Hugh raised both hands. “I really have no choice, my dear,” he said in a tired tone that suggested he and Phoebe had wallowed through this subject many times before tonight. “We must consider the benefits. By all accounts, money is going to be increasingly difficult to come by, and Jack Endicott is offering me a handsome wage to take him to Cape Town. He and I have handpicked a crew from the Cutler & Sons muster roll, and to ensure their loyalty, each sailor will be paid a bonus of 25 percent of his normal pay at the end of the voyage. As Agreen said, Falcon is a fast vessel—despite her age she is one of the fastest vessels of my acquaintance—and we shan’t be tarrying long in Cape Town, I can assure you. We’ll be home long before the leaves turn, and then you and I will kick up our heels like never before. We’ll make Will and Adele and Jamie and Mindy look like drab, boring stay-at-homes.”
“I shall be looking forward to it,” Phoebe said, but there was sadness in her voice.
THE DISTANCE from the family seat on lower Main Street to Richard and Katherine’s two-story gray clapboard house on South Street was only a quarter mile. Nevertheless, in consideration of the inclement weather, Caleb and Joan offered a bedroom upstairs to Richard and Katherine, with the added incentive that the room was the one that had been Richard’s as a boy. Hugh and Phoebe were staying the night just down the hall in Anne and Lavinia’s old room, Joan said to entice them, and in the morning the six of them could have breakfast together. When Katherine politely declined the offer, Will and Adele volunteered to accompany her and Richard home before walking the short distance to their own home on Ship Street.
The air was dank and chilly, and fog was moving in, but the mixture of rain and sleet proved to be more annoying than challenging. Winter along the South Shore and the Cape had been unusually mild this year, although the interior of Massachusetts had received its normal dose of wintry weather. Whale oil lamps hanging on posts thirty feet apart along Main Street, South Street, and North Street revealed a patchwork of dead grass, open road, and dirty mounds of slush where snow had once been piled. Without those lamps, even townspeople who had known these streets for years would have been hard put to find their way about the village on a night like this—which is why lamplighters would remain on duty to ensure that the lamps remained lit until midnight, two hours hence.
No one said much as they walked north on Main Street before turning west at the intersection with South Street. It took every bit of concentration to maintain a sure footing, and Richard kept a firm grip on Katherine’s arm until they were at the front door of their home and under the protective overhang of the roof at the front stoop.
“Would you two like to come in?” he asked his son and daughter-in-law. “Your mother and I normally have a glass of wine by the fire before retiring. You’re certainly welcome to join us.”
A hopeful glance from Will to his wife was met with, “We’d love to, but we really must be getting back. I’m sure Edna has had her hands full with little Katherine and deserves a respite. Maybe tomorrow? Or the next day?”
“Any day is fine, Adele,” Richard said, repeating his oft-used phrase: “You just need to open the door and walk in.” He looked at his son. “Will, I was proud of you this evening. You must have bitten your tongue to keep from spilling the news about your letter from Lieutenant Perry.”
In fact, Will had been near to bursting with excitement since receiving a letter from Lt. Oliver Hazard Perry two days ago. Richard had never met the young man, although he knew Oliver’s father, Capt. Christopher Raymond Perry, who had commanded the frigate General Greene during the war with France. Perry’s son, Richard was aware, had entered the Navy at the age of thirteen, serving first in his father’s frigate as a midshipman and then serving with distinction in the war against Tripoli: in the frigate Adams and later as commander of the 12-gun schooner Nautilus in the attack on Derne. At the moment he was engaged in the construction of gunboats, although as he stated in his letter to Will, he was in line to relieve Lt. Jacob Jones as commander of Revenge, a 12-gun schooner attached to the North Atlantic Squadron under the command of Commo. John Rodgers in Constitution. The squadron’s mission was to cruise the North Atlantic to enforce the embargo, and no less a personage than Navy Secretary Robert Smith had put forward Will Cutler’s name to Perry.
