Lone Star Rising: T.S. Wasp and the Heart of Texas

by Jason Vail

  “Don’t like the looks of that,” Willie said, lowering his glass. “Why would two converge on us like that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, examining the ship-rigged vessel again. She was smaller than Wasp, but with the low, trim lines of a fast ship, and she had the white stripe running fore and aft that usually meant a deck of guns.

  “Pirates maybe?” Crockett asked.

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. He had spoken with such a deadpan that if you did not know the man, you might be inclined to take him seriously, yet he often said the most outrageous things with that manner. This had to be one of them. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” I said, refusing to be deceived.

  “It will give the boys some easy practice. They’re bored with all this sailing and no fighting.”

  “I doubt it’s pirates,” Willie said. “The English wouldn’t stand for them this close to home. Customs boats?”

  “No,” I said. There were two other ships close to Calais that had just come about in our direction. We must have passed them in the darkness. I steadied my glass on them. “I see two more, and they’ve turned this way as well.”

  Willie swiveled his glass, scanning about until he found them. “Big ones. Warships. Two frigates by the look of them.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Well, Mister Crockett, this rules out the possibility of pirates.”

  A steward’s mate interrupted our vital discussions with a plate of hot biscuits.

  “French, do you think?” Willie asked, his mouth full of biscuit. “Pissed off by that business on the river?”

  “Doubtful,” I said. Although he was right about the incident at the river. There would certainly be repercussions, but I expected Rochelle to take care of them, as he had such a large personal investment in the ship. The riled feathers of bureaucrats are easily soothed with money, and as much as we pinched every sou, I expected that we had enough.

  “Surely not Spaniards this far north.”

  “We shall have to assume so,” I said. “They are hardly English.” I could think of no other possibility, and besides, English warships as a rule were painted a yellowish-orange along the gun decks. Prudence required that I not give this bunch the chance to close with us, for they were so obviously acting in concert that they had to be a flotilla. I looked aloft at the sails. We were heading almost due north with the wind on our beam, making easy headway under tops, forecourse and spanker. “Mister Halevy! All hands about ship, and bring us to north by northwest! Topgallants and all courses in addition to what we have. Let’s get every knot we can out of her! Mister Hammond, time to quit daydreaming and pay closer attention to business. You’re letting her head fall off too much with the swells.”

  “I am not day dreaming,” Hammond protested.

  “Don’t think for a second that I haven’t been watching, Mister Hammond. You’ve got to stop thinking this is a pleasure cruise.”

  “Another chase,” Crockett muttered. “I hate the chase.” For a sailor, a chase held considerable excitement — your attention fixed on the littlest things to get the most out of the ship, sensitive to the slightest change in wind, alert for the least bit of luff in the sails, constant adjustments having to be made to fine tune her performance. But for a landlubber like Crockett, whose expectations were framed by the frenzied movement of foot dashes and horses, they were dull affairs that consisted of hours when nothing important seemed to be happening.

  “You shall have to contain yourself, Mister Crockett,” I said. “You may get your wish before long.” I hated to admit that Wasp might have any failing. It pleased me to think her the fasted creature on the water, and that was probably true. She could make fourteen knots on a quartering breeze, which is about the most you can expect out of any ship. But I could never be completely sure nothing could beat her. “Let us put our faith in the ineptitude of Spanish seamanship.”

  “They aren’t all dolts,” Willie admonished. “You know that.”

  “No,” I admitted, “they aren’t.”

  Meanwhile, the ship-sloop to our east converged to within six hundred yards, but it shortly became clear as she came abreast that Wasp was the superior vessel, for she gradually pulled away and left the Spanish sloop behind. She hung on our tail as best she could, frantically making signals that said she believed us to be the objective of their hunt, while we watched her slowly dwindle in our wake.

  Wasp ran over a sea frothy with white caps, a blustery cold wind at our quarter under clear skies of scattered cloud. Austin began to look a little green and queasy. After all the rough weather we’d had during the crossing, you’d think he’d have got used to it. Crockett stood at his side, a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, while Austin leaned over the lee rail just in case his breakfast paid a return visit.

  During the next few hours, the larger frigate drew imperceptibly nearer, until the great hull so filled the view of my glass that even her top yards were out of the oval. The second frigate, sloop and schooner were distant sails on the horizon.

  My initial plan was to round the North Foreland, that blunt finger of land that formed Kent’s northernmost extremity, for above that lay the broad bay that formed the great funnel leading westward to the Thames and our final destination, and I did not want to abandon that intent even with four warships on our tail. The prudent thing would have been to head northeasterly into the North Sea, but if we did that, I feared the big frigate would have plenty of sea room to overhaul us.

  Presently, I ordered Hammond to change the course to northwest, eying the Kentish coast in the distance to gauge the right direction, because from here on out, our sailing had to be precise and sharp. Any errors in navigation would be fatal, for we were about to the thread the needle’s eye.

