Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale (4 page)

Ely looked at a group of burly men heaving and hauling thick lines as they pulled their ship into dock. Maybe one of those men knew John Taylor. He ran up to one of them to ask if he’d ever heard of Abraham Morgan or John Taylor.

The bearded sailor, who towered over Ely, looked down at him with a scornful expression.

“Can’t say that I have, son. No, no Taylors or Morgans on this ship, boy.” Just then the man paused and started stroking his beard.

“Now hold on a minute, you say Taylor?”

“Yes, yes. John Taylor,” Morgan said excitedly.

“Why don’t you try over there,” the man said, pointing to an adjacent ship. “I hear tell they got a Taylor on board.”

Ely’s heart was beating rapidly as he rushed over to the ship. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. Maybe Abraham was alive after all. Taylor would know. The letter to his mother had been so cryptic, its words so puzzling. Now the mystery would be solved.

Those few moments of euphoria were soon cut short by the awful sound of deep belly laughter coming from behind him. He stopped and looked back at his helpful informant, who was now laughing and joking with his shipmate, pointing in Ely’s direction as he made fun of “that stupid country bumpkin boy yonder.”

“Need some stichin’, do you?” the man asked. “That why you lookin’ for a tailor?”

“Where’s your mother, boy?”

Ely turned away, suddenly feeling small and alone.

PART II

We were again set to work, and I had a vile commission to clean out the chicken coops, and make up the beds of the pigs in the long-boat. Miserable dog’s life is this of the sea! commanded like a slave, and set to work like an ass!

—Herman Melville,
Redburn: His First Voyage

3

On a cold, drizzly November morning, Ely took the first tentative steps onto the gangway of the
Hudson
with great trepidation. Like many landlubbers, he was nervous and worried. The newly built 360-ton ship was sailing to London that same day on its inaugural voyage, and the seriousness of what he was about to do was just beginning to dawn on him. He looked around as he clambered aboard, awestruck at the smooth decks and the hundreds of feet of heavy lines that extended upward like intricate cobwebs. The ship was 106 feet long, about four times as long as it was wide. There were several hatches that led down below, but otherwise the decks were open spaces framed by the green bulwarks on the sides of the ship and the sweeping curve of the rails at the stern. The nine passengers in cabin class, all finely dressed, had already arrived with their crates and boxes. They were clustered together on the quarterdeck. Bundled-up stevedores wearing stained and patched woolen sweaters were loading barrels of apples and hogsheads of turpentine into the cargo hold at the center of the ship.

There were ten other sailors who came aboard at the same time he did. Some of them were dandied up, wearing tarpaulin hats with long black ribbons streaming behind them. Others had uncombed hair with untrimmed beards. They wore an assortment of stained woolen jackets and dirty canvas trousers that looked and smelled slept in. Morgan swung his small duffel over his shoulder. He suddenly had the urge to turn and run as fast as he could. But then he thought, he had no place to go. That sobering thought kept his feet anchored to the deck.

At that moment, he saw the wavy black hair of Captain Champlin emerge from below decks. He remembered how frightened he had been at Fickett’s shipyard on that first day in New York. He had been told to go there by a man at 68 South Street. He had waited for hours standing by the sawpits, watching men with two-handed saws slice through huge oak beams. Showers of sawdust filled the air. He had asked several workers if they knew Captain Champlin, but no one paid much attention to him. He was about to give up when he felt a firm hand on his shoulder. He had turned around quickly, almost jumping out of his pants at the sight of a big-headed man with a black top hat, bushy, arched eyebrows, and a large, protruding jaw. For one frightening second he had thought Champlin was his father and he had come to take him home. Instead, he’d reassured him that he was a lucky sailor to be going out on the maiden voyage of John Griswold’s newest ship.

“You know the difference, Morgan, between this here ship up on the ways and a transient ship?”

Ely had shaken his head.

“Quick voyages with no delays in port. That’s the difference between this ocean packet and a transient ship. Sailing on a schedule, that’s what people want now, son, no matter what the weather or the season.”

Morgan had smiled weakly.

