Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale (5 page)

Mr. Brown walked around Morgan, inspecting him like he would a farm animal or a Negro slave. “Nobody wants you, it seems, boy.” He spit out a wad of tobacco juice over the side, then turned to his fellow officer in what seemed like a rehearsed bit of choreography. “I reckon I’ll do you a favor, Mr. Toothacher. I’ll take the young pup this time, but I don’t mind saying I don’t like his name. From now on I’m going to call him Hayseed.”

Morgan’s last memory of his former life was looking back at the fading outline of Staten Island as the ship coasted by the highlands of the New Jersey shore. He gazed ahead of him at the sandy strip of land called Sandy Hook and then out toward the wide ocean that lay beyond. He could see angry whitecaps and what looked like some rough seas ahead.

During those first few days, Morgan was sick as a dog. The water swashed over the decks and over him. The second mate amused himself by tormenting him, forcing him to walk on the deck as the ship was rolling. Morgan staggered like a drunk man, falling down on the slanted deck repeatedly. Mr. Brown beat him with the end of a rope and told him to stand. When he couldn’t get up, the mate threw buckets of cold water over him. Morgan was desperate for someone to save him. He looked over at the first mate, who was watching them as he walked by. Morgan thought for sure that Mr. Toothacher would put a stop to this abuse, but he just looked the other way.

The shipboard cruelty wasn’t just confined to the mates. Some of the veterans jeered at him, but one old sailor kindly offered to give him a remedy for seasickness. Morgan was sent to the center of the ship where the farm animals were kept and came back with the sailor’s medicine, a pail of fresh sheep dung. The old veteran told Morgan to wipe this all over his face, and if he did that, he would never get sick again. Morgan did as he was told, and soon the entire ship was laughing at him, holding their noses as they avoided getting too close to him.

A few days into the voyage, some of the sailors were muttering that heavy weather was coming. He remembered gray clouds and green seas. The ship had fallen into a deep valley between two ridges, hiding the horizon. Just then came the order from the second mate to shorten sail.

“All hands aloft! Reef the topgallants! Reef the topsails! That means you, Hayseed!” Brown lunged at him and pushed him up the ratlines.

Morgan clambered up the shrouds as best he could, squirreling his way through the lubber’s hole, the less risky way to climb to the topmast platform. The captain was driving the ship hard with all sails and gear taut and straining. Morgan looked around him at the hundreds of feet of heavy rope lines that wove their way through the masts like a spiderweb, and wondered how he would ever learn their names. The
Hudson
had more than fifteen sails, most of which were fastened onto the stout yards. Each of the three masts was divided into three sections. At the deck level was the lower mast, to which was fastened the topmast, which in turn supported the topgallant mast. That much he already understood. However, he knew nothing about the pulleys and blocks that ran to other blocks on the mast, and then further down to a row of belaying pins around the foot of the mast and extending out to the bulwarks.

He continued crawling upward, slowly and awkwardly, his hands clutching the shrouds, his feet treading on the ratlines. He couldn’t look down. It was too frightening. The wind felt much stronger now, and the roll of the ship was quite pronounced. His heart was pounding. He could hear the second mate yelling at him. He stepped out onto a rope slung under the yard, gingerly pulling himself out onto the swaying topgallant yard eighty feet or so above the deck. His arms were wrapped around the yard so tightly he could feel the pain from the pressure on his biceps. He had a knot in his stomach when he heard another order.

“Ease the sheets! Haul on the buntlines and furl!”

All this was a foreign language to Morgan. He watched as another sailor on the adjacent mast started gathering in the sail. He had never even helped furl a square sail before, much less one eighty to ninety feet above the deck, but he set about his task as best as he could. He clumped together the sail, pulling at the heavy canvas from all directions. Suddenly, the first mate’s voice was directed at him.

“Hayseed, gather the bunt up onto the center of the yard.”

Morgan had no idea what the bunt was. He looked around and below to see if anyone would help him. There was no offer of assistance. Hiram was sent aloft to show him how to furl a topgallant. Reluctantly, his bunkmate took on the role as his teacher. Hiram showed Morgan how the buntlines and the clewlines were used for hauling up the foot of a square sail, and how, once the sail was furled, a gasket was used to tie it in place. Despite the helpful instruction, Hiram offered no sympathy.

“I reckon the second mate’s gonna beat you when you get down on deck. I’m glad I’m not in your shoes.”

