Mercifully, none struck the frigate; a voice cried out that they had fired one shot across our bow, followed by one to our stern. Immediately, the cries and shouts, confusion and disorder returned. The captain, white faced, pushed me aside, causing me almost to drop my precious cargo, and grabbed at a boy, a powder monkey, just emerging from the ladder with two felt bags, each filled with six pounds of black powder. Without so much as “Sorry” or “By your leave” he snatched the cartridges from the startled youth and ran aft to a starboard side battery.
But before he had taken five steps, a breathtaking explosion filled the air and Chesapeake shuddered, then reeled under a broadside from Leopard, this one clearly intended to bring us to grief. Happily for those of us below the spar deck, they had aimed high, and the shot tore through our rigging, wreaking havoc aloft and alow as it cut through shrouds, sheets, braces, ties, and lifts. Almost before the thunder of the broadside ended, we could hear over our heads the heavy thumps and screams as falling blocks and broken spars fell to the deck, killing or cruelly wounding the sailors unlucky enough to be in the wrong place.
“Allen! Baldwin! Get that gun firing.” Gordon screamed as he ran up a ladder to the spar deck, his frustration at trying to be in several places at once evident in his voice. I noticed, without conscious thought, that he no longer held the two cartridges.
BOOM! Another broadside erupted from the British ship. This time, we felt the full effect of it as the heavy iron shot, at least fifteen of them, slammed into our hull. The ship staggered, seemingly shaken by a huge unseen hand. Some of the British iron flew into the open or nearly open gunports, upturning some cannon and dismounting others, while more of the twenty-four pound shot plowed through the cargo still lying helter-skelter all over the deck. A few managed to fly into our sailors, killing two instantly and gruesomely, and leaving others desperately wounded and screaming in agony. A shower of splinters tore into a near-at-hand landsman who let out a blood-curdling yell and fell over, clutching at his stomach; a jagged silver of wood, some two feet and more, extended out from between his gore-covered hands. I stared, open-mouthed, at the man and the spreading pool of crimson staining our pristine deck, quite unable to move for several moments. The confusion of the gun deck swirled around me, fueled by our fear and the cruel wounds evident throughout. Before any could recover, return to whatever efforts remained of trying to return fire, or even regain a shred of composure, Leopard Tired again. Another broadside, and, again into our hull with equally devastating result.
I saw Lieutenant Allen, covered in gore, struggling with the train tackle on the gun I had earlier begun to clear. As I watched, he grabbed two sailors, shook them violently into their senses, and directed them to east off the tackles opposite him. I noted that his appearance had shocked the seamen as much as it had me. Shaking off the stupefying shock which had held me in an immobilizing embrace, I ran to help him.
“Henry! What has happened to you? You have been shot!” I screamed above the din around us.
He looked at himself, obviously surprised at my outburst and, I think, some startled at the sight of his front and arms scarlet with blood. Then he shook his head.
“Not mine. One of the lads was quite undone by a ball. Likely to have been a twenty-four-pounder. Caught it square on, he did. Must have splashed onto me.” He pointed over his shoulder where a body, it’s upper half mostly gone, lay in a widening pool of crimson.
I was again shocked into speechless immobility at the sight and, though utterly horrifying, I found myself quite unable to tear my eyes away from it. The man, from the top of nankeen trousers down, looked quite normal; had I noticed the legs splayed out from behind a gun carriage, I likely would have admonished their owner to get back to work. What remained of the upper portion of the poor unfortunate was scarcely recognizable as having belonged to a man; bits of flesh, some pale and bloodless, others crimson with the man’s life blood, were strewn about as though by a careless child. Pieces of bone lay starkly white in the deepening pool of blood and a nearly intact arm, it’s sleeve as ragged as the arm itself, had landed incongruously atop a hogshead, seemingly placed there for later use.
