The Evening Gun: Volume three in War of 1812 Trilogy

by William H. White

  Carronade began to bark and snarl at the intruder and the rider thought better of dismounting, preferring to remain safely aboard his horse as he called out, “Cap’n Biggs? Cap’n Clements? Got a message from the Commodore for you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Looks like you ain’t gonna be gettin’ over to t’other side o’ the Bay this time, Jake. Your young bride’s just gonna have to wait a bit more. I ‘spect we’ll be back up this way again sooner than later, though, so don’t despair yet.” Isaac was grim-faced as he broke the news to the young Lothario whose face darkened as he thought of the indeterminate wait he would have before he again saw his new wife.

  In the two days since the rider had brought the demand from Commodore Barney that the two sloops be in the Patuxent River as quick as ever possible, Isaac and Jack had provisioned their vessels to be self-sufficient and made their plans for departure during the period of the new moon. Since there were continuing reports of British concentrations both ashore and afloat from Sharp’s Island South, and it was only in April that the Royal Navy had seized and burned sixteen and more American vessels in the same area, the American captains decided that making the run south would best be done in the dark hours, taking advantage of their black sails and hulls and easy familiarity with the shoals and passages unavailable to the larger ships they might encounter – should a dash to safety be necessary.

  The two left their pier-side berths before the new moon rose in the last hours of the evening watch. Their black sails rendered them nearly invisible and their dark hulls merged with the leaden waters of Eastern Bay as they slipped away unnoticed. Isaac led the second sloop out past Kent Point and into the Chesapeake proper, hugging the shore line as Jake, his misery over not seeing Charity now behind him, called the bottom and guided them safely past unseen hazards.

  Jack and Isaac, in consultation with both Tate and Frank Clark, had decided to make the run along the Eastern Shore, feeling that the safety offered by the creeks and rivers, islands and peninsulas corrugating the coastline more than compensated for the slightly longer distance they would sail. The water was good and the northwest wind fair for the passage; with the tide helping them along, they expected to be passing Somervell’s (now Solomon’s) Island at the mouth of the Patuxent shortly after dawn.

  The two vessels remained within shouting distance of each other, though of course, no one was shouting. The night remained clear, and with just the sliver of a new moon showing low on the eastern horizon, quite dark. They had followed the edge of Tilghman Island south, heading for the mouth of the Choptank River when Sam Hay, on Isaac’s sloop, called out quietly from the leeward shrouds.

  “Isaac. Lookee there…comin’ out of the Choptank. Ain’t that a ship headin’ this way? Looks like she might be brig-rigged. Take a look.”

  Biggs was in the rigging instantly, climbing up past Hay with the ease of a seasoned topman. Even as he reached the tops’l yard, his longglass was at his eye. After a moment of study he grabbed a halyard and slid to the deck in the tradition of the men who earned their keep in the dizzying heights of the upper masts on the tall ships.

  “Bring her around. Hands to wear ship” He spoke only as loudly as was necessary to be heard and the little ship’s stern smoothly crossed the wind as Isaac, with Jake calling the bottom, guided her into the shallows behind Black Walnut Point and up the back side of Tilghman’s Island. Their pace dropped perceptibly as they came into the lee of the point and the northwest breeze was cut in half by the tall trees which gave the point its name.

  The cloak of invisibility which their dark hulls and sails provided them worked both for them and against them; no one on Jack Clements’ sloop noticed that their companions had worn ship and ducked behind Black Walnut Point. They proceeded to sail serenely across the mouth of the Choptank – and the unseen bow of the ship beating out of the river in the easy breeze.

  “’Eave to there and identify yourself.” The hail from the ship provided the American’s first notice of it when she loomed within easy musket range. Carronade, already alert and sniffing the air suspiciously, peered over the bulwark at the British voice. A low and menacing growl escaped his throat. Jack took the tiller and calling his men to stations for tacking, brought the sloop around smartly on a reverse course, and hard on the wind. Voices, broken in the wind, carried to them from the brig.

  “Looks like…tacked.”

  “Aye, black…devilish ‘ard…make out.”

