by Ron Carter
“There!” He worked his way back to the helmsman, Riggins and Matthew following. “One of His Majesty’s men-of-war, I think, one hundred yards, nearly dead ahead,” he shouted in the wind. “I don’t think she’s seen us. We’re going to fire as we pass her. If we can get her to chase us there’s a chance we can get help and take her when the storm blows out.”
He waited until he saw the helmsman understood. “When we come up on her I’ll be up at the bow and won’t have time to come back here and give orders. Pass along her port side, at twenty yards.”
The helmsman started. “Twenty?”
“Twenty.”
Weyland looked at Riggins. “Get ready to spread more canvas if we have to.”
“Sir,” Riggins stammered, “the masts might not take more canvas in this wind.”
Weyland shrugged. “No choice. Get ready.”
Matthew followed Weyland back to the starboard bow as the Esther bore down on the high stern of the big gunboat, both men gripping safety ropes to keep from being swept overboard. Suddenly Matthew pointed upward.
“She’s a man-o’-war, three masts! The Chelsea!”
The flag atop the mainmast was the Union Jack, whipped to shreds in the wind, and on the port side were three rows of cannon, eleven per row. High on the stern was the carved name Chelsea. The Esther was a scant thirty yards behind and closing fast. The helmsman corrected and the bow of the Esther swung to port, then straightened, and was just over twenty yards from the Chelsea as she passed the stern.
“They’ve seen us,” Matthew shouted, “but they’re too late.” Weyland bobbed his head as they both stared upward at the high deck of the big gunboat, where seamen scrambled desperately to put on more canvas and to load their cannon.
Ten seconds later Weyland and Matthew turned to watch Riggins, feet spread, braced, hunched over the nearest cannon. He was studying the peaks and valleys of the waves rolling in and the rise and fall of the two ships, side by side. A great swell rolled under the Esther and she rose, and she settled while the swell thrust the Chelsea upward. Riggins waited, watching, and as the next swell rolled under the Esther, he raised his arm, and a moment later he dropped it and shouted with all his strength, “Fire!”
All nine cannon bucked and roared as the Esther settled and the swell drove the Chelsea upward. The cotton muzzle plugs blew out into the sleet in flames, and all nine cannonballs punched gaping holes just below the waterline of the big gunboat. The cheer of every man on the decks of the Esther rose above the storm.
The small schooner cleared the bow of the man-of-war, Weyland signaled to Matthew, and they moved back to the helmsman. “Hold the course Mr. Dunson sets and hope she follows us.”
The helmsman nodded, and Matthew moved quickly to his quarters, worked hastily with his divider and charts, then returned to the helmsman and pointed at the compass. “Correct to due nor’east.”
The Chelsea was two hundred yards directly behind, and falling back. Weyland called to Riggins. “Spill the mizzen sail. Let her close a little.”
The Esther slowed and the Chelsea crept forward. At one hundred yards the two bow guns on the gunboat fired, but no one knew where the shots struck in the churning waters. Three minutes later they fired again, and again the shots went wild into the stormy sea.
Standing at the stern rail, Weyland and Matthew recoiled in surprise as the Chelsea put on more sail. “She’s too big, heavy,” Weyland exclaimed. “They’re risking their masts with more sail.” Slowly the Chelsea gained speed, plowing ponderously through the heavy seas, and Weyland let her close slowly. He wiped ice from his brows and beard, and it was then that Matthew saw the rising concern in Weyland’s face.
“Something’s wrong,” Weyland said. “They’re risking a broken mainmast to catch us.” He shook his head. “We’re not worth it. I don’t like it. Something’s wrong.” Matthew remained silent while Weyland studied the pursuing gunboat, and then Weyland turned to him. “How far from the shoals now?”
“I calculate six miles, a little over.”
“Check your charts. Don’t let us run aground.”
“Yes, sir.” Matthew worked his way to his quarters and for long minutes pored over his charts, wishing with all his soul the gray heavens would open long enough to get a sextant shot of the sun. At least that would fix the latitude, with some indication of how closely he had guessed current, tide, and drift.
