The Tempest--Commander Putnam and Mr. Madison's War

by James L. Haley

  “Be silent!” Hull softened almost at once. “Oh, Putnam, do shut up before you say too much.” After a moment his belly began shaking in an avuncular chuckle. “By God, I’m damned if you haven’t just told off the entire Navy, and named not a single officer who could call you out to a duel. Well done.”

  “Yes, there is an art to that, as I have learned.”

  “Ha! Well, we understand each other.”

  Bliven was at the point of adding that suddenly Commodore Dale’s resignation was put in a new light of understanding, but Hull’s readiness to end the topic offered a truce that was better to accept. “I do have one question, Captain, which I would appreciate if you could gratify me.”

  “What is that?”

  “If I am supposed to go to New York and enroll new seamen, why bring me all the way down here, only to go back? Why not just send me to New York and let me get on with it?”

  “Ah.” Hull leaned his head to one side and closed his eyes for a moment. “If only it were so easy. There was a time when we could depend upon patriotism to fill our want of seamen. Nowadays? People take their freedom for granted. All want to get out there and chase their dreams, and never think that we are not yet finished paying for the right to pursue all that happiness. The Secretary believes that your efforts will be crowned with greater success if they are accompanied by a bit of theatre. We can’t just send you quietly to New York to sit at a desk in the Navy Yard and sign up one and two. You are going to make an entrance, with the squadron at your back, ships dressed overall, guns firing salutes. People will make speeches. They’ll be ladling out whiskey.” Hull waved a hand rhythmically in the air. “A band will play patriotic airs.”

  “Oh, God, no,” Bliven mumbled.

  “Now, the Secretary believes that if it works, you may recruit your entire company at the outset, and what you accomplish in two or three weeks will help the Navy a great deal.”

  “Well.” Bliven recovered himself. “At least I know my fate, and I can prepare for it. What about you? Will you be dispatched to an individual patrol?”

  “Hardly. After we top off our provisions in New York, we will stand out with Rodgers and his squadron.”

  Bliven sagged a little at the recognition. “So, they did adopt Rodgers’s plan over Decatur’s?”

  “Yes, they did. That was their initial inclination, as you know.”

  In the back of his mind Bliven registered that it could prove useful one day to know exactly how little his best advice was worth, but he thought it well to see the other side of it. “In a way, it makes sense. Rodgers is senior, his desires would have more weight. Add to that the mental image of an American battle squadron, booming it out with the British and winning, would have a certain attraction in exciting public support for the war.”

  “Why, Putnam!” Hull was grinning. “Are you thinking like a politician?”

  Bliven shook his head. “A weak moment, sir, I apologize.”

  “Ha! Well, in truth, events are overtaking us. We have reason to believe that Admiral Sawyer in Halifax has learned of Rodgers’s design to attack a large convoy now coming north from Jamaica. If Sawyer sends out the Africa and his frigates to defend it, at the same time Rodgers gets there to attack it, we’ll have a battle whether we seek it or no. Adding Constitution to Rodgers’s squadron will make it our five against their five.”

  “And I must be left in New York?”

  They rose and Hull walked him to the door, patting him on the back. “Well, thank God you are not in it for the glory, eh?”

  “When do we sail?”

  “We have been still bringing the crew up to strength,” answered Hull. “Are you surprised?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Take heart, that is changing. Our need was not urgent, because the President had yet to submit a war message to the Congress. Now that has changed, and I aim to sail with the tide on the day after tomorrow. Cooper will be occupied in logging in stores, so in the morning you will accompany me over to the Adams and we will take off what we need.”

  “I wonder how her captain will feel about that.”

  “Oh, you don’t know, do you? They have decided to strike the Adams for now; they’re going to saw her in half across the waist and rebuild her as a corvette. If they work like dervishes it will take at least a year.”

  “What, now? We need every ship we’ve got!”

  “No, believe me, bringing her back on line as a frigate would take longer, and she would still be a lousy slow sailer. She had a defective design from the beginning. Her men have nowhere to go, so we can have our choice.”