  “…American raid…bounty…”

  Then Heart of Oak, the drumbeat calling the sailors and Marines to quarters could be heard on the British ship and Jack knew he had little time before their bow chasers would be seeking the range. The shoreline of Tilghman’s – and the relative safety it offered – seemed awfully far.

  Boom…crack. The wind’ard bow chaser fired. It’s echo resonating off the shoreline of the island. But no splash. The shot prompted one bark that turned into a snarl from the huge dog on the sloop.

  “Jack, ease her off a trifle and when I tell you, bring her back up. They’s a channel through there that I warrant them damn Royal Navy bastards won’t know, and if they follow and miss it, they’ll be on the hard. Ain’t marked, and unless you know it, a real trial to find.” Frank Clark pointed toward the end of Tilghman’s Island and while Jack could make out little of the shoreline, he had complete faith in the local knowledge the waterman possessed; he eased the sloop down. And spoke quietly to his men.

  “They’re just guessin’ where we’s at, lads. Keep it quiet as a tomb and mayhaps we can slip by ‘em.”

  As if to punctuate his words, another shot rang out from the larger vessel. This time there was a splash, well to their wind’ard. Jack smiled in the dark, and touched Clark on the shoulder, pointing at where the dim starlight made the white splash seem brighter than it was in contrast to the darkness all around them. Frank nodded and spoke softly.

  “Be bringin’ her up again here right quick now. Channel’s just yonder. With the wind like it is, we gonna be hard on her to make it through here in one tack. Channel’s maybe only a hunnert feet wide, and ain’t no water out of her. Best you get someone for’ard with a leadline. An’ if’n I tell you to tack, don’t wait to think about it; do it.” Clark, ever the taciturn waterman, emphasized the importance of his instructions just by the volume of words he spoke.

  “Hands to stations for trimming sails…and quiet-like.” Clements whispered, and sensed rather than saw that the crew were quickly in position to manage the sloop as she navigated the narrow unmarked channel in the darkness. He put his complete confidence in Clark’s experience with these waters. And he shushed the still snarling dog – to no effect.

  “Now, Jack! Bring her up, high as ever she’ll go.” Clark’s head swiveled between the end of Black Walnut Point, the bow of the little sloop, and the dim shape of the British warship still standing out to the southwest. The distance was opening, and the sloop danced through the light chop into the unseen channel, sails hauled in tight against the northwesterly breeze.

  Another shot rang out from the warship and, as the crash of the gun died off, the faint splash could be heard some distance away.

  “The British ain’t got no idea where we are, Jack. They’re firin’ in the wrong direction now.” Tom Walters, idle since Clements took over the tiller himself, observed brightly. In his excitement, he raised his voice even though Jack was only a few feet away. Within a few seconds, another shot rang out from the English ship.

  This time, the splash was easy to hear; the ball threw up water only a boat length from the escaping sloop. And then the sounds of the brig tacking, the sails shivering, blocks rattling, and orders being shouted, floated across the water. Carronade responded to the cacophony with a single bark, then resumed his quiet, threatening growl.

  “Oh my God. They musta heard us. Silence fore an’ aft.” Jack’s whisper was hoarse with concern; his little ship would not be able to stand up to even a few shots from the English twelve
-pounders. They had to disappear into the darkness or be crushed into matchwood.

  Silently, he wondered what had happened to Isaac. He had seen or heard nothing of him since the English ship appeared. Was it his sloop the warship had been shooting at when Jack heard no splashes? Was it that there were splashes from the shots and Clements, with but one ear, had missed them. Or was he safely away? And where did he go? Had he seen the British and called out a warning to Jack which, again with impaired hearing, he had missed? No. Someone else would have heard and acted on a warning, had there been one. Isaac must have borne off quietly in the darkness, afraid that a signal to Jack would give them away. Yes, he thought, that was it. That must be it. He would see…boom…boom.

  His concerns for Biggs and his crew became irrelevant as the water thrown up by the iron ball came aboard. He had to look to his own crew; Isaac could take care of himself, for now anyway.

