Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale (17 page)

Morgan saved himself from making an intemperate response by ignoring this openly hostile remark. He left the Old Jerusalem biting his lip in repressed anger. Like many New Englanders he had no love of slavery, but he had no solution either. He knew the southern states would never willingly give up the institution. They were too dependent on cotton and tobacco. Many northerners, particularly recent immigrants, didn’t even want the slaves to be freed for fear that their own jobs would be at risk.

As a New Englander, it hurt for him to admit it, but he had to acknowledge that this vile Englishman was right. America was as hooked and dependent on slavery as a Chinaman was on puffing the magic dragon from his opium pipe. Even the packets played a part in preserving this hateful institution. Much of the cargo going eastward to New York and then on to Europe was the steady flow of cotton from Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans. Cotton filled much of the Liverpool liners’ cargo holds, but at least the
Philadelphia
and the other London packets carried other freight like flaxseed, flour, apples, and turpentine.

Later that same afternoon at the far end of Change Alley, Morgan posted another promotional handbill in a particularly dingy coffeehouse that smelled of rotten fish and spoiled mutton. He sat down to eat a hearty lunch of smoked sausage with several slices of headcheese. He was just lifting a mug of swipes ale to his lips when he thought he saw someone he recognized. It was the red parasol and the glimpse of her hair that caught his attention and caused a tingle of excitement to run down his spine.

He bolted out of the coffeehouse, pushing people aside and knocking pewter plates onto the floor. He ran through the crowd, all the time keeping his eyes on the woman with the parasol. She and a man in a black top hat turned the corner from Castle Court onto St. Michael’s Alley and were walking quickly away from him. She was smiling and laughing just like she had always done with him. That’s when he shouted out her name.

The woman turned quickly like a startled wild animal. As soon as he saw the green eyes he knew it was her. She’d spotted him as well. That much he knew by her hurried reactions. She’d jumped like she’d seen a ghost. She said something to her well-dressed consort, pulled in her parasol, and then the two of them ducked behind a building on the corner. Morgan knew the area well enough to anticipate where they were going. He ran through a courtyard adjacent to the Jamaica Coffee House, then found a small alleyway that cut diagonally over to the street where they were headed. He found them trying to hail a hackney cab.

He called out her name again, but this time she wheeled around and confronted him just as he grabbed her arm.

“Go away!” she cried. “I’m a respectable lady. Don’t ye meddle with me.”

Morgan seemed paralyzed at seeing her again.

“I need to talk to you, Laura.”

“I have nothing to say to ye. Go away. Ye ought to be arrested, ye ought.”

As if on cue, the man in the top hat next to her raised his walking cane.

“Back away, you scoundrel. You have offended the lady!” The man struck Morgan on the shoulders with his cane.

As he felt the sharp sting of the blows, he acted without thinking in a sudden rage filled with confusing emotions. He punched the man first on his jaw and then his stomach. As the man doubled over in pain, crumbling to the street, he stood there transfixed by what he had done. He regretted it. He was about to stoop down and help the man when he noticed that Laura was bolting down the street. He took off in pursuit, catching up with her after she ran onto Lombard Avenue. He pulled her over into a dark alleyway, holding both of her arms.

“Tell me it isn’t true, Laura! Tell me it wasn’t you!”

She gave him a long steady look, her face defiant.

“Truth is, Ely, I never promised ye anything more than what I gave ye.”

“You let me walk into that trap. How could you?”

“I did what I was told.”

“You know they nabbed my old shipmate. What did they do with him?”

“I don’t know nothin’ about that,” Laura replied as she turned her head to look away. “I wasn’t even there.”

“You must know,” Morgan said, speaking more forcefully now. “Where is Blackwood? Where is he?”

“I don’t know. I got nothin’ to say to ye. Now leave me be.”

“Where is he? Is he here in London?”

“I told ye I don’t know where he is.”

“Did you tell him about Abraham?”

“Abraham? Who do you mean?”

“My brother, damn you. You know exactly.”

Laura looked at him with cold, stony eyes and said nothing. Morgan shook her shoulders, his voice cracking with emotion.

“Did he know my brother?”

“I have nothing to say. Now leave me be.”