When Morgan landed on deck, Mr. Brown boxed him in the ears and set him to work cleaning off tobacco stains on the decks. On that first voyage as the new cabin boy, Morgan was already getting used to being kicked and cuffed by every bully on board, particularly the second mate. Sailors held the belief that the more punishment they gave a cabin boy, the better sailor he’d become.

The worst job he was given was to clean up after the farm animals on board. Day after day, Mr. Brown chose him for this lowly task. Most of the packets had an outdoor area on deck in the middle of the ship where they kept a cow for milk. The sheep, pigs, ducks and hens were all destined to end up on the table for the cabin passengers. Morgan mostly showed deference to Mr. Brown, but one day he made a big mistake of talking back when the mate took away the small wooden shovel he had been using to scoop up the manure.

“I need a shovel to do that job,” Morgan said with some conviction, his fists clenching. “At home on the farm we do this kind of work with shovels.”

Brown locked eyes with Morgan and Ely noticed that they were twitching.

“Is that so, Hayseed? You hear that men? Hayseed here is making demands.”

Brown grabbed Morgan by the ear with one of his large, calloused hands.

“What do you think this is, Hayseed? Your ma’s flower garden? We’re here on a ship. We don’t use shovels to clean the pigpens. We use our hands. That’s why we need a farm boy like you. So start cleaning up the pig shit. Then you can move on to the sheep dung, which we know you like to wipe all over your face.”

He laughed and pushed Morgan into the pen, knocking him down onto a mound of wet, oozy manure. As he heard laughter from the men nearby, Morgan’s spirits sank even lower.

4

Shivering with the November cold and wet as he helped reef the main topsail, Morgan wondered what he was doing in the middle of the Atlantic. The bell had just struck as it did every half hour. He still had several hours to go before the end of the first watch at midnight. The mast swayed from one side to the other while he hauled out the reef tackles for the topsails. He climbed higher out onto the more challenging and dangerous topgallant yards, resting for a moment on the crosstrees before climbing higher to tend to the royals. He was slightly more comfortable climbing the ratlines and wrestling with the sails now, but it still terrified him to look down.

He was now in his second week at sea, and he had gotten to know his way around the 106-foot-long ship. The lower hold below the waterline was where the heaviest freight was stored. Above that was the upper hold area, where fine freight and the low-paying steerage passengers went. He had already been sent below to the bleak steerage compartment to distribute wooden buckets to the seasick passengers. It was a dank, windowless, enclosed space some twenty by forty feet with stacked, narrow, wooden bunks made of rough, unplaned boards. He remembered the distressed faces. The smell was putrid, making him want to vomit. He had quickly dropped the empty buckets, scrambled up the ladder to get on deck, throwing his head over the bulwarks as he emptied his stomach into the ocean.

One time he had peeked through a glass skylight into the passenger cabin below the quarterdeck at the stern of the ship. The captain was lounging over a decanter of wine. This area was called the saloon. There through the skylight he had seen finely carved mahogany pillars, polished tables, and sofas. One of the stateroom’s ventilated doors opened out onto the dark saloon area, and he could see a small berth with shiny silk curtains, a washbasin, and some drawers. A woman’s figure disappeared into another cabin, a forbidden territory for sailors. Only the captain and occasionally the first mate mingled with the first-class passengers. Mr. Brown had yelled at him before he could see much of anything else.

The ship’s masts were now swaying back and forth, making him dizzy and sick. To keep himself from falling, he grabbed hold of one of the lee braces for support. With his other hand, he pulled his pea jacket tighter around him even as he shuddered in the cold wind. The winds had switched to the north and it had started to sleet. The yard he was perched on was already icy and slippery. Down below him on the frozen, ice-covered decks, he could see men slipping and falling as they tried to make their way forward. He thought of his mother and the warmth of the kitchen fireplace, the reassuring smells of freshly baked bread and roast turkey, his three older sisters giggling as they ladled a creamy filling into a pie crust. This work aloft in the rigging was frightening enough in calm seas, but in stormy weather it was deadly.

Morgan wondered if this was what could have happened to Abraham so many years ago, falling, falling. He looked down some eighty feet to the deck below, then to the ship’s plunging bowsprit, diving, slicing the water like an axe splitting a log in two. Suddenly, he felt as if an unknown force was pulling him downward. He clung to the slippery, cold jackstay, his feet resting precariously on the foot rope slung under the yard. A destructive urge seemed to be pulling him downward and telling him to let go.

