Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale (23 page)

The ship lurched to starboard and amazingly he found himself washed backwards onto the ship’s deck. He got up and struggled back toward the wheelhouse, his hands grabbing ropes to pull himself up the slanted deck. He fell again as another wave of water swept over the ship, He would have slid overboard, but someone grabbed him and helped him up. Just as he reached the poop deck, he felt something give beneath him around the sternpost. The next thing he heard was a shout from below that water was coming in. It wasn’t just the normal weeping. Water was actually coming through the timbers. Leaks had sprung up everywhere, and streams of water shot into the lower cargo hold, overflowing the bilge of the ship.

With the wind screeching through the bare rigging and much confusion on deck, Morgan yelled at the first mate to start jettisoning some of the cargo to lighten the ship aft. It was important to find out where the ship was leaking. He ordered all of the remaining canvas taken down. The ship was now scudding along under bare poles carried along by fifty knot winds and a huge following sea. All this time the ship was taking in more and more water.

Morgan shouted, “All hands! Man the pumps on deck! Buckets below!”

Through it all, Icelander remained at the wheel, his knees forced in between the spokes, his feet braced in the wheel box, his thin lips twitching. Morgan went down below to warn the passengers about the leak, many of whom were lying in their staterooms, nauseated in their rolling berths and moaning in misery. He went looking for Eliza. He could hear the water splashing. The force of the wall of water had poured through the companionway into the main saloon. Everything inside had tumbled from one end of the cabin to the other. Lowery and Scuttles were huddled in a heap on the cabin sole in the galley clutching one of the fastened legs of the tables, their teeth chattering. The two Irish priests were now shaking convulsively and down on their knees praying for merciful forgiveness.

“Your men should pray with us, Captain.”

Morgan ignored their entreaties and walked by quickly.

“Join us as we ask the Lord for mercy, Captain.”

Morgan turned back to the two men of the cloth, and uncharacteristically addressed them in a curt manner.

“You pray, Fathers. The rest of us will pump.”

Just then he spotted Eliza. She was lying on the wet cabin floor in the Ladies Cabin, her hands holding onto the legs of the piano fastened to the floor. Like the other passengers, she was sick and barely seemed to see him. Morgan helped her up to a dry spot as the cry ran through the cabin that the ship was sinking. Much of the crew had already started handing up the cargo and throwing it overboard. The expensive American clock cases were on top so they had to be thrown out first. Two hundred cases of these finely made and expensive mahogany clocks from Connecticut went to the bottom before the cheese boxes eventually followed them overboard. That allowed the sailors to access and jettison some of the heavy cargo where the real weight was. Morgan told Whipple to get rid of all the furniture in the saloon. He then gave the order to toss the piano as well. He watched as Whipple took an ax to the finely tapered legs of the five-by-three-foot piano, allowing the sailors to carry the cherrywood case up through the companionway onto the deck. Eliza only managed a hoarse whisper of protest. She lay on the wet cabin sole, the fantasy of a romantic life at sea draining out of her as fast as the seawater was seeping into the ship’s cabin.

Most of the weary cabin passengers were now standing in ankle-deep water as a hastily organized bucket brigade got underway. He rushed topside to find two men already working hard at the pumping station just forward of the main mast, their hands moving the two wooden handles in unison, pumping back and forth frantically, up and down like a seesaw. Torrents of water were being sucked up from the bilge in the bottom of the ship’s hull and spewed forth on the deck, seething and gurgling, as the flow of water escaped through the freeing ports into the ocean. Hours passed, and the ship was now emptied of all the cargo in the upper hold. Morgan noticed with satisfaction that the
Philadelphia
was riding higher than it was before. The pumping continued nonstop at a rate of three thousand gallons per hour. The men worked in shifts, their stringy hair matted with sea salt, black pouches under their swollen, red eyes. Knowing how tired his men were, Morgan drafted some of the more stalwart male passengers, warning them that they “had to pump or drown.”

All this time, the gale and the towering, rolling waves were driving the ship southward toward the African coastline, hundreds of miles off course. Fortunately, the jettisoning of the cargo helped the ship even its trim and ride the waves better. Morgan estimated they had lightened the ship by nearly one hundred tons after a full day of pumping. Whipple was the one who found the leaking area after crawling inside the dark, rank bilge area. Most of the water was gushing in from a small hole, which they quickly packed with old sails and the passengers’ blankets and then plugged the seams in the planking with oakum. Morgan thought one of the ship’s ribs had cracked as well, but he hoped the emergency measures would hold until they could reach England.

