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

by James L. Haley

  “We have made them as comfortable as we can in the cable tier, below. The captain has determined to put back into Boston rather than continue our cruise, so they will be ashore in a few days. No doubt you will be exchanged in short order.”

  “Where is your surgeon?”

  “He is still in the cockpit, doing what he can. And by the way, your surgeon is with him. They have set up a second table to operate on, they are side by side.”

  Dacres smiled wanly and nodded. “Ha. Our doctors seem to cooperate well enough, what a pity that our governments could not.”

  BOSTON HARBOR

  30TH AUGUST, 1812

  My Own Dear Wife,

  If the newspapers reach you before this letter does, you will have learned that our ship has achieved a most signal victory in defeating the British frigate Guerriere in single combat. Our casualties were seven killed and seven wounded, the ship only slightly damaged, and I, unscathed.

  The British lost several times that number. On paper it was a nearly even match, our forty-four guns against their thirty-eight, but what I imagine the newspapers will not report is that our opponent was severely undermanned, our broadside threw at least half a ton more weight of shot than hers, and the Guerriere, being French-built (and captured and put into English service), was too light in its construction.

  Nonetheless, Capt. Hull fought our ship brilliantly. I am glad now that I did not go to Charleston straightaway and wait to assume my own command, for I feel I have learned much from him, and the officers and crew were inspired. A few short weeks ago our crew were all new to one another, and many new to the sea, yet from the way they worked the ship and the guns, no one would have suspected that to be the case.

  And the ship herself—oh, my love!—to say that she is magnificent in battle does her but little justice. At one point when the fight was at its hottest, a crewman looked down and actually saw a ball from the Guerriere bounce off our hull. “Look there, boys,” he says. “It’s like she’s made of iron!” And so the crew have taken it up and now refer to her as “Old Ironsides.”

  It is quite curious, really. It seems that with every ship and crew, there must come some moment when all its pieces, all its men with all its spars and guns and all its component parts, fuse into a unit. My moment with the Enterprise came when we defeated the Tripolitans without a single casualty, and our men’s fear of Sterett changed to devotion. With Preble on the Constitution it came off Cape St. Vincent, when the Commodore swore out a British ship of the line that he would be damn’d before he would send a boat over, and was roundly cheered by the men. And now, for our crew, they feel themselves part of a truly extraordinary and perhaps impregnable vessel.

  That is the good of the report. Now must come the other. Once returned to port, I have heard news that has come close to making me resign my commission, come home, and take up farming, never to leave again, nor care for the fates of governments. Though this occurred months ago, the sequence of events is only now becoming clear, and, my love, it is almost enough to make a moral man lunatic. As you well know, one of the principal causes of our going to war was the British insistence upon their Orders in Council, by which they claimed the right to stop neutral vessels—including ours—on the high seas, which opportunities they then parlayed into absconding with innocent American seamen. The chief proponent of this pernicious policy has been the Tory prime minister, Mr. Perceval. The policy has had many enemies within Parliament, while Perceval himself has not been perceived as heading a strong government. The weakness of his majority I never knew before.

  Perhaps you have read of this already, but on May 11 last, Perceval was assassinated in the very lobby of the House of Commons. The man who shot him through the heart did so for reasons totally unrelated to us, so it seems that Perceval’s injustices extended into still wider spheres. Lord Liverpool is now the prime minister, a man who has long advocated a more moderate policy toward the United States.

  Indeed, Liverpool canceled the hated Orders in Council, and a ship was dispatched carrying that intelligence to our government. That ship westbound crossed paths with our ship eastbound, carrying news of our declaration of war. And so, my love, none of this bloodshed might have been necessary. A little more patience, a little more forbearance, a little more statecraft on our part to gain the favor of friends in foreign governments, and war with all its horrors and expense might have been averted.

