Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale (27 page)

On a cold Thanksgiving Day morning, Morgan and Eliza accompanied his parents and Josiah and Amanda with their two children to the service at the meetinghouse in Lyme. The tall, square building with its steeple stood on a small triangle of land and dominated the town’s Common. The clanging of the steeple bell brought Morgan back to when he was a boy. The whole town had turned out to see the new bell arrive in town on the back of an ox cart, which had come all the way from Boston. He and Abraham had run alongside the cart to try to be the first ones to touch the new bell.

“Going to meeting” also reminded him of sailing amidst a field of icebergs. He could already feel the cold, chilly draft as they sat down in the long pews with the rest of his family. The soaring thirty-two-foot-high ceilings had much to do with the bitter cold temperatures. Eliza was shivering, her teeth chattering as she knelt to say her prayers. When they stood up with the rest of the congregation to begin singing the opening hymn, Morgan whispered, “You know why you’re so cold, don’t you?”

Eliza looked up at him with a quizzical look.

“You are supposed to be cold. It was the intent of the builders.”

He gazed up at the high ceiling. Eliza again looked at him in puzzlement. He leaned closer and breathed into her ear.

“They wanted to test the resolve of the truly devoted.”

Eliza almost laughed, but quickly controlled herself by shooting him a baleful, disapproving glare.

The service went on from eleven in the morning to two in the afternoon, and the church was crowded. His mother told him there were lots of new members thanks to the new young pastor. Some of the other seafaring families were there, the Chadwicks, the Pratts, the Tinkers, and the Lords. Reverend Erdix Tenny, who was around Morgan’s age, spoke from a pulpit reached by a winding stairway with a lofty view of the entire congregation. The sermon was long and the meetinghouse increasingly cold, but the singing of some of the hymns with the accompaniment of the big bass viol and the flute brought back childhood memories for Morgan. The congregation belted out the rousing words of the “Missionary Hymn” and he felt a reassuring warmth inside of him at the sound of these familiar lyrics. It wasn’t that he felt overly religious. It was more a moment of remembering the past. He thought to himself that this choir music was all his family had ever listened to, so different from the refined world in London he was now being exposed to.

After the meeting Abraham Morgan, despite his frail condition, was intent on introducing his packet shipmaster son to all the deacons and their wives. Morgan felt like he was being shown off like a prize bull at the annual fair. He may have softened somewhat, he thought to himself, but his father was still as proud and stubborn as ever. Still as he made the rounds amongst Abraham Morgan’s friends and watched his father’s face, he began to understand a bit more about the man he had once feared, a man devoted to his church. He could see the pride in his father’s face, a man so conscious of his image and his standing in the community. That pride in the way others perceived him was all-important to Abraham Morgan. He had been ashamed of having his sons become sailors, fearful they would return home as penniless drunks, and concerned this would bring dishonor to the family name. And when the family received the tragic news in that letter, old Abraham had seen it as a message from God, a punishment from the heavens. His family had been marked as sinners.

When Morgan ran away from home, it was as if the Devil himself had been mocking him for his inability to control the wayward behavior of his own sons. Now that the rebellious younger one had at last returned, miraculously not as a drunken sailor, but as a successful packet ship captain and a part owner of several of the line’s newest ships, he wanted to bask in some of that prestige. To him his son’s success was a sign that God now approved. The shame had gone and the pride had returned. Shame and pride, Morgan thought to himself as he watched his smiling father shake hands with some of the deacons’ wives. They are close cousins indeed, flip sides of the same coin.

It was only later when he was helping his mother in the kitchen by bringing in more firewood that he heard the reason for his father’s metamorphosis. It was the sale of the farm, she explained. At first, he had been depressed, but then he gradually came to enjoy his free time. He still mostly read the Bible, but he was also reading some poetry by Cowper and some of the frontier novels of Cooper. They had moved in with Josiah and because of his shortness of breath, he was forced to stay in the house. That confinement had meant he spent more time with grandchildren.

