Old Glory

by Christopher Nicole

  Harry seized his hand. ‘With you, John? Nothing would delight me more. But … are we to sail? Or sit around some port while Hopkins dithers as to what to do next?’

  ‘Hopkins will never command us again, I give you my word on that. I made this clear to Congress. I am to have an independent command.’ Paul raised his tankard. ‘To our success. I think I must have been waiting all my life for this moment. Now it is just a matter of reaching the water.’

  ‘And until then?’

  ‘There will be enough to keep us busy. I mean to recruit the finest crew that ever went to sea, and I mean to be sure that every man knows what he is about. So for a start, we shall cast about. Perhaps in this very tavern …’ he frowned past Harry’s shoulder. ‘By all the gods in heaven, is that not that lamentable fellow Bushnell?’

  Harry tuned his head. David Bushnell sat alone at a table in the far corner, drinking deeply. ‘Why, so it is. Have you changed your mind about employing his submersible device?’

  ‘No, Harry, I have not. But he is a sharp mind, no doubt about that. I might consider offering him a place on Ranger.’

  ‘Why not?’ Harry crossed the room and sat down beside the little inventor, who hardly seemed to notice him for a moment, then gave a start of surprise and spilled his beer. ‘Let me get you another,’ Harry said, and summoned one of the barmaids.

  ‘Captain McGann! You are covered in glory, I understand,’ Bushnell said.

  ‘There was little glory to be had at Nassau,’ Harry told him. ‘And yourself?’

  ‘I? I, sir, am covered in the misery of failure.’ Paul sat on his other side. ‘You mean no one will support your scheme for ridding us of that frigate in New York?’

  ‘No, sir. I did obtain support. I took my case to the Continental Army, and receivd the backing of General Washington himself.’

  ‘Well, then … ?’

  ‘I meant that the project was yet a miserable failure, sir.’

  ‘But … what went wrong?’

  Bushnell sighed, and peered into his tankard as if the liquid was the bottom of New York Harbour itself. ‘Well, gentlemen, with the full backing of the General, I recruited myself a crew. A Sergeant Lee, of the Army. A powerful man, able to swim like a fish and hold his breath for four minutes. A perfect choice for such a venture as mine.’

  ‘Not a Lee from Virginia?’ Harry asked. ‘No, sir, I do not believe that Sergeant Lee is from Virginia.’

  ‘Go on, man, tell us what happened? Paul Jones asked, obviously interested despite his disavowal of such a method of warfare.

  ‘Well, sir, as you may know, the English Navy in these waters is commanded by Admiral Lord Howe, a brother of the general commanding the troops. He flies his flag in HMS Eagle, no frigate, sir, but a line of battle ship. Thus when it was learned that he was to visit New York with a view to deciding its suitability as a base for his fleet, I was given my orders. My submersible, together with the gallant sergeant and myself, was taken clandestinely to a place in New Jersey from whence we could enter the water. This was done, the explosive was packed into the bows of my craft, and away went Sergeant Lee.’

  ‘Then what happened?’ Harry cried. ‘You sank the Eagle?’

  ‘Alas, no sir. I had made one miserable, misbegotten error, upon which the entire scheme foundered, literally. Sergeant Lee, a man, Captain McGann, of your strength if fortunately not your size, disappeared into the murky waters of the Hudson River, and duly, so he claimed and I cannot dispute it, manoeuvred his craft exactly beneath the keel of the warship. He then pumped sufficient water out of his ballast tanks, and the craft rose, until with a gentle bump she rested against that keel. The rest was simple. As you will recall from the plans I showed you, there were two hinged flanges attached to the submersible, already set with brass screws, and all the sergeant had to do was set his fuse alight, leave the craft, screw the flanges into the hull of the warship, and swim to safety. These steps he followed precisely, or he says he did, and I am again in no position to gainsay him. He set his fuse, to burn for half an hour, left the craft, and placed the first flange against the hull of the warship, and …’ he sighed.

  ‘Well, sir, well?’ Paul shouted, now highly excited.

