Rod was on the bridge beside the pilot as the land drifted by. ‘A fine ship,’ the pilot remarked. ‘Oh, she handles well, Captain Blaine. Havana, is it?’
‘That’s what my owners tell me,’ Rod agreed easily.
‘You wouldn’t have in mind a little bit of blockade running for the Confederacy now, would you?’
‘Cuban sugar is what theEurica will carry,’ Rod said, now quite certain that the man was a government agent. ‘If that’s what the Confederates want, having all of that Louisiana sugar to play with, well ... who knows?’
The pilot frowned, and dropped the conversation. Once they were at sea, Rod left him to it, explored the ship again, and was pleased and impressed. Then he put her through her paces, under sails as well as under power, practised raising and lowering her screw, and could not fault her. Two hundred and twenty feet long, thirty-one feet wide, and drawing fourteen feet, she displaced just over a thousand tons, and was thus more than twice the ship the oldSumter had been. Her single shaft would drive her at thirteen knots, as he ascertained, and that was fast enough to haul down most merchantmen, while her three masts carried sufficient sail to maintain an almost comparable speed under canvas alone. Best of all was her coal store, well over two hundred tons, which gave her a tremendous range — presuming the coal was burned only in action or pursuit.
She would carry a crew of one hundred and forty-five men, who presumably had by now been recruited by Semmes and Kell and were on their way to the island of Terceira in the Azores, the appointed rendezvous. And there she would be armed, with what Rod did not yet know, but he had no doubt Semmes would have insisted upon an improvement on theSumter’s limited gunpower. When he joined Bulloch and the invited guests for luncheon, he was in the best of humours, especially as the plan now had to be implemented.
‘I am most impressed with the ship, Mr Cartwright,’ he said, and sipped champagne. ‘So much so that I am prepared to sign and take command of the vessel now, on behalf of the owners.’
Cartwright looked astounded. ‘Now? But ...’
‘And pay the balance of the purchase money, of course. I believe Mr Bulloch has the funds with him.’
He glanced at Bulloch, who nodded.
‘Well, bless my soul,’ Cartwright said, looking around the circle of interested faces. ‘You mean you will not take the vessel back to Liverpool for formal clearance?’
‘Dashed irregular,’ commented the pilot. ‘Possibly unusual, but not illegal, sir,’ Rod pointed out. ‘There is money to be made out of Cuban sugar, sir, so long as the war between the States lasts. Who knows when it will end? My owners are in a hurry, gentlemen. So what will it be? Cash down, or a long delay?’
‘But ... Cartwright clutched at straws. ‘You have no crew; these fellows are my dockyard hands.’
‘I understand that, sir. You may return with them on the tug, with Mr Bulloch and these gentlemen.’ For the tender had accompanied them throughout the day, as was normal practice on a first sea trial.
‘And you will sail the ship singlehanded, to Havana,’ snorted the pilot.
‘By no means, sir,’ Rod said equably. ‘I shall have Mr McNair and Mr Freemantle with me, and between us we will take the ship into Moelfra Bay, on the north coast of Wales, it is only another hour from here, and there drop the hook for the night. Mr Bulloch can join me with a sea-going crew tomorrow.’
The pilot looked as if he would have liked to ask how Mr Bulloch was going to raise a sea-going crew overnight, or if he had already signed one on, but thought better of it.
Cartwright scratched his head. What Rod was suggesting was certainly irregular, but if he undoubtedly suspected the purpose for which theAlabamahad been designed and built, he had never inquired, or been informed, officially.He was not pro-Unionist, and as Rod had pointed out, there was nothing illegal in the proposal. ‘Show me your money, Captain Blaine,’ he said, ‘and you have yourself a ship.’
Bulloch obliged, the anchor was dropped in Moelfra Bay, the dignitaries, Cartwright, the pilot, Bulloch and the shipyard crew disembarked into the tug, Rod waved them farewell, and was then left alone in command of his ship, with only McNair the engineer, and George Freemantle, the coxswain, both of whom were in the plot and had already sworn to serve the Confederacy, for company. It was an eerie feeling, to be on board so large a ship, at sea, with only two companions, and with so much at stake. Fortunately the weather was fine.
