Chesapeake (79 page)

The few artisans on hand were glad to find work and in a desultory way repaired the
Ariel,
so that by the end of three weeks she was as stout as ever, but what to do with her became a problem. She could not sail back to the Chesapeake, for in mid-1814 that body of water became so infested with British battleships that no American craft could move, and that condition would prevail for more than a year. Other logical ports were blockaded, so the tedious business began of drifting back and forth across the ocean, hoping for profitable trade.

Captain Turlock made one successful run from the French island of Martinique to the Spanish port of Veracruz in Mexico, and there he loaded timber intended for Halifax, but a British gunboat had identified him as American and driven him from shore. He disposed of the untrimmed logs far across the sea in Portugal, but was able to find no cargo there destined for any port that he could enter. With a swift clipper and a crew of thirty-four to feed, he was being driven from the seas.

So one day as he was drifting aimlessly across the Atlantic he recalled his final trip in the
Whisper:
he had deposited a cargo of meat at Havana and was about to quit the port when a ship chandler rowed out to advise him that three slaves were waiting to be smuggled to Virginia, and that a substantial freight charge would be paid if he delivered them. He did so, and the money had added substantially to his profit, so now he began casually inquiring about the slave trade, and learned the basic principles: ‘Fill your ship with any kind of trading goods, run to Africa, pick the slaves out of the barracoons, ferry them to Brazil, take rum and sugar to any commercial port—and repeat the process.’

Blockaded by the British from honest trading, he was tempted by the easy money to be made in Africa but was restrained from sailing there by his awareness of the law. Since 1792 American ship captains had been forbidden to import slaves into the new nation and were indicted for piracy if they tried. In 1808 all importation, regardless of what nation owned the vessel, was outlawed, and Maryland, with her own surplus of slaves, even forbade their purchase from neighboring states like Virginia.

And yet the trade continued. Daring captains could snatch enormous profits by sneaking to Africa, unloading their cargoes in Cuba or Brazil, or even smuggling prime hands to secret landing spots in the swamps of Georgia. It was this nefarious trade that Matt Turlock decided to enter.

‘Not permanently,’ he assured his mate, Mr. Goodbarn, as they
headed for Africa. ‘Just a trip now and then till peace returns.’ And when they reached the Portuguese harbor of Luanda in Angola he explained to the local factors, ‘I’m not a slaver. Just this one trip to Brazil,’ and a Senhor Gonçalves said, ‘Good! I have two hundred and sixteen awaiting passage.’

But when Gonçalves inspected the bare structure of the
Ariel’s
holds, he laughed. ‘If you propose to carry slaves, you’ve got to have proper pens.’ He hired a team of Portuguese carpenters familiar with this procedure, and they swarmed into the bowels of the ship, installing massive barricades, and one afternoon, as the sound of hammers reverberated through the ship, Turlock had a premonition: They’re nailing down my destiny. He realized that once his ship was fitted for the slave trade, the impetus to continue would become irresistible: You don’t refurbish your entire hold for one trip. But regardless of the money involved, he swore: Once this war ends, out come those partitions. We go back to honest cargo.

When the job was done, Senhor Gonçalves invited him below to approve what the carpenters had achieved, and he was shaken by the gloomy massiveness of the bulwarks, the cramped space allotted to the slaves. Where the foremast came through the deck to seat itself in the keelson, a stout wall had been built. Where the mainmast came through, a vertical grating had been erected, and a short distance aft of that, another wall terminated the holding area. But what astonished Turlock was that between the bottom of the hold and the deck, a whole new floor had been laid, and the heights of the ceilings were unbelievable—‘In the lower hold it’s got to be less than four feet.’ (‘Just under,’ Gonçalves said.) And here in the upper it can’t be more than four-eight.’ (‘Four-ten,’ Gonçalves said proudly, showing Matt that a man could more or less stand erect if he kept his belly bent.)

‘What you have,’ he continued, ‘is four compartments. Two above, two below. Room for four hundred sixty slaves in all. You throw the most powerful ones, the troublemakers, down there. The others you keep up here.’

