The Dutch (24 page)

The subdued couple met with the admiral in his study and told him of their desire to marry. The admiral seemed neither surprised nor supportive. He asked his daughter only if this was what she truly wanted and then dismissed her while motioning for Jon to stay. The admiral told Jon he would be in favor of the union if three conditions were met. First and foremost, the wedding must be a Catholic ritual. This was the easiest hurdle for Jon had the same transcended feelings about the religion as had all the past lords of the Droger Land; adjust your religious fervor to immediate circumstance. Jon found no problem in submitting to the Catholic ceremony and doubted that either would his father or family. The second condition was more difficult, for the admiral insisted that one of the Dutch diplomats of noble birth act a surrogate for Jon's father and that all three diplomats must approve the union. John thought they would approve the union but knew this condition left his decision to marry in the hands of others. The final condition would be the most painful, even if all three of the Dutch delegates supported the marriage; the admiral demanded, following a wedding, that Maria be left in the care of her family until travel to the Netherlands became safer.

John quickly visited the Dutch diplomats. Upon hearing the conditions, the emissaries knew that a marriage between these two great noble families could only bind the two Republics closer together. They approved the marriage and sent their most noble member to negotiate the union. Three weeks later, in the main Catholic Cathedral in Venice, Maria Teresa Schraldi and Jon van Weir were married. The ceremony and the celebration were attended by most of Venice's ruling class, including the Archbishop who refused to officiate but gave his blessings to the marriage. To no one's surprise, every prominent astrologist in the city found that the stars were truly aligned for a long and happy union. An announcement was sent overland to be passed from one Venetian Ambassador to the next until it reached the Netherlands. The Venetians felt it a matter of honor that the Baron be informed of the circumstances surrounding his son's wedding before his return to the Netherlands.

Once married, Maria and Jon planned to seclude themselves at her family's summer retreat. It was on a mountain top on the Italian mainland that gave a good view of the lagoon, the city, and the night sky. Except for a few servants to cater to their needs, they would have privacy at the retreat. It had a magnificent bedroom with a pool for bathing and directly above the bed a round portal. It allowed sunlight in by day and doubled as an observatory at night. Both knew that for the first few days of their marriage, they would be more concerned with looking at the stars in each other's eyes. It was a Venetian wedding custom that once the vows were completed, and the guests greeted, the bride and groom would take their leave and they did so following the wondrous ceremony. Jon and Maria mounted white horses, crossed the causeway and rode to their “unknown” destination. Having rained the night before, by the time they reached the mountain villa, the bride's gown and Jon's uniform were splattered with mud forcing them to wash and change clothes before dinning. In that elegant bedroom, these two young chaste people had a long awkward moment, each waiting for the other to begin to undress. They laughed when Jon dynamically threw his long coat on the floor, prompting a procrastinating Maria to admit she needed help undoing the many ties that held her wedding gown and the many layers of under-garments in place. Jon helped her with the ties and before long each stood looking at each other's nude bodies a bit uncomfortably. Maria with all her freedom had lived a rather sheltered existence. There were no brothers in her household and she had never seen a naked man. At first, when she stared at Jon's manhood, she didn't know whether she liked what she saw or not, but she did find it interesting. Jon, who had seen naked women washing themselves in Lake Derick, knew the vision before him was spectacularly different. Maria seemed so much more beautiful than any of those girls he had happened upon. Both Maria and Jon, at the same moment, became more relaxed and excited simultaneous. The couple never did eat dinner that night.

