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

by James L. Haley

  “An oversight, perhaps.”

  “Tonight, then, we must renew our efforts, dearest.”

  He looked longingly down the length of her form. “After dinner?”

  “Ha! Yes, we must keep up your strength.”

  Shortly in the keeping room they sat down to clam chowder, and then roast goose, with rice and gravy, and sweet potatoes.

  Clarity realized with a start the she had forgotten to inquire into what must be, to him, the most important subject. “What of your ship, dearest? Your Tempest, is she in Boston?”

  Bliven’s blood froze with the realization that they could not have heard, for news of the Tempest could only have reached home five days ago, with them. “No, my love, I came home on the Constitution.”

  As usual, it was his mother whose apprehensions rose first. “And what of your ship, my son, your command?”

  It took him a moment to frame how to say it. “She was lost, Mother, off the coast of Brazil.”

  Dorothea went pale and set down her fork and knife. “What?”

  “We were overhauled by a British frigate with twice our guns. We fought, but the Tempest was sunk. We were taken prisoner, and then several days later that ship was overtaken by the Constitution and sunk, so we were rescued.”

  She laid her hand on his. “Did you lose many men, my son?”

  He glanced up and saw her studying deep into him. “Yes, Mother, I’m afraid we did.”

  “But you are all right?”

  “Yes, I was not wounded.” He felt as much as heard the sigh that Clarity heaved beside him.

  “And how is this for Providence?” Bliven was determined to put the moment behind them. “Our friend Sam Bandy was also a prisoner on the English ship. He had been taken at sea and pressed into service, and was taken with me onto the Constitution. He is on his way home to South Carolina and his family, even now.”

  “I am so glad,” said Clarity quietly. “I am glad that his wife will soon know the depth of relief that I am feeling, at this moment.”

  After a last course of syllabub, and the dishes being washed, Bliven’s father rose on his sticks. “Well, my dears, the excitement of the day has drained me quite completely, and left me ready for bed. Will you come, Mrs.?”

  “I will be along directly. I will just trim the goose for what we can use tomorrow.”

  The keeping room was soon left dark, with Bliven and Clarity alone in their chamber, grateful that his parents had retired early to their portion of the house, and aware that it was at least partly by design to give them privacy.

  In a very few moments they were in bed, the moon visible through the window, and he began exploring her, as he always did, easily imagining it as their first time.

  She luxuriated in his touch and then asked languidly, “Is it not true that Captain Cook was at sea for years at a time, yet he and his wife managed to have six children?”

  “What?” He was amazed, withdrawing his hand from within her night dress and laying it flat on her belly. “How do you come to know of Captain Cook?”

  “At church,” she answered. “We have a convert from the Sandwich Islands, a native but highly educated. He told us of his homeland, which was discovered by Captain Cook, and that set me to reading about him.” She moved his hand up to her breast. “And I am married to a naval officer, after all, so of course I want to learn more.”

  Bliven regarded her deeply. He wanted to nest her in his arms and talk with her endlessly, yet he also wanted to mate with her like an animal in a barnyard. He shook his head slowly, savoring the dilemma of having a woman whose conversation was as alluring as her body.

  “Commander.” Her voice brought him back into focus. “Forgive me, but oughtn’t you to batten down the hatches?”

  “How do you mean?” He had no idea.

  “Perhaps you want to lock the door.”

  “Fire!” Bliven’s own hoarse bellow awakened him with a start, sitting bolt upright in his bed, his chest heaving for breath.

  “Dearest?” Clarity was sitting beside him, her hand on his bare shoulder, pale in the moonlight that streamed through the window.

  He stared at her dumbly for a few seconds, coming back to the present. They had fallen asleep after their lovemaking, and he was conscious of nothing since. “Oh, I am sorry, my love. I woke you. I . . . I suppose I was dreaming.”

  “Are you all right? Look, you are soaked with sweat.”

  “Yes. Yes, it was nothing.”

  “It was hardly nothing. Do you remember it? Can you tell me about it?”

  “No. I don’t know.” The moon had moved noticeably, but it was not yet late. Bliven swung his feet out of bed, crossed over to the porcelain basin and poured some water into it. He washed his face, then soaked a cloth and swabbed his neck, shoulders and chest as Clarity watched him intently.

  He returned and kissed her lightly. “Go back to sleep, my love. I think I shall sleep better after a little walk, get some fresh air.”

  “Of course, dearest,” she assented, but in a voice that she hoped would convey that her alarm was not allayed. “Wrap warmly.”

  He dressed, donning outermost a scarf and coat, and exited quietly, walking toward town until he reached the green. There was little frost, but what there was made the grass crunch underfoot, until he paused to decide which way he would go. A short distance on he regarded the house that unthinking he knew he wanted, two dark stern clapboard stories, and a room added to one side with a door and window, within which a light shone.

