Chesapeake

by James A. Michener

  LEVIN: What does thee want me to do?

  ELLEN: (lowering her voice and taking her husband by his burned hands): Come First Day, I want thee to rise and propose that henceforth no Quaker who owns a slave can remain a member of our meeting.

  LEVIN: Thee has tried that gambit a dozen times.

  ELLEN: But thee has not, and thy word will carry substantial weight.

  LEVIN: I am busy building schooners. Steed has said, extravagantly I suppose, that they are helping to ensure freedom.

  ELLEN: A greater war than that on the Chesapeake is being fought.

  LEVIN: What does that mean?

  ELLEN: Surely these colonies will have their freedom, one way or another. England or a confederation, what does it signify, really? But the freedom of men ...

  LEVIN: That, too, will follow ... in due course.

  ELLEN: It will not! (Here her voice rose again.) More than a hundred years ago in this town Ruth Brinton Paxmore begged the Quakers to set their slaves free. Nothing happened. Fifty years ago thy grandmother made the same plea, with the same results. Fifty years from now my granddaughter will throw the same words into the wilderness unless we take—

  LEVIN: Slavery will die out of its own weight, thee knows that.

  ELLEN: I know it will persist forever unless good people fight it. Levin, on First Day thee must testify.

  LEVIN: I cannot inject myself into an argument which does not concern—

  ELLEN: Levin! This day a black man saved me, leaped among the flames like a salamander. Would thee leave him there in the fire?

  LEVIN: I cannot follow when thee engages in hyperbole.

  ELLEN: And I can no longer rest in this house so long as even one member abides slavery. Levin, I must make my bed elsewhere.

  LEVIN: (dropping his head onto the bare table): I have lost my yard, my tools. And my hands are burning with fire. I need help, Ellen.

  ELLEN: And thee will lose thy immortal soul if thee turns thy back on Pompey. He, too, needs help.

  LEVIN: (leaping to his feet): What does thee demand?

  ELLEN: Thy testimony ... in public ... come First Day. (Silence, then in a gentle voice.) Levin, thee has been preparing for this day. I’ve seen thee watching the black people of this town. The time has come. I think the fire served as a signal ... to the future.

  LEVIN: Can thee put some bear grease on my hands? They burn. Terribly they burn.

  ELLEN: (applying the grease): This means that thee will speak?

  LEVIN: I have not wanted to. In these affairs God moves slowly. But Pompey is a decent man. Thee says it was he who chopped away the restraining poles?

  ELLEN: He did. But he does not warrant thy support because of his acts. He warrants it because of his existence.

  LEVIN: I suppose it’s time. I’ll testify for thee.

  ELLEN: Not for me and not for Pompey because he helped. For the great future of this nation—the future that Ruth Brinton saw.

  So on a First Day in late 1777 Patamoke Meeting was startled to find itself in the midst of a debate that would tear the church apart. The members had come to the ancient meeting house expecting that words of consolation might be offered to Levin Paxmore over the loss of his boatyard or prayers celebrating the town’s deliverance from the English. Instead, after nine brief minutes of silence, Levin Paxmore rose, his hands bandaged, his hair singed:

  “The Bible says that sometimes we see through a glass darkly. For me it required a great fire which destroyed my handiwork, but in those flames there moved a figure comparable to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. It was the slave Pompey, owned by a member of this meeting who hires him out to others. I did not see what Pompey accomplished, but I am told he was most valiant and it was to him that the merit goes for saving the schooner.

  “In the days since the fire I have been asking myself how it could be that a slave with nothing to gain and all to lose should throw himself into my fire, to save my schooner? And the only answer that makes any reason is that Pompey is a man exactly like me. He breathes like me, and eats, and works, and sleeps when he is tired. How do I know? Because I saw him by the wharf yesterday, and his hands were bandaged like mine. The fire burns him as it burns me. [Here he held his bandaged hands aloft, and many began to feel uneasy.]

  “Therefore, today I reverse everything I have previously argued in this meeting. Slaves must be set free. In the name of God and Jesus Christ they must be set free, and no man dare call himself a Quaker and a slaveholder, too.”

