Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale (8 page)

Dear Morgan,

When I first Spied you high up in the yards after we cleared Margate and headed into the North Sea, I thought I had seen a Ghost. I thought it was Abraham as your appearances are similar. Then when I heard your name spoken, I realized you must be his Brother. It was then that I knew the heavy hand of Fate had directed me to this Ship for a purpose. It was my Time. I know that I failed to fulfill my Promise to write your Mother, and now I embrace this Opportunity to inform you. Your brother deserved better from me, his friend John Taylor. I find myself unable to easily relate to you what happened, but I must try to make you understand. I did all I could . . .

Morgan sat stunned at what he was reading. He turned the page back and forth, but found nothing more there. His mind raced ahead. The two anchors and the words tattooed on the man’s back, “Bosom friend and Brother”; it suddenly came to him. Those were the words John Taylor had used to describe Abraham in the letter he had sent. Even the odd use of capital letters was the same. How could he have forgotten that? Each sentence was imprinted in his mind like a phrase from the Bible.

Now it was clear. Dobbs was Taylor, the man he’d been searching for. Here he was lying in a bunk below him. He allowed himself to think that perhaps Abraham was alive. Taylor had not mentioned any details, only that his brother had been surrounded by wickedness, and that they would not see each other again. He must keep this man alive. The mates had told him that he now had a recurring fever with severe chills and sudden sweating. Scuttles thought it was one of the African fevers.

Days later, Morgan was draped over the fore topsail yard tying off the gasket to secure the sail to the yard when he spotted the line on the horizon several miles to the northward of them. At long last, they’d arrived across the Atlantic. They passed one of the emigrant ships carrying a full boatload of three hundred passengers. Two or three outward-bound ships with their cathedral-like towers of white sails were heading south en route to the Caribbean, South America, or even further to China. By afternoon, he could hear the faint booming of the surf even before he could see the white line of breakers rolling onto the sandy shoreline of Long Island. The voyage had taken a punishing six weeks. Most of the steerage passengers had pale and hollow looks. He looked down at a small group of them who had gathered on deck near the barnyard area to sing a hymn of thanks, their voices drifting upward, blending in with the murmur of the breakers in the distance. The melodic singing made him think of home and the Sunday service at the Lyme meetinghouse. He wondered if he would ever see his mother again. He clenched his teeth to fight back a muted sob, shook his head and looked out to sea. Soon he spotted the narrow spit of land called Sandy Hook that marked the entrance to New York harbor, and the first mate gave the order to back the yards. From his perch in the topsail area, he could see the pilot boat and the speedy news schooners sailing quickly toward them, black-backed gulls riding the air currents around the hulls.

As one of them came closer, Captain Champlin shouted out, “What’s the news?”

A man at the bow of the boat shouted back that General Marquis de Lafayette had arrived safely.

“He’s back! He’s here in America.”

It was August 15, 1824.

The sixty-seven-year-old Lafayette had come back to the United States for the first time since the revolution. The next day New York’s streets were filled with the sounds of patriotic Yankee Doodle marching bands and men dressed in military uniforms on prancing white horses. With the sight of Lafayette waving at the adoring crowds from his horse-drawn carriage, Morgan and Hiram carried the semiconscious John Taylor off the ship and put him on a cart. The captain had told them to get the man off his ship. He never wanted to see him again, and he didn’t care what they did with him. At the sight of a sick man, the crowds parted, giving them plenty of space. They took him to a sailor’s boarding house where a doctor eventually confirmed that Taylor had come down with a recurrent form of malaria. The doctor treated him with quinine, and over the next two days Taylor improved considerably. By the time Morgan came to see him, just before the ship sailed for London, Taylor was conscious, although extremely weak.

At the sight of Morgan walking through the door into his room, the sick man began shivering uncontrollably. His eyes opened wide with fear.

“No, Abraham,” he shouted. “Have mercy! Have you come for me?”

Morgan didn’t reply. He shook the man strongly and slapped his face.

“Pull yourself together, man. I’m not Abraham. For God’s sake, tell me what has happened to my brother. Is he alive or dead?”

The bedridden man was taken aback by this sudden attack.

“Why did you sail under a false name?” Morgan continued with his interrogation. “What have you got to hide?”