On deck, Weyland allowed the high bow of the pursuing warship to come within thirty yards of the stern of the Esther, and held the interval, waiting, watching intently. At thirty yards the bow guns could hardly miss, yet the cannoneers stood in plain sight at the rail and the guns remained silent. Weyland ordered the mizzen sail tightened and spread the distance to one hundred yards, and stood shaking his head as the Chelsea continued to follow. “Something’s wrong,” he repeated to himself.
In his quarters, Matthew leaned over his charts, and suddenly paused. He jammed an index finger down on the entrance to Newburyport Harbor, then shifted it to the shoals. He thumped his fist on the chart table. Quickly he slipped cold hands back into his soaked mittens and emerged back on deck, gasping at the instant bite of the freezing wind. As he passed Weyland’s quarters he glanced at the thermometer screwed to the door frame. Nine degrees above zero, Fahrenheit. Twenty-three degrees below freezing.
He grasped a safety rope and worked his way to Weyland. “Captain, can you come to my quarters for a minute?”
Inside his cramped cabin, Matthew shoved two more chunks of coal into the tiny stove and turned back to his charts. He wiped at his dripping nose as Weyland tugged off his soaked mittens.
Matthew tapped the large chart spread on his table. “Here’s Newburyport.” He moved his finger. “Here’s the shoals.”
Weyland waited.
“I think I know why the Chelsea is risking her mast to follow us.”
Weyland raised his eyes in silent question.
“She’s British, not familiar with these waters. She has charts that show the shoals, but can’t find them in this storm. I think she wants us to lead her past them, into the harbor.”
For long seconds Weyland studied the chart, then raised his eyes to Matthew and spoke quietly. “They intend dropping anchor in the harbor mouth and bottling it up and sinking everything afloat. Maybe even bombard the town.”
Matthew bobbed his head emphatically. “That’s what I think, sir.”
Weyland slapped his hand flat on the table. “They can’t find the shoals, so they’ll follow us because we can!”
Matthew waited for a moment while Weyland settled.
“Sir, I think there’s a way to handle this.”
Weyland stopped, waiting.
Matthew once again placed his finger on the chart. “Don’t come straight into the harbor. Come down from the north.” He moved his finger slowly. “Distance the Chelsea about three hundred yards, and when we clear the shoals, make a hard turn to starboard, due west, and run for the harbor mouth.” His finger retraced. “The Chelsea will be three hundred yards behind when we make our hard turn.” He looked Weyland in the eyes. “What will she do when she sees us make that turn?”
Weyland pursed his mouth for a moment. “Take the shortest distance to us by cutting across.”
“Exactly.”
Weyland’s brows rose. “And hit the shoals!”
“That’s how I see it, sir.”
“Will the shoals or the buoys be visible?”
“They’ll be hard to see if this storm holds.” Matthew pointed to a thick large book with “ATLANTIC TIDES AND CURRENTS” in block letters on the cover. “Right now the coastal tides are moving out. For the next two or three hours the shoals should be within three feet of the surface, but in this storm they’ll be hard to see unless you know where they are or happen to see a buoy. The Chelsea’s big and loaded heavy, with nine holes in her hull, and she’s bound to have some water in her hold even with her pumps going. So right now I expect she must draw somew
here between twelve and fifteen feet.”
Matthew waited and watched Weyland’s mind work.
“Can you find those shoals?” Weyland asked.
“I think so, sir.”
“How, with no sun, no landmarks, no coastline?”
Matthew blew air and pointed to the “TIDES AND CURRENTS” book. “Simple. We knew where we were when the storm hit thirty-six hours ago. We’ve got variable winds at our stern, gusting to seventy-two miles per hour, pushing us east, while the tides are pushing us west. We’re in the Gulf Stream, which is moving us north at a variable rate up to two miles an hour. And we know our hold is empty, so we’re high in the water and moving faster than usual. Put all that together and you can easily come out with an answer that puts us somewhere between two and twenty miles off the northern Massachusetts coast.”
He paused, and Weyland snorted a laugh.
“From there you check with your viscera and your instincts, and you pray.” He exhaled sharply and spoke decisively. “Sir, I’ve navigated these waters before. I think I can find those shoals.”