“Nothing is definite yet, Father,” Will reminded him. “I don’t want to say anything about it until my appointment is approved.”
“I understand. So you are firming up plans to sail to New York to confer with Lieutenant Perry?”
“I am to be there three weeks from tomorrow. The Navy is footing the bill for all expenses,” he added with a sheepish grin. In former days Will Cutler would not have deemed it necessary to emphasize that point. Today he did.
His father nodded. “That will give us ample time to discuss matters before you sail,” he said. “In the meantime, your mother and I wish you both a very good night.”
“Indeed we do,” Katherine said.
Richard opened the door for Katherine and followed her inside. After helping her off with her coat, he walked across the parlor to the hearth, lit a round of candles, and set a fresh bundle of birch logs on the smoking embers. He did the same in the kitchen and again upstairs in their bedroom. When he came back downstairs, he joined Katherine on the sofa near the now-blazing fire. On the long, low table before her she had placed a bottle of Bordeaux and two glasses next to a three-branched brass candelabra. The candles and firelight cast a cozy glow over the room as the last of the sleet and rain tapped against the window-panes.
“I shall miss Will if he enters the Navy,” Katherine sighed as Richard poured out two half glasses of wine and handed one to her. “I shall miss him as much as I already miss Jamie.”
“No more than I will,” Richard said reflexively. An instant later the full impact of what she had just said struck him a crushing blow. When their two sons went to sea, he would indeed miss them—but their mother knew that she might never see them again. He quickly added, “We have to bear in mind how fortunate we’ve been to have had them so close to us during these past few months. Now they must do their duty as they perceive their duty to be, and I am proud of them both—as I know you are.”
“I am,” Katherine said. “And I admire Adele for handling their situation so magnanimously. Not every wife would be so supportive of a husband’s voluntary leave-taking so soon after the birth of their first child. I have always said that Will and Adele make an excellent match.”
“As do Jamie and Mindy. And Diana and Peter. If nothing else, my love, you and I have seen all three of our children marry well and lead the lives we would want for them.”
Katherine raised her glass toward him, “We have certainly had our priorities straight when it comes to our children, haven’t we.” It was not a question.
Richard clinked his glass against hers. “Yes, although you deserve most of the credit for how they turned out. You did the hard work of raising them while I was often off at sea pursuing my dreams.”
Katherine shook her head. “As your Aunt Emma used to say, pish posh, my dear.”
The mention of his English aunt and her favorite phrase harkened Richard back to that voyage long ago, first to England and then on to Barbados, in the Cutler & Sons merchant brig Eagle. At their father’s insistence Richard and his brother Will had signed on as ordinary seamen to learn the ropes at sea and, more important, to learn the ropes of Cutler & Sons from their uncle’s perspective and those of their cousins, John and Robin Cutler. It was during their stay at their aunt and uncle’s home in Fareham, England, that Richard had met Katherine Hardcastle, a close childhood friend of Richard’s cousin Lizzy Cutler, now living a short way away and married to Richard’s shipmate and close friend Agreen Crabtree. He marveled at how all the variables and intricacies of his relationship with Katherine had linked up, one to another, in a chain of events that had brought them from their introduction to each other at his uncle’s home in Fareham thirty-four years earlier t
o this parlor on this night in Hingham. It must have been divinely inspired. It had to be.
“I remember she used to say to me in the evening, whenever I had been wrestling with a problem during the day, ‘It’s off to bed with you, Richard. Things will be clearer in the morning after a good night’s sleep. You’ll see.’” He chuckled. “Fact is, she was usually right.”
“My mother used to say the same sort of thing,” Katherine mused. “Except, of course, to my father. Even though she knew it wouldn’t do any good.”
“That’s putting it mildly. When your father first realized my intentions toward you, it would have taken him more than a month of solid sleep to solve this problem.” He pointed at himself. “No colonial rebel for his daughter, thank you very much.”