The sick man looked up at him, his eyes only half open. “It was the Englishman who did it. It wasn’t me. It was the Englishman, William Blackwood, that’s his name, the captain on that blood boat. He and his curly red-haired mate, Tom Edgars. Big Red, they called him, but it was Blackwood who done it. He hated and resented Abraham, and now he wants me dead.”

“What blood boat?”

“The
Charon
,” he replied with fear in his eyes. “That’s the English ship that conscripted us. The Devil’s own ferry, that one.” Old memories of the British raid up the Connecticut River suddenly resurfaced in Morgan’s mind. His childhood fear and anger toward the British Royal Navy rose up like unwanted phlegm in his throat.

“Why does he want you dead?”

“I know too much about them and their foul dealings.”

“What foul dealings? Where do I find this Blackwood?”

The bedridden man paused for some time before he answered, and then he mumbled, “The East End of London.” He said something else, which Morgan couldn’t hear well. He shook him again, but the shivering sailor didn’t respond. His eyelids flickered and closed, his body starting to shake as he slipped back into unconsciousness.

PART III

And the muddy tide of the Thames, reflecting nothing, and hiding a million of unclean secrets within its breast, — a sort of guilty conscience, as it were, unwholesome with the rivulets of sin that constantly flow into it, — is just the dismal stream to glide by such a city.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Our Old Home

7

1826

An early summer wind was blowing hard from the direction of Staten Island that June morning, pulling the
Hudson
’s anchor chains taut like the strings on a fiddle. Morgan stood by the windlass on the ship’s foredeck, ready for the order to weigh anchor. He was chewing a quid of tobacco, enjoying the bitter taste and the way it sharpened his mind. A couple of steam tugboats were puffing around the harbor. The jib sheets were pulled tight and the crew at the stern of the ship was busy raising the spanker. He could hear some of the sailors singing the “Sally Racket” chantey.

“Oh Sally Racket, pawned my peak jacket, hi-oh!”

Just then, the big, square-shouldered first mate strode forward from the quarterdeck with his rigid, military-like posture.

“Heave up the anchor, let’s get it aweigh,” yelled Mr. Toothacher gruffly.

Morgan and Hiram joined in the singing as they took their places along with the rest of the crew heaving on the windlass, their bodies’ movements matching the rhythm of the chantey song. They were now considered full-fledged seamen, or “jacks of all trades” as the sailors liked to say. After four years at sea, the tasks on ship strangely soothed Morgan like the monotony of the ocean on a calm day. He could toss the lead from the forechains, tie a cuckold’s knot around a spar, or take the helm during the night. All were as familiar to him as combing his hair or trimming his thickening reddish whiskers. He was twenty years old, but he felt much older.

Morgan looked over at Hiram, whose bearded face was now aglow in the morning sun. His teeth flashed. His eyes sparkled. He was stripped to the waist, revealing a sinewy white torso that gleamed and shimmered as he strained and heaved away. He now looked like a Yankee tar, a true foredeck sailor. His muscular arms and shoulders, tattooed with his busty mermaids and a trident-holding Neptune, flexed and tightened as he sang the chantey with the rest of the sailors. Icelander and the Spaniard, along with several of the Connecticut River men, were still visibly feeling the effects of taking too big of a “swig at the halyards” the last few nights of shore leave. Morgan noticed that they were having a hard time keeping up with the rhythm of the song as they heaved against the wooden capstan bars.

There were many new men in the crew. Old Jeremiah had left after the Jonah voyage, vowing that “he wouldn’t sail no more on no cursed ship.” Many of the other old-timers like Curly Jim had gone as well. Morgan had been glad to see most of those troublesome sailors leave. In their place, the captain had hired on some Cape Horn veterans from Salem and Newburyport, a couple of river men from Connecticut, and a colored man from New Orleans who’d been working on coastal packets.

Sailors were now on the yards bracing around the topsails of the foremast and the mainmast. The anchor was up, and the foredeck sailors were securing it to the cat head, ready for the next order. One of the men started singing “New York Girls,” and soon the yards and the foredeck were filled with song. All around were other transatlantic packets getting ready to weigh anchor, some already leaving New York harbor under full sail.

“Ely, look over there.”

Morgan’s head snapped up from the cat head. He watched as a small transatlantic packet fought its way toward the East River.

