In Hostile Waters: The Cruise of USS Argus (Oliver Baldwin Novel Book 3)

by William H. White

  Suddenly, a hand grabbed my elbow, spinning me around. “Sir, sir, you must come quickly. Cap’n’s cruel hurt, he is. Come!”

  Oh no! If Allen’s hurt that badly, then I am in command. He can’t be out of action. Not Henry Allen! No!

  I ran behind the messenger, dodging men, recoiling guns, equipment, and, yes, ducking my head each time I heard the whistle of an iron ball flying over. Through the clouds of smoke I could see a knot of men on the quarterdeck; some kneeled, some stood, but their attention was clearly focused on the deck.

  No! No! No! He can’t be laid low! Let it be someone else – a quartermaster, the signalman, anyone. Not Henry! I thought somewhat uncharitably.

  The men parted as I approached and I first saw Inderwick bent over the supine form of my captain – my friend. Henry lay on his back, a silent scream described on his face. From the waist up, he looked unscathed. But from the waist down – I felt my stomach lurch, threatening to embarrass me; – Henry’s left leg was akimbo, jutting out at an unnatural angle just above his knee. There was no joint there. How could it be in that position? The blood covering his britches had formed a large puddle around his lower half but was still bright – and flowing. Inderwick was struggling to secure a tourniquet around the captain’s thigh, but it failed to stop the blood gushing from his leg. He finally got it slowed sufficiently to allow him the time to cut away the remnant of Henry’s britches, and the collective gasp we all exhaled was clearly audible, even above the cacophony of the raging battle; our captain’s leg was all but severed completely, above his knee. I knew at once that Inderwick would have no choice but to remove the lower part and hope that Henry would survive the surgery. Past experience suggested it was doubtful.

  “Get him below, men. Take him to his cabin. You’ll never make it to the orlop. Send a man for my tools. I’ll need four strong men to hold him while I operate.” Inderwick stood abruptly, issuing instructions to those at hand.

  As the noises of the battle reclaimed my senses, I realized that, with the loss of my dear friend in command, I had just become captain. Never in my wildest dreams would I have sought this or expected it. Henry? Never! He would never fall. I recalled him on the deck of USS United States as we faced Macedonian – standing tall by Captain Decatur, never even flinching as iron shot and grape flew through the air. And now, severely, possibly mortally, wounded and I…The battle again receded into an indistinct distraction. The coppery taste of fear filled my mouth and I struggled for a moment to catch my breath. My stomach churned and I could hear a quiet sobbing somewhere behind me.

  I stood dazed and not a little confounded by the sudden turn of events, while the firing continued unabated. In my brain, a kaleidoscope of images of Henry’s and my shared experiences flashed in a crazy-quilt of snippets from our past: the attack by Leopard on Chesapeake, the battle between United States and Macedonian, all intermixed with events ashore, both pleasant and mundane. I shook myself into the present, pushing those memories away. There was a battle to be won, now more important than ever. I had disagreed with Henry about fighting today, but now we were in it. It was up to me to keep us alive.

  As I turned to the quartermaster at the wheel, I felt a stunning blow to my shoulder, knocking me to the deck. I regained my senses in a few seconds but could see I was bleeding profusely from what had to have been either a bit of grape or a lucky shot from one of their marksmen. I peeled off my jacket, painfully and awkwardly, as my shoulder seemed unwilling to follow the orders my brain was sending it, and, as I got to my feet, examined what I could see of the wound through my blood-soaked shirt. Ripping off my sleeve, I could see a piece of flesh absent from my upper arm and a goodly amount of blood issuing forth.

  Must have been a bit of their damn grape shot! Too big for a musket ball. Nothing for it now, Oliver. Surgeon’s working on Henry. You’ve got a ship to fight.

  “Sailor, tie your neckerchief about my arm, there. Tight as you can get it. Quickly, man.” I grabbed the nearest man to jury-rig a tourniquet, all the medical attention I could manage right now, and tried to put the searing pain of the wound out of my head.

  “Sir! Mister Baldwin! They’re coming around. Gonna rake us!” The man at the wheel shouted at me, his words piercing the mounting fuzziness in my head.

