In Pursuit of Glory

by William H. White

  For a moment, I pictured the mayhem and destruction those flying splinters would bring to the unfortunate souls near at hand. I would never forget the cruel wounds, the blood, the broken bodies that the iron shot from HMS Leopard wreaked in Chesapeake when their twenty-four-pounders unleashed their fury on us.

  Now we’re repaying that kindness, Oliver! Think of it that way. I admonished myself for taking momentary pity on my enemy.

  Boom! Boom! Two shots fired by Macedonian drew my attention away from my thoughts and I watched as a pair of splashes momentarily marked the water with fountains of white foam where the balls fell, well short of our side. And then the lower deck guns on our ship spoke, firing from the aftermost guns first then each joining in as they could find the target. I thought of Tom Goodwater down there in the tight confines of the gundeck.

  The heat, smoke, noise, and constant motion of the guns bucking back in recoil, the crews working feverishly to swab, load them, and haul them into battery so the cycle could begin again, must be some daunting for the Massachusetts man. Regardless of how much time at sea he had and how many times he had witnessed our battery firing in practice, there is little that can prepare one for his first actual combat encounter. And I knew he would be waiting for the first enemy shot to come crashing through our own side, throwing splinters everywhere, piercing any who had the misfortune to be in the way. I was glad to be topside where I could stand up, see my enemy, and breathe air without the choking smoke that fouled the air on the gundeck.

  Our guns below continued firing at a frenetic pace. Smoke, tinged with lavender, and smelling of sulfur and the acrid, nose-searing odor of burned black powder, wreathed our sides, obscuring our view of the enemy until the wind blew it clear. I am sure we must have appeared to be on fire to the British, so heavy were the smoke and orange flames shooting out from the gun barrels. And through it all, the enemy maintained a slower rate of fire back toward us.

  The few shot that actually hit United States had so little energy left that they scarcely caused any damage. Certainly a few splintered our bulwarks and several rounds of bar or chain shot parted some of our rigging, not so badly as to cause concern, however.

  One of my larboard long guns roared out and I heard the gun captain exclaim, “Lookee there, lads! We have made a brig of her!”

  I looked in time to see Macedonians mizzen topmast fall, dragging with it all manner of cordage and timber.

  “Huzzah, huzzah! We’ve made her into a brig!” One of the men repeated, his whole body echoing his glee.

  I laughed and shot a look forward to where Decatur and Henry Allen were calmly studying the action. The captain must have heard the comment about making the ship into a brig.

  “Take down her foremast, lads, and she’ll be a sloop!” He shouted from the quarterdeck and waved a congratulatory hand.

  “Mister Baldwin, change your shot to chain shot, if you please! And lively. With any luck, we will take down the others.” Henry called out, using a speaking trumpet to ensure his generally quiet voice would carry over the cacophony of the battle.

  I waved to him, and gave my men the orders. I heard him issue the same order to our crews below and watched as, after a moment or two, the deadly double round shot, held together by a length of chain, began to decimate the standing rigging of the enemy. And then the main topmast tumbled down, it’s shrouds cut by our effective fire and the use of chain shot.

  The captain stepped aft to where I was directing the fire of my two long guns; the carronades had yet to be called into service as we were still beyond their effective range.

  “Mister Baldwin: I propose to take us in closer and give her hull a pounding with the forty-twos.”

  “Aye, sir. I will see to it.” I responded, reaching up to doff my hat in a formal salute.

  It was gone. I have no recollection of how or where it might have parted company with me; a casualty of the battle, I assumed. Decatur, seeing my effort to acknowledge his order in proper fashion, smiled and doffed his own, the old straw hat that had seen better days. When he returned to the quarterdeck, he conversed with the first lieutenant briefly, whereupon the latter stepped to the hatchway leading to the gundeck and disappeared.

  And close her we did. Within a few minutes, the carronades could reach out and send their forty-two pounds of destruction into the wooden sides of the British frigate. The fire we received in return was sporadic and ineffective. I could imagine what their gun and spar decks must look like, with rigging and spars littering the latter, dismounted cannon and wounded men littering the former. In spite of the chaos they experienced, it was apparent, at least in my mind, that Captain Carden did not put the same effort into training his men in gunnery that our esteemed commander did. And further, they had no Henry Allen, our expert in naval gunnery, and responsible for the training our men received.