Champlin had patted him on the back as he pointed to the large looming sides of the ship up on the ways. The hull, made of live oak, had just been painted; some of the workers were now varnishing a strip that ran across the middle, from bow to stern. Riggers were busy installing the three masts.

“No shipping firm is providing regular packet service yet from New York to London, and Mr. Griswold aims to do just that. This will be his flagship. Imagine that son, we’ll be haulin’ the mailbags from New York to London and back again with all the important correspondence and all the news! I reckon we’re like a stagecoach on the Atlantic highway. A floating bridge from New York to London, you might say.”

Morgan had nodded as Champlin laughed and slapped him on the back. With the lecture over, he had then sent Ely over to the sawpits. For the next month until the ship was launched, he had worked at the shipyard, sleeping on the floor of a temporary work shed along with many of the workers, and some of the sailors who would soon be his close companions.

All that flashed before him as he saw the captain greet his cabin passengers with a ready smile and a handshake. As Ely surveyed the flushed deck of the
Hudson
, he turned to look at some of his new shipmates. He already knew some of them from the yard. Most of them were Americans from New England. Some of the men near him were laughing about a girl named Molly. Most of the sailors loved to talk about the grog shops they’d been to, the quantity of spirits they’d drunk, and the saucy women they’d encountered ashore.

“Like a cat that’s ketched a mouse, that g’hal can’t help thievin’, but this time I fooled her,” said a snub-nosed, red-faced man.

“How so?” asked a bald-headed sailor, whom the others called Curly Jim. “Why, I hid my money in my boots. I didn’t give her any opportunities.”

“That so,” said Curly Jim as he pulled out a quid of tobacco. “I reckon she gave you plenty more than just opportunities.”

“What do you mean by that?” replied the leering sailor.

“A case of the French pox.”

The men laughed and hit one another, continuing their banter and carousing. Morgan’s unease grew with every step he took onto the ship’s deck. He could see his shipmates were a hardened, tough group of men, most of whom were still drunk from shore leave. He jumped suddenly at the sound of some commotion behind him. Crouching up against the bulwark, trying to make himself as small as possible in case there was a fight, he watched as two sailors started to push and shove each other.

“You stole it! That’s where you got the money, you hornswoggling scalawag.”

“I ain’t stole nothin’.”

A short, muscular man with eyes that gleamed like black river stones was accusing another with a pockmarked face of being a thief. Pretty soon the two men were exchanging blows, and the surly sailors were cheering on the fight. A curly haired man wearing a blue jacket and a black leather porkpie hat, who was checking off the sailors’ names by the foremast, quickly stepped in to break up the scuffle. He lunged at the men, beating them with a belaying pin, and kicking them after they fell down. Morgan remained crunched up against the bulwarks, terrified by this display of raw brutality.

“Go forward, you two no-account rum-holers,” the man with the porkpie hat said as he kicked the two men again. “You two nancy boys can kiss up in the fo’c’sle.”

The other men all laughed at this homosexual reference, and the curly haired man continued his lecture as he squirted tobacco juice on the two men’s shoulders. This was Morgan’s introduction to the ship’s second officer, Jack Brown. He was a short, stocky man with a red face framed by black whiskers. He had piercing gray-black eyes that darted about the deck. His broad frame, long arms, and hairy chest made him look like more of an animal than a man.

Brown’s lips turned up slightly at the edges, giving his mouth a cruel expression. His lips were stained with tobacco juice that trickled down his stubbly chin.

“I want no more scuffling, men. If you have a mind to make trouble, I’ve a right to flog anyone I’ve a mind to. Now throw your bundles in the fo’c’sle. This packet sails with the tide. Remember tide and time wait for no drunken sailor.”

With that vivid demonstration, Mr. Brown squirted another stream of tobacco juice, this time in Morgan’s direction, narrowly missing his head as the squishy, brown gob flew over the side of the ship. Morgan caught the man looking at him with a predatory stare that seemed to hold little hope of good tidings to come. He cast his eyes downward, as he could already tell that Mr. Brown was the kind of man who expected others to submit to his will. He thought of his father at that moment. He followed behind the sailors as they walked to the front of the ship. Morgan watched as the men heaved their wooden chests and duffels into the dark hole in the deck, which was the entrance to the fo’c’sle. It was too late to run now.

