They returned in mid-morning; the town was moderately busy and there were numbers of uniforms visible in the street. Presumably many of the officers in the training battalions nearby had leisure time to fill in town.
Not so far from the hotel, the doors of the other house of ill-fame opened and a pair of gentlemen made their way out after their night of relaxation. Marcie snorted her distaste.
“Call themselves ‘officers and gentlemen’, and walk out in broad daylight, bold as brass!”
One of them carried the stars of a lieutenant colonel on his shoulders; the South had evidently welcomed Curtis-Manvers to its bosom.
They were no more than thirty yards apart, could not avoid a confrontation.
The Colonel stopped in amazement, pointed an accusing finger.
“Burke! Is that you?”
“Curtis-Manvers, I believe. I see that you have finally stopped running, you disgusting little beast!”
“But, you have no right to be here, Burke…”
Dick had no desire to be denounced as a Union officer, cut him short.
“You are a yellow-bellied coward, Curtis-Manvers! I told you when last we met that if I ever saw you again I would shoot you down like the dog you are. You are carrying a side-arm, sir. Have you found the courage to use it?”
They had attracted a crowd, many of the onlookers wearing a uniform; those immediately in line with the pair scattered to the side, left them facing each other in the street. The insult Dick had offered could not be ignored, must be met there and then,
There was no way out.
Curtis-Manvers suspected that if he attempted to run then any one of the several officers watching might shoot him out of hand, and be applauded. He could demand the formalities of a duel, but that would do no more than create a delay of two minutes while seconds were found from the onlookers. He had no choice, other than to take such advantage as he could from the rage he must be assumed to feel. He reached to the leather holster at his side, unbuttoned the flap and pulled out his hand gun, cocking it to rotate a full chamber under the hammer. He fired without any further warning or salute.
Curtis-Manvers got off two rounds before Dick had brought his Colt to the hip; both bullets ploughed furrows in the dirt road, fired too hastily and before he had levelled the heavy Adams revolver. Dick fired three pointed rounds, slowly and accurately, the soft lead balls penetrating the chest and flattening to cause massive, and fatal, wounds.
Civilian peace officers and Army Provosts ran to the sound of the shots, demanded the stories of the onlookers.
“That gentleman with the English accent, suh! He was walking peaceful up the road in the company of his lady friend when the man in the colonel’s uniform came out of the Molly-Shop and shouted at him. The soldier called him and the Englishman said as how he was a yellow dog and he was pledged as a man of honour to end his career of infamy when next he saw him!”
Dick was a little surprised – that was not exactly as he recalled the incident. He did not argue, however; it covered the important facts.
Other witnesses agreed with the first speaker, calling him ‘general’ and making clear that his word was to be accepted without query. The lawmen came to Dick for his story, much inclined to exonerate him without further ado, bearing in mind where the dead man had come from and all they had heard. Legal formalities demanded that they recorded a statement, however.
“Curtis-Manvers was an Englishman, like me, gentlemen. We met elsewhere in another regiment and he behaved in cowardly fashion and ran from a formal meeting with me. I did not know he was here, and am here myself by merest coincidence, a passenger on the prize recently brought into port. I must confess, however, that I am very pleased to have come across him. I have had every intention of making an end to him for some little time, gentlemen!”
Cowards should be shot – that went without saying and they had been told that the dead man had fired two rounds without waiting for Dick to step up to his mark. Many of the witnesses had categorically accused him of dishonourable conduct and had said they would have testified against him as a murderer had he been successful in his killing.
They assumed that the previous encounter had been in England, or in a garrison of British soldiers. It would have been inappropriate to pry further, they thought – the gentleman had solved the problem in proper fashion.
“Do you intend to stay in Wilmington, Mr Burke?”
“I sail tonight, gentlemen, on board the Rattlesnake, unless you wish me to stay to face a court.”
