by James Spurr
Still, the silence since the brief crescendo heard a couple of hours ago was even worse. The small crowd came to conclude the engagement had come to a close. They reasoned that had it gone well and if it occurred not so very distant, they might know something soon, perhaps by dark.
Abigail made small talk among the crowd. Most shared concerns for loved ones. She wondered if her interest in Captain Barclay would soon be such that her concern expressed amid such a crowd would be genuine. She did not share her hopes for James. Her concern for Thomas, she knew, was merely as a means to an end and his safe return was welcomed only for that which it might well portend.
The sun dipped still lower in the west and suddenly, the horizon was no longer vacant.
While Fleet fretted in his cabin, Captain Lee kept the deck, but remained content to let Trove call the trim. As dusk neared, the distance between the vessels was but a mile, just as the shore of Canada and entrance to the Detroit River appeared ahead. It was time to bring Little Belt within range of Scorpion’s long 32 pounder.
Captain Lee approached Trove from behind on the starboard bow. The headsails were barely drawing and Trove preferred to watch from the bow—closer to Friends Good Will. Captain Lee observed, “She is slippery, that is for certain!”
Trove could only nod in frustration. Captain Lee suggested, “Let the water. Offer the crew have a last drink, keep a small quantity in reserve for the wounded, and pump the rest over the side. I suspect we will last until morning, don’t you think?”
Trove smiled and replied, “Aye, Captain. And how about the wood for the galley stove?”
Captain Lee smiled, “Why not?”
Twenty minutes later, Scorpion had clearly gained. Thomas argued with Fleet. “You would dispose of the guns when we are within sight of shore? Let the damn ship’s boat go adrift. Towing the boat is costing us dearly!”
Fleet was adamant, “Pump our water, cast over out stores, lose the guns—for God’s sake, man, our slow match does not even burn, but I order you, do not cast off the ship’s boat!”
Still the flight of the Little Belt seemed futile. As the sun touched the horizon, Captain Lee let loose with a ranging shot from the long pivot gun trained just to starboard of the mainstay. The ball fell short, but just barely, directly astern of Fleet’s cabin window. While finishing his bottle in his cabin, Fleet’s stomach turned as the splash of the ball reached well above the taffrail after one skip on the surface of the inland sea.
While Fleet’s bottle was empty, his rage was yet filling and about to spillover. He took the deck and ordered the men to the sweeps. They wrestled with their ungainly length creating much confusion. They had not practiced their deployment or coordination. Fleet, no longer needing a long glass, observed Captain Lee had already been employing no less than six sweeps even as the wind created a nicely shaped billow in Scorpion’s topsail.
Closing on their prey with all the instincts of a predator, Captain Lee ordered, without so much as letting his eyes glance from the transom just ahead, “Cast over one half of the remaining shot. We shall, I wager, require just a few more balls.”
Scorpion came on. Even before her crew could dispose of all of the shot, committing it to the deep, Trove fired a second round, this time splashing just off Friends Good Will’s starboard chains. Fifteen feet more to the left and the shot would have crashed through the mast at the deck.
Fleet went pale and ordered, “Pull up the ship’s boat! Smartly, now!”
O’Connell was incredulous. Thomas demanded, “What are you about?”
Fleet retorted, “Having given the both of you time and opportunity to shake off this schooner, we shall tow her, if we have to, from the ship’s boat.” While the technique was appropriate even for larger ships stranded, with no wind whatsoever the effect of one small boat upon a ship that was already making way, even slowly, under sail, would be negligible and largely a waste of effort. Still, O’Connell assigned four men to form a line and prepare to board from the channels.
Suddenly, Fleet stepped atop the bulwark, over the hammock nettings, onto the channel and lowered himself into the boat, manning one of four oars. Fleet portrayed perfect nonchalance. He called up to the deck, “Well, step lively. I have no intention of rowing alone.” The ship’s company, however, recognized full well that an officer, let alone a Captain, making to tow his command from harm’s way while under attack was so bizarre as to cast doubt on his sanity, or the established order of the universe.