Laura’s unsentimental stare remained unchanged, but this time she spoke in a strident voice that had the sharp edge of a cutting knife.

“He called your brother a half-wit who got what ’e deserved.”

“What do you mean by that?” Morgan cried out. “Did he say anything else?”

“No, no. He didn’t say more.”

She struggled to free herself.

“Let me go. I ain’t done nothing wrong.”

Morgan pressed his face closer to hers and tightened his grip on her arm.

“Tell me, what does he look like?”

“’E’s much bigger than ye. Dark, frizzled hair and a big firm stomach, a scar across ’is forehead. A brawler with snake tattoos down ’is arms. ’Is upper eyelids . . .” She stopped and didn’t finish.

“What about his upper eyelids?” Morgan asked. “Tell me!”

“’E can hardly see. ’Is eyes are like tiny slits. Almost like ’e ’ad some kind of disease.”

She paused for a moment, and then hardened her voice.

“If you keep pursuing him, I believe ’e will kill you. That much I can tell ye.”

Morgan never stopped looking at her. By now, he had calmed himself and put his anger aside. She seemed sincere. He had never wanted to believe that she had been party to Blackwood’s scheming. Her eyes were moist and he thought he saw some feeling in her face, a touch of remorse. For the first time he thought he detected something of the young woman he had once cared for, but then he shook himself and wondered how he could be so stupid as to trust her. She had lied before and was probably lying now. He handed her a fistful of shillings and walked away without ever looking back. His stomach churned with a mixture of anger and hurt. His heart beat at a rapid rate.

He walked halfway back to the docks, collapsing on a bench in the middle of a small courtyard, and put his head in his hands. He was a fool. He felt like his search for Abraham was hopeless. A huge sadness engulfed him. He felt empty and alone. He pulled out the pennywhistle and without knowing why began practicing some of the notes in “Running Down to Cuba.” It was one of the old tunes Abraham had taught him when they were boys dreaming of faraway adventures.

15

A week later, the
Philadelphia
pulled in at its scheduled stop, just off Portsmouth harbor, ready to board the first-class passengers. With the anchor down and holding, Morgan gave the order to keep the ship’s topsails in their gear to make a quick departure by catching the outgoing tide. He left the quarterdeck area to walk toward the bow. As he went along, he admired the stretch of his new ship’s main deck, the varnished yellow-pine topsides, and the bleached white decks. She was roomy for her length of 132 feet, but still sleek, he thought, despite her thirty feet in width. For him, this new 542-ton vessel was a rite of passage, a sign that Mr. Griswold and his associates now thought of him as a qualified packet captain. He was master of a ship that was on par with the other four packets in the Black X Line, including the newly built
Montreal
and the
President
. The old
Hudson
had been sold off as a whaler like many of the older transatlantic packets. She was now a lowly blubber boat, destined to sink in some distant harbor.

He watched from the junction of the bulwark and the main fife rail the new men he’d hired in London. They were a rough bunch dressed in dirty, ragged canvas trousers and patched-up coats. Hardened, weather-beaten, dried fish-scale faces, their heads covered with woolen caps or bandannas, their arms heavily tattooed and scarred from rope burns. They had the look of Thames scuffle hunters, many of whom had done prison time.

He didn’t like the looks of them, but he’d had no choice. Only one day before leaving London, six of the crew had mysteriously come down with a severe illness that caused a high fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. Perhaps it was something they’d eaten as they’d all been ashore the night before. He’d been forced to leave them behind in the care of a doctor, and he’d had very little time to find replacements. Reluctantly, he’d instructed Icelander and Whipple to go into the East End and talk with the “Paddy West” man about getting half a dozen sailors. He’d stood on the quarterdeck and watched the new arrivals as they tramped up the gangway.

The first mate, who rarely spoke, volunteered his own comment.

“Those are sea ogres if ever I saw ’em, Cap’n. Worst kind of packet rats. They’re sure to give us trouble.”

“That may be, Mr. Nyles, but we need tough men who don’t mind filthy weather. We don’t have the time to be too picky.”

