by Ron Carter
“Letters issued by a government to citizens, authorizing them to do certain acts for the government.”
“Correct.” Weyland opened a drawer and tossed a heavy envelope to Matthew. “There isn’t time to build ships, so Washington is going to use merchantmen for his navy. Those are my letters of marque from him. I’m to take British warships as prizes of war wherever I find them and deliver to the army their cannon and powder and shot and whatever else they have that’s helpful.”
Matthew did not move or speak.
“We fly the colonial flag. We’re armed and there’ll be fighting.”
Matthew was incredulous. “This ship will be a colonial man-of-war?”
“It will.”
“Who owns this ship?”
“Me.”
“How are you compensated for all this?”
Weyland drew and released a great breath. “I’m not. Washington asked for my ship. I said yes.”
Silence held for a moment while Matthew accepted the fact this bull of a man had given his life’s work to the colonies.
Weyland waited until he saw Matthew’s eyes settle. “Have you ever been under fire?”
“Once. Concord.”
“Lost your father? Warren said you lost your father.”
“I did.”
Weyland’s eyes lowered, and Matthew saw the pain, but Weyland said nothing.
“Is your crew trained for naval combat?”
“No. We have four army officers who know cannon, and they’ve had three days to train cannon crews on how to load and fire. But none of us have ever seen a naval engagement, let alone fought one.”
“When did you get this ship out of dry dock?”
“Yesterday.”
“Did you have her fitted for war?”
“No. She’s a merchantman—India and China and back seven times. We’re thin hulled. Cannonballs will come right on through anyplace they hit.”
“You have copper sheathing on the hull to the waterline. She should be fast.”
“She is. We can outmaneuver and outrun a British man-of-war, and that may be our best weapon.”
“What happened to your navigator?”
“He didn’t like the risks of combat.”
“What’s the pay?”
Weyland pursed his mouth for a moment before he answered. “We can sell anything the army doesn’t want from the British ships and divide the money. Other than that, no pay. Government’s broke.”
Matthew slowly leaned back in his chair.
Weyland shrugged. “I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.” He leaned forward and interlaced his fingers. “You were graduated from Harvard and spent two summers at sea. Where?”
“Greenland to the West Indies.”
“Who made your charts?” Matthew saw the intensity in the aging gray eyes. Nothing on board the ship was more important than the navigator’s charts. Ocean currents and winds dictated seasons and directions of travel, and no one knew how many thousand ships lay on the bottom of the world’s oceans covered with coral and sand because of a shoal or reef or a current or trade wind that did not appear on the navigator’s charts. Endless sea stories spoke of ships whose navigators read currents and winds wrong and were never heard of again, or of the ship that sailed west from the Spanish coast in the wrong season, only to be blown back to port five months later without travelling ninety miles from home. And no ocean had currents or winds trickier than those of the Atlantic. Good navigators with good charts were prized, courted, sought after.
Matthew answered the question. “Laurie-Whittle in London, current through January of this year. Mercator projections, with circumnavigation charts by Byron, Wallis, Carteret, and Cook.”
“The entire globe?”
“Yes. All oceans.”
Weyland released relieved breath. Laurie-Whittle charts were the best available. “Ever see a naval engagement?”
“No, sir. I studied the history of naval warfare at Harvard.”
A wry smile passed over Weyland’s face. “That makes you our expert.” The smile faded. “You’ve heard enough to know what you’re getting into.” He leaned back in his chair. “Will you take the position of navigator on this ship?”
Matthew straightened. “Yes, sir.”
“Why?” Matthew saw the intensity rise in the old gray eyes.
“Personal reasons.”
“Your father?”
“That, and more.”
Captain Weyland bobbed his head once, and the conversation was closed. He spoke as he walked to the door. “We cast off tonight half an hour after full dark. If you were up last night on the Buford, you better get some rest.” He opened the door and called Riggins. “Show Mr. Dunson to his quarters.”
Men-of-war were designed to survive the devastating pounding of cannonballs. The hulls were double, the keel and rib timbers thick, the hold small and divided into compartments for the crew, with heavy bulkheads for storing the necessities of war and prolonged sea voyages. They were three-decked, with massive planking to support the cannon on every deck. They carried no cargo. The crew’s quarters were adequate, the officers’ quarters large and luxurious by sea standards.