The storm began to subside after another twelve hours of heavy seas. Amazingly, they had lost no one overboard, but there were several men who had injuries, including Icelander, who cut his leg. Whipple bandaged him up and then tended to some of the other injuries. Morgan ordered two men to begin replacing the jib boom and the missing yard on the foremast. Down below in the cabin, he found more serious problems. When he walked down the stairs to the wreckage, he was met by a profound silence, punctuated by groaning and sobbing coming from one of the staterooms. Accusatory eyes and pinched cheeks turned slowly to stare at him. He could hear mutterings of displeasure. He felt terrible and tried to reassure the passengers that the worst was now over. Most of the fatigued and weary cabin passengers were blaming him for endangering their lives. In his own cabin he found a teary eyed and stony-faced Eliza. “This was our honeymoon, Captain Morgan. This was our first voyage as husband and wife. It was supposed to be special. Instead, we almost died.”

He moved toward her with his hand outstretched, but she turned her back on him. He had never seen her so emotionally upset. He tried to comfort her again as he reached for her hands, but she recoiled from his conciliatory gesture.

“You threw out the piano! My one pleasure on this hateful ship!” she cried out passionately, her morose and reproachful eyes glaring at him. “I heard you give the order. Why? Why did you do that?”

“Rest and quiet is what you need now,” he said in an effort to reassure her, even as he covered up his uneasiness. “We all need that. We can talk later,” he added with fatigue in his voice. Again he reached out to touch her, but she jerked away and walked to the other end of the cabin.

“You know what they are saying in the saloon, don’t you?” she said with a note of disapproval in her voice. “They are saying you took unnecessary risks. You should have turned back to New York.”

Morgan was shaken to the core. He understood why she was so upset, but all he could think of saying was how much worse it could have been. They had been lucky. He wanted to say it was amazing that the ship had withstood the force of the storm. He wanted to hug her and comfort her. Instead he said nothing, fearing he would only make her more distraught. He cursed himself for not preparing her for the worst. He should have warned her about the dangers, but he hadn’t wanted to scare her away. He thought how young and inexperienced she was. He thought back to the high-spirited young woman who had climbed the ratlines to the top platform. She had seemed to love the ship and relish risk and danger. Now she seemed changed. He slumped into a chair, his body beaten and exhausted, his face in his hands. He blamed himself. He had allowed her to think that each passage would be as smooth and fine as their first together. He had deceived her.

Eliza seemed unaware of his distress as she continued to voice her own anxieties.

“And now we are headed for the desolate shores of Africa, where I have no doubt we will be shipwrecked. If this is to be the life of a shipmaster’s wife, Captain Morgan, I want no part of it.”

19

When the sun finally came out four days later, Morgan was able to shoot the solar meridian and make his calculations. He had carefully synchronized his watch to the ship’s chronometer down to the second, a habit he had developed since that first voyage as shipmaster when he had almost wrecked the ship. The sky was clearing, but the seas were still producing rolling ocean swells. Eliza helped him do the calculations in the cabin with the ship swaying back and forth. He hadn’t dared ask her if she still meant what she said.

He had inquired about how she was feeling after her ordeal of being tossed around the cabin. Was she stiff? Did she have any bruises? She had shook her head.

“I am fine. I am really a very strong woman, you know. Whatever happens you must know that.”

They looked at the charts of the mid-Atlantic together, drawing latitude and longitude lines, discussing their likely location. From the calculations it looked as if the ship was several hundred miles off the African coast to the north of the Cape Verde Islands. Even without much canvas, they’d clocked close to eighteen hundred miles in less than seven days. That was when the lookout at the top of the mainmast called out that there was a ship off the starboard bow.

Morgan grabbed his spyglass and put it up to his eye. Sure enough he could see a vessel wallowing in the waves less than a mile away. She was extremely low in the water. They hadn’t seen her because the waves were still high. Each time the ship’s bow rose, Morgan looked for a sign of the ship. It was hard to see and keep the spyglass steady, but it looked like a ship in distress. The boat was partly dismasted. He could see the remnants of the stump of the main mast. The decks appeared to be covered with people, madly waving their hands.

Despite the high waves, Morgan was able to bear down on the doomed vessel on an emergency rescue mission. He could now make out what was happening. Men and women were clinging precariously to the rigging, hanging over the ship’s sides, and crawling on their hands and knees on a slanted deck. Everyone was sliding and slithering as if they were on a pitched roof. He watched in horror as a fierce gust of wind pushed the foundering ship over on her beam ends as waves crashed over the windward rail. It was clear that ocean water was pouring through the hatches. The masts cracked and the yards snapped as a large wave hit the ship broadside, hammering the cabins. They were close enough to hear the cries of desperation, the shrieking and yelling. He could see dark men and women jumping off the ship holding onto pieces of wood. It was only then that he realized none of the passengers had any clothes on. They were naked, men and women alike, and they had heavy chains around their ankles.

