La Vengeance was suffering terrible damage to her planking, Constellation to her rigging. The American ship’s mainmast had taken multiple hits. Shrouds and stays on all three masts had been shot away. Dead Marines and sailors littered her weather deck. Others, badly wounded, moaned and struggled to pull themselves up, their pitiful cries for succor ignored because no man could be spared to carry them below to the surgeon. Not three feet from where Richard stood as stoically as an inhuman blend of terror and discipline allowed, a Marine private, felled from the mizzen top, splattered supine onto the deck. His hollow eyes rolled over to Richard, his mouth opening and closing in silent supplication, his body shivering and shaking as though from freezing cold, until the lifeblood drained out of him and he lay still, his glazed eyes, even in death, locked on the first lieutenant.
“They mean to board us, Captain!” Richard warned, forcing himself free of the Marine’s dead gaze when La Vengeance suddenly shifted course and came at them bow on. In the ghastly glow of sporadic cannon fire they could see French Marines and sailors assembling on the foredeck brandishing a lethal assortment of muskets, pistols, boarding pikes, tomahawks, cutlasses, and belaying pins. It was L’Insurgente all over again.
“Bring her off, Mr. Waverly,” Truxtun commanded. “Down helm!”
“It’s no good, sir!” the ship’s master yelled back, a rare hint of panic in his voice. “She won’t answer! She’s too shot up!”
“Mr. Cutler! The carronades!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“Mr. Porter, pass word to Mr. Sterrett to load with double shot and hold fire until he hears the carronades. Then, by God, tell him to give them everything he has, aimed at her foredeck!”
“Aye, aye, Captain!”
The two ships closed to within seventy yards, sixty, fifty yards—every yard bringing the snub-nosed devil guns within a more deadly range. Loaded with 24-pound shot in two of them, langrage and grape and case shot in three, they were swung on their casters to bear directly on the Frenchman’s bow.
“Steady, men,” Richard encouraged the five three-man gun crews.
Forty-five yards.
“You see your target. Wait for my command.”
Forty yards.
On board La Vengeance, the men in the bow held up weapons and shouted heated words of defiance. A bow-chaser barked, then another. The Americans ducked low, but the round shot merely bounced off Constellation’s hull and dropped into the ocean.
Thirty-five yards.
“Steady . . . steady . . .”
The long guns on both ships fell silent. French Marines held the Americans in the foretops at bay with a steady stream of musketry. La Vengeance loomed, a giant black silhouette against a slightly lighter backdrop of gloom, gliding closer and closer, until the distance separating the two ships was a mere twenty-five yards. On board Constellation , sailors on the starboard side armed with pistols and pikes clutched long wooden poles to fend off and prevent the enemy from grappling hold, pulling the American frigate in close, and unleashing her legions of hell.
“Steady . . . steady . . . Now, men! Now! Fire!”
Five carronades roared as one, seconds before a measured broadside of long guns erupted on the deck below, all guns trained on the enemy’s bow. Masses of hard, hot metal pummeled the French frigate, caving in strakes, shoving her bow off the wind and broadside to Constellation as the rage of carronades tore through enemy ranks like so many bowling balls on a green, cutting, slicing, and carving in a macabre feast of death, destruction, and mayhem.
“Reload!” Richard shouted on the weather deck.
“Reload!” Sterrett shouted on the gun deck.
The broadside was repeated. La Vengeance, dangerously cut up and caught unaware by the carronade onslaught, fought to come off the wind and turn away from the devastation. On her foredeck, French sailors and Marines threw up their hands, staggered backward, cried out in agony. American Marines in the tops added to the onslaught, lobbing grenades onto La Vengeance’s deck and bringing swivel guns and musket fire back into action. It was sheer butchery. No Frenchman was left standing. Some, perhaps crawling aft, were pinned in tight against the smashed-in bulwarks, escaping the bodies and body parts strewn in expanding pools of blood forward. After a third broadside exploded from Constellation, the great ocean fell silent, as though the two combatants, each stunned to the core, had paused to take stock of the carnage and chaos each had wrought against the other.
