“Twenty fathoms, Captain!”
Hull frowned. “A very shallow sea, Mr. Putnam.”
“Indeed yes, Captain.” Instinctively, Bliven glanced to westward. They were well out of sight of land, and the Atlantic here only twenty fathoms. In his mind’s eye he saw, if they were bested and sunk in this damnable calm, their topgallants and royals would still rise above the water, straining to catch a breeze.
“Keep sounding,” shouted Hull. “Sing out if it comes up to fifteen.”
“Aye, Captain!”
Charles Morris came on deck and saluted. “Captain, according to my navigating, we are just about abreast of Egg Harbor.”
That put them forty miles up the New Jersey coast. “It’s about time. Very well, bring your helm northeast, we’ll keep well clear of the shore until we can turn north off Sandy Hook.”
“Your pardon, Captain, I find myself uncomfortably indisposed. If I may be excused, perhaps Mr. Putnam can stand in for me this watch?”
“It’s the same to me. Mr. Putnam, you heard?”
“Yes, sir.” Bliven saluted. “I am most willing to take over for Mr. Morris.”
“All right, Morris, go below and see if Cutbush can give you something, then go lie down.” Hull glanced up and regarded the set. “Brace up, now, Mr. Putnam, will you? We don’t want to lose what little wind we have.”
Bliven made a quick salute and said, “Aye, sir” before peering down the spar deck and barking, “Bosun!”
Shipping an entirely new crew, he doubted that even the captain knew which man he was yet, but one who was occupying himself about the waist ladder faced the quarterdeck at attention, and Bliven recognized his rank by his hard top hat. “Sir!”
“Brace up, now!”
“Aye, sir!” The order given, there was no need to direct him in greater detail how close to haul the yards; the bosun could read the wind as well as they could.
“Deck!” At two in the afternoon the call came down from the masthead. “Deck, there!”
Bliven cupped his hands to his mouth. “Lookout, what do you see?”
“Four sail, north of us, heading west!”
“What do you make of them?”
“Hulls are down, sir, too far to see!”
Bliven sent a midshipman down to inform the captain, and Hull was on deck in an instant. He raised his glass but saw nothing from the deck. “Well, good, must be Rodgers, left New York early, came south to meet us. I wonder why?”
Bliven also descried nothing through his glass yet. “Perhaps he was fearful of being blockaded, trapped in port.” He felt a spark of excitement rise in his breast. If Rodgers had come out to meet them, perhaps now they would not call in New York at all.
Hull glanced at the canvas. “Set your staysails, come to the windward tack, I don’t want to lose them.” He stayed on deck, pacing impatiently.
It seemed like the next hour would never pass.
“Deck! Deck, there!”
“Lookout, what do you see?” shouted Bliven.
“Those four ships are under easy sail! Three big ships, maybe frigates. One smaller, looks like a brig. Deck there! I see a fifth sail, north by east, four miles, she’s a frigate, sir, under full sail.”
“It must be Rodgers,” said Hull, “but we can’t take any chances. Beat to quarters.”
“Beat to quarters!” shouted Bliven, and the Marine standing duty at the waist ladder began rapping out a loud tattoo on his drum. In the back of his mind Bliven thought of Andrew Sterett and his mania for preparedness drills. In five days Hull, after allowing the men to divide their watches, had held only a couple. His crew was newly assembled, but most were experienced seamen. It seemed that the entire ship groaned as the gun crews strained to roll in the fifty-seven-hundred-pound twenty-fours and pull out their tompions, as boys deposited extra balls and powder in the garlands behind them. One innovation that Bliven noted was that the powder now came up from the handling room prepared not in woven cloth bags but in thin shells of sheet lead slightly smaller than the guns’ bores—safer, easier to load, and more certain of firing. He also noticed the guns fitted with sights and firing locks; no more linstock matches or accounting for the timing of the fuse when deciding when to fire. With such improvements, if he were still pointing guns he felt sure he could put a ball through an open window at six hundred yards.
