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

by James L. Haley

  “Brains and bravery,” President Madison had said. “Before my God, you shall have need of both.” Is this what they meant, that they were sending him to his likely death, that junior officers such as he were expendable? But then, who in their tiny Navy was not expendable?

  No—battle and honorable defeat, perhaps honorable death, were all that were left him.

  A new look through his glass revealed that the frigate bearing down on him had run up the British naval pennant, and signal flags, a code he had no hope of answering, and he knew even now that her guns were being run out. He cupped his hands at his mouth. “Mr. Lewis!”

  “Captain!”

  “Show our colors!”

  “Aye, sir.” Within seconds the Stars and Stripes curled from the spanker boom.

  It was certain to his eye now that she was a thirty-eight, probably actually mounting forty guns or more, which would overmatch him two to one, the weight of broadside probably three to one. At a gaming table he would have folded his hand and awaited the next deal of cards, but here, to capitulate without resistance, even to save the lives of his crew, would be an unspeakable dishonor. He believed he knew his father well enough to know that he would prefer the grief of his death over the shame of his tame surrender. And likewise his mother, as she had made clear. And Clarity? The worst pang of all was the possibility of not seeing her again. If regaining her was the only question, he might indeed throw his honor overboard, and they could steal away to some place where he was not known and they could live out their days together. But that was not the only question, for to do that he would have to ask her to live with a coward, and no organ in his body could permit that.

  Bliven snapped back to the present with the boom of the frigate’s bow chaser, and then all heads snapped up as the ball popped through their mizzen topsail.

  It was necessary to assess any advantages, however slight and few, that he might have. He might not be faster than a frigate, although in a stouter wind he might take his chances, but it seemed possible that he could be more maneuverable. If he could make a tighter turn, unexpectedly, he might perhaps wreak enough damage to level the odds. If something happened to him, it was imperative to let the lieutenant know his plan.

  “Mr. Lewis, listen to me carefully. I am going to turn just enough to bring your stern chasers to bear. Take your shot now, reload with grape.” He paused, as their attacker was a thousand yards distant, and only now shortened to fighting sail; he had never seen such an assault, he was coming on like a tiger in its spring. “You see he has the weather gauge. If he turns to rake us, we will match his turn. If he stays and comes upon our weather beam, I am going to shear away at the last possible instant before he can deliver a broadside. When I do, luff the sails and spill the wind so he will shoot ahead. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Now, listen. Your forward four guns stay elevated to cut his rigging. Level your after four guns and try to hit his rudder. Do you understand?”

  “Exactly, sir, yes.” Lewis ran forward and relayed the instruction to the eight port-side guns, and the after four began to be quoined up and leveled.

  “Well, she’ll find we have a stinger in our tail now. Helm, starboard ten degrees.”

  Lewis loped back to the stern chasers and knelt at the sights. “On my order, boys, fire.” The second he shouted, twin explosions reported from their stern. At five hundred yards it would have been hard to miss. One ball crashed into the starboard cathead, sending the anchor dangling by its cable; the other flew higher, popping a hole in the jib.

  “Well done, Mr. Lewis. Now come back to your course. Helm, be ready for a starboard turn on my order.” He knew it must be an illusion, but the frigate seemed to fly at them. A ship approaching from an oblique course, shortened to fighting sail, could only close in a stately manner, but now with his own possible death in the balance, the hands of the clock seemed to spin. “Mr. Lewis, how much taller do you make her freeboard than ours?”

  “Five feet, sir, more or less.”

  “As do I, Mr. Lewis. Elevate your chasers to just rake her deck, if you get the opportunity.” She bore up only a hundred yards away. “Marines! Commence firing, keep their heads down in the tops! Mr. Lewis, this is your last opportunity with the chasers. Fire when you bear.” Bliven took the wheel and edged the Tempest to starboard until the chasers boomed behind him, and he came back to course.

