by Ron Carter
Notes
The dates, issues, participants, and results of the convention appearing in this chapter are taken from the following:
Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention, pp. 192–333.
Warren, The Making of the Constitution, pp. 207–33.
Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention, pp. 173–79.
Berkin, A Brilliant Solution, pp. 92–103.
Farrand, The Framing of the Constitution of the United States, pp. 84–93.
Moyers, Report from Philadelphia, pages designated Monday, June 11, 1787, through Tuesday, June 19, 1787.
The description of Alexander Hamilton is found in Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention, pp. 94–96.
Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts was called the “Grumbletonian” because of his habitual grumbling at just about everything he did not originate. Bernstein, Are We to Be a Nation? p. 179.
The reader is reminded that speeches have been abstracted because it is impossible to include every address in its entirety in this volume. Wording has been changed where it was felt necessary to make the language and figures of speech understandable today. Every effort has been made to preserve the intent and meaning of the original transcripts, and wherever possible, direct quotations have been included. Errors and misrepresentations are the sole responsibility of this writer.
The Bahamas
June 20, 1787
CHAPTER XVIII
* * *
The tense, shrill shout came down from the crow’s nest, sixty feet up the mainmast of the small schooner Zephyr as she sped south through the clear, blue-green waters, two-hundred-eighty miles due east of the southern coast of East Florida.
“Landfall, sou’west!”
One second later the voice of the sweating, bearded seaman cracked out again, “Ship! Due west. Two ships! Two!”
Below, on the rolling deck, Caleb Dunson and half a dozen crewmen trotted to the railing of the starboard bow and wiped salt-sweat from their eyes to peer westward, hands raised to shade their eyes against the glare of the setting sun, straining to see the irregularity on the flat horizon that would be another of the myriad of tiny islands approaching the Bahamas, and the tall specks that would be two ships. They were not there.
Caleb turned to the first mate, Miles Young, standing next to him. “Get Tunstall and his charts!”
“Yes, sir.” Average height, thin, angular, bearded, dark-haired, pale green eyes, fourteen years in the British navy before abandoning England to become part of the fledgling United States Navy, Young pivoted, bare feet slapping the wet planking of the deck. He jerked open the small door at the quarterdeck and disappeared down four steps into the cramped passage leading to the officer’s quarters, and stopped to hammer on the first door.
The deep, muffled voice of Nathan Tunstall, navigator, called, “Enter,” and Young barged in. Tunstall, stripped to the waist, barefooted and sweating in the heaviness of the tropical heat, stood hunched over his tiny table, piled high with maps. His sextant, alidade, compass, calipers, and other equipment were on a shelf at his left elbow.
Young exclaimed, “Cap’n says bring your maps. Now!”
Taller, red-haired, flaming red beard, jutting chin that gave his face a fierce cast, Tunstall turned narrowed eyes to Young. “What’s happened?”
“Landfall. Sou’west. Two ships due west. Move!”
Tunstall grabbed up two maps and as the two hunched down to hurry through the restricted passageway asked, “How near?”
“Can’t see ’em yet from the deck. Bartolo sees ’em from the nest.”
Bartolo was the tiny, swarthy Portuguese seaman with scraggly beard and bowed legs and the black eyes that Tunstall swore could see ships and land fifteen miles beyond the curvature of the earth. In these waters, open and international by all rules of the sea, but claimed by the British and French and Spanish, and pirates, it was Bartolo the ship’s crew wanted in the crow’s nest.
The two trotted to where most of the crew was clustered at the starboard bow, and the seamen opened a lane to let them take their places beside Caleb. All were barefooted and bearded. Most were stripped to the waist, clad only in pants that reached midway between their knees and ankles, though a few wore a light, striped cotton shirt against the ravages of a blistering tropical sun. All were burned brown, some with dead skin peeling.
