Now, look’ye here, Yankee lad.” White, the Java’s bosun, lowered himself by Sam’s pallet on the berth deck. “What’s this I hear of ye complainin’ about the biscuits has gone wormy?”
“All I said was that if I caught one of my sons in South Carolina eating worms, I would so spank him that he would remember not to do it again.”
“Aye, well, it is nearly a year now you have been aboard this vessel. Has your complainin’ brought ye one footfall closer to your liberty?”
Sam sat up wearily. “It should have. We resupplied in Bermuda months ago. I should have been granted a hearing, but instead I was put in irons and kept out of sight. My fear now is that the captain must eventually design to kill me to hide his crime, for if my case were ever laid before a fair tribunal, he would come in for a terrible censure.”
“Aha, don’t you bet on it. Look’ye, lad, my country is fighting for its life, its very survival, do you understand? Do you think that Napoleon has given up for one minute on his plan to invade England? The Royal Navy is the only thing that keeps him out, and the Navy must have men. Neither your life nor mine matters a damn against the life of the nation.”
“Against which one might argue that a nation which depends for its existence on the capture and servitude of others may not deserve to survive.” While that statement served his need for the moment, it also continued to ring with a distinctly disquieting echo deep in his psyche, and he knew that if someone else had uttered it to him about his own life, and his own slaves, he would have taken offense.
“Haha!” Bosun White shook his head. “You have given me pleasure these past months to listen to your arguments. But now look’ye here—there is a simple way to deal with worms in the biscuit. When you break it up, just put it in your tea right away. The hot tea kills the worms and they float to the top. Just rake them off, they don’t affect the flavor none. You’ll be none the wiser if you just don’t think about it.”
“A metaphor of life, that.” Sam got to his feet, and the bosun rose with him. “But I thank you for the kindness you have shown me.”
“Remember, the doctor and the chaplain are aware of your claims. They may act for you if they get the chance.”
Sam climbed two decks to the open air, where he noticed three sailors, off duty, fishing with rods and lines. The British Navy encouraged sailors to augment their rations with fresh fish when they could. In fact, English rations were not much different from the American: Every day each man received four biscuits weighing a quarter-pound each. Each week he received six pounds of salt meat, two pints of peas, six ounces of butter, and twelve ounces of cheese, and there was a pint of oatmeal for breakfast three mornings a week. But the most important ration was each man’s daily gallon of beer. Few Englishmen ashore ever enjoyed a gallon a day. Sam reckoned it was enough to deaden the pain of their existence but little enough that they remained docile. Any more and they might stay drunk enough to mutiny. The Admiralty, he reasoned, probably arrived at the dosage scientifically. The daily tot of grog—half-rancid water made more palatable by half rum—seemed just a bonus.
Sam looked down into the water as it slid by; they were bearing south, in the densest part of the Sargasso Sea, that mighty Atlantic gyre that accumulated and circulated vast clumps of green-brown seaweed. If ever he was to throw himself overboard and end this misery, he concluded that it must not be in these nasty waters.
He could not claim that fate had singled him out, or that he had been uniquely victimized, for what he was suffering many thousands of other American seamen were suffering, some even in this vessel. The officers were careful to keep them separated into different messes and occupied at different duties, to minimize their chance to congregate and compare grievances. And beyond that, British ships hosted larger companies of Marines than typically did American ships. Seditious talk was difficult to spread when there always seemed to be an armed redcoat just within earshot to report what was said. It was no wonder that the common English tars loathed the Marines and swore and spat after them. What Sam did not understand about the British seamen was their acquiescence, their sullen acceptance, of their impressment. American pressed men felt themselves wronged; English pressed men viewed themselves merely as unlucky.
Seven and a half million people in the United States—where were they? Why could they not find him? Sam stared into the water and sargassum for long minutes before closing his eyes, trying to visualize his family. As long as there was hope to see them again, he would not end it, he would endure.