Merchantmen were another matter altogether. They were designed for profit, not war, and profit depended on cargo tonnage. Consequently, they were single hulled, with lighter keels and ribs to accommodate a cargo hold as large as possible. The captain, first mate, and navigator each had small quarters in the stern of the main deck, while the balance of the crew had cramped quarters, separated by canvas walls, on the crowded, low-ceilinged second deck, between the stern and the mainmast. From the mainmast forward, the second deck was jammed with provisions, which often included a cow, sheep, pigs, and chickens for fresh meat as long as they lasted, and the air hung heavy, fouled by the stench of unbathed bodies and animals and their dung. Critical freshwater barrels were lashed to the hull on the second deck, with barrelled lime juice and fresh potatoes to prevent scurvy. The top deck could support cannon if ports were cut, but the second deck was too thin for cannon, and there was no third deck beneath.
Matthew unpacked his seaman’s bag into a battered footlocker, removed the oilskin wrapping from his charts, and slipped the great two-feet-by-three-feet leather-bound volume into its drawer in the massive chart table that dominated one corner of the tiny room. He opened the polished mahogany box holding his octant, checked the eyepiece, replaced the instrument in its box and laid it beside the charts, then closed and locked the drawer and slipped the brass key into his pocket.
He walked back out into the bright sunlight on deck to the big eighteen-spoke rudder wheel at the stern in order to inspect the ship’s compass nearby on its pedestal. It was an in-plane Pollock with a variable alidade for sighting. He walked the deck and studied the cannon set on their heavy oak carriages and thick wooden wheels. Centered amidships on both sides were two heavy thirty-two-pound Demi-Cannon, six-inch bore, each with a twelve-foot chase; all other cannon were smaller eighteen-pound Culverin with a five-and-one-half-inch bore and a ten-foot chase.
He took noon mess with the officers, who regarded him with typical stoic New England reserve, then went to his cabin. He lifted his logbook from the footlocker and sat at his chart table for a time while he made entries, then knelt beside the footlocker to replace it. He was rising when he saw the little flat waterproof paper, carefully folded and placed in one corner. He dropped back to one knee and tenderly picked it up and unwrapped it on the chart table.
The small royal blue watch fob shined in the shaft of sunlight from the window, and he touched the beautiful red white-edged letters, MD. A wave of nostalgia rose, and suddenly he could not remember why he was in strange quarters on a strange ship, away from his home, away from her. What happened at Henry’s trial? Guilty? Hanged? Deported? Was it a stroke Phoebe had, or just a fainting spell? How is Kathleen feeding them? Her music students had dwindled to but a few. The washing and ironing were bringing in enough money for bread and milk un
til it slackened. Have they lost their home?
He folded the watch fob back inside its wrapping, and started to place it back in the footlocker. Then, on an impulse, he drew his leather wallet from his inside coat pocket and carefully inserted the folded paper with his valuable papers and slipped the wallet back into its place. He hung his coat on a peg set in the door and lay down on his bunk. He stretched tired muscles, felt the tensions begin to ebb and drain, and quietly drifted into sleep seeing Kathleen’s eyes and dark hair.
He jerked awake with the sun low in the west and for a moment tried to understand where he was. He poured tepid water from the plain porcelain pitcher into the basin on the washstand and washed the light sweat from his face, then dried with a towel from the rack and combed his hair. He shrugged into his coat and looped the strap of his leather glass case over his shoulder, and walked out onto the deck. He took mess with the officers, then casually moved to the rail, watching the small port of Beverly end her day. Lights ashore flickered on in shadowy dusk, and the evening star emerged in the deep purple of the eastern sky, and by degrees the stars came alive, from east to west, until the heavens were a black vaulted dome filled with tiny diamonds. A shaft of yellow light flooded momentarily from the open door of Captain Weyland’s quarters, then disappeared as he closed it and walked to the wheel.
“Cast off.”