  Bliven brightened. “Then why not let me have the rest and I can get down to Charleston right now!”

  Hull chuckled. “Your eagerness does you credit, but I’m afraid you will have to stand in line. Your sloop is not yet ready and we cannot have a hundred and twenty men sitting on their backsides waiting.”

  Cooper rose from his desk as they exited the cabin. “Cooper here will assign you a berth. I am glad to have you aboard, Commander. Let us hope for a swift passage up to New York. You will have no fixed duties, except as I have need of you. Turn out for breakfast in the morning and we will fill out our crew.”

  “Aye, sir.” They saluted and shook hands again. “Mr. Cooper.” Bliven turned his attention to the purser. “As you may know, my final destination is Charleston to assume my own command, so I am laden with greater baggage than otherwise. I hope that will not present a difficulty.”

  Cooper pursed his lips and shrugged. “Not for me. If you have many trunks you will have to sleep on them.” He strode across the wardroom and opened one of the long file of doors. “You may take the second stateroom port side. Will it suffice?”

  Bliven kept it to himself that it was the same compartment that Sam Bandy had occupied in earlier days. Cooper stood outside as Bliven entered. Just to the right of the door reposed the smallest of chairs and writing table; to the left at the far end were hooks to hang clothing. Separating them, a hammock was hung diagonally, bolted on the near left to the bulkhead that separated the compartment from the wardroom, and on the far right to one of the ship’s massive knees that supported the spar deck. “Excellent, veritable luxury, Mr. Cooper. Will anyone mind if I commandeer the captain’s gig back over to the yard for my trunks?”

  “Not at all, make yourself at home.”

  “One other thing, Mr. Cooper.” He motioned down the quiet of the gun deck, past the cook and steward quietly working at the camboose. “I have seen no evidence that we have a surgeon on board. Surely we will not sail without one.”

  “Ah,” Cooper nodded. “Yes, that has been noted. They are sending us one down express from Philadelphia. Said to be one of the very best, he will arrive this evening or in the morning.”

  Standing his sea bag in the corner beyond the hammock and lining his three trunks beneath it, accessible but unobtrusive, took almost none of the otherwise usable space in the stateroom. His most important task was to remove the mahogany dressing box that Clarity had gifted him, but he was chagrined to discover that it was wider than the table provided him. It occurred to him to bore but one of the screws into the table, and that would secure it sufficiently for the short voyage to New York. When he opened it he saw to his surprise a thin box, stenciled WM MONROE, CONCORD, and a note from Clarity, which he unfolded.

  Dearest—Pen and ink at sea can create such a mess in a mischance. If you will forgive me the liberty, I purchased of Mr. Monroe a small box of these new writing implements. Each is a thin dowel of wood, into which a filling of soft graphite has been inserted. You whittle one end to a point and write with the graphite lead as you would the nib of a pen. There is nothing to spill or stain, and the visual result you see from this little note in your hand, as I have prepared the first one for you. They are called pencils. Is not the progress of mankind wonderful? Come saf
e home to me, my dearest heart. C.

  He slept so soundly that he awoke early and entered the wardroom just as the steward filled the urn with coffee and arranged milk, sugar, butter, and a tray of muffins on the sideboard. “Half an hour until breakfast, sir,” he said as he withdrew, and overhead he could hear the orders being barked and the squeaking and rumbling of boats being lowered.

  Bliven regarded with a kind of grateful contemplation the eggs and ham and toasted bread that the steward set before the officers. Good food, even excellent food, they could expect when in port, and it was not so far to New York that the meat would turn green or the flour would go rancid. It was impossible not to look ahead to Charleston and wonder what kind of cook he could capture for his own ship when he was sent out on a long patrol. Many times had Sam Bandy extolled the wizardry of the slaves who cooked for his family, enhancing the standard fare of the Piedmont with exotic touches of their own invention, no doubt rooted in their African origins. He knew from Sam that not all the blacks in the South were slaves, that in any given city there was a community of free Negroes, and certainly none should be more resourceful in managing a diminishing or spoiling food supply. The first necessary errand when he arrived there would be to visit Rebecca in Abbeville; perhaps she could offer some guidance on finding a cook.

