by Robin Lloyd
The chastened young officer must have recognized Townsend’s midshipman’s mannerisms because he didn’t question him. Townsend continued berating him.
“Now direct me to the senior officer, Captain John Goldsborough—Where is his ship? I believe he is commanding the USS Colorado.”
The officer pointed to the east, and Townsend thanked him even as he sharply turned the wheel to fall off again. Townsend’s intelligence gathering in Mobile had paid off. As the big sails filled and the schooner picked up speed, he leaned over the windward rail holding his hand up, palm out, in a mock salute to the officer. It was only when Olsen and Red Beard burst out laughing at the confused faces in the picket boat that the Navy men knew they’d been tricked.
Stringfellow, who had been lying flat on the deck, looked up at Townsend with a beaming smile.
“Bravo!” he exclaimed. “Never seen Yankee sailors gulled that way before. Brilliant performance Captain! I had no idea you blockade runners were skilled in the art of the stage as well as the sea.”
A volley of pistol shots went off and gun flares signaling “sail running out of channel” were soon rocketing off the decks of several other ships, lighting up the entire fleet ahead of them. Townsend could see there were two heavily armed warships with steam up directly ahead of them, and he quickly changed course. He silently blessed the cat for showing him where the blockading fleet was. Without the flares from the picket boat, he might not have seen how close they were coming to these ships. He would explain to Bertrand later that when a black cat comes on board a ship, it’s a sign of good luck. It’s only when it falls overboard it’s bad luck.
Townsend deftly steered the Gaviota through a dark gap in the blockade, away from the flares. One of the big ships started firing one of its howitzers, and Townsend warned everyone to crouch low behind the cotton bales. He could hear shouts and the thudding rhythm and plodding thump of paddlewheels behind him. He decided to risk overloading the spars with even more canvas to get out to sea as far as possible before daylight. Townsend watched as Higgins released the main topsail and then hung from the spring stay crossing over to the foremast, a dangerous journey, as a fall to the deck some sixty feet below would have probably killed him. In the inky darkness behind them, they could hear several loud booms of cannons, but after that, just the incessant howl of the wind as the ship continued on a southwesterly course toward Mexico.
A dull sky and a chilly, windless air caused the men to huddle around the cast iron stove in the galley for warmth. It had been twelve long days since they left Mobile. Dutch Olsen put on the big coffee pot to boil, and then threw some more coals on the stove. He was baking biscuits and some daddyfunk stew—a concoction of peas, chicken, and hardtack, all cooked in the oven. For two full days they’d been virtually becalmed with puffs of fickle air. The men were restless and to pass time they were telling stories. Olsen threw together the messy ingredients to make the stew, adding generous spoonfuls of molasses and a few more globs of pig fat when Red Beard surprised them all by saying that he owed his life to an oven just like the one in the galley. The Texas sailor explained that when he was a baby, he was small and sickly and the midwife had covered him with fresh sheep manure, wrapped him in a blanket, and put him in the slightly warm oven. The other sailors began snickering and screwing up their noses.
“Sheep shit,” Olsen replied. “They covered you in wet sheep dung?”
Red Beard nodded. “From head to toe. Left me in the oven for days, I’m told.”
“They left you in the oven?” Higgins said. “They cooked you, same as the daddyfunk stew? Covered in sheep shit?”
“Yes, sir,” Red Beard said emphatically. “Like a clump of mud. That’s how I came into this world. I owe my life to an oven just like this one.”
“Don’t forget to thank the sheep,” Olsen cried out. “You owe your life to them shittin’ sheep as well!”
The cabin echoed with raucous laughter.
“I’m afraid you’re still covered with shit, Red Beard,” Dutch Olsen said with a hearty laugh. “I guess nothing’s changed.” Red Beard lunged at the Danish sailor, but Olsen was too quick. The others were soon mimicking sheep, bleating at the Texan mercilessly. At one of the lulls in the storytelling, Olson threw some of the flying fish retrieved from the decks that morning to the cat. Against all odds, the black cat had been accepted by most of the sailors as the ship’s pet. She was a double-pawed cat with six toes on each of her paws. These types of cats were known for their climbing and hunting abilities, and were considered by sailors to be extremely good luck when at sea. She was kept in the main cabin house so there was no danger she would fall overboard or get the chickens. Higgins nicknamed her “Look-Out” because she had screeched out the warning about the Navy patrol boat.
