Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale (18 page)

As the luggage was hauled aboard, he led the passengers down below into the main saloon area. He advised them to hold on to the brass handrail and watch their step as they descended the steep stairs. Morgan watched as his guests’ eyes nervously scanned their new surroundings. He stood at one end of the large dining table and looked toward his passengers, who were scattered around the area.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the New York packet ship
Philadelphia
, which I dare say is one of the finest and fastest ships to sail the Atlantic.”

The men and women turned toward the captain.

“Some of those harbor reporters back in New York are calling new ships like this one floating palaces. The main cabins have been finished with a mixture of bird’s-eye maple, satinwood, rosewood, and mahogany. As you can see from the fine carpets on the floor, there is every comfort. In the adjoining dining room, the ladies have their own sitting area with a piano.”

This remark produced the desired murmurs of appreciation as the entire group looked over at the adjacent lounge with its blue silk curtains, two small sofas, a cherrywood piano, and walls painted with pastoral scenes. Morgan noticed that the young woman with the amber eyes had walked over to the piano with its finely tapered legs and was gently touching the keys.

“Gentlemen, I’m afraid, are not allowed in this room unless invited by a lady, of course.”

This brought forth some reserved laughter from the ladies and a few coughs and some cantankerous muttering from the men.

“The steward here, Mr. Caiphus Lowery, will show you the various staterooms. We have twelve separate suites on board, each with two stacked berths. As you can see, they offer abundant room for all purposes of toilet.”

Morgan could hear the clucking behind the varnished latticed doors as the group commented on the small windows, the tiny, standing washbasin, the cramped berths too short for most tall men, all in an eight-by-eight-foot space.

“Captain, how will we bathe?” asked one older woman plaintively. “I see no bathtub in my stateroom?”

“The steward will see to that, ma’am,” Morgan replied in the most courteous tone he could summon. “He will draw up a bucket or two of seawater every morning for you and place it in a small tub.”

Astonishment, then silence, greeted this grim description.

After an hour of letting his cabin passengers get settled, Morgan was back on deck giving orders. He could see the steerage passengers all on deck anxiously gazing back at the shore. On this trip, they had loaded eighty emigrants. They were a mixture of country English, wild-eyed Irishmen, red-bearded Scots, and crusty quarrymen from Wales. There were a few single women, but most were married with small children clutching to their dresses. Morgan was still under instructions from Mr. Griswold to take on steerage passengers only as a last resort. The shipping line could make more money carrying fine freight like Yorkshire woolens, Lancashire linens, and Sheffield cutlery in the upper hold. Still, the London shipping agents were always looking for more ships to take across the steady stream of emigrants, and the packets increasingly were adjusting their fares to make it worthwhile.

“Mr. Nyles, back the jibs.”

“Backing the jibs to starboard, Captain.”

“Break out the anchor.”

The massive anchor came tumbling up from the sea like a huge fish. In an instant, the sailors on the foredeck released the starboard sheets and simultaneously pulled in the sheets on the port side. The men high up in the yards, who were tending the sheets and the braces, trimmed the large square sails to make them work in conjunction with the jibs. On deck, the sailors tending the lines began to sing a departure chantey:

Yes we’re homeward bound to New York town

With a heave oh haul.

And it’s there we’ll sing and sorrow drown

Good Morning ladies all.

Anchor up, Captain, ship’s aweigh.

The
Philadelphia
shuddered as the power of the wind took her off with a sudden surge, the hull heeling to port as the big sails in the center of the boat filled out.

“Keep her sails full and drawing, Mr. Nyles.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Even before the ship had reached Land’s End a day later with the cliffs of the Lizard and the Eddystone Rocks safely behind them, Morgan could see trouble was brewing. His old veteran sailors were on edge. Whipple and the Spaniard both approached him and told him that the new crewmembers were not fitting in well. There was mutiny in the air, they said. He could hear the roar of the surf now crashing on the craggy ramparts of the southwestern tip of England. As they said farewell to the Scilly Islands, one of the more brutish-looking sailors with an oxlike neck refused to go up into the yards. Morgan had to send Icelander and Mr. Nyles up to the foredeck armed with belaying pins to make the man obey. He wished Hiram was still sailing with him. His old friend could always sniff out any trouble brewing on the foredeck. He swallowed hard as he thought about him. He wished he’d never gone into that tavern. Hiram might still be sailing with him now if it weren’t for that fateful decision he’d made.

Much later that same night, after a strong run across the Celtic Sea, Morgan lay on his bunk listening for any strange noises. The westerly winds had pushed them farther to the north and closer to Ireland than he would have liked. He guessed that they must be forty miles from Galley Head south of Old Kinsale. His senses were at a fine pitch of alertness because of his concerns about the ugly mood on the foredeck. The passengers had all retired to their staterooms. The winds had died down, and the packet was now loafing along at barely three knots.

The only sound he could hear was the lapping of the water against the hull, and his concerns that trouble was afoot began to subside. His thoughts turned to the young woman who had sat next to him at dinner that night. Her full name was Eliza Ann Robinson. She was attractive, but not overly so, and he guessed she was not too far from her eighteenth birthday. With her blue silk dress and single strand of pearls, she seemed bright and lively, but he also found her to be somewhat arrogant and overly self-assured. She wanted to know if she could climb up the rigging and crawl through the lubber’s hole to try to spot any whales. Persistent and willful, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Even though he politely told her that women weren’t allowed up into the rigging, she persisted with her request. The more he tried to say no, the more stubborn and truculent she became. After dinner she walked away with an aggressive gait, clearly indicating her displeasure with him. She began playing the piano, her fingers flying over the keys, which brought a cluster of three men around her. He concluded she was a spoiled rich girl who was used to getting her way.