  He smiled suddenly. Would food really be the most substantive topic of their conversation? Would their tryst in Naples really remain an unspoken memory of their history? Ought he to thank her for her discretion in having never spoken of it to Sam? Of one thing he must be certain: If she ambushed him again, he must refuse, and he must refuse with a delicacy that conveyed his very fond regard for her, yet be plain that his love as well as his duty was fully engaged elsewhere now.

  Isaac Hull ate alone in his cabin, poring over dispatches that had been brought out early from the yard office. He allowed time for his officers to finish their breakfast before emerging in his dress uniform, and Bliven realized with a wave of embarrassment that he had not yet procured a pair of the new high boots that the dress code now mandated. He must find time during the day to get back ashore and find some. “Gentlemen,” Hull announced when he appeared, “it is done. The President signed the declaration yesterday, and it will be published today. We are at war with Great Britain.”

  The murmur around the table was approving in tone but muted. Every man of them knew what a near-suicidal step the country was taking. It was a step mandated by the honor of the country, but one that some of them, perhaps many of them, would not survive. Bliven had been sitting opposite the lieutenant of Marines, a young fellow named Bush, who wiped jam from his lips with his napkin. “Well,” he said, “now we’re in for it, but when they tangle with us, they will feel it.”

  At the end of the table, nearest the screen that separated them from the gun deck, sat the ship’s chaplain, old and bald, named Wright, who even in their very short acquaintance Bliven had marked as sanctimonious and annoying. Indeed his first thought upon meeting him was that he would like to have locked him and Beecher in the same room together and see who emerged alive after such a duel of self-righteousness. And Wright was so large that he left Bliven wondering how one could grow so fat on Navy fare. “Gentlemen,” intoned this chaplain with a solemnity that left Bliven dreading to be led in a long-winded prayer, “the die is cast. Let no one of us fail to daily approach the Almighty for courage and guidance in doing our duty.”

  Amens circled the table quietly, to which Bliven had just added his own when Hull, passing behind him, leaned down and whispered, “Come, let us away.”

  Just outside the wardroom Cooper gave him a wide, flat roll book and showed him how to enter the names of the men they took off. “Pen and ink they will have on the Adams.”

  Bliven remembered suddenly. “Oh! Your pardon one moment.” He handed the register back to Cooper, ducked into his stateroom, plucked up the new wooden writing tool, and showed it to Cooper. “It is called a pencil. There is no ink to spill.”

  Cooper turned it over and marveled, “Really! Oh, that is wondrous. I should think there is a military contract in it for the one who thinks quickly enough.”

  Topside, Bliven saw their four large boats tied in a string one behind the other. Eight rowers waited in the first one with their sweeps raised. Of course, he realized, the men they took would row themselves back over. Hull first descended the convenience ladder, and Bliven followed. He descended awkwardly down the flaring tumble home, aware of and hating the sight he must present, one hand fast on the rope as the other clutched the oversized register.

  The captain of the Adams, a sharp-featured man named John Herbert Dent, came up to meet them but excused himself again straightaway, descended to his gig, and was rowed ashore, leaving his clerk to transfer one hundred thirty-two seamen, about half able and half ordinary. The process went smoothly until they came to a wiry, ginger-haired tar who saluted with his knuckles bent in the British fashion of making respects, and he spoke in an unmistakable Irish brogue. “Your pardon, sirs,” he said. “I have been debarred from speaking until now, but I take this moment to inform Your Honors that I am a British subject, wrongly taken and pressed into service in your Navy. I claim the right of repatriation.”

  Hull had been standing behind Bliven as he wrote down their names, ages, places of birth, and skills, but now he stepped forward in evident fury. “What!”

  “Yes, sir, it is true, sir.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Davis, sir. Charles Davis.”

  “Where and when were you pressed, as you claim?”

  “In Charleston, sir, two months short of two year’ ago.”

  “From what ship were you taken?”

  “The merchant brig Margaret, sir.”

