Chesapeake (78 page)

Rachel Turlock, seventy-seven years old and leader of the clan, took one look at the bleeding stump and said, ‘Hot shovel.’ No doctor was close enough for summoning, and the wound was bleeding too profusely to be stanched by ordinary means. ‘Hot shovel,’ Rachel repeated, and a
fire was spurred and a spade laid on till the iron was red-hot. Then five Turlock men held Matthew pinned to the earthen floor of the hut while Rachel supervised one of her grandsons as he took the spade from the embers, spit on it to test its incandescence, then applied it with great and pressing force against the jagged stump. Matthew, feeling the pain course through his body, fainted again, and when he revived saw that his stump had been smeared with bear grease and swathed in dirty cloths.

And as he felt the dull pain surging through his arm, a Turlock from Patamoke ran in with the harshest news of all: ‘When they fired the last salvo they hit your home.’

‘Was Merry hurt?’

‘Killed.’

And in the fury of knowing that his wife, too, was lost, as well as his ship and his left hand, Matt Turlock swore to get revenge, and the duel began.

When the stump had hardened, Matt kept it wrapped in canvas, knocking it against tables and chairs now and then to toughen it, and after a while the scar became like bone and he judged that the time had come.

He went to the box in which he kept his treasure: the deed to his land, the quitclaim signed by the Rector of Wrentham and President Washington, the bag of European coins, all silver. It was this silver that he took to a craftsman in Patamoke with the instruction ‘Melt ’em down,’ and when enough silver quivered in the pot he explained the device he wanted.

‘Make me a heavy cup—it’s got to be heavy—to fit over this stump. Leave two holes for rawhide thongs … tied at my elbow.’ When the cup was cast, he found it to be exactly what he wanted, but he had further requirements: ‘On each of the compass points a star, on the flat side an eagle.’ So with heavy hammers the workman fashioned four stars on the cuff, then added a handsome eagle on the flat side covering the end of the stump. When the rawhide thongs were attached at the holes, and tied above the elbow, he found himself equipped with a heavy weighted metal cup which could be lethal in a fight.

‘Silverfist,’ the sailors of Patamoke called him, but they did nothing to challenge him to use his heavy left arm. Matthew was forty-five when he lost his ship, a tall, rugged, red-bearded waterman with deep-set eyes hidden by shaggy red eyebrows. He had sailed the Chesapeake since birth; indeed, he had gone alone upon it at the age of four, and he intended to continue. What he needed now was a ship.

When he stopped at the office of George Paxmore he found the Quaker builder eager to replace the
Whisper.
Indeed, the young man was so distressed by the burning of his family’s masterpiece that he seemed
willing to proceed without a specific commission. But not quite. After he brought his enthusiasm under control he asked, ‘Has thee money to pay for the it?’ And he was relieved when Turlock said, ‘Enough.’

Paxmore did not want to hear any specifications from the captain; his only desire was to build a ship which would excel, but as he grudgingly divulged his plans he did occasionally stop to ask, ‘Does thee understand what I’m after?’

Surprisingly, Turlock was content to let him have his way, for he had learned from his father that the
Whisper’s
applauded merit lay one fourth in what Turlock did with her, and three fourths in what Levin Paxmore had built into her. ‘All I want,’ he told young Paxmore, ‘is the best your family ever built.’

‘That’s what thee’ll get, but the cost will not be slight,’ and he produced a paper on which he had figured to the last trunnel. ‘It totals $2,863.47.’

‘What dimensions?’ Turlock asked.

‘Eighty-two feet nine inches length, twenty-three feet six inches breadth. Draws ten-six in the bow, fourteen-eight in the stern.’

‘Good. I do not want it bow-heavy.’

‘Nor I,’ said Paxmore. Then he waited for a confirmation, but instead of speaking, Matt Turlock drew from his waist a canvas bag laden with silver coins and began to count, pushing them into piles with his silver-tipped left hand. When the sum amounted to a thousand dollars American, he said, ‘Build it. I have the balance.’ And he disappeared.

In early 1814, when it was finished, Paxmore said, ‘This one will sail in any breeze, but with a quartering wind she’ll clip along,’ from which his men called her their clipper, and it was this name that Paxmore painted on her transom. But when Turlock saw it he said firmly, ‘I name my own ship,’ and it was repainted the
Ariel:
‘The spirit of the sea. This one lives close to the heart of oceans.’