For a moment their eyes locked and Matthew didn’t flinch. A wry smile flickered on Weyland’s face as he reached for the door handle. “Give the helmsman a heading, and get up on the bow.”
For more than an hour they held a course while Matthew gripped the safety rope and the railing and rode the wildly plunging bow, swamped one moment, fifty feet high the next, staring intently eastward with his telescope, wiping ice from the lens, hoping in vain for a break in the storm that would show the bleak, rocky coastline in the distance. At the stern, the big gunboat doggedly followed while Weyland gave commands that kept her in sight.
“That’s far enough,” Matthew muttered to himself, and moved back to the helmsman. “Hard to port, due south.”
The helmsman looked at him in question, and Matthew repeated it. The man spun the big wheel, and the bow of the Esther swung until the point on the compass needle split the large S. At the stern, Weyland turned to look and saw Matthew by the helmsman, and then turned back to watch the Chelsea, one hundred yards behind. Slowly the great gunship made her turn, once again following the Esther. Matthew returned to the bow, searching with his glass for yellow buoys that would be nearly invisible in the storm and for the telltale roiling of water that was the mark of rocks near the surface.
Minutes stretched to half an hour in which Matthew swept the pitching waters with his glass, searching, probing, and he finally muttered, “Too far—we’ve missed them. Where’s the coast? If we could only see the—” He jerked erect and lunged against the safety rope while he searched again for a flash of yellow, and for a moment it was there, dancing in the ice and spray of the surging waves. His arm shot up, pointing as he shouted to himself. “There! Starboard! A buoy! There they are! Two hundred yards. The whole coast out there, and we found them.” He spun, exuberant, and scrambled back to the helmsman. “Swing about ten degrees east of south and hold it steady. I’ll tell you when to swing her starboard, due west. We found them,” he exulted, “we found them.”
The bow of the Esther swung hard to port and slammed into the incoming waves, and Weyland turned in question. Matthew waved his arms and pointed, and Weyland settled back against the stern rail to watch the course of the Chelsea. With less than one-fourth of her canvas unfurled she was slow, sluggish as she moved into her turn to follow the schooner, with the east wind battering her port side.
Weyland released held breath. Keep coming—we’ll show you where the port is—keep coming. His eyes never left the bow of the big man-of-war as she plowed on, while the lighter schooner began to distance her. Five minutes later Weyland had to squint to see the great bow, three hundred yards behind, in the driving sleet and ice.
“Bring her to port, due west, and steady as she goes,” Matthew shouted, and the helmsman spun the wheel, and the Esther swung due west and leaped before the wind. Matthew worked up the safety rope to the stern to stand beside Weyland, hardly breathing as he watched the man-of-war and both men stood like statues waiting for the Chelsea to make her move. Slowly she continued on her course due south for one hundred yards, then one hundred fifty yards, and Matthew said, “Turn—turn—you’ve got to turn—turn,” and then the great, blunt bow dug into the seas and swung southwestward, and within seconds the sails on the mainmast and the foremast of the gunboat caught the wind slanting in from behind and she gained speed.
Matthew rounded his lips and blew relieved air, and Weyland wiped an icy mitten across his mouth as they watched the great ship increase speed in her sweeping turn.
Weyland said, “Will they see the buoys?”
“Probably, but in these seas maybe not until it’s too late.”
Far into the turn the bow of the gunboat straightened and then started to turn back to port, and Matthew shouted, “They saw the buoys but they’re too late—she’s going to hit!” Thirty seconds later Weyland gasped and Matthew flinched as the bow of the Chelsea jolted and raised out of the churning water and rammed forward another thirty feet, and the great ship lurched to a violent stop and settled, her keel broken, the front half angled slightly upward. Instantly both the mainmast and the foremast strained forward and then shattered, and the top fifty feet of each, with both sails and all the rigging, came smashing down on the deck. The mainmast toppled crazily into the sea, her sail and the ropes to her yards still tied to the ship.