“It seems like your father has finally discovered the magic of children, Ely. I am sorry for the way he treated you. Perhaps in his own way, he is too. I am sure he has his many regrets, but I am afraid his stubborn pride will keep him from ever sharing them with you.”

Then she stopped and smiled, adding, “Even though your father can’t express it, I know he’s proud of you. And I’m so proud of you, Ely, for finding such a fine girl to marry. She must love you if she is willing to go to sea with you.”

The Thanksgiving meal was a happy occasion. All of Morgan’s older sisters and their husbands arrived in buggies. Their children screamed and laughed as they ran around the farm, playing hide-and-seek in the tobacco shed. The adults put the small ones on horseback and led them around the apple orchard. The older children pretended they were Indians and began stalking and scaring the younger ones. All the women clustered together in the big kitchen around the stove, chopping and cutting the potatoes and onions on the kitchen table, stuffing the turkey, rolling out the dough for the mince, pumpkin, and cherry pies, and basting the roast pig. Eliza was soon made to feel that she was part of a large, welcoming family. Morgan had never felt happier as his family sat down for the Thanksgiving supper, their heads bowed as Asenath’s husband, Deacon Talcott said grace, giving thanks for the plentiful food and the return of those in peril on the sea. He looked at Morgan and Eliza as he said this, and then closed his eyes, and bowed his head. “And finally, O Lord, let us give thanks for the happiness that comes with reuniting a family.” A resounding amen echoed around the dining room table.

After dinner, Morgan looked over at his mother, who was knitting by the fire, her wooden needles clacking and clicking in a slow, soothing rhythm, the soft yarn spilling to the floor. She was seemingly lost in the simple soothing repetition of one stitch, one purl, and then the same task all over again. Her gaze downward at her knitting appeared profound, meditative, and beyond his reach. He decided to say nothing as he watched her engage in the simple rhythmic process of knitting that he also found strangely calming. The small children were being read to by their mothers, while the men talked about the people they’d seen and spoken to at the meeting, the new hymns they sang, and Reverend Tenny’s simple, but stirring words about driving temptation away.

No one noticed as he and Josiah walked out of the house toward Low Point to smoke cigars as dusk set in. It was there, overlooking the river, that Morgan shared Abraham’s journal with his brother. He told him about John Taylor and how the man had run off as quickly and as mysteriously as he had surfaced. They read the journal together. Josiah remained quiet for a long time after that. Morgan watched him hold the journal, gingerly turning the pages, his face disturbed and intent. He could see that his brother was lost in the words. He turned away to give him time to recover his emotions. He walked to the overlook to gaze down at the river. Two men in a flat bottom pole boat carrying some livestock were navigating the serpentine shallows.

He finished his cigar and then walked back to find Josiah with his head down and the journal clasped tightly in his hands. Morgan asked his brother whether or not they should show it to their parents.

Josiah pondered that thought for a moment, and finally said, “Mother is not as strong as she might seem, Ely. She spends most of her time clacking away with those wooden needles. It’s her way to forget her troubles, forget the past.”

He paused to remove the cigar from his mouth.

“Do you think there be any chance that Abraham is still with the living, Ely?”

Morgan looked at Josiah for several seconds before he answered.

“I can’t say. My mind tells me one thing. My heart tells me another. I suppose that after all these years you would have to say no. It has been too long. What do you think, Josiah?”

“I would have agreed with you all these years, Ely. Ever since we got that letter, I never expected to see him again. But just last month something pretty strange happened. A man introduced himself to me just outside the general store in Lyme. Big fellow, beet-red hair. Had a patch over one eye and kept looking at me strange with that one eye. Asked if I was Josiah Morgan. He sounded like an Englishman. Something about him made me shy of trusting him from the first so I asked what business did he have. He wasn’t going to gull me any sooner than he could catch a weasel asleep. He asked if I had seen my brother Abraham recently, and as you might imagine, I thought it was a bad joke. I told him no, that Abraham had gone to sea a good many years ago and never come home. Then this Englishman looked at me real funny with that uneasy eye and said if for some reason he does come home I should tell him that one of his old mates is looking for him.”