Katherine smiled. “He had other plans for me, I admit. But in the end he came around. He actually came to like you.”
“He did, but only after I had walked through hell to prove myself to him.”
“No, that was not it. Father could be a cantankerous old cuss, but he was my father and he always had my best interests at heart. It took some doing and a few years of our being married, but when he realized how much I loved you and how very happy you had made me, he saw the wisdom of my choice. And then he began to view things a bit differently.”
Richard said nothing in response. During the early years of their relationship he had indeed had his trials with his father-in-law. But Katherine was right: in the end he had come to view things differently. Back in ’99, when Katherine and Lizzy had sailed with their children to visit with both sets of parents for what would prove to be the last time, Capt. Henry Hardcastle, RN, had been the quintessential loving father and doting grandfather. Katherine had often talked with Richard about that voyage during their evening fireside ritual, as she had about many of the milestones of her life as a girl living in England and then as a married woman living in New England. Those hours of fond remembrance were the ones she enjoyed most each day.
At the moment, however, she was considering not the past but the future. “Richard, we need to talk,” she said, staring at the fire.
Although his heart almost stopped beating he managed a nonchalant response. “About what?”
“I believe you know,” she said.
He did know, or at least he suspected, what she had in mind simply by the gravity in her voice. She had broached this topic before, on two occasions, and each time he had cut her off before she could get very far into it. He downed a healthy swig of Bordeaux and sat there, waiting.
“I understand why you don’t want to discuss this. Do you think I do? But there are things that need to be said and resolved, so please hear me out. We must face our worst thoughts and fears, Richard,” she said carefully. “The future is what it is for us all. We are all in God’s hands. Each one of us is going to die at some point. It’s the way of the world. We can only put our trust in God and in each other, and in the strength of what we mean to each other and the love we shall always have for each other. Denial does no good. I have tried it, and I assure you it does no good. We need to face this together, however much it may hurt to do so.”
“Katherine . . .”
“Hush, now. Let me finish. You have no doubt been thinking about how hard all this is on me. But I have been thinking about how hard it must be on you, and how hard it is going to be for our children. I have often thought about what I would do if our situations were reversed, if you were the one with this dreadful disease and I was the one left behind. Honestly, I don’t know how I could go on. But somehow I would have to find the strength to do it—for the many people who are near and dear to us, our children and grandchildren especially.”
She paused, then took up her glass and drained its contents. Richard poured her another round and one for himself, filling both glasses to the three-quarters level.
“Where is this leading us?” he asked quietly as he gently placed the empty bottle back on the table.
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “Perhaps to many places, eventually. The point for now is that we need to start talking more. We have been avoiding difficult discussions, and again, I understand why. But it’s helpful to me to talk even if talking is painful and makes us sad or uncomfortable. More than anything I need to know that when I’m . . . gone . . . things will be in their proper place and that you will not be lonely.”
“How could I be lonely? I have family and friends all around me. Our family and friends, Katherine.”
“You know what I mean, Richard.”
So, Richard thought, it had come around full circle for a third time to the very subject he had refused to discuss before, and would refuse to discuss now. “I do know what you mean, Katherine,” he said evenly. “I know exactly what you mean, and I know exactly where you’re going with this conversation. I will hear no more about it. As I have said before, I will discuss any topic you wish, at any time, except for that one. For that one the door is closed—and locked.”
“Richard,” she said hurriedly, “it’s critical that I tell you that you have my blessing whatever may happen, whatever you may choose to do. I need you to understand that I would not love you any the less, that it would not diminish in any way what we have had together, what we will always mean to each other.”
“End of discussion!” he stated emphatically. He looked at her and said, his voice breaking, “You are my wife, Katherine. You are my only wife. For today and for tomorrow.”
“Till death us do part,” she said quietly.
“No,” he countered. “Till God in his infinite love and mercy sees fit to reunite us.”
