The Shores of Tripoli

by James L. Haley

  “Our surgeon’s mate in the Enterprise was most attentive in the performance of his duties,” said Sam.

  Preble waved it off impatiently. “No doubt, no doubt. But they have not the learning, the reading, the experience. The men in the navy deserve doctors, not apprentices. Cutbush is a first-class physician. I marvel at why he is even in the service—he could be making four or five times the money in private practice.”

  “Patriotism, perhaps,” said Sam.

  Preble looked at him sharply, at which Sam took alarm until he said, “Well spoken, young man.” And they realized that Preble’s small, dark eyes above his big nose, eyes that betrayed quickness and intelligence, would seem to look sharply wherever they looked. “Where are you from?”

  “South Carolina, sir.”

  “Where exactly?”

  “My family owns a plantation, in the Abbeville District. It is in the upper part of the state, near the Georgia line.”

  “Plantation, eh?”

  “Yes, sir, we grow cotton, indigo, rice, and other crops.”

  “Slaves?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Preble’s fleshy lips pursed. “I don’t like slavery.”

  “No, sir. Well, you are hardly alone in that sentiment.”

  “And you, Mr. Putnam, you are from New England, I understand.”

  “Yes, sir, my parents are from Boston. They lost everything to the British in the Revolution and moved to Connecticut.”

  “They lost all in the war?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well”—Preble nodded—“we have that in common. I am from Falmouth. The British burned my family’s house with the rest of the town.” Sam and Bliven felt his passion rising. “There was no need for it. I shall never forget that arrogant officer in his red coat with his hateful accent saying he did not care, the entire town should burn to the ground. To this day it requires all my forbearance not to sink any English ship I come across. And now they say we are at peace.” Preble huffed. “Peace! Who do you think it was went to the Berbers in North Africa and whispered in the bashaws’ ears that their tribute no longer covered our ships? Peace! They have never accepted losing the colonies; mark my word, we shall have to fight them again, sooner than later.”

  “I wish my father were here to hear you say that,” ventured Bliven. “He expresses an identical opinion, quite often.”

  “Does he, now? What does he do, your father?”

  “We have a farm, at Litchfield.”

  A dissatisfied noise issued from Preble’s throat. “Mmph. I don’t like farming much. Takes too long to see anything happen. When I give an order, I expect it to be obeyed that instant. You can’t order a good crop. You’re too much at God’s mercy, and even then you can’t count on anything until the crop is harvested and safely stored.”

  “Yes, sir, that is very true. My father offsets the risk—he operates a drayage and livery stable in the town, and he does good business in cider.”

  “Wise man.” Preble’s tone lightened. “Well, have you seen the ship? What do you make of her?”

  “We are undone,” said Bliven. “She is magnificent. I am sure that Mr. Bandy and I both are thrilled to have been assigned to your command. Yet there is one thing that puzzles me. I am curious how I came by this assignment, for I have never handled guns of this size.”

  “I know,” growled Preble, “but lieutenants who are experienced with heavy guns are suddenly in short supply. After what Morris—” He stopped himself, aware that in his wonted directness of conversation he was about to criticize a fellow captain, which he must not do, both for manners’ sake and because it could, months or even years hence, result in a challenge to a duel. “Belay that,” he muttered. “After the navy’s experience of last year, we have hope that the government intends to finally”—he heaved a sigh for emphasis—“at last, deal with these barbarians as we should have from the beginning. Larger vessels are coming back into commission, not just Constitution, but Chesapeake, John Adams, and others. The officers who have experience with twenty-fours and eighteens, even twelve-pounders, are already spread too thin. And look here, even past that, our people are negotiating with the Sicilians to lend us gunboats and bomb scows, and I’ll have to divert more men to them once we get over there. So we are snatching you up, and others who have, say, an aptitude for guns, and depend upon it that you can learn on the job. We have the twenty-fours on the gun deck and eighteens on the spar deck, but you will also see twelve-pounders on the quarterdeck. They will be your assignment.”