Allen’s voice, insistent and urgent, penetrated my horror and I turned away from the spectacle to face my officer. He appeared oblivious to the carnage, indeed, paying it no more attention than had it been an up-turned bucket. His voice, directed at me, as well as those near at hand, was raised over the cacophony and, as he grabbed a pair of sailors (they appeared to be as stunned by the devastation as I) he shouted in a voice crackling with urgency, “If we can get this gun trained around, by the Almighty, we can gave ’em a taste of our own iron!”
The fire that burned in his eyes, even in the dim light of the gun deck, and the ferocity of his tone drove the dreadful specter of the severed body from my mind and replaced it with one of us returning a hot fire. That, and Henry’s words, inspired me to an effort beyond my limits and with the aid of the two sailors, we manhandled the eighteen-pounder long gun around to aim at our tormentor. Using one of my powder horns, Henry spilled a small quantity into the touch hole of the gun, then looked about frantically.
“My God! We’ve no match or loggerhead! Fetch me a linstock, Oliver … or anything to touch a spark to ‘er. A bit of slow match, a flint, anything.” Allen’s frustration at standing behind a loaded and ready cannon with no means of touching it off gave his voice a sense of exigency that sent me scurrying fore and aft in search of the needed flame, slow match, or, indeed, anything, anything that might serve our purpose.
When my frantic rush brought me back to the gun empty-handed, Henry was gone, apparently on a similar quest. Suddenly he reappeared, stumbling and tripping over fallen sailors, boxes, and rope, a smoking loggerhead from the galley held aloft.
He jammed it into the little puddle of powder in the touch hole and received not so much as a sparkle for his efforts. The wood was not hot enough to ignite the powder! Throwing it down in disgust, he ran off again, only to return a scant moment later with a glowing coal from the galley camboose balanced in a soup ladle.
“Stand back!” he warned us, and, blowing on the coal, which responded with a small burst of flame, he dumped the now flaming ember into the touch hole. He was instantly rewarded with the sputtering of the powder there and, in a second, the explosion of the gun.
With a deafening roar, the cannon discharged it’s ball and a six foot tail of fire, immediately slamming backward in recoil, to come to rest against the now straining breach tackles.
“Again! Swab ’er out and load another!” Henry’s cry penetrated the ringing deafness that always follows a firing, but the ramrod he brandished aloft left no doubt in any mind as to his meaning. I threw a sponge at one of the men who quickly shoved it into the barrel to extinguish any lingering sparks. The rest of our short crew turned to with a will, quickly preparing our gun to speak again.
“Below there! On the gundeck. Hold your fire! We’ve struck our colors!” A voice—it sounded to me like the commodore himself—shouted down the ladder to the gun deck loud enough to rise above the clamor and confusion that still reigned throughout.
Another voice, equally loud and commanding, echoed the first. “We are surrendered! Cease fire!”
I looked at Lieutenant Allen and I am sure his slack-jawed incredulity must have mirrored my own expression.
Struck? We had struck our colors after three broadsides? What had possessed someone on the quarterdeck to do such a thing? And, more puzzling, who? Surely not Commodore Barron! Though that first voice most assuredly belonged to him.
Together we ran for the ladder to the spar deck, manhandling out of our way the still bewildered sailors who were dumbstruck, either from the three broadsides we had just received and the chaos and carnage that lay all about, or our precipitous surrender. In deference to his rank, I let the lieutenant gain the deck first but was close in his wake.
On deck, we were greeted with the same confusion and frantic desperation
as we had just left. Fallen spars, blocks, chain and rope lay strewn on the deck amid the crates, bundles, casks, and hogsheads, unmoved since leaving Norfolk that morning. Twisted among the wreckage were men, wounded in varying degrees, but all crying out in their agony. Large pools of gore stained the previously immaculate, nearly white deck and gave testimony to the carnage wrought by the falling rigging and chain-shot. The lower mizzen mast was missing a great piece, almost like a bite had been taken of it, apparently gouged out by an iron ball. Both the main and the fore masts were wounded as well, though not as badly. Our sails were cut by the grape and canister we had received in the first full broadside. The main topmast, its shrouds having mostly been carried away, teetered as the ship rolled in the still mercifully easy seas, and lines, cut from aloft, hung in useless disarray throughout our rig. Amid the pandemonium, men and officers pushed and shoved, lifted and shouted, as they attempted to get to the men pinned under the fallen rigging.