  It was apparent that the Englishman was holding his fury until he was alongside, and he meant to do to the Tempest what Hull had done to the Guerriere. But, if he could turn just enough from her broadside, the tough elasticity of Tempest’s cedar hull might deflect the eighteen-pounder balls. He must not turn away completely, he realized urgently. If Tempest showed her full stern she would be raked; balls smashing through the undefended cabin would wreak havoc down the length of the ship belowdeck. But if he could present only an oblique target, they might just glance off his hull.

  Bliven sighted until he saw her bowsprit just come even with himself, only a hundred feet away. “Hard a’starboard! Luff your sails!”

  The fast Tempest answered with alacrity and the big frigate plowed ahead until Bliven could read the name on her stern: JAVA. His four after twelves took their shots at the frigate’s rudder, one crashing into the quarter gallery, another smashing a hole in the afterpeak, a third, and he saw it clearly, striking the British mizzenmast and shivering it violently, shaking its topsail like a bedsheet in the laundry. The fourth ball must have passed through, or astern, for he descried no effect.

  Then to Bliven’s horror he saw her heel ponderously, matching his turn exactly, and come alongside him on his new heading. “Brace up! Brace up!” he bellowed, but before his words died away Java unleashed a hellish withering broadside. Eighteen-pound balls crushed into his hull timbers like she was a furniture crate; grape from her carronades mowed down Marines and sail handlers like they were standing before a firing squad.

  He had never imagined such rapidity of fire from large guns. His own gunners were bowled over as twelves were knocked from their carriages. Starboard crews crossed the deck to replace them only to find the guns useless. Bliven’s helmsman cried out as he was dropped by a musket ball, and Lewis quickly took the wheel.

  Turner, the Charleston powder monkey, emerged from the ladder carrying ball and powder, running aft to find a gun that needed them. Bliven’s eye met his for an instant. “What shall I do, Captain?”

  “Leave them in the garland there and get below!”

  Turner crouched to deposit his burden in the garland of the aftmost twelve, stood to stretch out the strain they had been on his back. “Captain, am I doing better?”—and then he was not there anymore. Bliven had seen the result of what cannonballs did to human flesh, seen it lying in heaps on decks slick with blood, but this was the first time he had seen it as it happened, with his own eyes, how it was over in an instant, and seen how far blood could spray and spot everything it touched, seen life itself ebb away and the soul be released, leaving only inanimate flesh and organs lying warm and pliable on the charnel house deck. Sentience was reduced to meat, in less than a second, and it bent him double in a scream: “Turner! No!”

  As Bliven raised himself back up he heard the crushing rapid deep-booming staccato of another broadside, from the Java’s eighteens, now so close he could not see them beneath his rail. But he could feel the Tempest shudder under the pounding, no doubt each ball flying right through the cedar hull. One ball shot away the top of the rudder, severing its connection to the tiller, and suddenly the wheel spun into a blur as Lewis jumped back from it, praying that his hands had not been broken.

  With Tempest now beyond control, his port guns wrecked or off their carriages, Bliven saw the Java begin to wear around to present her other broadside. Had he considered it he would have hesitated, for it was his nature to work at a problem until he found some way through, b
ut that would have been a conceit now. It was without such thinking that he drew his sword and severed the line to the spanker boom and pulled down their flag.

  Java was still so close he could hear the order to cease fire repeated to all her stations, followed by the most galling three cheers he could ever hear. But thank God, at least now it was over. Within a moment davits lowered a boat from the Java, which her sweeps began to pull over. Tempest had no boarding ladder. “Are you all right, Mr. Lewis?”

  “I think so, sir, yes.”

  “Go have a net thrown down to them. Get to my cabin, throw the codebooks overboard. Then bring me a report on our casualties. If we are taking on water, get some able men working the pumps.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As the boat neared, pulled by Marines, Bliven could scarce believe his eyes. Her captain, in a spanking clean uniform, stood erect, one hand bracing himself against the boat’s spindle of a mast. He had last seen him in a powdered wig, and his hair was now swept forward in a Brutus crop, but there was no doubt it was he.

