In drawing twenty feet, the sloop’s hold was almost as capacious as an orlop, and Berend was satisfied with the roping off of a cockpit, should they get into a fight. Fleming had even built him a table on which to operate, since they would carry only two midshipmen and, in naval tradition, operations were performed on a table formed of midshipmen’s trunks. “Gentlemen,” Bliven told them while they were below, “it occurs to me that we are a greatly overpopulated ship. You will see that when we take on swine and fowls, we will keep them down here. Fleming has built them stout pens forward there.”
“You do know, Captain,” said Miller, “on most ships the fowl are kept topside in the fresh air. Besides,” he added, “if we get into a battle, perhaps we can have our very own fighting gamecock.”
Bliven smiled and considered it for a second. “No, I would not wish for Macdonough to think I am trying to outdo him.”
The officers laughed lustily. All knew the story of Macdonough at the Battle of Lake Champlain. When British ships on the lake sank both the vessels under his command, the indomitable Macdonough responded in a matter of weeks—an almost impossibly short time—by constructing a powerful 700-ton corvette, the Saratoga, in which he renewed the fight. The first British salvo from the brig Linnet broke open the chicken coop, whose resident cock, rather than seek shelter, fluttered from rigging to gun slide and back again, crowing and flapping and scolding defiantly. Saratoga’s sailors took such heart that they defeated the Linnet with their starboard battery, and then with that side shot to pieces swung at their anchor and defeated HMS Confiance, a thirty-six-gun frigate, with their port battery.
“Captain,” asked Berend, “have you given any thought as to who you shall designate as the duckfucker?”
Another gust of laughter erupted, the men recognizing that it was an old tradition in the Royal Navy for the seaman who was given care of the ship’s fowl to be known by that rude sobriquet. “As I think on it,” said Bliven, “I believe I shall defer to the quartermaster’s judgment. He can select some man who comes from a farming background.”
“Oh, are you not a farmer yourself, sir?” posed Miller.
“I am. However, I have never in my life fucked a duck, and I wish to God I could as solemnly affirm the same about my officers.”
Their spirits rose still higher as a sailing day approached. Hull gave Bliven a thick sheaf of orders, in which he kept his promise to repeat the complicated political chessboard of the Pacific, and explain his freedoms of action when left to his own judgment.
It was on April 10, 1820, months after he wanted to be away, that the bars were inserted into the capstan and the anchor was hoisted from only eight fathoms down and made secure to the catheads. As the pilot boat glided by them, Bliven called out, “Mr. Yeakel, set your tops’ls and stays’ls.”
“Aye, sir.”
Bliven took the wheel himself, cleared the harbor, and, after the pilot turned back, stood out east-southeast for Race Point and then southerly by degrees down the well-known beaches of Cape Cod.
He found himself of two minds about the wind. After sitting so long in port, his natural desire was for one full and following, but if they had to beat down the coast it would not be a bad thing, for Yeakel could begin forging the crew into a unit with the repetition of bracing and wearing. For now, he was content to have the wind at his back. In a voyage south down the whole curve of the globe, it was hardly farther for him to angle across the Atlantic to the African coast—he had always wanted a look at Dakar to see for himself how slaves were stored and embarked—and then cross again the relatively short distance to Brazil, but the necessity to put in at Charleston removed that possibility.
Soon to exit his thirty-fourth year, he had left Boston many times, but never with such a feeling of change coming over him. Departing as a midshipman of fourteen was one quality of emotion; being a lieutenant and knit into the fabric of a crew was a different sensation. This was not the first time he had left as captain of a vessel, yet it was not the same. With the passage of time and the impending death of his father, somehow Connecticut exerted less pull on him, but at last he realized that the great change was that this time he was not leaving everything behind; he was sailing toward something, and the faster he could urge his vessel forward, the sooner he would be reunited with his wife, and everything about his affections and future that she embodied.
