Annapolis, page 29
Porter had reluctantly put to sea with the carronades and the battery of six long twelves, which left the Essex powerful enough to intimidate British whalers. But the Phoebe would be another story, and Porter knew it.
So did Gideon Browne, who said that fighting a properly armed frigate on the open sea with a main battery of carronades was like a man with a shotgun fighting a man with a rifle in an open field, further evidence of Porter’s blind lust for glory.
And Jason knew it, too. But he said Gideon should consider how great the damage if the man with the shotgun maneuvered close, how great the glory if he defeated the man with the rifle.
That, it seemed, was how Porter felt as well, because he asked Hillyar to challenge him to a duel between their ships.
“A duel?” Hillyar made another slice in the peach.
“I would challenge you, but as you outnumber me, it would seem improvident in the eyes of my countrymen. Issue, however, and I’ll answer.”
“But I’m pledged to respect the neutrality of Valparaiso Harbor.”
“As are we,” said Porter indignantly. “Otherwise we would have destroyed you the other day.”
Then Jason, Porter’s expert on the dueling arts, became the second. “Captain Porter proposes we meet four miles out, sir, beyond Chilean territorial waters, but close enough for the people of Valparaiso to observe our skills.”
“Observe our skills.” Hillyar turned his attention almost completely to the peach, now scored by eight neat longitudinal slices. “Don’t you mean, observe the bloodshed? With nothing but carronades—”
“You have the more versatile complement of weapons, sir,” said Jason. “But we’ve studied local conditions. Of course, Essex Jr. is a converted whaler, without timbers to withstand Cherub, so we propose to leave them out of the action.”
Hillyar put the peach on a plate and, with a twist of his thumb, caused it to open around its pit like a flower. “You propose that I give up my prime advantage—the Cherub—in the interests of what?”
“Why, honor, sir,” said Jason confidently.
“Honor… Young men in a young navy.”
“In a young nation that needs victories,” said Porter. “I propose to give them one.”
“My nation needs freedom from commerce raiding.” Hillyar popped a slice of the peach into his mouth. “I fear we may be at cross purposes.”
“That’s why we’re at war.”
“You misunderstand me. If I can achieve my nation’s needs without fighting my ship, I’ll do it.”
It took a moment for Porter to realize the intent of that remark, then he sat back, as if struck. “You’re not planning to blockade me?”
Hillyar held up the plate. “A bit of peach, David?”
Porter almost knocked the plate from his hands. “I’ve sailed a thousand miles to fight you, and you propose a blockade?”
Hillyar stood. “There are so few of you, David, and so many of us. Blockade seems the rational choice.”
Porter looked Hillyar in the eye. “You disgrace the Union Jack.”
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Hillyar took his ships to blockade station off the mouth of the harbor. And the game began: a feint here, a challenge there, a fortnight of flat frustration for David Porter and his crew.
Then Porter received word that three more British frigates were closing in, and he resolved at last to extricate himself from the predicament into which his thirst for glory had thrust him. He would run for the open sea, drawing off the British so the Essex Jr. could escape, too. Then he waited for his opportunity.
xvii
Rebecca’s Proposal
Spring was coming early, as if to make amends for winter.
In Annapolis, Antonia had spent the bad weather teaching her slaves to read. She knew that as long as she stayed away from Stafford Hall, her brother would let her do as she pleased, so she accepted the bargain. She brought the dozen slaves at the Fine Folly into the library, sat them beneath the portrait of her father, and took them from the alphabet toward the Declaration of Independence. Little Iris learned so well that she was soon teaching. And by spring, Zeke was studying a botany book, sounding out Latin names for the flowers he tended so lovingly in the gardens.
ON THE PATUXENT, Rebecca Parrish had spent the winter planning her final assault. She had made many friends on the tidewater. Some had been born after the Revolution and did not particularly care that this tobacco-chewing old woman had opposed the fight their parents had fought. Some had forgiven Loyalists their mistakes. And some had secretly agreed with her from the start.