‘Will we make it, Mr Bascom?’ Freemantle asked.
‘That depends on Commander Bulloch. But if he is as good a man as I think he is, then we will make it.’
‘Always providing theTuscaloosa doesn’t come steaming round that headland at any minute,’ McNair remarked with true Scottish pessimism.
‘We won’t burn any lights tonight,’ Rod decided. ‘And there’s no moon. She won’t see us, even if she does poke her nose in here.’
But in July it didn’t get dark until nine, and none of them slept that night; they became even more anxious next morning, as the sun rose and the hours slipped by, and they scanned the northern horizon with their binoculars, seeking the tug ... or whatever else might be coming out after them. Rod kept telling himself there was nothing the Federal agents could do, even now they would certainly have realised what was happening, save complain to the British Government, which had to take a couple of days. And then there would be nothing the British Government could do save send out a warship to escort theAlabama back to port — and that would take a couple of days more. It had to work.
If only the tug would arrive.
‘There she is,’ Freemantle said, and at last the ship came into sight, chugging towards them ... and absolutely crowded, with women as well as men, Rod realised to his consternation
‘Something has gone wrong,’ McNair growled.
To Rod’s relief, as the vessel came nearer, he could make out Bulloch on the bridge, and a few minutes later Bulloch was on board, followed by his crew of seamen — and an almost equally large number of women.
Rod saluted. ‘Welcome back, sir. But ... ?’ he raised his eyebrows.
‘Oh, aye,’ Bulloch agreed. ‘Life never was a simple matter. These females claim to be the wives and sweethearts of the seamen, and they are not willing to let their men out of their sight until they get their first month’s wages; it’s apparently traditional in the British merchant service. I tried all the arguments I could, but they merely got aggressive.’
‘So you brought them all out here?’ Rod was aghast.
‘Well, I knew the Federal agents were scurrying around like mad, trying to stop the tug from sailing, and I also received a message when I got back last night, from one of our people in Bristol, that theTuscaloosa is commencing a cruise up the Welsh coast, looking into every bay, just on the chance we may have managed to slip out. So I reckoned we didn’t have a moment to spare.’
‘So what is your plan?’ Rod inquired. ‘To ship the women to the Azores as well? By God, sir, I’ll not chance that without guns.’
Bulloch tapped his nose. ‘They’re demanding an exorbitant amount of pay, no doubt because word has got around Liverpool that we’re not quite legal, and that we’re in a hurry. Now, I have told them that the final decision must come from you ...’
‘Eh?’
‘And that you are a very reasonable man. My idea is that you should appear to agree to their demands, and invite them all to a farewell lunch, together with their menfolk and, shall we say, complete our negotiations after the meal. I have brought with me a sufficient quantity of convivial spirits to warm the heart of the most recalcitrant Liverpudlian whore, or at least, fuddle her brain.’
Rod gave a shout of laughter. ‘A sort of reverse shanghai.’
Bulloch smiled. ‘You could put it that way, Mr Bascom. What a way to fight a war, eh?’
Bulloch’s plan worked to perfection. The entire ship’s company, male and female, sat down to an enormous meal, during which Bulloch’s rum puncheons were freely passed. By the end
of it, only Bulloch himself, Rod, McNair and Freemantle were able to stand up without holding on, and the British seamen, or more especially, their ‘wives’, who insisted on doing most of the negotiating, were in very amenable frames of mind. Rod then got out the articles, and signed each man for a voyage to Havana and back, paid over the agreed money — considerably less than the women had originally been demanding — and by nightfall the ladies were all herded back on board the tug for the trip back to Merseyside, thoroughly contented with their day’s outing.
‘If you don’t mind, Lieutenant, I’ll stay with the ship for a while,’ Bulloch said. ‘If those harpies sober up before we regain Liverpool, I might well be made to walk the plank. Oh, don’t worry,’ he added as he saw Rod’s expression. ‘You are in command. But you’ll not refuse me a day at sea on board my own brain-child.’
Rod clasped his hand. ‘Welcome aboard, Commander. Now ... let’s get theAlabamato sea before theTuscaloosa gets here.’