The Provosts said that as far as they were concerned the affair was a matter of honour, and one in which Mr Burke had behaved well. The civilians had no wish to prosecute Mr Burke but were very glad to know that he was to leave town. The simplest way of keeping the peace was to ensure that the restless were kept at a distance; they wished him a long and honourable life, elsewhere.
“Join me on the bridge when we sail, Mr Burke?”
“I would be pleased to, Captain Rodgers. I have never seen the sailing of a steamship without sails.”
“It demands a different set of skills, I believe, sir.”
They cast off in late afternoon, an hour or so before full dark so as to run down the river in daylight.
“No shore lights or marked buoys, not in wartime, Mr Burke. Running the river at night is not for me, sir!”
Rodgers spoke to a pair of inshore fishing boats as they reached the river mouth; they had seen two blockaders, a sailing frigate and a sidewheel sloop.
“Frigate will be far more heavily armed, a broadside of twenty or more big cannon probably, but harmless except by bad luck. The sloop will have one or two pivot guns and two or four of broadside pieces, heavy guns and firing explosive shells. The steamer can position herself wherever she will while the frigate must manoeuvre with wind. So the frigate may be avoided the more easily by a steamer, unless she just happens to be in the right place.”
“You carry no guns, Captain Rodgers?”
“They add weight and reduce speed, and need crews of trained naval men, who are hardly to be found in the South. In any case, I am no pirate nor am I in the privateering trade. We run, Mr Burke.”
As night fell, the dark of the moon, they crept slowly out to sea.
“At four or five knots we are almost invisible, Mr Burke. Painted black, no lights of any sort, and, very importantly, the furnaces burning low. At full speed there will be the occasional flame curling from the stacks and red-hot cinders frequently escaping – visible five miles away and more. The Union sloop is a paddle steamer, which means she is older than us and likely with a less efficient set of boilers – liable to be far more easily seen. So we crawl with all lookouts set.”
Nothing for half an hour and then the lookouts on the port side of the bridge called a light, a red glow, distant to the north.
“Boiler fires, or should be, sir.”
Rattlesnake eased onto a more southerly course and the lookouts reported the gleam in the north to be falling more and more towards their stern. Rodgers rang down for more speed.
“The wind is rising a mite, Mr Burke. Frigates can be very fast and we do not wish to be in sight at dawn.”
“What speed can we make, Captain Rodgers?”
“Loaded as we are and in these seas, probably sixteen knots, Mr Burke, but, only for twenty hours, because we would then have burned all of our coal! High speed can multiply our consumption of coal five or six times over. At nine knots we have coal for one hundred hours, which is ample for the run to Bermuda, and I intend not to exceed eight knots if it may be avoided, thus to have much in hand.”
“So you could not, for example, cross the Atlantic, sir.”
“Not in this ship, Mr Burke. She has been designed as a blockade runner – a fast passage from the Louisiana or Florida coast to Cuba was the original intent.”
It did not add up – Captain Rodgers’ explanations made no sense. The ship must have taken at least six months to build, and she was not ne
w, on her maiden voyage, now. The war was less than six months old, much less. There had been no blockade to run before the war.
He suddenly realised that he was wrong – there had been a single, specific form of trade that had been totally banned with the navies of more than one country seeking transgressors. Rattlesnake had been built as a slaver, hence the run to and from Cuba.
Very nasty, but also comforting because it meant that Captain Rodgers was long in the habit of sneaking through the night and avoiding the attentions of the minions of the state. The fact that he was here now testified that he had not been caught and imprisoned or hanged, said that he was good at his trade.
“We shall make perhaps seven knots through the night, Mr Burke, which should take us well offshore without creating any furnace glow and leaving no trail of smoke. With the dawn I shall ease her up just a mite, a little faster but leaving no great trail of coal-smoke and hopefully cruise the whole day at that speed. Two hundred miles offshore and we will be discovered only by accident. Three days thereafter should see us off Bermuda and exchanging courtesies with the Royal Navy.”