Cautiously he stepped down the steep ladder, his hands gripping the man rope tightly until his feet finally touched the floorboards. He groped his way forward into the darkness. He felt clammy and uncomfortable, overwhelmed by the smell of old ropes and tar, mixed with the musty odors of unwashed men and alcohol. Someone lit a lantern. Finally he could see where he was going. Amid the boxes, duffels, and bundles of bedding, the old hands greeted one another with bursts of laughter, slaps on the back, and gruff calls. Someone else tried to light another lantern, even as another silhouetted figure bumped his head, cursing at the darkness. Morgan put his hand into a black corner of his new sleeping quarters, reaching out until he found a bunk with no mattress. He started to throw his canvas bag onto the simple wooden bunk when a voice cried out.

“Don’t you put your bundle thar’, you worthless critter. Move away!”

Startled, Morgan jumped back. The unseen voice continued.

“You better pull foot out of here now or I’ll slash the hide off you.”

Morgan stammered an apology. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t see anything.”

The light from another passing lantern revealed a boy his age, or slightly younger, who was stretched out on the wooden planks. He had auburn hair, freckles, a round face, and a snub nose with a few stubs of hair growing from his dimpled chin and over his upper lip. In the flickering light, he was glowering at Morgan as his hand clutched a piece of wood.

“This here bunk is mine,” he said defiantly, lifting up his makeshift club.

“Where can I throw my duffel?” Morgan asked, backing away quickly.

The boy shrugged with cold indifference, and then pointed upward at the stacked bunk above him.

“Just stay out of my way, you hear. You can’t be too careful in a ship’s fo’c’sle. Some of these old tars are a bunch of sodomite codfish and there’s nothing they like better than to land a young mackerel.”

Morgan quickly dismissed this as an exaggeration and decided he would try to be friendly even if this gesture wasn’t reciprocated. He clambered up into the upper bunk. Right over his head was a piece of glass inserted into the deck to provide light. He thought to himself that at least he might be able to read on sunny days. He had brought along a tattered copy of William Cowper’s poetry which included his favorite, the comic ballad
John Gilpin
. The book had been given to him by his old tutor, Margaret Carpenter, a year earlier. He looked down at his new bunkmate.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Smith,” was the curt reply. “Hiram Smith.”

Morgan nodded to himself. “My name is Morgan, Ely Morgan.”

The next frightening encounter Morgan had was with the first mate, a big man with a powerful chest, arms like tree trunks, a squashed nose broken down the middle, and a prominent beard covering most of his face. His name was Tim Toothacher, a Connecticut man from Middletown who had sailed since the age of thirteen to China with the old-timers. He was a firm believer in young sailors learning the hard way, or as he would say, “coming in through the hawse holes and not through the cabin doors.”

It was Toothacher, with his chest thrown out in a disciplined military manner, who addressed the entire crew once they’d all come aboard. He and the second mate, Mr. Brown, divided the men into watches that first day. At the end of the selection process, Morgan was alone on the deck, a solitary figure and last to be chosen. He suddenly felt the unfriendly stares of his new shipmates. Who would have him? The first mate or the second mate? Did he care?

“What’s your name, boy?” the burly first officer asked. “I don’t think I know you.”

“Morgan, sir, Ely Morgan.”

“Morgan, Morgan.” He paused with a smile on his face. “Or did you say Organ?” At that, he began to laugh at his own joke, and most of the sailors joined in. “What do you say, my hearties? From now on we’re calling this young bumpkin over here monkey, the organ boy. Maybe I’ll just baptize ye monkey boy for short.”

Morgan’s face was petrified by this humiliation, but there was more to come. The second mate with the black porkpie hat strode over to him with a hostile swagger and began picking at his clothes with his large hands, his breath smelling of rum.

“Lookee here,” said the second officer with a gleeful smirk, “a piece of straw.” He picked it up and looked at it closely. “It appears like this yokel brought a bit of the farm with him on his duds.”