Morgan was dumbstruck by this news. It was both encouraging and unsettling. Who was this man?

“He walked away, but then all of a sudden he turned around and smiled, not kindly either, and said how he’d been here on the Connecticut River once long ago when the town of Essex was called Potapoug.”

A slight chill went down Morgan’s back as he pondered that cryptic clue. An English sailor who knew the name Potapoug, he thought to himself. That was strange. The words of John Taylor came to mind. “Big Red,” he’d said. “A man by the name of Big Red had been pursuing him.”

“You should keep the journal, Josiah. I will leave it up to you whether or not you share this with our mother, but I’m guessing you’ll decide to keep it private for now. No one wants father to start raging again. Until we find out more about what happened to Abraham all those years ago, maybe it is best to stay silent.”

PART IX

I have learned early to understand that wherever there is an Englishman in the question, it behooves an American to be reserved, punctilious, and sometimes stubborn.

—James Fenimore Cooper,
Gleanings in Europe

22

1843

Morgan pulled himself out of his cabin berth, walked over to a small looking glass hanging from the bulkhead, and stared at his face. In the glass he saw a still-youthful man, although he was thirty-seven years old. Not in bad shape, after more than twenty years on the North Atlantic. No gray hairs on his head, a brown, weathered, clean-shaven face framed by well-trimmed whiskers, a few furrows above his nose, but a mostly smooth forehead. As he soaped and lathered his face with the hog-bristle brush to begin shaving, he could hear the creaking of the horse carts carrying hundreds of workers into St. Katherine’s Docks. A chorus of stern dockmasters began shouting out orders for more men. The docks would soon be filled with the familiar squeal of rope and tackle as the men began the labor of loading and unloading cargo. It would be another hot August day on the docks.

As he scraped the straight razor across his soapy cheeks, his thoughts turned to Abraham. After all these years, the horrifying words in his brother’s journal still shocked him. There hadn’t been any further clues. The mysterious Englishman who had approached Josiah in Lyme had not resurfaced. Morgan had concluded that the man must have been either misdirected or misinformed. There had been no sign of John Taylor despite his repeated inquiries in the New York boarding houses frequented by sailors. He had almost given up hope. He had spent the last twenty years of his life on the North Atlantic, trying to solve the mystery of his brother’s disappearance. It still sickened him to think that Hiram Smith was probably dead, all because of his quest. Yet he had continued with his mission, uncertain about his destination, drawn ever forward by some unseen, unknown force.

As a boy, he had always told himself he would find Abraham for his mother’s sake, but she had died in March of last year with the snow still on the ground. His father was also gone. He had passed away in 1839 at the age of eighty-three. He thought of his mother’s quiet, melancholy face. He knew that his decision to go to sea had caused her much worry and sadness. He and Josiah had never shared with her what they knew about Abraham. They both felt it would cause her too much anguish. He still wondered if they had done the right thing.

Then Josiah had written that when they discovered her body in the morning they found the old letter from John Taylor clutched firmly in her hand. He remembered how he had cried that day. She had never given up hope. Maybe that stubborn determination was what was still driving him.

He stared at himself steadily in the looking glass, not so much out of vanity as out of self-examination. His features may not have changed that much, but as he looked into his own eyes, he wondered if he was looking at a stranger. As often happened when he was alone, his thoughts turned to Eliza. They had two children now. The eldest, William, was five years old. Ruth was two. With the children to take care of, Eliza was no longer accompanying him across the Atlantic. The turning point for her came with the sudden death of her father in March of 1837. Morgan had tried to console her, but she would often sink into somber moods and worry about her mother.

After the arrival of William a year later she had told him that she was staying ashore in their home on East 22nd Street. The thought of Eliza brought back the painful memory of their parting before this last voyage. The vision of her tears, and their two small children’s mournful eyes, had stayed with him. She was now pregnant with their third child. He had promised he would be back in time even though he wasn’t sure he would be. She had pleaded with him to stay, but he had refused, saying the shipping line needed him. These first voyages of his new ship were too important, he told her. The truth was he often sailed with a heavy heart, feeling guilt for having left and lost in dark thoughts about himself. He wasn’t sure what he wanted anymore. He was a man who was drawn to the sea. But he was also a father and a husband.