The guns were run back out and there was mostly silence until a quarter past six. “Deck! Deck there!”
“What do you see?”
“Fifth ship now bears east-northeast; she is closing.”
The officers on the quarterdeck had been observing exactly this. “Well, let us see if we can speak her. Wear ship, come to the east, set your light stuns’ls. We will stay to her windward, just in case.”
Bliven was glad that in these latitudes, the summer light lasted until very late. By eight the ships were clearly visible to one another; the stranger flew no pennant, and she began standing off, evincing a wary curiosity, which continued until it was well dark by ten. “Raise the private signal of the day,” said Hull. “If she is with Rodgers, she will answer.”
The array of lanterns was raised to the main topmast, where they remained for an hour without answer. Hull called his lieutenants around him. “Gentlemen, I am now inclined to believe that she is English. We will maintain our position with a sharp lookout until dawn, and if I am confirmed in my suspicion, we will have us a fight.”
“The men must be getting very hungry by now,” said Morris, back on deck.
“Yes,” Hull answered. “Yes.” It was Friday, the one meatless day in the week of prescribed Navy rations. Today they must subsist on bread and butter, and rice and cheese, and he would have preferred the men have more fuel in their bellies. “Pass the word among the men, they must remain ready for instant action, at any moment. They must eat and sleep by their guns. Is that understood? Go and tell your gun crews. I want two officers up here at all times; change the lookouts every hour to make sure they are fresh and alert.”
Hull made a final assay of the enemy ships, determining that there seemed to be a kind of agreement to hold their relative positions until all once more enjoyed the benefit of daylight. He lowered his glass and sighed. “Well, no sense starving ourselves to death before the damned English can finish us off. Why don’t you go below, Putnam, arouse a steward to bring us some supper before we sleep just a little?”
“Aye, sir.” Bliven scanned the quarterdeck, thick with eager young officers. Some of the lieutenants and the midshipmen were betraying their lack of experience, as though they expected some dramatic turn at any moment. Those who were coming off watch, and those not on duty but tired, leaned against the netting and napped. A sea battle, Bliven had come to learn, develops over many hours, or perhaps days, before ripening into action. It could be maddening, not knowing whether each meal might be one’s last before events began to accelerate, or deciding when to go to the head, so one did not have to fight with a full bladder. Bliven watched them tolerantly, straining their sight into the night for any sign of change from the stranger, but decided not to wear himself down with them.
He joined Hull in his great cabin, and the steward set them plates of rice and cheese, and bread and butter, but with strips of fried beef between them. When Hull was finished he retired to his cabin, and Bliven went down to fetch a book from his stateroom, returned and tiptoed down the gun deck as quietly as his boots would allow, passing along the gun crews asleep virtually in piles at their stations, fully clothed, some few with small pillows, others using a mate’s shoulder or belly to rest their heads on, or doing without. Bliven crept forward and was startled to discover no curtain divider or sick bay beyond the galley.
Nonplussed, he descended the forward ladder, and there discovered the divider and the lamp lit in the sick bay beyond. “Dr. Cutbush?”
“Mr. Putnam!”
he whispered hoarsely. “Delighted! You have found me, I was not certain that you would. Come sit down.”
“Excuse me, Doctor, but did you not used to be—” He pointed to the planking overhead.
Cutbush nodded emphatically. “Indeed I did, but after you left the ship in, what was it, aught five? I became increasingly unsettled about locating the sick so near where the food was prepared. I spoke with the captain, and he agreed to move the sick bay forward in the berth deck—more quiet, less chance of infecting the food. I do know that sick bays are located in different places in different ships, but this suits me the best. But tell me your news!”
“You may not know, I am supposed to be destined for my own command, she is being fitted out in Charleston. She’s a sloop-of-war, twenty guns, she’s Jamaica-built of cedar.”
