Leave-taking for Richard and Katherine came on a cloudless and unusually warm day for the third week of March. At the docks in Hingham to see them off were Diana and her fiancé, Peter Sprague; Agreen and Lizzy Crabtree; Peter’s parents; and a host of Hingham residents, many of them the same friends who had stood vigil on Main Street during the night immediately following Katherine Cutler’s surgery. Everyone agreed it was God’s blessing to see her looking so hale and hearty, and so clearly excited by what lay ahead.
“See you in May, Richard,” Agreen said soberly to Richard as they clasped hands at dockside. In years gone by, he would have offered an off-color remark regarding the loose morals and insatiable sexual appetites of the scantily clad minxes awaiting Richard’s arrival in the exotic Windward Islands. Today he did not.
“In May,” Richard acknowledged, and then stepped down into the packet boat that was to take them to Boston, where Dove and the remainder of his family were waiting to say farewell. He helped Katherine on board and then helped stow their luggage for the brief trip. At the command of her master, the mainsail was raised, the jib set, and the mooring lines cast free, and the packet boat edged away from the quay, the southwesterly breeze quickly filling her sails on a beam reach.
In Boston, the transfer to Dove was made quickly and comfortably. After another round of farewells to family members and friends, Dove nosed out of Boston Harbor under jib and mainsail, sailing before the wind with a handpicked crew of nine sailors—five of whom had served in Portsmouth during the war with Tripoli—Captain Bennett, and mate Bob Jordan. Once clear of the lighthouse on Little Brewster Island, Captain Bennett ordered the clipper’s foresail, fore staysail and flying jib set. With the extra press of canvas and a fifteen-knot offshore breeze kicking in, Dove leapt forward like a living being, her sails taut and thrumming at the leech. Foam creamed out from her stem as she drove through a light chop of cresting waves. Long past Provincetown she hauled her wind and headed southward on a close haul. Off the coast of Cape Cod and Nantucket—and the dangerous shoals lurking beneath those waters—Dove passed by a number of vessels bound for Georges Bank—named in honor of England’s patron saint—and the rich harvests of cod and halibut there for the taking.
Since the beginning of the cruise, Katherine had stood either amidships, when the spray was active, or at the clipper’s very bow, exhilarating in the splendor of the sun-drenched sea sparkling around her. Richard was concerned, for the sea air was cool, but he was loath to call her away and diminish her obvious joy. Plus, he knew from long experience that gainsaying Katherine when she was determined to do something was at best an act of futility.
“Very well, my lady,” he said to her late in the afternoon as he stood on her windward side amidships with an arm wrapped around her waist. “If you’re going to remain topside, allow me at least to go below and get you another layer. I can see your breath, it’s so cold, and the wind is not wont to show mercy even to you.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “As you wish,” she said happily. “But I promise you, I am not cold.” She looked up into his face, placed a hand on each side of his mouth, and kissed him hard on the lips, her mouth open. “Thank you,” she said softly, when reluctantly she pulled away from him.
“For what?” he asked.
“For this,” she answered, gesturing with both arms. “It has been a long time since I have felt so alive!”
Richard went below to the locker in the after cabin and took out a fleeced coat lined with goose down, the warmest he had brought. Back up on the weather deck, he walked aft along the flush deck to speak to Captain Bennett at the helm. “What are we making, Frank? Good Lord, it must be fifteen knots!”
“More like eighteen, Captain,” Bennett replied, allowing a rare glint of satisfaction to shine through, “last we threw over the chip log. We’ll have a hundred fifty sea miles behind us by nightfall, another hundred by morning. If this wind holds, I daresay the crew and I will be taking supper Sunday night at Gleason’s Pub in Bridgetown.”
“I doubt that,” Richard said, grinning, “but I appreciate your optimism.” He clapped Bennett on the shoulder and made to walk forward with the coat.
A word from Bennett stopped him. “Captain?”
“Yes, Frank?”
