The Tern Schooner (Privateers & Gentlemen) Read online

  PRIVATEERS AND GENTLEMEN

  THE TERN SCHOONER

  Walter Jon Williams

  Copyright (c) 1981, 2012 by Walter Jon Williams

  Originally published as The Yankee by “Jon Williams.”

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Other Books by Walter Jon Williams

  Privateers & Gentlemen (Historical Fiction)

  To Glory Arise

  Brig of War

  The Macedonian

  The Tern Schooner

  Cat Island

  Dagmar Shaw Thrillers

  This Is Not a Game

  Deep State

  The Fourth Wall

  Diamonds for Tequila

  The Second Books of the Praxis (NEW!!!)

  The Accidental War

  The First Books of the Praxis (Dread Empire’s Fall)

  The Praxis

  The Sundering

  Conventions of War

  Investments

  Impersonations

  Quillifer Series (NEW!!!)

  Quillifer

  Quillifer the Knight (forthcoming)

  Novels

  Hardwired

  Knight Moves

  Voice of the Whirlwind

  Days of Atonement

  Aristoi

  Metropolitan

  City on Fire

  Ambassador of Progress

  Angel Station

  The Rift

  Implied Spaces

  Divertimenti

  The Crown Jewels

  House of Shards

  Rock of Ages

  Short Stories

  Daddy’s World

  Investments (Set in the world of Dread Empire’s Fall)

  Prayers on the Wind

  Collections

  Facets

  Frankensteins & Foreign Devils

  The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories

  to:

  The gang at Cafe le Cabotin, and the Immortal Memory of the Eleventh Periscope Group

  HISTORICAL NOTE:

  For dramatic purposes I have compressed into one day the three-day siege and attack of Fort Bowyer (12-15 September, 1814). In that action, Major William Lawrence and 130 men held off 130 marines and 600 Indians, who were supported by a squadron of five British warships. The defenders inflicted 232 casualties and destroyed the sloop of war Hermes (20), while suffering only eight casualties in return. The actual battle for the fort occurred much as described here. The engagement at the Passe Maronne, and the ships and men involved, is fictional.

  THE TERN SCHOONER

  CHAPTER 1

  EMBAYED

  When he saw the enemy squadron drop from the wind, studding sails blossoming as they raced to get a clear look into the bay, Captain Gideon Markham, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, knew that his privateer was doomed. The British squadron consisted of a seventy-four of the line, a frigate, and a sloop of war, with over a hundred guns altogether and perhaps a thousand men; while the General Sullivan was a New England schooner with thirteen guns and a crew of sixty, embayed by an offshore wind in a Cuban inlet, and moored alongside two captured British prizes.

  Gideon would have abandoned his schooner and his prizes there and then, but it was low tide and the British would not be able to get their vessels over the bar until after dark; the two-decker wouldn’t be able to get over in any case. Gideon controlled the frustration and rage he’d felt when he’d first seen those studding sails sheeting home. He had time. Cutting himself a plug of tobacco, Gideon Markham chewed meditatively and studied the enemy through his glass. If he were that enemy captain, he thought, he’d give the lookout a guinea.

  Unquestionably they were British. Never mind that they were in Spanish— and therefore neutral— waters; so was General Sullivan, and on an illegal mission to boot. If the British attacked in neutral waters, Gideon could scarcely appeal to any Spanish court. The Spaniards, though neutral in the fight between Britain and the American commonwealth, were nevertheless allied with Britain against the French armies that had invaded Spain; the Spanish would find it politically expedient to overlook the occasional British irregularity.

  Anger flashed through Gideon, and he fought to control it. Helpless. He had been helpless too often in his lifetime. He hath enclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked... Gideon fought down his despair. All travail had its purpose. He spat his tobacco over the lee rail and turned to his first officer.

  “Go ashore, Mr. Harris,” he said. “Find the fastest horse you may and ride to Rio Lagartos. You will carry to Don Esteban a letter. I will give you that letter in five minutes. Be ready.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” said Alexander Harris. He was in his shirt-sleeves and in no condition to pay a visit. He ran his fingers through his shock of wheat-blond hair and turned hastily to pick out a boat’s crew. Gideon returned to his glass and his observations of the enemy. Behind him he heard Harris run down the aft scuttle for a quick wash and change of clothes.

  The British frigate was in the lead, a fine, fast-lined ship, her yellowed canvas taut as it bellied out with the following wind, stuns’l booms spread wide like the claws of a pouncing eagle. As fast as the frigate looked, Gideon knew his own General Sullivan could show the enemy a clean pair of heels in any wind— but he was anchored in a Cuban bay, trapped.