  On the deck of a defeated enemy one sees sights too terrible to relate, and the thought that such carnage, such butchery, might not have been necessary calls forth in me no feeling more than despair. The likelihood now is that, battle having been joined, both sides will pour themselves into vindicating their national honor, but let us pray that somewhere above the sight of those who do the fighting, cooler heads may prevail.

  Until then, I leave tomorrow for Charleston by coach. My ship the Tempest is nearly ready, and the recruiting difficulties of which everyone made such a fuss have been resolved. It seems that news of Rodgers putting to sea with a squadron has brought English warships racing in pursuit, which drew them away from their previous occupation of hunting down American merchantmen. This has had the unintended result that numerous American commercial vessels have safely put into the various Atlantic ports and interned themselves for the duration. It seems that at least for a short time Charleston is awash in seamen who have nowhere else to go, and I must hasten to harvest my share.

  Be not anxious for my welfare, my love. I am in robust health, and, God willing, this war will soon be behind us. For just one moment I will hold this letter as close to my heart as ever I held you, and when you do the same I know I shall feel it.

  Your devoted husband,

  Bliven Putnam

  Master Cmdt., USN

  Mrs. Clarity Putnam

  New Putnam Farm

  So. Road

  Litchfield, Connectient

  7

  The Shaded Bower

  Bidding farewell to a ship is a hard business, there are so many things of which to let go: the associations built up with shipmates, the knowledge of her eccentricities and intimacy with her nether spaces, the emotion expended in seeing men killed. And there must be the last gaze, perhaps over one’s shoulder but better if one turns to frame the final picture, while understanding that the vessel herself no canvas could capture: the proud angle of her hundred-foot bowsprit, the beetling vastness of her hull beneath the two-hundred-foot masts.

  Bliven turned twice as the drayman’s wagon carried him and his trunks down the Long Wharf toward Faneuil Hall, and he turned a third time as they rounded the corner, wondering if he would ever serve in such a monarch of a ship again. At the depot he arranged his passage for New York, feeling stung anew at the requirement to pay extra to carry more than one article of baggage. Perhaps with more competition, he thought, the common carriers would be forced to a more reasonable posture.

  It was unsettling to rumble along the familiar pike from Boston to Providence, and on to New Haven—and then not to obey the very habit of his limbs to change coaches and head north, to Litchfield and home. There would have been no point to write ahead and see if Clarity could meet him in New Haven, for his coach was the one carrying the mail.

  The bustle and hurry of New York he found disagreeable to the point of not even wanting to stay to see its famous places. He paid a different stage company his passage to Philadelphia, which he found equally busy, albeit more friendly, and he arranged passage to Baltimore, and so on. There was no single company to carry him the whole distance, and he found himself grateful now to be a wealthy man; travel was not for the poor.

  His uniform gained him deference, and occasionally polite conversation, but what occupied his most intense interest was the way the forest changed, by degrees, becoming more temperate, better watered. Traveling constantly enough, he assessed, he could see the apparent way of life change, too, the fieldstone fences of New Englan
d transforming through the stage windows into the tobacco barns of Virginia.

  Beyond Virginia he began to feel uncomfortably warm, at a time of year when New England would be preparing for the first cool breaths of autumn, and he knew his apples would be growing fat in his orchard. The creeks, when they forded them, began to feature thickets of the most exotic-looking strange tree, or rather not a tree, but not a bush, either. Their spreading leaves were as broad as a small dining table and composed of a fan of fibrous green strips interlocking like a hand of cards. A whole spray of such leaves erupted from the top of a trunk, of sorts, that was not solid but seemed to be a rising succession of the material of the remains of leaves’ stems that had lived their span, and died and hardened. The whole effect was one of a kind of unapproachable spikiness—not unlike the Carolinas’ own reputation.

