by James Nelson
‘Silence, please, gentlemen.’ The commodore held up his hand and the great cabin fell silent. ‘Your objections have been duly noted. Of course only a covey of goddamned, rutting lawyer’s clerks would expect us to maintain on a cold coast like this with so many men down sick. In any event, here’s the last part I want to read to you.
‘“Notwithstanding these particular orders,” et cetera, et cetera, “if bad winds or stormy weather, or any other unforeseen accident or disaster disable you so to do, you are then to follow such courses as your best judgment shall suggest to you as most useful to the American cause and to distress the enemy by all means in your power.”’
Hopkins tossed the orders from the Naval Committee on the settee behind him. ‘All right, listen here. Your orders are simple enough. Just keep company with the flag while we make our way south. Watch for my signals. If you get separated’ – Hopkins pulled nine identical sealed envelopes from a haversack on the table – ‘these here are your orders and the rendezvous. Read ’em whenever you want, I don’t go in for that “open them at this or that goddamned latitude” nonsense. I don’t know how you could mend it if you but do what I’ve just told you.’ He picked up a bottle of Jamaican rum and said, ‘Now, on to new business.’
By the time Biddlecomb climbed with elaborate care down the Alfred’s side and into the waiting boat, he felt decidedly unwell, having been eating and drinking, smoking a pipe, and shouting with his fellow officers without respite for the past five hours.
He boarded the Charlemagne on the larboard side to avoid the ceremony that must accompany the captain’s official boarding on the starboard. His head was in no condition to endure the shrieking bosun’s calls, nor did he feel he could manage another civil word. But four hours later, after a restorative nap, he called to the marine sentry to pass the word for the first and second officers.
Tottenhill and Rumstick arrived at the same moment, as did the cabin steward with a pot of coffee.
‘Gentlemen, sit.’ Biddlecomb indicated the chairs in front of the table. ‘Coffee? Ezra, I need not ask. Roger? No? Is there anything I can get you? Wine, beer?’
After Tottenhill had declined all offered refreshment, Biddlecomb sat behind the desk and took a long and luxurious sip of coffee. ‘I’ve just been to the flag, as you know, and the commodore has informed us of our orders. Or, perhaps I should say he has informed us of the orders the Naval Committee gave. You were right, incidentally, Lieutenant, about the Chesapeake and Lord Dunmore.’
At that Tottenhill’s otherwise neutral expression took on a hint of his former smugness. ‘I enjoy the confidence of some well-placed people, sir.’
‘Indeed. Well, as I said, there might be some difference between what we’re ordered to do and what we actually do. The orders the commodore read were a bit … ambitious for this little fleet. What’s more the commodore’s orders give him some discretion to disregard the committee’s orders if he must, and he put some particular emphasis on those words.
‘In any event, I have here’ – he held up the orders given him by Hopkins – ‘the instructions for the ship should we be parted from the fleet. I’m going to open them, and as the first and second officer I thought it best that you be acquainted with them as well, in case something should happen to me.’
Biddlecomb picked up a butter knife and sliced at the seal. The three men sat in silence as Biddlecomb read through the orders, evoking the captain’s privilege to be rude if he so chose. He frowned as he read the words and fathomed their intent.
It had occurred to him that Tottenhill might be one of those men who felt as if he were being persecuted, felt as if there were a grand conspiracy against him and his kind. The lieutenant had already made several oblique references to ‘Yankees.’ Biddlecomb had seen this sort of thing before, and he recognized the signs. In the forecastle it could be disastrous, and he hated to think what it could mean on the quarterdeck. These orders would not make Tottenhill sleep any easier.
‘Well,’ Biddlecomb said at last, looking up at his officers, ‘it’s all quite straightforward. We are to keep company with the flag, observe signals, the usual. If we are to get separated and cannot find the fleet after four days, then our rendezvous is’ – he looked down at the orders again, to make certain of what he had read – ‘the southern part of Abaco, in the Bahamas. No doubt he has in mind Hole-in-the-Rock. You’ll remember that, Ezra.’
‘Abaco?’ Tottenhill said. ‘What in hell is the commodore about? Why should we rendezvous at Abaco for an attack on the Chesapeake Bay?’
