The Downeaster: Deadly Voyage

by Paul Thomas Fuhrman

  Kayleigh could not hide the puzzled look on her face.

  “I believe, Kayleigh, that the emphasis of a nurse’s work is clinical. But the nurse must understand what she sees, what her hands, her ears, her nose tell her. She must understand pathology and the process of healing. It is so much more than cleanliness, fresh air, and good food. The nurse is an extension of the doctor’s mind and hands. A nurse’s mind must also have scientific acuity and absolute impartiality.” She then relaxed again, placing her index finger under her chin.

  Kayleigh asked, “Don’t you think the directors at Massachusetts General might balk at such a school? Most oppose even the school we’ve proposed.”

  Dr. Zakrzewska smiled. “It is how I’ve organized my nursing school. Watch, you will come to me for instructors one day.”

  The smile disappeared from the doctor’s face and her face grew stern. “I go on too much. I want to see you again when your menses fail to come, but in no more than a month. I want you to keep a record of your temperature. I’ll lend you a thermometer. You must see me sooner if you think it’s needed. You will be a healthy mother, and your child will be healthy too. That is our goal, you and I. First, a healthy baby and a healthy mother; then I will introduce you to a few of my friends.”

  The stern expression changed to that of a mother instructing a child. “We will help you discover the ability you’ve been given and the opportunity you have. We will talk more about nursing and your ambitions.”

  The dispassionate medical expression appeared again. “Here is what you must do now.” Kayleigh accepted the pamphlet Dr. Zakrzewska handed her.

  “This tells you what you must expect; your body is changing by the minute.”

  Dr. Zakrzewska stood at her desk and extended her hand to Kayleigh. Before Kayleigh could take her hand and say, “Thank you,” Dr. Zakrzewska made one last point. “Kayleigh, not every woman can or should be a nurse.”

  Thursday, June 6, 1872

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  Two days had passed and 5:30 a.m. had arrived in the Bullfinch Building, in the postoperative ward. Kayleigh MacKenna awoke in the fold-up bed she shared with another nurse, Rachael, in a little room in the middle of the ward that was used during the day as a sitting room for patients and their visitors. Kayleigh and Rachael were not alone. Two feet away, against the opposite wall, two additional nurses, Clara, and the physically formidable and older Kazia, occupied another fold-up bed.

  Kayleigh awoke from restlessness and from sharing a bed with a partner who tossed and turned and whose breath emitted the sweetly rancid odor of whiskey. She shook her partner. “Come on, Rachael, get up. We’ve fifteen minutes to get dressed and leave the room.”

  Rachael stirred, groaned, propped her body up on one elbow, and stared at Kayleigh through an open eye. “All right, Miss Prissy. I hear you.”

  With that, Rachael moved her legs so that her feet were dangling over the side of the bed. She then plunged them over the edge, until they struck the wooden floor with a soft thud before seeking her felt slippers.

  “There, Miss Prissy, don’t that make you happy now? Daylight, girls! If I can get up, so can you. Get up!”

  The four women shook off their sleeping gowns and took their day clothes off makeshift racks hanging off the backs of two spartan chairs. When dressed, the four nurses went directly to the common lavatory shared by the nurses and patients. Faces were splashed, hands washed, as they waited in turn for the toilet.

  “Go fetch the breakfast for the patients and us too. It’s your turn, Kayleigh; you too, Rachael,” Kazia demanded.

  Kayleigh and Rachael walked to the kitchen, loaded twelve breakfasts on wooden trays, and carried them back from the main kitchen to their ward using a cart with racks stacked on top of each other. Only after the breakfast had been distributed to the ward’s patients would the nurses eat.

  After finishing her meal, Kayleigh spoke to the other nurses.

  “We’ll need to start washing the linen. It’s not right to be told what to do. The directors are coming here Friday.”

  Kazia looked at Kayleigh through squinted eyes. “It can wait until you get back from the kitchen. Don’t want Miss Rich Lady missing any of the fun, now, do we?”

  Kayleigh replied, “Why do you always say things like that to me? Why?”

  “Well, what’s true is true. You can work or not work as suits your whim. Take whole weeks off without a worry.”

  “I’m here now, though. I do the same work as you do. I’m not too good for that.”