“Will the Union not have ships off the coast of Bermuda, Captain Rodgers?”
“Probably not – they could run foul of the Royal Navy. The chances of an incident would be high – it would require no more than a bad-tempered captain for a minor occurrence to become a diplomatic disaster. It would not be worth the risk, bearing in mind that England can ban American trade from its ports.”
“Is that so important?”
“Saltpetre, sir – necessary for gunpowder and half and more of the world’s supply coming from India.”
Trade from India necessarily went through English ports.
Dawn broke on an empty sea and the voyage to Bermuda proceeded uneventfully.
They docked in Hamilton with no great fanfare, joining at least forty vessels tied up in the old harbour which, before the war, would rarely have seen two at a time.
“Fast schooners the bulk of the vessels here, Mr Burke. Small craft that can slip into isolated creeks in the backwoods, most of them. Eighty to one hundred and fifty tons, the bulk of them. All very well, but you will need one hell of a lot of them to run a war on their back!”
“Just six ships I can see of your size or bigger, Captain Rodgers. Fast steam blockade runners, that is. I presume the big four- and six-masters are the ocean-going carriers out of England?”
“They would not run the blockade in them, that is for sure, sir. Though they might send them across to Mexico, to Matamoros for example. Just a few miles across the border and running the cargoes overland by wagon train. Mexico is neutral, so the Union might not wish to stop cargoes going into her ports, especially in English ships.”
It was an interesting set of risks to balance – Dick would not wish to be the captain of a Union blockader.
“I shall be setting up for myself in England, Captain Rodgers, quite possibly in Liverpool. If you should be in the way of trading directly with England then we might meet again. Have you a contact in Bermuda or elsewhere I could use for a letter to give my direction in England?”
Rodgers gave the name of his factor in Bermuda, expecting that he might well one day wish to locate himself on the far side of the Atlantic.
“By the way, just as an afterthought, you might say, sir – you made a very tidy job of that English colonel back in Wilmington. You might just possibly think that it was not exactly the first time you’d been involved in such a business, Mr Burke.”
“I spent a few months in Kansas and Missouri, Captain Rodgers – mostly carrying a Sharps.”
“Did you now, sir – well, who would have thought that? You being so quiet spoken a young English gentleman and all!”
“Little need that I know to shout my mouth off, Captain Rodgers. As well, there is this peculiar American habit of referring to a young man as a ‘Kid’. Rather embarrassing, especially in the Confederacy!”
“You would not object was I to mention a possible identity for you back in Wilmington, Mr Burke?”
“I do not intend to return to America for some while, Captain Rodgers, and to the Confederacy never, so it will affect me very little. However, I achieved a little of notoriety at Bull Run, wearing the blue, so it might be better to keep all quiet. Some of the more foolish might question how it came about that you helped me to leave the Confederacy.”
“Enough said, sir!”
Dick smiled, retaining the quiet persona.
Dick went ashore and began the process of looking for a cabin to England, not very easy because there were few passengers on the run, the bulk of the ships slow merchantmen with no facilities for idle bodies.
Two days found a choice of three vessels with cabin space, two bound for Bristol, the third for Liverpool.
He bought passage on the Liverpool run; he had no desire at all to land in Bristol – just a little too close to home.
The voyage gave him time to think, and to plan for the future. He had some money to hand, though far less than he had hoped for when first going out to America, but still a sufficiently substantial sum to set him up in a business.
He wondered who he should trade with. The Union must surely win in the end and would have some gratitude perhaps for its allies. The South must become increasingly desperate, dig deeper and deeper into its pockets.
Long term gain against short-run profiteering - a difficult decision!