  “In what circumstance?”

  “I and four mates went ashore to a tavern, sir. It is true, I imbibed too liberally, and when I came to at sea, I was on your sloop-of-war Wasp, sixteen, Master Commandant Jones.”

  The more Davis could give account of himself, the angrier Hull became, partly at having the enrollment impeded, partly that this man’s fate had fallen into his lap, and partly, Bliven hoped, in shame that the United States could be caught in the same wretched, indefensible trade that the British had engaged in for years. He had heard and suspected that there were such cases as this, but nothing had been so severely impeached within his hearing until this moment.

  “How shall we know you are telling the truth?”

  “In good faith, sir, there must be ample records. I escaped the Wasp after three months, when she was back in Charleston. I swam ashore and walked over a hundred miles to Savannah. There I was retaken, confined in double irons seventy-two days, tried, and brought here for flogging, seventy-eight lashes for desertion. Now, really, sir, in fairness, ought I to suffer such an extreme and perhaps fatal punishment, when I was wrongly taken to begin with?”

  Bliven turned in his chair and saw Hull’s face flushing as red as a tomato. “Well, Captain,” he ventured, “no wonder Mr. Dent ducked away on us.”

  “That bilious bastard! All right! Well, Davis, we are at war with your country. Our Navy needs men and must have them. You, I don’t care if you are English or Chinese or from stinking Fiji, I shall take you. I put you a choice, Davis! You may stay here and face your flogging, or you may sign on with me, and I will forgive your flogging.”

  “Oh, but, sir!”

  “Make your choice, man!”

  “Well,” he despaired, “I have never been flogged and do not wish to begin now.”

  He nodded at Bliven, who entered his name. He felt, even as Clarity’s pencil glided across the faintly ruled register, that he was signing his own name into the book of damnation, for participating in the same odious injustice they were supposed to be fighting against. But with Hull looming over him and in such a temper, this could not be the time to voice his reservations.

&nb
sp; It was into the afternoon when they returned to the Constitution with the very full longboats and cutters behind them. Hull was first up the ladder, with Bliven following, and Bliven saw a table had been set up by the mainmast, with a doctor’s case upon it, and who he saw standing by it made his heart leap. “Dr. Cutbush!”

  “Why, Mr. Putnam, how very good to see you.” He advanced and they shook hands warmly. Cutbush was seven years older than he was when Bliven last saw him, and it showed, but his essential features were unchanged and he was as immaculately kept as ever.

  “The purser told me last evening that we would have a surgeon coming down from Philadelphia, but I had no mind it would be you. I am so happy to see you.”

  “You two know each other, I see,” Hull joined in.

  Cutbush laughed. “Yes, very well. I stitched up this lad’s belly when he caught the business edge of a British sabre in Naples. I am happy to see my handiwork walking about in such good condition.”

  “Where have you been?” asked Bliven. “What have you been doing?”

  “In Philadelphia, as you heard, directing the hospital in the Navy Yard there. They felt with hostilities coming I would be more useful again at sea, a conclusion with which I do not disagree. Now, we shall have opportunity to visit soon, I am sure, but at this moment your new men are coming up the ladder, and I wish to look them over one by one as they do so.”

  They sailed with the ebb of the morning tide, the Constitution loaded to her full twenty-three-foot draught, wearing laboriously down the Chesapeake against a breeze so oblique that it almost forced them to stay in port, also working the pilot so hard in the boat leading them through the shallows that he barely saw them safe past Fisherman Island off Cape Charles before putting his helm hard over and racing back up the bay, speaking them as he splashed by to wish them fair sailing and good hunting.

  Once she made the open sea, setting her heading north-northeast to gradually wear away from land, the wind was favorable and stout behind them, but the coastal current so strong against them that they found themselves sailing hard only, it seemed, to barely crawl in forward progress. Worse, the wind fell off continuously, by degrees, until by early evening of their fifth day, July 17, there was only a slight breeze. They remained under easy sail, but Hull began worrying whether their forward speed into the current had stalled altogether. “Carpenter, what is your sounding?”