  ‘I had forgot, sir, that the bottoms of His Majesty’s Ships, when they are bound for foreign service, are sheathed in copper, to restrict the ravages of the teredo worm.’

  ‘My God,’ Harry said.

  ‘You may well say so, sir. Sergeant Lee tried with all his strength, but could not drive the screws through the copper. His breath had gone, and time was passing, with that slow fuse sputtering only inches from his head. He was forced to abandon, gentlemen, and swim to safety.’

  ‘But the craft was still lodged beneath the warship,’ Paul said.

  ‘Aye, but not secured. The moment it lacked Lee’s restraining hand, it began to drift away on the tide. Within the half an hour it was apparently a hundred yards from the warship. Then it exploded, with a bang which rattled a few teeth, I can tell you that. I heard it myself, far away as I was. And from all reports it frightened the jolly tars half to death, as they had no concept what had caused the noise. However, it did no harm to the ship at all.’

  ‘You poor lad,’ Harry said. ‘What a disaster.’

  ‘Indeed, sir, a total disaster.’

  ‘But you will build another submersible, and devise some better method of affixing it to the hull of a ship?’

  ‘No, sir, I will not,’ Bushnell said. ‘I was trained to be a doctor. As Captain Jones remarked when first we met, it was a grave mistake to have allowed myself to be led astray into schemes for taking life rather than saving by it, and by such nefarious means. I intend to abandon all such daydreams, and concentrate upon my profession. I will wish you gentlemen good night.’

  They watched the sad figure making his way to the door. ‘He is right,’ Paul Jones observed. ‘There are some things which were never meant to be, thank God. To be attacked from beneath the waves would put an end to sea warfare as we know it. Indeed, as anyone can know it. Now, Harry, let us return to the Alfred, and I will show you the plans for Ranger.’

  *

  Harry was enthralled. Ranger was not to be as large as the best British frigates, which might carry more than forty guns and be almost fit to take their places in a line of battle; there was simply not the means to build such a vessel at the colonists’ disposal, nor the materials. But she would carry thirty-six guns, and be a powerful commerce destroyer, as she was designed to be. This also was a disappointment, however the idea might attract Paul. Harry longed to engage a Royal Navy ship itself, at least partly to avenge the misery of his months on board the Cormorant, but he was forced to admit that there was sound sense in the reasoning of Congress. It was well known that there was a considerable and powerful body of English opinion very much opposed to the war, partly because it went against the British grain to fight their own kith and kin, especially when employing Hessian mercenaries to do so — as was the rumour — but even more because the war seemed to most of England’s gentry a colossal waste of their money: they were no believers in the colonial principle. To bring this waste home even more forcibly by destroying as much English trade as possible seemed as good a way as any of arousing further opposition in England, and Congress were sensible that the only way this war could end in their favour, barring massive foreign intervention, which at this moment did not seem very likely, was to make the English ruling class become so weary of it they would tell their government — enough.

  Equally, Congress had shown a great deal of sense in choosing John Paul Jones as the commander of such an essentially piratical venture — they were not unaware of his background. It was indeed while the Ranger was building that Harry came to know his friend far better than ever before, and even to understand him to a degree which had been impossible in the past; in that earlier relationship the Scot, as captain of the Carolina Wind, had felt it necessary to remain aloof even from his First Mate and best friend. T
his reserve, and indeed, his aggressiveness, was a result of his humble origins, Harry now realised, for his father had not even been an innkeeper, but an employed gardener. Paul claimed to have left Scotland of his own free will, and this Harry believed, as apparently he had a brother in Virginia, a journeyman tailor, and it had been this brother who had first introduced him to William Jones, for whom he had done some work — as Harry had never been invited to meet the elder Paul, he gathered that the tailor had not progressed socially as well as his younger brother.