Owing to the duration of the cruise, they took on board only two midshipmen, Evarts and Quarles. Most families would not countenance giving up their prepubescent sons to three years of hard life at sea unless they were driven by the ambition to have a latter-day Preble or John Paul Jones among their relations. Or else, and Bliven had to satisfy himself against this point, they might merely be incorrigibles who had to be gotten out of the house. The same could be said, in a smaller way, of the bare minimum of eighteen ship’s boys that he carried, bunking far forward on the berth deck where the surgeon and bosun could keep an eye on them, keep them out of mischief, and better secure them from seamen of dubious morals.
Their first morning out, he saw that Rippel had the midshipmen at the taffrail, and drew near enough that they snapped to attention and he bade them carry on. “Now, young gentlemen,” lectured Rippel, “it is vital for a crew at sea to be able to measure their speed in order to reckon their position. After today this task will be entrusted to you.”
As far as they know. Bliven looked away so he could smile upon his memories.
“Mr. Evarts, I hand you this sandglass. In it are precisely twenty-eight seconds of sand. Mr. Quarles, I hand you this length of line. You see at the end of it is a wooden float, and you will see that a knot has been tied in it every eight fathoms. You shall drop the float over the rail, and the instant it hits the water, Mr. Evarts will turn the glass over to mark the time. You shall pay out the line until the sand is exhausted, at which time he will call, ‘Mark!’ When he does so, you will stop paying out line, and haul the float back in, counting how many knots had gone out, and you will report that number to the officer on the deck. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” they said together.
“Very well, let us try it. Mr. Quarles, have enough line in hand that the float can fall all the way down. Mr. Evarts, turn the glass the moment it hits the water. You may proceed.”
Quarles cast the line gently, and the wooden chip made a tiny splash, at which Evarts snapped the sandglass on its head.
After a few seconds Rippel shook his head. “No, no, no! You must pay out the line more quickly, otherwise you are merely towing it, and that will show slower than your true speed. Haul it back in and try again.”
“I am sorry, sir,” said Quarles.
“No matter, I did not make it clear enough. You will get it right this time. Evarts, turn the glass back up.”
When the upper part of the glass was drained and ready, Quarles cast it again, paying out line to such slack that the float disappeared rapidly behind them. When the last of the twenty-eight seconds of sand dropped into the lower basin, Evarts called out “Mark!” in his voice that had not yet changed.
“Lieutenant, sir,” said Quarles, “do I start counting the distance from where the line was wet from the water, or from what is in my hand now?”
“A very pertinent question, Mr. Quarles, you show aptitude. Count from what is in your hand, for the line extends not straight down, but astern and counts in the distance to be calculated. Continue.” Quarles hauled in the dripping line until the float came over the taffrail. “Well, gentlemen, how many knots were betwixt you and the float?”
“Eight, sir.”
“And was there a significant length of line paid out until the next knot would have appeared?”
“Yes, sir, about thirty feet. Is that enough to consider half a knot?”
“How far is eight fathoms?”
The boy thought for a moment. “Forty-eight feet, sir.”
>
“It is. Thus our speed is eight and a half knots. Do you see what officer has the deck?”
“Mr. Miller, sir.”
“Well, then, go and report our present speed to him.” Ordinarily this was one of the quartermaster’s duties, to log their speed every hour, but they had discussed it and thought it well for the midshipmen to build a rapport with the lieutenants before resuming the regular order.
The boys advanced to where Miller had a hand on the binnacle. “Mr. Miller, sir?” They saluted, and he returned it gravely.
“Gentlemen?”
“We wish to report our present speed at eight and one half knots, sir.”
Miller removed a square of paper from his breast pocket, with a pencil, and wrote it down. “So noted, gentlemen. Thank you.”
Rippel had come up behind them. “Now, get you below to your books, both of you. Well done.”
“You know, Mr. Rippel,” said Bliven, “when I was a midshipman on the Enterprise, most of my instruction was entrusted to a lieutenant named Curtis. He was as sorry a waste of humanity as ever drew breath. I took an oath to myself that if ever I rose to command, the ancient practice of abusing cadet officers to indoctrinate them into the Navy should never, not ever, take place on my ship. I hope I may count on you and Mr. Jackson to sustain me in this determination.”