At first, the sailors had been mad at Bertrand for his foolish superstitions, but they forgave him when they heard his story about growing up in a New Orleans whorehouse. It turned out when Bertrand was ten years old he’d been trying to pick one of the customer’s pockets while the man was in the bed. In the dark, Bertrand stepped on the tail of the house’s black cat, and the screeching animal caused the naked man to jump out of bed “hollerin and screamin to beat the blazes.” Bertrand said the man thought some kind of demon was after him. He was an old sea captain, one of the establishment’s regulars.
“Sacré Dieu. When he spied me rifling through his trouser pockets, he swore like a drunken Irishman. Fou, complètement fou. He chased me down the hall and gave me a severe whipping with his belt. He then put me on a ship headed for Valparaiso. I’ve never liked black cats since then.”
As the sailors ate their daddyfunk stew, they argued about who was to blame for the weather. They decided Bertrand needed to use some of his New Orleans mumbo jumbo and they sent him up on deck to whistle for the wind. At the helm, Townsend could feel the chilly air bite into his skin. He could hear the gentle lapping of the ocean off to the starboard side, but he could see nothing. The men were still laughing and joking down below. Townsend smiled. Such different backgrounds, but all on the same footing at sea. They’d found common ground among themselves even as his own country seemed incapable of doing so. Even though the men spoke English with different accents, they had found a way to communicate.
Days later, the winds did fill in, and the schooner began making good progress. Townsend estimated they were northwest of Mexico’s Alacrán islands, standing as far north as 24 degrees latitude. This was a longer route, but he wanted to stay well clear of the Tortugas, where he knew Van Cortland and other patrolling ships would be waiting.
Unlike the two supercargoes who had kept mostly to themselves in their cabin, Stringfellow had spent most of the voyage talking to the men, learning about the schooner, and hearing about their wild sail to Mobile. During the watch that night, Stringfellow stood next to the captain at the helm. The moon was full and the skies were so light it was almost like daylight.
“Looking forward to Havana, are you?” Townsend asked.
“Indeed I am,” the man replied.
“See there now, you better prepare yourself,” Townsend told him. “Havana is its own animal, more wolf than dog. You best put your notions of American civilities aside.”
“Boh, Havana. Don’t I know,” Stringfellow said. “I’ve been there. Back when I worked for the New York Daily Tribune. It was about eight years ago. Covered this murder. An English diplomat. Quite shocking.”
Townsend and Hendricks looked at each other, both taken by surprise.
“Hulloa! You don’t mean Judge George Backhouse, do you?” Townsend asked.
“Yeah, that’s right. How did you know?” Stringfellow grabbed on to a stay to keep himself from falling. The boat lurched again, and Stringfellow pulled his slouch hat farther down on his head to keep it from blowing off.
Townsend shrugged. “Just hearsay, is all.”
“Well. Lik
e I said, it was a shocking story. English diplomat stabbed to death in his own home. Fellow was some kind of anti-slavery judge. It was all the talk in Havana. By the time I got there, the police had picked up several suspects. We all thought there would be a public execution—at least of two of the men. After all, the Spanish have been known to execute people for a simple robbery. But the mystery was nothing happened. The Spanish authorities released the men. Insufficient evidence, they said, or some such truck. I don’t remember. None of us believed it.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Hum! I don’t rightly know. The case was closed. Nothing was ever recorded. We reporters were never given the names of the suspects. They just disappeared. But it was the limeys that caught my attention. We expected tensions to break out between the British and the Spanish governments. With no execution for me to write about, I tried to interview the British consul general.”
“You mean Joseph Crawford.”
