Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale (7 page)

“All hands reef topsails,” came the shout from Mr. Toothacher.

The forecastle emptied out and nearly all the sailors on board the
Hudson
were soon aloft in the dark, clambering out on the yards, manhandling the canvas sails and securing them with gaskets. With the ship beginning a more pronounced pitch and roll, Morgan struggled to hold his balance as he leaned out on his stomach on the yard. The wind was whistling through the rigging, the masts creaking as the ship strained to meet the rush of wind and sea. He looked down to see the ship’s lee rail disappear under surging black water and white foam. He held on as tightly as he could. The
Hudson
was now heeling sharply to one side. Suddenly, the sheets and braces were eased to save the masts from splintering, and he found himself dangling out on a swinging yard. If he hadn’t secured himself on the jackstay, he might have hurtled overboard. As it was, he would have fallen if several sailors hadn’t pulled tight the loose brace and secured the yard. Then came the order: “All hands on deck!” Morgan swung out from the topsail yard, dropped down to the mast doublings, grabbed the backstay, and slid down to the deck, all in a matter of seconds. This was relatively easy for him to do on the windward side when the packet was heeled over with the tips of the masts tilting toward the sea.

“Stand by to come about,” cried out Mr. Toothacher using a trumpet so that he could be heard above the wind noise.

Along with several others, Morgan was hard at work on deck unfastening sheets and braces on the starboard side. The yards for the main swung around, the blocks clattering, the canvas thrashing. He could see Ochoa and Icelander fastening the braces on the port side.

“Release foresail!”

Morgan let go of the foresail to help the bluff bow of the
Hudson
swing across the wind. He watched as Ochoa wrestled with the thrashing lines as he adjusted and trimmed the sails. On the new tack, the packet was now pointed on a northerly heading toward Greenland, what some sailors called the uphill road. The storm had blown them way to the south, some six hundred miles off the coast of Ireland. At this rate, with the wind and the waves on their nose, the best they could hope for would be to make thirty to forty miles a day. Just then, Morgan felt the hot breath of someone standing closely behind him. He turned abruptly, and jumped back, as Mr. Brown thrust his bushy black whiskers into his face, his beady eyes glistening with malice.

“You’re on my watch tonight, Morgan.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” replied a startled Morgan.

“Where’s Smith?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“You tell that two-bit nancy boy to report to me, ye hear!”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

That night Morgan and Hiram were ordered to report to the pump station just forward of the mainmast. All night long, they pumped ship, their hands moving back and forth in unison as the bilge water from the belly of the ship spewed out into the ocean.

6

On that rough westward passage, Morgan often thought of Old Jeremiah’s warnings. He took more notice of John Dobbs, the hollow-cheeked man with the droopy jaw. It wasn’t just the worry in his eyes and the unsmiling face. Dobbs kept looking over at Morgan as if he wanted to tell him something, but when Morgan returned his gaze the man would look away. One morning, Morgan was walking the deck on his watch when he spotted Dobbs looking over the side, his clothes hanging loose on his body like baggy old sails. The man seemed to be in a trance as he looked forlornly at the jagged landscape of whitecaps before him.

Without warning, Dobbs grabbed hold of one of the topsail halyards and climbed up onto the waist-high bulwark on the side of the ship. Morgan began to move toward the sailor to try to say something, but the foaming seawater sweeping the decks prevented him. A tremendous wave crashed over the side with a thundering roar. All he could do was to catch a proper handhold and brace himself for the impact of the next wave. To his horror, Dobbs looked back at him with eyes flat and expressionless and then, zombie-like, he leaped over the side without making a sound. It took Morgan several seconds to realize that John Dobbs had jumped into the ocean.

He shouted in desperation, “Man overboard!” Morgan quickly turned to go aft to man the falls of the quarter boat, the waves sweeping him down the decks with such force he could barely keep his footing.

The helmsman turned the wheel sharply. “Bring the ship’s head round!” the first mate yelled out. Slowly the
Hudson
turned back into the wind, pitching and heaving as the vessel hove to. By this time, several sailors had come to Morgan’s assistance, lowering the quarter boat so that it was hanging just above the surging sea. The clouds of flying spindrift made it difficult to see. Several men finally spotted the man’s head floating above water, rapidly coming toward them in the waves. Morgan positioned himself with both feet squarely in the middle of the boat and threw a rope at the bobbing head approaching.

“Catch it, man. Catch it!”

The rope had reached its mark, but Dobbs seemed unable or unwilling to grab it. Morgan could see his head and his fear-stricken eyes disappear below the waves and then pop up again. Dobbs floated by and Morgan swung the rope again and this time the man grabbed it. He called on him to hold on.

“He’s got it,” yelled Morgan as he started to pull Dobbs in. Hand over hand, he pulled the frightened sailor through the water until he could haul him onto the edge of the quarter boat. At that point, Morgan yelled, “Man the falls! Pull us up!”