  The meeting broke up in consternation. Levin Paxmore was its most prosperous member, and also one of its sagest. Those opposed to change had always counted on him to support them: “Let us move slowly. Let us study this for the next Yearly Meeting.” And now he had broken the covenant and called bluntly for immediate manumission on pain of expulsion.

  At the Quarterly Meeting in December 1777 the Quakers of the Choptank became the first important religious group in the south to outlaw slavery among its members. In spite of Levin Paxmore’s unflinching leadership, the issue was bitterly fought and it required two days for the clerk to ascertain the sense of the membership; even then seven obdurate men stormed from the hall vowing to surrender Quakerism rather than their slaves.

  It had required more than a hundred years for this most liberal of the southern Christian sects to decide that human slavery was inconsistent with Christian principles; the more conservative sects would require an additional century.

  When the decision was announced, Levin Paxmore touched his scarred hands and told his wife, “The burning has stopped,” and she knew why.

  For those Americans who lived within the benediction of the Chesapeake, the culminating crisis of the revolution occurred in 1781. Indeed, the future of America and perhaps the world then stood in peril, for it seemed that the attempt at self-rule must be crushed, and with it the hopes of millions in Europe for a better pattern of life.

  In that year the English army, consolidated at last under a succession of daring generals, began to chew the south apart. Victory upon victory crushed General Washington’s lieutenants in Georgia and South Carolina, and it became clear that a few colonial farmers, no matter how brave, were no match for hundreds of well-trained English regulars supported by large guns.

  And when General Cornwallis began ravaging Virginia, and Admiral Rodney assembled a fleet of battleships in the Caribbean, ready to invade the Chesapeake, it seemed obvious that the rebellion was doomed. New York lay in English hands; Philadelphia was neutralized; Boston and Newport were powerless to send support, and no major port along the Atlantic was open to American vessels, even if any had succeeded in penetrating the blockade.

  Men had begun to talk openly of defeat and started calculating among themselves what kind of terms they might be able to wheedle from the victorious English. Even General Washington had faltered in his dogged optimism, sending Steed of Devon a letter which summarized the times:

  Where pray God is the French fleet that you and Franklin assured me would spring to our defense? Without their aid and without it soon, I fear we are doomed. My men mutiny. More deserters leave camp than recruits arrive. They have no food, no guns, no uniforms to sustain their dignity, and above all, no pay. Only the iron will of our junior officers holds this army together, and there is little hope that they can sustain this miracle throughout the balance of this year.

  Friend Steed, we must have immediate help from France. Have you any practical way of rushing this message to Paris? If so, depart at once and tell them the whole fortune of the war hangs in the balance, which must dip against us if our impoverishment continues. We need arms and food and cloth and money and particularly a French navy to offset the strangulation that threatens. I implore you, Steed, do something.

  There was nothing he could do. He could send no imploring letters to Nantes, for no mail could penetrate the blockade. He could not try to slip across to France himself, for Captain Turlock was absent in the Caribbean. And he could not even board his fa
mily sloop and sail to Virginia to help fight Cornwallis, because English patrol boats dominated the bay. Powerless, he had to stay on Devon, watching the disaster; he was not even aware of the greater disaster that had overtaken his two schooners at St. Eustatius.

  Captain Turlock, in the Whisper, had been highly pleased with Simon Steed’s nephew, Norman, as skipper of the new Victory. He was venturesome yet obedient to signals, daring yet prudent in protecting his ship. “He’ll make a fine captain,” Turlock told his son as they watched the young man.

  Together they had made three runs to St. Eustatius, transporting enormous cargoes, which Simon Steed sold at profit to the hungry armies of General Washington. They were now beginning a fourth sally, and if they could somehow smuggle the two schooners into Boston or Savannah, they stood to make a fortune. So as they drifted easily southward through the Virgin Islands, keeping watch for any English prowlers, Captain Turlock invited his colleague aboard the Whisper for a final consultation. “The trick this time, get in and out as fast as possible.”

  “Always before we’ve taken time.”

  “Something warns me things are different,” Turlock said.

  “How?” the younger man asked.

  “England is getting ready for the kill. Too much movement.”