  While Halevy attended to the trimming of the sails to match our course, I went below to fetch my chart of the eastern Kentish coast. It was not normally necessary to carry a chart to the quarterdeck, but I made an exception this time, for we were about to enter some of the most dangerous waters in the world. I had been through here before, but it had been a long time ago and I did not trust memory to show me the way.

  I edged upwind of Hammond, who smelled as though he needed a bath, and held the chart in both hands, the Kentish coast a low smudge on the western horizon only a few miles away.

  Willie frowned at the sight of the chart in my hands, for he was enough of a salt to know that the need for it at hand meant a great deal of trouble, and even Hammond, sharing the wheel with one of his mates, shock of white hair blowing into his eyes, gave me a wide-eyed look, and only kept his lips together when I shot him a hard glower.

  Willie and Crockett, who never failed to scent when something was up, peered over my shoulder at the chart. Willie consulted our surroundings. To larboard we were almost abreast of a lighthouse on the coast. Forward and to starboard about two or three miles off bobbed the black blot that was a hulk seemingly anchored in the middle of the sea but in fact was a channel marker, and beyond that the sea was in a turmoil of choppy and breaking waves. Willie consulted his watch, the checked the chart and landmarks again.

  “It’s not too late,” he remarked softly.

  “Too late for what?” asked Austin, who had strolled back from the forecastle at the sight of our huddle.

  “To take the easier way,” Willie said.

  “What is he talking about?” Austin asked, perplexed.

  “My dear Austin,” Crockett said, taking out his pipe and fussing with the bowl. “Our captain means to take us into low water again, if my nautical senses are correct.”

  “You have no nautical senses, Mister Crockett,” Willie said.

  “I should take offense at that, Mister Harper,” Crockett said loftily. “However, I shall let such disparagement pass, as I know it is only the product of jealousy. In any case, I have an equally infallible understanding of human nature and it is obvious that our captain intends to take us into the maw of potential death and destruction.”

  “Well, you�
�re right about that,” Willie said.

  “I don’t follow,” Austin said, looking from one to the other, confused.

  Crockett pointed to the chart. “Those numbers there,” he said, his forefinger tracing a series of fathom lines. “It would appear we are heading into some shoals.”

  “Oh,” Austin said. “Well, I’m sure Mister Jones knows what he’s doing. You do know what you’re doing, don’t you?”

  “Mister Crockett,” I said, “do I know what I’m doing?”

  Crockett hesitated, a sharp answer on his lips, but, glancing at Austin, he said for that poor man’s benefit, “I believe he does.”

  “Oh, well,” Austin said, “that’s good.”

  Over Austin’s head, Crockett and Willie exchanged worried looks. They fully understood the danger of our present course.

  The shoals Crockett had identified on the chart were a body of treacherous water known as the Goodwin Sands. The Sands lay about two or three miles off the Kentish coast, a nine mile long sandbar that was the graveyard of a thousand ships.

  Wasp passed the lighthouse and then the hulk to starboard, which marked the southernmost point of the Sands. A look through my glass confirmed that St. Margaret’s Bay lay immediately to larboard. We were now hemmed in, the coast to port and the sands to starboard, and there truly was now no turning back.

  “Come due north, Mister Hammond, if you please,” I ordered.

  “Due north, aye,” Hammond repeated. If he had any misgivings, he did not give them away, other than the compressed line of his lips.

  Austin also looked nervous. It is hard to bear dangers that you do not understand, for the sea is a mysterious and perplexing place even to those of us who have spent our lives upon her, and it is right to fear the sea, for she is unforgiving and capricious.

  “Mister Austin,” I said, “why don’t you go below?”

  “I prefer to remain here, Captain, if you please.”

  “Then stop your damned pacing,” I said rather more sharply than I had intended.

  “I beg your pardon,” he replied, wounded at my tone.

  As he turned away to the transom, Crockett said, “Don’t mind him, Stephen. He gets irritable in times like this.”

  “So I see.”

  “Mister Harper,” I said, “throw out the log. Let’s check our speed.”

  Willie had one of the boys fetch the log from below, and when he had it in hand, he said, “It will be low water in less than an hour.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “The worst time to try getting through.” He glanced to port, where far off on the sands the distant humps of exposed sand even now were visible, given away by the frothy lines of waves crashing over them. “Have a look there, and there.” He pointed off to our starboard quarter before he went aft to throw the log line into the sea.

  I looked where he had indicated, and saw hair-like, spindly lines swaying in the chop that were the masts of what had to be two ships that had foundered on the Sands. That could be our fate if we weren’t careful.

  Willie returned to my place, the long line dripping on the quarterdeck. “Ten knots,” he said. “Not bad for this wind and sea.”

  “Thank you, Mister Harper.”

  He remained there, the log under his arm and wetting his coat. I could tell he wanted to ask what I had in mind, but he knew better than to ask such a question in the presence of the men. So he said instead, “Mind if I look at the chart?”

  “Suit yourself.” I handed it over and scanned aft with my glass. The larger frigate seemed to have gained, for it looked larger in my field of view than I remembered.