Among these were Charles and Theodosia Duganey, and they had passed their feelings to their son, Anson. More than once, information about Charlton Stafford had passed from his office to his parents to Parrish Manor. And once the son of a Parrish had entered the ranks of rejected suitors, a sort of familial connection was forged that left professional ethics on a lower plane.
So Rebecca knew before the Stafford children that Mother Sara had rewritten her will. She knew that Charlton was considering a second mortgage on the Fine Folly to pay off three gambling debts—one to a tidewater horseman named Van der Voort, whose mounts had defeated Charlton’s in three races the previous autumn; one to a man in Baltimore who covered bets on local races and kept a small army of thugs to guarantee payment; and one to the notorious New York gambler Dregs McGee, who, in an epic night of whist, took Charlton Stafford for thirty-five hundred dollars. And most importantly, Rebecca knew that no Maryland bank was lending money to tidewater planters because the British blockade had destroyed the tobacco trade.
Stafford’s Fine Folly was in danger, which was just how Rebecca wanted it when she traveled to Stafford Hall and proposed her race. It was simple. She would run Lady Loring, a maiden, against the best horse in the Stafford stable. If the Stafford horse won, Rebecca would pay off Charlton’s debts and breed her horses to the Stafford line. If Lady Loring won, Rebecca would pay off the debts, and take Stafford’s Fine Folly. Either way, Charlton would be off the hook to Dregs McGee.
“I WON’T LET you do this,” said Antonia to her brother. It was March, and the world outside the windows of the Fine Folly was tinted a delicate yellow-green. “You’re gambling away my birthright, and Jason’s.”
“You’ve signed power of attorney, and the will gives me control over Jason’s third of the house until he returns, when he must sign as well.”
“You’re going to lose the house.”
“I have never lost to a Parrish horse.”
“Have you ever wondered why?”
Charlton dropped into the chair behind his father’s desk and folded his hands on his paunch. “I’ve been in this house fifteen minutes, and not one of those overeducated slaves of yours has offered me a cup of tea.”
“I give them Tuesday afternoons to themselves.” Antonia looked out the window so that she didn’t have to look at him. “If you want tea, get it yourself.”
“It’s precisely that attitude that has left you unmarried all these years.”
“The house, Charlton.” She turned on him angrily. “I won’t let you bet the house against a woman who once swore to take your mother’s pillow.”
“It’s done. Duganey has drawn up the appropriate papers. The race is to be held on March 28, a match race at the Stafford Hall oval. Stafford’s Patuxent Prime and Lady Loring of Parrish Manor. They’ll be talking about it for years to come.”
Even now, with his lack of discipline so close to ruining them, Charlton had a little boy’s all-consuming enthusiasm.
“Why did you never grow up, Charlton?”
He stood, suddenly angry. “Because they made me the son for the soil and asked me to learn things I had no interest in—planting, thinning, aging, squeezing a living out of slaves not much smarter than my horses… all while you were teaching them to read the Declaration of Independence and Jason was playing sailor boy. Gambling is my reward. Come to the race or not. But be certain that it will be run.”
xviii
The Essex and the Angels
On March 28, half a world away, a strong southeasterly gale blew the clouds in over Valparaiso and caused the Essex to part her larboard anchor cable. Then, as if the wind knew what it had done, it began to blow harder, whistling in the rigging and pushing against the hull, so that the other anchor began to drag and the ship began to ride toward the mouth of the harbor.
“We’re under way, Mr. Stafford,” said Porter, “whether we intend it or not.”
“No sense in trying to reset the anchors now, sir?” asked Jason.
“A waste of a good zephyr.” Porter studied the British ships through his glass. “Blowin’ right on their bows.”
“With luck, sir, we might take ’em to windward and be on our way.”
Porter slammed his glass shut, and his leathered face brightened like a brown shoe taking polish. “A good commander knows when to fight and when to run. Let’s run. All hands.”
