Chesapeake (77 page)

Up and down he went, following with careful eye the work of the two crews. Late in the afternoon the first group of men began arriving at the yard with their felled loblollies, and these they nailed against the face of the main shed, masking it and forming in its place a mock forest: It doesn’t look real to me. We’re going to need twice as many trees.

He then sailed closer to the warehouse, whose front was being made
to look like a boat shed: That timber will fool nobody. Much too fresh.

So he sailed back into the harbor and all that night supervised the chopping down of additional trees, the smearing of watery paint upon the new boatyard, and when at dawn he went back onto the Choptank he was satisfied that he had done as good a job as possible: It may fool them. It may not. There’s nothing more I can do.

But then he thought of something positively vital: Back to shore! Quick! Quick! And when the sloop reached the wharf he leaped ashore and ran to the real boatyard, shouting to the tree cutters, ‘Go back and fetch any dried branches.’ To the carpenters he cried, ‘Help me with the turpentine,’ and they were sweating like pigs in the hot August sun when sentinels cried, ‘They’re coming up the river.’

The British bombardment of Patamoke on August 24, 1813, was a savage affair. Captain Gatch had intended landing just below the town and investing it on foot, so that he could lay waste the infamous place at leisure, but a squadron of watermen who had been hunting rabbits all their lives—including some thirty Turlocks from the marshes—set up such a resolute fire that Sir Trevor had to confess, ‘Damn me, they fight like Napoleon’s best.’ And to his dismay he had to stand well out in the river and bombard the place with long guns, because the riflemen on shore were beginning to pick off his sailors.

‘Set fire to the whole town!’ he shouted in his high voice, and flaming shot was directed at the principal buildings. This set no spectacular fires, so he directed his men to turn all their efforts to the boatyard, where he thought the
Whisper
lay, and when red-hot cannonballs were thrown into that sprawling structure, a fire of great intensity erupted and the British sailors cheered, and Captain Gatch cried, ‘Damn me, we’ve got ’em this time.’ It was his opinion that the incendiaries had struck the turpentine and oil supplies being used to repair the
Whisper.

As the tumbling flames rose and twisted in the air, destroying the shed and all within, Sir Trevor stood very erect and smiled grimly. To his aide he said, ‘My father was humiliated at the Battle of the Chesapeake. And a generation of our lads have tried to pin down the
Whisper,
but now, by gad, she’s done for.’ And at noon he ordered his flotilla to sail back down the Choptank, keeping well off the points, where the local militia was still troublesome.

‘Shall we fire some farewell shots at the town?’ the aide asked.

‘That we shall!’ Sir Trevor replied, and nineteen heavy shots were lobbed into the town, creating havoc while the British sailors cheered their victory.

But as they withdrew, the spy who had brought them here, knowing the tricky manners of Choptank people and especially the Turlocks, kept
his eye fixed on the marsh, and while Captain Gatch was sharing a bottle of rum with his gunners, this man cried, ‘Captain, there’s the
Whisper!’
and Gatch choked.

It was the
Whisper,
hidden among the marsh grasses where no Englishman would have spied her. But now, at two in the afternoon, Sir Trevor stood face to face with the ghost of the schooner he had sunk a few hours earlier.

‘Man all guns!’ he commanded, and the entire flotilla drew up in a line close to the marsh, for there was now no headland from which the militia could operate, and slowly the heavy cannon were wheeled into position.

The first salvo struck home, and planks were ripped from the decking. The next hit the port side of the anchored schooner in the area known as ‘between sea and sky,’ and the damage was tremendous.

On the fifth salvo an outlook shouted, ‘She’s taking water. Heavy list to port.’

And then, as the smaller English guns began to tear apart the stricken
Whisper,
the lookout cried, ‘There’s a man aboard. Red hair, red beard.’ And the gunfire centered on this big, dodging figure, and finally a cannonball struck him in the left arm, pinning it against a bulkhead, and the outlook could see blood spurting, and he cried, ‘He’s hit, sir. He’s down.’ And when Captain Gatch took the glass, he saw the schooner listing to port, the shattered wood, the smear of blood, and on the deck a severed hand.

