Chesapeake (128 page)

‘What you tryin’ to do, destroy the
Sinbad?’

‘Exactly,’ Jake said grimly. He then invited Tim Caveny to show Otto the real surprise, for onto the skipjack the Irishman had lugged three of his deadly spray guns, each with a battery of seven barrels and a capacity of many pounds of shot. Otto was captivated by the ingenious manner in which Caveny intended igniting his guns, and cried, ‘You must let me fire one,’ and Caveny said, ‘Our plan is for you to fire two.’ But Jake interposed, ‘No, we’d better save Otto for the two big guns forward.’

‘Do I aim at the cabin?’

‘At the waterline. I’m gonna sink her.’

So Jake spent the first two days of January training his accomplices; practice rounds were fired far up Broad Creek so no one could spy, and when he was satisfied that his men could handle their arsenal, he headed for the Choptank.

The guns were kept under tarpaulin, so that the
Jessie T
looked like merely one more Maryland skipjack trying to earn an honest living. The plan was for two relatively unarmed boats from Patamoke to move in the van in a casual approach to the oyster beds that were in contention, and to allow the
Sinbad
to drive them away. Then, when the Virginia vessel came at the
Jessie T
to complete the sweep, it would be Jake’s responsibility to bring his boat as close as possible to the enemy, keeping the blue
Sinbad
to port, for the guns were concentrated on that side.

This would be a risky maneuver, because the
Sinbad
sailors had
proved they would not hesitate to gun down the opposition, but Captain Turlock had anticipated the most dangerous moment: ‘You men at the guns stay low. It’ll be hard to hit you. I’ll stay at the wheel and take my chances.’ He had improved the risk by building about the wheel an armored semicircle behind which he could crouch; his head would not be protected, but as he said, ‘If they’re good enough to hit me in the head from their shiftin’ boat, they deserve to win.’ It was a confident crew of eight—four white, four black—that entered the bay and headed south.

Two days passed without incident, except that the
Jessie T
caught so many oysters it was an embarrassment. ‘We cain’t side up to a buy-boat, or they’d see the guns and the extry two men. On the other hand, if we pile them arsters right, they’ll form us a fort.’ So the deck was rearranged to permit the gunners to hide behind their catch.

On the third day the ominous blue
Sinbad
entered the Choptank, prowled the edges of the Patamoke fleet, then made a direct run at the two lures set up by Captain Turlock. As expected, the Virginia boat drove the smaller skipjacks off, then came directly at the
Jessie T.
‘Thank God!’ Turlock called to his men. ‘We pass her to port.’

The hidden gunners kept low. Jake hunkered down behind his iron battlement, and the two boats closed.

The first fire came from the
Sinbad.
When its crew saw that the
Jessie T
was not going to back off, their captain cried, ‘Give them another whiff.’ Shots ricocheted about the deck, ending in piles of oysters. The fusillade accomplished nothing except to anger the Choptank men and make them more eager to discharge their battery.

‘Not yet!’ Jake called, and his men stood firm while the
Sinbad
grew careless and moved much closer than she should have. ‘Wait! Wait!’ Jake called again, kneeling behind his armor plating as bullets whined by him.

As he hid, he caught the eye of Otto Pflaum, finger on the great gun once owned by the master-hunter Greef Twombly. He saw with satisfaction that Pflaum was not only ready with this gun, but prepared to leap to its lethal brother propped against the bulwark.

‘Now!’ Jake shouted, and from the entire port side of the skipjack a blaze of powder exploded, sending a devastating rain of lead across the deck of the
Sinbad
and punishing her at the water line. Those Virginians who were not knocked down were so confounded that they could not regroup before Tim Caveny fired at them with another of his seven-gun monsters, while Otto Pflaum leaped to a second long gun and aimed it right at the gaping hole opened by his first.

The
Sinbad,
mortally wounded, started to roll on its port side and its crew began leaping into the water and shouting for help.

‘Let ’em all drowned,’ Turlock snapped, and with grand indifference the
Jessie T,
her centerboard side-assed, as her detractors charged, withdrew from the battle.

It was a triumphal return such as few naval centers have witnessed, for the victorious vessel came to the dock laden with oysters, and as Tim Caveny called out details of the battle, Otto Pflaum counted the iron buckets as buyers on dock hauled them ashore: Tally three! ‘Tally four! Mark one!’