“Look Ely, it’s the old
Cadmus
. Remember two years ago when that Havre packet brought in General Lafayette?”

Morgan nodded. Hiram was right. It indeed was the
Cadmus
, a smallish snub-nosed packet on the Havre–New York run flying the tricolor. She must have just arrived from France. The sailors were high up on the yards furling the topsails. The sight of the old
Cadmus
brought back poignant memories for Morgan. He began thinking of Old Jeremiah, black cats, and that fateful voyage two years ago that had seemed cursed from beginning to end. He thought of his traumatic encounter with John Taylor. Immediately after that voyage he had written his brother to tell him the good news that he had found Taylor, but then four months later when he had returned from London he found that the man had vanished from the boarding house where he had been delivered.

His mind wandered back to that boarding house. He had walked up Cherry Street, noisy with drunken, rowdy sailors spilling out into the snow-covered cobblestone street. It was freezing cold and the snow was crunching underneath his boots. He had found number 39 easily enough, a wooden two-storied building, with a nondescript blue door. The boarding house lady, a harried middle-aged woman with her hair tied up in the back, had poked her head out the door. At first, she had threatened to have her husband pummel him if he didn’t leave, but then she recognized him when he pulled his woolen cap off and invited him inside.

“Take off your coat, sailor, and come over here by the fire. I am right surprised you came back. Your Mr. Taylor disappeared soon after you left.”

Morgan had raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“What happened? Where did he go?”

“Can’t say,” the woman replied as she looked at him expectantly.

“As soon as he was strong enough to walk, he just left. Look’d to me like he were a man who didn’t care much for himself,” she said simply as she offered him a piece of pound cake and then poured him a cup of tea.

“He a relative of yours?” she had asked inquiringly.

“No, ma’am,” Morgan had responded matter-of-factly. “Just a fellow mariner, that’s all.”

Then he remembered how her face had become animated, her eyes widening. “I ask ye ’cause I’m curious. A big English fellow came looking for him just after he disappeared,” she had said. “Scary-looking fellow with tattoos and puffy eyes. He said Taylor was his brother, but I knew that weren’t the case.”

Morgan asked her for his name.

“He gave no name,” she had replied, “and no address neither, but he was an Englishman.”

She had paused and looked at him again inquisitively. “You sound like you might know him? Friend of yours, sailor?”

Morgan shook his head, thanked the woman, and left, disheartened and preoccupied by what he had just heard. It sounded to him like an English bloodhound with no kind intentions was hot on Taylor’s trail. He wondered if this Englishman could be connected to Abraham.

Those thoughts were passing through his mind when the first mate yelled out, “All hands aloft.” As Morgan climbed the ratlines of the main mast, he looked back toward the East River and could just barely make out the tips of the masts of the fast new Swallowtail packet, the
York
and the
Canada
of the Black Ball Line still loading freight and passengers. Morgan was busy unfastening and unfurling the topgallants from the yards when he heard the order for more sails. He looked down from the yard on which he was perched and noticed that the new cabin boy, Dalrymple, was already down on his knees, holystoning the decks. The second mate, Mr. Brown, was yelling in his face.

“Look at me boy when I talk to you,” the mate shouted derisively, his face scowling underneath his black leather hat. “Stop skylarking and clean the decks, boy, so they’re as smooth as your little pup’s face.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Mr. Brown caught Morgan’s glance and saw him staring down at him from the yard. Morgan quickly looked away, but not before he noticed the mate’s lips curl with an expression of malice. At first he thought that Brown was looking at him, but then he noticed that his churlish face was turned in his friend’s direction. Hiram was on the royals yard just above him.

That night, the winds began to pick up sharply. Morgan was on watch aloft, squatting in the crosstrees and holding on to one of the stays for support. He had grown to like sitting high above the deck at night. The tangy smell of the sea and the freshening breeze filled his lungs and invigorated him. He looked up into the blackness around him and marveled at the immensity of the star-filled skies. The tip of the mast swayed from side to side as the ship’s bow plunged into the waves. The melancholy whistle of the wind caused his mind to wander. He reached his hand out into the blackness as he pretended to pluck one of the brighter stars out of the sky. It reminded him of picking apples. He thought of home at that moment and felt a sudden sadness. Just then, a sharp gust of wind caused the ship to heel over sharply. He grabbed onto the mast to steady himself. His eyes searched for Hiram, but he was nowhere to be found. Lately his friend had been slipping away, mysteriously disappearing. The mates were always looking for him, particularly Mr. Brown.