“That is very fine, congratulations.”
“Thank you, but I wish particularly to solicit your advice on a point. As commands go, it will be relatively minor, enough so that I cannot expect to be assigned a surgeon on board, likely only a surgeon’s mate.”
“I see.” Cutbush was giving him full attention.
“Anticipating, therefore, that my medical officer may not be experienced or even, God forbid, qualified for the post, I recently took the trouble to acquire a medical text I had learned of, to provide him if he seems out of his depth.”
“I see, good, that is prudent.”
“Of course, I know nothing of such matters, and I wonder if you would be so kind as to provide me your estimation of the work?” He handed Cutbush a fat little brown volume.
Cutbush lit up. “Ha! My book! Well, yes, I believe I can recommend it in general terms. Wherever did you come across it?”
“I know a dealer in New Haven, who procured it for me.”
“Well, at least you see I was not idle during my years ashore. While I directed the hospital at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia, I gathered the sources and wrote most of it there in my spare time. Would you like some tea?”
“Most surely, yes. Do you still use lemon?”
“What a memory you have.”
A steaming pot was already on Cutbush’s desk, and as he poured tea and halved a lemon, Bliven continued, “In your book you advocate most earnestly the provision of fresh air for the men, even to the point of recommending that timber for ships be felled when the sap is low, so that the space belowdecks is not noxious.”
“Yes, most certainly.”
“You know how cedar smells. It is the very oils in the wood, not a question of sap. What would you recommend?”
“Well, let us apply ourselves. It is a sloop-of-war, you say?”
“Yes.”
“So all the guns will be on the weather deck, and the berth deck below is the only full deck above the hold?”
“I’ve not seen her yet, but I would expect so.”
“Well, if you keep your hatches uncovered at night and admit as much fresh air as possible, it should be well. I am not overly familiar with ships built of cedar, but I have read nothing of greater sickness on them owing to that.”
Bliven accepted his tea with the half-lemon in it. “I am glad to hear that. By the way, those seemed to be quite thorough inspections you were giving these new crewmen from the Adams since they came aboard.”
“And not in prime condition, many of them. Skin eruptions, vermin, not immediately dangerous to health, but surely indicative of a drift down toward sickness.”
“Mm.” Bliven swallowed some tea. “In your book you spend considerable length extolling the virtues of hygiene. That was quite prominent.”
“What do you do when you take over a ship that has been worn down by sailing in unknown waters? You scrub her from stem to stern, do you not? You heave her down and scrape her bottom. I’d like to do the same with most of these new men!”
Bliven’s hand shot to his mouth to keep from laughing loudly. “Oh, I think you did not mean to say that you would scrape their bottoms!”
“Oh, would I not, now, Mr. Putnam? If you read my book, you know that pests and vermin are the cause of most of the disease and discomfort at sea. These men join the Navy and march on board with the fleas and ticks from their woods, lice from a woman in some dockside stew. No, I tell you, if I thought they would survive it, I would strip them naked, burn their clothes, shave them bare, and boil them in lye.”
Bliven was shaking in silent laughter.
“And”—Cutbush raised a finger—“that would advance us only to the physical examination. Those with bad lungs or weak constitutions, and especially those who exhibit any evidence of tropical or communicable disease, I would thank for their interest and send them right back ashore. You may laugh now, Mr. Putnam, but you take this to heart, New Orleans and Charleston are the last two ports in the United States where I would want to ship a crew.”
Bliven grew more serious. “I do understand, Doctor, and I will follow your advice.”
“Good. Have you ever seen a ship quarantined for pestilence? Can you imagine, in the close confines of a ship, a crew being ravaged by typhus or yellow fever? I tell you, simple cleanliness is the greatest preventative.”
Bliven reached into his pocket and produced his pencil. “Would you sign your book for me as a memento, please?”
Cutbush took it. “Ah, a pencil. They are becoming quite the rage, are they not? I saw my first one three months ago.”