At the close he informed his fellow crewmen, ‘Damn near record. Thirty-nine and three!’ But the
Jessie T
had earned more that day than one hundred and ninety-eight bushels of oysters. It had won the right to say that the riches of the Choptank would be harvested in a responsible manner.

The victory of the Choptank men led to a series of events that no one could have imagined.

The fact that Captain Turlock was now able to berth each weekend at Patamoke allowed him and Caveny to go duck hunting, with such good results that the two watermen accumulated surplus income in the Steed bank.

Since Jake Turlock had grown sick and tired of hearing the men at the store downgrade his boat—he loathed especially their contemptuous description ‘the side-assed skipjack’—he decided to get rid of her and buy the partnership a real boat with its centerboard where it ought to be. When he approached Gerrit Paxmore with this proposal he found the Quaker willing to listen. ‘I’ve been pondering this matter, Jacob, and have concluded that I’ve been obstinate in refusing to build in the new manner. There is a difference between an ocean-going schooner, whose keel must be kept inviolate, and a skipjack destined for bay use only, where the strain is not so great. I’d like a chance to build thee one to thy design.’

When the contract between Paxmore and the Turlock-Caveny partnership was drawn—‘a first-class skipjack with centerboard trunk through the keel, $2,815’—Gerrit Paxmore asked the owners of the
Jessie T
what they intended doing with their present skipjack, and Turlock said, ‘I suppose we’ll find a buyer somewheres, even if she is side-assed,’ and Paxmore replied, ‘I think I can take it off thy hands,’ and Caveny asked, ‘You got a buyer?’ and Paxmore said, ‘I think so,’ but he would not divulge who it was.

So the new skipjack was built, superior in every way to the
Jessie T,
and when it had been launched and given a couple of trial runs out into the bay, Jake and Tim concluded that they had bought themselves a masterpiece, and the former said with some relief, ‘Now we can hire a white crew. You, me, three Turlocks and Big Jimbo in the galley.’

‘Them niggers wasn’t so bad,’ Caveny recalled.

‘Yes, but a white crew’s better. Less likelihood of mutiny.’

‘The niggers fought well.’

‘Yes, but a white crew’s better.’ Jake paused, then added, ‘’Course, I’d not want to sail without Jimbo. Best cook this bay ever produced.’

But when he went to Frog’s Neck to advise Jimbo that the new skipjack would be sailing on Monday, he found to his dismay that the big cook would not be assuming his old place.

‘Why not?’ Jake thundered.

‘Because …’ The tall black was too embarrassed to explain, and Turlock heckled him, charging cowardice because of the gunfight, a lack of loyalty to his crew mates, and ingratitude. Big Jimbo listened impassively, then said in a soft voice, ‘Cap’m Jake, I’m takin’ out my own skipjack.’

‘You’re what?’

‘Mr. Paxmore done sold me the
Jessie T.’

The information staggered the waterman, and he stepped back, shaking his head as if to discharge evil invaders. ‘You buyin’ my boat?’

‘Yes, sir. From the day I could walk my daddy tol’ me, “Git yourse’f a boat.” He had his own ship … for a while … as you know.’

‘What ship did Cudjo ever have?’ Turlock asked in disgust, and Big Jimbo thought it best not to pursue the topic. What he did say was this: ‘He tol’ me, time and again, “When a man got his own boat, he free. His onliest prison the horizon.”’

‘Hell, Jimbo, you don’t know enough to captain a skipjack.’

‘I been watchin’, Cap’m Jake. I been watchin’ you, and you one o’ the best.’

‘You goddamn nigger!’ Jake exploded, but the words denoted wonder rather than contempt. He burst into laughter, slapped his flank and said, ‘All the time you was on deck, doin’ extry work to help the men, you was watchin’ ever’thing I was doin’. Damn, I knowed you niggers was always plottin’.’ In the old camaraderie of the cabin, where these two men had worked together, and eaten and slept, Jake Turlock punched his cook in the back and wished him well.

‘But you got to change her name,’ Jake said.

Big Jimbo had anticipated him. When he and Captain Jake went to the Paxmore Boatyard to inspect the refitted
Jessie T
they found the old name painted out, and in its place a crisp new board with the simple letters
Eden.

‘Where you get that name?’ Jake asked, admiring the condition of his old boat. ‘That’s a Bible name, ain’t it?’

‘My mother’s name,’ Jimbo said.