Bennett chewed his lower lip and pushed back the black hair blowing across his forehead. “I’m a bit concerned about your missus, sir,” he said finally. “Never in my life have I seen a woman so pleased to stand on a rolling deck. It’s a marvel to watch, I admit, but I can’t help being worried. In her state and all,” he added uncomfortably.
Richard nodded as a smile played across his lips. “I appreciate your concern, Frank. In fact, I suggest that you go up there and advise her to go below. But be forewarned: she tends to set her own mind on things, and it can be the very devil to change it. You’re welcome to try, however. You have my blessing and I wish you the best of luck. I’ll take the helm in the meanwhile.”
Bennett continued chewing his lip as he mulled the implications of Richard’s suggestion. “That’s all right, Captain,” he said eventually. “I’d be a fool to think I would have better luck than you. If it’s all the same to you, I believe I’ll just stay put.”
“A wise decision, Frank.”
WITH RICHARD’S APPROVAL, Bennett had shaped a course for the Caribbean that, once free of Cape Cod and the islands, took them southwestward and then south along the coast to North Carolina. Off the Outer Banks they pushed out to sea until they lay within easy reach of the highly predictable trade winds. Now comfortably within the warm caress of these northeasterly breezes, Dove kept the wind two points abaft her beam on a course that, without unforeseen interference, her crew would likely not have to alter until they approached Barbados. This sailing plan involved considerably more sea miles than a more direct southerly approach into the Caribbean through the New Bahama Channel or the Mona Passage between Hispañola and Puerto Rico, but it also kept Dove clear of the pirate lairs that infested many of the more remote islands of the Bahamas, the Caymans, and the Greater Antilles.
Every day that conditions permitted it, Richard called out the crew for an hour to exercise the guns. Since each 6-pounder gun required three men to service it, Richard rotated the crew into two groups of four, with himself acting as the third gunner for each of the two guns exercised on a given day. The drills were intended to keep the men highly skilled in their gun assignments, but they were hardly necessary: every member of the crew save one had hands-on experience with naval gunnery, and each sailor respected Richard’s own experience as commander of the gun deck in Constellation. On that deck he had outranked everyone, including, at Captain Truxtun’s insistence, Captain Truxtun himself.
It was during such a drill on a cloudless, soporific day in early April, with Dove swaying lazily back and forth in the gentle Atlantic swells, that an urgent call came down from a lookout high in the foremast.
“On deck, there!”
Richard shaded his eyes and glanced up. Because they had crossed the latitude of the Tropic of Cancer at daybreak, he assumed that the young lookout had raised the British-held island of Anguilla. “Deck, aye! What is it, Walsh?”
“A ship-rigged vessel, sir,” Walsh yelled down with more than a note of worry in his voice. “She’s showing all plain sails to royals.”
“Where away?”
“Broad on our larboard bow. She’s following a reciprocal course, sir.”
Richard frowned. A ship-rigged vessel, signifying that she carried square sails on all three of her masts, was a vessel of consequence. The fact that she was showing all plain sails to royals strongly suggested that she was a man-of-war. To his surprise and disgust, he could already make out the white head of the foremast royal on the distant horizon ahead. She was, he calculated, only about five or six miles from them, and closing fast on a starboard tack.
Richard cursed under his breath. “Can you make out her ensign?” he shouted up through cupped hands.<
br />
“No sir. Not yet.”
“Stand by, Walsh. I’m coming up.” To Bennett at the helm: “Bring the wind to two points on her quarter, Mr. Bennett.” Bringing the wind onto her larboard quarter on a broad reach would shift Dove from a fast point of sail to her fastest point of sail. It would also set her on a course obliquely away from the oncoming vessel.
“Two points on her quarter, aye, Mr. Cutler,” Bennett acknowledged. To his mate he said: “Stand by to loose sheets!”
“Stand by to loose sheets!” Jordan shouted through a speaking trumpet. Instantly the crew responded by leaving the guns and assuming their sailing stations. At the mate’s subsequent command, the sheets on all standing sails were eased out. Dove’s jib-boom swung to starboard. When she had veered a full twenty degrees on the compass rose, Bennett ordered the sails sheeted home.