“Of course, Captain. Did you feel I was too sharp with them?”
“No, not a bit. Now, Mr. Miller here will be largely occupied with his executive duties, so you and Mr. Jackson may discuss between yourselves which of the midshipmen’s courses of study you each feel the better to take charge of.”
“Yes, sir.”
For days southward, they stayed inshore of the Gulf Stream, riding coastal eddies, and without event turned into the confluence of sloughs that formed Charleston Harbor. Bliven had been devising excuses to remain in port long enough to meet Sam, if he could come, but upon calling at the Navy Yard he knew from the brevity of the note waiting for him that they could not meet.
ABBEVILLE, S. CAROLINA
15 FEBY., 1820
My Esteemed Friend Putnam,
I thank you for your recent favor of correspondence. As much pleasure as it would give me to see you, I regret bitterly that I doubt it will be in my power to do so. I have not received a reply to my letter to you, sent to Boston, and so send this separately to Charleston. If you must lay over there for long, let me know of it and perhaps something can be managed, but as it seems now, affairs here are at such a pass, I cannot look away.
Remaining yr friend through all,
Sam’l. Bandy
BLIVEN PUTNAM, CAPT. USN COMD’G
US SHIP RAPPAHANNOCK
C/O CHARLESTON NAVY YARD
From the Navy Yard Bliven took a stroll into the town, turning over in his mind what Sam might have meant by remaining his friend “through all.” That answer came with surprising swiftness as he discovered that if the attitude toward the federal uniform had been cold when he was here during the War of 1812 it was now, if anything, hostile. He knew of course that John C. Calhoun, that preening rooster of Southern pretense he had encountered as a boy at the same social where he met Clarity, had risen to serve three terms in Congress. There he became a thorn in the side of everyone who did not bend the knee to South Carolina as a mighty and sovereign nation. After six years of forging a pugnacious alliance of Southern extremists and making enemies of everyone else, he became Secretary of War, an office he occupied even at this hour.
Bliven had to wonder whether having a Southern extremist in that office had anything to do with the fact that Northern armories seemed stripped down to their echoing bare walls, while those of Charleston strained to hold all the powder and shot diverted to them, but at least now that would work to Rappahannock’s advantage, for powder and ball and grape and canister were stocked in plenty, and loaded in two days. Before committing to their long voyage, Bliven anchored off Fort Moultrie and staked floats every hundred yards away from the ship to mark the range, and used the opportunity to test the powder, which he found excellent and consistently effective to a thousand yards, and also to verse the men in the exercise of the great guns. This was simpler than it was in the days of linstock fuses, and there were enough seasoned hands in the crew to apportion them as gun captains. If he should find himself in a battle and the gun captains did not show great aptitude for gunnery, he would have the lieutenants point the guns.
* * *
* * *
AS RAPPAHANNOCK PLOWED her stately way south, past the Caribbean islands and down the coast of Brazil, Bliven took some superior fun in directing the visit of Neptune and his “wife” as they crossed the equator. So many of the crew had never done so that he decided to make it more a day of rest, with singing and fiddling and jig dancing. In a twist unheard-of in the Navy, he saved a little mild abuse for the junior officers, for of the lieutenants only Miller was a veteran of crossing the line. Rippel and Jackson had the men stripped and doused in a barrel of water; his own joke was that as they braced to be dunked in cold sea water, Bliven had had the cook prepare it with hot fresh water, and slipped them a cake of soap to make it worth their while. Lieutenant David James Horner—Bliven noted that he always introduced himself using both his given names—also had never crossed the equator, but Bliven judged his character too fine and grave, and too easily embarrassed, to inflict any indignities upon him. When some of the more crusty sailors cast eager eyes in his direction, Bliven decreed that Neptune’s authority extended only to seamen, not to marines.