The marriage did bond together two of the noblest families in Europe and created an atmosphere that allowed two of the existing Republican forms of Governments, Venice and the Netherlands, to officially normalize relationships. The diplomats were able to draft a treaty and reach an agreement regarding trade. Both documents needed to be ratified by the new government at The Hague. The pact was important because it granted Dutch ships the use of Venetian ports of call along the Adriatic Sea. This diplomacy meant that the Jachtschip must soon begin its return journey to Amsterdam. During the prior months, the Venetians had put great effort into the refitting of
Abraham's Youngest Son
. A huge crane had lifted the ship out of the water and skilled workers carefully scraped the hull to eliminate the months of sea growth. The fine oak Gustoff's father had used in construction had held up well under the normal attack of sea worms, and none of the planking needed to be replaced. The skilled shipwrights at the Arsenal examined the innovative craft and used their own technology to make a few changes to improve the ship. They had coated the hull with strips of tapered copper plating. It was the way the Venetians protected important ships from sea creatures that always attached themselves to wooded hulls making them porous. The copper strips ran from bow to stern and were overlapped and secured with copper nails. The heavy Dutch sails, built to sustain the heavy winds of the North Sea were replaced with lighter Venetian ones, better suited to the milder wind conditions of the Mediterranean. The Dutch crew expected the clean hull and lighter sails to add some speed to their ship but they were in for a surprise. Once underway they would discover they had underestimated the benefits. With a good wind on the lighter sail, the overlap on the copper plates made the ship hydroplane over the water, dramatically increasing speed.

To Gustoff, Jon's marriage came as no surprise for he knew Jon's feelings after only a few days at the villa. Following the wedding, Gustoff began preparing the ship for the return voyage. He replenished the ship's supplies of powder, shot, and balls from his contacts at the Arsenal and procured the necessary non-perishable marine supplies. With the master's help, he prepared a list of the food and other perishable items needed for the journey. He gift-shopped, purchasing some high-quality ship-building tools for his father and, in what he considered a moment of weakness, some fine Venetian crystal for his mother.

On the day the Jachtschip was returned to the water, Jon met with the Dutch diplomats and was told to prepare a hasty return trip. He was informed that only one diplomat would be returning and would be carrying important papers which must reach The Hague safely. Because of the work Gustoff had done, it took only a few days to acquire and store provisions. The journey again began in darkness, but only after an elaborate farewell at the admiral's villa, well attended by the city's finest families. The admiral presented Jon with farewell gifts including one for the Baron, a captured Saracen sword with the famous Damascus blade. It was a nice addition to the many gifts he and Maria had already purchased for Jon's family. Maria had given him a special gift that morning when she informed him that she was with child and her stars had promised a boy.

Jon knew the decision to leave Maria behind had been the correct one. It was only confirmed when Admiral Schraldi took Jon and Gustoff aside and informed them that the Spanish ambassadors had learned of the diplomacy and the timing of their departure. They could expect Spanish warships to intercept them somewhere along the Italian Coast. He also reminded the young men that the Moors would also be seeking revenge for the loss of their galley. While the admiral gave a formal handshake to the departing diplomat, he gave his son-in-law and Gustoff a warm hug. He promised to send Maria to Jon as soon as possible. While clearly speaking to Jon, he was looking at Gustoff when he said, “If you meet a Spanish or Moorish galley, clear the main deck with your cannons before you let that sharpshooter experiment.” His father-in-law's voice was filled with apprehension.

