by Diane Carey
“Here you go, Tom,” fire-haired Steven Sigsby showed up from the main cabin with a fresh white shirt for the captain.
“Good man! Bring up the signal flags and run up ‘heave to.’”
The wind was still stiff and the flags boiled madly on their halyard. High up at the main peak, the United States flag batted madly at the remaining droplets of rainwater shedding off the gaff. The flag was sassy, or was it just his own defiance? He liked the sass.
The prey ship turned away, bracing its square sails over as tightly as they would go, clearly recognizing the nature of an American ship in these waters, with this design. Reputation had preceded the Chasseur, though Boyle knew the credit was not all his. He was part of an active fleet of raiding American privateers out of several ports, though Fell’s Point held the most infamous reputation for spitting out the dangerous and effective design with risk-loving captains and white-knuckled sailors for crews.
No reason not to be proud of himself, though, was it? Of his ship and crew.
And he was the first to hunt these waters. He knew, though, or hoped, others would follow him here, scatter predictability to the north wind and knock the Brits’ personally in the teeth.
“Put the brig to l’ward,” he said. “We’ll steal her wind.”
“L’ward, aye,” Pedre responded with a reckless gleam in his eye.
Chasseur bore down in a lovely arch on the sixty-foot brig. The faces of the crew over there were clear to see now. They were ignoring the signal order to clew up and wait.
“Put one across her bow. Clew up the square. Ready on the fore brails.”
The forward gunners were ready and adjusted the aim of one of the twelves. An enormous report pounded the atmosphere, blown forward of the brig in a column of rushing smoke. The ball streaked visibly forward of the brig and struck the water with a satisfying splash. At almost the same moment, Chasseur straightened up and came abeam of the other ship, like a big bird, and the brig’s sails went limp and flapped pathetically. With Chasseur between her and the wind, the brig went gasping.
Boyle instinctively knew the momentary indecision had ended. The brig’s sails fluttered up at the corners and the ship surrendered. Her little stern Union Jack was struck. Never a good moment for a ship.
“Brail the fore!” Dieter ordered from where he stood amidships at the fore sheets. “Back the stays’l.”Wind spilled out of the sails, and the schooner’s speed magically dropped away.
“Prepare to raft,” Boyle commanded.
“Fenders, starboard!” Dieter called.
The ship’s boys dropped woven rope fenders over the rail, measuring in their minds where the two ships would bump.As the conqueror, Boyle had the privilege of boarding the other ship rather than be boarded, unless he requested that, which he rarely did. Climbing onto another vessel when he had seized it was an ego-feeding moment and he might as well enjoy it. He dropped to the deck of the tidy cargo vessel, where the crew of five along with two passengers waited for him to decide their fates.
He introduced himself and made his usual boarding speech to the disheartened captain of the Marquis of Cornwallis, who irritably said, “You are too late, Mr. Boyle. Your comrades have stopped us no less than four times already, stripped us of our cargo and told me that my ship is not worth a prize crew.”
“Not something a captain wants to hear, certainly,” Boyle replied. “You have passengers?”
“Two. Their valuables have been spared by your cohorts.”
“Understandably,” Boyle said. “Most privateer captains choose not to rifle the possessions of private citizens.”
“How noble.”
Boyle smiled, not without sympathy. “Don’t worry, Captain. You’ll sail on. But this time you will have a reputation.”
“What’s that?”
“John!”
“Right here,” Dieter called from Chasseur’s amidships deck.
“Bring our guests and transfer them.”
The other captain watched, curious, as Chasseur’s prisoners from other ships paraded out of the hatch, blinked in the brightness even of this overcast day, and climbed over the two rails to the deck of the Marquis of Cornwallis. They were the captains and crews of the Reindeer, the Favorite, the Prudence—Boyle’s captures of the past couple of days. Dieter followed them, carrying a rolled parcel wrapped in brown butcher paper and tied with sail twine.