Richard stole a glance at his wife watching him intently by the bulwark amidships before clambering up the larboard ratlines on the mainmast shrouds, using the ship’s heel to starboard to facilitate his climb. At the first crosstree he met Walsh, who offered a hand up. Richard ignored the hand and secured himself within the hempen cords, then took Walsh’s long glass from him and brought it to his eye. He could make out little detail on the deck of the oncoming ship, although he would bet his life on the pedigree of those three towering pyramids of white canvas.
“Sorry, sir, I should have spotted her sooner. She came up sudden-like.”
Richard was too angry to trust himself to reply. Walsh was right. He should have spotted her sooner. A ship of that size does not appear “sudden-like” on a clear horizon on a relatively calm ocean. Walsh had been caught daydreaming, Richard concluded, a dereliction of duty that in the Navy would earn him twelve lashes at the grate even in peacetime. He felt the fury rise within him. Damn this youth for putting his wife and vessel in jeopardy! He rued the day he had agreed to sign on the eager young topman, the one sailor on board who lacked naval experience. He did have excellent vision and a thorough knowledge of ship design, which was why his primary responsibility on this cruise had been as a lookout. But daydreaming on watch!
“Can you make her out, sir?” Walsh asked cautiously. Richard continued to study the oncoming vessel. “She’s a warship, sure enough,” he said to himself rather than Walsh. “A frigate, I’d wager. In these waters and with those lines, she has to be British.”
“That’s exactly what I thought, sir,” Walsh said, in an ingratiating tone. “Is she likely to give chase, do you think?” Whether the anxiety in his voice was due to guilt or trepidation, Richard could not determine. An incident off the coast of Bermuda four years earlier came to mind. The British frigate Temptress had intercepted his schooner Barbara D on her northward cruise from Barbados to Boston and had forced her to lie to. Royal Marines had come on deck and dragged off a newly signed-on seaman named Cooper who claimed to be an American but had lost his papers.
Richard lowered the long glass and examined the oncoming man-of-war with his naked eye, pondering Walsh’s question. “Who can tell,” he said, unable to hide his anger. “We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we, Walsh.”
THIRTY MINUTES before Seaman Walsh reported the approach of an unknown ship, a lookout high in the foremast of that ship had shouted down a sighting to the midshipman stationed on the starboard gangway near the point where the mast disappeared below into the partially open gun deck and beyond to its step on the keelson.
“Can you identify her, Sawyer?” the tall, lean, ruddy-complexioned midshipman called up.
Sawyer shouted down what details he could.
“Very well. I shall inform the captain.”
The midshipman strode purposefully aft and down the companionway ladder located between the mainmast and the rise of the quarterdeck from the weather deck. At the base of the companionway, on the gun deck, he turned aft and returned the crisp salute of the Royal Marine posted on sentry duty before the captain’s cabin holding a gleaming, bronze-butted musket horizontally at his side. Two chevrons on the lower sleeve of his flawless red uniform jacket indicated his rank of corporal.
“Message for Captain Humphreys,” the midshipman announced.
The Marine pivoted and rapped gently on the shuttered door. When a gruff voice answered on the other side, the Marine cracked open the door and announced the visitor, then opened the door wide, nodded to the midshipman to enter, and closed the door after him.
“Yes? What is it?” the British captain inquired of the midshipman after he had removed his bicorne hat, tucked it under his arm, and saluted. Although the young man had served five years as a midshipman in His Britannic Majesty’s Navy, and had spent much of his childhood before that at sea, he remained awestruck, as did even seasoned veterans, by the magnificence of a post captain’s after cabin. And this captain clearly possessed the financial wherewithal to adorn his living space with lavish and elegant accoutrements, from the oil paintings hanging all around him to the thick Persian carpet underfoot. The cabin’s opulence made a mockery of the midshipman’s damp and dreary quarters down on the orlop.