The first three weeks, after leaving Venice were relatively quiet.
Abraham's Youngest Son
found no awaiting ambush along the upper Italian Coast even after leaving Venetian territory. They did encounter fishing and cargo vessels that posed no threat to their ship, yet Jon avoided any contact. They soon found the Jachtschip was now capable of faster speed than when it began the journey from Amsterdam. With some justification, a beaming Ship's Master believed their ship might be the fastest warship in the world. Jon already found himself hard pressed to not let thoughts about his wife and future child distract him for his duties. He was forced to concentrate of a new predicament developing aboard the ship. The innovative configuration of lighter sails, which caught more wind, and the over-lapping copper plating, which permitted hydro foiling, had one unforeseen consequence: the two expert tillermen were having difficultly steering. In those days, before the development of the ship's wheel, the helmsmen who steered the ship were below deck and relied on commands from above and their own feel at the tiller to steer a ship. The new configurations created greater speed but also increased the action of waves at the ship's stern. The Venetian innovations changed the dynamics of the tiller and placed unforeseen pressures on the rudder. To maintain control, the helmsmen were laboring to develop systems to lessen this pressure. Each time the ship made a major course adjustment; unidentified strains were being placed on the rudder. Until a solution could be found, Jon directed the ship's master to sail as straight a course as possible, making less frequent adjustments for wind and trusting in God to protect the overburdened rudder. As they entered the Ionian Sea, they found the Spanish waiting in ambush. In good wind, they were pursued by a host of galleys, which they easily outran as the rowers on the Spanish ships collapsed from exhaustion. The crew, filled with over-confidence, openly grumbled that Jon had not given Gustoff the opportunity to fire a single ball at the hated enemy. Gustoff's uncommon silence appeared to side with the sailor's sentiment. The now-cocky crew longed to enrich themselves with prize money by attacking other enemy ships during the return journey to the Netherlands. Anything taken during such plundering was commonly divided among the officers and crew. Only Jon seemed to understand it was their primary duty to return the diplomat and his papers safely to the Dutch Republic. He resigned himself to dealing with an over-confident, discontented and evermore greedy crew. As they sailed between Sicily and Malta, they came upon other ships. One, a lightly armed Portuguese carrack, was the largest cargo vessel of the time. The sighting gave the Jachtschip's crew visions of an immense treasure contained within the magnificent oversized hull. All knew the carrack could be easily pounded into submission. Again, Jon avoided contact, allowing nothing to distract their fast pace home. As they entered the Mediterranean Sea, the crew was still brooding over their captain's decisions.

Near Algiers, the strong winds diminished, and the ship began drifting the last eight hundred miles to the Straits of Gibraltar. To conserve stores, the captain ordered the rations slashed and added a responsibility of rowing to crew members working on partially empty stomachs. He ordered the ship's launch and sometimes even the little yawl placed in the water. By day and night, the crew rowed those boats, pulling
Abraham's Youngest
Son
closer to home. It was backbreaking labor for men weakened by short rations, and even the soldiers were directed to take a turn at the oars. As they neared Oran, the winds picked up and they again encountered Arab fishing vessels which had to be driven off by gunfire. When the crew killed the relatively harmless fishermen for sport, Jon admonished them for using more force and ammunition than necessary. The crew's falling morale became a serious problem.

Little did anyone on board suspected that political manipulations on the North African shoreline had begun a chain of events that would provide treasure for the crew and a diplomatic coup for their new country. Since before the fall of the Roman Empire, sailors on North African side of the Mediterranean, were involved in acts of piracy against their European neighbors. The Christian conquest of Spain, a hundred years earlier, forced tens of thousands of devout Spanish Muslims to voluntary immigrate to the North African Coast, rather than accept life under a Catholic Monarch. Over time, with a thirst for revenge, these former Spanish Muslims, with shipbuilding skills, turned piracy into an industry. From bases in Algeria, Morocco, Tripoli, and Tunisia they built semi-independent fleets of war galleys, which wreaked havoc on Christendom from Portugal to Greece. The pirate industry grew even more powerful following the rise of the Ottoman Empire. The North African coastline was now controlled by a handful of Beylerbeys, Saracen Warlords of the Sea, who lived off the spoils of their Christian victims. As true believers, each Beylerbey pledged loyalty and deference to the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul. These independent Moorish admirals made their fleets available to the Sultan whenever the Ottoman Empire attempted naval operations against Christian kingdoms. The Ottoman alliance and the wealth they accumulated from the European coastlines made each individual Beylerbey a power unto himself.