Slowly the quarter boat was lifted upward toward the bulwarks. Morgan kept pulling underneath the limp shoulders of the gasping man until most of his body was safely inside. Finally, as the quarter boat was raised even with the deck, Morgan succeeded in hauling the shivering man into the boat. He spotted Captain Champlin and the cluster of cabin passengers that stood behind him. He caught a glimpse of the cold, hostile eyes of Jeremiah and Curly Jim. Dobbs was pulled onto the deck of the
Hudson
, wrapped in warm woolen blankets, and taken into the cook’s quarters, where Scuttles tried to pour hot soup into him.

Morgan stayed with the cook to help keep the man warm. Dobbs was in shock, shaking and shivering uncontrollably. Morgan and Scuttles started to undress the emaciated man, stripping him of his shirt, and it was then that Morgan saw something unexpected. There on Dobbs’s bare back, framed by his two protruding shoulder bones, was a large tattoo with two anchors intertwined. Beneath it was written something oddly familiar: “Bosom friend and Brother.”

Morgan looked at these words on the man’s back, letting them slowly resonate in his mouth. Scuttles tried to feed him more pea soup with a spoon, but the man vomited it up. The cook made him drink some water and he fell back onto the table. He tried to speak, but he opened his mouth and no words came out. Dobbs’s skin was a deathly blue. Morgan couldn’t take his eyes off his back. How strange that he knew those words. Something connected him with this man. What was it? At that moment, the first officer came down below to check on the nearly drowned man and told Morgan to go and get his clothes in the forecastle. Scuttles volunteered his observations.

“Ain’t no way about it, Mister Toothacher. Sir, from the looks of Dobbs, he’ll have to bunk here in the sick bay. If we put him back in the forecastle, he’ll either die on his own or they’ll do it for him.”

Above decks, the ship was rolling and pitching, the winds gusting over thirty knots. Morgan was met in the foredeck by the ugly, threatening stares of Old Jeremiah and Curly Jim. They seemed to be the ringleaders, but there was a motley group who stood right behind them. Morgan had been around these sailors long enough to know that the mood of the crew was in a dangerous state.

“You the Devil, ain’t ye,” cried out Curly Jim with an ominous tone in his voice. “You saved Jonah, the sinner. He should have drowned in the sea.”

Morgan didn’t answer. He jumped down into the dark forecastle and walked toward the area where Dobbs kept his clothes. The same group of six sailors who’d met him at the foredeck followed closely behind. They stood there holding two lanterns as he collected the small bundles of clothes and personal effects around Dobbs’s bunk. He saw a letter that he had been writing and decided to put it in his pocket. He could feel the men’s cold, hostile stares, and knew that trouble was ahead.

It was Old Jeremiah who spoke first.

“The man needs to be thrown into the sea.”

“If you won’t do it, we will,” another cried out.

Old Jeremiah then continued, his voice sounding like a prophet. “Jonah fled from the Lord. He must pay the price. Those are the Bible’s teachings. It is the Lord’s will.”

A low murmur reverberated in the gloom.

“Aye, aye, ’tis the Lord’s will.”

Morgan looked at the weathered faces of these older men who were his shipmates, the scruffy beards and the sagging, haggard cheeks. Despite oil skins and boots, they were soaked, their faces and beards streaked with water. The anger and fear in their bloodshot eyes told the story. Morgan had no weapon. For a brief moment, he thought of trying to run through this gauntlet of men. Instead he spoke up in a stronger, more authoritative voice than he thought possible.

“Maybe this man is a Jonah,” Morgan said, looking Curly Jim squarely in the eye. “That’s not for me to say. It’s the first mate who wants Dobbs’s possessions and I’m here to collect ’em. Now I mean to do what I was ordered to do. If you have a quarrel with that I reckon you will want to take that up with Mr. Toothacher.”

Morgan put his shoulders down and stepped into the press of men, who now seemed intent on seizing him. They moved forward, arms outstretched like a lynching mob. It was the huge form of Icelander who emerged to pry him away from the clawing clutches of this small mob. At six foot four, he towered over most of the other sailors. They all knew that his calm, cool demeanor masked a powerful anger that they were all afraid of.

At that moment, a trumpet sounded and a cry went out from above deck. “Icebergs ahead! All men on deck!” The sailors sprang from their berths, buttoned their pants, grabbed their caps, struggled into their jackets, and bolted up the stairs of the forecastle companionway. As suddenly as that, Morgan and the Jonah were forgotten. He scrambled up on deck with the rest of the men, only instead of going aloft he dropped off Dobbs’s possessions below decks in the galley area and made his way back to the chaos on the foredeck.

The crew had been battling heavy winds for days now, but no one had bargained on anything like this. On its northwesterly course, the ship had sailed into a field of icebergs. They were now north of 40 degrees latitude but still far enough away from the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and the Labrador current so as not to expect to encounter the southerly drift of ice fields. All around them they could see these large mountains of ice, some two hundred to three hundred feet high, rising out of the water like white cathedrals. Most were still half a mile away. The danger was clear, but eager to make up lost time, Champlin pressed ahead, ordering Mr. Brown to station lookouts aloft as well as on deck.