As La Vengeance slewed off the wind, nothing but her bowsprit, lower foremast, and mizzenmast remained standing. Nonetheless, the sails on those damaged spars remained functional. As she drifted apart and away, she began listing to larboard, suggesting that at least one shot from Constellation had hulled her at the waterline.
“Damnation!” Truxtun swore under his breath. He watched in agonizing frustration as the lights in his enemy’s gun ports faded into specks in the distance. Constellation’s body was too bruised and battered to give chase. “We had the bastards!”
“Have them, is how I see it, Captain,” Waverly countered. “If that floating hulk isn’t done for, then I’m a farmer from Tennessee.”
“Watch out the mainmast!” Boatswain Bowles suddenly cried out, pointing upward.
With an almighty rip and a resounding crack! the mainmast, which had teetered ominously during the engagement, its supporting shrouds and stays sprung by enemy fire and its base battered by multiple whacks of round shot, snapped in two just above the deck and toppled sideways. Crashing against the larboard bulwarks, it lay motionless for a split second like a giant oar shipped inboard, balanced on its yards, before it rolled over and splashed into the Atlantic, still tethered to the ship by two lengths of rope. Four topmen went with it, along with James Jarvis, midshipman. One topman, still alive, slung an arm listlessly over a yard and was dragged behind in the water. Two others floated beyond him, belly down. Jarvis was nowhere to be seen, presumably trapped somewhere under the heavy shroud of canvas.
Richard glanced at Truxtun, who gave him a brief nod in reply.
“Mr. Bowles!” Richard shouted forward. “Retrieve those men and ax those ropes! Get the wounded below to the surgeon! Fix stoppers to the two masts and rig temporary shrouds and stays!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Bowles called back. A shrill of whistles from his two boatswain’s mates awoke the crew from their postbattle stupor and drew their attention away from the horrific sight of their shipmates lying about them, many of them dead, dying, or grotesquely maimed.
As the gruesome work got under way, Nate Waverly stood with hands on hips, surveying the damage to Constellation’s rigging. Halyards, lifts, braces, sheets. Lines of every purpose and description lay in unruly coils and long serpentine formations all over the deck. Aloft, from what could be seen of holes and tears in the faint light, not a single sail had escaped damage. “We’ll have a hell of time beating north with this rig,” he commented matter-of-factly, his creased face gray with fatigue and concern.
Forward, despite mind-numbing exhaustion, sailors worked feverishly to comply with the first lieutenant’s commands, motivated, perhaps, by the simple blessing of being alive and able to work. No one, from captain to captain’s clerk, paused to think of the horrors about to unfold on the surgeon’s table down on the orlop. Or of the sharks beginning to circle and thrash about in the waters close by, drawn to the surface by the smell of blood dripping from the scuppers. Soon enough, these demons of the deep would be rewarded with a banquet of sawed-off limbs heaved overboard by a surgeon’s mate.
“I quite agree, Mr. Waverly,” Truxtun said, his voice containing a neutral, faraway quality that was unusual for him. “Which is why we are not returning to Saint Kitts. “
“Where to, then, sir?”
“Port Royal. We can make repairs there.”
Constellation WAS CRIPPLED. Her body and soul remained intact, but her mobility was threatened by the loss of her mainmast and the damage to her rigging. Her rudder, while serviceab
le, had also taken a hit. The odds were long, but should an enemy warship happen upon her, she would be hard-pressed to present her broadside.
Jamaica lay approximately 700 miles to the west, and Saint Kitts only 150 miles northward. But Nate Waverly was right: sailing upwind under these conditions would prove challenging if not impossible. Heading westward meant that Constellation would have the wind at her back, a point of sail that would put the least strain on a makeshift jury-rig and allow stability for carpenters and sail-makers to make minor repairs and adjustments along the way. Better still, since the trades blew predictably from the northeast, it was unlikely that Constellation would have to alter course until she reached Port Royal.