The most famous of these Beylerbeys was Uluj Ali, who had commanded the left wing of the Muslim fleet at the Battle of Lepanto. At Lepanto, he had the only Moorish success. His own flagship, after a fierce hand-to-hand mêlée, captured the flagship of the revered Maltese knights. When forced to disengage, as Christian ships overwhelmed the other Muslim naval wings, he was the only Moorish admiral who organized an orderly withdrawal of ships. His flotilla was the only Ottoman squadron that survived the catastrophe nearly intact. Upon returning to Istanbul, ignoring the magnitude of the Turkish defeat, he presented the captured banner of the Maltese Knights to the Great Sultan. He was appointed an Ottoman Grand Admiral and given a good part of the responsibility for building a new Muslim fleet. His accomplishments in helping to build a new Turkish navy, allowed the Sultan to keep control of the Island of Cyprus, which was captured from the Venetians. With the support of the grateful Sultan, he became the sole ruler of Algeria and Tunisia, motivating the Pasha of Morocco, the second most powerful Beylerbey on the North African coast to seek an alliance. To bind the relationship, a marriage was arranged. The Moroccan Pasha pledged his daughter's hand and a large dowry to Uluj Ali.

As part of the wedding celebration, the wealthy Pasha of Morocco built the largest ship in the world to deliver, with the great pageantry, his daughter and her fabulous dowry to Algiers. The wedding ship was described as a great cargo ship, similar to a giant Arab dowel. The sheer size was a magnificent sight, but its seaworthiness left much to be desired. It could only sail in calm conditions and relied on a single lateen sail for propulsion. The sail was triangular with the leading edge bent on a long yard hoisted obliquely to a tall tower mast. The sail was so heavy it often deflected more wind than it caught. In light winds, the great ship had to be towed by a galley. On a sunny morning in what seemed the perfect weather conditions, with the Pasha's best admiral in command, the giant ship left the harbor at Rabat to deliver the new bride and her dowry to Tangiers. It was escorted by a dozen large galleys and a similar number of smaller galliots. This wedding fleet planned to hug the North African shoreline, making its way slowly east through the Straits of Gibraltar and on to Algiers with its precious cargo. Nature intervened and a sudden freak storm struck endangering the entire fleet.

At the same time,
Abraham's Youngest Son
was entering the western end of the Straits of Gibraltar with an unhappy and underfed crew. Uncertain winds caused constantly tacking and further complaints from the grumbling crew who were absurdly beginning to question Jon's courage. The day before, three different Moorish cargo vessels were allowed to pass unmolested. Letting these ships and their cargoes pass angered the crew even more, as they grew ever weaker from tainted water and smaller rations. A few seamen were by now showing the first signs of scurvy. All felt the ships stores should have been replenished by engaging any of those vessels. As they entered the straight, they ran into the same storm the Moroccans were encountering. The high seas, erratic winds, and driving rain dramatically reduced visibility and the So
n's
lookouts failed to notice they were passing the lead elements of the battered, scattered, and disorganized Moroccan Fleet. The less seaworthy Muslim galleys and galliots were spread haphazardly across the Straight by the rolling seas. Each Arab vessel fought for its own survival.

The storm suddenly blew in from the northwesterly direction of the Canary Islands, and the strength of the storm immediately separated the giant wedding ship and two trailing galliots (small galleys) from the fleet. All were hurled far from the Moroccan coast. The storm forced the admiral to furl the bride's ship heavy sail, but not before it was damaged. The sail's braces and sheets had been snapped by the sheer force of the early winds. Repairs would be needed before they could again raise the sail, if the great ship survived the storm. In a great display of seamanship, the admiral signaled the two galliots to come alongside and had each lashed to a different side of the great vessel. It gave the big ship the stability needed to ride out the storm. When the sun returned, the Moroccan Admiral took pride in his skillful handling of the freak storm, and sensed any immediate danger had lapsed. Informed of a ship on the horizon, he anticipated the arrival of one of his galleys which could tow the giant ship to a safe harbor for repairs. A second report was disturbing; his lookouts reported the spotted ship was probably European and not part of the Admiral's fleet. The Admiral ordered the two galliots unlashed and sent to intercept the intruder. The ship was
Abraham's Youngest Son.