“Yeah, that’s him. Crawford. Silver hair and powdered white moustache?”
Townsend nodded.
“A cagey old fox, that one,” Stringfellow said as he stroked his beard. “Slippery fellow. I almost laughed at the old diplomat when he told me the British government would be offering a two-hundred-pound reward for any new information about the murderers. Is that what Judge Backhouse’s life was worth to the British Foreign Office? I asked him. Nothing more than two hundred pounds?”
“What was his reaction?” Townsend asked, raising his eyebrows.
“He lost his temper. I admit I might have been a little too brash, but I was looking for a dramatic quote. A scoop. My editor at the time loved any opportunity to tweak John Bull’s nose. Crawford started shouting and shoved me out the door. I think he wanted to kick me down the stairs. That was the end of the interview.”
“Who do you think did it?” Townsend asked as he tugged thoughtfully on his lower lip with his thumb.
“A deuce of a question, that one. There were a lot of rumors going on at the time. Everything from a simple burglary to a political assassination. The police wanted us to believe it was just a robbery. Some even claimed it was a ritual killing by Negro slaves on the docks. Some kind of secret society where the blacks have to kill a white person with a knife to become a member.”
“Ñañigos.”
“Yeah, that’s the name. I never believed that.”
“Why not?”
“Because the intruders didn’t kill the man who was with Judge Backhouse that night. Fellow by the name of Callaghan, another Britisher. They just tied him up. If it was a ritual killing, I think they would have stabbed him too.”
“So who do you think did it then?”
“Only Callaghan saw everything, and he didn’t see much. The two men who attacked them had covered their faces. There were suspicions about an employee, a former clerk at the Consulate. Backhouse had just fired him, a most disagreeable drunken scoundrel named Dalrymple, who was known as a gambler and a thief. He left the island not long after the murder. No one made any serious attempt to stop him. Heigh-ho! Just one more mystery.”
A weighty silence fell over the quarterdeck.
“I will tell you one thing that mightily intrigued me at the time. I was covering the funeral ceremony in Havana, and one of the younger clerks at the British Consulate let slip that Judge Backhouse’s journal had gone missing from the house. It was never found.”
Townsend raised an eyebrow. “Maybe that’s why Backhouse was killed. To get the journal, I mean.”
Stringfellow shrugged and looked out at the cresting waves. The wind was picking up. He turned back to face Townsend.
“No one really knows. Any further investigation is probably pointless. It’s ancient history. It’s been eight years, and Havana’s skeleton pile is ever deeper at this point.” He shrugged. “I will say I’ve always wondered about Backhouse’s widow. She was back in England with the two children at the time of the murder. I felt sorry for her. Imagine, your husband murdered, knifed to death in your own home in far away Cuba. Even her own government seemed not to care. Sad story. She never returned to the island. I always wanted to interview her.”
Stringfellow patted Townsend on the back. Just then the shadowy figures of Salazar and Nolo walked up the companionway and joined them. Nolo had his knife out, and was whittling away. It looked like he was carving a handspike with a sharp, crowned top to it. As always, there was a certain menacing hostility in Salazar’s stare.
“¿De qué hablan?” asked the Spaniard brusquely. “What are you talking about?”
“Just a private conversation,” Townsend replied. He glared at the two Spaniards, who he made no pretense of liking. Salazar’s glance now rested on Stringfellow.
“Haven’t I seen you before? Your face is familiar.”
“Don’t believe so,” Stringfellow replied.
“Ever been to Havana?”
At this point, Townsend interjected.
“Mr. Stringfellow was just telling me about the last time he was in Havana eight years ago. He was assigned to write about the murder of an English diplomat. Name of Backhouse. Heard of him?”
Just by looking at the Spaniard’s pale blue eyes dart from Townsend to Stringfellow and back again, the young captain knew these two Spaniards were quite familiar with Backhouse. It wasn’t just a coincidence either that they’d come up on deck when they did. They’d heard something. After an awkward pause, Salazar asked him how many more days until Havana. Townsend replied that it might take three more days as it was hard sailing into the Gulf Stream chop. The two Spaniards turned their backs and retreated into the cabin house. An uneasiness swept over the young captain as he stared after them. The Backhouse case and its recent investigator, Michael Abbott, were anything but ancient history for these two men.