As Captain Lee ordered Scorpion’s long gun reloaded, Thomas considered Fleet and recognized the cause of his conduct was the combination of drink and cowardice, not insanity. Thomas guessed Fleet’s plan and, sensing opportunity, formed his own. Thomas grabbed a nearby pistol from a small barrel on deck, slipped it into his belt and offered quietly in a threatening voice, causing a shipmate to surrender the painter and all crew to stand aside, “Don’t you worry now lads, back to stations. I will gladly man an oar; just me and Captain Fleet.”
On shore, the crowd heard the guns and watched as the two ships slowly approached. Abigail focused a long glass and cried out in excitement, “It is Little Belt leading our boys home yet flying the Union Jack!” As cheers arose from the Canadian shore, Scorpion fired her third shot of a chase quickly coming to a close. The third roar of a gun was mistook by the spectators as a celebration and announcement of the squadron’s triumphant homecoming.
The round shot whistled close over the heads of the crew gathered at the channels just as Mr. Macomber turned over the painter to Thomas. Standing on the channels and ducking suddenly to keep his head, the crewman lost his balance and tumbled upon Thomas, who was just then stepping, with no welcome whatsoever, into the ship’s boat. Fleet was incensed that Thomas was in the boat, who in turn was frustrated that he and Fleet would not, apparently, be alone in the boat.
O’Connell, apparently left in command of Little Belt, directed Thomas and the additional, accidental oarsman, “Alright, take out the tow line, quick as thought, before the Americans reload.” Now with three in the boat, Fleet assumed a position at the tiller and pretended to call the stroke, while in reality he added only more weight and no propulsion. The farce played out before the entire crew just as the light began to fade and before the moon began to rise.
The tow line tightened as the fourth shot struck the larboard beam, but on such an angle as to leave only a long, deep gouge in the planking. Nary a splinter reached the deck, but the sound of a 32 pound round shot scraping along planking, leaving a trail of damaged wood floating aside and slowly astern, caused every one on deck to realize the scantlings, or size of the timbers comprising Little Belt, were simply not intended to withstand the wrath Scorpion would very soon deliver. The shore was now just two cable lengths distant and the Detroit River just about to assert her influence, thus slowing Little Belt well before the current would have the same effect upon Scorpion. The Americans would soon close to within range of an easy shot.
O’Connell nodded to the gunner.
Instantly obvious to Captain Lee, despite the fading light, and in full view of Abigail, standing ashore wondering as to her status in respect to the Fleet family fortune, Little Belt’s Union Jack fluttered to the deck from the peak of her gaff.
O’Connell ordered the helmsman to come up into the wind, allowing Scorpion to close in preparation for taking possession. As Little Belt’s bow began to turn, its mass and momentum began to pull the ship’s boat from its intended course.
Fleet looked astern, comprehended the reason for O’Connell’s change in course, cursed under his breath and took his only decisive action of an otherwise decisive day. Just as Fleet had planned while taking refuge in his cabin, he cast off the tow bridle and ordered both of his remaining crew from the third ship over the course of his career suffering his command, to row for shore as quickly as possible.
Thomas considered his situation. Little Belt had surrendered. Her Captain’s dishonorable escape was as yet being fully witnessed
by an unexpected crowd on shore. An unintended crew in the ship’s boat observed Thomas’ every move and he was armed with only a single shot pistol slid inside his belt. Thomas elected to forego his plan in the service of the Widow Fleet and leave her to an allowance as he was certain was nowhere provided for him within the trust drawn by Mr. Wellstone.
As the stem of the ship’s boat scraped up against the sand and pebbles, Thomas was greeted insincerely by Abigail, whom he could tell in the moonlight reflecting off her fair complexion and golden hair was most disappointed. Thomas half smiled as Fleet stumbled from the sternsheets, splashing to his waist, his plan to kill Dunlap found out and foiled just hours before. Abigail next studied Fleet, who despite his incompetence and cowardice, had somehow survived her sabotaged slow match, American iron, and her most formidable man servant. Fleet strode past her, generally considering her, as soon would all in Upper Canada, the former woman of a vanquished, wounded, one armed Lieutenant, perhaps the only to surrender an entire British squadron. If prestige she wanted, he would well wish her luck. She saw in his eyes not love, nor hate, but ambivalence as she had never seen in her presence. It was a look which she knew held no hope of a relationship.
