The French Prize

by James L. Nelson

  “They pretend these fellows are privateers. They probably have some sort of paper, I shouldn’t wonder, though whoever signed it is likely off to the guillotine before the ships could raise our coast. The point is, these so-called privateers are no better than pirates. They can make a fortune raiding our commerce. The French government, such that it is, won’t stop ’em and we can’t because we don’t have a navy, do you see?

  “So now we’ve elected a president who can see the truth of the matter, who isn’t wearing a tricolor cockade and shouting Liberté, Égalité and all that, like our Mr. Jefferson is. Which is good for us, but the French don’t like it, so you can count on their redoubling their depredations, the dogs. They’re right off our coast, you know. French privateers sailing free as you please within sight of our very coast, and not a damn thing we can do about it.”

  “Speaking of a navy,” Jack said, wishing to change the course of the conversation, but not so radically that his father would notice, “did I see the United States planked up and near ready to go down the ways?”

  “Yes, yes,” Isaac said with enthusiasm, his mounting irritation with the French blown clean away. “Beautiful, isn’t she? Humphries is building her, as you know. He built the frigate I commanded in the War, the Falmouth, built her pretty much where the United States sits now.”

  “I recall,” said Jack, stabbing a substantial piece of meat with his fork and swaying it aloft.

  “A month or so, Humphries tells me, and she’ll be going down the ways.”

  Jack, his mouth now full of lamb, nodded. United States was one of six frigates that had been authorized in March of 1794, more than three years prior, back when it was the Algerians who were causing so much trouble for the American carrying trade. Now, with that crisis past and the Algerians having been bought off for nearly a million dollars and, most humiliating of all, the gift of a thirty-two-gun frigate thrown into the bargain, only three of the six were slated for actual completion. Happily, United States was one.

  Jack swallowed. “She looks just the thing,” he said. “And if Humphries has drawn her and built her she’ll be a good sea boat, I’ll warrant.”

  “She has diagonal bracing, do you see?” Isaac said, holding up crossed arms by way of demonstration. “Diagonal, running fore and aft from the midships and drifted into each frame. It’ll keep her from hogging, despite the fine entry she has, and the weight of the guns.”

  Jack nodded. “Isaac, dear,” Virginia interrupted, “this is all terribly boring.”

  Jack looked at his siblings. Elizabeth, he could see, was indeed bored and doing nothing to disguise the fact. Nate was enjoying it because it was manly talk and seafaring talk, even though he probably did not understand it, at least not entirely. As for himself, he was finally finding the conversation stimulating, but his mother had spoken and that was an end to it.

  They moved on to more mundane topics, more mundane, at least, to Jack: talk of Philadelphia society, gossip about the other members of Congress, news of old friends from back home in Rhode Island. Jack discovered that President Adams had called a special session of Congress to consider the French problem. Isaac expressed amazement that he could have not known that. Jack pointed out that just a week before he had been crossing the Tropic of Cancer in a full topsail breeze.

  The meal passed in a more or less amiable manner. Despite Jack’s flashes of anger it was better than it had been in years past, when such an evening might have ended with shouting and slamming doors and his mother fleeing the room in disgust. But now he did not seem to feel that passion, and his father seemed less likely to provoke.

  Jack understood he was no longer a boy. He was master of a vessel now. I have my responsibilities, he thought, I am a responsible man now. That seemed to better explain his changed attitude, but then a twinge of pain in his ribs brought back memories of the night before, or what he could remember of it, and made him question just how responsible he really was.

  Maybe it’s the old man who’s growing up, he thought. Maybe it’s his attitude that’s changed.

  The shadows were long in the streets, the evening chill settling in on the city when Jack said his good-byes, kissed his mother, shook his father’s hand, teased his sister one last time, and assured his brother he could come by the ship when they were taking on cargo. He stepped through the door, down the four steps to the street, and nearly collided with the man hovering there, waiting.

  “Good evening,” Jack said by way of inquiry, but this fellow did not look to be having a good evening.

  “Good evening, Captain,” he said, and there, for the first time, the word was used with a mocking, ironic tone. Jack’s reaction was instant: the flush of rage, the balled fists, but the man did not seem to notice, or care.

