The Watermen: Selections From Chesapeake

by James A. Michener

  It was during the sail back home one morning that Tim Caveny cleverly put his finger on the considerable danger they might run if Captain Jake proceeded with his plan for restaffing the Jessie T, now that the Englishman and the Bostonian had departed. Turlock had mentioned the problem to Big Jimbo, who said, ‘You ain’t got no trouble, Cap’m. I knows two men like to drudge.’ But when the cook returned with the would-be crew, Tim saw that each was very big and very black.

  Without bothering to take his partner aside, he asked, ‘Jake, you think it smart to hire ’em both?’

  ‘They look strong.’

  ‘But it would make three white, three black. And you know how niggers like to plot against white folk.’

  Jake studied the three black men, and although their faces were placid, he could easily visualize them launching a mutiny. Turning to Big Jimbo, he asked abruptly, ‘Weren’t it your daddy that murdered my grandfather’s brother?’

  ‘Maybe it was your grandfather stole my daddy as a slave,’ the cook replied evenly.

  ‘Tim’s right,’ Turlock snapped. ‘We’ll take one. Catch us another white man in Baltimore.’

  So on the first day of dredging, the Jessie T was not on station. She was delivering a load of ducks to the Hotel Rennert in Baltimore, and after this was accomplished, Turlock and Caveny returned to the Drunken Penguin to inspect what the waterfront had to offer. They had not long to wait, for into the bar came a giant German wearing one of those gray sweaters with a double-folded neck and pants so thick they looked as though they could withstand a hurricane. He was obviously hungry, for he wolfed down three pickled eggs before the bartender could pour his beer, and while he was gulping a sandwich, Captain Turlock struck him on the head with a bottle. When he collapsed in the sawdust, Caveny ran into the street and whistled for Big Jimbo to come drag him out.

  He was still unconscious when the Jessie T sailed, but when the skipjack cleared the Lazaretto, Jake summoned the Turlock boy from his position forward and said, ‘Take the wheel. This one may be trouble when he wakens.’

  With Tim’s help he spread the unconscious German on the deck, then grabbed a belaying pin and advised Caveny to do the same. When they had secure positions from which they could defend themselves, Turlock called for the black sailor to throw a bucket of water over the German’s face, but just as the young fellow was about to do so, Jake prudently called for Big Jimbo. ‘Better stand here with us. This one could be mean.’ So the cook joined the circle, and the water was thrown.

  The fallen sailor shook his head and gradually awoke to the fact that he was aboard a moving ship. When he sat up, wiping the salty water from his face, he stared at the circle of faces, two white, two black. Assuming that Turlock was the captain of this craft, he asked in heavy accents. ‘Where’m I going?’

  ‘Arsterin’,’ Jake replied.

  The German was obviously disposed to fight, but he saw the belaying pins and reconsidered. ‘How long?’ he asked.

  ‘Three months. And when we pay you off, we bring you back to Baltimore.’

  The German remained sitting, and after he had pressed the water out of his sweater he said, ‘Otto Pflaum, Hamburg.’

  ‘Glad to have you, Otto. Coffee’s on.’

  He was a splendid addition to the crew, a man of powerful energy and surprising dexterity in sorting what the dredges hauled up from the bottom. Knowing nothing of the bay’s traditions, he did not think it unusual when the Jessie T remained on station, week after week; he enjoyed it when the buy-boats visited to pick up the catch, for this meant that for the next few days the food would be superior, and he had a ravenous appetite.

  ‘You let him, he stay at table twenty-four hours each day,’ Big Jimbo said admiringly.

  ‘Only decent thing on this boat, the cook,’ Pflaum said.

  In the winter of 1893 the crew of the Jessie T came to appreciate how lucky they were to have found big Otto Pflaum, for once more they were confronted by their ancient enemy: boatmen from Virginia creeping in to encroach on Maryland waters, even though a compact between the two states clearly reserved those oyster beds for Eastern Shore watermen.

  The Virginia men had three advantages: since their state was larger, they were more numerous; their boats were much bigger than the skipjacks; and for a curious reason no one could justify, they were allowed to use fueled engines while Marylanders were restricted to sail. Their swift, piratical craft could strip an oyster bank in an afternoon.