  But certainly the introduction had been a most fortunate break for John Paul, for until then he had sailed on a slaver, bringing Negroes from the Bight of Benin to labour on the West Indian sugar plantations, and it had undoubtedly been that experience which had at once filled him with disgust for the white men, himself included, who could indulge in such a trade, and, paradoxically, with contempt for the black men who would accept such a fate without serious resistance. But such paradoxes were essential parts of Paul Jones’ complex character. As an example, while a very lion when it came to action, he still brooded over his ‘crime’ in shooting the seaman Martin, and was convinced there had to be a warrant out for his arrest on a charge of murder, for which he would be hanged were he ever taken.

  Harry supposed he might be right about being hanged, but hardly for the murder of Martin. Although it had been murder, undoubtedly, as it had been undertaken as a coldblooded act of discipline. But did that make Paul any more reprehensible than the average English Navy captain, who could order a man to be keel-hauled for a far less serious breach of discipline than inciting a mutiny?

  Such ambivalence, added to the different personality Paul revealed when ashore and when afloat, had, Harry knew, to be a source of weakness. Yet he personally had no doubts about following his friend into the very gates of hell, if need be. He still often felt that he was alone against the world, with only Paul Jones as a reliable friend. He fought for the American cause, and identified himself with it, indeed, both because of his forebears and because only in America did there seem to be the slightest hope of making anything of his life — always supposing it was possible even here, or that he even knew what he wanted to achieve. He loved the sea and everything about it, and dreamed of his own command in the course of time, but he also dreamed of recreating the totally happy atmosphere of Tramore, somewhere in the Americas. He even thought he knew where it could be done — in Long Island, with John Palmer, always supposing Palmer had not been driven out or killed by the British. But it couldn’t be done without a woman at his side, to love. And Palmer’s daughter was not the one. There was Irish romanticism distorting his common sense just as much as Paul Jones’ flights of conscience. Because there was only one woman, he now knew, that he could ever love. And she was lost to him. Forever?

  Try as he might to forget her, he could not bring himself to accept that.

  But he knew he might have to believe it, as time went by.

  *

  The keel of the Ranger was finally laid that summer, but even as the carpenters’ hammers got to work the infant United States, so declared by Congress on 4 July 1776, appeared to be collapsing before the weight of British power and determination. General Howe did indeed evacuate Boston during the summer, but only, as predicted, to occupy New York, from whence no one could doubt he meant to invade Pennsylvania, the seat of colonial resistance and government. To find Ranger still a ribbed skeleton? Paul Jones was beside himself with despair as the year wore on, and 1776 went into 1777, and his ship seemed hardly nearer completion, while it became apparent that the Hessian mercenaries everyone was talking about had arrived and were in action. But General Washington, in several campaigns of desperate brilliance, fought for New Jersey and even defeated the dreaded Germans from time to time, while in the spring the Americans were cheered by the arrival of a large number of French volunteers, led by an enthusiastic young aristocrat, the Marquis de Lafayette, to support the American cause, as the French government was also clandestinely supporting the erstwhile colonists with vast loans, without which there would have been no money available for anything. Yet there was never enough, and another summer had arrived before Ranger was actually launched. Then began the most frustrating period of all, as they at last had a fine ship and a fine crew, ready to go to sea, and still lacked the armament to make her the warship she had to be. And all the while the slow and careful British advance continued, until in August word was received of a new British army descending upon them from Canada by way of the lakes and the Hudson River, a route obviously designed to cut New England into two halves to make its reconquest that much simpler.

  Slowly the much needed equipment trickled in, yet never in sufficient quantity or quality. Cannon arrived which were the wrong calibre accompanied by shot which was of a different calibre yet. Warps and halliards arrived so rotten they had to be rejected. ‘I will have the best or I will have none,’ Paul shouted at the commissioners. He might have nothing but contempt for Hopkins, but he had been a seaman long enough to know that an ill-found ship was worse than no ship at all, if he intended to fight her. And for all their frustration, it was at least comforting to know that had they continued with the ‘regular’ navy, they would have been even more frustrated, as Hopkins never took his small squadron to sea at all, and was eventually removed from his command for dilatoriness. But the ‘fleet’ still never put to sea. The American Navy might have ceased to be.

  And at the beginning of September, General Howe launched the invasion of Pennsylvania.

