A Call to Arms (10 page)

“Gallatin never has supported the Navy,” Agreen grumbled. “But at least we can make good use of those twenty-five men. They'll make excellent petty officers and topmen.”

“That they will. And George Lee will be our second, assuming his promotion goes through. He liked you and Will when you met in Batavia, and Preble has trained him well. We can use an officer of his quality who's familiar with an Essex-class frigate.”

“Aye,” Agreen agreed. “And he can help with recruitment. He's known and respected in these parts.”

“There you go, Lieutenant. You see? Everything is under control. You have nothing to fret about. I have every confidence you'll get the job done with your usual flair for efficiency. Why else would I have requested you as my first officer?”

“For my good looks?”

Richard pretended to ponder that. “No. Lizzy's more interested in that sort of thing than I am.” He grinned. “I had other reasons, and I suggest we waste no further time putting those reasons into action.”

S
EVERAL WEEKS LATER
, in Boston, Midn. James Cutler reported aboard
Constitution.
Trouble was, there was no one aboard to report to. The frigate's only commissioned officer other than Captain Preble was 1st Lt. Charles Gordon, and he had come and gone—where and for how long, no one seemed to know. A ragtag band of eleven sailors clad in the castoffs from a slop chest lolled about the deck without much to do and without much enthusiasm for doing anything. Certainly they appeared unimpressed by what Jamie realized must have appeared to them as a young, full-of-himself snotty strutting about the weather deck in the relative resplendency of a midshipman's undress uniform of buff trousers and a coat of indigo blue cloth with short lapels, six gold buttons, and a stand-up collar. ‘That one came in through the cabin window,' he could almost hear these sailors whispering about him, ‘not through the hawser hole the way less fortunate officers do. They have to
earn
their rank.'

Constitution,
Jamie quickly discovered, was a shambles. Since returning to her home port following the conclusion of the war with France, she had been laid up along the banks of the Charles River without even a caretaker crew until the men he saw lazing about on the deck came aboard a couple of months ago—and they took care of her hardly at all. Debris littered her weather deck, and few lengths of running rigging were properly coiled to their belaying pins. Hardly anything Jamie observed met the minimal requirements of naval regulations or seamanship. As bad as it was topside, what he found belowdecks was worse. It was as though a herd of wild beasts had run amok, with no one bothering to pick up the mess they left behind. Only the guns on her gun deck were done up properly, bowsed tight against the starboard and larboard bulkheads. But every gun on that deck cried out for someone to scrape away splotches of orange rust and restore its black gleam.

Following a brief inspection of the two middle decks—he did not bother going down to the orlop deck; the stench wafting up from there turned his stomach—Jamie returned to the gun deck. He folded his arms,
leaned against the cascabel of a 24-pounder on the starboard side of the gun deck, and peered out its gun port at the Boston skyline visible across the river. Having no idea what to do next, he thought through what his father had taught him about command.
Command.
He snorted at the word. On his first day as midshipman in “the pride of New England,” he found himself, for the moment, the ship's ranking officer. And his crew was clearly indisposed to take orders from an upstart eighteen-year-old boy whose every trait bespoke good breeding and privilege.

After considerable thought, Jamie concluded that he had two choices. He could return topside and inform the men that he was going ashore to report to the superintendent of the Charlestown Navy Yard, the very man Captain Preble had warned him about and the officer who bore primary responsibility for the sorry state of affairs in
Constitution.
That option, to Jamie, seemed cowardly. Or he could do what his father had always encouraged him to do when faced with a tough situation:
Trust your instincts and take action.

His mind made up, Jamie clambered up the main hatchway ladder. The first sailor he spotted on deck was perhaps twice his age and was wearing a blue-and-white-striped jersey and wide-bottomed white trousers. His hair was bound in a loosely plaited queue, and gold shone from his left earlobe. He was lazily coiling a rope that Jamie suspected had been coiled a hundred times in the past week alone. The sailor hardly glanced up when Jamie emerged from belowdecks and approached him.