*
As Bulloch had warned him the Federal frigate was in the Irish Sea, Rod opted to take the stormy route around the north side of the Emerald Isle, and thence plunge out into the open Atlantic, where finding them would be next to impossible. Now the weather deteriorated very rapidly, and they ploughed their way through a rising gale. But the ship handled perfectly, and standing together by the helm as theAlabama creamed over the swell, Rod and Bulloch laughed aloud. They were at sea, and free, and they had one of the finest ships afloat.
Off the Giant’s Causeway, on the northwestern shore of Ireland, they sighted a fishing vessel and hailed her. Bulloch shook Rod’s hand. ‘It has been a pleasure, Mr Bascom,’ he said, ‘meeting you, and knowing you. May I wish you, and Captain Semmes, and all who sail in theAlabama, every success in your venture.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Rod said. ‘You may be sure we shall not fail you.’
‘I never doubted that,’ Bulloch told him, and climbed down the swaying ladder to the waiting boat which ferried him across the choppy sea to the fisherman. An hour later he, and the coast of Ireland, was lost to sight, and Rod was laying a course away from the wind-torn waters of the north, toward the sunny Azorean high pressure belt. He received the minimum of work from his new crew, but this he had anticipated — few sailors worked with a will until that first month’s wages paid to their ‘dependents’ had been earned out; it was known in sea-going terms as flogging a dead horse. He did not press them, having only McNair and Freemantle on whom he could rely, but enjoyed their consternation when, after only a week at sea, he dropped anchor in the bay of San Sebastian, the chief port of the island of Terceira, the easternmost of the Azores group. Here, as expected, waited Semmes and Kell, several other officers from the oldSumter, and a crew, a mixture ofSumter men and newcomers, but all, as Rod could see at a glance, already devoted followers of Semmes. They promptly took over the ship, and sent the delivery crew ashore, to see what they could do about finding passages home.
Here, too, were the guns, also brought from England on an ordinary merchantman. There were rifles, bayonets and revolvers for the men, while for the ship, there were six thirty-two pounders for a broadside, and one massive sixty-eight pounder for use astern, but in addition theAlabama mounted as a bow chaser a six-point-four inch Blakeley rifled cannon, a truly powerful piece.
‘Now we have a ship, and men, and guns,’ Semmes declared proudly. ‘Thanks to you, Rod.’ He clasped his second officer’s hand. ‘I am forever in your debt. More, the Confederacy is ever in your debt. Now, let us get to sea and make these Yankees rue the day they ever went to war on us.’
*
Jerry McGann sat his horse on the dam leading from the canefields to Martine’s Plantation House, and gazed at the tangled mess that had once been the front garden, where the dogs had barked and the children had rolled about on the grass in play on the day Rod Bascom and Claudine Grahame had been married, and at the terrace, now half-overgrown with weeds and vines, where he had stood with Marguerite to watch them. How long ago that seemed. And longer with every visit that he paid to this place.
He had been here the day after New Orleans had surrendered, to find it a milling chaos of bewildered overseers and slaves, unable to determine what had happened to their master and his womenfolk. They had departed in the night, no man knew where. Inquiries in New Orleans, and of Captain Lunis of theScarlet Belle, now in use as a troop transport — Lunis just being happy to keep his position — had elicited no further information. Wilbur Grahame and his wife and daughters might have vanished into thin air.
And with them had gone Joseph McGann.
And there had been a war to be fought. Orders from Washington were for the Federal fleet to open the entire length of the Mississippi, and Farragut had decided that his first course must be to link up with the gunboat squadron commanded by Captain Charles Davis, and which held the river above the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg. As Davis’s ships were not powerful enough to run the gauntlet of Vicksburg’s heavy guns, Farragut had determined to do so himself, and had boldly led his squadron up the river at night, trading shots at almost point-blank range with the Confederate garrison. That engagement, on 28 June, was the hottest fight Jerry had so far experienced; several ships had been damaged and a good number of men killed and wounded — to very little purpose. Davis’s squadron had been reached, off the mouth of the Yazoo River, and the two federal fleets had still been united when the last of the Confederate makeshift ironclads, theArkansas, had come steaming down the Yazoo to give battle, and attempt to reclaim command of the river for the Confederate cause.