Morgan shook his head, calmed himself with deep breaths, and followed the example of some of the old veterans who controlled their nerves by singing. He would conquer this wave of fear, he told himself. He thought of the terror he’d experienced when those British Navy sailors had fired on him and Abraham. He thought of the angry, scowling face of his father. For some reason, his mind flashed back to that first year after Abraham left home. He and Abraham had always gotten into trouble, letting out the neighbors’ pigs, or scaring the girls next door by pretending to be Indians on the warpath. With Abraham gone, the pranks seemed less fun and he had gotten into fights. After one of those scraps in the center of town, one of the deacons, Squire Ridley, had come out of the meetinghouse to break up the fight. News of that shameful rebuke made its way back to the Morgan farm and Ely was given a thrashing by his father. The old man had met him with his whipping belt in hand. He marched him into the barn where he was forced to drop his pants and lean over. He whipped him until the skin was raw and he cried for mercy.

“Maybe that will beat the freewheeling nature out of you,” he had yelled. The memory of that beating and how it had stiffened his defiance of his father strengthened him now. He started to climb down the ratlines, more confident than before. If he couldn’t control his fears, he told himself, the only alternative was to return to the Connecticut River Valley to work as a farmer. That image of a life shackled to a horse-drawn plow helped him overlook the new hardships he was enduring at sea.

On that first voyage, Morgan soon got used to a sparse diet of salt beef or pork and weevily sea bread. In fact, the
Hudson
’s cook, whose name was Scuttles, was the first to befriend him. He told him that if he ate a pound of cold salt beef he wouldn’t get sick. Scuttles had escaped from a Maryland plantation when he was eight years old. He’d then found a life with the small Negro community living on Staten Island. When he got older he realized that there were few good opportunities for him in New York. Like so many colored men, he’d ended up choosing the sea as a way to escape the severe discrimination he faced ashore. Generally speaking, the sailors accepted most everybody once they were on ship, though when they didn’t like the food, some of the sailors called him “that no-good Guinea nigger-cook.”

Morgan had never come into close contact with a black man before, so with food as the primary incentive but curiosity a close second, he befriended Scuttles, whose real name was Samuel Cuttlefish. Hiram had the same idea. As a result, the ship’s galley and pantry became a meeting place for the two boys, a refuge from the mates and the constant abuse they received from many of the other sailors. It was there as they ate their burgoo porridge after their four-hour watch, among scattered pots and pans, that Morgan and Scuttles heard how Hiram came to be on the
Hudson
.

“Is this your first voyage with Captain Champlin?” Morgan asked as he took a spoonful of the thick oatmeal mush covered with molasses, which the sailors called long-tail sugar. Hiram shook his head. He was a Penobscot boy from Thomaston, Maine. He confessed that he had left home when he was only fourteen years old. His mother had remarried and his stepfather used to beat him. One day down at the docks in Thomaston, he had spotted a small trading schooner that was sailing to New York. He decided to sneak on board where he hid in a dark corner in the bow of the ship. They never found him until they were well out to sea. Once they arrived in New York, they booted him ashore.

“I didn’t know where to go,” Hiram said. “I had not a cent in my pocket and no clothes neither.”

“What did you do?” asked Morgan.

“Spent a couple of nights sleeping in a fish vendor’s cart down by Pine Street. That fishmonger discovered me when he came to hitch up his horse. He kicked me from here to kingdom come. Some sailors came and yanked me away. Took me to see Captain Champlin, and when he found out I was a New England boy, he put me to work on board the
Cincinattus
. He says New England boys work harder. That’s why he hired me. That was two years ago, and now I’m on this new ship.”

Morgan told Hiram his own story, about how he had met Captain Champlin. His parents had gone upriver to Middletown to a baptism, and he had slipped away and taken the ferry over to Great Meadow. A new ship was being launched at Hayden’s Yard. Champlin had singled him out from a group of boys, and offered him a berth if he could get to New York. Then he told his new friend about the cryptic letter from John Taylor.

“The letter didn’t even say for sure that my brother was dead or how he died.” Morgan hesitated. “Something strange there, don’t you think?”