Boyle accepted the rolled parcel from Dieter and addressed his prisoners as well as the other captain. “This brig is now officially a cartel vessel. You are all hereby paroled, free to return to your home country, on one condition. I required your words of honor that you, singularly or collectively, will travel immediately to London and that this document shall be affixed to the front door of the insurance underwriters’ office Lloyd’s Coffee House, in a pronounced manner for all to see.”
“What is it?” the Marquis’ captain demanded. “Does it involve becoming a traitor, because I won’t do it.”
“I know what it is,” said the Scottish captain of the Reindeer. “I’ll do it.” An older man with arthritic hands and a full beard that did not hide his emotions, he all but snatched the parcel from Boyle’s grip. “You’re a brassy man, Captain Tom, and your schooner’s a muckle minx. That said, you’ve been humane tae us and left us wi’ our dignity. Your crew has been respectful. You therefore have m’word of honor as a fellow shipmaster and an Aberdeen gentleman that your message will be delivered swiftly and posted as ’e direct. This,” the old man added, wagging the roll, “is the most vexatious dispatch in the history of seafaring. You may not enjoy the results. However, I must say, sir, you’re a cheeky Caesar among us.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s no’ a compliment.”
Boyle smiled and shrugged. “Fair weather to you.”
“And to you.”
“Captain,” he added, nodding to the current master.
The Marquis’ commander nodded in return. “Captain Boyle.”
“Hands to rafting lines and fenders!” Dieter howled and followed Boyle back to Chasseur.
As Dieter orchestrated the crew, Boyle retired aft to let it all happen. He felt the surge as the sails filled and the ship heeled elegantly to larboard, and instinctively adjusted his balance, taking that athwartships stance that kept sailors on their feet. He hardly thought about it, but today for some reason, he noticed the motion under him. Feeling the eyes, and the multiplex emotions of the people on the other ship watching Chasseur as she bore away from them, he looked down at his feet, braced apart there beneath him, and felt completely alone.
By tomorrow it would be done. For good or ill. But done.
On a starboard tack Chasseur slipped away from the other vessel, in no particular direction except to put distance between them, going where the wind went. The clouds thinned, allowing a haze of sunlight to penetrate as if shining through gauze. The gray water slowly hinted at turning blue, but even gray water had a metallic manliness about it that drew the eye as he stood gazing off the stern at the eternal scene.
Only as the Marquis of Cornwallis became nothing more than a handkerchief on the horizon did Boyle notice the unusual silence aboard his own ship.
He turned and looked forward. There were the silent faces of his hundred men, looking back at him.
Standing with the stiff white fores’l as his backdrop, John Dieter sharply raised both his tattooed arms and shouted. “Hail, Caesar!”
And the cheer rose from every throat.
“Hail, Caesar!” the crew answered.
As they laughed and cheered for him, Boyle hung his head and smiled. It wasn’t easy to surprise him, but they had. He had no doubt, too, that the riotous cheering traveled across the open distance of water to the ears of the ship that carried his bizarre declaration.
He waved at them in gratitude, somewhat shyly, quite against his nature but genuine anyway, and hoped they wouldn’t feel otherwise any time soon.
The Royal Exchange
<
br /> LONDON, ENGLAND
“DO YOU THINK IT’S too late to take it down?”
“We gave our words of honor.”
“You gave yours. God knows what demons have driven me here.”
“You know what demon.”
The two captains, of the Reindeer and the Marquis of Cornwallis, stood together across the excessively wide street from the Lloyd’s of London insurance market in the massive Royal Exchange complex at Cornhill, the world-renowned center of British commerce chartered by Queen Elizabeth I. These, of course, were not the original premises of Lloyd’s Coffee House, which had been an actual coffee house, though mostly a place where insurance brokers could do business regarding the maritime trade.