  “I’m here at the behest of Mr. Jonah Bolingbroke,” he said. He spoke like a man struggling to talk above his station, the words stilted, the accent wrong. Normally, Jack would have found this amusing, but he was too angry now.

  “Mr. Bolingbroke takes exception to your conduct last night, and demands satisfaction of you on the morrow. There’s an empty lot on Second Street in the Southwark—”

  “I know it.”

  “Sunrise. Tomorrow,” the man said.

  Biddlecomb searched his memory, trying to recall what obligations he had for the morrow. Cargo was coming aboard, but he would not be needed for that until sometime later.

  “Very well, then,” Jack said, then thought better of that arrangement. “No, hold a moment, I’ll never find a second would agree to sunrise. Pray, make it eight o’clock. There’s no one in the Southwark will care either way.”

  Bolingbroke’s second seemed a bit taken aback by this arrangement, but he nodded and said, “Very well then, Captain, eight o’clock.”

  He turned on his heel and marched off, not so much appearing in a hurry as appearing to want to seem as if he was in a hurry. Jack watched him go and thought, I reckon I have time enough to kill Bolingbroke in the morning and then get on with my business.

  This was all very surprising. Over the years he had beaten Bolingbroke senseless and Bolingbroke had beaten him senseless but neither had taken offense enough to demand satisfaction. Jack wondered what might have changed. Could Bolingbroke have been pushed to this by Jack’s elevation to command? Could he not stand the adulation that had come Jack’s way after that business west of Montserrat? That had been a close-run thing. And now, nearly a year later, he might die as a result of it.

  “That would be ironic,” Jack said out loud. Jack Biddlecomb hated irony.

  3

  That business west of Montserrat. It was nearly a year gone and Jack was only now realizing that it had made a pretty big splash among the mariners of Philadelphia. Why, he could only imagine. Perhaps because it was one of the Americans’ few unqualified wins, after so many merchant ships of United States registry, hundreds, in fact, had been picked off like birds in a tree by French privateers.

  They had cleared out of Barbados two days before, well laden with sugar and molasses, which was pretty much all they shipped from the West Indies because they were just about the only things the West Indies produced that were of any value. Abigail caught a nice slant of wind that drove her along to the east of the Leeward Islands as they shaped a course to catch the prevailing southeasterlies and the Gulf Stream north.

  The morning watch belonged to Jack Biddlecomb. It was ten minutes shy of eight bells, 3:50 A.M., when he came up on deck to relieve the second mate, Oliver Tucker, standing the night watch. From the stuffy confines of the after cabins Jack stepped through the scuttle and onto the quarterdeck, into the embrace of the reliable trade winds off their starboard quarter.

  The stars were formed up in their brilliant cascade overhead, a great sparkling dome unbroken by moon or cloud, but Jack’s eyes went to the sails, always right to the sails, every time he set foot on deck. He looked aloft, past the crossjack yard to the mainsail, the main topsail and the main topgallant. The canvas wa
s barely visible in the sweep of stars, but there was light enough that he could see their set, and he saw that it was good. There was about eight knots of breeze and Jack’s instinct told him it was building, but for now he was comfortable with the sail they were carrying. Tucker, he knew, would be thinking about stowing the topgallants, but Jack was willing to hang on to them for a while longer.

  He stepped clear of the scuttle and moved quietly down to the leeward side of the quarterdeck. This was a moment he loved: when he was on deck, lost in the dark, his watch not yet begun, no one even aware that he was topside. He could stand still and let the beauty of the ship and the sea and the night envelop him. He could feel the warm, regular breeze on his face, and the long, steady roll of the ship underfoot. He could hear the sound of the water rushing down along the hull and gurgling under the counter as Abigail’s bluff bows parted the seas and the sails above drove her hundreds of tons of bulk along its steady track.

  He took a deep breath. This was the reward, the moment of rest as the sun was setting, the warm fire at journey’s end, the cool dip in the pond when a long summer’s day of labor was over. This was the prize won by hours and days of standing the deck through blowing wind and freezing rain and seas piling up like mountains to windward. This was the compensation for standing watch upon watch in bitter weather, struggling with torn sails, shattered spars, rigging snapped like cotton thread, for bearing the responsibility of driving a ship through reefs and bars and shoals, through waters swarming with pirates and privateers and customs agents and tight-fisted merchants. This was why he went to sea.