In Boston, before they sailed, Caleb had thought hard on the question of a crew, and then sent out word, first to all seamen in the employ of Dunson & Weems Shipping Company, then to any on the Boston waterfront who wished to listen. He was going to take a schooner south into the Bahamas and maybe beyond, into waters legendary for sudden storms, wrecked ships, and lost crews, and now infested with ships from just about every other competing foreign country in the world: Britain, France, Spain, and the Dutch most prominent among them. His purpose was to find any survivors of the crew of a merchantman ship that had been plundered and burned by pirates and driven onto a reef by a storm, if there were any such survivors. Chances of a fight were excellent, and chances of safe return to Boston were not. They would travel fast, go in, get out, and do it under any flag necessary—British, French, Dutch, Spanish, or pirate. They would be armed with muskets, swords, knives, and twelve, thirty-two-pound cannon, concealed by canvas and lashed against the main-deck railings next to the gun ports, which had been newly cut in the small schooner and would be kept closed until they were needed. They would carry twenty extra kegs of gunpowder in the hold for whatever eventualities might be required. Pay would be standard seaman’s wages if they survived to return to Boston, with an additional ten pounds sterling for all who came back. The crew was to be volunteers, and men with families were urged not to apply. Ninety-three volunteers appeared at the Dunson & Weems office; fourteen were chosen, in addition to Caleb, Miles Young to serve as first mate, Nathan Tunstall to navigate, and a ship’s surgeon.
Caleb spoke to Tunstall. “How close are we to the north end of the Bahamas?”
Quickly Tunstall spread a map on the hatch behind them, scanned it, then tapped it with his finger. “We’re about here. About eighty miles north of the first big island. There’s more’n seven hundred islands down there, most small, a lot of them uncharted. I think Bartolo is seeing one of the uncharted ones.”
“Where’s the reef McDaris said has the wreck of the Belle?”
Tunstall pointed to a distinctive “X” he had made on the map. “Right there. About two-hundred-eighty miles south by sou’east. The island is likely uncharted.”
Caleb cupped his hands to shout up to Bartolo, “Can you see the two ships?”
The little man’s arm shot up, pointing. “There. Due west.”
“Use your telescope. What flag?”
Seconds passed while the little man adjusted his telescope and squinted. “Cannot tell.”
“What heading are they on?”
“Due east. T’ord us.”
Suddenly Young pointed. “There!”
Instantly Caleb, Young, and Tunstall raised their telescopes, adjusted them, and picked up the two tiny flecks on the horizon. For several seconds they watched them coming on, growing in size, cutting a course directly for the Zephyr. Caleb lowered his telescope and reflected for a moment before he called to the seaman at the wheel.
“Steady as she goes.” He turned back to Young and Tunstall. “We get ready to put on all canvas, and then we wait until we see their flag.” He glanced up at the flag they were flying—the British Union Jack—and nodded to Young. “Get the crew into the rigging, ready with the water buckets, but wait until we know who those ships are.”
“Aye, sir.”
Young gave orders and a few seamen with hot wind blowing their hair and beards scrambled up the rope ladders to the spars on the two masts, then worked their way outward on the hawsers, bare feet and toes clinging as they leaned forward to loop their arms over the spars with their chests against them while peering at the two ships quartering in from the west. Other seamen wa
lked the ropes to control the spankers and the jibs at the bow and stern, which would give more sail to the slender little schooner. Those still on deck seized heavy wooden buckets and stood by barrels of seawater, ready to dip them full and pass them up the rope ladders to the men in the rigging.
Minutes passed before Bartolo shouted down, “French flags! Both French!”
Caleb and Young felt the relief and rounded their mouths and blew air. A French ship would not be anxious to attack a British ship in these open waters. The British, French, Dutch, and Spanish had long since made their competing claims to most of the string of lush, tropical islands arcing southeast for more than fifteen hundred miles—the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and Lesser Antilles. The British had ports in the Bahamas, Jamaica, Barbuda, Antigua, Dominica, Barbados, Tobago, and others, while the Spanish laid claim to Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Saint Domingo, and Cuba, and the French to Martinique, Marie-Galande, Guadeloupe, and Saint Lucia, and the Dutch to Saint Eustatius and Curacao. While each country jealously hovered over their ships and their islands and ports, none was eager to provoke an incident that could start a naval war with the others. But an American ship? None of them was reluctant to take an American ship if they thought they could conjure up some claim of right to justify it, and avoid retaliation from the United States. Pirate ships were another matter altogether. Seldom seen, they flew any flag, or none at all, and they struck anyone they could from coves and inlets hidden among the hundreds of tiny islands.
