Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale (11 page)

“I’m sorry, Ely,” he said as he walked off with a grin, the two women laughing on either side of him. “These two beauties have given me a glimpse of paradise.”

Morgan walked on, exhaling deeply, fighting his own temptations. He was alone by the time he reached Vinegar Lane and spotted the sign for the tavern, which was hanging outside the ground floor of a blackened brick building with a dark green door. Underneath the sign, a drunken sailor was belting out a lover’s ballad, his sonorous baritone voice rising above the noisy din around him. Across the street there were various lodging houses and brothels where he could hear the sounds of raucous laughter, but a few others seemed to attract a more dignified clientele seeking anonymity amid the squalor. These were small hotels for the toffers who catered to the amorous needs of discreet gentlemen from the West End. He looked up at one of the two-storied houses and caught the eye of a striking young brunette looking down at him, his starved eyes transfixed as he paused for a moment to look at her.

With his mind still on the pretty woman in the window, Morgan stepped inside the tavern and began to assess the kind of place he’d walked into. The air was stagnant and stale, not unlike the ship’s moldy forecastle. The bar was lined with sailors, each with their hands squarely around a mug of ale. Several dusty lamps swung overhead. The smoky blue walls were filled with sailors’ drawings of ships and mermaids, sea chanteys and poems. Sailors were belting out lusty ale songs as they stared dumb-eyed and dim-witted into the blousy, loose tops of the bar maidens delivering them ale swipes.

“I put me arm around her waist

Sez she, young man, yer in great haste!

I put me hand upon her thigh,

Sez she, young man, yer rather high!”

Morgan soon found the owner of the establishment, a portly man by the name of Stillwell, who was behind the bar. His puffy red face and piggish eyes told the story of a tavern owner who patronized his own grog far too generously. Morgan introduced himself as an American sailor off a New York packet.

“What will ye ’ave?” he asked.

“A tankard of swipes,” Morgan replied.

“Not that often that we get Yanks in ’ere,” said Stillwell. “What brings ye to this part of London?”

Morgan asked if he knew an English sailor named William Blackwood, and Stillwell put his hand to his bulldog jaw and double chin as if he was thinking, and then nodded his head slowly.

“Sure, I know of ’im. Bill, yeah I know ’im. ’E comes in ’ere from time to time. A right fine sailor is Bill.”

“Where do I find him?” Morgan asked abruptly.

Stillwell seemed to ignore the question as he reached for a bottle off the shelf.

“Not that often that I get to serve a Yankee tar. ’Ave some of our own grog, our own special recipe. This one ’ere is on the ’ouse.”

He poured the clear liquid into a cup and handed it to Morgan. Ely drank it down in one gulp. It had the flavor of musty gin with a bitter lemon taste. He didn’t like it much, but he asked for another anyway. Normally he would have shown more caution, but he convinced himself that he needed to get on the bartender’s good side. He saw the man beckon one of the girls over and whisper something into her ear.

“How do I find him?” Morgan asked again, his speech now strangely slurred.

“Well now, I was just talking to pretty Susana ’ere and she says yer friend Blackwood may be in the ’ouse. She can take you to ’im. You might be in luck.”

Morgan followed the young woman up a rickety staircase to a long hallway lit by tall brass candlesticks that emitted a thin thread of smoke rising to the ceiling. The old wooden boards groaned and creaked as he took the first steps down the narrow hallway. Susana beckoned him to follow her. She pointed to a room at the end of the smoky hallway and said he should go in there. Morgan hesitated before stepping inside, a chill penetrating his clothes, his head starting to swim, his vision beginning to blur. Something was happening to him. He shook his head and slapped his face, but he still felt like he was sailing into a North Sea fog. With little to no ventilation, the stagnant air hung heavy in the room. A petite young woman sat on the bed with a candle flame flickering on the table beside her. She was stark naked, motionless and voluptuous.

Morgan stood staring at her long neck, firm breasts, and the curve of her hips and suddenly found himself overcome with desire. He hesitated even as he felt the blood pounding in his ears. His heart beat rapidly. At that moment, this was everything he ever wanted, beckoning him. The room was misty now, much like a hazy dream. He had no sense if he had been in that room for hours or even days. She smiled at him as he walked toward her, his arms reaching out to touch her like long sinewy tree limbs. Suddenly he sensed more than saw a figure coming up from behind him, grabbing both of his arms, and then he felt an excruciating pain in his head. Through the dizzying blur, he could see the shape of a large man looming over him. A set of narrow eyes looked down at him from their setting of fleshy eyelids.