  All came up the net, captain and Marines, and Lewis gestured them toward the quarterdeck.

  The captain touched one of the Marines on the arm, pointed down at Turner’s remains. Wreckage from the yards prevented them from walking around, and he said, “Throw that overboard.”

  Bliven could not bear to watch and turned away. What was left of Turner made small splashes when the pieces struck the water below, and the captain approached. “I am Captain Lord Sir Arthur Kington, commanding His Majesty’s frigate Java.” Bliven turned to face him and Kington’s face went slack. “You!”

  Bliven saluted. “Bliven Putnam, Master Commandant, United States sloop-of-war Tempest. You have beaten us, sir. My sword.”

  Kington took it. “I remember you, from Naples, you were with your commodore.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kington surveyed the quarterdeck, and then down the wreckage of the spar deck. “What kind of slapped-together, made-up tub of sticks did they send you out in?”

  “Whatever they could find to fight you with, sir. Whatever would float.”

  “Hm! Well, she won’t be floating for long, I’ll warrant. I confess I respect your sand, Commander, I will give you that. What are your casualties?”

  “My lieutenant is just coming with his report, sir. Mr. Lewis, what did you find?”

  “Seventeen killed, sir, thirty-five wounded. Dr. Gabriel believes he can save most of them. Excuse me, sir.” He saluted Kington. “Abel Lewis, first lieutenant.”

  Kington nodded at his good manners. “Lieutenant, speak to Mr. DeWest here, my lieutenant of Marines, about starting to transfer your wounded. Mr. DeWest?”

  “Sir!”

  “Follow this man.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He turned his notice back to Bliven. “Well, Commander, did you take any prizes with this vessel?”

  “Two, sir. One in the Windward Passage, and one off Demerara.”

  “Have you any prisoners aboard?”

  “No, sir, I turned them over to the British consul at Salvador a few days ago.”

  “I see. Good. Well, you are the first vessel I have encountered since leaving Bermuda. Your officers and crew will be confined to my cable tier until I can get them ashore. You, as captain, I accord you a stateroom with my officers, if you will swear to me your parole that you will take no action against my men or my ship.”

  “You have it, sir, thank you.”

  “I remind you, your parole is upon your life. Break it and I will hang you.”

  “I have given it, I will not break it. You have shot our boat away, we will have to use yours to effect the transfer.”

  “Of course. Please report to Lieutenant Chads when you have got your men across. My men will salvage what of your stores we can use. We observed you hit several times between wind and water, and, to put it plainly, this vessel is not worth saving. We will let her sink when we are done.”

  The transfer required three hours; Dr. Gabriel saved his chest of medical implements, Gaston his cabinet of Creole spices, and each man was allowed a small clutch of personal items. Once the pumps went still the Tempest settled quickly and quietly, and Bliven could at least say that he was the last man off the ship. He carried with him sufficient clothes to change, and Clarity’s dressing box, but he grieved the loss of his books, for he would have to start a new collection from the beginning. And if he came to sea again, he resolved to bring only the dearest volumes to keep him company, for he knew he could not bear to lose them all again.

  On the Java he was given a tiny stateroom not at all unlike what he had known on the Constitution. Later he found no officer at hand to ask whether he might use their privy, and decided he was not too proud to make his way forward to use the common head.

  Bliven made his way down the gun deck toward the forward ladder, followed by the impassive stares of the British tars, but then was hailed by a voice that shocked him like an electric wire. “Excuse me, Captain, sir? May I have a word?”

  Bliven stopped in his tracks as Sam Bandy stood and faced him—wan, thinner than he had ever seen him, but the soul behind those clear blue eyes was not possible to mistake. Bliven gasped audibly, and Bandy held up his hands. “Excuse me, sir, you do not know me.” It was Bandy’s eyes that conveyed the further imperative that indeed they must not know each other, that Sam’s life might depend upon their not knowing each other. “But I am an American, wrongly taken at sea and forced into impressment. As you are an officer and will be soon released, can you at least get word to my family that I am alive?”