Turlock felt strangled, as if he had constructed a jail for himself; he was aghast at what these carpenters had done to his ship. He wanted to quit the slave trade right there, but Senhor Gonçalves said reassuringly, ‘Captain, they had to make two layers so you could load more slaves. That’s where the profit is. And they had to make them solid. You must remember that for a hundred and fifteen days strong black men will stand cursing behind those bars, trying every trick to break them down and mutiny your ship. In this trade we’ve learned one thing. If they do break loose—and sooner or later they’ll break even these bars—the only thing to do is shoot them … fast.’

When the slaves were herded onto his ship, and thrown below into the
four compartments, Turlock suffered additional revulsion, thinking that no proud waterman from the Choptank would accept such indignity; within the first minutes there would be riot. But these aren’t watermen, he rationalized, and when the hatches were battened down and the holds sealed except for small openings into which food and water would be delivered, he raised anchor and set sail for the Brazilian port of Beiém, some distance east of the Amazon. When he landed there in January 1815 the Portuguese plantation owners were delighted to get the slaves and assured him that his profits would be prodigious, but as often happened in such cases, payment was delayed, and he was forced to lay over.

The more he saw of this steaming tropical town and its relationship to the Amazon, the more he liked it. He began to frequent a tavern called Infierno—its door was guarded by two devils carved in ebony, and they seemed to wink at him when he entered, as if they were a foretaste of what slavers could expect in afterlife—and there he heard fantastic stories about the Amazon: ‘Thirty percent of all the water that enters the oceans of the world comes from here. Sixty miles out at sea the water is still fresh. Throw down your buckets and drink. No man has ever gone to the end of the river. It has birds and animals that would stupefy you.’

He was listening to such a monologue when an English sailor made an unbelievable statement: ‘Our men marched to Washington, burned the city and captured the whole American government. The United States is no more.’ When Turlock shouted his disbelief, the sailor said, ‘Ships like yours will be driven from the sea. They’re hanging captains like you … right now.’

Even after he had collected his money, Turlock sat day after day in the Infierno, seeking information. He could not believe that a nation so promising could have collapsed, but before he departed on his third voyage to Africa a French officer arrived at Beiém with confirming news: ‘You Americans must learn never to challenge England without our help. Now you’ve lost everything.’

For the first time in his life Turlock was bewildered. He needed the easy money provided by the slave trade, but he also needed information about home. He felt that if America had succumbed to the British he ought to be on hand to aid the new system, whatever it was to be. He knew that the wounded country would need practiced men and sturdy ships to develop its commercial interests.

So in spite of attractive commissions from Brazilian slave dealers, he sailed not to Africa but to the Chesapeake. He arrived there in April 1815, to find no English warships on patrol, no impediment at the capes. Gingerly he sailed into the bay, hailing the first ship he saw. He and the other captain spoke each other.

‘Defeated? Hell, no! We drove the redcoats back to London.’

‘I was told that Washington was burned.’

‘It was, and not a thing was lost. We’ll build it better than before.’

‘England is not ruling us?’

‘Nor ever will.’

The ships passed. Turlock stood by the railing, the speaking-trumpet in his right hand, his silver fist hammering rhythmically at the wood.

When he reached Patamoke he found that he was regarded as a hero, the man who had kept the American flag aloft. He did not tell his neighbors of his second defeat by Captain Gatch nor of his ignominy as a slaver. He was so relieved that America was still free that he accepted the plaudits.

In triumph he became a moody man, as effective at forty-seven as he would ever be. But he had no wife, no home, really, no job; and he could never erase from his mind those drifting months on the Atlantic when he had not even a port he could claim his own. He thought: I’ll stop at Patamoke for a while—give the
Ariel
a good mending. Then something’ll turn up.

In the meantime there was considerable excitement on Devon Island, and he found himself sailing down there more and more.

As soon as the war ended, Penelope Steed Grimes had informed her London circle that she was taking her pretty daughter Susan to Maryland, in the Americas, to be married. For some years she had been in communication with her distant family, the Steeds of Devon, and had known of her father’s death. Simon Steed had been well regarded by Fithians, her London family, for he had been generous in supporting her. When she married Captain Grimes, Simon had sent five thousand pounds, a tremendous sum which had helped her husband buy a colonelcy in a good regiment. He had died fighting Napoleon, but by then Simon was dead, too.