“I warrant that be a slave ship, Captain,” Mr. Nyles said as he looked through the spyglass. “Yup, that’s a guinea ship, Cap’n. No doubt about it. That’s the slave cargo we’re looking at.”

Morgan didn’t reply. He was too horror stricken by the sight of men and women, their wrists and ankles still manacled together jumping into the water to almost certain death. He looked around for any signs of telltale fins. In these warm waters, there would be a danger for sharks. There was not much time left. In fact, they were too late to offer much assistance. The damaged ship began a slow spin downward as if it were caught in a whirlpool. The stern sank first, disappearing under the waves as the bow pointed upward. Morgan looked at the rapidly sinking bow, and then, amazed at what he saw, he raised the spyglass, again pressing it closer to his eye. It was unmistakable. There, underneath the bowsprit, was the ship’s figurehead, a carving of a sea serpent. It was just like the
Charon
’s figurehead.

Parts of the sinking vessel now shot upward, broken spars, hatch covers, pieces of doors, even brown bodies burst to the surface. There were shrieks for help, all in a strange tongue Morgan couldn’t understand. He could see heads tossed about in the waves, hands clutching upward momentarily, then disappearing. The ship was now swallowed up by the ocean. All that was left was floating debris, and about four dozen survivors who were clinging to pieces of the deck or hatch covers as they rose and fell amidst giant ocean swells.

Morgan gave the order to round the ship up into the high waves and wind and lower the quarter boats. The screaming had been replaced with an eerie quiet, interrupted only by faint pleas for help. He and Icelander went out with four other sailors in one of the boats and began rowing through the debris, pulling aboard the survivors who were clutching pieces of the yards and the spars. Their gaunt, anguished faces were filled with fear as they were hauled aboard. Along with the other quarter boat, they were able to save about thirty people before they gave up the search as futile and rowed back to the ship. It was one of the ship’s younger sailors who spotted a board with some writing on it and snared it as they went by. It appeared to be the ship’s name,
Serpente Preta
. Morgan wondered if the
Charon
’s name had been changed or maybe this was another ship owned by Blackwood. Once aboard the packet, he instructed Mr. Nyles to mark the latitude and longitude of this place.

“That will be the only marker these poor souls will ever have.”

With the weather now improving, the
Philadelphia
raised half of its sails to head north toward the Canary Islands and then England. The ship’s crew continued to repair the rigging so the going was slow. Morgan quickly assessed the situation. He had Whipple examine the survivors, who were sprawled out on the deck in the center of the ship. Fortunately there was no sign of disease like smallpox. Many of them had been branded like sheep with a scalding-hot iron. A large
O
was burned into the men’s skin, and the same brand was imprinted on the women’s breasts. A few of them had welts and scars on their backs. They’d been shackled in pairs, and some of them were still wearing leg irons and handcuffs.

Morgan ordered Whipple and Icelander to try to remove these shackles. He told Scuttles and Lowery to make sure that these people were clothed and fed. The still-weary cabin passengers, who had not yet recovered from the trauma of the storm, stood on the quarterdeck looking down in amazement at this surreal sight of survival at sea. Without asking anyone, Eliza helped Scuttles and Lowery bring towels and clothes to the Africans. Morgan could see she was wiping away tears as she moved from one survivor to the next.

He was wondering what he should do with these unexpected passengers when Lowery approached him, his face tense and serious.

“I been talking to some of the survivors, Captain.”

“Some of them speak English?”

“No, sir, Captain. Seems as though I can speak their language. It ain’t exactly the same as what my mother taught me, but it’s similar enough. She was Igbo, and these people must be from the same area. They say they are Ndi Igbo from west of the big river.”

Lowery’s face twisted with anger as he explained what they told him. “They were captured, their villages burned, and sold off by a rival chief to a slave trader called Cha-Cha. Then they marched ten days to the coast with yokes around their necks, gagged, put in canoes, and taken to a place called Whydah, where they were kept in a barracoon with hundreds of other Africans and then loaded onto that ship.”

“How many were on that ship?” Morgan asked.

“I’m not sure, Captain. They told me ‘O hiri nne.’ In their language, that means ‘many.’ I am guessing maybe as many as three hundred. Could be more.”

Morgan shook his head as he pondered this figure of lives lost.

“What happened on board, Lowery? They are without crew or captain. Do they know who the slavers were?”

“They ain’t saying much, Captain, but I think they rebelled and took over the ship. Maybe when the storm rose up and the sailors were busy tending to the sails. Maybe that’s when they escaped and attacked. I’m just speculating. When I asked them if there was fighting on board ship, they didn’t say anything, but some of them have knife cuts and bruises. They say the captain and crew punched holes in the ship’s hull before they fled in the quarter boats.”