“All hands, Mr. Kingsbury!” called Jason.
“All hands, aye, sir.”
And with a cry that echoed from the quarterdeck to the midships to the forward gangway, with the sound of two hundred pairs of bare or booted feet pounding on the decks and crunching on the ratlines, the Essex was in no time under a full spread, courses to topgallants, all drum-tight and singing to the tune of the wind.
The British pointed after them, but the moment belonged to the Essex. If she could make a single tack at Punta del Angeles, eastern headland of Valparaiso Harbor, she would outrun them for certain. And every man aboard understood, because every man stayed at his station like coiled line waiting to play out.
“Reef topsails!” came the order, and a single reef rose in every topsail.
“Take in t’gallants!” High up on every mast, the topgallants were pulled and furled in an instant, neater than Monday’s wash.
Now Porter told Stafford, “Prepare to brace yards.”
Gideon Browne was at the foremast, with Badmouth Ben beside him.
The Crab Louse and Jasper Reed held the heavy double wheel.
Little David Farragut stood at his foster father’s side, as if he knew that this was a day when a boy might need the protection of a man, or when a boy might become a man himself.
High up on the mainmast, One-Eyed Mudge, Will Whitney, and the others watched and listened and waited for the sailing master’s cry.
“Brace yards!”
Just as the Essex rounded the Point of the Angels, the cry came, and two hundred pairs of hands worked in an instant to turn the ship. And just as she turned, a squall of wind exploded around the point and struck the Essex right on the bow.
She all but lifted from the water. There was a tremendous groan of wood against wood. Yardarms screamed on their parrels. Miles of line wailed.
“Take in topsails!” cried Porter. Fore and mizzen tops were furled in a trice. But the maintop halyards jammed, and the great sail, reefed once but stretched to bursting, became like a hundred-ton weight tearing at the main-top-mast.
One-Eyed Mudge and Will Whitney and the others struggled. But the harder they worked, the harder the rogue wind gusted. And finally, with a tremendous, skull-shattering crack, the maintop snapped and went by the boards, taking Mudge, Will Whitney, and four more with it.
“Men overboard!” cried Gideon.
But the Essex could not come about. She could not even maneuver back into the harbor.
With the wind whipping torn rigging like useless strands of ivy, with his ship crippled and the British coming hard, Porter chose to run downwind for a small bay three quarters of a mile down the coast, there to make repairs. He had not fired on Hillyar in Chilean waters. He told Jason that Hillyar would certainly afford him the same courtesy. He was wrong.
“God damn them, Mr. Stafford,” he said when the Phoebe and the Cherub ran up their battle ensigns and started toward his makeshift anchorage. “I’ve known whores with more honor.”
“Hillyar said only that he would respect the waters of Valparaiso Harbor,” answered Jason. “He cuts his words as neat as he cuts his peaches.”
“Run up the battle ensigns and beat to quarters.”
Jason gave no thought to the possibility that he might die, or to their damnable luck. It was time to prove himself. “Mr. Kingsbury, beat to quarters.”
The drums began to pound, and the ship began to rumble with the sound of wooden gun carriages rolling out on wooden decks.
“Mr. Barnewell,” said Porter to the sailing master, “order up the springs.”
“Aye, sir.”
“And every lieutenant to his division.”
And so, thought Gideon, their noble duel would be fought aboard an outgunned cripple, anchored in the shallows, maneuvering with nothing more than springs attached to her anchor cables. He watched Jason run the pennant up the mizzen: “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights,” while Lieutenant Cowell ran another up the foremast: “God, Our Country, and Liberty: Tyrants Offend Them.” Then he spat and went below to his station.
He hurried along the gundeck, past the powder monkeys fetching linen bags of gunpowder, past the loaders and spongers and rammers, past all the guns of the starboard battery to gun port number one and Crab Louse Tom.
“We’re ready for ’em, lieutenant.” The Crab Louse spat on his gun, one of the few long twelves, like a man spitting on his palms.