  Quickly Bliven figured sums in his head. The Constitution was rated a forty-four-gun frigate, but what he had seen was at least ten more than that. He knew that in every navy a ship’s rating was flexible, and varied with the judgment of the captain, his personal preferences, and his expectation of what kind of action to expect on his next cruise. Those who preferred close fighting would want carronades that could be double-shotted with chain to clear an enemy’s decks; others preferred a bank of long twenty-fours to engage at a distance. Preble wanted them all. That must be the key to understanding him.

  “Well, what say you? Do you boys think you can sail with me?”

  “Eagerly, sir,” Bliven responded. “Right eagerly.”

  “And I,” Sam added.

  “Mr. Bandy, the scores on your navigational exam recommend you as much as Mr. Sterett’s endorsement. When we’re out there”—he pointed in the direction out of the harbor—“and I ask you where in hell we are, I will expect you to point to a map and show me, at any hour.”

  “Well understood, sir.”

  The commodore rose, and Sam and Bliven were instantly on their feet. “Your duties will not be heavy for now; we cannot sail for several weeks, and even then it depends on getting a crew. We placed notices in the newspaper two weeks ago, and but a dozen men have signed on. Universal problem, I know, but you will excuse my partiality in believing Constitution the finest ship in the fleet. Lack of enthusiasm in others can make me disagreeable—”

  “Indeed, we quite understand,” said Sam.

  “—as I am sure you must have heard.” He walked them to his cabin door. “Mr. Putnam, I have heard that you are a reader. Is this true?”

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  “Did you bring books on board with you?”

  “What I could carry, yes, sir.”

  “What do you read?”

  “History and geography, mostly, sir.”

  Preble crossed his arms. “Capital! Do you ever lend them?”

  “To you, sir? Readily.”

  “Good man.”

  “I did have the experience in the Enterprise,” Bliven added cautiously, “one of the lieutenants asked to borrow a book. Being only a midshipman, I did not feel at liberty to refuse. That was well enough, until I found the book later in the officers’ head with half the pages torn out.” Bliven still remembered the incident bitterly; it took no imagination to know what use those missing pages had come to.

  Preble harrumphed. “Well, be assured your little library will come under my personal protection. The other junior officers can either give in to their jealousy or profit by your example. If they are wise, they will choose the latter.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you have Moore’s New Practical Navigator?”

  “The 1801 edition, on the very top of the stack, yes, sir.”

  “As do I,” said Sam.

  “Excellent.” Preble nodded. “Different chapters will apply to your different duties. It is well for Mr. Bandy to have his own set of navigational tables; Mr. Putnam, by first gunnery practice I expect you to have memorized the firing sequence of heavy guns without further reference to the text.”

  “Yes, sir. We followed the manual on the Enterprise, but most certainly I will refresh my memory before we exercise the guns.”

 
“Very well. You are dismissed.” They saluted and Preble returned it. Sam preceded Bliven down the after ladder, and their eyes had to adjust again to the dimness of the lantern-lit berth deck. “Doesn’t like slavery, indeed,” fumed Sam. “Who does he think cut the live oak for this hull? Look down, you are walking on Georgia pitch pine. Does he imagine some Massachusetts gentleman sweated himself to saw it?”

  They reached the wardroom and Bliven patted him on the shoulder. “Yes, well, console yourself. Apparently he does not think much better of farmers.” Being from New England, Bliven knew as well as anyone that, in fact, Joshua Humphreys the builder had indeed sent carpenters to the South to cut and saw the ship’s timbers, but he saw no profit in raising the issue with Sam.

  “You’re back!” They heard Dr. Cutbush’s voice from within his berth, the door of which stood open.

  “We will be with you presently,” Bliven answered. They poured themselves glasses of water from a pitcher on the sideboard, then went by turns to the officers’ head before presenting themselves again at Cutbush’s door.