  “Back the main tops’l! Put your helm down!” Argus and her crew responded instantly, slowing and bringing her bow around. Our enemy’s intended move now unrealized, and we found ourselves in a position to offer him a raking shot down the length of his ship.

  The broadside fired, but, again, our carronades could not be depressed enough to have the desired effect of sweeping their spardeck; our iron, both grape and ball, flew high and, while there was some damage to their rig, the deck remained essentially unscathed. The enemy put his helm alee and once again, ranged alongside us. With much of the way off the ship from my earlier maneuver, there was little we could do little to counter their move. Another English broadside cut the main shrouds and I watched the mast begin to teeter. It was the beginning of the end for Argus.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  HMS Pelican

  “That Allen fellow is quicker than I expected! I shall have to congratulate him when I accept his sword!” Ballantyne smiled, happy that, while his foe was clearly a skillful captain, he – Ballantyne – had successfully got his ship nearly alongside his enemy.

  It wouldn’t be long before his Pelicans boarded the American ship, carried her in hand-to-hand, and Argus, the menace that had been plaguing his home waters, would become his prize. He smiled, even as the cacophony of the cannonading and musketry rose to a deafening level and, in a voice likely louder than required, ordered Welch to “put us alongside her.”

  “Helm: bring her down a point or two; head right for their bow.” The first lieutenant watched as Pelican quickly responded to her helm and closed the gap. The cannonading continued and, through the acrid smoke hanging over both, Welch saw an American sailor at one of the carronades amidships, stand up just as a thirty-two pound ball shot over their bulwark, removing his head as cleanly as though with a surgeon’s knife. Welch looked away for a moment; the sight was just too shocking to focus on the man sprawled – headless – while his life blood spurted from what remained of his neck.

  Argus drew closer and closer; one hundred yards to fifty, then to twenty, and then crash! Pelican was alongside her opponent, the British stern scraping against the American bow. “Heave the grapnels, there! Lively! Topmen, secure the yards!”

  The captain and his first watched as the hooks flew through the air, each landing with a thud on the enemy’s deck. Despite the efforts of a few American sailors to cast them away, the irons held fast where they landed. Aloft, a crew had worked their way to the end of the mainyard, where they passed a line around their own yardarm and that of the enemy’s. The ships were now secure side by side, aloft and alow.

  “Away the boarders! Boarding party away!” Welch cried out. With the guns suddenly silent, his voice carried to the fo’c’sle easily and penetrated the noise-deafened ears of his men, now brandishing cutlasses and screaming unearthly shouts.

  At their fore, Midshipman William Cox, cutlass in hand, leapt onto Pelican’s bulwark and jumped down nimbly onto the American deck. His reward for being first to board the enemy ship was a musket ball to the face, fired by an American Marine in the foretop. But his death slowed his mates not a whit, and they poured over the bulwarks brandishing pistols and cutlasses, screaming their lungs out, and cutting down the few American defenders who stood to meet them. The others had dashed below, pursued by British sailors who quickly rounded them up.

  “They have struck! Their colors are down! Hold, men. Hold! They’re done.” Lieutenant Weiss, stood breathless on Argus’s fo’c’slehead.

  He lowered the spent pistol and his gore-encrusted sword and shouted out when he saw a man – an American seaman at the stern – cut down the American flag. It was done.

  EPILOGUE

  Dartmoor Prison />
  My Dear Ann –

  In my wildest imaginings, I could never have conceived of penning this missive to you…or to anyone else. I have become a player in a tragedy of unfathomable proportion, a truly melancholy situation, which I am still unable, or perhaps unwilling, to fully grasp. I am held within the cold, stone walls of the British prison at Dartmoor, the result of a most disagreeable and unhappy event that took place some weeks ago, on 14th August. Those of us who survived the horrific beating Argus took at the hands of the British in their heavy brig of war, HMS Pelican, Edward Ballantyne commanding, are here as well, incarcerated, not unlike common criminals. I am given to believe Watson and I will be given our parole to live in the town rather than remaining confined, but I have no information as to when that might occur. And Watson remains in Plymouth, confined to the hospital, in any case.