  Bliven swallowed and realized that he must play along. “What is your name?”

  “Bandy, sir, Samuel Bandy, late captain of the brig Althea, taken at sea a year ago.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “South Carolina, sir, the Abbeville District. My wife and two sons, and my mother, are there and must be in despair.”

  White came storming over in his bosun’s hard hat. “Be silent, there! You have no right to address this officer. As you were!”

  “Bosun,” said Bliven, “are you acquainted with this man?”

  White made his respects uncertainly, not sure whether he was called upon to salute an enemy officer, but he deferred to his rank. “He is a suspected Canadian deserter, being bound over for examination when we can get him ashore.”

  “Is your ship not based in Bermuda?”

  “It is, sir.”

  “And he was taken a year ago? Have you been at sea for a year without an opportunity to give this man a hearing?”

  “Our port calls there have been very brief, sir; there has been no opportunity, no, sir.”

  An officer came forward from the wardroom, having noticed the small commotion of their conversation. “Henry Chads, sir, first lieutenant. What is going on here?”

  “Lieutenant Chads, sir,” White made his respects, “this man has accosted the American captain and once again pled his case that he himself is an American and is trying to send word to his family in South Carolina, as he claims, sir.”

  “Mr. Lively, once again you are cruising in danger of a lashing. You have no right to address this officer.”

  “Lieutenant.” Bliven saluted, obligating Chads to return it. “I am Bliven Putnam, master commandant of the vessel you have just taken. In considering the matter before us, may I recommend your tolerance of this man’s interruption? He has not discommoded me at all, and further, I would like your permission to return to him when I can and take his information. If it turns out that he is who he says he is, why, the matter is concluded without further trouble. And if his information does not bear out, and he is still possibly a Canadian deserter, well, there will be your habeas corpus to dispose of him as it pleases your captain. I would be only too happy to assist in clearing the matter, if I may serve.”

/>   “Commander Putnam,” said Chads, clearly taken aback and unsure of his ground, “your dispassion and good sense are very welcome. I can see no obstacle to your interviewing this man and, when you are released or exchanged, taking up his cause to the extent that you are able.”

  “That is kind of you, Lieutenant. If your purser can supply me with something from a writing kit, I believe I have enough pocket money to purchase it equitably.”

  “Oh, no! I can give you pen and paper,” said Chads. “Call at my stateroom in a moment and we will attend to it.”

  “That will do very well,” Bliven acknowledged with a shallow bow. “Now, if you will excuse me, I was bound for your head for a most important errand.”

  “Ha! Of course, go on. Mr. Lively, as you were, you may count yourself lucky to have encountered such an amiable officer.”

  “Yes, sir, Lieutenant.” Bandy made his respects in the British fashion. “I do indeed.”

  As he departed, Bliven’s eyes met Sam’s. Facially Sam gave no hint of his thoughts, but deep in his eyes his satisfaction at having established their ruse shone clearly.

  Returning from the head, Bliven entered the wardroom and found Chads’s door open, three sheets of paper, a pen, and an inkwell all reposing on a stiff tablet. “Are you certain you will not let me pay you for these?” he asked.

  “No, not at all. You should just be able to take the man’s statement—the captain believes him to be a Canadian named Lively, wanted for desertion, but his protests, and the circumstances of his having been taken, caused enough doubt to prevent his summary hanging—you should have time to do that and wash up for dinner in the captain’s cabin.”

  “I will return your tablet and pen and ink as soon as I have done, thank you.” Again Bliven saluted, prompting Chads to return it and become more accustomed to conversation with a prisoner given freedom of the ship on parole.

  As he walked forward down the berth deck, Sam saw him and rose.