  This, and because he was not sure he was capable of doing anything else.

  Jack saw a seaman heading aft to turn the glass and ring out eight bells, so he pushed himself off the rail and sought out Oliver Tucker on the windward side. Tucker was bigger all around than Jack, who stood five foot eleven and had his father’s muscular build. Tucker was toying with six feet, was inches wider than Jack, and ten years his senior, but he lacked Jack’s time on blue water.

  Tucker had spent most of his career in coasting vessels, or fishing for cod on the banks, and had only recently taken to the deepwater carrying trade. That was why, despite the difference in age, he was second mate and Jack first. And that seemed to be fine with Tucker, who was competent but unimaginative and largely devoid of ambition. He said little and seemed quite content with his place in the world and in the hierarchy of the ship.

  “Evening, Jack,” Tucker said on seeing the mate’s approach.

  “Evening, Oliver. Fine night.”

  “Fine indeed,” Oliver agreed, then went about the formalities of turning over the watch. “Course is northwest, and Montserrat bearing west southwest and about ten leagues distant. Not much else to report, we haven’t touched a rope since I came on deck. Wind does seem to be building. I was thinking of handing the topgallants, but reckoned I’d wait for the change of watch.”

  Jack nodded. Abigail, like most merchantmen, carried a bare minimum of crew, because Oxnard, like most merchants, was too mean to pay for more hands than were absolutely necessary, and generally less than that. There were ten men in the forecastle, five for each watch, along with a cook, steward, two mates, and Asquith, making a total of fifteen souls aboard, excluding the two cats, who displayed even less evidence of having souls than did the cook.

  Any task of notable difficulty, such as winning the anchor or reefing topsails, required all hands, but stowing topgallants did not rise to that level. In truth, Jack knew, Tucker was under orders not to make any sail changes without waking the captain, and he did not want to wake the captain, so he had waited for Jack to make his appearance.

  “We’ll probably need to hand them soon,” Jack agreed, “but I reckon I’ll hang on to them a bit longer.”

  “You’ll hang on to them till they blow out of their boltropes,” Tucker said, and in the dark Jack smiled.

  “I might yet, but only if I can figure a way for you to take the blame.”

  They said their good nights. Tucker and his men headed for the scuttles and their watch below, Jack’s went to their various stations: helm and forward lookout, the rest milling about amidships, waiting for orders. There was a good chance that the four tricks at the helm, requiring slight turns of the big wheel one way then the other, would be the most taxing part of the watch.

  Had it been daylight, Jack would have set the men to a half-dozen different tasks; tarring down the standing rigging, slushing the topmasts, end for ending the running rigging, mending sail, polishing brass, making up sword mats, and refreshing the chaffing gear; but as it was dark, and because he knew the men would work like dogs when called upon to do so, he let them stand easy. Or sit, as the case may be. Such was watch standing in the Caribbean.

  Asquith had the reputation of being a fair captain, and Biddlecomb a hard driver, a mate not shy about carrying sail, a man who knew his business but not one who sought authority through fear and brutality, as some did. The profit on that was that they had their pick of the seamen along the waterfront. Abigail had a small crew, but a good crew, and when it came to seamen, quality counted for considerably more than quantity.

  Jack took his place by the weather rail, looked down the length of the ship at the water rolling and curling off her rounded side, flashing with light as the phosphorus was churned up in her passing and stretching away in a long wake astern. He walked over and glanced at the compass, illuminated by a candle in the binnacle box. Northwest. John Burgess, the seaman at the helm, was holding her so steadily on course the compass card looked as if it was stuck in place.

  “How does she feel, Burgess?”

  “Feels well, sir. Helm answers right and proper.”

  Jack nodded. He paced. He ran his eyes over the sails, and the time rolled past like the dark water moving under their keel.