  “Just you and Rachael get them things back to the kitchen and watch your tongue.”

  Kazia puffed herself up like a grackle and threatened Kayleigh with her eyes.

  Rachael put a forefinger to her lips. “Shh. Stop it. The matron’s just outside. C’mon, Kayleigh, I don’t want to be here when the matron sticks her head through that door.”

  Kayleigh and Rachael quickly gathered the dirty earthenware and utensils from the patients and left. Rachael smiled and did something like a curtsy on passing the matron of nurses.

  “Good morning, mum.”

  “Good morning, Rachael, Mrs. Griffin.”

  After a pleasant, unburdened, and silent walk from the kitchen scullery back to her ward, Kayleigh found the pile of dressings and linens untouched. Kazia had found some pretext to accompany the matron to the next visit ward while Clara waited idly, standing by the hamper that contained the dirty linen.

  Rachael became agitated. “You let the matron near that? With it just standing there? Did you? We are going to catch all hell now. Nothing can hide that smell. Where’s that fat bitch? Shirking work as usual?”

  The nurses’ job was to prepare the dirty linen for the hospital laundry. This meant separating the linen by use and type, scraping off the excess filth of human waste, blood, and poultices, then washing the linen in a mixture of hot water and strong lye soap, wringing it in wooden rollers until it was damp-dry, then moving the linen to the hospital laundry for boiling, bluing, and pressing with mangles.

  Kayleigh found herself at her usual job, standing, waist bent over a laundry tub, using a scrub board and a stiff-bristle brush to remove as much of the staining as she could. Her hands had turned red from chapping. She felt her belly pressing against the wooden tub as she worked her brush downward across the corrugated board. She continued her labor until as much dirt as possible dissolved into the hot gray water in the tub. Rachael took the washed linen from Kayleigh and rinsed it vigorously on her own scrubbing board in a tub of fresh water. When Rachael’s tub became saturated with soap, she and Kayleigh lifted it and poured the contents down the drain. Clara then refilled it with hot water from a stove. When the laundry was rinsed, Clara ran the linen through a wooden wringer and then sorted and stacked it in a canvas hamper fitted with wheels. The weight of the damp linen would require three women to push it up the hill to the laundry.

  Late in the afternoon, Kayleigh made rounds with her assigned patients. She cleaned wounds, examined stitches, and dressed the incisions with fresh linen. She then gave them the doses of medicines the physicians had prescribed. It pleased Kayleigh that the ward was bright with sunlight and aired out daily. It also pleased her to see the reactions to her smile. The frescoes in the Bullfinch Building added an intentional sense of cheer. To complete the homelike atmosphere, each patient had a small wool rug by his or her white metal bed to add color to the white paint and gray wainscoting covering the ward’s walls. Once a week, the nurses took the rugs outside and beat the dust from them.

  As Rachael made her rounds, she sat on the edge of a bed and flirted with a law student who had been injured in a horsecar accident. She seemed to take unusual care and time with changing his dressings, bathing him, and joking with him. His student friends snuck her whiskey and complimented her for her jet-black hair and buxom figure.

  Dr. Zakrzewska’s pamphlet was proving itself to be true. Kayleigh’s lower back began to hurt; her uterus was growing
with new life inside and pushing her internal organs to unaccustomed places. She felt nauseous. There was a sharp pain followed by the resumption of a now familiar rumbling ache. The sharp ache brought tears to the edges of her eyes. As evening approached and the final meal was served and taken away, Kayleigh told Rachael that she would have the bed to herself. Kayleigh was in pain and exhausted.

  Kazia overheard. “Sneaking off again to leave all the dirty work for us poor girls. You’re no better than we are, Irish trash—just got money; that’s all.”

  Kayleigh felt Rachael’s hand on her shoulder. “Pay her no attention. She’s just jealous.”

  Twenty-Two

  The Northeast Trades

  With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,

  That well had borne their part,

  But the noblest thing which perish’d there

  Was that young faithful heart!

