I had no idea how bad that Saturday would turn out to be, but I did know it was Saturday, so I slept in. Elise finally called me around nine. It sounded like she had been sleeping in too. She said she had a good laugh about the “historicals” when she saw that in the paper, but mostly we talked about us. Now that the re-enactment was finally starting, it would only be about two more weeks before the thing dragged to its conclusion and I would be able to come home. The way she talked about my return to Green Bay, I wished I could get on a plane that instant.
Eventually I got out of bed, had a late breakfast in the empty hotel dining room, and then got over to the tailor shop for my costume. He had it all tied up in a neat package, warned me once more time how hot the wool would be, and asked me to get it back first thing Monday morning. Even taking my money seemed to be an annoyance to this guy. Here was a man in a desperate need of a vacation. Being French, he no doubt took six weeks a year, and being French, it was not nearly enough.
I was in no hurry to get to Biloxi – dinner on the boat did not begin until eight – but I really had nothing else to do, so I drove the wagon route one more time, had a light lunch in Gulf Port, and despite how much I dawdled, I still pulled into the massive parking lots outside Biloxi around three. I left the costume in the car and went wandering around the crowd. If anything, there were more people than ever wandering around town. I could just imagine what the place would look like tomorrow when the show really began.
I had no particular destination for my wanderings, other than finding smatterings of shade, but I knew I didn’t want to get near the boat and the main players in this show – I would get enough of them this evening. So eventually, I started looking for mules. I figured if the wagon train was going to pull out tomorrow, the mules and wagons must be somewhere in the vicinity already. If nothing else, it gave some purpose to my steps.
I got some help from a woman at an information booth, and other help from people I met on the street, but eventually I got the most help from my nose. Forty mules corralled in one location are no flower garden. These were being kept in a warehouse several blocks from the dock. Huge fans were blowing air through the warehouse, which is to say, huge fans were blowing an incredible smell down the street. Everyone else who ventured down that particular street suddenly found good reason to hurry despite the heat, while I decided I had a professional responsibility to inspect the mules. What can I say? I was pretty bored.
What did I learn about mules? I learned Louisiana has more mules than it has qualified mule drivers. They had a wagon on one end of the warehouse, and about fifty men were struggling to hitch up a team. Each of the men had his own opinions on the best way to put on the harness, none of the mules was in any mood to go wherever they were wanted, and the whole process was being accomplished with typical French efficiency, which is to say, at their current rate they might have that one wagon connected in time for the Christmas parade. I took a few pictures, talked to a few men, and basically enjoyed the show, if not the smell.
The other smell I thought I detected was fear. I had come to believe that this whole wagon train effort had been completely choreographed and organized to perfection. From the sound of panic I heard in a few men’s shouts, and the increasing volume of profanity, it occurred to me that these men knew they were just hours away from a national television appearance, and they were not at all ready. Somehow they had to get the mules harnessed and the drivers trained by ten a.m. They were down to their last seventeen or eighteen hours, and the clock was moving fast. Hadn’t this been organized months earlier, I asked? No, was the short answer. Some so and so who was supposed to get the mules and the drivers had taken forever to get it all organized, only to have several of the drivers not show up. Meanwhile, the wagons were newly built to be particularly photogenic and the rigging wasn’t right for the harness, and so on. My French cursing vocabulary was expanded considerably by this conversation, as was my awareness of just how precarious tomorrow’s event might be.
Eventually, the smells overcame my professorial curiosity and I left, the wagon just as unrigged as it was when I arrived. I spend the next hours taking crowd shots, hunting for cold drinks, and claiming any shady spot I could find. Time passed. Finally the sun hit the horizon and I went back to my car to emerge as Shawn Murphy – Huguenot merchant. The suit was heavy to begin with, and immediately began to absorb buckets of my sweat, adding somewhere in the vicinity of a pound an hour to its weight. The only saving grace was a wind that picked up as the sun set.