First order of business: clear away the debris on the weather deck and make Constellation as shipshape as possible. Second order of business: burial at sea for the fifteen American dead. Captain Truxtun in full dress uniform presided over the somber proceedings alongside his commissioned and warrant officers and the ship’s complement of Marines, less those six lying alongside their nine shipmates amidships, each entombed in a pure white shroud of flaxen sailcloth. After Truxtun had read the service and committed the bodies to the deep, Richard dismissed the mustered divisions. As a reward for a job well done—and as an act of mercy—he divided the crew into four watches of two hours each rather than the customary two watches of four hours each, a watch bill first introduced to the Continental navy by Capt. John Paul Jones. Such a regimen allowed the men, in rotation, to sleep for eight hours straight, a rare luxury at sea but one desperately needed by men living on the edge.
The week’s voyage to Jamaica proved uneventful but ultimately disappointing. The morning after Constellation dropped anchor off naval headquarters at Port Royal, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker was piped on board with full military honors. He was keen to learn more about the battle with La Vengeance—the first details of which had begun to wend their way through the ubiquitous web of British intelligence—and unhappy to inform Captain Truxtun that, alas, he was unable to supply a new mainmast for Constellation.
“I must apologize on His Majesty’s behalf,” he said to Truxtun and his first lieutenant in the after cabin, “but we have no spars to spare. The war in Europe, you understand. You can see for yourself that I command a somewhat smaller squadron than I did during your last visit. Of course, ever since your navy entered these waters, our navy has had less need of our own ships, which is why My Lords of the Admiralty have recalled so many of them to home waters.” He smiled as a steward bowed before him, offering a glass of claret from a tray. “You have been most helpful to our cause, and for that His Majesty is most grateful. I am pleased to report that attacks on our merchantmen are down considerably from a year ago. Most sectors report no hostile activity of any sort in months. As a result, your merchant captains, and ours, are free to sail wherever the winds of profit take them.” He raised his glass. “Cheers, Commodore. Cheers, Lieutenant. Here’s to ridding the seas of vermin.” He took a healthy sip, as did Captain Truxtun. Richard left his glass on the table.
“What of Toussaint L’Ouverture?” Richard asked after Hyde had set his glass down with a contented sigh. He well recalled his conversation with Hugh Hardcastle in Barbados and was curious to know the extent to which the term “vermin” applied in the admiral’s mind.
“I am pleased to report that General Toussaint has succeeded in his campaign,” Parker replied, as though Richard’s question fitted comfortably within the scope of the conversation and his own ethical view of the world. “He doesn’t rule the entire island—by agreement, the Spanish have retaken control of the central and eastern portions—but he does control all of Saint-Domingue—or Haiti, as he intends to call the colony once Napoleon grants independence. You should be proud, Lieutenant. As Haiti’s first president, Toussaint will preside over a government based on your American model.” He smiled broadly. “A rather impressive achievement for a former slave, what? Makes one rather proud to have had a hand in the making.”
“Yes, sir,” Richard said, inwardly thinking, a slippery fellow, this Admiral Parker. A man of rank and polish and apparent sincerity who manifests no guilt for the duplicitous role he played in the affair—or remorse for the thousands of lives that role had claimed—and who now takes credit for the outcome! In truth, Toussaint had prevailed not because of men like Hyde Parker, but in spite of them. But Richard decided not to press the point. Doing so, he realized, would serve no purpose.
Truxtun, perhaps reading Richard’s thoughts, changed tack. “Admiral,” he asked, “is it true you have no notion of where La Vengeance might be at the moment? Or her disposition?”
“Just so. We know where she is not: Basse-Terre. What we suspect, assuming she remains afloat, is that she is somewhere off to the south where the prevailing currents would take her. We shall soon have this puzzle solved, and when we do, we will notify your Navy Department posthaste.” He glanced over at Richard. “By the bye, Lieutenant, you will be interested to learn that Captain Hardcastle has put in for duty at Spithead, and his request has been granted. More’s the pity. He was my finest officer and I shall miss him. I hope he finds the action he is seeking.”
“Yes, sir,” Richard said straight-faced, knowing full well why Hugh Hardcastle had put in for duty at Spithead.
“Well then, Admiral,” Truxtun ventured, “I think our business here is finished. I offer my thanks once again for allowing us to transfer our wounded to your hospital ashore. In a few days we shall be sailing for Virginia. I understand there are American merchant vessels in Kingston who wish to depart with us.”