  “I saw nothing coming down.”

  “Me neither,” Turlock grunted. “But things are changed. In fast. Out fast.”

  Norman Steed could not comprehend how a man could see nothing and be told nothing and vet sense that somehow the world had changed. He paid his respects to Captain Turlock and rowed back to the Victory, but when the two schooners passed St. Maarten, that strange island half French, half Dutch, he saw that Captain Turlock had launched a boat, which came scudding across with an imperative: “At St. Eustatius the Whisper is to enter first. Keep a close watch.”

  But when they approached the golden isle nothing had changed. There were the forested masts, the bustling porters, the reassuring Dutch flag drooping heavily in the still air. Indeed, there was so little breeze that when Captain Steed’s Victory reached the entrance in good condition for an easy turn to starboard, the vessel made that turn, which put her into the harbor some distance ahead of the Whisper. But as the sleek new schooner moved to anchor, for there was still no room at any of the wharves, a shattering gunfire broke out, the mast of the Victory was carried away, and her young captain lay dead with two musket balls through his chest.

  It was Captain Turlock’s intention to storm into the harbor and revenge this craven act, but no sooner had he broken out his four guns than Mr. Semmes cried, “Captain! Those ships are all English!”

  And that was true. Admiral Rodney, commander of the Caribbean squadron, had at last grown choleric over the insolence of the Dutch in maintaining this treasonous entrepôt, and with a squadron large enough to blow the island out of the sea, had captured it. Then, craftily, he kept the Dutch flag flying, luring freebooters like young Norman Steed into the range of his guns. St. Eustatius was no longer golden; it was lead and iron.

  In a rage, Teach Turlock turned the Whisper away, leaving young Steed dead, the Victory lost and her Choptank crew headed for the Old Mill prison at Plymouth. Numbed with fury at having been so tricked, he stormed through the Caribbean, tackling any English vessel he came upon. On one glorious cruise, years before, he had taken one prize for each of his four guns, the best a freebooter could hope for. Now he took two for each gun, and the booty in the bowels of his schooner became enormous ... and a tantalizing misery.

  For he could land it nowhere. The principal reason why he had been free to rampage through the myriad islands was that England had moved her major battleships northwestward to encase the colonies in a rim of iron. The strangulation that General Washington had feared was under way, and there was no device by which Teach Turlock could land his captured booty.

  And then, one day in late August as he languished off the Carolinas, hoping to find some refuge, he overtook a small fishing boat containing American watermen, and they gave him tremendous news: “The French have come!”

  They told of General Lafayette, that conceited but brave man, who had marched into Virginia, restoring order and maneuvering so brilliantly that he had General Cornwallis cooped on the York Peninsula. They spoke of a powerful effort, through all the colonies, to reinforce Lafayette and bring the war to a conclusion. And then they reported the most electrifying news of all: “They say a French fleet has arrived to clear the Chesapeake!”

  “That means we can get home!” Turlock cried, and within five minutes he was clearing his decks for a swift dash north.

  How beautiful the Whisper was as she sped toward Cape Halteras, wind to larboard, her bow cutting into the waves, her decks aslant, and young Matt forward peering for sight of Cape Henry. Gulls followed, wheeling and dipping, and sun glistened on the lines. It was good to be heading home in time of trouble, to stand with one’s own kind against the enemy.

  Off Hatteras they intercepted another boat, and its occupants confirmed the incredible: “French ships guarding the bay! You’ll have easy entrance!”

  Now that the shoals of Hatteras were safely passed, Captain Turlock piled on more sail, so that the Whisper leaped through the waters, making the speed that Levin Paxmore had predicted, but as the rich voyage neared completion Turlock knew that it was not one of triumph, for he had lost his sister ship, and he damned the English, hoping that the French would smash them.

  Then came the cry—forward—from young Matt: “Cap’m! Battleships! All English!”

  And there, moving majestically toward the entrance to the Chesapeake came four great ships of the line: Royal Oak, 74 guns; London, 90 guns; Invincible, 74 guns; Intrepid, 64 guns. With grand indifferent motion they rolled in the swells, indomitable, relentless. They saw the Whisper but ignored her; they knew they could not catch her in the open sea. Their job was to crush the French intruder; that done, annoying craft like the Whisper could be easily handled. She would be driven from the seas.