I was thinking the evening’s dinner better be special to be worth all my discomfort, but of course I had no idea how “special” the whole night would be. Instead, I innocently returned to the dock area, passed through crowds of staring tourists, and waited in a short line at the gang plank to be checked off a list and checked for weapons. Everyone else in line was in silks and wigs, marquis Huguenots to the last. The women, all marquises, wore long silk gowns, mostly in white – after all, this was a political event, but a few were daring enough to wear pale colors. So not every woman on board looked like an aging bride. All women, however, looked terribly hot under layers of silk. At least I wasn’t the only one on deck who was suffering.
It’s hard to count all the mistakes that were made that night, but they started early, and occurred often. Which was the first mistake? Was it the toasting? While a few people were fashionably late, including Foster, Soisson, and his henchmen, most people were in board soon after eight, and were having a reasonably agreeable time drinking good quality champagne and wandering about the upper deck to greet friends and admire costumes. I was largely ignored – after all, I was just a merchant amongst royalty – but everyone else was in good humor as they modeled their play clothes and showed off new shoes, and basically had as much fun as kindergarteners have on the first day of school.
Then the heavies arrived. Foster was first. And he was astonishing. Whatever kind of count or earl he was, whole forests of mulberry trees had been denuded to produce the silk for his stockings. Everything above the knees was purple, and seemed to glow in the oil lamps that had been hung from the rigging. He looked like something from a unique species. Four hundred pounds and already wet clear through the back of his coat, it suddenly seemed a lot less fun to be dressed up like he was. Did others look as ridiculous, you could imagine people asking themselves?
Soisson and his boys decided to dress up like soldiers, and they came with matching uniforms that vaguely resembled something an officer might wear to a ball two or three centuries ago, but then they went over the top with sashes across their chests and silk stockings on their legs. Instead of looking gallant, they came off as comical. And then Soisson struck a pose. He walked around the deck shaking hands and being admired, but then decided to take up a champagne glass and propose a toast. He climbed a few stairs to the higher deck with the wheel, and people started taking pictures. Women had cameras in their purses, men had them in their coats, I had two with me, and we all wanted to capture the moment. Soisson instantly responded by raising his chin and posing while they snapped pictures. Then he did the unforgivable. Joking about their future success, Soisson raised his champagne glass with one hand, and then slipped his other hand into his coat vest, ala Napoleon. Instantly a hundred cameras flashed and he knew he had just made a huge error. I watched his face change as he realized what he had just done, calculated the political consequences, and searched for a quick recovery. His response wasn’t bad. He smiled, and took a couple more poses to make it appear he had been joking, but it was too late. The digital images were there, and he was stuck with them. By morning his enemies would have a shot of him pretending to be Napoleon. I would provide one of the photos.
The next mistake? Food. The deck below had been set with long tables. Everything was beautiful. Candles and flowers highlighted the linen table cloths. Utensils were all gold. The China was the finest, and the food was perfect. It was a bit cr
owded down there, but we managed to find our assigned seats, and waiters carefully moved between rows of chairs to bring us food and keep our wine glasses filled. No French restaurant offered better service than we had that evening. As a lowly merchant, I was near the foot of the table, and to keep me company Captain Whatsis and one of his friends were assigned to seats across from me. I would do nothing embarrassing this evening. Next to me? Margaret Riemard, library archivist, Biloxi beauty queen, and who knew what else? She wore a deep red silk gown so she would have stood out from all the other women in the room in any case, but she was also the most beautiful woman on the boat. Candlelight did amazing things for her face. She swept into her seat, said a pleasant “Good evening” to all those around her, and then looked at me, waiting for me to say something.
“The generations of Riemards who came to Louisiana on boats like these would be proud of you. You are beautiful tonight. I am pleased to see you again.” Yes, I said all that. And I meant it. I had no ill feelings toward her. She would make some man very happy. I just wasn’t going to be that man.
“Thank you. I am pleased I was able to see you again. I expect you will be going back to Green Bay soon?”