Still, they’d sailed here on the two-day passage down the English coast from the mouth of the Thames and there hadn’t been an incident. They’d obeyed orders even under tough conditions. He’d run up all the sails from the royals to the topgallant staysails and watched with satisfaction as these new men scrambled out on the yards, overhauling the clewlines and buntlines while sheeting in the sails.

“Passengers on the way, Captain!” shouted the whisky sodden Mr. Nyles as he handed the spyglass over to Morgan. He put the telescope up to his eye and watched a broad-beamed lugger with a fore lug and a mizzen meet the waves as the sailors manned the oars. He knew that all of these cabin passengers had taken the horse-drawn coach from London the day before. They would have spent the night in Portsmouth and would now be eager to get on their way. The sight of the well-dressed passengers in the lugger, the men in their top hats and the women in their long, billowing dresses, made him think of Charles Robert Leslie, his wife, Harriet, and their three young children. Leslie was an English painter who had traveled on the
Philadelphia
to New York last October to take a job as an art teacher at the military academy at West Point. As unlikely as it might have seemed, he and this refined English artist had become fast friends.

Morgan’s mind drifted back to the voyage over with the Leslies. It had been a rough passage westward. He remembered how Harriet Leslie had gripped the long table in the ship’s saloon every time the
Philadelphia
lurched or heeled over. He had laughed and told her jokingly, “Let her go, Mrs. Leslie. Let her go. You can’t hold up five hundred tons of ship.” She had responded with a weak smile, still clutching the table at each sudden movement.

Morgan had liked Charles Leslie immediately. He was a tall, striking man ten years his senior with a gracious, easygoing manner. He had a good-natured, boyish face with an ever-present smile that signaled his enthusiasm for life. What Morgan liked the most about him was that he was a positive thinker. The painter never complained about anything or anyone, and his friendly nature immediately brought forth smiles all around. The voyage to America had been a chance for him to reacquaint himself with his family. His parents were Americans from Cecil County in Maryland, but he had been born in England and had spent most of his life there.

As with most of his passengers, Morgan never expected to see the Leslie family again, but they had reappeared at the South Street docks six months later. They hadn’t liked America much and had decided to return home to England. Harriet Leslie had been sick for most of that cold winter and Charles had missed the art world and his friends in London. They had greeted him like a long-lost relative. As much as Harriet Leslie didn’t like ships or sailing, she had told Morgan as she walked across the wooden gangway onto the deck that she was never happier to see the
Philadelphia
. “Take me home to England, Captain Morgan,” she had said simply. “I cannot abide the long cold winters here in America.”

Fortunately, that spring passage back to London had seen ideal weather, with westerly winds allowing for a full complement of sails. Morgan had spent many hours talking with Leslie about England and America. In some ways, that was the glue in their friendship. Leslie, who understood both countries, helped him comprehend some of the British sensibilities. He explained that many of the British aristocrats still viewed Americans as unruly rebels who were uncouth and unsophisticated. They needed to be taught a lesson was the view of many in England. The Americans’ directness unnerved polite society in London even as their plainspoken mannerisms offended. Leslie told him that many of his friends in London high society were delighted over Mrs. Trollope’s scathing review of the lowly state of American culture. Her book
Domestic Manners of the Americans
had created quite a stir and sensation in England, particularly her vivid descriptions of all “those Americans’ remorseless spitting.”

Morgan smiled as he remembered one specific moment on that passage back to England. Leslie had spotted him shouting at some of the men high up in the yards, yelling at them with his hands cupped to raise the stunsails and the skysails. Sailors aloft were busy releasing buntlines and clewlines for the many different sails while others climbed from the foremast to the mainmast, sliding down the shrouds with their strong hands. Leslie had looked up in awe at the cloud of snapping, billowing canvas that now enveloped the ship and the graceful ballet movements of the sailors. He had turned back to Morgan, who was now examining his handiwork.

“I can recognize an artist when I see one, Captain. In London, you will have to come and meet my friends. Stanfield and Turner will wish to speak with you at length, I am sure. You will see that the English are more friendly than you realize. They aren’t all determined to set America on fire. We will discuss the art of sailing a packet ship. How a ship captain can draw as much inspiration from the wind and the sea as any man who ever put a brush to canvas. You will see. I think you will like them.”