“Amen,” she whispered, and closed her eyes to the night as the tears welled up.
Thirteen
The Atlantic Ocean
June 1808
WITHIN the Cutler family there was considerable debate on the course Falcon should follow from Boston to Cape Town. If she were to optimize prevailing winds and ocean currents, there were essentially two alternatives. The first was to sail south to where the north-flowing Gulf Stream split in two off the coast of North Carolina north of the treacherous Diamond Shoals, and follow its more powerful southern track eastward across the Atlantic to West Africa. There Falcon could pick up two secondary southbound currents—one leading past the Azores, the other past the Canaries—to near the mouth of the Senegal River, where the great clockwise motion of the North Atlantic Gyro veered westward back across the Atlantic toward the Indies. The voyage from the Senegal to Cape Town would potentially be the most difficult leg because the schooner would likely encounter southeasterly headwinds in collusion with the counter-clockwise motion of the great South Atlantic Gyro.
The alternate route was to avoid the Gulf Stream and other northbound currents along the North and South American coasts and sail southward in mid-ocean until they reached the latitude of the southern coast of Brazil. From there a strong eastbound current—the southern loop of the South Atlantic Gyro—reinforced by prevailing easterly winds would take them swiftly on a direct line across the Atlantic to the southern tip of the African continent.
They would need to cross the equator on either route, and Falcon would be subjected to the doldrums, an area of low pressure in the low latitudes where prevailing winds are calm. Sea stories told of vessels trapped in the doldrums for weeks on end, of sailors delirious with thirst and hunger driven to commit savage acts of cannibalism. When that source of food was depleted, they succumbed to the elements, their skeletal remains bleached white on the weather deck of a ghost ship adrift on the open sea. Hugh could only pray that Falcon would breeze through this unfavorable stretch of ocean without undue difficulty or delay. He could not imagine living with Jack Endicott in such conditions.
Not a sailor himself and having little interest in the business of sailing, Endicott left the decision of which route to follow to his captain. Hugh Hardcastle, in turn, had conferred with his brother-in-law and also with Agreen Crabtree, the only one among them who had made this
voyage. Back in 1801 Agreen had conveyed Caleb and Will Cutler in Falcon to Cape Town and from there to Batavia, on the East Indian island of Java, where the Cutlers had been grandly accommodated by Jan Van der Heyden and the vast resources of C&E Enterprises’ Far Eastern headquarters. From Java Falcon had sailed east across the Pacific Ocean, south around the raging Horn, and northward off the coasts of the Americas in a circumnavigation that was completed, according to those in the know in Boston, in near record time.
Agreen recommended that Falcon take the first alternative, effectively shadowing the route that he and Richard had followed to Gibraltar and Algiers back in 1789. Hugh agreed. During his tenure as a post captain attached to the Mediterranean Squadron he had rarely had occasion to cruise south of the Azores. Nevertheless, he understood from his years of study of Royal Navy logs and charts that the course Agreen was recommending had first been developed by Portuguese and Spanish mariners exploring the New World and had since been refined by mariners of many nations, including, most recently, Capt. Thomas Truxtun of the U.S. Navy.
Hugh set a departure date of May 1. He had pegged the distance from Boston to Cape Town at approximately 8,000 sea miles. At an average speed of 6 knots Falcon would make close to 150 miles per day—twice that amount on the best days, half that amount on the worst. Allowing one full day for reprovisioning in the Canary Islands and one full week as a hedge against the doldrums and other unforeseen difficulties, Hugh put Falcon in Cape Town Harbor a week before the target date of July 15. If Jack Endicott were delayed for any reason, Jan Van der Heyden would simply wait for him. Van der Heyden would be sailing an equally daunting distance from Java in China, the largest and most heavily armed ship in the C&E merchant fleet. According to Agreen, who had toured China in Batavia Harbor, she looked more like a Royal Navy ship of the line than a merchant vessel.
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