Together, with nary a word, the three with murder in their hearts and utter failure on their minds began their journey back to Amherstberg, a town, shipyard and fort no longer under the protection of the Royal Navy.
Under a large autumn moon rising red and gradually growing gold and then bleaching white, Scorpion tacked her way southeast in a modest breeze. The occasional moderate gusts filled her sails, heeled her hull gently to larboard and allowed her crew to relax despite more than a dozen British prisoners among them. O’Connell came to respect her acting Captain, a young, knowledgeable man who introduced himself only as “Trove,” who with little formality and no indication of rank, treated them with firm discipline, sincere respect and genuine sympathy. O’Connell wondered, for some time, why the Captain of Scorpion took command of his small prize.
“But you see, Sir,” Trove explained, even while recalling his last command was but a stolen canoe, “Captain Lee was the Master of Friends Good Will before the war.” Trove, checked the course and leaned a bit on the tiller to suggest the helmsman stop pinching. He continued, “He and your Captain Fleet go back some years, with, well, no fondness ‘tween them.”
O’Connell just nodded and said, “On my word, I assure you, he is not ‘my’ Captain Fleet.” Trove understood the implication perfectly.
Just ahead and slightly to windward, there sliced along in the moonlight the silhouette of a square topsail sloop. She boasted a bowsprit and jibboom as seemed to never end, a raked main and topmast, with topsail drawing nicely from yards braced hard ‘round and a powerful mainsail with a long, overhanging boom. Captain Lee smiled as he knew Trove was trying mightily to keep up, but to windward in a breeze all he could offer, muttering under his breath, was “Good Luck!”
Captain Lee was filled once again with the pure joy of sailing a fine lined ship on his inland sea. He gave no thought to the war, despite the pivot gun on deck, to an enemy, despite the prisoners below, but rather just felt the way of his ship whisper to him through her tiller as she climbed high into the wind, anxious, it seemed, so to make him proud yet again. Captain Lee, despite the speed and angle with which he coaxed his sloop, was in no particular hurry. The speed was simply fun, no longer a mere means to defeat an empire, the flag of which yet flew from the peak of the gaff.
But that night, the flag of an empire flew beneath that of a republic; that of the Stars and Stripes.
As Friends Good Will luffed into the wind, her anchor let loose from the cathead, her rode slipped out from the hawsehole and a crew rang eight bells. Midnight. Captain Lee would note in the log their arrival at South Bass Island. But before he made his way to the binnacle and as his crew organized the prisoners to go ashore, he spotted a small boat approach, it having, he surmised, set off even while he made his final approach.
William was overjoyed to see Oliver climb up from the entry port, but could not, if he tried, express his emotion to see James following behind his uncle. The three of them embraced as family, as friends, as men and as shipmates, having survived so many dangers as had left none of them any right to see another dawn. Oliver explained, “Captain Dobbins brought me out to South Bass Island about midday aboard Ohio as Harrison’s envoy to receive and report the news. We depart within minutes. I don’t know which brings me greater joy; that my favorite Captain has recaptured my ship, or that our hero, Perry, has captured the entire British squadron!”
William joked, “Well, certainly, my priorities may not be in line with his!”
James looked at his father and informed him of that which he had wanted to tell him, which he knew in his heart all of his life, but which he came to understand just that afternoon, “Father, I am proud of you. And I regret this distance as I have wrongly, this last year, put between us.”
William grasped his son’s shoulder, hoping the moonlight would disguise his eyes filling with tears of joy. “And I am of you, to be certain. I saw Perry confide in you this afternoon on the deck of Niagara. Just know that your worth as a good man, in all respects, will forever warm my heart!”
James suddenly exclaimed, “The Niagara! Uncle Oliver, I have a note from Perry to Harrison. I am directed to give it to you, his envoy!” James excitedly pulled the envelope from his vest pocket and handed it to Oliver, confessing, “I have not given it a thought until now, given this day.”