The cabin was dark after he put out his lamp. Just as he was dozing off, a sudden firm knock on the door caused him to jump out of bed.

“Who is it?” he called out in alarm.

The cabin door sprung open and there stood the first mate, Horace Nyles, his silhouette and whiskery face framed in the doorway. He had a sharp-tipped handspike in his hand. Morgan felt a cold tingle down his back.

“It’s a mutiny, Captain! Mutiny! Come quick!”

“Who are they?”

“It’s all those new recruits we took on in London, Cap’n.”

“How many?”

“All six of them, I’m guessing. Two of them tried to nab Icelander at the helm, but he knew something was up ’cause they smelled of rum.”

“Did they harm him?”

“No. They pulled a knife, but he knocked the man flat. The other critter came at Icelander from behind, but Mr. Pratt and Ochoa got to him before he could reach Rasmussen. They knocked him into the bulwarks where half his body was hanging overboard.”

Morgan grabbed his two pistols and pushed his way out the door. The Spaniard, a knife clenched in his teeth, was just coming down the companionway with the two rebel sailors. Their hands were manacled behind them, their cotton shirts torn exposing their bony chests, their faces bruised.

“Aquí están Capitán. Piratas, hijos de puta que no valen mierda.”

Ochoa cursed and swore as he kicked them down the last few steps, his face intense, his manner purposeful.

“¿Quiere que les mate, Capitán? Do you want me to rip them open from head to heel?”

Morgan shook his head and told Ochoa to lock them up in the ice room where the meat was kept. He watched as the Spaniard kneed the two prisoners in the back and pushed them into the cold storage room where they fell with a heavy thud. Morgan had noticed these two before. One was a tall, shaggy-haired man with a bulldog jaw and deep-set eyes that glowered under a heavily furrowed brow. The other smaller one had a pale, drawn English face with a droopy nose and eyes that blinked continuously. They reminded him of the mud-covered clammers they would pass on their way up the Thames whose upturned faces were devoid of even the faintest hope. They stood there shivering among the blocks of ice and slabs of meat. Morgan stared at them defiantly, closed the door, grabbed a board, and thrust it in between the two looped handles. He told Mr. Pratt to get their story even if he had to inflict bodily harm.

With his two pistols primed and ready to fire, he climbed up the companionway steps and ran to the stern of the ship where Icelander was still at the helm. The packet ship was headed for Cape Clear off the southern coast of Ireland. It was a dark, moonless night so the land just two miles away was invisible in the darkness. The gentle southerly winds barely moved the big ship forward. Morgan could feel the cat paws filling and emptying the sails. Icelander and the second mate quickly told him the trouble was far from over. The two captured sailors’ defiant shipmates had taken over the forecastle and had tied up Whipple and many of the other sailors loyal to the Captain.

Morgan took careful measure of the situation. With his two ship’s officers, Icelander, Spaniard, Lowery, and Scuttles down below, he guessed that they now faced the remaining four mutinous sailors, all armed with knives they’d taken from the others. Certainly they had the mutineers outnumbered, but there were hostages to consider. He knew the only big advantage he had were the two pistols he carried.

With Icelander and the Spaniard at his side, Morgan slowly advanced to the foredeck. He’d left Nyles to steer the ship and to guard the helm. Pratt was below with the two prisoners. He noticed that the foredeck lantern had been snuffed out. There was an eerie quiet on the slow-moving ship, the only sound, the creaking masts. He strained his ears for any suspicious noises like a footstep or a human voice. The night was so dark it was hard to see anything but the bare outline of the shrouds immediately ahead of him. Ochoa held the flickering lantern in one hand and his throwing knife in the other. Icelander had a large axe that was normally used to cut down tangled rigging and splintered masts. As they came closer to the foredeck, Morgan could hear the faint lapping of the water as the waves splashed against the starboard side.

As the trio crept forward, a large shadowy object suddenly fell from the sky to the deck, landing with a solid heavy thud just several feet from where Morgan was standing. He jumped back, frightened out of his wits, the air sucked out of his lungs, leaving him too shocked to react. It was so dark that he couldn’t see what it was, but Ochoa lunged toward it, lantern in one hand, the knife in the other. The Spaniard reached into the darkness, grabbed something, and yanked it up into the flickering light, revealing the head of an unconscious man, his eyes blank. A pool of blood was spilling onto the deck. Ochoa turned him over and saw the handle of a long sheath knife protruding from the man’s stomach. Morgan could see that it was one of the new recruits who had fallen from the yards onto the deck. It looked as if he’d impaled himself on his own knife.

Morgan was rattled by the sight of the dead man and the blood pooling on the deck. His gaze remained locked on the man’s lifeless eyes and the knife handle sticking up out of the bloodstained shirt for what seemed like a long time. A death on his own ship! Events were quickly spiraling out of control. Just then, they heard a thudding of feet on the deck. With a banshee-like yell, the rebels charged the three men amidships. All three stood their ground. Morgan extended his arms out in preparation to fire. Just when it seemed likely that there would be a bloody clash, the three rebels stopped within twelve feet of Morgan. A glimmer of shiny metal by their fists alerted him that they had their knives drawn. In the dim yellow flame from the lantern, he couldn’t see them well, but he could tell from the faint flash of their teeth, and the wide stance of their feet, that they were poised for action.

“Show your face,” Morgan cried out.

“Go ahead and fire, Captain, or maybe yer scared,” shouted the bushy-headed sailor, who from his manner and the way he spoke was clearly their leader.

“What are your intentions?”

“What do ye think, Cap’n? We aim to take yer ship. A dozen of your sailors are all tied up in the foc’sle. They can’t ’elp ye.”

The words spilled out from the darkness, slowly and steadily, hauled out of a deep inner well of bitterness and hatred.