That night Morgan was placed on the foredeck watch. The Pleiades were still visible on the eastern horizon and the Dipper beckoned to the north. He looked back at Icelander, who was on the opposite side of the ship, a thin speck of light from the lantern highlighting his face. Watchful and mute, he stood there in the dark, his jacket flapping and fluttering in the wind. Over the years he’d gotten to know more about this mysterious man of so few words. Icelander, or Olaf, had grown up as a fisherman’s son. His father had drowned in a storm, leaving only him and his mother. When she eventually remarried, her new husband constantly beat her. One evening when his stepfather raised his fist, young Olaf came to his mother’s defense. The fight ended with his stepfather falling backward, hitting his head on a ship’s anchor with a fatal thud. That was not only the end of his stepfather but also the end of Olaf’s life in Iceland. His mother told him to leave home and never come back. He never understood why she didn’t want him to intervene. He eventually found his way to Denmark and finally to London, where he’d shipped on board one of the Griswold ships.

Morgan looked at the square pale face of the melancholy sailor with the thin lips and the strange, white eyelashes. He wondered about his own family. His decision to go to sea left him isolated like Olaf Rasmussen, a wandering sailor who, like a piece of driftwood, never comes farther inland than the shoreline.

As the early morning sky lightened on the horizon, Morgan had run up the ratlines to help with the foremast topgallant sail. The air was strangely filled with the smell of mountain lake water, not the salty smell of just the day before. All around the ship were white mountaintops peeking out of the ocean waves like frozen pyramids. It was from his high perch that he spotted something enormous and bluish. It was just a vague shape concealed in one of the black cresting waves. At first he thought it was a shark or a whale. He rubbed his eyes with his fist. It was still there, a pale, translucent blue object coming directly at them. He didn’t want to believe what he was seeing. One of the bluish edges of the object broke the surface. It was sharp and jagged, and then he knew for sure what it was. Morgan sounded the alarm, which was echoed back to the mate. The helmsman spun the wheel around so that the ship narrowly missed the sunken block of ice, its uneven edges scraping up against the ship’s sides with a wrenching sound. Had it occurred an hour before in the dark of the night, nothing could have saved the
Hudson
. The underwater iceberg would have punctured a hole in the bottom of the ship’s hull. Champlin approached him later and personally thanked him. It was the first time that had ever happened. The captain had actually spoken to him and congratulated him, something he rarely did with the younger, less experienced sailors.

“What do you think, Morgan, does prayer bring good luck?”

“I don’t know, Captain,” he replied, somewhat surprised by his question.

Champlin pushed his hand through his disheveled head of hair as he looked out at the cold blue ocean. He seemed strangely shaken.

“One thing’s certain about this life, Morgan. It comes to an end. Out here in the ocean, the Creator reminds me of that fairly regular. Thank you for your vigilance.”

With that comment, he walked away.

The next day dawned with bright sunlight and light air. Looking back to the north, there were no signs of the lethal icebergs. The forecastle was alive with storytelling and chanteys. The dark tension of the past few days seemed to have lifted, and Morgan joined a small group of sailors on deck who began singing “Fire Down Below.” He watched as Ochoa pulled out his guitar and began playing, his calloused, ring-covered fingers strumming the chords lightly and quickly. Along with Hiram and Icelander, Ochoa had become one of his closest friends on the ship. He supposed the common bond they shared was that they were all the favored targets of the second mate’s rages. They had banded together to help one another. He didn’t know much at first about Ochoa, but then when he realized that the Spaniard understood and spoke more English than he let on, he came to hear the man’s tragic story. When he was only ten years old, his family traveled from Cadiz to Cuba. Their ship was only one day away from reaching Havana when a pirate ship boarded them. All aboard were shot or hung. He had watched as his parents were killed, shot at close range while they were on their knees. His sisters were taken by a few of the men on board the prize ship and he was forced to join the pirates. He never forgot their fear-stricken faces just before they were pushed down the companionway into the hold.

It was then, amidst much foot stomping, singing, and yelling from the sailors, that Morgan remembered the letter that he had stuffed into his pocket. He’d asked earlier about Dobbs, the jumper, and he’d been told by another sailor that the sick man was still talking incoherently in a semiconscious state. He went off to a dark corner on the other side of the livestock shed and sat down to read the letter he’d picked up from the man’s bunk area. He was always happy when he could slip away and read in seclusion, and this was one of his hideouts. There was no way to describe the extent of his astonishment as he unfolded the piece of paper. The handwriting was shaky and jagged, the lettering uncertain, a sign of the writer’s weak and trembling hand. Dobbs had not finished it, but that wasn’t what left Morgan speechless.