  Their second night in South Carolina, where they were told they would reach Charleston the next day, was spent at an inn in a tiny settlement they called Wappetaw, which in Bliven awakened an ancient association. He was certain that he remembered the name, for it was settled by people who determined to leave Salem, Massachusetts, because they could not stomach the insanity of the witch trials of 1692. Most people did not know that there were some people in Salem who’d had a conscience against that madness, but there were.

  Charleston when he reached it proved to be the most water-bound city he had ever seen, more so than Boston or even New York. It lay at the confluence or environ of five wide, sluggish, tepid, snaky rivers, which made him understand the city’s reputation for miasma and the yellow jack that had claimed Sam’s father. The city occupied a peninsula between two of those rivers, its approximate northern boundary being a broad avenue marking the line of a former city wall, which the British had assaulted during the Revolution, and had since been dismantled.

  The city was larger, much larger, than Bliven imagined it would be. Though there were neighborhoods of apparent poverty, some thickly inhabited by families of free Africans who lived on their own without belonging to anybody, his overall impression was that it was a city of commercial importance, with fine, large homes and well-fed-looking people. He had contracted with the driver to deliver him to the Navy Yard itself, and discovering it was a shock, for it was all but indiscernible within the commercial stretch of the waterfront. Bounded by alleys on the left and right, and by masts of what he took to be his Tempest at the wharf beyond a scatter of smallish nondescript structures, the only identifying feature was the American flag fluttering from a pole before what must be the receiving office.

  When Bliven entered a small front room, a lieutenant working at a table stood and saluted. Bliven returned it. “I am Master Commandant Putnam, reporting to take command of the United States Ship Tempest.”

  “Welcome to Charleston, Commander. Captain Dent is in command here. I will let him know you have arrived.”

  “Captain John Dent?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  How fallen are the mighty, thought Bliven.

  The lieutenant entered a rear chamber and returned. “The captain will receive you.”

  John Herbert Dent was tall and well made, darkly complected, with a large aquiline nose, his dark hair swept forward like Hull’s and most men’s in the ubiquitous Brutus crop. They traded salutes and Dent extended his hand. “Welcome to the end of the world.”

  Bliven took it. “Is it, truly? I am sorry we have never met. By reputation you are one of the most widely experienced officers in the service, it seems we should have crossed paths at some point.”

  “We almost did, once. Do sit and be comfortable.”

  “Really, where?”

  Dent folded his arms and grinned. “I was a midshipman in the President when you and that other fellow got into a sword fight in, was it Algiers? During the Barbary War.”

  “Oh my goodness! Yes, that was Sam Bandy, my fellow midshipman. Your lieutenants on the President were bored and decided to amuse themselves by goading him into fighting me. You must have been at the back of the cheering crowd.”

  “I was! I went on to serve in the Essex, the Constellation, and the John Adams, and I commanded the Scourge and the Nautilus. I must have made an enemy somewhere, for here I am in this . . . place.”

  The double window of this back office afforded a prospect of the wharf, at which a ship-sloop was moored, seeming a hundred and twenty feet or so between perpendiculars. Dent’s voice trailed off as he noticed Bliven’s study of the vessel.

  “That is she?” Bliven asked reflectively.

  “Such as she is. We are working on her. You look as though you are dreaming of your future glory.”

  Bliven rose and walked over to the window. “No, actually I was thinking of Mr. Bandy. He became a merchant captain, and some months ago he was taken at sea and pressed into British service. He is out there somewhere, under lash and chains; he is never out of my mind.”

  “He and thousands of others,” said Dent. “That’s why we are having a war.”

  “I don’t know them, I know him. I just hope there is some justice at the end of it all. Well, your installation seems it may be too small for a mess. Where does one eat around here?”

  “Do you wish to eat, or would you see your ship first?”

  “Just at this moment, my hunger outweighs my apprehension.”