‘I can’t say with certainty. The commodore did not make his intentions known, but, ah, I think perhaps we are not going to the Chesapeake.’
Tottenhill looked at Biddlecomb and then at Rumstick with something accusatory in his glance. Biddlecomb wondered if Tottenhill thought them a part of whatever nefarious plot he was imagining. ‘The orders were for the Chesapeake,’ he said.
‘Well, for God’s sake, Isaac ain’t the damned commodore, is he?’ Rumstick said in a loud voice. ‘He don’t write the orders for the fleet.’ The second officer had, up until that point, displayed what was for him a near saintly patience, but Biddlecomb could see it wearing thin.
‘I don’t suspect that you … gentlemen quite appreciate the deprivations that Dunmore is carrying out in the Southern colonies,’ Tottenhill said, biting off each word.
‘Roger, I don’t know what the commodore has in mind. But understand, this is a cold coast, and a dangerous one this time of year. The Charlemagne alone has eighteen down with the smallpox, and we’re doing better than most. I think it reasonable—’
‘Did you know about this?’ Tottenhill asked suddenly.
‘“Did you know about this, sir?”’ Biddlecomb corrected.
‘Well, did you? Sir?’
‘Lieutenant, despite my lofty and, as you seem to think, autonomous station, I follow orders, just like you. And I generally don’t know what they are beforehand, and I’m generally not asked if they meet my approval.’
Tottenhill stood up quickly, nearly knocking his chair over. ‘Beg your pardon, sir, but I have matters to which I must attend.’
Biddlecomb stared into his eyes. ‘Sit, Lieutenant.’ When the lieutenant remained standing, he said, ‘That’s an order.’
When Tottenhill was once again sitting, Biddlecomb continued, ‘I have been trying to fathom what you’re about, Lieutenant, and I’ll own I can’t. But you will hear me on this. This is a navy of the United Colonies, and we follow the orders of the man appointed by the Continental Congress to lead this fleet. Or, more to the point, I follow his orders. You follow my orders, quickly and unquestioningly. You may depend upon it that whatever I order is for the good of the ship and the country. Depend upon it, but don’t question it. Understood?’
Tottenhill glanced at Rumstick and back at Biddlecomb with just a hint of furtive, trapped-animal look. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said in a neutral tone. ‘May I be dismissed?’
The captain held him in his gaze for a moment before saying, ‘Yes.’
‘Whatever you’re thinking, Ezra,’ Biddlecomb said as Tottenhill shut the great cabin door behind him, ‘pray keep it to yourself.’
That was three days ago. Since then the activity had been nonstop, getting the Charlemagne ready for sailing offshore. Biddlecomb had been certain that that work, and the blue water that followed, would take the men’s minds off their troubles. But he had been wrong.
He felt the Charlemagne twist in the big sea with an odd, corkscrew motion. A burst of water came in through the forwardmost gunport and ran inches deep along the deck.
Well, he thought, if fine weather will not distract them, then what we’re in for now surely will.
CHAPTER 15
Hornet and Fly
Biddlecomb felt the Charlemagne heel farther over, heard the note of the wind in the rigging rise in pitch. The shrouds and backstays on the weather side were straight and taut, to leeward they bowed out, the slack running ge
ar twisting and flogging in the wind. He looked up at the six unhappy souls aloft, three on the main topmast crosstrees, three on the fore, struggling to send the light spars down.
Biddlecomb waited for the gust to pass, for the note of the wind to come lower, and for the brig to stand upright again, but it did not. Rather, she heeled over another three degrees, and the whistling wind rose to a shriek. Fore and aft, men stumbled and grabbed on to anything solid or fell on hands and knees to the deck.
He looked aloft once more, willing the men to move faster, to get the uppermost masts and yards down on deck, but he knew that they were doing the best they could. Even on deck it was hard to stand; seventy feet up, they were getting a wild, terrifying ride. To a landsman it would be inconceivable that a man could do anything but hang on to the swaying, bucking mast. But the men aloft were pressing on with their work, preparing to send down to the deck spars weighing hundreds of pounds.