  Naturally, the Choptank men tried to hold the invaders away, but the Virginians were able sailors and knew how to muscle the smaller skipjacks aside. They also carried rifles, and since they were not afraid to use them, gunfire was common; two Patamoke men had already been killed.

  At first there had been no retaliation from the skipjacks, but the past year, after several blatant attacks, some of the Choptank boats had gone armed, and sporadic firing had broken out. In spite of the fact that Patamoke boats sailed under a constant threat of open warfare, Captain Turlock had been reluctant to arm the Jessie T.

  ‘Our job is drudgin’ arsters, not fightin’ Virginians,’ he told the men at the store.

  ‘What you gonna do, they come at you with guns?’

  ‘Stay clear.’

  One of the captains said, ‘Strange to hear you say that, Jake. Wasn’t your kinfolk them as fought ever’body on the bay?’

  ‘Yes, and we’re mighty proud of what they done, pirates and British and all.’

  ‘Then why don’t you arm yourself?’

  ‘Because a skipjack ain’t no man-o’-war.’

  So the Jessie T remained unarmed, and Jake’s strategy worked, for he moved onto the beds early each Monday, and after prayers, hauled his dredges back on deck with huge catches. When the Virginia boats began to encroach, and he satisfied himself that they were armed, he withdrew, content to work the smaller beds inside the Choptank. But his retreat merely emboldened the invaders, and before long they were brazenly aprowl at the mouth of that river.

  The Virginians were led by a daring boat whose arrogance was infuriating. It was a large bateau named the Sinbad, distinguishable for two features. For its figurehead it carried a large carved roc, the legendary bird with great talons; and the entire boat was painted blue, a color forbidden to skipjacks. The Sinbad was formidable.

  This winter she challenged the Jessie T, almost running her down on a sweep across the beds. ‘Stand clear, idiot!’ the Virginia captain bellowed as he bore down.

  ‘Run into him!’ Ned Turlock shouted to his uncle, but the Sinbad was much too heavy for such tactics, and prudently the Jessie T retreated.

  This encouraged the other Virginia dredgers; with impunity they paraded over the Maryland beds, scraping them clean with their powered boats. It was a sad experience for the Choptank men, made worse by the fact that Virginia buy-boats moved in arrogantly to collect the stolen oysters for sale in Norfolk.

  Something had to be done. One evening four Patamoke skipjacks assembled at one of the beds to discuss strategies that might restrain the Virginians, and one captain who had a safe crew, in that none had been shanghaied, said that since he was going ashore, he would telegraph the governor of Maryland, requesting armed force to repulse the Virginian invaders. But when Pflaum heard the conversation he demanded loudly, ‘They go ashore. Why we have to stay out?’ and one of the captains, aware of Pflaum’s status, quickly explained, ‘Because your boat gets the biggest oysters.’ Later the Jessie T crewmen laughed at the big German as he stood alone in the bow, trying to unravel this curious explanation.

  The telegram achieved nothing, so the skipjacks that had put into Patamoke for the weekend acquired rifles, which they were prepared to use, and for two days Captain Jake was content to allow the other Patamoke skipjacks to patrol the Choptank while he sailed unarmed, but when the Virginians detected this strategy, they came right at the Jessie T and muscled her off the good beds.

  Otto Pflaum had had enough. Storming into the cabin at dusk, he shou
ted, ‘You, damned Turlock. You don’t go into Patamoke, you afraid I jump ship. You don’t buy us rifles, you afraid of Sinbad. By God, I no sitting duck, let them others fire at me, bang-bang. I want a gun!’

  He got one. Next afternoon when the Jessie T tied up to a Baltimore buy-boat, Captain Jake asked if it had any extra guns for sale, and five were procured, so that on the following morning when the blue-hulled Sinbad bore down with her engine at top speed, it found Otto Pflaum standing forward and shooting at them with a repeating rifle.

  ‘He hit them!’ Ned Turlock shouted as the surprised Virginians scattered about the deck.