  A few shots—they still fired solid shot—hit us and splintered bulwarks forward. One knocked a bowchaser off its carriage. Many of their shots flew over our heads, sounding like tearing canvas as they flew by, to splash harmlessly in the Atlantic Ocean. And then I heard a different noise: it sounded like the buzzing of bees, a whole swarm of them.

  “Get down, sir. Their Marines have the range now.” Wright, a sailor assigned to work the breeching tackle on one of the long guns, shouted at me.

  I glanced at him as a fountain of gore erupted from his upper arm. Before I could get to him, the gun captain had ripped off his own neckerchief and wrapped it tightly around his wounded comrade’s arm, stanching, for the moment, the flow of blood. I turned back to my post by the forward-most carronade. Suddenly I felt a sharp blow to my midsection, like I had been punched by a giant.

  I fell back, knocked off my feet and stunned at the realization that I had been hit by the very thing the sailor had warned of: a Marine’s musket ball. My vision blurred; I didn’t seem to mind, though. The noise of the battle seemed to grow distant, cannon fire merely dull thuds that caused me no distress at all. Images of my parents, Edward, and my dear Ann floated before my eyes. They all seemed to know each other and appeared quite content in their surroundings. Thomas Wheatley, my nemesis from the schooner Enterprise, drifted into the picture, laughing at my plight. Then, as an illusion created by a clever magician might do, he simply disappeared. Ann continued to smile lovingly at me, and I knew it was her hand I felt on my cheek, soothing and cool. It was all very peaceful and harmonious. That I should experience this in the very midst of a battle seemed not a bit odd to me. There was no sound save the gentle lapping of water, like a mountain brook burbling its way around the rocks and stones in its bed. And there were no ships, no sails, no chaos; only a brilliant azure sky and my loved ones watching over me.

  “… hit his watch, I reckon. Won’t be much good for tellin’ time now, I’d say, but likely saved him from havin’ me pokin’ around in there with forceps while his life blood spills out. Nothing seems to have penetrated his body. No blood on him. Might have busted a rib or two, but he’ll be good as new in a few days.”

  As the words filtered through the mists of my consciousness, I became aware of smelling rum. The images I had been watching, Ann, Edward, my parents, all faded, to be replaced by the thuds of cannon fire that seemed to get closer and sounds of men shouting, distantly. And overhead, sails, some full, some backed, and some clewed up to their yards replaced the beautiful bright sky I had so enjoyed. I shut my eyes, screwing them down tightly in an effort to return to my earlier images, but to no avail. And the slightly sour odor of rum was most insistent.

  Surely the captain would not have issued spirits during the heat of battle! Why would I smell rum? We don’t even have any aboard. And what was that about my watch? Has that rascal from the Boston waterfront taken it again?

  I struggled to sit up and felt strong hands grab my shoulders.

  “Take it easy, lad. You can sit up in a moment or two.” As I heard the words, I again smelled the distinctive aroma of rum, this time closer.

&nbs
p; I opened my eyes, made the effort to focus, and found myself staring into the hirsute face of Eldridge Appleby, our surgeon. His strawberry nose, supporting his spectacles, loomed close as he peered into my eyes and his rum flavored breath fouled the air between us. Behind him, I saw Henry Allen standing with Captain Decatur, each wearing a concerned expression. The sounds of the battle returned now in all their harshness and I could distinguish the sharp roar of our long guns, the heavy, deep-throated clump of our carronades, and, now, the crack of musketry, apparently fired by our own Marines in our fighting tops. I tried again to sit.

  This time, no hands held me back, but the sudden pain in my side caused me to cry out and clutch at my midsection.

  “I warned you about sittin’ up, Oliver. Just catch your breath, there, and you’ll be fine. A bit of pain, to be sure, but nothin’ that might bring you to grief. Your friend Holt wasn’t so lucky as you; splinter from the forward bulkhead went through him—through and through—right into his heart. Likely was dead afore he hit the deck.” The thick beard and his quite dirty glasses obscured Appleby’s expression, but his tone seemed to imply that he was saddened by the loss of our midshipman.