  “Let us begin at the bottom and work up, shall we?” he asked, adding, “Well, what do you make of the commodore?”

  “I believe the appropriate expression would be ‘force of nature,’” answered Bliven.

  “Ha!” exploded Cutbush. “I believe you have got him there. You’ve got him.” They descended, but not by the after ladder. Cutbush produced a key and unlocked a hatch in the very floor of the wardroom, which he raised, and led them down into a very gloomy space indeed. It was on the level of the orlop deck but separated from it, a cramped space that seemed eerie for being nearly entirely empty, and it resembled nothing so much as a chamber in a cave, for its height was less than five feet from the planking to the top of the live oak knees that supported the berth deck above. Cutbush led them yet farther down a ladder of similar height to the orlop deck, into the very hold at the bottom of the ship.

  “This is the ammunition magazine,” said Cutbush.

  Bliven assessed the racks of round iron shot, twenty-four and eighteen pounds, and the twelves that he would be responsible for seemed insignificant next to them. There were racks of bar shot and canisters of grape; Bliven could hardly fathom how much it all must weigh, so ballasting the ship that she probably could not have foundered in any circumstance. “How large is the crew?”

  “Counting marines, four hundred and fifty,” Cutbush answered.

  “How many boys?”

  “Thirty, in full complement.”

  “Great heavens!” Bliven exclaimed. “Thirty boys! Do they not collide with one another down in this darkness?”

  Cutbush laughed. “They have some method to avoid it. Also there is a second magazine forward. The ship is too large and there are too many guns to be adequately served by only one magazine.” They reached a bulkhead in which there was an opening covered with a heavy felt curtain. “In there is the filling room. As the cartridges are wanted, the men in there hand them through this portal. So you see, your powder monkeys have further to scramble to get your cartridges than on your schooner. Come, we can go in.”

  Cutbush ducked and crouched to half his height to fit through a low hatch, and Sam and Bliven followed. “This box contains the felt slippers the men have to wear, and having any iron implements in hand or clothing is strictly forbidden. What little illumination you see comes from a lantern beyond that sealed glass window in the light room. In here they make up the cartridges for the different-size guns; when they are finished they pass them through these openings.”

  “My word,” said Sam. “They take every precaution.”

  “Yes,” said Cutbush. “We can go on. In here is the powder magazine.” He ducked through another tiny hatch into an even closer compartment in which not only was standing upright impossible, but it seemed that the only possible form of locomotion was to lie prone and push oneself with one’s feet. They were lying against the very curve of the stern, which was lined with copper; indeed, the entire space was lined with copper, to keep the dank air from spoiling the powder or any outside fire from reaching it.

  “This is the last place where enemy fire could penetrate,” said Cutbush. “If it ever did, the ship would be blown to splinters.”

  Bliven nodded. They were directly beneath the wardroom, and above that, the captain’s and commodore’s cabins. If such a calamity did occur, there seemed a certain justice to the fact that the officers would be the first to blow sky high.

  “I gather,” said Sam, “we won’t be repairing down here to enjoy a smoke.”

  Cutbush shook his head. “One incautious moment down here could cost the life of every man on board. Reflect on that. Look what happened to the New York just a couple of months ago.”

  “We have heard about that,” said Bliven.

  “They were damned lucky it didn’t reach the powder magazine itself. Let us go back up,” said Cutbush. “I dislike this place.”

  They ascended the two short ladders back to the wardroom, and they watched as Cutbush lowered, latched, and locked the hatch. “On we go,” he said. They left the wardroom and descended the regular after ladder to the orlop deck, which seemed if anything even more eerie than the magazines they had just left, for they could look forward the entire length of the ship, in a deck less than five feet high.

  “Forward there”—Bliven pointed to their unobstructed view of the hold, keel and ribs dimly visible—“that’s for freshwater casks and the like?”