  “I could eat as well,” said Dent. “Come, I’ll show you.” They exited into the front room. “Lieutenant, we will be lunching at Mrs. Finklea’s, if you need me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  From the waterfront they walked leisurely two blocks into the commercial district, which struck Bliven as having been exceedingly prosperous, but at that moment was capable of sustaining greater bustle than it was. Certainly the activity did not equal what he had seen in New York or Philadelphia or Baltimore, although it apparently might have done so.

  They entered a tavern whose sign in front was simple and to the point: GOOD FOOD.

  The proprietress was a blond woman of middle age, who seemed as though she had not shared much of the surrounding prosperity. “Good day, Captain. Who is your friend?”

  “Good day, Mrs. Finklea. This is Commander Putnam, who has come down to take command of the sloop we have been rebuilding.”

  “Commander.” She nodded.

  “Captain Dent speaks highly of your fare. What would you recommend?”

  “Beef stew and bread, and beer, twenty-five cents a head.”

  “You must allow me,” Bliven said aside to Dent. He produced and proffered a silver half-dollar.

  “Have you no Carolina money?” she said with no expression whatever.

  “Carolina money?”

  The proprietress removed from a pocket in her apron two small pieces of paper, about one-eighth the size of a sheet of writing paper. They were crudely typeset with the name of the Bank of South Carolina, and denominations, with some copperplate gewgaws.

  “Ma’am,” said Bliven, “I have seen a good deal of the East Coast, and in every place federal coin was the standard by which local currencies were measured. Is silver not always to be preferred to local paper?”

  “In South Carolina, sir, we have learned to trust our own.”

  “Well, is there a bank nearby where I could change the coin for your local bills of exchange? That will make it more convenient for you when I come back next time.”

  “In town, Bank of South Carolina, you will see it.” Her manner eased. “But if you will have your lunch, your silver will do for now.” He gave over the coin and she left.

  “If I come back,” he muttered to Captain Dent. Although, he thought, that must be good business for the bank. They must be eager enough to take in good government silver coin and exchange it for this worthless scrip that was supported by nothing beyond their own conceit. He wondered for a moment how many years it had taken for the local population to be talked in
to such a vaunted imagining.

  “If you find her attitude objectionable,” warned Dent, “you may not be giving much business to anyone else hereabouts. Her view is the prevailing one. You know, I am from Maryland, so I have some sympathy for Southern opinions, but I tell you, Carolinians are a stiff-necked bunch.”

  The stew was thick and flavored with herbs that Bliven determined that he should inquire after, the bread warm and fresh.

  Dent broke his bread and stirred it into his bowl. “Still, we might consider, Commander Putnam, that South Carolina began its association with the Union in good faith. Let us not forget, before the Revolution Charleston was the most heavily defended city in the country, not just harbor forts but city walls, and a moat across the neck of the peninsula. And after the war they demilitarized, completely. They demolished the fortifications and used the materials for other construction, developed the harbor, and built up a huge profitable commerce from exporting their cotton and rice and all the rest of it. To be sure, they got on well enough at the beginning. Then what did we do? The Embargo Act of 1807 deprived them of more than half their markets, for they have always sold much more to Europe than to the North. So they said, very well, this hurts us, but as long as England and Napoleon are fighting and both are taking our ships, we can recognize the need to restrict trade, and they bore it. And then what did we do? The very next year we outlawed the importation of new slaves from Africa, and it became harder for them to find workers for their fields. I think we might forgive them if they begin to feel picked upon.”

  Bliven nodded slowly. This was the juncture, he thought, where Clarity would have raised the immorality of slavery and declared that any economy that depended upon it deserved to collapse. Indeed, owing to the ferocity of the history classes that she had survived in Miss Pierce’s School for Girls, Clarity was even able to stake out the position that Rome herself, with all her marble temples and forum, and her gigantic empire, never deserved her greatness, for all was built on the backs of slaves. With Rome it was imperial greatness, with Charleston—as he observed through the tavern’s windows—it was gracious ease, a comfortable life that wanted for little, but equally built on the toil of others who could not share in it.