That had been an even fiercer fight, and a portent of the way the war might have gone had the Confederates possessed a few more of these formidable vessels — and could still go, were they to be successful in obtaining armoured ships from England. TheArkansashad battered her way through the entire Federal fleet, blazing away with all her guns, and being fired upon with everything the navy possessed in return — but she had hardly been damaged, and had reached Vicksburg. That had opened up the river, all right — for the Confederates. So Farragut had had to run the forts again to get his squadron down-river and interpose it between the Confederate ironclad and the Gulf. But in fact the story of theArkansashad been much the same as that of theVirginia. Impervious as she was to ordinary shot, the ironclad had yet possessed too many defects, born of the haste and primitive conditions in which she had been created. She had returned up the Yazoo for repairs, and had still been there when the Federal armies had reached her. Her crew had burned her, and she had disappeared from history.
Yet her presence had saved Vicksburg, at least for the rest of 1862. Farragut had convinced Washington of what he had always known, that his ships alone could not reduce the fortress, and that they would have to wait until the armies in the west had managed to invest the city from the land before it would be worth his while to resume a waterborne assault. Until then, he had nothing better to do than resume his blockade of the Gulf coast, and as he was now based in New Orleans, the opportunities for shore leave were ample.
Did he know where his executive officer went whenever he could be spared? Jerry presumed he did; his commander seemed to know everything. But there was no way he could stop himself coming here, even if the plantation had been abandoned, and the slaves fled or enlisted in the Federal forces. Here was the only link he had with his wife and child, the only receptacle he had for his tumultuous thoughts, his continuing anger.
He turned his horse, and saw movement in the now thickly clustered trees and bushes which fringed the lawn. ‘Stop there,’ he called, and drew his revolver.
The figure hesitated, then stepped from the bushes, hands held above his head. Jerry frowned as he walked his mount towards the black man, slowly recognising him. ‘Jacob?’ he asked. ‘Jacob?’
The butler touched his forehead. ‘And how’s yourself, Captain McGann?’
Jerry did not bother to correct him. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘I was told you
had fled with Mr Grahame.’
‘Well, sir, I had to go with the master.’
‘Did you? But you are back.’
‘Well, sir, the master and the mistress, they does like to know what is happening with the plantation.’ He looked around him, and shook his head. ‘They ain’t going to like what I tell them.’
Jerry’s heartbeat had quickened. ‘You mean you are going back to them?’
‘Oh, yes, sir, Captain McGann. I ...’ Jacob hesitated, as he realised he might have trapped himself.
‘Are Misses Claudine and Marguerite still with them?’ Jerry asked, with deceptive casualness.
Jacob licked his lips. ‘Well, sir, they must be with their parents.’
‘And my son?’
‘Well, sir, Captain, he must be with his mother.’
‘And he is well?’
‘Oh, yes, sir, Captain McGann. He is too well.’
‘I am glad to hear that,’ Jerry said. ‘Now tell me something, Jacob: where is my family at this moment?’
Jacob licked his lips again. ‘Well, sir, Captain, I can’t say about that. Mr Grahame did say I mustn’t tell nobody about that.’
‘You will have to tell me, Jacob, because I intend to find out.’
Jacob shook his head. ‘Well, sir. I don’t think I can do that.’
Jerry’s hand came up, and he levelled the revolver. ‘You had better, Jacob, or I will put a bullet through your gut.’ Did he mean it? He doubted he could ever shoot down an unarmed man. But it was necessary to look as if he meant it.
And Jacob certainly assumed that he did. He commenced to shake. ‘Well, sir, I think Mr Grahame going to whip me.’
‘No, he isn’t,’ Jerry said. ‘Because you are no longer a slave. As of 1 January you are a free man. Didn’t you read Mr Lincoln’s proclamation?’
‘A free man? Me, Captain? What I am going to do being free? I am Mr Grahame’s butler.’
‘Not any more,’ Jerry said. ‘I will count to three.’
‘Well, sir,’ Jacob stared at the hammer on the Colt being slowly withdrawn.
Iron Ships, Iron Men Page 26