  —Felicia Dorothea Hemans

  Sunday, June 4, 1872

  Lat 33˚52΄29˝N, Long 44˚20΄15˝W

  The North Atlantic, 272 Miles Logged

  Providence averaged eight and a half knots on Friday, ten knots on Saturday, and, if the winds held, ought to average eleven knots today. The wind had been steady and brisk from southwest and south. Large waves crested with white foam rolled atop sides carved rough with gouges. These made Providence behave like a young stallion racing, absorbed and satisfied by the joy of its own physicality. It was such a beautiful sky with those cumulus clouds, and shirtsleeve temperatures in the warm sunlight. These thoughts came to Peleg Carver as he extended his dead reckoning track in the chart room. He was pleased; she was prancing and snorting along with sweat on her chest. All sails to royals muscled her forward, starboard tack, running free, the bow wake singing, the standing rigging strained like swollen sinews. This was perfect had the spanker not required constant attention to balance a heavy weather helm.

  Peleg Carver returned to the quarterdeck to see that Griffin was still there, calculating speed from his Bliss patent log, squinting at the topsail leeches, choking off his words until Lennon and Gabriel directed the watch to trim sail to take out the offending shake or flatten the weather leeches with the bowlines. Griffin had refused to let the helm luff or come down unless the wind hauled. He would not suffer even a half-knot loss of speed. The only thing occasionally distracting Griffin was the barometer. Thus he stood, absorbed and on deck for the last thirty-six hours, unaware of all the eyes watching him, but sublimely aware of the ship’s speed, feeling his identity and the ship’s as one. Only one thought repeated itself in Griffin’s mind: faster.

  “Mr. Carver, fix our position and show me where we are.”

  Peleg Carver gritted his teeth; barely an hour had passed since noon. Still, he went to his stateroom to get his sextant, compared his hack watch to the chronometer in the chart house, and stepped back on deck. “Priest, you need to record the time and altitude, upper limb this time of day.”

  Carver was a Yankee and former navy officer as well; he used Priest as a quartermaster’s mate because the boy was good with numbers and neat. Peleg had assigned him to help the captain navigate whenever the captain had the urge to do the first mate’s duty. Carver had made sure the boy knew how, but habitually repeated, “Get ready, time first. Altitude’s on the sextant.”

  He then went amidships and used the main-mast fife-rail to brace himself for using his sextant. When Carver felt himself move in complete harmony with the ship, he selected a reliable combination of smoked lenses to observe the sun through the sextant’s low-power telescope.

  “Look at the watch and listen to me; be ready to write.”

  The mate used his arms to steady his heavy brass sextant. He brought the sun down to the horizon, then rocked his sextant slowly to set the upper limb precisely on the horizon.

  Peleg Carver barked the word “mark,” then read the vernier scale for degrees, minutes, and tenths of seconds. He then asked for the recorded time.

  Priest read back the elevation and time he had recorded.

  Peleg Carver was an experienced navigator. He knew the ship’s approximate latitude from his dead reckonings and the sextant’s recorded altitude.

  Carver waited an hour and repeated the process; he would use a running fix to locate the ship’s position. Carver took Priest with him to the chart room.

  “Do you think you can work it on your own, Priest? You’ve seen me and the captain do it enough to know how yourself if you’ve been alert.”

  “Aye, sir. I can do it. Watch.”

  Carter observed Priest step up to the chart table, then stand on his toes to reach the almanac and bring it down from its shelf. The boy took a blank piece of paper and set out a sheet to record the data needed to work the two sun sights. Bowditch was at his left elbow.

  Priest asked, “What was our height above the water, sir?”

  Priest then used what he had recorded, the sextant altitudes and times, the almanac data, the logarithmic tables, and other tables from Bowditch to calculate the two lines of position. When finished, he showed his work to Carver.

  “You plot it on the chart.” Carver admired the way the boy handled the parallel rulers and drew light, precise pencil lines.

  Priest drew the two lines of position and carefully advanced the earlier line to intersect with the later one. He used the latitude scale to measure distance and calculated speed mentally. He smiled toward Carver. “The ship really is rolling along, sir!”

  Carver smiled toward Priest and said, “Go see Bishop and get yourself some coffee. Tell him I would like biscuits for breakfast tomorrow.”

  As Priest left the chart room, Isaac Griffin entered and asked Carver, “Current? Set? Drift? Look at the pilot charts.”