The sloop-of-war Tempest, twenty guns, was piloted out of Charleston harbor on the morning of October 24 and stood southeast under easy sail. Bliven had a table and chair moved onto the quarterdeck so he could study his maps in the fresh air and walk around. Summer lingered in the South, and it was annoying to be putting out just as the first cool puffs of autumn had eddied through that humid city—and then be ordered south, even to the tropics, where they would surely remain in sweat.
She was a very full ship, not just his own crew of a hundred, easily rounded up from stranded merchant sailors interned at Charleston, but thirty supernumeraries from whom to form prize crews, and forty Marines for close action if he engaged a warship. They would be useful if things came to boarding, but in any case they would have to fight from the deck because the Tempest lacked fighting tops. But it gave him seventy men more than his crew to start, which would be a very formidable boarding party, and below, next to the new-built magazine, Captain Dent had fully stocked a partition that served as a gun room with myriad small arms and ammunition. Bliven had to smile. Once he had abhorred Barbary pirates and their larcenous operation of overhauling merchantmen and frightening them into submission with their whooping and brandishing of weapons. Most vessels they captured without firing a shot, and now that was his own best prospect.
In the very center of the berth deck swung the hammocks of his seven boys, the powder monkeys to shuttle powder and shot to the guns. They ranged in age from eight to ten, and Bliven had been of two minds about accepting them at all. The magazine that Dent had had constructed was not of the traditional frigate’s variety, accessible through a scuttle hole that only a boy could wriggle through. He concluded to take them, anyway, first because it was tradition, and many great officers had begun their careers as powder monkeys, and second because for boys to bring powder and shot freed more men for fighting, and in a close scrape, that could be the margin of a victory. It was usual in the Navy to hang the boys’ hammocks in the very center of the berth deck, to minimize the chance of their being cornered and tormented or badly used by any of the men—Bliven did not understand it but could not deny that it happened. In his present case this had a second value, in keeping these Carolina orphans and incorrigibles in sight. Some had already learned to wrest their own terms from the world, were already hard and asked no quarter. They were capable of harsh mischief and best kept under observation, yet also when he was honest with himself Bliven could admit that they triggered his desire to parent them, that they filled a void in his life.
She was a very full ship, but at last, his own ship, done, at five-and-twenty. He took just a moment to be satisfied. He and Sam had begun late as midshipmen, to have been fourteen. They escaped the earlier drudgery as powder monkeys, many of whom Bliven noticed then and now were orphans who had no better prospects in life, and the Navy became their mother and father. He could not but be content with his own childhood, its memories and associations. It was his advantage over other Navy men that he had that alternative life which, as he had made perhaps too plain to Isaac Hull, he could return to quite happily if he felt his services were no longer wanted. But at this moment’s balance, he had his own command, he had a wife and parents who were proud of him, and he had been set a task that was difficult but within his abilities. Nor was the prospect of prize money lost on him. Give him two heavily laden merchantmen to send home, and he would have the purse to match his growing rep
utation in Litchfield and give a different complexion to the gossip that he had married money. And always in the back of his mind was Sam, or a cloud in the shape of Sam, that hovered and gave him no peace.
A black man in a white apron emerged from the ladder and came aft, rocking with small extra steps against the ship’s roll, trying not to spill the coffee he was bearing onto the white napkin. Bliven watched him approach with some amusement and nodded. “Well done, Gaston,” he said as he set the coffee and napkin on the table. “We were able to find you some good coffee, now we must find you some sea legs.” Bliven was pleased to have landed him: during his weeks in Charleston he had actually become friendly with Mrs. Finklea, and had returned for many samplings of her unique stew. When she learned that he was in search of a cook for his ship, it was she who had brought Gaston to him, a free Creole from New Orleans with a somewhat murky past and an anxiety to be clear of land. Gaston had cemented their relationship when he sampled Mrs. Finklea’s stew, pronounced it delicious, and when they were clear of her hearing said, “Oregano, with a little Cajun filé. It works well.”