  For the next few days oystering was pleasant, and as they sailed back and forth across the beds, Captain Jake had time to reflect on the excellent job the Paxmores had done with the Jessie T: She has her centerboard off to one side, but she sails better’n any boat on the bay. He remembered telling Caveny, ‘No man in his right mind would build a boat with the mainmast so far forward, but it works. And do you know why? Because it’s raked so far aft.’ It was a curious mast: it not only rose from the innards of the boat at a severe angle, so that it appeared almost to be leaning backward, but its top bent forward, producing an arc which seemed certain to break it. The mast thus fought against itself, leaning backward but curving forward, and it was this tension that made it so powerful; from it hung one of the largest sails ever used on a small boat, and because of the mast’s design, the sail rode up and down with ease. It’s a beautiful boat, Jake thought. Damned shame it can’t just mind its business and drudge arsters.

  But under the leadership of the enraged Sinbad, the Virginians had mounted a concerted effort to drive the Marylanders away from their own beds, and any skipjack that volunteered to challenge them received rough treatment. Gunfire became commonplace, and Captain Jake was always inclined to retreat, to protect his boat, but Otto Pflaum and young Ned Turlock would not allow the Jessie T to be taken off station.

  It became a target for the Sinbad. ‘Move back, you bastards!’ the captain of that vessel would bellow as he brought his engine to full speed.

  ‘Don’t alter course!’ Pflaum would shout back, and the Jessie T held fast as Pflaum and Ned Turlock stayed in the bow, blazing away at the invader.

  Nothing was accomplished, but one night as the crew assembled for prayers, Ned Turlock said, ‘Uncle Jake, when you got yourself this German, you got somethin’ good.’

  The camaraderie of the cabin was a strange affair, as Ned pointed out one night, ‘Never thought I’d serve with two niggers, and both of ’em real good at arsterin’.’ He was seated between the cook and the black sailor, eating from a common pot. ‘Where’d you learn to sail?’ he asked the younger man.

  ‘Big Jimbo, he teached me.’

  ‘He ain’t got no boat.’

  ‘He brung me to the Jessie T. When you was duck huntin’.’

  ‘You ain’t never been on water, prior?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Danged, you learn fast. You watch, Jake, these goddamned niggers gonna take over the world.’

  ‘You sailed, prior?’ Caveny asked the German.

  ‘Many ships,’ Pflaum replied.

  ‘You jump ship in Baltimore?’

  ‘Want to see America.’

  ‘This is the best part,’ Ned broke in.

  ‘And you’re earnin’ good money doin’ it,’ Captain Turlock said. All the men engaged in this conversation would later remember that whenever Jake stressed wages, Otto Pflaum listened intently, keeping his hands clasped over his belly, saying nothing.

  ‘He was special attentive,’ Ned Turlock would report at the store.

  He was attentive, too, when the Sinbad swept back into action, for when the Virginia guns blazed, and a bullet struck Ned, knocking him perilously close to the railing, Pflaum stuck out a massive paw, dragging him to safety. Then, using his own gun and Ned’s, he launched a fusillade at the Virginia boat.

  ‘I think he got one of them!’ Caveny cried, for in the heat of battle Otto performed heroically.

  It therefore posed a grave moral problem when the time approached to throw him overboard. In whispered consultations Caveny said, ‘We got to remember he saved Ned’s life, more or less.’

  ‘That’s got nothin’ to do with it,’ Captain Turlock growled. ‘Cruise is endin’. We got to get rid of him.’

  Caveny brought Ned into the discussion, expecting him to vote for keeping Pflaum aboard and paying him honestly, but the young man was a true Turlock, and said, ‘Overboard. We need his share.’

  So it was agreed that during the first week in April, as the cruise ended, Ned would take the wheel, Caveny would keep the German in the cabin talking wages while Captain Turlock and Big Jimbo waited on deck with belaying pins in case anything went wrong when the boom swept Otto overboard.

  It was a gray day, with the wind blowing, as it did so often, from the northwest. The bay threw muddy spray, and the dredges were stowed port and starboard, having crawled across the bottom for three unbroken months. Everyone was tired and even the buy-boats had retreated to their summer anchorages. The long voyage was over and the oystermen were heading home to divide their spoils.