Aboard the Jachtschip, an alert seaman spotted the giant wedding ship silhouetted on the horizon. When the full fury of the storm struck, the two brave helmsmen had risked their lives securing the weakened rudder into a stationary position. The immobile rudder made any change in direction impossible. The pilot climbed the mast and reported to Jon they faced a gigantic vessel and two smaller galliots. He described what he saw on the horizon as a fat mother duck with two ducklings. Jon called the ship to arms and began to improvise a plan. As the crew armed for the inevitable battle, the helmsmen worked franticly to remove the preventer on the rudder.

In desperation, an ax was used to cut through the many layers of rope and the helmsman reported “Sixty degrees!” meaning the ship could be turned the normal sixty degrees to port or starboard as long as the released rudder held.

At the same time, the pilot's voice bellowed from high in the mast, “The two ugly ducklings are paying us a visit!” The Captain called Gustoff to the quarterdeck, and was clear in his command: “Gustoff, the men on the ramp of the first ship, only the men on the ramp, with your starboard guns, at my command!” His tone left no room for discussion.

The two approaching galliots were rushing to carry out their admiral's command with their usual ferocity. Each vessel had about sixty galley slaves chained to their oars laboring to deliver, against the wind, a heavily armed group of boarders. The galliots pilots would attempt to place their bow ramp near the middle of the Jachtschip's deck, initially on the starboard side and soon after on the port. Each ramp would allow seventy or more screaming brightly dressed Corsairs, armed with swords and spears to descend and physically overwhelm the crew of
Abraham's Youngest Son
. The galliots' crews had used this tactic successfully to conquer much larger ships. With the gun crew below on the second deck, only about twenty-five Dutch soldiers and sailors awaited the enemy on the main deck. Each was armed with at least one firearm as well as some kind of bladed weapon. The Captain had lined these men along the starboard side of the deck, with orders to fire their muskets and pistols only at his command. He wanted to evaluate the damage done by the first broadside before directing the swivels and small arms fire to where it was needed. Jon had ordered Gustoff to load the five starboard cannons with small shot, nails, and links of chain to target the corsairs on the ramp. He well remembered his father-in-laws advice as the gun crews under Gustoff's command struggled to raise the elevation on each starboard gun with wooden blocks. When the first Moorish ship came to within a hundred yards of them, the Captain turned the ship slightly and gave the command to fire at will. Gustoff, on the gun deck, could see that the ramp at the bow of the Moorish ships was filled with corsairs and waited for just the right moment. When he fired, the cannonade was spectacularly accurate and the entire mass of corsairs on the first galliot evaporated into a pile of mangled flesh and pieces of bright cloth but the fight had only begun.

“Hold your fire on deck, hard right!” Jon screamed, as the Jachtschip narrowly avoided a collision with the first galliot, whose galley slaves were propelling their dead masters past the starboard side of the Dutch ship. There was too little time to avoid the eminent collision with the trailing galliot approaching the port side. The captain's sharp right command had smashed oars on the second galliot and forced it to misplace their ramp toward the stern rather than the desired middle section of
Son's
main deck. Placing the ramp toward the stern cushioned the immediate impact between the ships and the Dutch hull remained watertight. Gustoff let loose with a broadside from the port guns that decimated the galley slaves and provided a concussion that caused a few of the Corsairs on the ramp of the second ship to fall into the sea. It also bought the crew time to shift its attention to the new threat. Captain's Jon's command could be heard even above the screaming Moors: “Ready, Fire!” as the Jachtschip's swivel guns and small arms killed many of the disembarking Moors. The corsairs, forced to board at the stern, had their momentum slowed by a few Dutch soldiers and sailors wheeling swords and pikes and willing to sacrifice their lives for their comrades. It took time to overwhelm these few Dutch heroes and their sacrifice allowed the other crew members the precious time needed to reload their firearms. After that second shot, nearly everyone entered the melee. The hand-to-hand bladed fight did not end until Gustoff and his gunners arrived from below. The reinforcements forced the surviving Moors to retreat to their galliot which began to drift listlessly away from the Dutch Ship.