  “Frank,” he whispered forward into the darkness. “I’m bearing off some. Got to get some speed on her. That last shot was too close. Mind your depth.” Without waiting for an answer he eased the tiller to wind’ard and felt the sloop come off the wind slightly, gathering speed as she did so. The sails paid out somewhat and the little vessel heeled and leaped ahead.

  Suddenly Clark was at Jack’s elbow. “Jack, you’re gonna put her on the hard you don’t come back up. They ain’t nothin’ but flats out here twixt us and that point yonder.” Clark’s concern was evident, even in a whisper. Another shot crashed out from their pursuer. This time, the splash was to wind’ard, right about where they would have been had Jack not borne off when he did.

  A hushed voice whispered the depths as the sloop continued to gain speed, now heeled over to where her lee rail was even with the black water rushing by. The hands held their collective breath, knowing for certain it was only a matter of time until they bottomed out, stranding on the shallows while the Royal Navy took their time to find them, and then pound them into kindling. Still, the sloop rushed on. The soundings showed they were getting into thin water, but Jack carried on, intent on escaping. All his senses and instincts gained over a lifetime at sea concentrated on everything around him: the water’s appearance, the soundings as they were whispered aft, the dim shoreline, and the faint outline of the British ship, enhanced by the glow of her battle lanterns.

  Without warning, he threw the tiller over to leeward; the hands scurried to adjust the sails and the sloop passed smoothly through stays and charged off on the other tack, accelerating and heading back towards the channel. Clark’s sigh was audible and his muttered “Thank God” voiced the feelings of the entire crew. Now if they could get back into the deeper water without…

  A grinding noise followed by shouted curses and yelled commands came from behind them. The English ship had not found the channel. And the depth under the sloop was increasing.

  “She’s took the bottom, Jack. God alone knows how you managed to keep us off’n the hard, but I reckon they’ll be busy as ever they could be for a while now. Once them soundings get back up to two fathoms an’ more, we can tack back and just follow the channel back out to the Bay. Put us ‘bout two miles behind where we come in, but we’ll be offshore o’ the British. Probably sail by ‘em easy as kiss my hand.” Clark, in his quiet way, was as jubilant in their narrow escape as any had ever seen him. Clements released the breath be had been holding and smiled in the darkness. Carronade offered a final deep bark and became silent. He laid down on the diminutive quarterdeck, head on his forepaws, and confident that he done his job well.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The thunder was continuous; one shattering crash led directly into the next and the lightning maintained an incessant brilliance from horizon to horizon. The succession of window rattling blasts from the heavens, with their instantaneous shocks of blinding yellow light, had stopped all conversation in the ramshackle building Commodore Joshua Barney used as a temporary headquarters on the edge of a shallow and narrow tributary of the Patuxent River called St. Leonard Creek.

  Isaac and Jack Clements stood by a window transfixed by the ferocity of the storm; neither, in their years at sea, had seen anything quite like this. To be sure, they had each witnessed their share and more of head-shaking weather, including thunder and lightning, rain, snow, wind and worse, but what made this so unusual was the constancy of the heavenly display. It had been going on now without interruption for an hour and more and the intensity of the rain had only increased. Neither man could see the dock and two gunboats secured there though they were only a scant pistol shot distant, and without question, the lightning surely provided adequate illumination. Strangest of all, though, was the complete lack of wind. Not a breath. The rain poured straight down; the torrent running off the steeply pitched roof indistinguishable from that which came directly from the heavens.

  The men who remained sitting at the table suddenly stood, and without comment, picked up the table and chairs and moved them for the third time a few feet, getting away from the expanding leak overhead. Commodore Barney again lit the fat candle in the table’s center, after drying the wick in his fingers.

  “Lightning’s bright enough we likely don’t need this.” He smiled at the four men who sat with him at the table littered with water stained charts and mugs of thick coffee.

  The men from the black-hulled sloops, Biggs and Tate, Clements and Clark, had been called to a meeting with the commodore in the waning hours of daylight. Something over two weeks before, they had been chased into the Patuxent River and more recently into the creek, along with the gunboats and barges, and now were effectively blockaded there by a brace of frigates and a seventy-four, each with its complement of attendant schooners and cutters.