  Tim Caveny was in the cabin, his books spread on the table, explaining to Pflaum how the money would be divided. ‘We had a good season, thanks much to you, Otto. We handle the money like this. One third to the boat, which is only proper. One third to the captain. One third to you and young Turlock and the two niggers, with ever’body throwin in somethin’ extra for the cook.’

  ‘That’s fair. Best cook I ever sailed with.’

  ‘I’m now going to pay you in full—’

  ‘All hands!’ Captain Turlock shouted as a tremendous clatter echoed on deck.

  Later Caveny confessed, ‘It could of been my fault. You see, I knew the call was comin’, so I didn’t react. In a flash Otto saw I had no intention of goin’ on deck, even though there was supposed to be an emergency. So he give me a look I’ll never forget, hitched up his pants, pushed his right hand into his belt and went slowly up the ladder. You know what happened when he reached the deck.’

  What happened was that Otto knew the boom would swing in upon him; he was ready when it came, grabbed it with his left arm, swung far out over the bay as it swept past, and with his right hand produced a pistol, which he aimed at Captain Turlock’s head.

  ‘One of the most devious tricks I ever saw,’ Turlock said later, for as the boom rode out to starboard, Otto Pflaum slowly made his way forward along it till he reached the mast. With great caution he lowered himself onto the deck, walking slowly aft toward the cabin. He kept his pistol aimed at Captain Turlock’s head, and when he drew even with Jake he said, ‘I stay in cabin. Alone. You take this boat to harbor. Quick.’

  With calculated steps, feeling his way as he went, he backed to the cabin door, opened it, shouted down the hatchway, ‘Caveny, you got two seconds to get out or I kill you!’ He waited for the terrified Irishman to scramble onto the deck, then descended slowly into the cabin, locking it behind him.

  For a day and a half the five men on deck went without food or water. They sailed the Jessie T as rapidly as possible back to Patamoke, angry and cursing at the duplicity of this German who had pirated their boat, and when they docked at the wharf, and Caveny had been allowed back into the cabin to pay Pflaum his wages, the big German crawled up the ladder, pistol in hand, and made his way slowly to the side of the skipjack. Without a farewell of any kind, he gingerly stepped backward off the boat, still pointing his gun at Turlock’s head, and made his way to a waterside bar.

  ‘How I catch a ship to Baltimore?’ he asked the girl waiting tables.

  ‘Queen of Sheba,’ the girl explained. ‘When she comes down from Denton.’

  She was exceptionally pretty, a girl of nineteen who prided herself on her appearance. ‘What’s your name?’ Pflaum asked, flushed with his share of the oystering wages.

  ‘Nancy Turlock. My father owns that skipjack.’
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  ‘He’s a fine man,’ Pflaum said. And for two days he remained at the bar, waiting for the Queen of Sheba, telling extraordinary yarns to Captain Turlock’s daughter.

  Whatever slight reputation the Jessie T might have earned by her good oystering was destroyed when Otto Pflaum loud-mouthed it in the Patamoke bars that Captain Turlock had tried to drown him and that he, Pflaum, had been forced to capture the skipjack and hold it against five opponents for more than a day.

  ‘Jake botched it,’ the other watermen said, and again none would sail with him.

  Normally, Turlock and Caveny would have gone to Baltimore to shanghai a crew, but they were afraid that Pflaum might be lurking there, so they swallowed their pride and permitted Big Jimbo to sign up another of his blacks. Thus the Jessie T became the first Patamoke boat to have three whites and three blacks; it was a cohesive crew, for Big Jimbo disciplined his recruits, warning them, ‘You do right, they gonna be lots of black watermen. You mess around, no niggers never gonna see inside of a skipjack.’

  But any pleasure Captain Jake might have found in his crew was dissipated when he brought the Jessie T into port one Saturday in late December to learn that his daughter Nancy had run away to Baltimore. ‘I grew suspicious,’ Mrs. Turlock said, ‘when she started ironing her clothes. Then I noticed that whenever the Queen of Sheba came to the wharf she asked a lot of questions. So I kept a close watch on her, but last Tuesday she fooled me by ridin’ up to Trappe and takin’ the packet there. She’s gone, Jake, and do you know who with?’