Southerners in the crew of the Tempest whom Bliven had heard mutter about having a colored man aboard were silenced when he berthed the cook in one of the four small staterooms next to his own cabin, and then were won over with the first meal of stew prepared from the salt beef with which the hold was laden. Bliven did not know how long the flour would last, perhaps longer than on other ships, for Gaston professed a knowledge that a bay leaf laid in the top in a barrel of flour would retard the worms. They would see. Biscuit in plenty was stocked below, but also enough flour for stew and fresh bread for the time being.
With steaming coffee in hand, Bliven studied the chart before him, a general map of the Caribbean. Those who spent their lives on land had insufficient appreciation of what a complex body of water it was. The heart of British imperial wealth was Jamaica, which lay on the opposite side of the length of Cuba, and her commerce bound for the mother country must pass through the Windward Passage, between Spanish Cuba and newly independent but vexed Haiti. The closest fleet anchorage of warships to protect them was Nelson’s Dockyard—it seemed that all British naval installations were now named for Nelson—at Antigua, four hundred miles to the east and at the end of the chain of Leeward Islands. The trick would be to intercept a commercial vessel before it could rendezvous with an escort or form into a convoy.
An escorted convoy he would have no play against in his twenty-gun sloop. Or merchantmen who sailed first to Antigua, skirting the south shore of Cuba and Hispaniola, he would have no play against. Indeed, that entire stretch of the Greater Antilles he must regard as British home waters and avoid at all costs. But there must be a weak spot, a point where British shipping must be vulnerable. There, he thought, and tapped his finger on the sixty-mile-wide outlet of the Windward Passage, between Great Inagua Island on the north and the Île de la Tortue on the south; he would first try his luck there. Of course, he must get by Grand Turk to reach it, but the British were not known to have placed any frigates there. Any vessel smaller than a frigate he would be content to play his hand against. Again, he had to smile. This must be why the Almighty had saddled him with his fascination with maps since his earliest childhood. This must be what he was born for, here with the morning wind in his hair and a ship at his command.
“Excuse me, Captain.” Gaston had returned, and Bliven marked the instant, the first time that he had been addressed as captain. Master commandants were well recognized as captain upon their own vessel, a privilege that he suddenly approved of more than ever. “You will be wanting more coffee?”
“Yes, Gaston, thank you.”
“Captain, in the British Navy, sailors are allowed to fish, to give themselves a variation in their diet. I had a friend once who was a cook in the French Navy, he said that every day he would throw scraps from the galley overboard, and he would always include some of the meat. Within a day or two, sharks began following the ship. Sharks are smart fish, they never take the trouble to hunt if they can snatch scraps for free. One day, one of those pieces of meat had a big hook in it, and he fed the crew for three days on that shark. Their flesh is very good. You see where I am going?”
“Yes, I see.” Bliven was inclined to agree, but he had reservations. Before leaving Charleston word had come in that Rodgers had returned to Boston with the President and his squadron. They had succeeded in locating the convoy of Jamaica-men that they had gone out after, or rather, they never caught sight of the ships, but they followed the freshening trail of kitchen debris, orange peels and coconut husks, thrown overboard. “But might not leaving a trail of refuse risk leading a British man-o’-war right to us?”
“We throw only edible refuse over the side. Only bait. I will keep other scraps on board until we can weight it in sacks. How is that?”
“Well, that is how we will have it, then.” And he had to admit he was curious, for he had never eaten shark. Gaston filled his cup and departed.
Alone again, Bliven turned his attention to a stout packet of papers that Dent had given him immediately before they sailed. He had read it before sailing and now read it again.
WASHINGTON
22 SEPTEMBER 1812
Dear Sir:
I have the honor to enclose a copy of the book of recognition signals and countersigns for the coming months, for use on your cruise from Charleston. You are instructed to act upon your own initiative, seizing British commercial vessels wherever you may encounter them, excepting neutral ports and waters, of course. You are further advised that the Constitution, accompanied by the Hornet, are being dispatched to this same area. If practicable, you will attempt to rendezvous with them in the waters about the Isle of Ascension on or about the first of the new year, and act as a squadron in coordination with them.