‘He’s dead,’ he announced to the crew, and forthwith he directed boats to be lowered and men to row ashore and burn the
Whisper,
that it should never torment the seas again. And the fires were set, and the shattered mast and the severed hand were consumed, and vengeance was had for all the sins this sleek schooner had committed.

Next morning, as the victorious British squadron navigated the channel north of Devon Island, the spy said, ‘That’s where the Steeds live. They owned the
Whisper,
’ and Captain Gatch cried, ‘It’s a far distance, but another prize to any man who hits it.’ So the guns were fired and great cannonballs were lofted toward the house, but only two reached it. At the end of an arching flight, they lodged in the bricks at the top of the second story, near the roof, where they remained imbedded, having accomplished nothing.

The British bombardment of Patamoke affected three local citizens in contrasting ways. Paul Steed, grandson of Isham and great-nephew of Simon, now headed the vast plantation system, assisted by various older cousins of the Refuge Steeds, and at twenty-two he was young enough to have enjoyed the cannonading of Rosalind’s Revenge. Indeed, during the barrage he had danced gleefully as the balls passed overhead, missing their target, and when two did finally hit, doing no real damage, he
shouted in triumph, ‘They’re powerless! Look at them scuttle away.’ And he had grabbed a musket and run to the northern shore, firing ineffectively at the flotilla. The pellets from his gun fell a good mile short of the English vessels, but later he would boast to the community, ‘We repelled them.’

Paul was the first male Steed who had failed to obtain at least part of his schooling in Europe, usually at the great Catholic seat St. Omer’s, but he had been educated more or less effectively at the new college at Princeton in New Jersey, where large numbers of southern gentlemen were now being trained. The strong Presbyterian bias of the college had had a deleterious effect upon the pure strain of Catholicism which the Steeds had hitherto cultivated, and young Paul’s character had suffered thereby. He was not sure what he believed in; he lacked conviction on the simple basics and his vacillations expressed themselves in his reluctance to marry or assume real responsibility for the management of the plantation.

In fact, the Steeds of Devon were in danger of becoming just another tidewater family in grand decline, and Paul showed no capacity to reverse this doleful trend. The problem was an intellectual one; Paul and his generation were the first to miss the easy transport back and forth to Europe; family ships no longer left family wharves for regular and relatively quick passages to England and France; children could no longer simply run down to the waterside for a visit to London, and this lack of civilizing impact was damaging the fiber of the young. It was not that Europe offered a superior culture, or an education more subtle than what a bright lad could acquire at Yale or William and Mary; what Europe provided was the challenge of different ideas expressed in different languages by men reared in different traditions, and Paul Steed was a prime example of the damage done when these broad new ideas were no longer a part of a young man’s education. From now on, the great families of the Chesapeake would become parochial.

But the young master had spirit. When the British were safely out of sight he brought ladders and inspected the two cannonballs lodged in the northern wall of his home, and when he saw that they were well wedged in among the bricks, he summoned slaves to plaster in the broken spaces so that the balls might be permanently housed where they had struck, and it became a ritual whenever guests stopped by the Revenge for Paul to take them upstairs to his bedroom and there show them the half-projecting missiles of the British raid.

‘That devil Gatch was trying to kill me in bed,’ he would say laughingly, ‘but Clever Trevor miscalculated and fired too high. Three feet lower and the cannonballs would have come crashing through that window and killed me as I slept.’ He never revealed that the had made this room his only after the attack.

George Paxmore was elated that the British had spent their gunfire on
his deceptive warehouse, which burned with little loss, and none on his camouflaged boatyard, which survived untouched. In fact, he was so gratified that he paid each man who had cut trees or timbered the warehouse a bonus of one week’s pay. ‘Thee performed a miracle,’ he told them. ‘Without thy fine effort, Paxmore’s would have been finished.’

But he also suffered a psychological defeat, because the
Dartmoor,
which had done this damage to Patamoke and burned the
Whisper,
was a Paxmore product. His grandfather, Levin Paxmore, the famous designer, had built it back in the 1770s, and on it had lavished his most attentive care; it was the last of the well-regarded
Whisper
class that had performed so ably.