A man’s voice asked, “Do yer know this ’ere man, Bill?”

“Never seen ’im before,” a gruff voice replied.

And then everything went black.

The next thing he remembered he awoke in a damp cobblestone alleyway where the smell of urine and filth made him cough and wretch. Everything was a blur. His head throbbed with intense pain. His ribs felt like a wagon wheel had run over him. His eyelids only partially opened. His mind was filled with shapes, colors, and vivid dreams when suddenly a few faces and figures came into view. A young woman was dabbing his head with a wet cloth as she came in and out of focus. It was a different woman than the one in the room, he thought. She was so familiar. How did he know her? The dawn’s first light was streaking through her brown hair, and all he could think of was that she was like an angel with green eyes.

“’Elp me get ’im into the house,” she said.

Two arms pulled him up from behind as two other arms lifted his feet. The pain in his head was so sharp he wanted to scream. He felt like he would soon lose consciousness. He looked at the woman who was leaning over him. He suddenly recognized her. She was the pretty woman in the window.

“Whar ye want to put ’im, Laura?” asked someone.

“Just put ’im in my room fer now,” came the reply.

PART IV

Of all men, sailors shake the most hands, and wave the most hats. They are here and then they are there; ever shifting themselves, they shift among the shifting: and like rootless sea-weed, are tossed to and fro.

—Herman Melville,
Redburn: His First Voyage

10

1829

Dressed in his pea jacket with his woolen hat pulled tightly over his head, Morgan stood by the helm in the grayish black light just before dawn. Watchful and mute, he rolled his first fresh cigar of the night. This had become a habit for him now that he was the first mate. He had given up chewing tobacco. A cigar helped calm and clear his mind, and he felt it gave him a look of authority. First ship’s officer, he thought to himself. It was hard for him to fathom that he was now in charge of the ship’s navigation, the setting of the sails, and the discipline of the crew. He was only twenty-three years old.

Cold and damp, he put his hands in his pockets. It looked like it might rain or sleet. The ship was heeled over sharply under a stiffening late November breeze. He could see the vague figures of the sailors on watch forward of the waist of the ship. He stepped to the windward side and looked down at the shadowy water, and then upward to check the sails, which were now barely visible. One of the topsails was flapping, probably on the foremast. He looked over at Ochoa, who was at the helm. Without a word spoken, the Spaniard corrected the ship’s course, and the protesting canvas quieted down. Morgan once again fell back into his thoughts.

He smiled as he thought about Laura Hawthorne. She had nursed him back to health. If it hadn’t been for her, he felt sure he would have never made it out of that alleyway. She had kept him in her room, bandaged him, and made sure that he got back to the ship. He still had no idea what had happened to him. It was all a hazy dream. He thought he had been drugged. That pig-faced bartender must have put laudanum in his drink. He had heard that this was how some men were shanghaied off the docks in London. He wondered if that was why he’d been drugged, but that didn’t explain why they dumped him in the alleyway. He had so little memory of what had happened. From the bloody gash on his head, he knew that he had been bludgeoned with some kind of blunt object. The bruises and swelling on his rib cage and face implied that he had been kicked and then presumably dragged out into the street. What he did remember was a man with fleshy eyelids. He was leaning over him, a man whose name might have been Bill.

His mind shifted back to Laura. She was somewhat of a mystery to him. He wasn’t sure how she found him there in that alleyway, or why she took the trouble to care for him. He knew very little about her except that her mother had died when she was twelve years old. Her father had taken to drink shortly afterward, abandoning the family. She and her older sister had been left without a home. Her sister had married a tavern keeper and she had taken the maid’s job at a boarding house as her best option. She was a good-looking woman with high cheekbones and piercing green eyes. Morgan found her physically attractive, but he was not emotionally attached. It was certainly not love. Their relationship could best be described as a sailor’s romance, born of necessity and nurtured more by practicality than love. Many of the other sailors had similar loosely defined ties with women in London.

