Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale (19 page)

Morgan responded, his voice projecting more confidence than he felt. “Two of your men are now in manacles locked up down below. One of your number is already dead with a knife in his belly. That leaves only the three of you scoundrels left, and with my two shots, there soon will just be one of you. What will it be, men?”

Icelander and Ochoa stood with their weapons hoisted over their heads. Morgan’s palms were sweaty. He could tell that this news had changed things. He could just make out the visibly startled face of the ringleader, but then the man quickly regained his composure. A fight was about to begin when out of the gloom of the foredeck, one of the rebel sailors appeared with a knife to Whipple’s throat, the blade flashing in the lantern’s flickering light, the man’s largely bald head and long, drooping moustache barely visible.

“Stop where you are, Captain! Unless ye want this old sailor to die,” said the bald man, whom the ringleader called Enochs. “I’ll kill ’im without a thought. I’se done it before, you can be sure of that.”

Their leader, the bushy-haired mutineer, now spoke up.

“This old tar ’ere will die like a pig unless ye ’ave yer men ready and lower the quarter boat on the starboard side. We’ll kill ’im, don’t y’doubt it.”

It took Morgan a moment to register that the ringleader appeared to have changed his mind or at least his tactics. The mutineers no longer wanted to try to take the ship; they wanted to escape. But the danger was far from over. The tip of the man’s knife traveled across Whipple’s throat. Morgan hesitated. Icelander and Ochoa were looking to him for the word to attack.

“Do it, Captain, or this man dies. So might many of the others tied up below in the fo’c’sle. We’ll corpse ’em all if we can.”

Morgan watched the point of the knife prick Whipple’s throat and heard the ship carpenter cry out in pain as the blade’s point broke the skin and slid down to the base of his neck. He saw the thin trickle of blood on his neck. He could sense the ringleader’s desperation and his impatience. Morgan paused another moment as he weighed the options, finally deciding on the more cautionary alternative. He gave the orders for Icelander to go lower the boat.

The big bushy-haired sailor threw his head back with a triumphant shake, and growled in satisfaction.

“Good choice, Captain. Now bring up the two of my men ye ’ave and fetch the body of Armstrong. No tricks, mind ye. Comes a time when every tar ’as to fall off the wind in bad weather. Appears like yer makin’ the right decision.”

Morgan kept his eyes fixed on the man. The roughness of his manner attested to his vicious nature. For the first time, under the lantern’s glow, he noticed the elaborately blue and red tattooed serpents that spiraled down his arms, the fangs extending down each finger, the green eyes on either side of his large hand. The throaty, hoarse quality of his voice seemed familiar to him somehow, almost like from a dream. He didn’t know why, but it was unnerving. In the lantern’s dim light, Morgan could see a white weal that ran across the man’s forehead, but it was the eyes that were unforgettable. One of them had an odd slant to one side, and both of them were almost hidden behind fleshy eyelids. His pistols were ready to fire, but he did as the man said, sending Lowery down into the cabin to retrieve the captured men, who stumbled up from below decks carrying the dead sailor with them.

“Get over ’ere, Compton. Ye too, Wainwright,” the ringleader barked at the two men who had been apprehended earlier. “Get Armstrong’s body into the quarter boat.”

The five mutineers now gathered around the quarterdeck, clustered around the wide-eyed Whipple, whose neck was still bleeding. The ringleader had brought along two of the captured sailors from the foredeck as hostages. He turned to the bald-headed man who held the knife to Whipple’s throat.

“If he makes one move, Enochs, stick him like a pig.”

Morgan watched as the shadowy figures of the mutineers disappeared one by one over the side, climbing down the ship’s rope ladder to the quarter boat below. The winds had now died down to a flat calm so that the ship was hardly moving. Their captives, their hands still tied behind their backs, were dragged along, and thrown down next to the corpse into the bottom of the quarter boat, which was hanging from the davits just a foot above the water line. Morgan was powerless to do anything. Any move by him would have caused Whipple’s death and maybe the other two as well.