Morgan finished washing up and dressed quickly after brushing his hair and smoothing his coat. His thoughts turned to his business life as he sat down in his chair where a pool of sunlight had gathered. His life had certainly changed beyond his wildest imagination. He was a top packet ship captain, well known and well respected in both New York and London. He picked up the copy of the
Illustrated London News
from earlier that month. The August 12 article had referred to his new ship, which had made its first passage in April, as a “magnificent vessel” and a “superb work of structure and design.” The lavish Saturday luncheon on the ship’s quarterdeck had been well attended by leading English nobility, including the Duke of Sutherland, Lord Blantyre, several members of the
corps diplomatique
from the continent, as well as the American minister, Edward Everett. The event had been a great success and the newspaper reporter had given his new ship a rave review.

Morgan sat quietly and allowed his mind to wander back in time. So much had changed since the arrival of the ocean steamships in 1838, when the
Sirius
and the
Great Western
had steamed into New York harbor. Two years later the steamships of Samuel Cunard, financed by the British government, inaugurated service from Liverpool to Halifax and Boston. A new era had begun. The ocean’s horizons were now filled with the funnels of steamships belching out black, coal-fired smoke. The mails now mostly came by steamship, and the cabin passengers were increasingly lured away from the sailing packet lines by the promise and hope of the quickest way across. Paddle wheelers, particularly the British Cunarders, were often beating the American sailing packets. The steamships could keep up a steady speed and travel in a straight line. They weren’t dependent on the wind.

He thought again how fortunate it had been for him to meet Charles Leslie all those years ago. That friendship had changed his life. This past May after the opening of the annual Royal Academy exhibition, Morgan had been surprised as all his artist friends in the London Sketching Club had voted unanimously to make him an honorary member of their club. It was a heartfelt gesture. He sensed he had won their friendship and their trust, which had touched him. This was the only time in the exclusive London Sketching Club’s forty-year history that, not only had a nonartist been chosen, but an American. He remembered Leslie’s kind words when he made the announcement with all the club members present in his studio.

“Fellow members, we have in our midst a cousin from across the Atlantic who is from another England, a New England.”

“Hear, hear!” they had shouted.

“Although it is not our club’s custom to admit foreigners or nonartists, I believe we should break our rule and admit our own ship captain into this fine family of artists. Are there any objections?”

“Nay. Nay.”

“Then with no objections, I hereby welcome Captain Morgan into the distinguished ranks of the London Sketching Club.”

“Hear, hear! Drinks all around!”

He’d been invited to dinner later that week at Clarkson Stanfield’s house at 49 Mornington Place along with several of the other artists in the Sketching Club. Leslie’s friends from
Punch
, Tom Taylor and William Thackeray, had come as well, as had the prickly but witty Sydney Smith, who was then railing about money he’d lost by investing it in Pennsylvania bonds. He had appeased Smith by bringing him a barrel of Connecticut-grown apples and assuring him that, unlike Pennsylvania, these New England apples were from a solvent state. The imposing, hawklike Duke of Wellington was there. So was the jolly Lord Nanvers, who had recently been commissioning work from some of the club’s artists.

Charles Dickens, who was a good friend of Stanfield’s, had shown up unexpectedly. Dickens was in high spirits as his
American Notes
had won huge acclaim on this side of the Atlantic, and he was just finishing a new Christmas story. His keen blue eyes darted about the room until they landed unexpectedly on Morgan. He remembered how Dickens had started walking toward him, catching him off guard. Here was the man who had just written so critically of Americans, questioning their character, their morals, and their manners in his latest book. Many thin-skinned Americans had taken serious offense at his biting commentary, particularly on the topic of American equality. Here he was coming to introduce himself.

“You must be Leslie’s good friend, the American captain?”

Morgan nodded. “Indeed, I am.” He held out his hand. “Captain Elisha Ely Morgan of the Black X Line at your service.”