Henry and I were dumbstruck! He stood open-mouthed as the scene registered; I am sure my expression was no different. I had seen nothing like this carnage and disarray even after a several hour running battle with Tripolitan gunboats. And this was the result of fifteen minutes of gunnery! I later discovered that we had been hulled in twenty-one places.
“Mister Allen. You will accompany Mister Smith in the boat, if you please.” The commodore’s voice, icy calm, penetrated our sensibilities and Henry stepped off to the larboard side where the cutter had been secured under the gate in the bulwark. I noticed several splotches of crimson on the commodore’s white breeches, but he seemed not to be concerned about them and I followed the progress of my friend and the first lieutenant as they disappeared through the bulwark. They soon re-appeared, seated in the sternsheets of the cutter, as they were rowed across the short span of open water toward Leopard.
Why were our first lieutenant and a junior officer being sent to the ship which had just pummeled us into wreckage? Should not the victor come on board his conquest and claim his prize? I pushed aside unanswerable questions and watched the boat.
Had Father not warned me against wagering those many years ago when I first left Philadelphia and the sheltered life I led in their house on Held Street (he also warned me about blaspheming and the effects of strong spirits, but neither warning had stuck with me for long), I would have wagered all I had that not a man among us took a breath while every eye topside was on the cutter and the two officers as they made the side of the British warship.
Within moments, our first lieutenant and Henry Allen were back in the cutter retracing their course to Chesapeake. And followed by two boats from Leopard carrying in their sternsheets at least three (that I could see) Royal Navy officers.
As our boat drew closer, I could see both Allen and Lieutenant Smith were clearly agitated; they talked with great animation, their eyes shifting constantly from each other to the two boats following, to the still gaping muzzles of Leopard’s guns menacing our ship, and finally, to Chesapeake’s quarterdeck where Barron paced in great vexation, smacking his fist onto his open palm.
By contrast, Captain Gordon who I had last seen tearing topside from the gundeck as our own special hell began, and who was the one likely to answer to the Secretary for the surrender of his ship, was white-faced and quiet; stunned, I would reckon, and perhaps even unable to grasp the enormity of what had just transpired. The work on deck, stopped by most to follow the actions of our officers, had resumed; the surgeon’s mates treated a few of the wounded and carried others below to be looked after by Doctor Bullus and our surgeon. Topmen were aloft sorting out the tangle of broken spars, shredded canvas, swinging blocks, and dangling ropes, securing any that might suddenly give way and drop to the deck and cause further injury to the crew.
Surrender! What possibly could they have been thinking! An American warship surrendered after receiving three broadsides and only one shot fired in response! Decatur would surely not have behaved in such a disgraceful way.
My mind continued to reel with more and more unanswerable questions. I shifted my gaze haphazardly, not knowing whether to keep an eye on the two British boats or my colleagues in our own boat. Standing close at hand, equally incredulous at the shameful drama in which we were all now players, my fellow midshipmen and a clutch of seamen seemed to suffer the same indecision.
Our boat made the side first and, as the first lieutenant rushed aft to the quarterdeck, Henry Allen came and stood where a knot of junior lieutenants and several midshipmen had gathered. I moved to join that agitated group.
“Henry, what happened over there? What were you sent to do? Present the captain’s sword in surrender? What did they say?” Joshua Belcher, a midshipman slightly senior to me, cried out. From the corner of my eye, I could see Lieutenant Smith making his report to Commodore Barron and Captain Gordon. Scowls, wide-eyed horror, and, finally, incredulity greeted his report.