  I have no assurance that this letter will find its way to you, and I anguish for the distress it will cause you when it does. Even should we be permitted roam at will, we will still be as much prisoners as were we confined within the stone walls of Dartmoor.

  I was put in their hospital in Plymouth when we arrived, but only for a few days. A wound I received in my shoulder – likely from a single bit of grapeshot – had putrefied, according to Surgeon Inderwick, despite his efforts to prevent it. The doctors in Plymouth – at the hospital there – cleaned and treated it with some dreadful smelling balm, and bandaged me up. Satisfied the contamination had been eliminated and I was on the mend, they ultimately sent me here, to the prison, to languish while it continued to heal.

  Watson, I am sorry to report, was not as fortunate. During the early part of the battle, he was grievously wounded by a fist-sized splinter through his arm and, were that not enough, a piece of grape shot that removed a portion of his scalp. He remains alive, his pain mollified with laudanum, but will remain in the hospital for a bit longer, I suspect. Inderwick’s attentions on the ship likely saved his life. Hopefully, the doctors at Plymouth will do no worse.

  The most grievous news, however, is the loss of my dear friend, shipmate of many years standing, and my captain – Henry Allen. He received the full impact of a thirty-two pound ball early in the action which left his leg hanging by only a small bit of muscle and skin. Inderwick had no choice but to amputate it, which he did as soon as the battle ended. He had lost a lot of blood despite the efforts of Surgeon Inderwick. Captain Ballantyne was generous enough in his victory to agree to delay putting the ships underway until Inderwick had completed his surgery. And further, in a gesture of good will, sent his own surgeon, a Mister Coniby, to assist him. Henry survived the surgery, rallying a bit and giving us all hope, even as there was no hope to be had. Once into Plymouth – Argus, sadly now a prize of HMS Pelican and Edward Ballantyne – he briefly remained in the ship, but his condition was worsening and Inderwick saw that he was taken to the hospital. His final words to those who had gathered at his bedside, before he was carried ashore, were: “God bless you, my lads; we shall never meet again.” It was enough to make one weep, Ann, and many of us did. Ashore, Henry was tended by their chief surgeon, a man eminently qualified to treat his cruel injuries, as well as Mister Inderwick and his steward, Appene. Their efforts were for naught, and after barely a single day in hospital, he succumbed. The port admiral ordered a full military funeral with a proper procession for him – an unnecessarily generous tribute to a fallen enemy. The procession and funeral was public and attended by all the naval officers in the port, as well as by those of us physically able to manage it. The full complement of Marines, a guard of honor, and a Marine band gave testimony to the great respect our captain commanded.

  Appene was beside himself with grief, having served Henry through several cruises, and wept openly and uncontrollably. I would not have missed the funeral, even had I been at death’s door myself! His mortal remains were installed in a mausoleum in the churchyard at St. Andrew’s Church in Plymouth. A suitably inscribed plaque has been affixed on the outside, and I am given to understand a more permanent marker will replace it in due course.

  We lost many good men that day, my dear Ann; one of our midshipmen, William Edwards, died on deck before he could be taken below. Whether a marksman’s ball, splinter, or shot claimed him I never discovered, as he was taken midway through the battle when I was otherwise occupied, and his corpse disposed of at sea. Another mid, Richard Delphy, was wounded in a way similar to Henry, but worse in that it took both his legs in one fell blow. He had been directing the fire of several of our guns. Because he fell near the end of the battle and somehow clung to life, not succumbing until after the battle ended, he was not thrown overboard as had been his colleague; we brought his body ashore for burial and it has been done, also in the churchyard at St. Andrew’s, in Plymouth to lie for eternity next to his captain.

  We also lost six of our fo’c’sle people, Mister James White, the carpenter, and suffered serious injury to eighteen others of our complement. Of course, our dear Argus was cut up dreadfully: she was brought into Plymouth with both masts jury rigged and her bulwarks little more than a collection of splinters; her deck, in spite of the scrubbing it received, stained with the gore of our fallen shipmates and showing the course of the enemy’s shot that ploughed furrows across the pine planks. Her sides were pocked as badly as any sufferer of smallpox; some of the holes, while above the waterline, were all the way through her stout oaken sides. I have little idea what might become of her, but it is possible, I imagine, that the Brits will repair her and sail her against us; waste not want not.

