three of them, Stanton, Virginia, and Biddlecomb, made their way down the narrow after companionway. They crossed the gunroom and stepped into Biddlecomb’s quarters, which carried the traditional, if perhaps, for that cramped space, pretentious title of ‘great cabin.’
‘Oh, damn me,’ Stanton said. ‘I’ve a message for Rumstick. Please excuse me for a minute.’ And with that he was out the door.
And they were alone. ‘Well, Virginia,’ Biddlecomb began. His eyes were fixed on her face. Her smile was fading, not gone, but changed into something else: a frustrated desire, perhaps, to say something, a desire for him to say something. He stopped and looked at that smile, but he could think of nothing to say.
And then the desire rushed over him, an aching need, a physical thing, and before he even knew that he was going to speak, he said, ‘I love you, Virginia.’
‘I love you too,’ Virginia said, and suddenly he was across the cabin and wrapping his arms around her small frame and she was wrapping her arms around his shoulders and they were kissing, long and desperate. He could feel the curve of her waist even through the riding cloak and the silk dress and bodice and shift, could feel her breasts pressed against his chest.
He wanted to hold her completely, to feel every part of her pressed against every part of him. He wanted to say so much to her, he wanted to laugh with joy, but he did not. He could not stop kissing her, he could not stop the venting of years of suppressed passion.
From somewhere beyond the cabin he heard the scuttle door open and heard boots on the ladder, but he could not pull away from her. He heard boots coming across the gunroom, and at last he stepped back, his hands still on her waist, seeing nothing but her eyes. Then he dropped his hands to his side and turned just as Stanton stepped back into the great cabin.
‘You know, Isaac, about those wedges under the woolding there on your fish …’ Stanton began, and his eyes moved between Biddlecomb and his daughter, then back to Biddlecomb. The old man could be obtuse at times, but he was not so obtuse that he could not see what was happening there. The great cabin was silent, and Biddlecomb could hear Rumstick topside calling orders to the men on the capstan.
‘Yes, sir, the wedges?’ Biddlecomb asked at length, and with obvious relief Stanton leapt into the subject of repairing damaged spars.
‘In any event,’ Stanton said, after giving his advice on fishing spars, ‘I received a letter from Hopkins … you know Stephen Hopkins? Of the Providence Hopkinses? Delegate, former governor?’
‘I know of him,’ Biddlecomb said. Indeed it would be hard to live in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and not know of Stephen Hopkins.
‘Well, Stephen wrote and asked if I’d like to serve his committee, assistant secretary of the Naval Committee, or some such nonsense.’
‘Naval Committee? What does the Naval Committee do? I wasn’t aware that there was even a navy.’
‘It just happened, officially,’ Stanton said. ‘They just authorized the purchase of a few ships and formed this committee. So now there is a navy of sorts, a bunch of merchantmen they’re beefing up and turning into men-of-war.’
Stanton’s tone left little doubt as to his position regarding that plan. ‘Nonsense, of course, as you well know. If you want a man-of-war, you have to build a man-of-war, like Charlemagne here. No merchant brig could have lived through the pounding she’s taken. But I reckon there’s neither time nor money to build new—’
‘So Hopkins asked you …?’ Biddlecomb cut Stanton off. If he was allowed to get full under way with this line of thought, Biddlecomb knew from long use, there would be no stopping him.
‘Yes. He said they need people working for them that know ships, understand what’s required. I reckon my involvement in the Rhode Island navy gave him the idea I know something of naval affairs.’
‘You know as much as anyone in the Colonies, I should think.’
‘Well, I was honored, to say the least, and I accepted right off. I had to take Rogers, of course, I’d be lost without him, and I couldn’t leave Virginia alone, so we’re moving the whole household to Philadelphia.’
Biddlecomb glanced at Virginia. She was excited about the trip, he could tell as much, excited to live in the biggest city in the Colonies.
‘It was my thinking, you know,’ Stanton continued, ‘that you and Charlemagne would be best off going to Philadelphia. That’s where it’s happening, in the naval line.’
‘You see a place for Charlemagne in this navy they’re forming?’
‘I do. I reckoned when Charlemagne was ready, why, we’d all take passage to Philadelphia. Kill two birds, you know. I’d a mind … I mean I had thought that, if it is agreeable to you, perhaps Charlemagne might just be leased to the Naval Committee. You’re to retain command, of course.’
Biddlecomb smiled and nodded his head. Stanton was being as political as he could; despite the familial aspects of their relationship, Stanton was in fact the outright owner of the Charlemagne and could do whatsoever he pleased with her.