The three men on deck had telescopes focused to watch the two ships loom ever larger, their colorful French fleur-de-lis flags blowing in the wind. They were one mile away when Caleb asked Young and Tunstall, “See any cannon ports?”
Both men shook their heads and Young answered, “None. They look like merchantmen.”
At one-half mile Young lowered his telescope and a quizzical look crossed his face, and he turned to Tunstall. “Look at the quarterdeck. The officers. Do they look right?”
Tunstall answered, his voice low. “I been watchin’ them. They don’t look French to me.”
Caleb came alive and turned to the two of them, both with years of experience on the sea far beyond his own. “You mean their dress?”
Young nodded. “French seamen don’t wear dark clothes this close to the equator. And did you ever see the captain of a French merchantman with a sword at his side and a pistol in his belt?” He pointed. “Both ships are riding too high, cutting too big a curl. They aren’t loaded. What’s a merchantman doing coming at us empty? Look how the crew’s standing, spread down both the port and starboard railings. What are they doing? Getting cannon ready?”
Tunstall shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
Caleb turned to the crew, tense, waiting, and barked orders. “Stand by to unfurl the jibs and spankers! Fill the water buckets!” He turned back to Young and Tunstall. “If they haven’t declared themselves at two hundred yards, we make a run.”
At four hundred yards, every man on the Zephyr was at his station, standing like statues in the wind, eyes locked onto every detail of the approaching ships. At three hundred yards the two vessels began a slow turn to their starboard, which would soon show their port side to the schooner and bring them into near collision with the Zephyr if she held her course. At two hundred yards Caleb and his crew stood stock-still to watch the French flag lowered from the mainmasts of the looming ships, and none were sent up to replace them. Two seconds later eight gun ports yawed open on the port side of both ships, and the black snouts of heavy cannon were jammed outward.
“Pirates,” bellowed Young, and the crew of the Zephyr exploded into action even as Caleb shouted orders. “All canvas out! Get the water buckets moving! Helmsman, hard to port, NOW!”
Within one minute, dripping, sloshing buckets of seawater were being relayed up to the men in the rigging, and they threw it drenching on the sails to capture more wind, and dropped the buckets to waiting hands below to be filled and sent up again. On the bow and stern, nimble fingers jerked the lashings from the spanker and jib sails, and they dropped and snapped tight in the wind and within seconds were dripping water from the buckets. The helmsman wrenched the wheel to port, the schooner leaned violently to starboard with Bartolo crouched, clinging in the crow’s nest, and instantly leaped skimming ahead, throwing a forty foot curl and leaving a wake two hundred yards long, like a living thing born to the sea, distancing the larger ships as though they were standing still. The helmsman spun the wheel starboard, and the Zephyr corrected to a course due east.
Caleb ran to the stern to grasp the rail and peer west toward the last arc of the sun, telescope to his eye, tense, watching as the two ships corrected course to follow, and he held his breath as two black gun ports opened in the bow of each ship, and then the muzzles of cannon came thrusting through, and he watched the gun crews lining the heavy guns on the Zephyr. He counted five seconds, then turned to shout at the helmsman, “Hard to port!”
In one second the little ship answered the rudder and swung hard left, and two seconds later Caleb saw the white smoke belch from all four cannon. Four geysers erupted from the sea, straddling the wake where the Zephyr had been, and then the blasting boom swept past the speeding schooner. The gun muzzles disappeared, and one minute later came back into view, reloaded, at the ready.
Caleb judged the interval between the flying schooner and the heavier ships behind at one thousand yards and growing every second, and settled. He glanced at Young, beside him, then back at the rapidly fading ships, and quietly said, “Catch us if you can.” Young grinned and licked at parched, dried lips and said nothing. The big guns blasted one more time, and the crew of the Zephyr watched the geysers leap ninety yards behind to blow spray thirty feet in the air.