  “Will we take the north channel or this other one here?” Willie asked, a finger on the chart where a narrow slice of deeper water marked as the Kellet Gut cut the shoals into two parts.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I said.

  “The northern is safer,” he said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “But there’s a better chance of causing that big fellow behind us to run aground if we take Kellet Gut. Assuming that he follows us, of course.”

  “So, what is your recommendation, Mister Harper?”

  “I would wait to see if he is so crazy as to stay on our wake.” He looked aft at the towering masts of the frigate, all courses, topsails, topgallants and even her royals bursting full with the stiff western breeze. “She hasn’t yet reached that southern buoy,” he added, meaning the hulk that marked the southernmost point of the Sands. “She may shy away.”

  But then he squinted at the Spanish warship and brought up his glass. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “What is it?”

  “Have another look at her.”

  I did as he bid, and nearly gasped in surprise and disbelief. For on the top of the Spanish ship’s main mast a long pennant snapped like a whip: a red and yellow flag that the both of us knew very well.

  “Could it be?” I asked amazed. “Our old friend?”

  “Unless he has a brother and that’s their family insignia,” Willie said.

  “Captain Vasquez,” I murmured. For we had encountered him last summer and taken his ship, though only through blind luck, for he had chased us down on a formidable frigate far larger than Wasp.

  “Vasquez?” Crockett said, hurrying over. “Did you say Vasquez?”

  Willie gave his glass to Crockett so he could see for himself.

  “We’re done for,” Crockett said, returning the glass to Willie.

  “Well,” Willie said, “he has to catch us first.”

  “How could he be here?” Crockett asked. “On that ship?”

  “I suppose it’s possible in the Spanish navy to lose one ship and get a promotion,” I said, since the frigate had to be the flagship of the flotilla pursuing us.

  “I think this answers the big question,” Willie said as he put the glass in his coat pocket.

  “What is that?” Austin said.

  “He’ll chase us,” Willie said, “into the mouth of hell. He has a score to settle.” He then added, glancing at me, “And now I think we know where our captain intends to sail.”

  Lone Star Rising: A Short History of the Republic of Texas and the Free States of America

  by Victor D. Lautenberg

  Emilio Arco, the Spanish consul in New Orleans, was a careful man. He had worried that the Spanish frigate would not be able to stop the Wasp.

  When word of the disaster that had befallen the Buena Vista reached New Orleans, he hired boats to fetch the survivors, then hurried off to the Governor’s Palace to register a stern protest at the unprovoked attack against a peaceful Spanish vessel.

  The French provincial governor received his complaint with dismay and disgust, for he had never liked the policy that required him to cooperate with the upstarts in the desert, because unlike Armand Rochelle he had serious doubts that they could be kept under control, and now the rabble had proved his reservations to be correct by causing an international incident. He promised Arco that the French government had no part in the attack, that there would be a full investigation, and that the ruffians were a bunch of pirates who would be severely dealt with should they fall into the hands of the French government.

  Not deceived by these assurances, Arco went straight back to the wharf where he hired a fast schooner to carry a dispatch to Havana, the headquarters of Spain’s Caribbean fleet. He did not trust the French to take care of the Wasp. Spanish iron would have to do it.

  And he had information, bought at enormous cost, that neither the governor nor Rochelle suspected was in his possession: the Wasp’s destination.

  Since that fateful day in November 1820, many have speculated just how a Spanish fleet managed to catch the Wasp off Calais. For it certainly was no coincidence that such a force happened to be in foreign waters at the precise time as the Wasp. Yet no one has been able to answer that question until now.

  But in the Spanish naval archives at Madrid, I have found correspondence that identifies the so
urce, as Arco waged a decade-long struggle to be reimbursed for the substantial bribe paid for the information. It was Adele La Fontaine, the baroness de Crequy, who had sold the Wasp’s destination for £2,000 and a vial of strychnine.

  The English Channel and the North Sea

  November 1820

  The other vessels of the flotilla veered off to leeward into the North Sea, indicating that their captains understood the danger that the Sands posed.

  Vazquez’s frigate came on after us, gaining imperceptibly with every minute, crashing through the waves like a burly man through a crowd, the spray from her bow flying as high as her main masts in her eagerness to catch us.

  No more than twenty tense minutes passed and already the stubby gray slab of Deal castle was visible in my glass to larboard. It was now time to decide. Ahead and a few points larboard of the bow lay Ramsgate and its harbor and some measure of safety, the channel leading up to it marked by a line of buoys like footmen at a ball. But I saw no advantage to that refuge for we would be blocked up far away from our destination with no way of bringing the guns to us, all the while vulnerable to a cutting out expedition.

  “Mister Hammond,” I said, “come northeast by north. Mister Halevy, trim sail for the new course! Lively, now! I do not want to lose an ounce of speed!”

  Wasp’s bow swung to starboard as the warrant officers and mast captains shouted orders and the men rushed to obey them.

  “Kellet Gut, is it?” Willie asked at my elbow.

  “You knew that’s the way it had to be,” I said.

  “Let’s just hope that Vasquez is as crazy as you.”