The main topgallant yard was hoisted from a horizontal to a vertical position. It hung there from the yard rope, the line on which it would be lowered to the deck, and the three men on the crosstree struggled to keep it from swinging out of control, like a giant pendulum. They wrestled it out to the backstay to which they would toggle it and send it down.
Benjamin Woodberry was one of the three, the most able man aboard and a seaman who had been with Biddlecomb since the merchantman days. He stood by the topgallant mast, one arm gently hugging the pole as if it were his child, as if he were four feet off of solid ground.
He handed the man at the backstay a becket and toggle; the short rope was standing out straight in the wind, as was Woodberry’s clubbed hair. The man reached for it, and as he did, the Charlemagne rolled away to windward and the yard slipped from his grasp.
Biddlecomb tensed up, his hands balled into fists as the spar swung inboard again. ‘Ahhh!’ he said through clenched teeth as he saw the topgallant yard smash into Woodberry’s arm, heard the man scream even over the howling wind.
‘Mr Rumstick,’ he began, intending to have Rumstick send some men aloft to help Woodberry down, but Rumstick himself was already in the main shrouds, going up himself.
It took Rumstick ten minutes to help Woodberry down to the maintop, and Biddlecomb could wait no longer.
‘Mr Tottenhill,’ he called, and the first officer stepped aft, wrapped in oilskins, moving with confidence on the rolling deck. There was a steadiness about him, a lack of fear or concern in that sea that gave Biddlecomb confidence. Perhaps he was wrong about the man, perhaps his fears, amorphous as they were, were misplaced. If nothing else, Tottenhill was a decent seaman.
‘Mr Tottenhill, we’ll tuck deep reefs in the topsails and the foresail, and the second reef in the main!’ he screamed. The wind had built to a steady forty knots and was gusting much higher than that, laying the Charlemagne hard over until the sea boiled over her leeward rail and ran feet deep along the waterways, crashing against the triple lashed guns like surf against a rocky shore.
‘Aye, sir!’ Tottenhill shouted back, and staggered forward, rounding up the men, pushing them in various directions as Sprout did the same. Slowly, deliberately, the men clambered up the weather shrouds, pausing and clinging tight as the ship rolled to windward and threatened to chuck them into the sea, then climbing again as the ship rolled away.
Ten of the marines came tromping aft to tend to reefing the mainsail, ostensibly under the command of Lieutenant Faircloth though actually taking directions from Midshipman Weatherspoon.
Faircloth staggered up to Biddlecomb’s side and peered aloft. ‘Striking topgallant gear, sir?’
‘Yes. Probably should have done it an hour ago.’
‘God, what a storm!’ Faircloth shouted as the wind made his cloak flog like a slow drumroll. ‘Are we … I mean to say … is there any … danger?’
‘Danger?’
‘Well, sir! This storm! Sure you’ve not seen worse than this?’
Biddlecomb looked at the marine officer, pale, wet, huddled under his coat, and he laughed, a loud, genuine uproarious laugh. ‘Lieutenant, are you afraid?’
‘No, sir, I am not!’ Faircloth shouted, and Biddlecomb could see that that was true. Concerned might have been a better description. ‘I was just interested in knowing our situation, sir!’
‘Well, Mr Faircloth, for one thing, you would be right to be afraid, you should be afraid every time you venture out on the big ocean. But that aside, this storm is no more than a trifle. I shouldn’t give it a second thought.’
‘So we are in no danger, sir?’
‘Not from the storm. But once the sun goes down, we shall be in mortal danger of running into one of the other ships in the fleet. I hope they have the sense to spread out more than they are doing now.’
At last the main topgallant mast was on deck, lashed to the booms, and the vessel properly snugged down for foul weather. It had been a slow process, with nearly a score of men down below in the sick berth with the smallpox, and the ship’s company, unused to working together at sea, struggling to coordinate efforts. Woodberry’s left hand had been crushed by the runaway yard, and one of the men from North Carolina was knocked insensible by a flailing staysail-sheet block.
The deck was crowded with all able hands, including the cook and the cooper. Fore and aft they were hauling taut and lashing down, rigging up preventers, lifelines, and leeclothes and seeing that the tarpaulins covering the boats were keeping dry the two small pigs and three dozen terrified chickens housed therein.