Oliver held it to the moonlight, flattened some wrinkles, squinted, nodded and smiled. William encouraged, “Well, it can hardly carry state secrets, given our existing knowledge!”
Oliver read:
“Dear General: We have met the enemy and they are ours: Two Ships, two Brigs, one Schooner and one Sloop. Yours, with greatest respect and esteem,
O. H. Perry”
Fact and Fiction
In “One Sloop and Slow Match,” the second book of the Great Lakes, Great Guns Historical Series, history provides a great deal of both the facts and the action. Perhaps the largest challenge was to blend historical and fictional characters into the plot such that important events, sometimes hundreds, if not thousands, of miles distant from each other, fold seamlessly into a compelling tale.
The Chicago massacre unfolded largely as related, from what few accounts emerged. William Wells and his small band of Miami warriors, intent on assisting his niece, the recent bride of Captain Heald, entered Fort Dearborn, singing their death songs. The negotiations between the army garrison and the Potawatomi, the tactics employed for the ambush and the death of William Wells is also factual. Friends Good Will is likely the last ship to have called upon Fort Dearborn before the massacre.
Although Edward ‘Trove’ Morris is a fictional character, ship owner Oliver Williams, Captain William Lee and James Lee are historical characters. John Kinzie and his niece Sarah are also historical characters. Amazingly, both Captain Heald and his wife survived the massacre with numerous wounds and later made it to Mackinaw Island.
Trove’s journey across the Michigan Territory recounts the virgin forests before the area was logged and illustrates the abundance nature provided for those skilled in taking no more than was needed.
Admiral Sir Edgar Fleet, his widow Abigail Wheems and their man, Thomas, are fictional characters, as is the Solicitor Mr. Wellstone. Lieutenant James Fleet, R.N., was a historical figure and served as Captain of the unfortunate H. M. Schooner General Hope, wrecked in 1805 amid suspicions of his inebriation. All of his activities beyond those few known facts are fictional.
Lord Castlereigh was England’s foreign minister. His reflections with respect to the issues which prevented peace, forcing a conflict that neither nation wanted but neither could manage to avoid, are accurate. Dover Mills, now known as Port Dover, was founded by United Empire Loyalists, refugees of the American Revolution. Amherstberg, just south of Windsor and very near Detroit, is th
e site of Fort Malden and was the site of a Royal Navy yard and the base for British ships during the War of 1812.
In October 1812, Lieutenant Jesse Duncan Elliott launched a raid from the United States Navy yard at Black Rock. Elliott “cut out” the Brig Caledonia and the Snow President Adams from underneath the guns of Fort Erie. Adams was burned, however, by her captors upon running aground on Squaw Island, trying to fight the current in an all too faint wind. The raid made headlines across the young nation, which had little other good news to celebrate. Elliott was an instant hero. Captain Lee and James Lee are not known to have been present and their role in this episode is fictional. While fire rafts were sometimes used as diversions, there is no evidence that Elliott employed the technique in the actual raid.
Oliver Williams was taken prisoner by the British and sent, it is believed, to Kingston. The circumstances of his exchange are fictional, although representative of practices prevalent at the time.
The background, exploits and early commands of Oliver Hazard Perry are accurate. His close friendship with James Lawrence is well known. Initially, Lawrence seemed to be on a fast track for important commands as compared to Perry. For instance, the U.S. Brig Hornet with Lawrence in command departed Boston in company with U.S.S. Constitution with Captain Bainbridge replacing Captain Hull in command of the latter in late October 1812. It is unknown if Perry witnessed U.S.S. United States bringing in her prize, H.M.S. Macedonian into Newport Harbor, but it is entirely likely as Perry was in command of the local gunboats. Perry’s interview with Captain Stephen Decatur is fictional, but, such a conversation is well within the realm of possibility. The description of Macedonian’s capture is factual, as are the details of the U.S.S. Constitution’s taking H.M.S. Java off the coast of Brazil. Many details of the latter engagement were taken from the logs and letters of Captain Bainbridge and First Lieutenant Chads.