  The first hints of dawn were starting to show themselves when Noah Maguire, once just another Irishman from Cork, now an able-bodied seaman from Philadelphia, a good man at sea but a fearsome drunk ashore, came ambling aft, turned the glass, took up the bell rope, and rang out four bells.

  “Maguire,” Jack called. “First light soon. Take this glass and up aloft with you.”

  Maguire responded with an “Aye,” took the telescope that Jack offered, and disappeared up the main shrouds. This was a precaution that his father had often told him about, how in the naval service in times of war they would have a lookout aloft at first light, to minimize the chance that the dawn might reveal some unhappy surprise, such as a powerful enemy in the offing. Indeed, according to his father the entire ship would go to quarters at dawn, just to be ready.

  Jack would not go that far. And of course there was no such thing as “quarters” in the merchant service, and since no merchantman carried any sort of weapons with which they might reasonably defend themselves, such a precaution would be pointless in the extreme. But in waters infested with French privateers, having a man aloft at dawn seemed a reasonable precaution.

  It was not long after Maguire had disappeared aloft that the first gray light began to spread along the deck. The masts, hatches, the fife rails and pumps, and forward, the windlass and the heel of the bowsprit slowly revealed themselves in the gathering dawn. The sky to the east took on a pinkish hue. Just forward of the mainmast Abigail sported a galley, housed in a deckhouse about the size of a generous privy, and now the first puffs of black smoke began chuffing from the galley’s stovepipe and whisking away forward and downwind.

  It was no more than ten minutes after that, with the sun finally breaking the rim of the horizon, that Maguire sang out from aloft.

  “On deck! Sail, ho! Two points off the larboard bow and all but hull down! Can’t make out more than that, Mr. Mate!”

  “That’s well!” Biddlecomb called back. “Keep your eye on it, sing out when you can see more!”

  Sail … Jack swallowed down a rising panic, chided himself for a coward. You’re in the West Indies, you damned fool! he thoug
ht. Of course there’s a sail, there are more damned sails here than the damned bloody sail loft in the Royal Dockyard in damned Portsmouth!

  And, inevitably, there was the image of his father, standing unmoved amid the flying metal, the hero of the War for Independency who most certainly did not urinate in his breeches at the sight of a strange sail on the horizon.

  “Oh, damn it all!” Jack said, which earned him a “Pardon, sir?” from the seaman on the helm.

  “Nothing, Lacey, it’s nothing.”

  Six bells and Jack was about to call up to Maguire to ask if he could see anything more, an undignified display of impatience and he knew it, when the captain appeared on the deck. He was still dressed in his nightshirt, as was his custom in the warmer latitudes. “Jack, did I hear something about a strange sail?”

  “Two points off the larboard bow, sir, and all but hull down. That’s from Maguire aloft, sir, don’t know if we can see it from here.”

  Asquith raised the telescope he had brought from his cabin and swept the horizon. “Yes, there’s the buggerer,” he muttered. “Tops’ls, that’s all I can see,” he added, then he looked aloft. The rising wind was making his thin, white hair stream out to leeward. “Still carrying the t’gan’sls, Mr. Biddlecomb?”

  “I was just about to order them handed, sir,” he said, which was not strictly the truth. Actually, it was not the truth in any sense. But, motivated by Asquith’s pointed hint, he called an order forward that sent men running to the foremast, casting off the topgallant halyard, hauling away clewlines and buntlines to bring the yard down to the cap.

  Make us less visible from a distance, in any event, he thought.

  “Deck, there!” Maguire called down. “She’s hull up now, schooner or brigantine, I’ll warrant!”

  Jack could take it no more. “By your leave, sir, I’d like to go aloft and have a look.”

  “Of course, Mr. Biddlecomb, of course,” Asquith said. Jack took off his hat, a moderately high-crowned, round-brimmed affair, and stuffed it between the binnacle box and the aft skylight, shed his coat, and swung himself up into the main shrouds. Climbing aloft, up the hundred or so feet of a swaying, plunging mainmast, over the futtock shrouds that ran at a sharp angle from the shrouds to the edge of the maintop, up and over and up the topmast shrouds, it warranted no more consideration than climbing a set of stairs and, young and fit as he was, took only a bit more effort.