Only his steward Ross was aware that Bliven began having trouble sleeping at night. He had sailed the South Atlantic before, lost the Tempest, and then in the Constitution played his role in defeating the Java, but as they cruised past the twenty-fifth parallel it weighed on him that now he was entering waters new to him. At length he realized that what unnerved him was the prospect of making his first rounding of Cape Horn, that graveyard of ships, that terror of all sensible seamen. Dr. Berend, he learned, had traversed it once but had no part in plotting its navigation; indeed, he had spent the passage below, ostensibly to comfort the sick but in truth, as he now admitted, avoiding being topside from his own terror, for it was from his account an uncommonly fraught passage.
After two and a half months at sea, their water turning foul and rations rancid, their fresh meat long since exhausted, it began to press where to make port to provision and water, for Rio de Janeiro was in political upheaval. In his lack of sleep Bliven had begun rereading Captain Porter’s account of his voyage in the Essex, in whose long-vanished wake they were following. Indeed, if it had not been for Porter’s memoir, he would not have thought to put in at Santa Catarina Island and its congenial little town of Florianópolis.
Brazil was vast, and this was part of it, but far enough removed from the turmoils of Rio that the people, to all appearances, were left content to live their bucolic lives. It lay at nearly the twenty-eighth south parallel, a temperate land of plentiful vegetables and fruit, and Porter had taken special trouble to describe their water as excellent. He even noted the soundings of the harbor and where a ship of deep draught could anchor in safety.
Before pushing on, Bliven called the officers and warrant officers into the great cabin to consider the hazards of the coming weeks. “Gentlemen,” he began, “no one knows from one day to the next, even from one hour to the next, what the conditions are in the southern straits. We should prepare for some eventualities now. I want the extra spars carried down and stowed on the gun deck. Take the bow chasers off their carriages and lower them into the hold. Take the carronades off their slides and do likewise, only make sure in the hold to lash everything down very securely. We want all the ballast we can put down there, but it wouldn’t do at all to have it break loose and roll around.”
That procedure when completed would remove at least seven tons of weight from their upper deck and locat
e it where it would do the most good.
“Now,” he continued, “once we get near to the straits, we will dispense with the morning routine of stowing hammocks in the netting. All that would accomplish is to make the men’s bedding cold and soggy. I can stand the extra clutter for a few days if you can, and I believe it will have a good effect with the men.”
Bliven went back to studying Porter’s experience and was discomfited to learn that he had chosen the rock-lined defile of the Strait of Magellan, narrow as an attic hallway, over the longer but broader passage of the Le Maire Strait. It was an opportune time to consult with his trusted bosun, whom he called to the quarterdeck. “Mr. Yeakel, have you made the rounding of Cape Horn before?”
“Yes, sir. I was bosun’s mate on a commercial vessel.”
“And how did you find it?”
“Like Jacob and Esau, sir.”
“I am not such a religious man, Mr. Yeakel. I do not follow you.”
“Captain, I was a smooth man on the day before, and a hairy man on the day after.”
“Ha! Walk with me.” They advanced slowly forward on the spar deck. “Did you take the Le Maire Strait or the inland passage?”
“We followed Magellan himself, sir, and not to tell you your business, but I would be a happy man not to do so again.”
“Upon what considerations?”
“Well, first, it is a longer passage than it seems because it is in the shape of a great S. Some of it is wide enough, ten miles across in places, but there are two narrows that are just as tight as a garden gate, and the smallest miscalculation will ground you on the rocks. Except the winds do not allow for calculation. Sir, imagine yourself in a doldrum, and following the cat’s paws on the water to detect how the breeze varies from all over the compass. Now imagine that times a thousand, being slapped left and right and behind so fast, you don’t know what direction you are facing. That is just the wind; the current is worse, and the tide worse than that. If it comes with you, you must ride it like the flood of a river; and if it comes against you, it will spin you around and set you into the wind before you can haul in the sails. Quickest way in the world to lose your masts.”
The Devil in Paradise--Captain Putnam in Hawaii Page 22