He recruited a knowing crew of thirty-four and told them one cold January day, ‘We’ll try her on the Choptank,’ but when he had her moving, he nosed her into the Chesapeake, then edged her down the eastern margin of the bay far from the dozing British ships of war, and when she reached Cape Henry he startled the men by sailing into the broad Atlantic, shouting, ‘Look at how she takes the waves!’

It was three months before he returned to the bay, bringing with him a crew hardened for war. He brought no booty; the
Ariel
had captured two small English merchantmen but had got little from them, just enough to feed the crew. At Patamoke he asked Paxmore to make a few alterations, picked up a commission from Paul Steed, and set forth again on his quest.

He was moving briskly down the bay when the lookout called, ‘Two British craft three points off starboard,’ and when Matt took the glass
his breath caught in his throat, for he saw that the lead ship was the
Dartmoor,
flagship of his mortal enemy, Captain Gatch. ‘He has eight guns to our two,’ he cried to his men. ‘And maybe two or three more on the little ship trailing aft. But we can do it.’

Allowing his sailors no time to calculate what this enormous advantage might mean to Gatch, Matt gave one swift glance at his chart and satisfied himself that the battle could be confined to that broad stretch of bay between the York River on the west and Cape Charles on the east, and he was pleased that he would not have to worry about British support ships rushing in from the James River, for its mouth lay well to the south. Fate had given him room, a brisk wind off the western shore and a trusted crew. He asked no more.

Crisply he told his men, ‘We’ll cut that one out and sink her,’ and he indicated the trailing sloop with the four guns. Having given this brief command, he swung the
Ariel
onto a starboard tack that would carry him between the two British vessels, and well aft of the more dangerous one in the lead. He calculated that he would dispose of the sloop before Captain Gatch in the
Dartmoor
could swing about and bring his guns to bear.

Now the
Ariel
leaped through the water, her low decks awash, her tall masts straining under the weight of sail, and so expertly did the clipper move that Turlock succeeded in the first part of his plan: his two guns punished the lesser vessel and stopped her in the water, whereupon he swung about and bore down upon her. Nine Choptank men swarmed aboard, scuffled, killed when necessary and set the ship ablaze.

There was no way to recover them without stopping dead in the water and allowing the
Dartmoor
to fire at will, so Turlock waved to his men and watched approvingly as they launched rowboats. They were out of the fight.

When Captain Gatch swung the
Dartmoor
about, intending to run down the impudent American ship, he saw with amazement that it was captained by a man he thought he had killed long since—‘Good God! It’s Turlock!’ Spotting immediately that Turlock had only two guns while the
Dartmoor
carried eight, he shouted, ‘That’s the new thing they call the clipper. We sink her now!’

Every advantage lay with Gatch. By swinging north he had acquired the weather gauge; he had eight well-trained gunners and an eager crew who believed in his invincibility. What was more important, at the bombardment of Patamoke he had outsmarted Turlock and felt confident he could do so again. He could not lose and told his men so.

Before Turlock could untangle himself from his engagement with the first British vessel Captain Gatch bore down on him from the north, sails tightly controlled and the four port guns exactly trained. The pass was a masterpiece of seamanship, and Gatch’s gunners, secure on their steady
platform, devastated the
Ariel’s
decks; they did not, however, damage either mast, so that Turlock had an opportunity to head eastward and prepare himself for the next assault. With some dismay he noted that neither of his gunners had even fired at the British ship during the first sally. He did not propose to have this happen again; he would choose the time and condition of the next contact.

Accordingly, he danced about in the eastern portion of the bay, keeping careful eye on the
Dartmoor
but also watching with satisfaction as the British sloop burned to the waterline: You’ve lost half your command, Gatch. Now the other half.

As he waited for an opportunity that would permit him to keep the
Dartmoor
to port, he ordered his gunners to swing their swivels to that side and warned, ‘This time we must hurt them.’ To his sailors he said, ‘We’ll give them full musket fire.’

Obedient to his plan, the
Ariel
moved with great speed on a starboard tack, almost throwing itself across the path of Gatch’s schooner, and as it passed, it delivered a withering fire from all kinds of weapons. One cannonball glanced off the foremast, causing some of the forward canvas to lose wind; muskets ripped across the deck. It had been a notable exchange and no American sailors had been lost.

