China Jewel

by Thomas Hollyday

  “It’s your money. I just help you make it.”

  “You do good, Jimmy. No, I have a plan to jazz up the finish line so it is very American. I guess I owe it to my ancestors. They fought for all this back when River Sunday was a little village, starting out building fast ships. Anyway, here’s to us.” Bill raised his glass to Cutter.

  The start was across a line between two launches from the Chinese frigate. The racers tacked back and forth fighting for the best starting position. Strand’s boat seemed to be having trouble. Crewmen were on deck puling on a stubborn halyard to adjust one of the spars. The Peregrine and the Willow were neck and neck coming up to the line. Cutter clenched his fist in excitement. Monroe held Bill’s hand. The horns of the various boats began blasting with excitement. Jim heard the crews cheering. Then the Chinese launched a rocket which went up tumbling brightly in the sky. The race was on.

  The wind blew from the north and east as was typical in these latitudes at this time of year. The brigs had maneuvered until they crossed the line with their sails out in a dead run. The boats headed almost bow to bow in the direction of Brazil to the southeast. Each captain had lain on the studding sails so his craft appeared to have mass expanses of sail over tiny hulls. The sails extended to almost twice their regular width with the extra cloth. The sailors stayed aloft giving constant attention to the thin spars that held the fabric to the wind. The Chesapeake brig began to move to the lead, with the French boat a half-length behind. The British raced another length behind and the other American brig wallowed a second full length behind. Strand’s crew was having trouble raising a main course.

  “His crew hasn’t had much training,” observed Bill.

  “They’ll learn or capsize, “said Cutter. He added, “Couldn’t happen to a better boat.”

  “Glad we got your son. He’s a real sailor,” said Bill, raising his glass.

  Cutter nodded. He was indeed proud. He remembered when he, Katy, and Jamie had dinner three weeks ago. They sat in the Fells Point section of Baltimore, the village where the giant three-masted clippers had been built in the last century.

  “We ordered for you,” said Katy, kissing him as he bent over to her. She looked as beautiful as ever with her long black hair and well tanned face. Jamie smiled, nodding as he watched them. She wore her new summer dress, the one Cutter had given her at Ocean City on their last full weekend at the beach.

  “I’m sorry I’m late. It was a final conference call on budget for the promotion program. I had to listen in. I put my foot down when they wanted Johnson Company to pay for the staffers to stay in luxury hotel rooms in China at the finish. Salespeople get economy class the way it has always been.”

  “How is your training? I read some of the stuff you guys have to do. Too high for me,” he offered.

  “I couldn’t go up on those masts,” said Katy.

  “I like it,” said Jamie.

  God, Cutter thought, he’s got his mother’s looks.

  “Mom wants me to visit in Buenos Aires after the race, Dad.”

  Jamie looked at Katy as if he wanted to say something more, and then stopped.

  “We should order,” said Katy, quickly picking up the menus.

  “What are you two up to?” asked Cutter, seeing their glances at each other.

  “Katy wants a leather jacket from Argentina. Mom says she’ll get it for me to give to her.” Cutter felt at that moment like a father and at the same time more attached to Katy.

  As he had sat, he had remembered the last words his wife had said to him as she took her suitcase and his son away from him in Africa. She had turned to him on the way out the door. She had said, “You see, I have myself understood many soldiers in my country. It is not so new for me. You think you’re so damn brave, but you are not. You think you have, how do you say, guts, like those you served with at Vietnam. You haven’t got any real guts though, James, just the kind you need in battle. True courage is not shown with a pistol. You must live with others and stay around, take the good and bad, participate in life and its losses. You must foremost take care of your own, to be a soldier.”

  She had gone on speaking with her Spanish accent, “Someday you will realize this, run in the direction of the firefight as you always say, and then remain afterward for the real hard work cleaning up after the damage done by the guns. I think you would not have been able to care for the wounded. I don’t know about you, James. You’d say you have to go on ahead with the fight. Care of your own, though, is important. It takes a kind of love. Until you have that love, your son and I will not have, in you, a man who we can rely upon to look out for us.”

  She had hesitated then she had added, “You love success more than you love love.”

  Those words repeated over and over in his mind as he felt the big seaplane maneuver to take off. As the hull bumped over the wave tips, moving faster, he tried to settle back. He looked out the window once more as they headed for the Azores and home. The tiny square riggers below had their sails up and trimmed. The wind blew over their stern quarters in the way that allowed those old ship designs to perform at their best. He’d done all he could to win. Suddenly he thought of what Stringer had said about safety. Out here he could feel the smallness of the Peregrine. For the first time in the many years he had managed projects and profits for Bill, he worried. He didn’t know what to do about this new feeling.

  Chapter 5

  June 7, 10 AM

  Baltimore, Maryland

  On the first morning back from the ocean flight, Cutter drove Jolly’s pickup to Baltimore to talk to Katy about John Reedy’s story. While driving, he telephoned Missus Williams. He did not mention the confusing ship woodwork found in the barn. He told her only his team needed to redraft the Peregrine’s history for the media.

  They began by discussing the Peregrine sendoff she had attended in River Sunday. “My husband would have been so proud,” she said in a cracking voice showing her years.