“Aye. Smith and I were sent to tell them in Leopard that Chesapeake was surrendered and their prize. Captain Humphreys—he’s commander over there—personally told us he had no interest in taking our ship as a prize. ‘We’re not at war with you Jonathans and she wouldn’t be adjudged a fair prize, in any case.’ Those were his words. Smith very nearly collapsed when he heard that. ‘Why ever did you fire on us, then?’ he asked. ‘You have British seamen aboard who are deserters from the Royal Navy and it is our intention to return them to where they ought to be. After a proper court martial and punishment is meted out, of course. To that end, Lieutenant Smith, we will again send a boat on board your ship, muster your crew, and find our missing sailors. We expect your cooperation … or at the very least, your non-interference. After we have recovered our property, you are free to carry on as you will.’ Then the pompous ass turned, gave a few orders relating to their boats and some officers, and marched himself right aft to the quarterdeck, where he still stands, I’d warrant.”
“Muster our crew? That’s what started this whole affair in the first place!” I couldn’t help my self; Barron’s words—and he must have put them in the letter he sent to Humphreys as well—still echoed in my head. Of course, none of the others had been privy to the meeting between Meade and the commodore and suddenly they all spoke at once, questioning me on my knowledge.
By then the two boats were alongside and the British officers on our deck. Without a lot of fanfare, we were pleased to note. One of them, a tall fellow with a large sharp nose with spectacles perched on it, stepped onto the quarterdeck and, quite ignoring Captain Gordon, faced the commodore with all the bearing of a Roman gladiator standing over his victim. That he arrived on that hallowed deck without so much as a ‘by your leave’ added insult to injury. We could not hear their words, but the effect of them became apparent as soon as the bosun blew shrilly on his pipe and called for “All hands to muster in the waist, and look lively, there! Form up by division.”
My colleagues and I went to the break of the quarterdeck while the hands assembled, mostly grumbling and growling. Two British officers and a master’s mate stood rigidly facing forward, their hands clasped tightly behind them. They seemed quite unmoved by the wreckage strewn about the deck before them or the obvious stains of blood which they had taken some pains to avoid.
I noticed they wore swords and two of them, the master’s mate and one of the lieutenants, had pistols stuck into their trousers. Do they really think they will need those? We have surrendered and, unlike the corsairs off Tripoli, will not begin the fight again. I felt the same sense of outrage that, I am sure, burned in the breast of every man aboard.
The three officers moved through the ranks of our sailors and marines, stepping over fallen blocks, cordage, and bloodstains, still shining wetly, all wrought by their untimely broadsides. One of the officers, a lieutenant, would stop directly in front of each man in turn, staring into his face, then questioning him and inspecting him closely. Each response was checked against our muster book and then the name was compared to a paper the master�
��s mate held. Every man-jack in the crew received equal attention.
And then the British boarding party searched the ship. The whole of it lasted for over three hours while we lay hove to under the still gaping guns of Leopard.
When it was done, the British had discovered four men whose names appeared on their list. They also found another eight whom they identified as British, but whose names were not included in their orders. We all waited, with growing impatience and indignation, as a boat went to Humphreys and returned, bearing instructions to bring only the four named deserters. Along with the orders was a letter to James Barron, which, I later discovered, deplored the whole event, and offered whatever assistance might be required by our cruelly wounded ship. Indeed!
After the three officers left with their prisoners, among whom (I found out later from Lieutenant Keane) were three Americans who had indeed deserted HMS Melampus to which ship they had been impressed a year before, Barron sent Henry Allen, by himself, back to the British vessel in a further—and futile—attempt to have Humphreys accept his surrender. Never before or since have I seen such outrage as enveloped Lieutenant Allen, or any other in memory, for that matter. His face scarlet, eyes hard, and fists clenched tightly, he was quite unable to give voice to his feelings beyond a sputtered “… a shameful disgrace” and “… humiliation beyond description.” He busied himself with trying to restore order to the gundeck. His efforts also gave our sailors employment. Allen worked feverishly, quite obviously trying to exorcise the demons of our dishonor from his mind, moving barrels and boxes by himself which normally two, or even three, men would have been hard-pressed to handle. And all the while his scowl never left his face, or his mutterings his lips.
In Pursuit of Glory Page 4