For any man of the sea, the killing of a ship—no matter friend or enemy—is never a thing of joy. Everyone on the deck of the Esther spent a silent moment, feeling a sense of loss in their hearts as they stared at the Chelsea, mortally wounded with her spine broken and two of her three masts and her rigging in a splintered shambles on her decks and in the sea.
Weyland spun and barked orders to the helmsman. “Hard to port.” He shouted at Riggins, “Spill all wind and furl all sails and drop anchor.” With no sail, and the anchor at fourteen fathoms, the storm swung the Esther about until she was facing due east, bow into the wind, riding the storm but not moving. Every seaman was on her decks, grasping the safety ropes while they watched in awed silence, waiting to see if the Chelsea would try to launch her lifeboats, knowing there was little chance any of the longboats would survive the wild seas or the shoals. Minutes passed while the great waves battered the ship, settling her deeper onto the rocks, but no boats were launched. Half an hour passed with the Esther anchored, taking the storm head-on, watching, and the Chelsea taking the battering broadside. The half hour became an hour before Captain Weyland finally turned to Riggins. “What’s the time?”
Riggins pulled off a mitten and plucked his watch from inside his oilskins. “Eleven-twenty, sir.”
“We ride out the storm anchored where we are. Get the assignments made to the crew.”
All the seamen aboard the Esther took their orders and went to their duty posts or bunks with a quiet feeling of pride in the knowledge that their captain was waiting to see if the crew of the Chelsea would be forced to abandon their ship. If they did, they knew Weyland would risk his ship and they would risk their lives trying to save every one they could. They stood to their posts and they looked at the Chelsea, and they put the feeling away in a place in their hearts to be brought out later in a quiet moment and savored once more.
The winds slowed after one o’clock. By four o’clock, when the deck crew changed, the mountainous waves had dwindled to rough water that rocked the Esther, but the forty-foot swells were gone. When full darkness closed around them, they still had a headwind but were riding well at anchor. On Weyland’s orders they built a fire on the deck, and ten minutes later an answering fire appeared in the blackness. The Chelsea had not yet broken up; her crew was surviving. At three o’clock in the morning Matthew pointed upwards at a break in the clouds and located the Big Dipper, then the North Star. Half an hour before sunrise Weyland raised signal flags, and the British answered. They were prisoners of war, their ship a prize of war.
With the first arc of the su
n showing on the flat Atlantic skyline, the Esther closed to within two hundred yards of the Chelsea and again dropped anchor. Throughout the day the crews of both ships shuttled back and forth feverishly in every longboat they had, transferring the cannon and gunpowder and shot, ship’s inventory, safe and log, navigational equipment, medicines, food stores, and clothing into the hold of the Esther. Weyland gave the British captain a few moments alone with his crew on their ship before he took them all onto the Esther, and turned to Matthew. “Take us to Newburyport.”
They tied up at the docks at ten minutes before eight o’clock and had the British crew delivered to the militia by eight-thirty. Weyland gave shore liberty to his men who wished it, while the others went to their bunks below decks. He took his supper in his quarters with Matthew and Riggins. At ten o’clock he set down his second cup of steaming tea, closed the inventory ledger of the Chelsea, and raised his eyes to Matthew and Riggins.
“Sixty-eight cannon, eighteen hundred pounds of gunpowder, thirteen hundred rounds of shot, six hundred pounds in gold, one hundred ninety uniforms, three hundred blankets, muskets, medicine . . .” He raised the steaming cup and squinted one eye as he sipped the searing-hot tea. “It didn’t come easy, but it was worth it.”
In the warmth of the cabin, a sense of weary satisfaction had mellowed and settled on all three men as they sat in dry clothing in the yellow lamplight, steaming tea cups on the table before them. Matthew and Riggins remained silent for a moment before Matthew spoke. “What about the Chelsea? Should we go back and blow her up? She might become a hazard if she breaks up and part of her remains afloat.”
“We’ll take a look when we leave. If she’ll stay on those shoals we might leave her as a marker.”
Riggins interrupted. “She was breaking up.”
The words brought images in their minds, and for a moment each reflected on his own memory of a great ship driving onto hidden rocks—the shuddering jolt, the masts splintering, the rigging crashing, the wrenching sight of a proud thing broken and dying.