Her correspondent at Devon had been Isham Steed, her grandfather’s brother, a delightful old man who had visited London in 1794 to attend Penelope’s wedding to Captain Grimes; he had enchanted the community as a witty, well-educated gentleman who could laugh at American pretensions. He liked Penelope and through the years had kept her informed about the Steed half of her heritage.

He had written, proposing that young Susan come to America and marry his grandson Paul. At first the idea had seemed preposterous to Penelope. ‘They’re cousins, in a manner of speaking. And Paul’s gone to some silly school in America where he’s learned nothing, I’m sure.’ She rambled on, as she often did, but in the end began to take seriously her great-uncle’s suggestion.

Fithians assured her that the Steeds were one of the soundest families in America, and that if rumor could be trusted, Simon had doubled his fortune in the rebellion. The family was stable, as witness Uncle Isham,
and now that peace had settled over the area, life in Maryland could be quite acceptable. A portrait painter had shipped to London a likeness of young Paul, and when everything was added up, a Steed-Grimes marriage seemed practical, despite the consanguinity.

So in the summer of 1816 Penelope Grimes, lively widow of forty-one, took passage on one of the Steed ships accompanied by her daughter Susan, aged twenty, and after a crossing as placid as the good relations now existing between England and America, the ship dropped anchor at Devon. Susan, standing at the rail, saw with delight that Rosalind’s Revenge was as handsome a plantation home as she had been promised. ‘It’s protected by a hundred trees! It’s a splendid place!’ Her musical voice carried over the water, and as she came toward him, Paul was even more charmed by her dainty style, the beauty of her features.

Days of exploration and enchantment followed, with Penelope as pleased as her daughter by the unexpected suavity of Devon. ‘Really, it could be transplanted right into rural England and no one could detect the difference. Susan, we’ve come to a little paradise.’

Both women were fascinated by the idea of literally owning servants who could be told what to do without fear of their departing in a huff. But even so, when old Isham and young Paul appeared one day leading a shy black girl of thirteen, neither of the English visitors was quite prepared when faced with the actuality of slavery.

Shoving the little girl forward, barefoot and dressed only in a slip, Paul said, with obvious pride, ‘She’s yours, Susan. Name’s Eden.’

‘Eden what?’

‘Just Eden. Slaves don’t have names,’ and Isham added, ‘She sews beautifully. And she’s young enough to train in the ways you desire.’ Eden, her smooth and beautifully composed features betraying no sign of understanding, stood silent as the Grimes women inspected her.

‘She’s a gem!’ Penny said, but her daughter was confused as to what one did with a slave. ‘How do I …’

‘You own her. She sleeps outside your door,’ Paul explained. ‘She does whatever you wish. Because she belongs to you.’ Turning to the black girl, he said abruptly, ‘Back to the kitchen,’ and the girl vanished.

‘Paul!’ Susan said when the girl was gone. ‘What a sweet gift! And the glorious parties you’ve been having.’

‘There’s to be more,’ he assured her, and that night Susan met for the first time some of the Steed captains. Among them was Matthew Turlock, not at present working for the Steeds but a figure of some importance in the community.

‘This is our local hero,’ Paul said with a faint touch of amusement. ‘He fought the British.’

‘I’m sure he fought well,’ Penelope said as she took his right hand. ‘I’m told some of your seamen were quite heroic’

‘Yes,’ Susan burbled. ‘My cousin’s married to Sir Trevor Gatch and he told us …’

At the mention of Gatch’s name Captain Turlock stiffened. ‘He was a formidable enemy,’ he said. ‘He’s the one who fired the cannon at this house.’

‘This house?’ Penelope said in disbelief. ‘Did the war reach here?’

‘It did,’ Turlock said.

‘You must see what your friend Sir Trevor did to us,’ Paul cried, his voice rising rather higher than he had intended, and with a lamp he led the way upstairs to his room, where the two cannonballs were lodged in the wall near his bed. ‘Had Captain Gatch lowered his sights three feet, I’d have been killed.’

‘Oh, look at those dreadful things,’ Susan cried. ‘Coming right into the room. Could I see them?’