  “Holt?” I asked stupidly. “Is the ship badly wounded?”

  Holt’s station was below on the gundeck; if he had taken a splinter, a fatal splinter, we must have received a shot into the hull there, near his battery.

  “No, son. The ship is barely scratched. But Holt was topside, just aft of the fo’c’sle when he got hit. No tellin’ why he didn’t keep his post. Just bad luck, I reckon.” Appleby patted my shoulder and, saying a few words to the captain and Henry, headed forward. From his hand dangled my watch. Or, more accurately, the remains of my watch. Before I could call out for it, he returned and put in my hand the ribbon fob from which dangled the ruined timepiece. I mumbled my thanks, I think.

  “Can you stand, Oliver? Here, let me give you a hand.” Henry bent down, offering his extended hand, which I took gratefully, and managed to get to my feet. The pain in my side seemed no less and I found it worse when I took a full breath. Tentatively, I prodded my ribs and belly. The former produced a sharp pain and I resolved not to do that again.

  Now I remembered my watch, dangling from its ribbon, in my left hand. I held it up before my eyes and my heart sank! The beautiful silver watch given me by my father was destroyed! The case was stove in, the cover hanging by a single hinge, and the crystal and face unrecognizable. Of the hands, there was no trace. I was stunned! My watch had been stolen in Boston when I was just a raw midshipman and returned to me by a kindly warrant officer in Argus. It survived that and over a year fighting the corsairs of Tripoli only to be smashed in a frigate battle in mid-Atlantic. And, apparently, it had saved my life!

  As I turned to Henry, it felt as though there was something else in my waistcoat pocket; likely a few bits from the corpse of my watch, I thought. I fished around in the depths of the damaged pocket, trying not to rile up the throbbing pain just behind it, as Henry grinned at me.

  “That must be some lucky watch. Saved your life, it did. That bullet would have likely gone right through you, had your watch not caught it. Wrecked the watch, but you’re still right side up! Well done, Oliver.”

  He turned to return to the quarterdeck as I pulled an object out of my damaged pocket, clearly not any part of my watch. Turning it over in my fingers, I realized it was the musket ball intended to be my undoing, and resolved to save both remnants as talismans of good luck.

  My personal ordeal now behind me save for the pain in my side, I looked about, not sure what I expected to see; I had no idea how long I was “out of action,” only that the battle continued. Macedonian was close aboard now and our forty-two’s were pounding her without mercy. The intense fury of our cannonading filled the air with smoke, even in the fine breeze; the noise blotted out everything, even making it difficult to think. I could only imagine what it must be like below in the confined space of the gundeck and, in spite of the musket fire of the Royal Marines, was glad to be topside. I looked closely at our adversary.

  Her foretop was hanging by its shrouds, and her jibboom absent; only the stub of her bowsprit remained. Even a cursory glance showed many places in her hull where our shot had penetrated and she seemed unable to sail.

  “Boarders, stand by!” Henry’s cry caught me by surprise. It had looked as if the enemy was done, incapable of carrying out further fighting. Why board?

  “Wagoneers! To the waist and make ready!” The bosuns shout and his use of our fine ship’s rude nickname made me smile in spite of myself.

  “Mister Comstock!” Decatur could not have missed it. “That will do. You and your men will arm yourselves and stand ready, should we need to board her. And show a little respect for our ship, if you please. She has done us proud and will bring us to glory!”

  His tone was not chastising. Decatur was in fine humor; it appeared that he had beat a most worthy opponent and would sail back to Boston a conqueror, just like his friend Isaac Hull. His ship was barely harmed—a stove-in bulwark forward and a shattered mizzen t’gallant mast—and only a handful of his crew wounded or killed. But he was far from finished.