  He was unto me as a bear lying in wait and as a lion in secret places. He hath made me desolate. Gideon clenched his teeth as the despairing verses welled up from his mind. The Lord will not cast off forever, he reminded himself firmly. From the frigate’s fore shrouds he caught a wink of light, twice repeated. Gideon’s lips twitched in the beginnings of an ironic smile: the British were studying him as intently as he investigated them. He swept his glass to the shore, to where the sandbar met the palms of the forest’s edge.

  “Mr. Willard!” he called.

  George Willard’s eyes were an intense, absorbed black; his dark hair was worn in the old style, unfashionably long and caught in a queue behind. The second officer was a Gay Head Indian from Martha’s Vineyard, one of the small, able tribe of American natives brought up from the cradle to sail upon the breast of the sea. More white than Indian, and more sailor than either, George Willard had been at sea from the age of six, his profession chosen for him by generations of island ancestors, chosen along with his Christian name and his Congregational religion.

  “I want you to go aboard Linnet— I understand the prize has two long twelves?”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Move them to yonder point and set up a battery. Take ye powder and shot. Take care to see that the battery may be hidden from the enemy. Take the pinnace.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.”

  “Have it done by tonight.”

  Willard’s slight hesitation before his “aye aye” did not go unnoticed. Gideon pounced upon that hesitation like a lion in wait.

  “I do not give orders lightly; I expect that battery built by nightfall,” he said. “You may have ten men. You will stay with the guns—“ if the enemy crosses the bar, fire on them.” His mouth tightened to a grim line. “Kill as many Englishmen as you can.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” George Willard assented. He turned to gather his men. Gideon did not spare the battery another thought, for he knew that he himself could have set up the battery before nightfall— therefore Willard could, or would be answerable. Gideon did not consider his orders subj
ect to question or himself obligated to explain the reasoning behind them.

  He picked up his telescope once more and turned it on the enemy: the frigate was drawing nearer, less than two miles offshore. He could see the white commission pendant sailing out from her mainpeak with the red St. George’s cross. British. As if there were any doubt.

  Forward of General Sullivan’s mainmast Gideon could dimly hear Browne, the bosun, commencing an anecdote in his high-pitched Briton’s voice, the general theme of which was the dull-wittedness of Englishmen in general and naval officers in particular. Browne, a candlemaker from Bristol, had been pressed into the Royal Navy and had fought at Copenhagen and Trafalgar; but he now maintained, as frequently and as loudly as he was allowed, that after the death of Nelson there was no man left in the British fleet who could command his allegiance. One night in Plymouth he’d slipped over the side and swam to an American ship.

  Now he fought his former countrymen and would probably be hanged if caught. As far as Gideon could tell, Browne wasn’t much bothered by either fact. He had volunteered to be a privateer; there was no compulsion in the American service. He was an American seaman now and carried his citizenship papers to prove it.

  Gideon considered cutting himself another plug of tobacco, but resolved to resist the inclination as long as he could. The British frigate was flying signals; Gideon could not make them out, but the ship-sloop was repeating them, and the seventy-four answering. There were hours yet before any hard decisions would have to be made.

  He returned his telescope to the rack and walked to the quarterdeck scuttle, descended the companionway, and walked the short, narrow corridor to his little cabin. The place was small and tidy, the furniture partly built by the ship’s carpenter— there were no paintings or costly rugs, and the service was pewter rather than silver. Gideon placed his beaver hat on the little table, reached his sword down from its peg, and laid it next to the hat. Standing at his desk, he wrote a note for Harris to carry ashore and sent it up via his steward. Then he knelt stiffly by the bunk, clasped his hands, bent his head, and began to pray.

  CHAPTER 2

  AT PRAYER

  As he bent over his bed, the privateer’s form was echoed by the shaving mirror on the wall, and it reflected him in shades of brown: his face had been burned very brown by the sun and showed every one of its thirty-four hard-fought years; his clothes were a deep brown, and though neat, were modest to the point of plainness. His hair was brown, lightened a bit by the sun and cut in the modern vogue, short and combed forward over the temples; long side-whiskers advanced down either jawline and were also in the time’s dashing fashion—“ but on Gideon the whiskers looked more severe than gallant.

  It was August of 1813; he had commanded General Sullivan for more than a year. The year had seen disaster for the young America on land— one entire army surrendered along with the entire Northwest, and other armies beaten or driven back in humiliated defeat. Only on the sea had the United States been able to inflict a surprising series of defeats on British arms: Constitution had defeated and sunk both Guerriere and Java, Wasp had captured Frolic, Hornet had sunk Peacock, and the frigate United States, on which Gideon’s cousin Favian Markham served as lieutenant, had not only captured Macedonian but brought the British frigate home to an American port. The victories had stunned Europe and heartened a bitter and divided America, but they would not win the war. Gideon Markham knew what would.