With the sun gone, and the western horizon rapidly becoming a line of dwindling yellow against the dark sea, the crew of the schooner watched as the two heavy ships slowed, then swung to starboard. They held their turn until they were but a small silhouette traveling west, from whence they had come, and then faded into the deep dusk.
Caleb gave orders to the men on the first four-hour duty, and the cook went below to prepare the evening mess. Then Caleb led Tunstall and Young down to the captain’s cramped quarters where they spread the charts on a table with a lamp dangling, undulating overhead, casting oblique, moving shadows.
“Where are we now?” Caleb asked.
Tunstall turned the chart to coordinate north, then tapped with his finger. “Right about here.”
Caleb studied the position, then asked, “How far from the wreck of the Belle?”
“We lost about twenty miles running from those ships. We’re close to three hundred miles from the place McDaris said, more or less. Sou’west.”
“Any major islands between?”
“Three big ones.” His finger traced the chart as he spoke. “Grand Bahama here, Great Abaco here, Eleuthera here. The Belle is on an island about here, just south of Eleuthera, north of San Salvador.”
“Can you set the course by the stars?”
Tunstall grinned. “I can set it without the stars.”
The trade winds held steady through the night, and the Zephyr sped south, cutting a great curl that hissed and left a long, straight wake behind, ghostly under the stars and quarter moon. The crew took their four-hour intervals on duty, eyes straining to see hidden, uncharted reefs, and then four hours off duty, curled in their canvas hammocks, swinging lightly with the gentle roll of the little ship. Caleb awoke at the sound of the bells that signaled crew changes and came on deck to watch one man descend from the crow’s nest and another climb up the treads bolted to the mainmast. He paused at the bow railing both times to marvel at the clarity of the blue-green water under the stars, and the occasional glow from luminescent coral that cast a dull, eerie light for thirty yards in all directions. Sunrise found Bartolo back in the crow’s nest, and the great ball seemed to fill the entire eastern horizon as it rose, turning the tops of the masts and the
n the sails on fire with the golden glow. It was during morning mess that Bartolo’s voice came from the crow’s nest.
“Landfall. West sou’west.”
Within seconds Caleb, Young, and Tunstall and his charts were at the bow, adjusting their telescopes, waiting for the rise of the land dead ahead. It came and soon covered much of the western horizon.
“Grand Bahama,” Tunstall said. He pointed south. “Down there is Great Abaco, then Eleuthera, and then the place the Belle should be. We should be there by late tomorrow morning if the wind holds.”
Caleb asked, “Can you find it?”
“If McDaris was right, I can.”
Caleb stroked his beard for a moment. “The British claim the Bahamas?”
“Yes.”
Caleb pointed up the mainmast. “Do we fly the Union Jack?”
Young cut in. “Best chance we have.”
Caleb nodded. “Carry on.”
By noon they had passed four ships far to the west, near the erratic line of islands, three flying British colors, one flying the horizontal orange, white and blue bars of the Dutch. None slowed nor came inquiring. At two o’clock Young pointed east, toward a low, flat cloud, gathering purple, and the crew hung sail canvas sagging from the railings to the hatches, and waited. Just after three o’clock a squall passed over to dump rain so thick the men bowed their heads to breathe. It disappeared to the west as quickly as it had come, leaving the little ship drenched, and the makeshift canvas catch-basins filled with fresh water. The crew used buckets to fill their water barrels while the deck steamed and they dripped with sweat under the unrelenting tropical sun.
The sun dipped to touch the western rim of the world then disappear, and the crew of the Zephyr went on with the monotony of the unending, unchanging routines that filled most of the lives of men who choose the sea. They held their southward course as the quarter moon rose, with men in the crow’s nest and on the starboard railing, watching the distant lights of a few tiny, scattered harbors and small villages on the shores of the islands. The starry night yielded to approaching dawn, and Tunstall came to the port railing to shoot the risen sun with his sextant and take his bearings.