London was very different from the sea. The sea was quiet and lonely, changeable and dangerous. London was a vast, overbuilt, overcrowded, unsleeping city both ancient and modern, founded by the Romans who were still here in spirit and in form, their echo very much present in the vaulting arches and columns all around. Never mind that people called it “London town,” this was the eternal definition of a metropolis, with breathtaking stone edifices like St. Paul’s Cathedral just over there, and monuments like the Royal Exchange to ground all passersby in both past and future.
The captain of the Reindeer was enjoying himself. Being a Scot, he couldn’t help but find enjoyment in their handiwork, the placement of Captain Boyle’s cheeky proclamation on the door of Lloyd’s. Certainly Boyle had chosen his target well. An insurance house. That would do it.
Beside the whiskery older man stood the captain of the ill-fated Marquis of Cornwall, who certainly had not expected this kind of notoriety to befall him. Together, harboring a maddening stew of emotions, they watched the crowd grow larger and larger around the document hanging from the single nail on Lloyd’s. Men from inside Lloyd’s, and even a few women, were beginning to slip out through that very door as word spread and they came to see the shocking announcement for themselves. No one tore it down. There was no point.
“Here come the press boys,” the captain of Marquis said. A gaggle of somewhat younger men, many carrying notepaper and pencils, ran to the Lloyd’s door and were already scribbling, trying to get close enough through the growing crowd to be able to read the notorious document. “That’s the end of our chance to tear it to bits.”
“I couldnae allow it,” Reindeer reminded. “You know that.” He chuckled then. “Cannae help but admire him. The man has a hundred sailors and one ship. He’s an Agamemnon, that rascal, to conceive of this, never mind then to do it. With one ship!”
“Flirting with upheaval every day, the Yankees,” the English captain said. “I had thought their reputation for caprice to be more or less folk legend.”
The Scottish shipmaster chuckled again. “Well, if they’re not legendary yet, they will be in a few minutes.”
PROCLAMATION
issued by
THOMAS BOYLE, Esq.
COMMANDER of the CHASSEUR
WHEREAS It has become customary with the admirals of Great Britain, commanding small forces on the coast of the United States, particularly with Sir John Borlaise Warren and Sir Alexander Cochrane, to declare all the coast of the said United States in a state of strict and rigorous blockade without possessing the power to justify such a declaration or stationing an adequate force to maintain said blockade; I do therefore, by virtue of the power and authority in me vested (possessing sufficient force), declare all the ports, harbors, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, outlets, islands, and seacoast of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in a state of strict and rigorous blockade. And I do further declare that I consider the force under my command adequate to maintain strictly, rigorously, and effectually the said blockade. And I do hereby require the respective officers, whether captains, commanders, or commanding officers, under my command, employed or to be employed, on the coasts of England, Ireland, and Scotland, to pay strict attention to the execution of this my proclamation. And I do hereby caution and forbid the ships and vessels of all and every nation in amity and peace with the United States from entering or attempting to enter, or from coming or attempting to come out of, any of the said ports, harbors, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, outlets, islands, or seacoast under any pretense whatsoever. And that no person may plead ignorance of this, my proclamation, I have ordered the same to be made public in England. Given under my hand on board the Chasseur. THOMAS BOYLE By command of the commanding officer. J. J. STANBURY, Secretary.
Infested
BATHGATE, WEST LOTHIAN, SCOTLAND
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1
THE CAPTAIN OF THE Reindeer drew up his horse-drawn cart in front of a dark fieldstone cottage set deeply within these rolling green Lowland hills, the lands of the ancient kings, with its old Roman roads cut into the landscape and its whispered memories of years counted in the thousands. His beard was wet from a passing rain, but like the old Scottish goat he was, he simply shook the droplets off and traveled on.
Giving the horse her good-girl pat on the shoulder, without which she would have followed him into the cabin, he left her to graze on the wildflowers and knocked the head of his cane on the door.
He was admitted by the captain of the Marquis of Cornwallis, whose trimmed English sideburns and curled mustache were so different from the free-roaming creature on Reindeer’s own face.