  I watched as the men assembled in the waist, armed to the teeth with cutlass and pike, cheering each other, our guns, and our fine ship, and jeering at the British man-of-war we had apparently bested. And then, with a crash, our fore t’gallant mast fell, bouncing off the web of running and standing rigging to land safely in the netting strung above the spar deck for just such an eventuality. To a man, they ducked, then laughed at each other, relieved that no serious harm had befallen us.

  We continued to fire, our carronades throwing forty-two-pound shot into the Macedonian’s hull from a scant two hundred yards, while the long guns kept up a steady fusillade of chain shot into her rig. When the British mizzen—what was left of it—went over the side, victim of our twenty-fours, the enemy vessel became completely unmanageable. The spar and cordage dragging overboard caused the ship to bear off, even as the helmsman fought to hold his course. And United States began to pull ahead.

  My goodness! He is going to bear off across her bows and rake her with a broadside! That should certainly finish the job! The carnage …

  My contemplation of the captain’s strategy was interrupted by his own shout. “Belay the boarders! Back to your posts. She is done, lads!” Decatur stood on the bulwark at the quarterdeck, clearly a target for any with a musket on Macedonian.

  With our adversary disabled, unable to steer, and with barely a mast on which to hang a sail, our Old Wagon quickly pulled ahead. All the while, the captain watched his enemy, never taking his eye from the long glass he kept focused on their quarterdeck. He did not bear off to offer a raking broadside as I had anticipated he would, but instead turned away from the hulk.

  “Stand by to tack. Men to your stations for tacking.” Henry Allen called out and received a wave from the sailing master in acknowledgment.

  Then we were back alongside, now facing in opposite directions, and hove to, waiting to see what the pride of the Royal Navy might do. It appeared that chaos reigned supreme in her; men rushed about, sorting through wreckage. Bodies were thrown overboard, and the cries and screams of the wounded and dying drifted across the water to our own ears, causing more than one of us to shudder involuntarily.

  “Lookee there, boys! She’s struck!” One of the sailors in the waist cried out, his glee at the British action undisguised.

  Indeed, the colors, the British battle ensign, had been hauled down from the stump of the mainmast, leaving the wallowing, unmanageable hulk vanquished by United States and her valiant crew!

  “Mister Allen, take a boat with a boarding party across and bring Cap’n Carden here. A few Marines should answer nicely. Mister Baldwin, you will accompany him, if you please.” Decatur, still in his homespun shirt and straw hat, neither any the worse for their wear, stood on the quarterdeck, his glass tucked under his arm.

  My ear
s were still ringing from the gunfire as I boarded the boat, following the Marines, each with a loaded musket slung over his shoulder, down the manropes. We were rowed across the heaving seas to the side of the drifting ship.

  Not a soul on deck even acknowledged our presence; no boarding ropes were dropped, nor any threw us a line to secure the boat. There was a great deal of shouting, cursing, moaning, and the scraping of fallen spars being dragged across the deck above us. Without warning, a body slid over the side, splashing into the water just astern of the boat.

  Henry surveyed the scene and directed the cox’n to ease the boat up to where the main chains were attached to the ship’s hull. Stepping on the torn remnant of an open gunport, he clambered onto the channel and, using the shrouds, pulled himself up to the shattered remnant of the bulwark and landed lightly on the deck. I followed his action, and quickly we had the boat secured and our Marines aboard the British ship.

  The sight that greeted us put me immediately in mind of Edward’s description of what he found on the deck of Guerriere: sailors, some quite obviously drunk, staggered about the deck; others dragged broken spars and cordages around, seeking fallen messmates, while still others, some cruelly wounded, cried out for help. Surrounding all this motion and noise, shattered bodies, limbs, and bits of flesh lay in great pools of drying gore. Cannon barrels, dismounted from their carriages, lay askew on deck, one covering part of an obviously quite dead sailor. To my horror, I espied a head, or most of one, lying under the pin rack that surrounded the stump of the foremast. I swallowed hard, trying to suppress the bile that rose in my throat, as I quickly looked away, studying intently a ragged furrow along the deck, dug by one of our shot.

  No officer or warrant officer seemed in charge on deck. Finally, Henry pointed to the quarterdeck where they all stood, waiting, it seemed, for us to take charge.