It had been christened the
Victory
and had stumbled into a trap laid by Admiral Rodney at St. Eustatius. Captain Norman Steed had been killed by musket fire and the
Victory
had been captured. Rechristened the
Dartmoor
and fitted with six powerful guns, it had enjoyed years of distinction as a member of the British fleet and had helped defeat the French at Trafalgar.

For some years now it had been Captain Gatch’s preferred vessel, for in it he could move with startling speed, rushing at larger ships and subduing them before they had a chance to maneuver their powerful guns to repel him. The
Dartmoor
was by no means deficient in gunfire; recently Captain Gatch had mounted two additional heavy guns forward, making eight in all, and he had spent weeks training his gunners how best to use their weapons.

So during the hours the flotilla had stood off Patamoke, pumping in devastation, Paxmore was confused: he was embittered to see Captain Gatch trying to burn down his boatyard, but at the same time he appreciated the opportunity to study the
Dartmoor
professionally, and he had to concede that many of the alterations Gatch had introduced had strengthened the ship: He’s raised the timbered sides to give his gunners added protection. And moved his cannon to lend added weight forward. That keeps his bow down. Provides the gunners a more stable platform. But then his practiced eye spotted the danger: I do believe he’s made her ride too low in the bow. He must watch. Finally he made a curious concession: In battle she must be formidable. Hesitation. But of course she wasn’t built for battle.

He had argued himself into the corner that bedevils everyone charged with planning a ship or making a decision: each improvement carries with it the seed of its own self-destruction; a vital balance has been altered and the consequences cannot be foreseen. Yet change is essential, inescapable; the burden of the thinking man is to calculate the probable good against the possible bad and to decide whether the change will be worth the risk. Captain Gatch had gambled that weight forward would provide him with better gunnery, and the accuracy of his recent fire confirmed that decision.

At the height of the blaze and the screaming, George Paxmore concluded: I have in mind a vessel that will treble the
Whisper’s
advantages but increase her risks only slightly. And he began to pray audibly that Captain Gatch’s outlooks would miss the camouflaged boatyard, for he was eager to start construction, and when the flotilla withdrew he was not ashamed to fall on his knees and give thanks for his deliverance.

Then rumors began to flood Patamoke: ‘The
Whisper
was detected.’

‘The spy ferreted her out as she hid among rushes.’ ‘Gunfire at shore range destroyed her.’ ‘In the end she was put to the torch.’

When Paxmore heard this he became so agitated that his wife asked, ‘George, what’s the matter? We’ve saved the yard,’ and he replied, ‘They sank the
Whisper.’

‘No!’ she cried, running out to survey the river as if it might contain contrary evidence, but it was gray and unconcerned.

Then workmen came to confirm the report. ‘Captain Turlock’s killed and burned with his ship.’ And there was lamenting, for all men who have worked a ship and known her qualities come to love her, and her untimely death is deplored. They began to recount her exploits, and Elizabeth Paxmore served the first of that year’s cider, and George Paxmore blew his nose and bit his lip and said, ‘Matthew Turlock was the best waterman this river ever produced,’ and they began to reminisce about him.

But Matthew Turlock did not die in the burning of his ship. When his left hand was blown away, he was sickened by the pain and the sight of his own blood and came close to fainting. Perhaps this was his salvation, for as he lay on the deck, trying to stanch the flow, he became invisible to the British sharpshooters.

When he saw that the
Whisper
could not be saved, he crawled to the landward side and dropped off into the marsh, still trying to wrap his shirttail about his wound, and when the shore party came to burn the vessel, he was hiding in the grasses. Later he staggered to fast ground, where two Turlock boys watching the fire discovered him. Others were summoned to drag him to safety, but he would not leave the shore, remaining there as his splendid schooner burned to the waterline.

The
Whisper!
Proudest vessel in America’s resistance to the king, the wandering command of his father, his own home from the age of seven, the scourge of corsair, the insolent taunter of English admirals, the swift, sleek progenitor. How pitiful to see her dying in the shallows of a marsh, gunned down without the power to respond. Salt tears wetted his beard and he fell unconscious, which allowed his kinsmen to carry him to safety.