“Those slavers left them to drown on board a sinking ship?”

“I believe so, Captain. They ask if we are going to take them home. They keep saying, ‘Ala Ndi Igbo.’ What do I tell them, Captain? They plenty scared. They think all white people want to eat black people and make powder from their bones.”

“For Lord’s sake, Lowery, I hope you told them we aren’t cannibals. Did you tell them they are safe now?”

“Yes, sir, Captain.”

Morgan looked down at these abused and frightened people he’d saved. They were squatting on deck looking around them with fear and amazement. The two Irish priests were blessing each of them as they walked through the small huddled group of shivering survivors, who were clutching towels they’d been given. Eliza and Whipple were ladling out water into tin cups from a wooden cask as they gulped down the water. He was going to have to bring them to London. There was no other choice. His ship was in need of repairs and he had passengers to deliver and a schedule to keep. He estimated they would be arriving in London at least a week to ten days later than their schedule. The Africans were now shouting and singing and Morgan stopped walking to listen.

“Onye na nke ya!”

“O di ndu onwu ka mma!”

“Anyi na-acho ila ala anyi, ala ndi Igbo!”

“They are calling for their freedom, Captain,” Lowery said. “They say to be enslaved is to be part of the living dead and they want you to take them back to their homeland.”

Morgan asked Lowery to walk with him so he could talk to some of them. Thirty pairs of intense dark eyes were now trained on him and Lowery as they stepped into the steerage area. He could feel their attentive stare and sense their fears and desperation. He felt uncomfortable as he looked at the huddled naked bodies with only towels covering their waists, the recently scarred and raised flesh from the branding all too visible. For the first time in his life, he felt in a most profound way the unspeakable horror of slavery with all its indignity and cruelty.

As he walked amidst the thirty survivors, he looked down at the bent back and sharply ridged backbone of one crouched man who sat at his feet. He was a young fellow, probably no older than seventeen, tall and slim, long necked with scuffed, bony knees. Morgan took a closer look. The young man was fondling something in one hand, a talisman, perhaps. He had opened what looked like a small round sundial compass made of bronze about three inches in diameter.

“Mr. Lowery, ask that man if I can have a look at what he has in his hand,” Morgan said. The African, his face suddenly mistrustful, closed his fist over the compass, shaking his head. Lowery persisted, coaxing the man in his language to let the captain see this small treasure. He promised he would give it back so the young man relented and handed it over reluctantly. Morgan’s eyebrows rose as he examined the brass container. He flipped the lid open and focused on the engraved lettering on the inside cover.

“Hold on. What is this?”

He read it aloud with a clear note of anxiety in his voice.

“William Blackwood, Shipmaster,
Charon
.”

“Mr. Lowery, ask this man how this container came into his possession.”

The man’s eyes were now wide with fright. He began to speak in the singsong tonalities of the Igbo language. Lowery translated.

“Captain, he said he found it in the room on the big ship, the prison ship, he calls it, in a room with the big sleeping bed. He said he found it after all the white men fled the ship. I think he means the captain’s cabin, sir. He thinks it will give him power like the white man who owned it.”

Morgan was silent as he turned to look southward toward the horizon. It was as if he somehow expected to see the longboats that had carried Blackwood from the sinking slave ship. He took in a deep breath and pulled out one of his cigars. He thought of Hiram and he became remorseful. Then his thoughts turned to Abraham and he felt a rising tide of anger sweep over him. Ever so softly he murmured to himself, “I will find you, Abraham. I will find you. At the very least, I will find out what that man did to you.”

One day later, it was Ochoa who spotted a sail on the horizon.

“Where?” asked Morgan anxiously as he held the spyglass up to his eyes.

“A estribor, Capitán. Todavía lejos.”

The first mate soon spotted the tiny white sail to starboard. It was nothing more than a speck on the horizon.

“On the starboard beam, sir. She’s got her hull down, Cap’n.”

“How’s she headed?” Morgan asked.

“The same course as us, northeast.”

“How far away?”

“Maybe ten miles, but she’s moving up quickly.”

What concerned Morgan the most in these waters was that the pursuing ship could be a British Royal Navy gunship. The British had been increasing their patrols off the West African coast in search of slaving ships ever since the Emancipation Act was approved by royal decree. He had heard of several cases where English warships had seized American merchant ships and their legitimate cargoes off the African coast. The British Navy claimed “right of search” and “right of seizure” even though the Americans didn’t recognize these rights. He watched through his spyglass as the distant ship tacked once to get to the weather side of the packet and then to resume her line of pursuit. She was still miles away, but a sailor’s instinct told Morgan this ship was coming up too fast to be another merchant ship.