‘That’s nice,’ Jake said. ‘I named her after my mother. Now you niggers name her after yours. That’s real nice.’

‘She give me the money to buy it.’

‘I thought she was dead.’

‘Long ago. But she always collectin’ money … fifty years. First she gonna buy her freedom, and the Steeds give it to her. Then she gonna buy Cudjo’s freedom, and he earned it hisse’f. Then she gonna buy her brother’s freedom, and Emancipation come along. So she give me the money and say, “Jimbo, some day you buy yourse’f a boat and be truly free.”’

In October 1895 the skipjack
Eden
out of Patamoke made its first sortie on the oyster beds. It was known throughout the fleet as ‘the side-assed skipjack with the nigger crew,’ but it was in no way impeded, for Captain Jimbo had to be recognized as a first-class waterman. There was, of course, much banter when the other captains gathered at the store: ‘
Eden
like to went broke last summer. Cap’m Jimbo tooken her up the Choptank to fetch a load o’ watermelons to the market in Baltimore, but when he got there the crew had et ever’ goddamned melon.’

There was no laughter, however, when the black crew began to unload huge quantities of oysters into the buy-boats. And the bay might have been outraged in the fall of 1897, but not really surprised, when Randy Turlock, a distant nephew of Captain Jake’s, snowed up as a member of the
Eden’s
crew, which now consisted of five blacks and one white.

‘Why would a decent, God-fearin’ white man consent to serve with a nigger?’ the men at the store raged at the young waterman.

‘Because he knows how to find arsters,’ young Turlock said, and in the 1899 season Big Jimbo’s crew was four blacks and two whites, and thus it remained as the new century dawned.

Onshore, relations between whites and blacks did not duplicate what prevailed in the skipjacks. When oyster dredging, a waterman was judged solely on his performance; if he said he was a cook, it was presumed that he could cook; and a deck hand was expected to muscle the dredges. A man won his place by exhibiting skills, and his color did not signify.

But when he stepped ashore the black oysterman could not join the circle at the store, nor send his children to the white man’s school, nor pray in a white church. For seven months he had eaten shoulder to shoulder with his white crew mates, but onshore it would have been unthinkable for him to dine with his betters. He had to be circumspect in what he said, how he walked the pavements and even how he looked at white people, lest they take offense and start rumors.

The permanent relationship between the two races was underlined at the start of the century when a gang of venal Democratic politicians in Annapolis proposed an amendment to the Maryland constitution, revoking
the right of blacks to vote. This was done for the most corrupt of reasons—perpetuation of thieving officeholders—but behind the most honorable and persuasive façade. The gang did not offer the amendment under its own besmirched name; it employed the services of the dean of the law school at the university, a handsome man with a mellifluous three-barreled name, John Prentiss Pope, and he devised a simple formula for perpetually denying the ballot: ‘Any Maryland resident is entitled to vote if he or his ancestors were eligible to do so on January 1, 1869, or if he can read and interpret a passage of the Maryland constitution.’ It was especially effective in that it avoided the necessity of stating openly that it was anti-Negro.

‘What we intend doin’,’ the Democrats explained when they visited Patamoke, ‘is end this silly business of niggers traipsin’ to the polls like decent people. You know and I know they ain’t never been a nigger qualified to vote, nor ever will be.’

The campaign became virulent. Newspapers, churches, schools and congregations at country crossroads united in an inflamed crusade to restore Maryland to its pristine honor: ‘We gonna end this farce of niggers pretendin’ they got the brains to comprehend politics. End nigger votin’ and reinstate honest government.’

Not many blacks voted, actually, and some who did accepted money, but the basic argument against them was they supported the Republican party because Abraham Lincoln had belonged to it, and he had freed the slaves. Endlessly the Democrats had tried to lure black voters into their party, but had failed; now the blacks would vote no more. The unfolding campaign indicated that the amendment would carry, for Democratic orators stormed the countryside, proclaiming, ‘If a respected professor like John Prentiss Pope says niggers shouldn’t vote, you know what your duty is on Election Day.’

The Steeds favored the amendment because they remembered John C. Calhoun, spiritual leader of their family; he had claimed that the governing of free men should be restricted to those with education, moral principle and ownership of wealth. ‘I am not against the black man,’ Judge Steed said at one public meeting held in the Patamoke Methodist Church, ‘but I do not want him casting his ballot on issues which concern only white men.’