  “Exactly,” said Cutbush. “Come, I will show you my battle station, the cockpit. These right here are bread rooms.” Bliven surveyed the warren of storage areas, which when they sailed would hold tons, and tons more, of rocklike biscuit. Cutbush led them forward, ducking under the oaken beams that supported the berth deck, to the area around the mizzenmast’s footing. “Now, in most large ships this would be the place for the cockpit, but starboard there you see quarters for the surgeon’s mates.”

  “God, they live down here?” asked Sam.

  Even in the dim of the battle lanterns, they could descry the twinkle in the surgeon’s eye. “Shh. They won’t know better if you don’t tell them. But I had rather that they not billet right next to such nasty business, so I moved the cockpit forward, as you will see.”

  Bliven pointed to matching compartments on the opposite side, to one of which the door was not only closed but barred and padlocked. “What is this to port? The brig?”

  “Worse,” said Cutbush. “Commodore’s private stores. Preble likes to set a fine table; no one knows how he does it. That is his chef’s berth next to it.”

  “His what!” Bliven exclaimed.

  “He only comes down here to sleep, has the run of the commodore’s cabin at other times. Doesn’t mix much with the rest of us, don’t know a thing about him. But when Preble convenes a captain’s table, you will see something.”

  “Great heavens.” Bliven pulled at the padlock on the bar.

  “Rattle that lock when the chef is sleeping and you will see something, too. Preble is a cultured man, but he knows very well the kind of men they recruit for sailors. Just try to break into his private stores and hear this, he will resurrect keelhauling as a legal punishment. Not even I could save your life after such an offense.”

  They moved on forward, as Sam looked over his shoulder. “My word.”

  “Just there you see the cable tier, and the main hold beyond that. If you look all the way forward, you see a bulkhead beyond the foremast footing. If you go beyond that, you have the armorer’s and master’s storerooms, and the sail room, to starboard, and the gunner’s and bosun’s storerooms to port.”

  He led them just beyond the foremast, which passed on below and was anchored to the very keel. “In a battle, this is the most steady and quiet part of the ship, so this is where I try to put poor blighters back together.” He opened a cabinet and lifted the lid o
n his chest of implements—scalpels, probes, tourniquets, and, most prominently, a bone saw. “It doesn’t take much, really. It is surprising how little.”

  They returned to the berth deck. “The wardroom you have seen,” said Cutbush. “Just forward of here are the midshipmen’s quarters.”

  “How many of them?” asked Bliven.

  “Twelve or thirteen.”

  “Good Lord, they might as well open a school with that many to train.”

  “Beyond that you see that hammock space for the crew. They sleep in shifts, of course, to maintain the watches.” They ascended to the gun deck and its tidy rank of twenty-fours. “Down there you see the galley and the camboose, and the sick bay past there, that is my daily office.”

  “Next to the galley,” observed Sam. “Let us hope that is no comment upon the food.”

  “Ha. Not really. I hold sick call every morning, and since all the men are present for breakfast, it is the most convenient place. Usually I hang sheets up to separate the sick bay from the rest. Gives us a little privacy.”

  “Is your cook a good one?” asked Bliven.

  “Navy fare is navy fare,” the doctor sighed. “He does the best he can, he makes better use of the steep tub than most, so the meat doesn’t taste like a mouthful of salt. And he is probably more generous with the plum duff than others. Nevertheless, there is little difference between the biscuits on this vessel and on any other. Thank God, we officers manage better than the seamen, our purser stays well supplied and we can buy special items from him—chocolate for a hot drink, or brandied cherries even, and such like.”

  “That is good to know,” said Bliven. “We had few luxuries on the Enterprise.”

  • • •

  ON THE LAST DAY OF JUNE, Sam crashed into Bliven’s cabin without knocking, causing him to leap clean to his feet. “What in hell?” demanded Bliven.

  “Did you hear the news? We are ordered out!”

  Bliven’s annoyance dissipated in an instant. “Is it true?”