  But now Matt cried again: “Cap’m! More!” And seven more gigantic ships loomed from the horizon, the most powerful ships of the English navy.

  “Cap’m! More coming!” And eight more towering vessels, terrifying to the sailors on the small Whisper, hove into sight: Monarch, Centaur, Montagu, Ajax. They came like platforms of death, monstrous engines of war rolling in the sea like whales impervious to the small fish surrounding them. When the line had passed, Captain Turlock asked Mr. Semmes to make an entry in the log:

  4 September 1781. At dusk well east of Cape Henry we were passed by nineteen great ships of the English line, heading for the Chesapeake. May God in His mercy strengthen the French, for tomorrow we live or die with their ships.

  The French could not have been in a weaker position to engage the English squadron. Some days earlier Admiral de Grasse had arrived at the mouth of the Chesapeake with a squadron of twenty-four ships, but imprudently he had anchored his flotilla inside the headlands; worse, he had given liberty to almost half his crew, who were now foraging the shores of the bay for food and water. Still worse, since none of his ships were copper-sheathed like the English, they were perishing from the worms. And worst of all, his position allowed him no room in which to maneuver. He was trapped, and when scouting boats rushed in with news that Admiral Rodney was bearing down with the entire Caribbean squadron, he realized his peril.

  If De Grasse had been a prudent man, he might have surrendered then and there, for the enemy had every advantage except one: the British ships were sleek-bottomed and free of worm; their crews were complete and battle-hardened; they had the advantage of the wind and ocean space in which to maneuver; and they had guns of shattering power manned by the best seamen in the world. The only disadvantage the English suffered was that Admiral Rodney, a tested leader in battle, was not aboard the ships; his place had been taken by an indecisive gentleman of little battle experience named Gatch.

  The accident which caused this substitution wa
s one of those misadventures which occur from time to time, as if to prove that human history can never be an exact science: the English government had sent to the Caribbean their best admiral, Rodney, and a plethora of their best ships. Victory over De Grasse was ensured. But when Rodney captured St. Eustatius he became so bedazzled by the riches there and so mortally tempted by a chance to steal some four million pounds for himself, that he dallied among the warehouses and wasted time among the overflowing shops, and in the end even requisitioned a small squadron of the best battleships to convoy him back to London in style. His absence, and especially the absence of the diverted ships, gave the trapped French squadron one slim chance of escape.

  Captain Turlock, of course, did not know of Rodney’s absence, and when dawn broke on the morning of September fifth he shuddered. Watching from a safe distance to the east, “like a gnat watching eagles,” he said, he saw the great ships of the English line form like an arrow and move toward the mouth of the bay, where the trapped French ships could be destroyed one at a time. “It’s to be a massacre,” he told Mr. Semmes, and to his son he said, “When you become a captain, never let yourself be caught at the mouth of a bay.” Then, remembering his disaster at St. Eustatius, he added, “Nor at the mouth of a harbor, either.”

  “Look, Cap’m!” Matt cried, and in the distance, barely visible, came the first of the French warships.

  “My God!” Mr. Semmes cried. “They’re going to run it!”

  There they came, a line of vessels with almost no chance of escaping, with no room for subtle maneuvering or the arts of war, just forging blindly ahead, out of their trap and trusting for a chance to reach the open sea: Languedoc, 80 guns; Saint Esprit, 80 guns; Marseillais, 74 guns.

  “Look!” Matt shouted, and there came the most powerful ship afloat, the gigantic Ville de Paris, 110 guns.

  “They’re going to make it!” Mr. Semmes cried, slapping Captain Turlock on the back, but the captain said nothing. For more than an hour he just stood there, staring at this incredible scene of twenty-four disadvantaged French warships turning the tide of battle by an act of supreme courage. When the last of the line stood free, away from the confines of the bay and ready to form a battle line, he turned to Mr. Semmes and said, “We saw it. No one will believe us, but we saw it.” Like a deer breaking loose from dogs, De Grasse had leaped his barriers and gained space.