  Cutter continued, “I have to go over every step of the ship’s history to prepare a complete press release. I wondered if you had discovered any more of her records.”

  She thought for a moment, then replied, “After my husband died, all the research he had compiled on the old ship was stored. Then, when this race came along, Bill Johnson asked me to review the papers for anything about shipments of opium. I found nothing.”

  Cutter said, “I’d appreciate your going back through the files.”

  “Of course, I certainly will,” she assured him. “I’m not as quick a reader these days with my old eyes so I'll need time. I’ll have to get my gardener to help me move the cartons.”

  “I understand, Missus Williams. Anything will be helpful.”

  Navigating the city’s traffic-clogged avenues, he finally parked in front of the venerable Maryland Historical Society and Museum. It was a modernized brick building in a part of the city once famous for street meetings of Confederate sympathizers. Inside Cutter moved through the quiet lobby surrounded by dusty glass exhibits of colonial silver and artifacts. The yellow walls displayed faded oil portraits of Maryland ship captains and Revolutionary War patriots. Many other pictures illustrated more modern heroes of Maryland and America, with a few minority faces.

  Cutter rode a tiny elevator to the second floor and went down a familiar corridor. He stopped at the office of Chief Curator, Katy Marbury. Cutter opened the door to see, amidst shelves, tables and scattered teetering piles of books, a black-haired woman, pretty and seemingly too young for her obviously powerful job. Katy was behind a desk piled with papers, concentrating on a phone call. She looked up, smiled and quickly said goodbye to her caller.

  “You didn’t tell me you were coming,” she said as she took off reading glasses revealing a well-featured face. She adjusted her hair as he approached.

  Cutter did not hesitate but bent down and kissed her, long and with feeling. Then he said, “I wasn’t sure I could get away from the race. I only got back last night from the sta
rting line out in the Atlantic.”

  “You are what I need.”

  “Me too,” he said, holding her hand, looking into her blue eyes.

  “I haven’t seen you since our dinner with Jamie,” she said. He had been counting the days too. Their schedules did not mesh given her lecture travel and his shuttling between New York and River Sunday on the Peregrine project.

  Katy reached for a folded newspaper on her desk, among the assorted manuscripts. “I read about your ship again. You’ve got a good promotion office. Besides, I’m a patriotic Maryland girl.”

  She held up the article. “Maryland entry makes excellent start in China clipper race.” Below the headline was a picture of the Peregrine with all her sails drawing, her hull several boat lengths ahead of the next entrant, the Willow.

  “No one is as happy for this state as my boss, Bill Johnson. To listen to him, you’d think the Chesapeake craftsmen invented boats.” He cleared books from the seat of a leather-covered wooden chair. The small brass label on its crest indicated the antique had been shipped to Maryland from a Boston maker in 1720.

  “I like him anyway,” Cutter said as he sat down.

  “How long can you stay with me?” she asked.

  He grinned. They could read each other pretty well by now.

  She added, “We could hire a plane and in five hours we could be naked on that Caribbean beach again.” Her eyes glistened.

  “How about naked right now?” Cutter smiled.

  “Close the door,” she whispered, color coming into her cheeks.

  “I’m afraid the overseers of the Maryland Historical Society would throw me the hell out of here,” Cutter said. He added, with a wink, “Worth it.”

  “OK,” she said, sitting back, “I’ll control my impulses and wait.” They looked at each other, with smiles of satisfaction and abandon. For Katy, the romantic outbursts contrasted with her scholarly career. For Cutter she opened a window to a new life filled with a love he had not known before.

  He picked up a six-sided pewter container at the edge of her desk. “I’ve seen one of these.”

  “Tea caddy from our collection. Your ship had these aboard. They were used to carry tea to America from China. See the design on the top?”

  “A box decorated like this is in the company hallway display in New York.”

  “It represents the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees.”

  “Where is that?”

  “You’re going to take me to see it when you win the race. It’s in Guangzhou, the place you are sailing to.”

  He put it down. “You got yourself a deal.”

  Cutter carefully tested his weight on the antique chair. He judged even with the suspicious squeak of the wooden joints he was safe.

  “I’ve got a problem,” he said.

  “That Chippendale chair?”

  “No,” he said, with a laugh. “I mean, I need your professional help.”

  A look of concern traced her face as she sat forward. He continued, explaining the discovery of the Osprey name.

  “Why didn’t Bill know?”

  “The people of color in River Sunday kept to themselves.”

  She nodded. “They were not about to stir up hatreds.”

  He said, “Whether any of this is relevant to our ship is the question. I have to make sure. I need a researcher, someone like you who can keep the work confidential.”

  Her face wrinkled. Cutter had fallen in love with that expression. She said, “Research on ships is a whole field in itself, Jimmy. Better experts than me exist for this work.”

  “Yeah, but I trust you. We don’t need to create a mystery out of all proportion. I find any dirt existing anywhere, I’ll know where Bill’s company stands. You see what I mean?”

  “If we find something evil, it could hurt your son too,” she said. “Jamie is associated with the Peregrine as part of its crew.”

  He was silent, thoughtful.