At this point it would have been prudent for Turlock to retire; he had hurt his enemy, and there was no reasonable hope that in a prolonged battle his lightly armed clipper could continue to rake the heavier
Dartmoor.
But Turlock was not thinking prudently; he was so bent upon revenge that safe escape was no part of his plan. ‘Shall we finish them off?’ he cried to his men, and they shouted their assent. So he altered course, moved down along the west coast of the bay and proposed to come at the
Dartmoor
on a rushing port tack, with a quartering wind.

But Gatch discerned the plan and conceded that for the moment, with his foremast scarred, he had the slower vessel, so he prepared to pass starboard-to-starboard and to rake the insolent American foe with a hail of fire not to be forgotten. Turlock’s men quickly understood the tactic and realized that all depended upon their successful passage of this fiery deluge. They wheeled their two guns into maximum position and lined the starboard bulwark with muskets of every description. This would be a test of wills.

It was a test of captains, too. Gatch had the advantage of fire superiority; Turlock had the wind, the speed, the taste of partial victory. And each had the support of his crew, the English knowing that Clever Trevor was a lucky leader, the Americans relying as they had always done on the courage of Silverfist.

How beautiful the two Paxmore schooners were as they maneuvered through the Chesapeake, the old
Dartmoor
as fine as the bay had produced, the new
Ariel
a sprite foretelling a future when clippers of this
design would command the seas from China to Murmansk. They sped across the bay like those bugs of summer which dance upon the water, their miraculous feet never breaking the surface. Their masts were raked, their lines severely clean; they leaped forward as if eager for a test of strength, and during one fearful moment Gatch thought: My God? Does he intend to ram? He judged the American capable of any folly.

But at the last moment Matt Turlock veered to bring his starboard across the path of the
Dartmoor,
and the firing began. The American gunners were good, and they were resolute, killing two English sailors; but the heavy guns of the Dartmoor were terrifying, and they ripped the
Ariel.

Wood shattered. Men were thrown helter-skelter. The clipper seemed to shiver, and a yard came crashing down. This time the English fire had been irresistible, and the fragile
Ariel
was doomed.

That is, she would have been doomed if Turlock had been stupid enough to wait for a third test of arms. He was not. A quick survey satisfied him that she had been sorely damaged and that on any further runs her advantages of speed and maneuverability would be lost. Without hesitation he fled.

‘Now we have her!’ Gatch shouted as his men cheered. And he prepared to chase the wounded
Ariel
to her hiding place in the Choptank and destroy her as he had done her predecessor.

But it was not Captain Turlock’s intention to hide anywhere. Without reflecting on where or how he would refit, he limped toward the entrance to the bay, trusting as his father would have done forty years earlier that somewhere in that great ocean the
Ariel
would find refuge. Wounded, her spars in disarray, her decks cluttered with debris, the ship crept out into the open ocean, where not even a swift
Dartmoor
could catch her and where she could heal herself.

‘She’ll sink out there,’ Sir Trevor prophesied as he watched her go, but he did not believe his own prediction; he suspected that somehow Matt Turlock would mend that sleek clipper and that somewhere on the oceans of the world the two vessels would meet again. Nevertheless, when he reported the battle to the Admiralty he claimed a victory. ‘True, we lost one small sloop of no consequence, but the
Ariel
we punished, and this is important, for the Americans had begun to place great store in their new clipper. We drove her from the seas.’ He now had two victories over Captain Turlock and no defeats, and when his men rejoined Admiral Cockburn’s fleet for the attack on Washington, they boasted, ‘Clever Trevor knows how to handle Americans. He smashes ’em.’

Of all the places in the Atlantic to which Matt Turlock might have gone to mend his ship, he chose the least likely. He sailed to St. Eustatius, that
insignificant Dutch island in the north Caribbean. No longer was it an entrepôt of swarming wealth; one of the peace treaties that periodically swept Europe had returned the island to the Dutch and it was once more what it had been down the centuries: a sleepy, unimportant little harbor with two or three shops that did a pitiful business. Of course, along the shore there still stood those immense warehouses which for a few exciting years in the 1770s had housed the wealth of the world, but now they were empty and mice gnawed their timbers.