Bliven returned to his tiny stateroom but did not undress, and left the door ajar to alert him to any sound. He napped only fitfully, and returned to the quarterdeck long before it was light. The morning watch had just been called, indeed the ringing of the bell had hardly faded, when the northeast was lit up by a spray of sparks as a rocket shot up from the strange ship.
“Deck! Deck there!”
“What do you see?” shouted Morris.
“She has worn around completely and is bearing up.”
Morris pushed a midshipman toward the ladder. “Go get the captain, hurry!”
Bliven thought it best to visit the head before events could get any more interesting, and clattered down the ladder. Just as Hull emerged, two small guns banged from the stranger, their little muzzle flashes making bright pinpoints in the gray. Bliven heard their small reports from within the officers’ privy. He heard shouting between the officers and the lookouts, but heard it only indistinctly.
He finished and returned to the deck, standing close to Hull, but having no duties, not interrupting.
“Well, Mr. Putnam, are you well refreshed?”
“Yes, sir,” he answered, a little embarrassed.
“Good. Tell me, Mr. Putnam, how long has it been since you sat for your lieutenant’s examination?”
“Why, it was in Gibraltar, sir, during the Barbary War.”
Hull nodded. “Well, I have a new examination question for you. I am interested to hear how you would solve it.”
“Very well, sir.” It was always good to come topside and find the captain jovial.
“I put it to you, your ship is in a near calm on a clear morning, the sea smooth as glass.” Bliven glanced around and up and noted that those were the conditions exactly. “As the light clears, your lookouts inform you that two enemy frigates are approaching on your lee quarter. Astern of you approach two more enemy frigates, a ship of the line, a brig, and a schooner. What is your course of action?”
Hull looked at him, so impassively bemused that Bliven felt his stomach drop to the very bottom of his belly. Instantly he raised his glass, and after only a few degrees’ sweep he beheld five sail, fully set including stuns’ls, maybe three miles astern, and a mile closer off their lee quarter, two clearly visible frigates bearing up. “God damn!” he wheezed.
“Ha! Why, Mr. Putnam, in all the time I have known you, that is the first time I have heard you utter such an imprecation.”
“Th
en, sir, it bears repeating: God damn!” He looked again. They could see them distantly, but clearly. Rodgers’s President was a big vessel, sister of the Constitution, but still there was a vast, an unmistakable, difference in the expanse of her hull, versus a tall third-rate like the Africa. There was no question that that massive ship of the line was in the squadron closing in on them.
“Well, Putnam, what would you do?”
“Well! Well, we mount in total fifty-six guns.” He spoke as fast as he thought. “We should expect them to attack from both sides. The Africa mounts sixty-four guns, five frigates at, say, thirty-six each is, five times forty is two hundred, less twenty is a hundred and eighty, plus sixty-four makes two hundred and forty-four, plus two smaller makes it about two hundred and seventy guns to our fifty-six. In short, sir, we don’t stand a chance in hell, and I would get out of here, sir!”
“Mr. Putnam, there is no wind.”
“Then I would put my boats down and row!”
“A very good answer, Mr. Putnam. If you would be so kind, tell the bosun to get the longboats and a cutter into the water and start sweeping us out of here.”
“Aye-aye, sir!” His sword swinging at his side, Bliven ran to the waist ladder and gave the orders, letting the bosun pick men who were not needed at the guns, while he took it upon himself to direct a midshipman into each boat to exhort and encourage the men as they rowed.
Hull strode ten paces forward on the starboard side. “Carpenter,” he called, “what is your sounding?”
“Now eighteen fathoms, Captain.”
“Very well. Now, listen to me. I want you to put a detail together. Remove the windows from my cabin. Move your aft twenty-fours into my cabin, point them through the windows. We’ll use them for heavier stern chasers.”
The Tempest--Commander Putnam and Mr. Madison's War Page 13