‘A fine plan. I would be honored, of course, to serve as an officer in the navy of the United Colonies, and frankly I’ll be quite pleased to see a real navy come together, converted merchantmen or not.’
It was another week before they were blessed with the right conditions for slipping past the blockading squadron: quarter moon with a promise of morning fog, light airs from the northwest, and an ebb tide just past midnight. A pilot was summoned, a man whose local knowledge encompassed every shoal, rock and shifting bank of sand, and in the darkness the Charlemagne’s dock lines were singled up and topsails loosened off.
‘Mr Rumstick,’ Biddlecomb called forward. He spoke in a loud whisper; there were enough people in Cambridge of dubious loyalty, and enough time for such people to get word to the Royal Navy, that he did not care to advertise their departure. He was about to follow the hail with orders to set the fore topsail when a coach and four came rumbling and creaking down the quay. The driver reined the horses to a noisy stop as the door was flung open.
‘Ahoy, there! Ahoy, is this the Charlemagne?’ a voice called from the dark interior of the carriage. Biddlecomb wondered if there was anyone in Cambridge who was not startled awake by the noise.
‘Yes,’ he called back hesitantly.
‘Are you getting under way?’ the man in the carriage demanded next.
It was irritating in the extreme that any degree of secrecy was now lost, and Biddlecomb was not about to begin shouting out his intentions like a town crier. ‘Look, here—’ he began, then the man in the carriage cut him off.
‘Of course you’re getting under way, singled up and topsails loosened off, I must be quite blind.’ The stranger stepped out of the carriage struggling with a large bag which he carried over to the Charlemagne. The driver of the coach snapped his whip and the vehicle rumbled off into the dark. The stranger dropped his bag on the quay and glared at the sailors staring back at him.
‘You there, take this on board,’ he snapped in a tone that demanded obedience, and much to Biddlecomb’s further annoyance a sailor leapt ashore and snatched up the man’s bag and carried it on board, as behind him the bag’s owner clambered over the bulwark.
Biddlecomb turned to William Stanton, who was standing on the starboard side of the quarterdeck, hoping tht he might have some explanation. ‘I think that may be …’ Stanton began, but before he finished the stranger was up the quarterdeck ladder and making his way aft. He was not a tall man, and the lines of his conservative blac
k coat showed him to be plump. His long hair – he wore no wig – was tied back in a queue, and a civilian-style cocked hat was on his head.
‘Are you Biddlecomb?’ he asked.
‘Captain Biddlecomb. And as such I will not—’
‘Yes, I am fully aware of who you are. Good show with the powder, by the way. I’m John Adams, and I’m sure there’s no need to explain who I am. I shall be taking passage to Philadelphia with you. And I will say simply that the British would willingly lose half their navy to capture me, so please do not take any unnecessary risks. You there’ – he pointed with his walking stick to Midshipman Weatherspoon – ‘take my bag and show me to my cabin.’ With that he turned and went forward, then disappeared down the scuttle.
‘Oh, yes, Isaac,’ Stanton said, ‘I’m afraid there was one other arrangement that I failed to mention.’
And now, four days later, Biddlecomb stood on the quarterdeck watching either shore of Long Island Sound slip past and enjoyed the relative calm of being chased by a frigate.
From the moment the Charlemagne had successfully slipped out of Boston Harbor, passing at least one British man-of-war so close that they could hear the ship’s bell ringing out in the fog, he had endured Adams’s presence in the gunroom and his loitering about on the windward side of the quarterdeck, quite contrary to maritime etiquette. He had endured Adams’s suggestions and his criticisms and his condemnation of all but a handful of his fellow congressmen.
Fifty yards off the larboard beam a seal rolled its sleek body out of the water. ‘Oh, Virginia, look at this,’ Biddlecomb said as the door to the after scuttle burst open and with it came Adams’s grating voice, and Biddlecomb knew that his moment of peace was at an end.
‘Honest to God, Rumstone,’ Adams was saying to the first lieutenant, Ezra Rumstick, who was, as he had at every opportunity, tagging behind Adams like a big dog, ‘if we keep referring to ourselves as “United Colonies,” we shall never rid ourselves of the notion that we are but colonies and not free and independent states, as we should be. It’s bad enough that I can’t get those blockheads in Congress to refer to us as the United States, I should hope that at least men such as yourself, one of the Sons of Liberty, hotheads though they are, could be depended upon to say “United States.”’