To his surprise, shortly after the
Philadelphia
arrived in London, Morgan had received an invitation to Leslie’s house on Edgware Road to attend the weekly meeting of the London Sketching Club. He had walked into the Leslies’ full house around six o’clock to find a noisy group of nine painters sipping punch around the fireplace in the living room. They were all formally dressed in long dark coats, white shirts, and cravats. Morgan had dressed in the same formal attire he used when he went to Change Alley. They had been expecting him.

Leslie wasted no time in introducing him as his new friend, the American ship captain. The names and smiling faces were still a confusing whirl of bald heads, curly red hair, gray muttonchop whiskers, and bushy eyebrows. Cristall, Stump, Uwins, Stanfield, Landseer, Chalon, Bone, and Partridge were the names. Turner couldn’t make it, Leslie said. He had given them the topic for the evening, “friendship,” and the artists immediately sat down by their easels with charcoal and crayons to begin blocking out their versions of the subject. They had three hours to complete their watercolor sketches. Morgan watched the different styles and different interpretations: a shepherd with his dog, a boy giving a flower to a girl, a ship rescue. Then time was up and they were served a modest supper of cold roast beef, potato salad, and pudding, with brandy and cigars afterward. This was followed by a game of charades where one of the artists, a shaggy-haired man named Landseer, came grunting into the living room on all fours. Morgan recognized him as the artist who painted with a brush in each hand. Another artist with a thin face and deep-set eyes, Robert Bone, whom Leslie called Bibbitty Bob, pretended to be a farmer scrubbing a grunting hog. Morgan couldn’t remember laughing as much as he had that night.

His pleasant reverie was interrupted by the growl of his first mate.

“Stand by for boarding, Cap’n.”

One by one, the male passengers clambered up the sides of the ship with the tails of their long coats dangling behind them. The ladies, holding onto their bonnets, were placed in wooden bucket slings and slowly hoisted aboard ship from the small lugger by rope and tackle, a journey punctuated with shrieks and squeals of fearful delight. They were the usual mixture of well-dressed men and women, many of whom traveled with servants. Morgan greeted his passengers at the quarterdeck with his customary warm handshake for the men and a tip of his hat for the ladies. He noted with subtle interest that some of the younger women were wearing revealing low-cut dresses with tight corsets, their hair in fashionable corkscrew curls and braids. The older ladies, with their slightly rouged cheeks, wore black-print dresses with semicircular brimmed bonnets tied under their chins with colored ribbons.

One young woman caught his eye as she sprung out from the wooden bucket sling onto the deck as gracefully as a cat jumps off a chair. She had the look of someone who enjoyed adventure.

“What a lark!” she cried out as she quickly surveyed her new surroundings on board ship. “I felt like I was flying!” She strode with a confident gait across the quarterdeck, a pleated skirt accentuating her tiny corseted waist. She was a small woman, barely over five feet tall, with a thin nose and sparkling amber-colored eyes. Her high forehead and long neck led his gaze down to her bare shoulders and slender figure. Behind her was an older, square, short woman wearing a black dress and a frilled white day cap. Morgan was soon introduced to Mrs. Ruth Robinson and her daughter, Miss Eliza Robinson, from New York. The younger woman’s unabashed gaze and prominent chin suggested a strong-willed, independent character. The older woman had looked at him attentively and asked if there would be storms ahead. He replied that it wasn’t the season for rough, stormy weather.

He was now directed elsewhere and began talking with some of the other passengers. He shook hands with each one as he welcomed them aboard like a proud deacon greeting his parishioners at a Congregationalist Church meeting. It turned out that one of the Englishmen had traveled with him before, a smiling stout-chested man with thinning red hair, George Wilberton, the third Earl of Nanvers. After a momentary lapse, Morgan remembered the robust, cheery-faced man when the English lord mentioned the shuffleboard incident on board the
Hudson
. He introduced him to his new wife, Lady Nanvers. He was taking her to America to show her this new experiment in democracy. They were going to visit Niagara Falls before attending to some business matters in Baltimore. Morgan’s gaze lingered on the flirtatious, fair-haired Lady Nanvers, whose tight-fitted waist, wide low neckline, and bare white shoulders were already attracting attention.