“Release my men!” Morgan shouted in sudden desperation as he raised his guns to eye level. “Rest assured, I’ll fire unless you free those men.”

The bushy-headed sailor looked up at Morgan with a pernicious smile, his heavy-lidded eyes opening wider.

“Aye, aye, Captain. Let Neptune ’ave ’em and the Devil too.”

He cut the hand ties from behind Whipple and the two other captured sailors, and then pushed them overboard as he sliced the quarter boat’s painter. All this happened within seconds, so fast Morgan wasn’t sure of what to do next. He watched as the shadow of the quarter boat moved away into the darkness. He could have fired, but he saw what he thought were the bobbing heads of his men, their hands and arms thrashing in the water. The mutineers were already disappearing when Morgan finally reacted. He shouted out for Icelander to drop the jolly boat at the stern to try to pick up the men who had been thrown overboard. With the lack of wind and the flat seas, the men were easy to find from the noise they made thrashing about in the frigid water.

As Morgan turned and walked toward the quarterdeck, he saw that most of the cabin passengers were now clustered around the companionway. The first mate, Mr. Nyles, held a lantern. The passengers’ wide-eyed faces were filled with uncertainty and fear. He himself was trembling as he tried to reassure them that everything was fine. He spotted the normally cheery Lord Nanvers, who looked like he had seen a ghost. He was dressed in silk pajamas, a plaid flannel robe, and embroidered slippers. Morgan’s eyes met the gaze of the girl with the amber eyes, and he noticed that she seemed slightly shaken, but not as unnerved as he might have expected. In fact, Miss Robinson, wrapped in a pink satin coat, seemed strangely energized by all the drama and excitement. Her cheeks were flushed and she seemed to be looking at him with renewed interest.

An hour later, the three shivering and frightened sailors were down below in the cabin wrapped in blankets, sipping some of Scuttles’s warm pea soup. If it hadn’t been for the calm seas, these men would have drowned. Morgan had more questions than answers. The mutineers had escaped. They were probably already safe ashore in Ireland. He wondered who they were and why they had chosen the
Philadelphia
out of all the ships in London. He thought back to their leader. He remembered Laura’s description of Blackwood’s eyes, and the serpent tattoos. He suddenly thought of Laura’s warnings about how the man would try to kill him. Maybe she told Blackwood about their encounter in Change Alley? That throaty voice had seemed so strangely familiar. His mind went back to a distant memory, a hazy room in the Frying Pan Tavern, the naked girl and that distinctive voice of the man named Bill. “Never seen ’im before.” That’s what he’d said in that same guttural voice.

“Fastnet Rock ahead of us, Cap’n,” Mr. Nyles yelled out from the forward section of the ship. The winds had shifted and picked up sharply, coming out of the north. Morgan pulled up the collar of his coat. He could just barely make out in the gray predawn light the black rock pointing up from the sea like a breeching fin whale. This was Ireland’s most southerly point. The Irish called it the lonely rock and he could see why. Off to the starboard some four miles away, he could just make out the round stone lighthouse of Cape Clear. This would be their last sight of land until they sighted the sandy beaches of Long Island.

16

Days later, the
Philadelphia
was forging along under full sail with a fair, fresh breeze at twelve knots an hour. The attempted mutiny along with the last sight of Ireland was all but forgotten now by most of the cabin passengers, but not for Morgan. He blamed himself for not being more vigilant. If he had listened to the warnings from Ochoa and Whipple he might have prevented the mutiny. He consoled himself with the fact that no lives had been lost and his ship was still on schedule. Still, he’d let them get away. He could have fired his guns, but he’d hesitated. So many troubling questions lingered in his mind. Who was that devil sailor with the squinty eyes? He wondered again if he had finally met William Blackwood. Pratt had questioned the captured men and found that they were a couple of scrappy fishermen from the lower Thames. They said their plans were to capture and scuttle the ship off the Irish coast. All on board were supposed to die, but they didn’t say the ringleader’s name.