“Quite so, Captain. In the meantime, let our dock master know what provisions we can supply for your cruise home and what repairs our dockyard might make to Constellation before you leave. I am putting a dispatch vessel at your disposal, should you wish to send word ahead of your intentions.”
“Thank you, Admiral. That is most generous of you.”
“My honor, my dear sir. My honor.”
A week later, under a more substantial jury-rig, Constellation weighed anchor and accompanied a convoy of seven American merchantmen northward through the Windward Passage. Helped along by fair winds and the swift-flowing Gulf Stream, she reached Hampton Roads in respectable time. Awaiting her at the Gosport Navy Yard on a cool, blustery, brilliantly sunny afternoon in late March was a welcome whose like no one on board could have anticipated.
Hardly were they within the confines of the large natural harbor when seventeen warships—a fair representation of the forty-eight warships that now constituted the U.S. Navy—erupted in a series of sixteen-gun salutes. Officers and Marines on deck and sailors arrayed in the top-hamper on ratlines and footropes stood in silent tribute to Constellation as she coasted to her mooring. Ashore, fife-and-drum bands struck up lively tunes as civilians who had assembled en masse at the docks waved hats and added their huzzahs to the din of rockets exploding high overhead.
The next few hours on board ship were frenetic. Dignitaries of various political and military stripes either came on board or sent word that they would be coming. Excited chatter abounded about the battle with La Vengeance, to such a degree that fact became difficult to distinguish from fiction, heroics from bravado. This much, at least, was known: La Vengeance had made it to the Dutch island of Curaçao, where her captain—a Frenchman named Pitot who reported to his superiors that he had been attacked by a ship of the line—had driven her onto a sandbar to keep her from sinking. On board, among other passengers, were thirty-six American prisoners-of-war who were subsequently released for helping to save the lives of a large number of distraught French dignitaries. La Vengeance, however, could not be saved. She would never sail again.
Accounts of the battle—relayed to the American press courtesy of British intelligence, reports sent ahead by Captain Truxtun, and several of the thirty-six American prisoners on board La Vengeance who had recently arrived back in the United States—electrified the young nation. Accolades poured in via congr
atulatory speeches, letters, and written communications dispatched from the halls of Congress.
Not all of the communications were of that sort, however. On the day Richard arrived in Hampton Roads he received a letter by military post that was addressed simply to “Lt. Richard Cutler, USS Constellation” and written by the hand of the one he held closest to his heart. He stared down at the cursive flow, wondering how on earth she could have known his whereabouts and troubled by what that knowledge might portend.
As quickly as decorum allowed, he withdrew to the privacy of his cabin. He sat down on the chair by his desk, unfolded the letter, and read.
27 February 1800
South Street
Hingham, Massachusetts
My Dearest:
I do not know where you are or where you are bound. I am thus sending a copy of this letter to every British and American naval base of which I am aware, in the hope and prayer that somehow by God’s grace you will receive it and act upon it, if duty and circumstances permit.
Your father has taken a turn for the worse. We understand it is his heart. There is no immediate danger, I think, and Caleb is here, which gives him great comfort. But he is calling for you, and I must confess, I am concerned that he is being so adamant. It’s as though he may sense something that Dr. Prescott cannot.
Come if you can, my darling. If you cannot, we will all understand, your father first and foremost. But come if you can.
Katherine
Fifteen
Hingham, Massachusetts April 1800
ASSUMING FAIR WINDS when returning to home port from the east or south, Richard Cutler normally charted a course between the Graves and Green, the two islands located farthest out among the thirty-odd islands fringing Boston Harbor. Once past those islands he would tack around to a southeasterly course toward Boston’s commercial wharves, careful to keep the shoals of Deer Island and the Winthrop Peninsula well off to starboard. He would hold that course until he came abreast of the lighthouse on the northern tip of Long Island, at which point he would order his crew either to make final preparations for docking at Long Wharf, often his initial destination, or to steer around the southern end of Long Island eastward toward Hingham Bay. From there it was an easy lope through the sheltered waters of the bay to the docks at Crow Point, always his final destination.
The Power and the Glory Page 30