“I will stay another week or two to learn some more about the re-enactment, and then I have to get back to the university. Will you be part of the wagon train?”
“Yes, I am going to ride all the way to the end. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I think we owe it to the memories of all who built our land, don’t you?”
“I am an historian. My life’s work is to show respect for the past.”
“So why are you trying so hard to make us all look foolish?” Captain Whatsis decided to interject himself into our conversation. “Your web site has geezers talking about ‘historicals’, and you have more pictures of that damned cathedral than of the good people trying to show what life was like when this nation was founded.”
“What do I have to do not to talk to you?” I asked. “I know it is a small boat, but there are one hundred guests here. Surely one of them would be willing to have a conversation with you.” At this point he started blowing himself up like he was going to take a swipe at me, but I was pretty certain he would do nothing to interfere with the banquet. Instead, he stalked from the room, left his lieutenant to glare at me, while Margaret and I talked about the wagon train.
Hours passed. The wine flowed, the food was excellent, there were a few perfunctory toasts, but mainly the wind bags left people alone to eat and converse. At some point the boat seemed to move a bit more than it had, and Foster got up to explain that we had left the harbor and would be sailing in the gulf. He thought we would enjoy the ride, and we would make a more dramatic entrance as we returned to Biloxi Harbor just after dawn.
It seemed like such a good idea at the time. What could be simpler? We would just sail around a bit, and then slip back into the harbor. As it turned out, it took just under an hour for the problem to become obvious. We sat and we ate, and we sat and we drank, and the ship leaned to one side and then it leaned to another, and then it rose up, and then it slid down, and then people started turning green. While Louisianans live on the gulf, very few ever go out onto it. They are the farmers. We Yanks are the sailors. They were riding on very gentle seas, but they weren’t gentle enough for Frenchies with a gut full of food. We were barely out of sight of land, when people started hurrying from the table.
Near midnight, the waiters brought around a cherry desert, and that cleared out another bunch of counts and countesses. Soon the room that had been so crowded held fewer than two dozen people. Among them were Margaret and myself and Foster. Foster, looking like a purple silk whale hoisted himself to his feet, pushed past all the now –empty chairs, and came down to our end of the table.
“Well, now I know who to have crew my boat next time I sail the Chicago to Mackinac Race.” He was loud and smiling, but I wondered if he was just a bit nervous about the way this was going. We wouldn’t look very good sailing into Biloxi in the morning with a hundred Huguenots hanging over the rail.
“It might have been better to have stayed in the harbor.” I offered. Count on me to advise the obvious.
“Oh, they’ll be fine in a couple hours. We have a doctor on board and plenty of dramamine. By one o-clock I bet half of them will be dancing up on the deck. They may not be sailors like us Yanks, but they will do all right.”
“Don’t you think the deck will be pitching a bit too much for a dance?” Once again, I had a firm grasp of the obvious.
“No, we told them to drop the sails. Once we stop moving, the ship will settle down.”
“With no sails, won’t we lose steerageway?” Our family only had a thirty-two foot sloop, but we had sailed enough on the Chesapeake to understand the basics.
“I am sure the captain will have addressed that.” At this point Foster lost interest in us and headed for the one exit that might permit him to get back up on deck. Margaret and I sat and talked more about the wagon trail and about her job, and basically passed the time in polite conversation until a quartet began playing and we went up on deck ourselves to join in the dance.
I might point out before my description of the disaster begins, that I did mention the steering problem to Foster. Whenever a boat stops moving, it loses directional control – “steerageway”. Without steering control, it no longer faces into waves, but may end up sideways – “abeam” to them. Foster was right to expect our captain to deal with that problem, but it soon became obvious he hadn’t. Hence, we had a short dance followed by several hours of excitement.