“Your name, sailor?”

The man gave him a suspicious look. “Simpson, Your Honor,” he mumbled. Jamie caught the sarcasm in his voice.

“Come again? I didn't hear you.”

“Simpson,” the man repeated in a slightly louder voice. “Alan Simpson.”

“Thank you. Your rating, Mr. Simpson?”

A pause, then: “Able-bodied seaman.”

“I see. Can you tell me, is there a petty officer aboard?”

Another pause. “Aye, there is.” He went back to coiling the rope.

“Would you be so kind as to point him out to me, Mr. Simpson?”

Whether from an inbred reaction to an officer's direct query or in appreciation of the midshipman's unusually respectful tone—no officer had ever addressed him as “mister”—Simpson pointed at a stocky, muscular man with a short-trimmed black beard who was leaning against the mainmast whittling on a block of wood. “His name's Baker. Boatswain's mate.”

“Thank you, Mr. Simpson.”

As Jamie approached the petty officer, Baker stopped whittling, placed his work on a pinrail, and stood slightly slouched, as though signaling either boredom or resentment of this intrusion on his day. His insolence notwithstanding—or perhaps because of it—Jamie saw a man he would most definitely want on his side during a tavern brawl.

“Are you Boatswain's Mate Baker?” Jamie asked him.

“I reckon I am,” the man replied, his southern heritage coming through in his accent.

Jamie bristled at the unmilitary response. “My name is James Cutler,” he said. “I have a midshipman's warrant, and I have been ordered by Captain Preble to report for duty at my earliest convenience, which is today. Please assemble the men, Mr. Baker.”

Baker narrowed his eyes and advanced one step. “Assemble the men, you say?”

Jamie held his ground. He could feel his heart pumping. He fought to keep his voice calm. “Yes, Mr. Baker. That is what I said. And I would very much appreciate you doing it
now.
” Feeling a ripple of fear, Jamie realized he was treading in perilous waters. The next few minutes could decide his future as a naval officer.

Seconds ticked by as the two men—one seasoned by years at sea, the other as yet untested—stood face to face, neither budging. Sailors on the weather deck dropped what they were doing and came together by the mainmast, keen to observe more closely this unexpected and intriguing spectacle.

Baker blinked first, although his tone was hardly conciliatory in defeat. “It seems, Mr. Midshipman Cutler,” he sneered, “that the men have already complied with your request.”

“I can see that, Mr. Baker. And I appreciate your cooperation.” Jamie turned on his heel. In a loud voice he said, pointing to starboard, “Men, please gather over there. That's right, over there by the mainmast chain-wale.”

Whether driven by a sense of duty or simple curiosity, all eleven sailors, including Baker, obeyed. When they had formed a semicircle close by the broad, thick plank projecting horizontally from the ship's side, Jamie grabbed hold of a shroud and climbed onto the railing.

“Men,” he said in as clear and steady a voice as he could muster, “I am James Cutler. I have in my possession a midshipman's warrant, signed by the secretary of the Navy, to serve aboard
Constitution.
That warrant
makes us shipmates. During the next few days I shall come to know each of you and your name and your rating. I look forward to that.

“We have serious work to do. Whatever has happened aboard this ship before today is of no concern to me. I care only about what happens from this day forward. Three months from now, Captain Edward Preble will take command of this vessel. We must have her in fighting shape before he does. You know our captain's reputation. He will not tolerate insubordination or dereliction of duty from any member of his crew—including his officers. Make no mistake, lads, if we don't have
Constitution
shipshape from stem to stern by the time Captain Preble steps aboard, you and I will pay the forfeit. You and I
together.
Lieutenant Gordon is out on a recruiting mission,” he added, not certain if that was the truth, “so help is on the way. But we cannot wait for help to arrive. We need to start our work today. We need to start
right now.
”

With that, he jumped down onto the weather deck. After removing his coat and draping it over a belaying pin, he rolled up his sleeves and began gathering the debris that littered the area between the main and mizzen masts on the starboard side of the weather deck. Sailors made way for him as he went about his task. One of them picked up a broom; another grabbed a large gunnysack into which he jammed the litter Jamie had piled up. Within the quarter-hour most of the sailors were pitching in. Within the half-hour every sailor was hard at it, including Boatswain's Mate Baker and the seaman named Simpson.