Yrs. respectfully,
Jas. Barron, Commodore, USN
Bliven Putnam, Master
Comdt., USN
Charleston
P.S.—It has come to our hearing, from sailors returned home from Bermuda after the capture of an American merchantman, that the gentleman for whom you have been concerned, Mr. Bandy, was taken aboard a British frigate in Bermuda. We do not know the identity of this ship, but it is not among those who port in Halifax, and as most American shipping have reached safe ports, it is not beyond question that this frigate will also be dispatched to southern waters to protect their commerce.
Bliven pondered one other element. Rodgers, in pursuit of that convoy, did overhaul and engage robust fire with a British frigate. Indeed, Rodgers had pointed the first shot himself and hit her, only to have to break off the action when one of his guns exploded, killing fifteen men and breaking Rodgers’s leg. Bliven determined to follow Andrew Sterett’s lesson and become a tiger on the efficient operation of the guns. They mounted mere twelve-pounders, but he had begun his career with twelves and knew them very well. Following the captain’s prerogative of deploying them as he chose, he ranged them eight guns down either broadside, with two bow and two stern chasers. One thing that life at sea had taught him was that chasers were used much more often than he would have imagined, and ships when caught up in pursuit had to suddenly move guns to chase positions to meet an emergency. This disposition made him feel reasonably prepared all around.
“Mr. Lewis!” he called forward, and his first lieutenant made his way aft and saluted.
“Captain?” Abel Lewis was not a man whom society belles would have sought out. He was short, his very curly blond hair prematurely balding, and he had a hooked nose and an annoying, nasal laugh. But he had ten years on a large civilian brig, could navigate, and if anything happened to their bosun, he could accomplish anything concerning the rigging.
“Pass the word among the crew, we will have a gun drill this afternoon. You are familiar with the standard exercise of the great guns?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, have the
men form up into gun crews of four, try to have at least one man in each who has fired a gun before. That may be a bit much to ask, but try. We will run through the drill twice dry, and once with live fire. This will also give us a chance to test the powder that was seized from that prize and brought aboard. And it will give the new men exposure to the noise of the guns so they will not flinch when it counts.”
“I understand, sir, yes.” Lewis saluted and went about it.
Bliven returned to his map. Ideally, he thought, he could sneak through that passage between Florida and the Bahamas, then run southeast down the coast of Cuba and approach the Windward Passage from the west. That would surprise the British right enough, but it also meant he must sail into the irresistible push of the Florida Current as it shot through that slot. Fighting the Antilles Current that flowed northwest up the outside of the Bahamas would be less arduous, but still better it might be to stand far enough out to sea to approach from the north. That might put him at risk of the British naval traffic in and out of Bermuda, but up to this point, that was mostly smaller vessels that he could contest with his own. On the other hand, the English had had five months now to respond to America’s declaration of war. It would be madness not to assume that they were diverting a powerful portion of their naval strength to the western Atlantic.
Alone again on the quarterdeck, he took his coffee and walked slowly aft until he leaned against the taffrail, hypnotized by the quiet wake behind them, smooth for a time, until invaded by the ocean’s chop and swell. “Sam,” he whispered, “Sam, Sam, where are you?”
With November, the season for hurricanes was past, but the great pulses of heat that blew west from the African desert were not yet exhausted, and ten days out of Charleston they encountered a storm that baptized the ship into her name. Bliven was forced to shorten sail and run before it, even as he played down its danger to his men, and took the wheel himself, cold and soaked to the skin, the only dry part of his uniform his bicorne, which he had left in the cabin. Yet that was preferable to being on the berth deck, where his cabin door could not bar the foul odor of seasickness which spread its own contagion, and those afflicted dared not venture out to the head on the bow that plunged down into each heavy sea and shot geysers of cold sea water up through the toilet openings.
The Tempest--Commander Putnam and Mr. Madison's War Page 22