“Ah!” the Marquis exclaimed and snatched the other shipmaster by the arm to draw him inside. “I was afraid you didn’t receive my note.”
“Visiting my daughter in Linlithgow, bouncing her bairn on m’knee when your bosun tracked me down. What’n perdition’s the crisis?”
“Have you been following the newspapers?”
“Not a bit.” Reindeer sloughed off his coat and hung it on a kitchen chair, then took a seat where two rocking chairs were placed by the stone hearth. There was a fire going to offset the dampness, of which he was glad, and the heat felt good on his sore knees. “Is this the cottage of a friend?”
“It’s my cottage. I fish.”
“Oh, you fish.”
“That’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Fine wi’ me, aye.”
“Whiskey?”
“Not before gloaming. What’s all this about?”
“I’ve just returned from Glasgow,” the English captain said. Holding some printed papers, he took the other rocker and sat forward on the edge of the seat. “There was an emergency gathering, if I may call it that, of ship owners and underwriters, as well as an army of Glaswegian merchants. They presented the Lord Provost with this and demanded it be presented to the king!”
He shook one of the papers.
“Cannae read it wid’out m’specs,” Reindeer told him. “Read it to me, eh?”
“Why didn’t you bring your spectacles?”
“Who expects to read in the countryside?”
Exasperated, Marquis straightened the paper and turned it so the firelight would help. “‘Unanimously resolved that the number of American privateers with which our channels have been infested’—”
The elder man laughed. “Infested!”
“Listen!”
“Aye.”
“—‘the audacity with which they have approached our coasts, and the success with which their enterprise has been attended, have proved injurious to our commerce, humbling to our pride, and discreditable to the directors of the naval power of the British nation, whose flag till of late waved over every sea and triumphed over every rival. That there is a reason to—’ No, never mind that part. Eh … where is it? Oh— ‘At a time when, in the plentitude of our power, we have declared the whole American coast under blockade, it is equally distressing and mortifying that our ships cannot with safety traverse our own channels, that insurance cannot be effected but at an excessive premium, and that a horde of American cruisers should be allowed, unheeded, unresisted, to take, burn or sink our own vessels in our own inlets, and almost in sight of our harbors. That the ports of the Clyde—’
”
Again he was interrupted by the chortling of the older captain, who rocked happily and enjoyed the entertainment. “A horde …”
“What’s the matter with you?” Marquis demanded, apoplectic. “This is a petition that the Crown and the admiralty take action! Insurance rates have shot to the skies! The Admiralty is being pressured to recall ships from the American blockade to come back and guard our own ships in our waters! It’s those American vipers! It’s Boyle! We’ve lost fifty of our ships and more than one thousand crew this summer—in our own waters!”
“Yes …”
“Are you drunk? You and I delivered his proclamation!”
“We did that, yes.”
“We might as well have laid seventy-four guns to the Bank of England! What if someone saw us?”
The old man felt his eyes go wide. “Saw us? Who’d see us?”
“If it gets out that we’re responsible, you and I could be shot as traitors!”
“For keeping our word of honor to another shipmaster? Neh.”
“There’s talk of torching that lawless den where these ships are built. Where Thomas Boyle’s ship was built. That Fell’s Peninsula!”
“Ah, yeh, worry not,” Reindeer told him. “That place is so saturated with pubs, all they have to do is touch a whore’s arse to it and it’ll light. Read on.”
Marquis blew out a funnel of breath on which his dram of whiskey traveled, and struggled for composure. “All right … ‘This meeting reluctantly feels it an imperious duty at once to address the throne, and therefore that a petition be forwarded to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, acting in the name and on behalf of His Majesty, representing the above grievances and such measures to be adopted, as shall promptly and effectually protect the trade on the coasts of the kingdom, from the numerous insulting and destructive depredations of the enemy …’ I say, it’s really not funny!”