Turning away from the helmsman, he began walking toward the quarterdeck. The seas were calm and radiant, taking on a furrowed appearance like a recently plowed field, offering little resistance for the large packet ship. A noonday sun warmed the wooden deck. Morgan decided to leave the sailing to his two ship’s officers while he spent time being packet-polite to his passengers. Most of them had surfaced on deck to enjoy the weather. The wind was fair and balmy and everyone seemed to be in fine spirits.

He watched as some of the men, dressed in brightly colored coats, cream-colored pants, and flat-brimmed straw hats, tried to play shuffleboard on the slanting deck with their broom-shaped paddles. They laughed good-naturedly, trying to keep their balance as the waves sent their weighted biscuits sliding off to the leeward side. A group of older women in full-sleeved white cotton dresses, shawls, and calico bonnets sat on the windward side, safe from any ocean spray, crocheting and chatting. Lowery was passing sardine and cucumber sandwiches, his agile body leaning into the slanted deck like a gimbaled compass.

Morgan continued to walk toward the noisy center of the ship where the steerage passengers were kept, absorbing the sounds and sights of the small village ahead of him. A refreshing breeze came tumbling down from the enormous cavity of the mainsail and fanned his cheeks. The steerage area was a world away from the peaceful quarterdeck. He could hear whistling, whining, sobbing, laughing, and the scraping of fiddles ahead of him. As captain, he spent little time in the steerage area, preferring to let Whipple or Pratt see to the passengers’ needs and keep order. Due to the attempted mutiny, the number of sailors on board was now seriously depleted. They had been forced to continue sailing the ship shorthanded. All the sailors, including Pratt and Whipple, were needed aloft, leaving the steerage passengers mostly unattended except for the occasional visit by the first mate or Morgan himself. Mostly they wanted more water, bandages for cuts, and information about the weather and the length of the voyage.

Morgan now took stock of what the sailors referred to as their human cargo. All eighty of the steerage passengers were clustered on the deck into a fifty-by-twenty-foot area alongside the farm animals. It was a mixture of men and women. There were entire families as well. His eyes scanned the patchwork quilt of humanity that lay before him. Such a raw display of the human character, he thought to himself, their faces filled with hope and fear, cruelty and humility, ignorance and despair, deception and honesty. A group of them were lined up at the scuttlebutt, tin cans in hand, waiting for their daily allowance of water. Another small group was waiting by the deckside galley for pea soup and hot water from the kettle. They had all been checked for any signs of yellow fever or cholera, as an epidemic on board was Morgan’s greatest fear. As with the other packet ships, the
Philadelphia
had no doctor on board, and there was no effective way to stop the spread of an infectious disease. Fire was another great concern.

Another group gathered around the barnlike, pine board structure on deck where the animals were kept, singing and dancing a jig. Some young children were playing hide-and-seek around their parents’ legs, the girls shrieking with delight as one of the boys discovered their hiding place. A few young men wearing woolen caps and flat-rimmed hats were playfully gut-punching and shadowboxing one another by the leeward bulwarks. Morgan leaned his elbows on the cabin hatch and, as often happened when he looked at his steerage passengers, felt empathy for these people. Their accommodations below decks consisted of stacked wooden bunk beds and little else. There were no walls for privacy. Men, women, and children were crowded together with only four feet of space to move around. He knew from years of observation that the lucky ones might escape New York’s scalawags and scoundrels, but most would be dealing with a hard life in the new country.