  There is no talk of a prisoner exchange, so I have little idea when – or even if – I shall leave these shores before the war’s end, which doesn’t appear to be looming. I shall write whenever I can find a way to send you my thoughts and love and ask that you keep me in your heart, as I do you, always.

  With every devotion, I remain, your committed and faithful,

  Oliver Baldwin

  First Lieutenant, (late) U.S.S. Brig of War Argus

  Dartmoor Prison, England

  31 August 1813

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Thank you for reading In Hostile Waters, I hope you enjoyed it. While technically the book is fiction – a novel – it is historically accurate and most of the characters are real, acting as depicted in the story. Of course, their dialogue is fictionalized, as at the time of the story, no one was following them around writing down their utterings! But the events depicted, the ships, and the geography are not fictionalized.

  William Henry Allen was a real U.S. naval officer as described in the introduction. The tragedy, other than his being killed, was that he never learned of his promotion to master commandant which was approved after Argus sailed from New York, and obviously, he was never in a place to receive dispatches or mail, save for when they arrived in France, and there was no ship that could have got there before them. It caused him some considerable annoyance and frustration. The marker on his tomb says only that he was the “Late commander of the U.S. Brig of War, Argus” with no rank given.

  Obviously, followers of my stories know well that Oliver Baldwin and Edward Ballantyne are fictitious; they have each appeared separately in two other novels, but for this one, I thought it would be fun to bring them together, albeit without their knowledge, to play the roles of, respectively, the real William Watson (1st Lieutenant of Argus) and Sir John Maples, commander of HMS Pelican.

  The Honorable William Crawford and all of his entourage as well as the Frenchman, Monsieur Loremy, are real. And the real William Crawford did suffer the effects of mal de mer for much of the voyage. He was not the disagreeable fellow I wrote him to be; that was artistic license to add a bit of conflict to that part of the tale.

  Arbutus “Billy” Halethorpe was, of course, fictitious, reprising the role he played in a previous book, In Pursuit of Glory.

  The secretary of the navy’s orders to Allen were as stated, setting him up for disaster before he even left New York. It was, of course
, inevitable, that after the depredations Argus committed in British waters, a warship – or several – would be sent out to find them and stop them. This all happened as I depicted it in the story, except that Admiral Thornbrough sent out three or four ships right before Pelican went out the second time, but as it was Pelican which enjoyed the success of the mission, I decided the others would be superfluous to our story and did not include them. And Argus and her crew did indeed take twenty British vessels, captured or burned, in just about three weeks; it is a record unbeaten by any to date!

  Of note is what happened in England following their capture, Henry Allen’s death, and the crew’s incarceration in Dartmoor. The officers were in fact given their parole (once Bill Watson was released from the hospital), but the crew remained within the stone walls of the prison at Dartmoor (which had been built only a few years before specifically for prisoners of war from England’s longtime conflict with France and Spain). They had run of a village, Ashburton, near to Dartmoor and some twenty-five miles north of Plymouth. In the same place were paroled some one hundred French officers, both army and navy, as well as American privateersmen and a few masters and mates of large merchantmen. The Matilda’s prize crew – recall that Acting Lieutenant Uriah Levy was recaptured by the English – were initially incarcerated in a prison hulk in Plymouth, but later sent to Dartmoor.

  Repatriation would not come quickly to the Americans held in Dartmoor or paroled in Ashburton; the first batch, some nineteen of them, left England around the middle of October, 1814, well over a year after their capture. The remaining men did not get home until February, 1815, after the war was officially over. Only the surgeon in Argus, James Inderwick, a non-combatant, was released early – if one can call July of 1814, nearly a year following incarceration – “early.” He languished ashore for another year, but then was ordered to join USS Epervier, ironically a so-called “thirty-two-pound” brig captured from the British and a carbon copy of Pelican! (Recall that Pelican’s main battery was composed of thirty-two-pounder carronades.) She sailed with Decatur’s squadron in May of 1815 to see to the recurrent problem with Algiers. Sadly, on being detached from the squadron to return independently to the United States (following the second defeat of the Algerians), Epervier was lost with all hands.