S
UMMER AND EARLY AUTUMN
plodded by in naval routine for those aboard
Constitution
and
Portsmouth
as both ships made ready for sea. Exactly when they would sail remained a matter of conjecture to the crews and to the national press.

Captain Preble had suffered another medical setback. According to his doctor, Edward Miller, the setback was not serious and should not delay matters more than a few months, and those being the months of winter. To those serving in
Constitution,
that report presented a not-unwelcome reprieve. In mid-September, just a few weeks before Captain Preble was to take command, Lieutenant Gordon, in company with James Cutler and Ralph Izard, had descended to the depths of her hold beneath the orlop and had poked her bottom in numerous places with boathooks and rakes. What they pulled up, at nearly every poke, was a discouraging blend of sea grass and moss.

“Her copper's broken and full of holes,” the lanky, brown-haired
lieutenant announced. He yanked a clump of green moss off his rake, examined it, and threw it back disgustedly into the watery hold.

“Which means we'll need to bream her and re-copper her,” Izard said confidently. Jamie had developed a great respect for the slim, sinewy midshipman from Charleston, South Carolina, in the weeks since he had stepped aboard and dropped his seabag onto the deck.

“Quite right, Mr. Izard,” Gordon responded. “Another damned delay. But there's nothing for it. We'll have to ride out the winter and set her sea trials for early spring. Captain Preble should be in fine fettle by then, so nothing is really lost. For the moment, let's get her moved to Union Wharf and set about careening her.” He added sotto voce, “At least at Union Wharf we will be outside Captain Nicholson's jurisdiction. That should expedite things. Among other benefits,” he added disdainfully.

N
AVAL ROUTINE
for both Jamie and his father gave way in late September to Caleb Cutler's long-heralded wedding to Joan Cabot within the magnificent confines of Trinity Church. This regal event was a mostly Bostonian affair; the Cutlers were among the few Hingham families in attendance. With his family's permission, Jamie had invited Ralph Izard and Octavius Paige of Delaware, another of
Constitution's
midshipmen. As a matter of protocol he had also invited Charles Gordon and Robert Greenleaf, the frigate's recently arrived second lieutenant. Both officers had politely declined. Decked out for the occasion in their full dress uniforms, the three midshipmen looked like miniature versions of Richard Cutler—without the abundant embroidery and lace, longer lapels with nine gold buttons on each breast, four additional buttons on the cuffs and at the pockets, gold epaulet on each shoulder, and rich blue cloth cut to the waist in front and with tails behind that defined a captain's uniform.

Richard Cutler and Peter Cabot, brothers respectively of the groom and bride, took up position behind Caleb at the altar. Katherine Cutler, seated in a front pew with Diana, Caleb's two sisters, and their husbands, looked on wistfully as the ceremony commenced. The Endicott family and Will sat in the pew directly behind them. Jamie, seated across the aisle from the Endicotts, sensed more than observed Frances Endicott's furtive glances in his direction. He made a mental note to introduce her to his two fellow midshipmen at the reception and then make a graceful exit.

The ceremony and reception were everything a grand wedding should be, and the newlyweds left afterward on a brief wedding trip to New
York. For the others, it was back to what passed for normal these days. The war in the Mediterranean was going badly, and the national press was making sure that everyone knew it. To date, Commodore Morris's squadron had accomplished little of note beyond sailing from one to another of the more appealing destinations along the north shore of the Mediterranean, setting a social standard a British admiral might covet. Accompanying Morris in
Chesapeake
were his wife—labeled tongue-in-cheek by the press the “Commodoress”—and their young son. It was the commodore's wife, so the newspapers needled, who had set such high standards of social intercourse with a husband all too eager to satisfy her every desire.