Hiram shrugged as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Could be, but then maybe not. What sailors do and what they say don’t always make sense. Your brother could be lying senseless in a street somewhere. Maybe he’s shipwrecked somewhere off the coast of Africa. You’ll probably never know, but if there was foul dealing, I understand you need to find out who done it.”

Those conversations helped create a tie between the two cabin boys. Morgan even confessed to Hiram his love of reading and produced the book of poetry that Mrs. Carpenter had given to him. He hid the book under his mattress. If any of the other sailors saw him reading, he knew it would create an ugly scene, not just name calling, but possibly a fight. That was another reason why the friendship with Hiram was so important. Morgan sensed he had found a new ally who could help him learn the ropes, and he sorely needed one. The tobacco-chewing second officer was always looking for him to clean the farm area or to lower him from the catheads over the side of the ship to chip rust from the anchor.

When Mr. Brown first ordered Morgan to slush down the masts, he replied he didn’t know what that meant. The mate flew into a rage, hitting him with the belaying pin. Morgan felt his hands drawing into fists as he thought about fighting back. Then he heard Hiram’s voice cautioning him, and he thought of how Josiah had always counseled him never to cry out when their father was in one of his rages. Mr. Brown handed him a heavy two-gallon bucket filled with thick gravy, which Scuttles had prepared from the remnants of the boiled salt beef. He then ordered him up the rigging.

“If one drop falls, Morgan, you’ll be licking it off the deck. I want the masts to be thoroughly greased so the topsails, topgallants, and royal yards can be hoisted up and down easily.”

Biting his lip in humiliation, Morgan held onto a rope attached to the pail with one hand, twisting it around his wrist. It was so heavy he felt like his hand would separate from his arm. With the other hand he pulled himself up the ratlines, squeezing through the narrow lubber’s hole, hauling up the heavy bucket behind him. The slush-filled pail scraped against the mast, tipping back and forth, its foul-smelling contents almost spilling over the edge. Gritting his teeth, Morgan pulled the bucket up the shrouds. His heart pounded as he kept climbing past the topgallant yards up into the royals, refusing to look down. The higher he climbed up the swaying mast the colder he felt. He held on tightly to the shrouds from his precarious perch, more than eighty feet above the deck on the three-foot-wide crosstrees. There he was able to set down the slush pail and gather his strength.

Mr. Brown sent Hiram up to help him. The two cabin boys were busy slathering the masts with the thick grease when they first heard a commotion below them on deck. It sounded like a fight. They had worked their way down the mast so that they were now perched just below the upper topsail yard, about fifty feet from the deck. They could hear stomping and an angry voice shouting, “I’ll give you the toe of my boot and knock you all the way into the middle of next week.”

“What’s going on, Hiram?”

“Sounds like Mr. Brown is having a frolic with one of the sailors,” Hiram replied dryly. Morgan looked down through the spiderweb of the rigging until he spied the blue pea jacket and the black leather hat of the second mate, hurling abuse at a big sailor and shouting into his face.

“Answer me, you great white monkey!” he yelled as he rained blow after blow on the big man’s back with the belaying pin. Morgan could recognize the sailor by his yellow hair tied back in a ponytail. He was a great hulk of a man with wide and broad shoulders, a big square face with thin whiskers, pale blue eyes, and thin lips that rarely smiled. His name was Olaf Rasmussen. Everyone just called him Icelander because that’s where he was supposedly from. The story was he’d gone to sea because he’d killed a man, or at least that’s what some of the crew whispered behind his back.

Morgan watched, mesmerized as the shipboard drama unfolded directly underneath him. Another sailor came to Icelander’s defense, a small dark-haired man who spoke little English named Luis Ochoa. He was known as the Spaniard. He was a man near thirty, thin and bronze-skinned with a drooping black moustache and heavily tattooed arms. Morgan had already heard about his reputation of being quick with a knife. Some of the other sailors claimed he had once been a pirate sailing out of Havana. The ship’s officers didn’t like these two foreigners. Some of the river men took a special dislike to sailors who weren’t from New England.

The second mate was striking both men now. Morgan could see the flat top of his hat and the thrashing motion of the belaying pin. Suddenly, the Spaniard drew his sheath knife and was about to lunge at Mr. Brown. Morgan held his breath and began to panic as he felt the rope holding the slush bucket slipping out of his grasp. Hiram had warned him that this could happen. He tried in vain to wrap it around his wrist, but his hands and arms were thick with grease and the rope kept slipping. He knew he couldn’t hold it any longer.