A semblance of daylight was still left when the brunt of the storm rolled down on them, flashing lightning all around and carrying in its breast a freezing, driving rain. Then with the setting sun even the little visibility that they had enjoyed was gone.
The storm would be bad, Biddlecomb knew, but if the storm had been his only concern, then his mind would have been at ease, for the Charlemagne was a solid brig, just out of the yard, and he had weathered storms much worse than this.
But now there was more than just wind and sea with which to contend. He peered anxiously into the dark and strained his ears above the roar of the wind and the groaning of the Charlemagne’s rig and timbers to catch some sign of the other ships. He would not have cared to be within half a dozen miles of another ship on that wild night, and he knew that the entire fleet was closer, much closer than that.
Despite the extraordinary circumstances, the ordinary routine of the ship was maintained. The glass was turned by a shivering, wet ship’s boy, who then unlashed the bell rope and struck out eight bells, and Tottenhill and his larboard watch relieved Rumstick and his starbowlines.
Had this been a merchantman, with her diminutive crew, Biddlecomb would have had all hands on deck, no doubt through the night. But aboard the Charlemagne, brig-of-war, the larboard watch alone was larger than a merchant brig’s entire company, and for the time being he was able to stand the watches down.
‘We’ll maintain this heading as long as the wind remains as it is!’ Biddlecomb shouted to Tottenhill, who was standing only a few feet away. ‘If it builds any more, we’ll have to heave to or run with it! Station lookouts on every quarter, keep a bright lookout for the rest of the fleet! That’s our greatest concern now!’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’ Tottenhill shouted, and relayed the instructions to the men on deck.
Biddlecomb looked over his shoulder. Ferguson was at the helm, backed up by another able seaman. That was good; Ferguson had also been with him since the merchantman days, and he was as good a helmsman as Biddlecomb had ever seen.
‘Mr Tottenhill! I’m going below for a moment! You have the deck!’ There seemed to be no immediate danger, and Biddlecomb wanted desperately to change his clothing, get some dry stuff on and his oilskins on over that. He had not been below for six hours, standing all that time on the quarterdeck in soaked clothes.
‘Aye!’ Tottenhill nodded and Biddlecomb fought his way forward, then down below to the great cabin.
He flopped down on the set
tee aft and peeled the coat off his back. Overhead the skylight was open, just a few inches, and water poured in with each leeward roll of the brig.
He pulled himself to his feet and was reaching up to close it when he heard from the quarterdeck above Tottenhill’s voice, high-pitched with excitement, shouting ‘Fall off! Fall off!’ Then Ferguson replied – it sounded like an argument – but Biddlecomb did not hear the words for he was already through the great cabin door and rushing for the scuttle.
He burst through the scuttle onto the weather deck, into what seemed to be utter bedlam. The thunder rolled overhead, louder than any sound of wind or sea. A bolt of lightning struck the water, and in the light of the long, jagged shaft he saw the schooner Fly to windward, not fifty feet away, looming over their starboard side and racing down on them as if she meant to crash into their bow.
Biddlecomb turned and ran up to the quarterdeck. Tottenhill and Ferguson were face-to-face. ‘Fall off, God damn your eyes! You insolent whore’s son!’ Tottenhill screamed.
‘What the hell is this!’ Biddlecomb screamed over the wind. ‘Ferguson—’
‘Hornet’s there, sir, right there! I seen her just when Mr Tottenhill seen the Fly!’ Ferguson screamed, pointing into the darkness over the leeward side, water streaming down his face and off his beard. ‘If I falls off, we’ll be right aboard her!’
Biddlecomb looked around. He could no longer see Fly, but he did not have to. She would slam into them in seconds, and the two ships would hang up, smash themselves to pieces in the steep seas. They had to fall off, as Tottenhill had ordered. But what if Ferguson was right?
‘Mr Tottenhill, back the main topsail! Back it now!’ Biddlecomb shouted.
‘In this wind? Are you mad? We must fall off!’
‘Back it, do it now! The rig will hold! Now go!’
Tottenhill hesitated, just for a pause, then ran forward.