  She stood up, her eyes excited like Cutter had seen them so many times when she was deep in the middle of one of her research projects. “On the other hand, I don’t know how much I can do for you.” She began looking through some of the volumes at her massive bookcase. As she took down books, she told him more about the early Chesapeake brigs.

  She said, “They were called ‘pilot boat built’ or ‘Baltimore clippers’ and sailed fast for their time. Many of them never got registered. The craft often used several names depending on what kind of business they were involved in.”

  “Like what?” asked Cutter.

  “Most of them beat up national laws in one way or another. Their captains smuggled, ran slaves from Africa to the Caribbean. They traded opium in China. Boats like the Peregrine relied on speed to outrun the police. You have to remember these Chesapeake boats were unique. This type had certain high-speed sailing characteristics. They rode low to the water, with sharp ends from deadrise or empty dead space where the boards slant upward. They had raked masts to change the angle of moment so the bows would stay in the water without the buoyancy they lost from the sharpness. They carried lots of sail area.” She added, “The best ones were built in and near River Sunday in small hidden harbors.”

  Cutter said, “From the records we have, this ship was always used in something legal. Her Quaker owners would not have stood for anything crooked.”

  “May be true, assuming the merchants knew for sure what their captains did when they weren’t looking.”

  She went on, “Some of the faster brigs carried legal cargoes, perishables such as fruit. The tea had to be carried back fast too. The importers had Federal regulations that allowed them to put off paying their import duties for up to eighteen months. They could bank and leverage their tax funds to buy more tea, then pay off the earlier taxes with additional profits. The faster the boat could make the trip, the more money made. Also, the fast boats demanded higher freight rates.”

  “Time is money,” said Cutter. “So how do we find out what the Peregrine was up to?”

  “First let’s make sure we didn’t miss anything in the regular sources.” She went back to the shelf. She lifted down a gray-jacketed book and carried it to her desk, pushing aside other documents.

  “Well worn. You use it a lot?”

  “A history of the clipper ships of the early period,” she said as she opened it, and began thumbing. “It’s one of the few copies still available. I love touching it.” He noticed the pages were brown with age.

  “What’s the difference between early and later period?” asked Cutter.

  “Later period was after 1850. It started when the shipbuilders learned how to make the big three-masted clippers, the ones most people call clipper ships.”

  “I wondered about that because our boat only has two masts.”

  She added, “The later vessels had a different hull design, more rounded to carry more freight. They got speed because of size and amount of sail, not so much from the knifelike Chesapeake lines.”

  “So we’re looking for only the two-masted ones, the brigs.”

  “Yes. Some two-mast topsail schooners, not brigs, sailed in the China Trade too, but mostly brigs because their square sails allowed the boat to perform better. You see, the trade winds pushed the boat in the right direction but the boat had to have them blow from behind to get real speed. The square sails were good at doing that. The schooners mostly sailed across the wind and so had to tack and maneuver a lot.”

  “The bigger clippers had huge square sails.”

  “You got that right. They also had large hulls and with all the sails they really moved fast. Of course they needed more sailors to set all those sails. So, the steamers with smaller, less expensive crews won out and the use of sailing clippers died.”

  She thumbed through the index. “Nothing on your Osprey. Let’s find out about the Peregrine.”

  Two references applied to ships called Peregrine. One was for a three-master built in 1850. Katy said that many times the shipbuilders would use t
he same name on a later ship, especially if the namesake had been fast.

  She read the other entry:

  “The Peregrine sailed as one of the fastest Baltimore clippers of this period. Owned by the Quaker firm of Williams Tea of New York, she made a record passage of 56 days from Callao Peru to Lintin Island, off Canton, China in 1835 which was not surpassed for several years until the advent of larger vessels.

  “According to the Canton newspaper of that time, she lost a famous race with a British boat, the Willow.”

  “I know about that one,” said Cutter. “Our English competitor won’t stop reminding me.”

  He added, “Her captain was quoted afterward as stating ‘Peregrine will come back. She’s not finished yet.’ We have his words in a sign across the back of the boathouse at Jolly’s shipyard. It cheered up the workers this spring as we put together the hull.”

  “Inspiring.”

  She read further. “Here’s the ship’s port of registration. It also states she traded in the Pacific for many years.” Her finger moved across the page. “Did you know she sank off New Jersey in September 1840 on a return trip from China?”

  Cutter smiled. ”One of our competitors reminded me of the sad fact at a recent race meeting in New York.”

  She closed the book. “I know from other research a coastal storm that particular April sank ships all up and down the East Coast.”

  Katy decided to research the original registration of the Peregrine. She rummaged through small drawers in a wooden file case. After a few minutes of searching well-thumbed index cards, she jotted numbers on a pad of paper.

  “Come on.” They entered a dimly lit room. He noted rows of books with circular stairways among high files. He smelled mildew mixed with the odor of old paper and leather. He followed her up the steps, his eyes watering. At the topmost level she kneeled in front of dusty cardboard boxes.

  “Microfilm,” she said as she pulled out small boxes and started off again to a film machine. After going through several reels, she found the right year. Soon, the two of them were reading the Peregrine document.