Looking over the side at the waves pushing them westward, he was reminded of the distant fields and pastures that sloped down to the Connecticut River. He turned back to the steerage section of the ship, his gaze pausing at an older man seated by the base of the foremast smoking a pipe. He reminded him of his father. He had the same nose and bushy eyebrows, but a gentler expression, rounder face, and flatter cheeks flecked with silver stubbly whiskers. Thoughts of home made him melancholy, and he wondered if he would ever see his parents again. His father would be in his late seventies now. It was hard to believe. He knew he should go home and make amends, no matter how difficult, but he also was aware that he said this every year and never did. He stepped forward to where the old man was seated. The man turned in his direction expectantly, his smoky eyes looking beyond Morgan.

“That you, Sally?” he asked with a hopeful tone in his voice.

Morgan suddenly realized that the man was almost completely blind. He introduced himself, and learned that the old man was traveling with his daughter. His name was James Cleaver, and he was from Kent. He had worked all his life on a farm not far from the village of Plucks Gutter, he said, until his eyesight completely left him about a year ago.

“I am a widderer,” he told Morgan. “My wife died some years ago. That was her dream to go to America to start a new life theer’. I am going out with my gal Sally. She’s over yonder, gettin’ me some soup. She’s my oldest. Now that I am stone blind, I depend on her fairly regular.”

“How did you manage to save the money?” Morgan asked.

“It took ever so many years,” he replied wearily. “With a few shillings put aside each week from our wages. It took ever so long to get enough money. Finally it was done at last.”

“Where will you go?”

“Not sure ’bout that,” he replied. “Sally says the Lord will direct us. America is the promised land, am I right, Cap’n? Maybe we’ll head west.”

Morgan remained silent as he looked into the man’s milky, unseeing eyes.

“Will we be theer’ soon, Cap’n? Some say America only be a short distance from Ireland.”

Before Morgan could answer, he heard some shouting and his instincts told him something was wrong.

“Ballenas! Ballenas!”

It was Ochoa high atop the main mast who spotted them first. Soon that cry echoed around the ship.

“Whales! Close alongside! Thar she blows!”

One of the sailors hanging out on the jib boom spotted them directly underneath him.

“Whales, whales, swimming off the starboard bow!”

Morgan rushed back to the quarterdeck area, shouting out orders along the way.

“Sheet in the fore and main courses!” he yelled.

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Mr. Nyles.

“Veer off to port to keep well clear!” he shouted to the helmsman. Normally he was not that concerned about encountering whales in the open ocean, but this pod had come extremely close to the ship.

“Tighten up the inner and outer jibs!”

The ship’s sails fluttered as the crew pulled on the clewlines and bunt-lines. The cabin passengers, eager for a diversion, rushed toward the starboard side of the boat, followed by a stampede of steerage passengers doing the same. The whales were breaking the surface just off the starboard bow, fifty-foot giants, effortlessly diving and resurfacing minutes later. The deck was filled with excited exclamations from the passengers as one of the whales surfaced, letting out a geyserlike spout of water. Soon they were close enough to see the encrusted barnacles growing on the gray heads of the larger whales. Cautiously, Morgan ordered the helmsman to head further to port.

It was then he noticed a cluster of men in dark coats and dark cravats gathered around the young woman with the amber eyes. It was apparent that Miss Robinson had found several suitors who were avidly seeking her attention. One was a young American from Philadelphia, Buckley Norris, who had studied medicine in Europe and was returning home. Another was a middle-aged French nobleman, Count Michel d’Aubusson. And the third was Sir Charles Molesworth, an older English businessman known as a successful cotton manufacturer from Liverpool. Morgan’s eyes scanned the decks and noticed the girl’s mother with her full, long-sleeved day dress surveying the scene like a proud symphony orchestra conductor. From the way Miss Robinson handled this field of suitors, with a magnetic smile and sparkling eyes, he could see she was well acquainted with the whirl of high society dances and the protocol of formal luncheons and teas.