  ***

  At three bells of the forenoon watch, Mr. Lennon called for the apprentices to report to him. “Lads, de captain wants ter see yews now. He’s standing outside de wheelhouse. Make it smart.”

  Smallbridge knew the captain would be standing on the weather side of the wheelhouse and led the way. Priest was close behind him, swaying from side to side, catching his balance with every footfall, and doing so absolutely without conscious thought of the difficulty of walking on a deck in a seaway.

  Smallbridge spoke. “Sir, Mr. Lennon told us you wanted to see us.”

  “Yes. Mr. Carver tells me there’s reasonable hope you might become seamen. Smallbridge, you and Priest are going to start helming. You’ll stand tricks with Stedwin and Duder, lee helm.

  “Now that you can box the compass and tie a reef knot, thought you might like learning officer’s work. I’ve carried sail to take advantage of the trades. What’s the ship doing, Jeremy?”

  “Mr. Carver says ten knots or better.”

  Griffin frowned. “That’s not what I wanted to hear. You know, Smallbridge, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. She’s—”

  Griffin interrupted, “You tell me, Priest.”

  “She’s started to heel hard on her lee, sir. She’s nearly got her deck in it at times. Started heeling hard over before two bells.”

  “What do you think that does to her, Richard?”

  “Ca-ca-capsize? He-heel too much?”

  Griffin smiled toward Richard Ernst and said, “Good answer, but you’re missing something. She’s slowing down, too much sail, too much rudder. That’s right, too much. Causes weather helm. We’re going to furl the royals to right her up a bit and see how much faster she’ll go.”

  Jeremy Ernst started to frown at the word “furl.” He drew a rebuke from his captain.

  “Don’t ever let me see that again, Ernst.

  “Officer’s work: the rules for managing sails. Remember them.” Griffin peered down his nose at each boy to measure his level of attention.

  “First, always make the wind help you by blowing the sail to ease the hauling. If you’re taking in sail, get the balloon out of it as soon as possible. No sense working the men on the yards harder than you have to. If the lee sheet is l
et go, a sail always shakes. If the weather sheet is let go, the wind stays in the sail and steadies it. Remember, a sail will always split if you allow it to shake in a gale.

  “Think about that when Mr. Carver takes in the royals. On deck.”

  The apprentices returned to their stations.

  ***

  Priest was excited. “He’s going to let us helm.”

  Smallbridge replied, “Yeah. Don’t smile until you’ve done it awhile. You saw Carver kick Craig out of the wheelhouse and swear so loud at him it startled the captain.”

  “Yeah, I saw that. Do you think Craig had it coming?”

  When Carver gave the preparatory command for furling sail, Priest was careful to observe and commit to memory everything Mr. Carver and the boatswain did. He watched how the running rigging was prepared. How the helm and sheets were used to spill the wind from the sails, when the bunt and clewlines were bowsed. When he and the other top-men were allowed to go aloft, he made note of what gear he overhauled prior to furling and how close to the yard it was brought with clewlines and buntlines.

  Although Priest was stationed on the weather side of the sail’s bunt, he impulsively shouted out, “No, that’s no way to make a skin. Watch me, Craig. Watch me. I’ll show you.” All Priest wanted to do was save Craig from a tongue-lashing. He was shocked with the anger on Craig’s face.

  When the top-men were permitted to leave the yard and go back on deck, Priest attempted to talk to Craig, but Craig rebuffed him and walked away while swearing that the bastards never let him be.

  ***

  A tired Nicholas Priest felt the tension ease as Stedwin and Smallbridge took the helm and repeated the course steered and the spokes. His first trick had ended with no reprimands. Duder just smiled.

  Feeling released from tension, Priest walked to the galley door and took a piece of ship’s biscuit from the bread kid, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat on the deck. He had by now become used to drinking coffee at all hours of the day and night in order to maintain alertness despite his body’s desire for sleep. He had barely walked to the galley door when he heard the timekeeper strike eight bells of the afternoon watch on Providence’s large ship’s bell. The dogwatches had begun. Ship’s work stopped. Men squatted on deck with their backs to bulwarks or the deck cabin, their eyes barely open, their hands moving slowly, almost wandering about their personal tasks.