Morgan and Laura would sometimes spend an afternoon together walking along the Thames as far as the London and Southwark Bridges. She was always full of questions about his family and his home. She wanted to know all about why he went to sea, and why he chose to sail with the London Line. He told her about his brother Abraham and his quest to find out what had happened to him. She always seemed interested and wanted to hear more. He revealed to her the puzzling information he had received from John Taylor, and how he was looking for one English sailor in particular, named William Blackwood. She’d said she would ask around the taverns and the boarding houses to see if any of the girls had heard of Blackwood or a ship called the
Charon
.

Morgan was thinking about this as he stood by the helm looking into the darkness, puffing on his cigar. A sudden gust of wind caused him to reach for one of the windward stays to keep his balance. Sea spray splashed his face and his thoughts abruptly shifted to his own career. The last two years had brought so much change in his life. He remembered when he first got the news that he was to be promoted. It was in the summer of 1827. They’d just arrived off Sandy Hook. The captain had given the order to square the yards. One of those fast newspaper schooners had come alongside, the reporter shouting the startling headline that slavery had been legally abolished in New York on July 4, Independence Day. That same afternoon, Captain Champlin gave him the good news that he would be promoting him to second mate. He was turning the
Hudson
over to his brother, Christopher, and Morgan would be serving as one of his new ship’s officers. It had all happened so quickly.

He thought back to Henry Champlin’s last words to him as he stepped off the
Hudson
in New York.

“I suppose you wonder why I decided to promote you, Morgan.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I can tell you that Mr. Griswold thought you were too young. So did my brother.”

“Yes, sir,” Morgan replied glumly as he watched Champlin fold his arms over his chest.

“But I told them I’d observed that you had a watchful eye and a keen desire to know the reason why of anything, two important and desirable traits out on the open Atlantic highway. You were a good sailor man, I told them, with a ready smile no matter the weather, and if we didn’t promote you soon we might lose you to another line.”

Champlin paused to take in a deep breath, then straightened his back and adopted an air of frigid dignity. He looked around to make sure that no one was listening, and then began speaking in a more serious tone of voice.

“But that’s not why I wanted you as a ship’s officer, Morgan. No, the real reason I wanted to promote you is over the years I saw some rare leadership skills in you, most particularly in the way you handled Jack Brown. You showed me then that you were a sailor at your best when the weather was at its worst.”

Morgan’s eyebrows now arched upward in surprised astonishment.

Champlin paused and took his top hat off, running his hands through his thick, silvery hair.

“I never would have believed it about Brown if you had just come to me with that story. I would have just kicked the sorry lot of you off my ship. As it was, I was so startled by what I learned, I came close to putting you in manacles. But later I got to thinking how I underestimated you. Brown was a wicked storm coming in your direction, and like a sailor choosing to ride out the waves with no more than a double-reefed topsail, you found a way to stay clear of him. You showed me what I didn’t want to see about Brown, and you let him reveal his dark side. That’s what I told Mr. Griswold. I told him you had the quick thinking and resourcefulness needed to be a ship’s officer. And he agreed.”

Champlin then looked at him with a skeptical frown, and then a sort of curiosity in his probing eyes, like he was trying to figure out something that puzzled him.

“But I don’t mind telling you, Morgan, you’ve got your fair share of flaws as well.”

Morgan didn’t reply as he shuffled his feet and cast his eyes down.

“From what I’ve heard about your wanderings in those dark alleyways around the London Docks, you’re more foolhardy than I would have expected. I would be careful where you put your feet, Morgan. Like a chance meeting with a snake that crosses your path, you have to know where to step. The world is like a snake, Morgan, whether you’re shipboard or on land. Make no mistake, it will bite you if you give it the opportunity.”

With that parting remark, Captain Henry Champlin had walked out of his life. Those were words he would always remember. Mr. Toothacher and some of the more experienced sailors had left with Champlin. Morgan had watched the old sea dog walk down the gangway and slowly saunter off to the offices of the Black X Line at 68 South Street. He thought to himself how much their relationship had changed since he had first come aboard ship as a cabin boy. That seemed like a couple of lifetimes ago. Champlin had been so stern at first, and then become almost like a distant father, but one who seemed to understand him. He would miss sailing with him.

Ochoa interrupted his thoughts.

“Ya llegamos. Allí está Irlanda.”