  Bliven mounted the three steps and knocked, lightly, rather hoping it would not be heard and he could excuse himself from this errand. He had just backed away when the door creaked open. Lyman Beecher was still as fully clothed as he was during the day, except for the dressing slippers on his feet. “Commander Putnam!”

  “You were on your way to bed. Please forgive me, I should not have disturbed you.”

  “Nonsense, I was having tea. You must join me.” He reached out onto the stoop and took Bliven by the arm, tugging gently. “Come inside.”

  Bliven’s eyes darted around the room, obviously Beecher’s study and sanctum, with shelves crowded with books—books that ordinarily would have excited his curiosity, but of which he found himself vaguely afraid, for they must contain the raw materials for Beecher’s forbidding sermons, his windows into heaven and hell. The chamber was connected to the darkened parlor beyond by a door that stood open.

  Steam rose from a silver teapot that rested on a tray, in company with a tiny pitcher of cream and bowl of sugar. Beecher set a cup onto a saucer and poured. He stepped away and opened a cabinet, and extracted a blackish-green bottle, peculiar for its perfectly round globular bole beneath a long, slender neck that Bliven recognized instantly as rum from the West Indies. “A small fortification, perhaps?”

  Bliven stared in astonishment. “Truly, sir, you are a man of God, yes.”

  Beecher’s face wrinkled up into a smile and deep chuckle, the first relaxed moment in which Bliven had ever observed him. Beecher pulled the cork from the bottle and they heard its tiny gurgle through the long neck as the honey-colored rum spiked the tea. Beecher looked at him, suddenly serious. “I trust this confidence will be respected.”

  “No one will ever know, I give you my word. Oh, thank you.” Bliven took the cup of tea and sampled it, and found the blend surprisingly compatible. After a few seconds’ reflection it made sense, for many people put sugar in their tea, and rum was distilled from the molasses. The affinity was similar. “No fortification for you?”

  “Not tonight. It is true that I am well known as a temperance man, and to be sure, drunkenness is a sin and the cause of numberless domestic agonies. Yet alcohol is a component in many of our medicines, and to you I will confide that sometimes, just a drop of rum in my tea helps me sleep, when I am troubled.”

  “Th
ere are nights when you are troubled?”

  “Many.”

  Bliven felt his façade crumbling. “Then I should not add to it,” he said quietly.

  “My friend, did you come to me because I am your minister? If so I should be glad of it, for that is my job. Won’t you tell me what is on your mind?”

  If Bliven had spent long planning on such an interview as this he would have been prepared, but now he was simply caught up in it and found himself grateful that Beecher was practiced enough to have made him comfortable. “Have you ever been in battle?” he asked at last.

  “Ah, for a man like me, trying to live a godly life and persuade others to it is battle, but of the sort you mean, no, I have not.”

  “Few have, hereabouts. The generation that fought the Revolution are passing away. Some have fought Indians, but that is about all.” He knit his brow. “In our last battle, it was just before the new year, we were challenged and engaged by a British frigate. It was a fierce fight, I fired the last shot, I raked her quarterdeck with grape, killing the captain and others. Reverend, the battle was all but over. I did not have to take that shot. I fired it because my blood was up and I wanted to kill him. Understand me rightly, I wanted to kill him. I perhaps did not know it then, but I know it now.”

  Beecher nodded solemnly. “Let me ask you something very pointedly”—he set his tea down—“and answer me honestly.”

  “Very well.”

  “At the moment you fired that last shot, had she struck her colors?”

  “She had not.”

  “At the moment you took that last shot, did you observe any activity about her deck that would lead you to believe she was imminently to strike her colors?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “So she could have been standing off to make repairs and then resume the fight, is it not so?”

  “Yes, that is true. We had done the same.”

  “Thus it is possible that your final shot, killing her captain and confusing her command, might have been what carried the day.”

  “Yes, I cannot deny it is possible.” Bliven felt his emotions breaking like a dam, and he began weeping. “But that is not why—I did it. I did it—because I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill him, and I did.”

  Beecher leaned close but did not touch him.

  Bliven drained his cup; the tea would have scalded him, but the rum had cooled it. “You don’t understand yet. When he sank my own ship a couple of weeks before, during the battle, I had a boy, Turner, a powder monkey, he was ten years old. He had just delivered a ball and charge to one of the guns. He stood up to go below for another. And then, there was a spray of blood, too fast to see how it happened, a ball took away his hips and bowels. His legs stood there, and his body above, but with open air between them—and then all fell into a pile.” He sobbed. “But he was still as conscious as you or I sitting here, and he lay there, looking about, until he died.”

  “God in heaven,” whispered Beecher.

  “Do you know why he came into the Navy? His parents were dead. His relatives could not afford to keep him, he had already learned to lie and steal and do for himself. On my ship he came to look to me for—” He could not finish the sentence. “When that captain came to take our surrender—he did not send a lieutenant, he wanted the satisfaction himself—he saw what was left of Turner, and he told his Marines, ‘Throw that overboard,’ and they did, the pieces of him. Sir, he was a child, he had hopes, and things that amused him. Despite his bad start, he deserved some chance at life. ‘Throw that overboard,’ indeed! He walked around Turner’s blood to take my sword, and I had to give it to him. My surviving crew and I were taken prisoners onto his ship.