Hard, callused hands cast the four two-inch hawsers from the pier brackets, and seamen on board quickly reeled them in and coiled them on deck. The ten men in the longboat leaned into their oars, and the towrope between the longboat and the Esther rose dripping from the black water and tightened. Slowly the ship crept away from the pier, out into the harbor, due west past the lights of Salem Town in the distance on the starboard. On command the longboat dropped the towrope and came alongside the Esther, and five minutes later it was secured in its blocks on board and the oarsmen were standing to their duty stations on the deck of the dark ship.
“Unfurl all sails and hold her due west.”
The Marblehead Peninsula slipped past on the starboard side, and ten minutes later the Gulf current and the westerlies caught the schooner and she leaped forward.
“Mr. Dunson, set a course for Gloucester.”
“Yes, sir!” Matthew turned to the helmsman. “Hold her east by northeast for fifteen minutes, then northeast until we pick up the lights of Magnolia, shortly after midnight.”
“Yes, sir.” The helmsman turned the wheel a quarter turn and the bow corrected to starboard, then fifteen minutes later adjusted to port, and the Esther was flying on the open seas. The moon rose in the east, and Matthew waited for the first feeling of a shift in the tides and corrected one more time, ten degrees to port, and the ship continued, her bow throwing a curl on either side. Running empty and high, with copper sheathing to reduce friction, the Esther was the fastest ship Matthew had ever experienced. He stole a moment to relax, to revel in the feeling of running under the black-vaulted heavens, free, with the salt tang of the fresh westerlies blowing. He picked out the Dippers, then the North Star, and listened to the sound of the bow cutting a twenty-foot curl in the black waters, and he filled his lungs with the clean salt air and slowly released it.
At twenty minutes past midnight they sighted the lights of Magnolia.
“Three degrees east of due north,” Matthew ordered, and once again the helmsman spun the wheel and the bow swung hard to port, allowing the three degrees for magnetic deviation, which meant the ship was driving due north.
“Sir,” Matthew said to Weyland, “we’ll be entering Gloucester Harbor within half an hour, and we’ll make port by three a.m. Do you intend anchoring there tonight?”
“No. We stop half an hour before we reach Eastern Point, and wait for light.”
“Are you expecting British ships?”
“I’m told they’re up there harassing merchantmen.”
Matthew drew his telescope from the scarred leather case, extended it, and glassed the blackness ahead. At ten minutes past two he leaned forward and studied the pinpoint of light dead ahead, then turned to Weyland. “Sir, we’re about five miles from Eastern Point.”
Ten minutes later all sails were furled and lashed to the yards, the ship died in the water, and the two bow anchors dropped splashing into the black waters. All deck lights were extinguished, and the Esther rocked with the swells and waves, nearly invisible in the night.
The first watch was ending before the stars in the eastern sky began to fade, and the officers gathered in the bow to glass the waters northward, Matthew with them. They all saw the tiny fleck on the horizon at the same instant, and it was Weyland who spoke. “Can you see her colors?”
Long minutes passed before Riggins spoke excitedly. “The Union Jack! She’s an English man-of-war quartering southwest towards Gloucester Harbor.”
“We’ll wait here until she’s at the bay entrance, then show our sails and colors,” Weyland replied, and turned to the bosun. “Load the cannon and keep them out of sight, and keep the crews on standby. Then arm every man with a musket and ten rounds and tell them to load and prime.”
Twenty minutes later Matthew said, “They’ll be rounding Eastern Point and they’ll be in the bay in ten minutes.”
“Weigh anchors and unfurl all sails,” Weyland barked.
The first arc of the rising sun cleared the eastern horizon as the last jib was tightened, and the early morning rays caught the rigging on both tall masts and turned the great sails to fire as the two anchors broke water and were secured under the bow. Three miles north, the British man-of-war slowed, then swung due south, tacking into the wind with the Union Jack glowing proudly in the sun.
“They’ve seen us,” Weyland said. “Every man to his station. Mr. Riggins, run our colors up.”
The oncoming three-masted gunboat rode deep and heavy in the water. She was high in the bow and stern, low and broad at the beam, double hulled, triple decked, thick keeled and ribbed, and Matthew judged her to have a burden well in excess of six hundred tons. She was slow and sluggish, her maneuvers ponderous.
At one mile Weyland asked, “Can you see any bow guns?”