There in the distance off to the port side, Morgan could see the faint outline of the Cape Clear lighthouse on the bleak, barren southern tip of Ireland. They steered the ship so as to pass some three miles from the lighthouse and then headed toward the Cornwall coast at the southwestern tip of England. The long vigil of being on watch afforded him plenty of time to think about things, not just his life aboard ship and his time in London, but also his family. The first ray of sunlight had now peeked above the horizon, and the darkness began lifting like a slow-moving curtain revealing a rolling seascape with frothy whitecaps.

Normally the London-bound packet ships traveled well to the south of Ireland so they could clear the western edge of the Scilly Islands. But the favorable northwesterly winds had convinced Morgan to hug the Irish coastline before bearing off and running before the wind.

“Plenty of sheep in the meadow today, Ochoa. We should make good time to the Scillies.”

Ochoa nodded. Frozen drops of rain and hail began to pelt the ship’s decks, and the sound made him think of falling chestnuts dropping onto the barn roof back home. He wondered if he would ever get home again. He had been at sea for seven long years now. The last letter from his brother had made it sound like his father no longer wanted to see him ever again. It seemed that he and Icelander had something in common. They were outcasts who had left the unrest of the land to embrace the risks of the sea. Maybe all sailors were that way, with no place to call home.

“Home,” he murmured softly to himself under his breath. “Home.” He wondered if his long journey to find Abraham was no different than chasing a mirage. He thought of reading
Don Quixote
and smiled as he remembered his tutoring sessions with Margaret Carpenter so long ago. A wave of melancholy overwhelmed him. “Home,” he whispered again.

Ochoa, who was just six feet away from him, turned in his direction.

“¿Que cosa? ¿Me dijo algo?”

Suddenly embarrassed that he had been talking to himself, he responded with the little bit of broken Spanish that he knew.

“No, no es nada, Ochoa. Pensando. Just thinking, that’s all.”

He smiled at the Spaniard and then began walking toward the bow on the leeward side, holding onto the bulwarks, looking down at the green, blue color of the sea. The changing colors of the water never ceased to amaze him, from the clear, welcoming turquoise of the Gulf Stream to the dark, somber blue of the mid-Atlantic. The cresting whitecaps with their splashes of foam and froth made the ocean seem to him like a painter’s canvas. He fell back into his reverie. Where is home? he asked himself. Maybe it was the sea and the ship. Maybe home is internal, ever changing, rooted to the past and memories, but connected at the same time to the people in the present who surround him. He didn’t know. All he knew was that at that moment he missed his family. He missed the apple orchards, the smell of summer by the river, the laughter of his sisters, the jokes with Josiah, the quiet presence of his mother, . . . but at the thought of his father’s scowling face his mind jolted back to the duties at hand. He shook his head and whispered to himself that he would stay true to his goal. He would find Abraham.

The wind was coming up quickly from the north, bringing with it a gray stampede of squalls. Foul weather, he thought to himself, unpleasant, but good packet sailing weather. The sun was now hidden behind the incoming storm clouds. Morgan buttoned up his pea jacket and pulled his woolen hat down firmly over his head. He might have to reef sails sooner than he thought. He walked past the slanted stretch of the ship’s main deck where the animals were kept, acknowledging the sailor on watch as he walked over to the windward side, feeling the cold north wind on his cheeks. The rain and the gusts were now stirring up the ocean. They only had a few passengers in steerage on this trip, twelve people in the saloon, and a cargo of tobacco, beeswax, and hides. He flexed his knees and moved his body forward and backward, feeling at one with the seesaw motion of the ship. He breathed in deeply as he cast away his doubts and felt a surge of self-confidence. This was his first trip as first mate. Even though he knew the captain of the ship would be coming up on deck soon, for the moment he was the commander and the ship was under his watch.

The coast of Ireland was now well behind them and Morgan was surprised as he calculated that the ship had probably covered over a hundred miles in the last eight hours. Moments later, Captain Christopher Champlin surfaced from below and looked up at the men in the yards. He was a man much like his brother, medium height with a head of thick, wavy hair, and dark, perceptive eyes. He was frugal with his compliments and quick to express his disfavor.

“Mr. Morgan, get those men up on the royals and the topgallants. Trim those sails.”

Morgan picked up the trumpet and started shouting.

“Reef the foresail, men. And set the main topgallant close-reefed!”