  ‘When?’ Harry demanded. ‘When do we sail?’

  Jones sighed, and checked his apparently endless list. ‘We will be ready to sail by the end of this month. There are only three cannon still required, and I am promised these next week.’

  ‘Unless Washington requisitions them,’ Harry said bitterly. ‘Or the British arrive here first.’

  ‘If they get too close, we must leave and drop down the river,’ Jones said.

  ‘And the cannon?’

  ‘They will be here by then. They have to be here by then.’ He gazed at his friend. ‘We must wait until the last possible moment, Harry, if it means we can be fully armed. Do you not realise that if Howe and Burgoyne succeed in their joint venture, this ship may well be the last thing left flying the United States flag, anywhere on earth?’

  It was the first time Harry had ever heard him admit the possibility of defeat. Nor could he find any argument to set against it. Indeed, he felt even more gloomy regarding the future. ‘In which case,’ he remarked, ‘it might as well be the Jolly Roger.’

  ‘Maybe. But it will be the Stars and Stripes. Old Glory, Harry, the most splendid flag that ever sailed the seas. There could hardly be a better way to go into oblivion.’

  That was true enough, Harry supposed. But the concept linked up with others that were roaming around his brain. Thoughts such as, if the United States was now recognised, at least by France, as an independent nation, he could hardly still be considered a traitor, even by Lizzie Bartlett. While contrariwise, if the infant republic was doomed to extinction in any event, and he and John Paul were to sail into the sunset as the last Americans until they were inevitably hunted down, where was the point in planning a future, in being governed by conventional attitudes, conventional morals? Life had to be lived for the next few crowded weeks, or perhaps months, as it was so certainly going to be short.

  Sure enough, the British were not now to be held, and it became necessary for Ranger to drop her moorings and slip down the river into the Bay, only hours before the redcoats marched into Philadelphia. But the precious cannon had arrived, and they were fully ready for sea — only to receive orders to remain at anchor within the shelter of Cape May, awaiting further instructions from Congress.

  ‘I shall go mad,’ Paul declared, gazing at the bleak and empty shoreline. ‘If I supposed for one minute that they intend to use my ship as a bargaining counter in negotiating a surrender, by God, I would hoist the Jolly Roger.’<
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  ‘I cannot believe that is their intention,’ Harry argued. ‘We must be patient.’

  ‘Aye,’ Paul agreed. ‘God, to know what is happening. For all we are aware of it, we might be entirely surrounded by the British even here. To know!’

  Harry stared at him. They were not more than a hundred and fifty sea miles from New York, with before them, no matter whether they received orders or not, nothing but an endless sea voyage — soon the British would close every port to them. Obviously it would be suicide to attempt to take Ranger north. But not half a mile away a small schooner lay at anchor, abandoned by her crew because of lack of trade, but still sea-worthy.

  ‘I’ll get you information,’ he said.

  Paul looked at him, then at the schooner, then at the headland hiding the sea. ‘You are a sly fellow, Harry. You mean to kidnap the girl.’

  ‘If I have to.’

  ‘From New York? For you even to walk the streets there would be suicide. It is the main British base in America, now.’

  ‘I think I can do it,’ Harry argued. ‘I can take that schooner, flying the red ensign like the most determined Tory, and enter the harbour without risk. I can go ashore after dark. O’Hare is dead. And it was all two years ago. There is hardly likely to be anyone else to recognise me on sight, save Bartlett himself. And Liz.’

  ‘Madness.’

  ‘I will bring you, and Congress, and General Washington, the information you seek.’

  ‘You will also be hanged as a spy.’

  ‘I doubt that will ever happen, John. They have first to hang me as a deserter, then as a pirate, then as a murderer, then as a traitor.’

  ‘You have a grim sense of humour.’ Paul stood at the stern window and looked down into the river. ‘Our orders could arrive any day.’

  ‘I will be back in three.’

  ‘I do not expect to see you back at all, you crazy Irishman. I told you, there is no room for love and romance during a war. But what the hell, you are of no use to me if you are mooning over a skirt. Is she that beautiful, Harry?’