Initially, the dance was fun. Margaret and I waltzed on a nearly empty deck. At no time do I recall more than half a dozen couples actually dancing, so we had plenty of room, and it was a funny sensation to turn with a waltz step just as the ship rose or fell on a swell. Couples bumped against each other and against other couples, and we all thought the whole thing was pretty funny. Dozens of people who had been leaning over the rail now had something else to watch, and waiters brought around glasses of champagne and quietly handed out sea-sick pills. For a while there, I thought the dance would be a success.
As miffed as I was that Margaret had not been completely honest with me about her various connections to the blue armband people, I enjoyed talking with her, and I enjoyed dancing with her. For those initial dances, I forgot about the politics of the evening and the threat these people represented, and enjoyed the music, the sea breeze, and the woman in my arms. I had fun. My fun lasted about thirty minutes. Then a slightly larger swell caught the boat and I could feel it begin to slide around. With that swell we healed to starboard a few more degrees than before, and people laughed as we were pushed into each other. I am sure many of the men enjoyed the opportunity to pull their partners even closer.
The next swell took us farther over, and while there was still some laughter, we could hear things crashing below decks. Whatever crystal had been left on the tables would never make another trip. Gravity accentuated the tilt a bit, as people slid or fell towards the right side of the boat. With a hundred silk-enwrapped counts and countesses now all on the same side of the boat, we were already several degrees off vertical when the next swell hit. We rolled farther this time, and something below deck let loose and slammed into the hull beneath our feet with a violence we could feel through the decking. Several sailors broke from their stations to run for the lower decks. The guests on board might not know what was wrong with the boat, but when they saw sailors running, they knew things were not right. The quartet had stopped playing when the last swell had pushed them nearly out of their chairs, and now the silence was overwhelming.
The next trough brought the boat closer to vertical and I used that time to move Margaret and myself closer to one of only two lifeboats I could see on deck. We got there just as the first of the smoke wafted up through the planks at our feet. The next swell took us even farther over a
nd now a couple women started to scream. The boat was so lopsided now I wondered if it might capsize. More things crashed below decks. Something else hit the hull so hard the deck shuddered. Obviously we were in big trouble.
For a boat filled with politicians you would have thought one of them would have jumped to the lead at that moment, but all I could hear was a gaggle of voices shouting ever louder as they neared hysteria. No help was going to come from the Huguenot royalty. I took matters into my own hands and lifted Margaret into the lifeboat. There was a moment of hesitation as she looked at me seeming to wonder if this was really necessary, but she never said a word and settled herself in the middle seat. I pushed my way to the block and tackle that would be needed to first raise the boat to railing height, and then, after it had been pushed over the side, to lower the life boat into the water. This was a museum boat that hadn’t carried passengers for centuries, so I was worried the rigging might be rotten, but as I pulled to tighten up the block in the bow, nothing snapped. The lines tightened, and I was able to raise the bow a few inches.
The minute I got the bow raised, people around the boat noticed, and instantly they lunged for the boat. Mostly women were put in first, but several men also jumped in, including Soisson. In an instant the boat was filled and the men on board had to shout to keep others from coming on board. Meanwhile, I tried to make my way around to the stern lines, but I couldn’t fight through the crowd. To my surprise, Captain Whatsis grabbed the block and tackle at that end and waved me away. I went back to the bow, and with both of us pulling, we were able to raise the boat the three feet we needed to get it over the rail. Now we needed to push it sideways, and of course with this full load, it weighed a ton. Fortunately, a dozen or so men helped push the boat over the side, some of them no doubt thinking this would be the last time they were able to look brave before their beloveds. Minutes later we had the boat lowered into the water and the rigging detached so the life boat could float free. It drifted next to our boat, just a few feet away, so couples could keep talking across the gradually increasing gulf of water. I took a couple quick pictures of the boat, and then headed for the other lifeboat.