Dickens extended his hand with a sardonic smile spreading across his face. “Pleased to meet you. Charles Dickens of the Royal Stinkpot Line.”

Morgan was at first taken aback, but when he looked at Dickens’s grinning face, he realized that the man was being facetious.

“You must excuse me, Captain. I have been wallowing in delightful sarcasm as I am in the midst of writing my American novel,
Martin Chuzzlewit
. I find it hard to restrain myself sometimes. Steamships are not my favorite vessels. I traveled on the Cunard liner to America and I was never happier to come back by sail.”

“So I understand, Mr. Dickens. I read your lively account in
American Notes
of your stormy passage on the steamer, the
Britannia
, with great amusement. I am heartened by the brisk sales of your book as your descriptions of the dangers of traveling by steamship will no doubt mean more business for my shipping line.”

“Indeed,” Dickens exclaimed delightedly, his eyebrows arching upward. “With all the vitriol I have received of late from your countrymen, it is welcome to hear a rare endorsement from an American. My good friend Stanny has told me all about you, naturally only good things. I had expected you to have a mahogany face with a red bandanna on your head and rum-and-water teardrops in your eyes.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Dickens, I hardly ever spit tobacco on the floor.”

The author laughed.

“You seem to have won a place in this small club of theirs, Captain Morgan. Everyone has told me that I must meet you. They all say you are quite the salty storyteller.”

Morgan nodded. “Maybe so, but in that case, Mr. Dickens, you must have considerably more brine in you than I do.”

Dickens laughed again. “I’ll take that as a compliment, Captain.”

“You must come with us on a cruise down the Thames, Mr. Dickens. Leslie has already done this, and he says his friend Thackeray is eager as well. Uwins, the Chalon brothers, and Stanfield have all said they’ll come with me. We will drop you off at Gravesend. Even old Turner may come.”

“Did I hear the name of Turner? What is that madman painting now?”

Slightly startled by this sudden interruption, Morgan and Dickens turned to face the stout-chested Lord Nanvers, who introduced himself to Dickens even as he nodded to Morgan.

“In
The Slave Ship
you can barely see the vessel. Everything is a blur. Do you know that painting by Turner, Captain? I must say I far prefer the realistic maritime scenes of our host, Clarkson Stanfield. What about you, Mr. Dickens? Do you ever understand what Turner is depicting?”

“I would say that paintings are somewhat like human beings,” replied Dickens with the faintest of smiles. “They’re not always what they seem.”

The sound of oak barrels being rolled up the gangway interrupted Morgan’s reverie. He noticed that the pool of sunlight had shifted from his chair to an old chessboard he kept on a small table. He picked up one of the ivory pieces and began squeezing the smooth surface. The worn ivory board had been one of the many gifts he had received from Joseph Bonaparte, the former King of Spain, who had chartered his ship to cross the Atlantic three times. The chessboard had been used by Bonaparte’s brother, Napoleon Bonaparte, during the fallen emperor’s imprisonment on St. Helena. Morgan prized this possession. He often touched these ivory pieces with a certain awe as he tried to imagine the figures being moved around the chessboard by the man who had once conquered Europe. He put the bishop down and picked up the king, and his mind flashed back to the last trip with old Joseph Bonaparte on the
Philadelphia
in the fall of 1839. That’s when he had heard about the French slaver
Le Rodeur
, a story that had troubling similarities with the last snippets of information he had read in Abraham’s journal.

On that September passage, the
Philadelphia
’s cargo hold had been loaded to capacity with crates and boxes of Bonaparte’s treasured art, works from some of the great European masters like Titian, Murillo, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa. Bonaparte was leaving Point Breeze, his estate on the Delaware River, for good. He had fled to America in 1815 when he made his escape from Europe, and now he was returning. They had favorable westerly winds across the Atlantic and the
Philadelphia
’s saloon had been filled with memorable discussions about America. De Tocqueville’s
De la Démocratie en Amerique
had recently been published in English under the title
Democracy in America
. Morgan pointed out how the book’s optimistic views about the country differed sharply from Frances Trollope’s merciless descriptions of America.