At that moment the lunch bell rang, and like a herd of milking cows answering the farmer’s call, the
Philadelphia
’s cabin passengers headed below for their afternoon meal. Morgan turned to leave when he heard a flurry of feet on the deck and several shouts from some of the passengers. He turned toward Mrs. Robinson, who was looking up with shock and disbelief. He followed her gaze, and to his astonishment there was a young, slim figure climbing the ratlines to the top of the lower mainmast. It was Eliza Robinson. She’d pulled her light cotton dress up between her legs and secured it in front, revealing the lower back part of her calves and the edge of her knee-length white drawers to those on the deck, shocking most of the women even as it was pleasing to the men. She squeezed through the lubber’s hole and pulled herself up onto the main-top platform. Soon she was looking down and waving at the throng of upturned faces on the quarterdeck. No one was more surprised than the captain himself. Mrs. Robinson began screaming for her daughter to come down immediately. She turned to Captain Morgan, her nostrils flaring.

“Do something, Captain! She’ll fall to her death!”

Just then, Eliza spotted dolphins. Hundreds of dolphins with glossy backs surrounded the ship, diving and surfing in the
Philadelphia
’s wake. Some of the steerage passengers yelled out, “Sea pigs, sea pigs!” Most of them had never seen a dolphin before. The sailors on board weren’t surprised, as whales and dolphins frequently were sighted together. Eliza looked poised and confident standing on the small platform with one hand on the shrouds. All eyes now turned to watch the frothy spectacle around them as scores of dolphins raced the ship, leaping high in the air before diving under the hull and resurfacing on the other side.

Morgan sent two sailors to help Eliza clamber down the ratlines. When she reached the last few rungs before the deck, Morgan offered his hand to her, but she refused it, squaring her shoulders.

“I will be fine, Captain, but thank you very much. I found the view to be excellent.”

In an effort to be conciliatory but firm he said, “Miss Robinson, I must warn you. This is not allowed on board ship. I will not have one of my passengers getting hurt.”

“Captain, I want you to know I am not a fragile piece of china to be kept safely in a cupboard.”

At that, Eliza walked off with her head held high and her scowling mother marching close behind. Morgan was annoyed he had been spoken to this way in front of all the other cabin passengers. He could tell from the smirks on some of the sailors’ faces that his frustrated efforts to control this strong-willed young woman had made him look foolish.

They sailed two hundred miles on June 22, which turned out to be their fastest day. They were now approaching the Grand Banks. Morgan remembered that day for the fine wind, but also for the creamed potato soup, the roast pig, and the apple pie. All afternoon long the quarterdeck was filled with comforting smells of roast pork wafting up the companionway hatch. Scuttles was hard at work in the galley preparing lunch. When the lunch bell rang, Lord Nanvers was in a fine humor at the sight of the feast laid out on large platters atop the saloon’s long dining table, everything from stewed chicken to boiled codfish to a fine macaroni pie. He took a seat next to Morgan. Rubbing the palms of his hands together in hungry anticipation, he remarked, “Now there’s a sight for a Rubens’ painting, eh Captain.” He pointed to the large platter where the pig’s head had been placed as the centerpiece of the table. “Nothing I like better than the smell of roast pig.”

With that, the barrel-chested English lord wasted no time in spearing a large slice of roast pork and serving himself a generous amount of mashed potatoes and corned beef. He then passed the pickled oysters to his lovely young wife. Morgan allowed his gaze to wander over to Lady Nanvers, a striking blonde with large blue eyes whose tall, voluptuous body was a constant distraction for most of the men on board. Her ever-present vapid smile, Morgan suspected, cloaked a far more complex character. She had the look of a woman with a strong appetite for men and had sampled many before she chose the stout-chested English lord. She was his second wife, as his first had died in childbirth, leaving him no heirs. He was hoping that they would have a son soon. Morgan discovered all of this from another of the English passengers who’d confided in him that Lord Nanvers might not have a legal heir, but it was rumored around London that “the old devil considered himself quite the swordsman and had many illegitimate children from several different women, who were not from the gentle class.”