Here is where statistics failed me. In a normal population distribution there are always a few outstanding individuals – people at the top of the curve, who can do extraordinary things. Statistics would predict that even in a crowd of Frenchmen, there would be one or two who could figure out a block and tackle and get the second life boat launched. But these were not only Frenchmen, they were French politicians, so any hope they could make anything mechanical work was in vain. Whatsis and I both pushed our way through the bodies and grabbed the lines. We got the boat raised a few inches, only to have a mob of people jump in. Here Whatsis did something truly admirable. One of the rats deserting the ship was Lebeck, elbowing his way through several women to climb on board. Just as he got one foot on the life boat, I saw Whatsis grab him by the back of the uniform collar and whisper something in his ear that stopped him as short as a knife in the chest. Lebeck froze, then stepped back out of the boat and actually helped a woman get in. I’d love to know what he said, but he taught that weasel some manners real fast.
Once again men helped us swing the life boat over the edge, and we slowly lowered it into the water. There were almost no men in this boat, just gunnel to gunnel silk skirts. It was probably overloaded by a few women, but it looked like as long as they all stayed low in the boat, they would be safe. I took a few more pictures and then tried to figure out what to do next.
There were still over sixty of us left on board, and we had two main concerns – finding life preservers, and keeping the boat afloat. At the moment, neither was going very well. Had the boat been inspected by the Coast Guard before it sailed? Before it left Trinidad? Before it left Bristol two centuries ago? Who knew? Someone found one locker with a couple dozen life preservers. That seemed to be about it for safety. As for the fire, I could hear the whoosh of small fire extinguishers, but smoke was still squeezing up through the decking planks and billowing out of every door way. Meanwhile, the swells kept us rolling farther and farther, and we seemed to be riding lower in the water. It looked like it would be race to see if we burned, capsized, or sank first.
Whatsis and his lieutenant headed below decks to help, and I followed, even though the smoke made it nearly impossible to breathe. I tied a handkerchief over my nose and mouth and followed down two decks. We found the fire almost at once. A stove had been installed for dinner, but if it had been secured to the deck it must have been with thumb tacks. As soon as the boat started rolling, the huge stove had slid across the deck and right into the hull. There it had simultaneously cracked the hull and let in a stream of water, while setting alight all the other detritus that had slid with it across the deck. Water poured in through the hull while fire raced across the ceiling. Crew men and waiters shot fire extinguishers at the ceiling while all of us beat on the flames with table cloths. It was obvious immediately the best we were going to do was slow the fire down. This boat would never make port.
When the heat got too intense we all backed out of the room and climbed up on the top deck. Someone had the bright idea of pouring water on the deck, and that worked well enough to keep the flames down below. We hoisted ice bucket after ice bucket of water out of the gulf and threw the water towards the flames. We were probably sinking the boat faster this way, but I think we all feared the flames more.
How long did this go on? You know how these things are. It seemed like days, but probably took less than an hour. We stayed busy throwing water while the ship rolled, burned, and slowly sank.
And then we were rescued. Three boats arrived almost simultaneously. Two local shrimpers went for the life boats, while a U.S. Coast Guard boat pulled along the port (the high) side, and put some ladders across so we could climb over. I was pleasantly surprised that there was no final rush to get off. People helped each other climb the sloping deck and steadied the ladders and each person went over. Some even continued to pour water on the flames until most people were across. The Coast Guard sent several men over to see if their equipment could save the boat, but they returned quickly with their faces showing the obvious answer.
In the end, it all went quickly and smoothly. The crew made a final check of the cabins to make sure everyone was off, and the captain, bless his heart, really was the last to leave his ship. I managed to get a picture of him walking fully erect over the ladder, proud to the last. Later he would be arrested for all the safety violations on his boat, but for the moment, he looked the captain of historical romances.
The coast guard boat was large enough for all of us to be seated inside a large cabin, and that is where we stood as we watched the boat go down. In the end it took so long it almost felt like an anti-climax, but it did go down, rolling onto its side as flames sputtered in the sea. Almost instantly the three rescue boats and several others that had arrived on the scene all headed to shore. The party was over.
Chapter 18
Sunday spent in several places
The Canadian Civil War Volume 2- The Huguenots Arrive Page 18