18
May 10, 1863
In the sweltering sun, Townsend stood alongside Don Pedro and the Confederate agent Helm on the Havana docks as the last of the bulky cotton bales were hauled out of the ship’s cargo hold. Ever since arriving the week before, they had spent several days at anchor in the harbor waiting in line for dock space, and the last two days unloading the cotton bales. They were almost done. Salazar and Nolo had handled customs officials and completed the paperwork, making sure that their departure city was listed as Matamoros, Mexico, not Mobile. It was mid morning, and the docks felt like a furnace to Townsend, the tropical sunlight reflecting off the red-tiled roofs of the warehouse buildings. The wooden decks of the Gaviota were so hot he could feel the sizzling heat burn his skin through his thin-soled shoes.
Townsend glanced at Helm, wiping sweat from his sloping forehead, as the diligent Confederate agent jotted down observations in his notebook about this latest batch of cotton. Helm pulled on his tufted beard, and Townsend thought to himself that he looked like a banker counting his money. A fitting image, he mused, given that the South’s only real currency was cotton. He could tell the man was making quick calculations about how many British weapons the Confederate government’s share of this shipload would buy.
“It’s a sizeable haul,” Helm said with a warm smile as he patted Don Pedro on the back. “I’m glad you made it, as we have word that the USS Huntsville just seized another schooner, that one with over two hundred bales of cotton. Despite that unfortunate news, I do believe cotton schooners like yours are the South’s secret weapon. Thanks to this fleet of sailboats we are getting cotton out of some of the most difficult places to navigate, everywhere from the Suwannee River in Florida to the Brazos River in Texas.”
Townsend said nothing. The Confederate agent was either misinformed or being overly optimistic. Even he knew the blockade was ever tightening. More steamships were added to the Navy’s Gulf Squadrons every month. They had been lucky toward the end of the voyage. A gunship had fired at them when they approached the western tip of Cuba, the ball
striking a glancing blow on the ship’s hull. They’d been fortunate to be able to patch up the damage and reach Spanish territorial waters. But it was only with the arrival of a patrolling Spanish gunboat that the Navy warship had given up the chase. Running the blockade under sail was becoming increasingly dangerous.
Just then, a cannon blast from El Morro signaled a new arrival into the harbor.
At the sight of a British steamer filled with military supplies arriving from Nassau, the Confederate agent rushed off. Don Pedro left him and Red Beard to oversee the rest of the unloading. Townsend picked up his telescope and looked over across Havana harbor at the wharves at Regla. Two newly arrived British-flagged blockade-running steamers were still loading up with military supplies for a run to Galveston or Mobile. He’d heard news from their captains, who had been running the blockade from Nassau to Wilmington, that faster British-flagged steamships were on their way to Havana. Word had gotten out about how much cheap cotton there was to be had in the Gulf of Mexico.
The sound of Africans singing brought his attention back to the ship. The head dockworker, a powerful, thickset man with glistening muscles, called out a pulsating work rhythm, slapping his thighs and clapping his hands as a chorus of dockworkers chanted a mournful, melodic response. The black stevedores sang as they shoved the big rectangular white bales down the ship’s wide gangplank to the docks. There the cotton bales were loaded onto rugged two-wheel carts and flat bed drays pulled by donkeys and mules.
To Townsend, the repetitive, rhythmic chants of the dockworkers now were like a narcotic, lulling him into an indolent daze. There was something primordial about the work songs on the docks, something ancient and constant like the wind blowing through leafy trees or waves crashing against the shoreline. His mind wandered to Emma. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. No matter how hard he tried to forget her, he found himself lost, conjuring her wavy hair, her intelligent brown eyes and smiling face. He remembered dancing with her, feeling the curve of her waist as it gently moved with the music.