Gideon liked the calm confidence of the Crab Louse. It had rallied them off the Horn. By some miracle, it might save them now. But calm confidence would do them no good if they could not bring their guns to bear.
“Listen up, lads,” cried Gideon, doing his best. “The Crab Louse sailed with John Paul Jones. He’s livin’ proof that Yankee seamen can beat any odds.”
And the men of the gundeck cheered, the deep roar echoing so loud off the blood-red bulkheads that Gideon almost believed what he was saying himself. Then he ordered them to manhandle another long twelve from the larboard side and get ready to blow the Cherub to hell, and he shouted it with such spirit that the men cheered again, feeding off the spirit that fed off their own.
“COWARDS!” PORTER GROWLED as the British came on, then fell off, then circled back and came on again. “Like old women around a sleepin’ dog.”
“A vicious dog,” shouted Jason, urging his gunners to hurry as they dragged two long twelves to the stern.
“We’ll bite off their hand if they get too close,” said Reuben Marshall.
And all the gunners cheered.
“By God,” said Porter, “with men like these, I’d fight the whole Royal Navy!”
And the men cheered again, because they sensed that he meant it.
As the afternoon sun broke through, Jason’s division shackled their two long twelves at the stern ports, and two more poked out of the gallery in the captain’s cabin below.
Reuben Marshall and Badmouth Ben, gun captains of the spar deck twelves, were making the final adjustments, advancing the quoins to raise the barrels, priming the guns, gauging the roll of the sea.
“Aim for their gunports, lads,” said Jason. “We’ll cut up her riggin’ after we’ve knocked out a few of her eighteens and evened the odds a bit.”
“Even the odds, my ass.” Badmouth Ben blew on his slow match.
Jason pretended he did not hear that. But he heard Reuben Marshall say, “She sure is pretty, with all them pennants and all.”
“When we’re done with her,” cried Jason, “she’ll look like a poxed whore—”
The Phoebe cut him off with a thundering broadside, and the Cherub fired one of her own. In an instant, the balls struck, bow and stern, shattering rails and wrecking the springs that had been fixed to the anchor cables.
Porter called, “Fire!”
And the Essex answered.
A moment later, there were loud cheers from the stern as a long twelve sent a great splash up the side of the Phoebe and drove an iron ball into her at the waterline.
A moment after that, cheers rose from the forward battery for a shot that struck the Cherub on the foremast chains and sent them flying into the air.
And another moment brought a groan of disappointment as ranging shots from the carronades splashed several hundred yards short of the Phoebe.
Another British broadside, almost simultaneous from the Cherub and Phoebe, echoed off the surrounding hills and came whistling at the Essex.
Cannonballs tore up rigging and blasted through ports on the gundeck. One deadly shot came in over the stern, killed the sponger on Badmouth Ben’s gun, hit the larboard rail, and sent up an explosion of two-foot wood splinters, then ricocheted back and tore off the head of the rammer, splattering Badmouth Ben and Jason Stafford with blood and brains.
For a moment, both men were frozen by the sight.
Then Jason heard a whistling, wheezing, strangulated sound that seemed, for a moment, louder than the roar of battle.
It was Reuben Marshall, breathing his last through the splinter hole in his chest. “We should’ve swum faster,” he said to them.
“We’ll see the rapture again, Reuben,” said Jason, “see it soon.”
“Like hell,” growled Badmouth Ben. With the slow match, he fired gun number two himself. Then he stepped around Reuben’s crew and fired number one.
By the time the shots hit the Phoebe, four new men had hurried forward to work Ben’s gun, and Reuben Marshall had seen the rapture or, at the very least, been released from his pain.
On the gundeck, the roar was deafening, and the blood-red paint could not conceal the blood covering the decks. Smoke hung like burning brimstone in the air. And the stink of mangled meatlike flesh, of excrement released as some men died and others simply surrendered to their fear, hung even thicker. But for all the death around them, the men of the forward battery did their duty so well that the Cherub fell off.