  “Later, when he fought the Constitution, the ships collided. My friend Sam and I managed to get aboard her. The officer in charge of the bow chasers was killed, and the captain ordered me to take over.” He felt his calm returning to him. “And after the Java was reduced, I saw that captain on her quarterdeck. I fired that last spray of grape, because I wanted to kill him.”

  Beecher laid his hand on Bliven’s knee. “My friend, you are too young a man, altogether, to be called upon to retain such terrible memories.”

  “When she struck her colors, I was sent over to take her surrender. I found the captain in the cockpit, laid on a plank; the surgeon was attending him although there was nothing to be done. He was appallingly cut up, and in agony, and I felt no pity.” He hung his head. “None. No pity. What am I becoming?”

  Beecher was silent for several moments, and Bliven knew that he was composing, arranging his thoughts oratorically, intending to persuade, as in one of his sermons. “Commander,” he said at length, “some night, when you are cruising upon what you imagine might be the deepest part of the ocean, some night, at midnight under a new moon when there is no light, no light at all, walk over to the railing and look down into the water. Study it. Contemplate it. My young friend, there are corners of the human heart that are infinitely blacker than the deepest abyss. All men are vulnerable to it. You are prey to it. I am prey to it. The darkness wants us all.”

  “You?”

  “I perhaps more than you, for I am held to a higher standard. Can you not see, placing ourselves in service to the higher Being is the only salva—”

  “Why, good evening, Commander Putnam!”

  Their dual gazes shot up to the door into the parlor as Harriet’s barefoot, nightgowned little form emerged from the gloom.

  “Harriet!” snapped Beecher. “Child, I swear if you ever actually stay in the bed once you are put there—”

  “I am sorry, Father, I heard voices.”

  Bliven caught Beecher’s arm. “No, please allow it.” He stood to his feet and bowed. “Mistress Harriet, I am so sorry if we disturbed you.”

  “Not at all, I am delighted to see you.” She curtsied. “I shan’t keep you, I only wanted to wish you a good evening.”

  “You are most gracious. I hope we will meet again soon. Good night.”

  “Good night, Commander. Good night, Father.”

  “Good night, child.”

  Bliven and Beecher looked at each other, laughing softly at the innocent joy she took in playing at adult manners. “Children,” Bliven sighed. “Children, to raise them, gently—are they not what gives us the hope to keep going?”

  “Our savior said as much, suffer the children to come unto me, for of such are the Kingdom of Heaven.” They were quiet for some moments. “Commander, until this night, I do not think I entirely approved of you.”

  Bliven took that in. “Nor I you, Reverend. Nor I you.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I was grief-stricken at the retirement of my editor at G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Christine Pepe, who managed The Shores of Tripoli so well and got this project well under way. I am once again indebted to Putnam’s president, Ivan Held, who placed this book, and me, in the care of Alexis Sattler, who has proved to be that wonderful combination of editorial eye and probity with a light touch. My thanks continue to my agent, Jim Hornfischer, who brought me this project that is turning out to be one that my whole career’s training has pointed me toward. And thanks of course to my cadre of readers, who are the first to let me know if I left threads hanging out of the story: Craig Eiland, Greg Ciotti, Evan Yeakel.

  FURTHER READING ON THE WAR OF 1812

  Dudley, Wade G. Splintering the Wooden Wall: The British Blockade of the United States, 1812–1815. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003. Tight, scholarly focus on the British blockade.

  Dudley, William S., ed. The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History. Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1985. Well-annotated transcripts of hundreds of Navy documents; gives a reader a better perspective from the point of view of the participants.

  Forester, C. S. The Naval War of 1812. London: Michael Joseph, 1957. A perspective from the British point of v
iew, eminently readable, from the author of the Horatio Hornblower novels.

  Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Scholarly interpretation with exhaustive documentation.

  Jenkins, Mark Collins, and David A. Taylor. The War of 1812 and the Rise of the U.S. Navy. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2012. Richly illustrated and deeply contexted, the best single-volume introduction to the conflict.

  Long, David F. Ready to Hazard: A Biography of Commodore William Bainbridge, 1774–1833. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1980.

  Lossing, Benson J. The Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812 . . . New York: Harper & Brothers, 1869. A rare book but a treasure if one can find it; leaden, as was the style of the time, but exhaustive and documentary.

  Maloney, Linda M. The Captain from Connecticut: The Life and Naval Times of Isaac Hull. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986.

  Roosevelt, Theodore. The Naval War of 1812 . . . Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1987, repr. Fast-paced and often argumentative, as TR himself often was, but written with great feeling and excitement.

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