Book One: The Making
of a Man Series
Chapter Eight
Dick reached Liverpool on the high tide of a gloomy January day, the westerly that had brought them quickly across the Atlantic blowing in a mixture of near-horizontal rain and sleet. The docks were crowded and, despite the half-gale, stinking of soot and smoke. He estimated a thousand masts in direct sight, three or even four hundred ships, mostly tied up to the shore but a number at anchor out in the river waiting a berth and others shifting in and out of the port, mostly under tow to sidewheel tugs throwing out clouds of black smoke that lay thick over the water and drifted across the warehouses and stevedores on the shoreline.
He had come to friendly terms with the Second Mate during their six weeks at sea, leant on the rail, borrowed duffle coat tight to his neck, watching him making ready for berthing.
"The advantage of being owned by a merchant house with its own wharves, Mr Burke. The independent ships, the trampers and the larger grain carriers particularly, have to signal to their agents for a berth on arrival and may often have to lay at anchor a mile offshore for a week or more waiting their turn. We will tie up on this tide, sir. Not that it matters to passengers, of course - it would be a small boat for them if need arose."
"A fast turn round, Mr Nichols?"
"It could be, Mr Burke, but not for me - I am due leave this time, will not sail again for two months, and then in another ship, I doubt not, as First Mate with a little luck. The company has eight ocean-going cargo carriers, Mr Burke, one of the larger concerns in Liverpool. Most are on the run direct across to the St Lawrence to the Canadian wheat ports - there is no end to the demand for wheat, it crosses the Atlantic literally by the millions of tons. Westwards, the holds are full of cottons and woollens, again a massive tonnage, building again just now. There has been a downturn in trade these last two years, the warehouses cram-packed with bales of raw cotton waiting for the spinners to buy them."
The embargo on cotton exports would be ineffectual then - the buyers in Lancashire would be in no way incommoded for a year or two. Dick made a note for the letter he would send to Washington.
He had decided to keep in contact with McClellan's people for a while, a year or two, and then, probably, gradually let the acquaintance fade. It was, he had decided, wiser than simply taking their money and running. McClellan had the Scots detective Alan Pinkerton on his staff and his agency - renowned as ruthlessly bloody-handed in its dealings with strikers and others it saw as criminals - might easily be tasked to pursue one they saw as a fraudster
.
"How would I go about discovering a hotel in Liverpool, Mr Nichols? One that is proper for a businessman, that is."
"Talk to our people in the office at the docks, Mr Burke. They will be able to point you in the right direction, I doubt not."
"Where do the genteel live in Liverpool, sir? I may well choose to settle in this part of the world and would wish to purchase in the better part of the town."
"Across the water, Mr Burke, to the west, upwind of the smoke and smell, over on the Birkenhead side. Some even live further along the coast or to the north, towards Southport, the railway allowing easy access to their places of business."
Branch lines connected even the smallest villages to the cities, of course; he had forgotten that. More correctly, he thought, coming from the rural fastnesses of Dorset, he had never really been aware of the modern world.
He took rooms in the Adelphi Hotel, not the most expensive but one that showed a reasonable plumpness of pocket. He ate in the dining room that night, watching, observing, listening to the crowd of businessmen about him. He soon discovered that he needed to visit a tailor before attempting to enter into trade himself - he was out of place, stood out as unconventional in his attire, and that would never do. He overheard more than one man commenting on the 'Yankee in the corner'.
"I have lately returned from the States, sir, and, of all things, my ship was taken by a privateer! I lost the great bulk of my wardrobe to the looters, the so-called Southern gentlemen!"
The tailor's sympathies laid very much with the Abolitionist cause - all except the very few of his craft who served the fashionable aristocracy in London were of the Radical persuasion - it was a tradition, very nearly compulsory for the masters of the trade.
"The newspapers tell us of several such outrages, sir. The Union navy has caught the bulk of the privateers though, but a number of naval raiders are loose on the High Seas. The word in Liverpool is that the bulk of trade with the North is now to be carried in English bottoms; the Confederacy will not risk the might of the Royal Navy, one suspects."
A Victorian Gent (The Making of a Man Series, Book 1) Page 17