The midshipman stiffened. “Seaman Sawyer’s duty, Captain Humphreys, and he has sighted a schooner northeast of us following a southerly course. She’s flying the American ensign. Sawyer believes she’s a clipper.”
“Indeed. How very interesting . . . and how very tempting.”
Salusbury Pryce Humphreys pondered that piece of information while the midshipman stood by awaiting orders, his eyes glued to the front of the desk at which the captain was sitting.
“No,” Humphreys ruled at length. “If she’s a clipper, and I trust Sawyer’s judgment on that, we would be hard-put to catch her. Besides, if there were British sailors on board the schooner, she would more likely be heading north than south. No, we shall maintain present course. Once we’re on station we shall have ample opportunities to snatch and hang deserters. Is that understood?”
“It is, sir. Very good, sir.” The midshipman saluted and made to leave.
“Incidentally . . .”
The midshipman turned back. “Aye, sir?”
Humphreys settled back in his chair, folded his arms, and studied the young midshipman intently. “I am hearing rather encouraging reports about you from my officers, including Mr. Bryant,” referring to his first lieutenant, the man most responsible for the proper disposition of the ship’s officers and crew. “Clearly you come from good stock and know your way around a ship. More important to me, you apparently run a taut ship.” He smiled at his turn of phrase. “The men in your division clearly respect you, because it has one of the highest ratings of any division. I am a stickler for such things, as every jackanapes on this ship is painfully aware, so I must commend you for your achievements. How long have you been going to sea?”
“Eight years, sir,” the midshipman replied, “since I was twelve. I joined the Navy when I was fifteen. My father was opposed at first but has since come around.”
“Not an uncommon state of affairs. Have you considered taking your lieutenant’s exam?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I’ve been studying for it at every opportunity.”
“Good. Very good. When the time comes, I shall be delighted to put in a good word on your behalf.”
“Why, thank you, sir,” the midshipman said, blushing with pride and embarrassment. Captain Humphreys was not normally one to offer compliments. “That is most generous of you.”
“I did not mean to be generous,” Humphreys stated gruffly. “I offer only what you have earned.”
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”
Humphreys began rummaging in the papers he had been sifting through when the midshipman entered his cabin. “Ah, here we are,” he said with satisfaction. Then he glanced up, as if surprised to find the midshipman still standing at attention. “That is all, Mr. Cutler. Please carry on.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Midshipman Seth Cutler saluted stiffly and left the cabin.
Four
Barbados,
Windward Islands
Spring 1806
CARLISLE BAY was just as Katherine remembered it. Although nearly a quarter century had elapsed since she and Richard and baby Will had departed Bridgetown for Boston in the Cutler & Sons brig Eagle, precious little seemed to have changed. The harbor was still alive with seagoing vessels and crews. On the eastern side of the vast crescent-shaped bay, brigs, brigantines, and other merchant rigs flying the flags of many nations were moored fast to the finger-like quays jutting out along Front Street. On the western side, beneath Government House perched high above the fray and surrounded by royal palms and a riot of multicolored flora, lay at anchor the frigates, schooners, and sloops of war that comprised the Windward Squadron of the Royal Navy’s West Indian Station.
Richard noted, not to his surprise, that there were considerably fewer ships in that squadron than he had counted on previous visits to the island. Everywhere, nonetheless, was the hustle and bustle of empire, from the lighters and hoys supplying ships of the squadron with fresh water and provisions to the commercial on-loading and off-loading at quayside orchestrated by bare-chested dockers toiling in the hot sun as cultured gentlemen and gentlewomen in the latest European fashions strolled arm-in-arm nearby. The contrast between the rich white planters and the poorly clad dark-skinned workers was striking. The former were in town for the day from the sugar plantations that formed the basis of the island’s economy and enriched those who gained handsomely from what those plantations produced—the sugar, molasses, and rum whose vast profits lined the pockets of English planters, of shippers who conveyed their “white gold” to markets worldwide, of tax collectors in service to the British Exchequer, and of a host of intermediaries and beneficiaries clogging the routes from the cane fields to the banks.
How Dark the Night Page 6