As his glance fell to the deck, he noticed the shadowy figure of the second mate climbing over the futtock shrouds heading up the mast toward him, and he braced himself for the worst. Moments later, Brown had climbed up the ratlines and thrust his face inches from Morgan’s nose, his foul-smelling breath almost making him gag.

“Where’s your chum, Morgan?” asked the second mate, his voice growling with hostility. The reflected light off the white canvas sails revealed the man’s yellow teeth and shiny black eyes. Morgan thought he knew the answer. On one of the voyages a year ago, Ochoa had taken him and Hiram down into the dark corners of the main hold and shown them where the rum barrels were kept. This was the black belly of the ship, where rats scurried over crates and barrels and the cross beams creaked and cracked with the ship’s movement. To Morgan, the place seemed like a musty tomb with the smells of rank bilge water filling his nostrils, but despite the unattractive surroundings, trips to the rum barrels soon became a welcome diversion for him and Hiram.

Ochoa taught them the sailors’ trick of sucking the rum directly from the barrels with long quills. Once the novelty had passed, Morgan still enjoyed numerous forays into the rum barrel area on each passage, but he noticed that Hiram was always pushing to go again. He was probably down there now. His friend was fond of the grog, no matter what the risks of being caught, no matter how stormy the weather.

“So where is he, Morgan?” Mr. Brown asked again in an even more menacing tone.

“I reckon he’s out on the jib boom tending to the sails,” Morgan lied, in as convincing a voice as he could muster. As a sailor, he had learned how to lie with a straight face and a forthright voice. That answer seemed to partially satisfy the second mate. Brown had already caught Morgan and Hiram below decks around the rum barrels before on an earlier trip. They had been busy sucking the rum out of one of the barrels with quills when they heard footsteps. The second mate had been snuffing around below decks when he heard voices and saw the glow of their lantern. When he yelled out, they’d been quick to come out of the shadows with a story about how Scuttles had sent them down there to look for more flour. The cook was making biscuits and didn’t have enough, they’d said. Mr. Brown had been suspicious, but fortunately for them Scuttles had backed up their story.

Like many in the crew, Morgan tried to stay away from Brown. The man was edgier than usual on this trip. No one seemed to know much about his history. It was rumored that he had gone to sea at an early age because of a crime he committed, but no one knew where he came from or what the crime was. He clearly enjoyed inflicting pain on any sailor who crossed him or failed to do his job. Morgan had also heard other unsavory things about Mr. Brown and some of his activities when he was on shore leave.

On that early summer passage, the
Hudson
had taken a more southerly route to stay clear of possible ice fields. One of the Black X packet ships on the London to New York run had never arrived in port and was presumed lost. The
Crisis
had not been heard of now for more than two months. The talk on board ship was that the captain had been given orders to look for any signs of wreckage.

For the first one thousand miles they sailed along the North American mainland, leaving the dangerous Nantucket Shoals to the west, and passing over the Great South Channel. They endured several days of stormy weather with heavy rains, thunder, and lightning. Despite more vigilance than normal, there was no sign of a shipwreck. The
Crisis
, with its twelve passengers and two dozen sailors, had disappeared without a trace. The Black X Line now only had one other remaining ship besides the
Hudson
. Morgan once again thought of Abraham and looked out at the sea from high atop the masthead, where he was tightening one of the stays. For a moment, he imagined that he was looking at a battlefield cemetery, the foaming whitecaps extending to the horizon like luminescent marble gravestones. He felt humbled, and he thought of the captain’s words about the reminders of death out on the ocean. He looked up at the stormy, black sky crackling with lightning and listened to the roll of the thunder. He murmured a small prayer.

Among the cabin passengers on board was the famous American author James Fenimore Cooper, who was traveling to England with his wife and five young children. Cooper was already well known as a successful and widely read author after publishing
The Pioneers
. Some even referred to him as America’s Sir Walter Scott. He was headed for Europe on an extended stay to give his young children the benefit of learning French and Italian. He was also trying to secure English rights for his books.