“Two,” Riggins said, his voice too high.
“How many decks show cannon?”
“Three,” Matthew replied.
Weyland pursed his mouth and shook his head. They were closing with a ship more than twice their size, built for war, and they were outgunned three to one. A full broadside from three decks of cannon would shred the Esther.
Weyland licked dry lips. “With the wind from the southeast she’ll have to turn nearly due west to bring her guns to bear. Mr. Riggins, tell the helmsman to keep a bearing head-on. She might think we’re a merchantman until we turn and she sees our cannon ports.”
At one-half mile neither ship had changed course. Aboard the Esther every officer, every seaman stood like a statue, frozen, white-knuckled, waiting for the oncoming man-of-war to make her move or for Weyland’s orders to make his own.
At five hundred yards they saw the two puffs of white smoke on both sides of the bow, and a moment later waterspouts leaped fifty yards on either side of the bowsprit of the Esther, and then the sound of the two cannon shots rolled past. Seamen flinched and ducked and moved their feet, but stood to their posts. Weyland ignored the two cannonballs straddling his bow that were the universal demand to stop and strike colors and surrender.
“Steady as she goes,” he shouted, and the Esther continued her headlong flight on a collision course with the oncoming British ship.
At two hundred yards they watched the British seamen finish reloading the two bow cannon and roll them back into their ports, and they saw the black-coated officer raise his hand and then throw it downward. The cannoneers touched their matches to the touchholes, and again the cannons blasted and belched white smoke. Again two geysers leaped, this time less than twenty feet on either side of the bow, and cold salt spray splattered the deck halfway to the mainmast. Men flinched and ducked, and for
a moment murmured, then once more settled.
Weyland gripped the rail, knuckles white. “She won’t ram us,” he growled under his breath. “She’ll turn. She has to turn.” He pivoted his head to shout at the white-faced helmsman, “Steady as she goes.”
Matthew did not realize he was crouched forward with a death grip on the rail, holding his breath, bracing himself for a head-on collision that would smash the Esther to kindling. At one hundred yards they were all looking upward at the high bow of the heavy ship, and they could see the beards and neckerchiefs of the excited British seamen. At ninety yards they could see the startled expressions on their faces. At eighty yards they saw the captain turn and heard his shout, but could not hear his order. Then, with a scant seventy yards separating the onrushing ships, the bow of the British vessel started to swing to the west, and the crew of the Esther saw the line of cannon muzzles thrust from the gun ports on all three decks, twelve per deck, all thirty-six pounders.
Weyland’s shouted order came instantly. “All cannon crews show your cannon and prepare to fire! Bosun, get crews onto the yard ropes and prepare to turn hard starboard, then hard port. Keep your muskets handy.”
Men on either side of the cannon strained on the ropes and pulleys that rolled their gun forward into firing position, muzzles showing to the man-of-war, while other men looped the tether hawser around the butt of the cannon to take the recoil when they fired. Crews grabbed the ropes that controlled the yards and the sails, and stood with eyes locked onto Weyland, ready, anxious.
At fifty yards the bow of the man-of-war was into her slow, ponderous swing to the west to bring the snouts of her port-side cannon around to bear on the Esther, in a raking position, not broadside. Weyland’s eyes were intent on the muzzle of the lead cannon, which would be the first to come into direct line. The instant before it reached firing position Weyland shouted, “Hard starboard!”
The helmsman spun the wheel, and the men on the yard ropes instantly adjusted sail to maintain capture of the southeasterlies to keep the canvas taut, full. The bow of the schooner swung violently towards the east, light, flying with the wind, and completed her turn, while the cumbersome man-of-war was less than half through her move to the west, and at forty yards the racing Esther flashed past the first four cannon ports, with the British gun crews watching in bewilderment, unable to collect their wits in time to line their cannon and fire. The schooner had passed the sixth column of cannon ports before the remaining British gun crews clacked their gaping mouths closed and came to life. They had no time to depress their gun muzzles to shoot downward at the hull of the Esther, a full ten feet lower than the bottom row of cannon. The cannoneers had time only to smack their matches down on the touchhole with a fervent prayer that the big thirty-six-pound ball would hit a mast or yard, and then the great guns bucked and roared.