  The American captains reflected their commodore’s black humor and so far, no one had put forth a plan to escape that had even the smallest chance of success. Isaac and Jack had left the table in frustration and had been watching the storm and talking quietly while the others, the Baymen and the gunboat skippers, continued hatching and discarding ruses by which they might fool the British into opening the river’s mouth.

  Now even they were silenced, as much by the noise of the storm as by their lack of ideas. Each looked up as they realized Barney was speaking.

  “…know them raids the damn Royal Navy is doin’ is aimed at getting us to engage ’em. Ever since they chased us up here from Cedar Point they been tryin’ to figger out how to get to us to make a break for it. I’d reckon it’s only a matter of time afore they sail right in here brazen as ever you please.” He paused, a thoughtful look, then a thin smile crossed his face. “I’d rather take ‘em on here in the river where we might have an edge with our shallow draft than out yonder where they got sea room.” Barney looked from face to face, seeing nods of agreement around the table.

  Clements turned away from the window and fixed the commodore with a hard look. His hand lightly rubbed the scar where his ear had been. “’Ceptin’ for the sloops. We could outsail ‘em easy as kiss my hand out in the Bay. In here, ain’t much we can do to help you. Isaac an’ me an’ our lads been doin’ some good up the Bay. Down here, we’re just ‘bout as useful as teats on a boar.” The lanky deep waterman, for all his easy going manner and good humor, was not happy at being trapped with the gunboats in the Patuxent River. Indeed, not just the sloops and gunboats were bottled up in the narrow river, but most of Barney’s squadron including thirteen row barges and four light ketches used as fire ships were trapped as well.

  He felt Isaac touch his arm lightly and, turning back to the window, caught the warning look from his friend. Clements aimed his scowl at the downpour and drifted back a few weeks as he thought yet again of the events which had conspired to neutralize the flotilla and the two sloops.

  After escaping the British brig at the mouth of the Choptank River, Jack had sailed south without further incident, finding the gunboats and barges anchored at the mouth of the Patuxent River just off Cedar Point. Setting his anchor offshore of them, he
found the commodore in one of the gunboats and paid him a visit to report his arrival. Isaac’s sloop was not in evidence.

  “Where’s Biggs and the other sloop?” were the first words out of Barney’s mouth when Jack climbed over the rail on the gunboat.

  “Last saw him off’n the Choptank in the dark hours, Commodore. Thought he’d be here afore me, seein’ as how I had a little set-to with a British brig.” A brief smile crossed the tall sloop captain’ face as he recalled the way he left his adversary. “Left the might of the Royal Navy on the hard off Tilghman’s so I’d reckon they didn’t give Isaac any problem, but I got nary a thought as to where he might have got his self.” The look that passed between Jack and Frank Clark indicated the concern that both men shared about their friend. Clark had been casting an eye back along their track from the North as if he expected to see Isaac’s sloop break the horizon any moment.

  “Damme. I need both sloops if we’re to accomplish anything here. The English are building up a garrison on Tangier Island and Secretary Jones wants us to make their lives as miserable as possible; harass their ships and take the smaller ones, raid the island and whatever else we can think of.” The commodore paused, removed his cocked hat and ran a hand through his still dark hair – even at fifty-five years of age, he looked many years younger; he wiped his face and neck with a lace trimmed handkerchief. Even before he resumed, the sweat was again freely coursing down his high forehead, beading in his bushy eyebrows, and running unchecked down the end of his long nose where it sprayed out with every word he uttered. “Hear tell they’re building up a force of escaped slaves on Tangier Island and gettin’ ‘em riled up to fight against us. Callin’ ‘em Colonial Marines. And givin’ ‘em transport to Bermuda or Halifax if’n they ain’t of a mind to fight.

  “Your sloop, and Isaac’s, will give us speed and surprise – just like you done up the Bay. Let the English think we got a lot of ‘em. I’m thinkin’ of putting some light cannons – maybe six- or eight-pounders – aboard and sending you out after their transports. The smaller ones, of course. Take a few of ‘em and we might discourage some of the Negroes who’re thinkin’ on joinin’ up with the Colonial Marines. My gunboats and the barges can do the rest, but I was countin’ on both of them sloops.”