  As a good New England Federalist and an admirer of Congressman Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, Gideon looked upon the war with suspicion. He would rather have fought the French— assuming the United States was to fight anybody at all— for the French had disregarded the rights of neutrals as callously as had the British, and Gideon would rather have had the strength of the mightiest navy in the world on the side of America instead of against it. But war had been declared against George III rather than Bonaparte, and therefore Gideon felt it must be the will of God that England fight the United States. And as it was the will of the Lord, Gideon had become a privateer.

  Privateering was a Markham family tradition, for Gideon’s father, uncles, and grandfather had all in their own time been privateers. Privateering was by now the only profession for a New England seaman that could hope to show a profit. With luck Gideon might be able both to do the Lord’s work and bring himself out of the endless condition of debt into which the disastrous Non-Intercourse Acts had plunged him.

  For almost an entire year General Sullivan and other American privateers had virtually wiped out the British West Indian trade; they had laid naval siege to Jamaica, and the British had utterly failed to produce a ship capable of catching the swift, big-sparred American clippers. Recent British reinforcements had made the pickings in the vicinity of Jamaica a good deal less easy— even if they couldn’t catch the privateers, they could recapture the prizes— and so General Sullivan had been forced to sail farther abroad in search of prey. But Gideon knew that privateering was the only hope America had of winning the war.

  The United States had a long, irregular seacoast, hard to blockade efficiently; England’s trade was spread thinly and was often unprotected by the Royal Navy cruisers, which were concentrated off Europe’s coast. England was a merchant nation, and her trade was vulnerable; if enough ships were taken, if Consols dropped thirty points and forced the resignation of the government, if enough cargoes were auctioned off in American ports, and if the insurance underwriters were afraid to guarantee cargoes except at twenty or thirty percent, then England would be willing to make peace.

  And Captain Gideon Markham, privateer and deacon, was prepared to squeeze the British as hard as he could and make himself the richer thereby. Two weeks before the British squadron had appeared off Cuba, Gideon had captured three prizes at once off Anguilla, filled with drygoods and plantation equipment destined for Jamaica. Gideon had filled General Sullivan’s hold with the goods from the smallest vessel and set it free along with his prisoners; the other two craft he took in company.

  The British presence made it risky to take captures back to an American port, and Gideon thought he’d had a better idea. He knew a Spanish planter in Cuba, one who owed him a favor from before the war. Don Esteban de Velasco y Anaquito had riches enough and influence enough to dispose of Gideon’s captured cargoes, and at good prices in a Cuba desperate for European goods. Velasco’s principal plantation, Rio Lagartos, was also situated comfortably near the mouth of a river where the cargoes might be easily landed. Gideon would not dare to enter any Spanish port; the Spanish authorities had been seizing and condemning any American privateer entering their jurisdiction, and although the seizures were illegal, the American government, hard-pressed by the British, had no hope of enforcing any demands.

  A small, private arrangement was what Gideon had proposed: General Sullivan and her two prizes had been taken over the bar and anchored in the center of the little bay where they could be guarded and kept safe. Gideon had gone ashore by boat. Don Esteban had been friendly and interested but had been in no hurry. They had haggled for two days, ever nearing agreement. Now, the morning of the third day, a British squadron had appeared.

  This called for assistance from God Almighty; and so Gideon prayed.

  It was Gideon’s opinion that the Lord rarely allowed his children to be beset by difficulties but that he also created opportunities to be exploited. That belief had been sorely tried during the Embargo, but Gideon had managed to maintain his faith; and now Gideon attempted, through urgent and systematic prayer, to discover any such opportunities the Lord may have left within his reach.

  He had no doubt that the British would attack. The situation was obvious: an American-built schooner armed as a privateer, with two captures, found anchored quietly in Spanish waters, protected by a bar and low tide. The Spanish authorities would not interfere.

  The tide was not great here, two or three feet at its highest, but it would not be as safe for the British vessels to venture over the bar unti
l the tide was in their favor. Gideon would not face attack until after nightfall. But when it came, would the attack be delivered by boats, or by the ships of war themselves?

  Lord, let me see thy path clearly, Gideon prayed, but somewhere in the back of his mind was the thought, What would Malachi do? Malachi Markham, his uncle, was the most spectacularly successful privateer of his family, and perhaps of his generation; Gideon had been raised on legends of Malachi’s genius and conquests, and a copy of Malachi’s biography by his former first officer, John Maddox, lay in Gideon’s sea chest next to his prayer book and bible.

  “The greatest natural sailor I have ever seen,” Josiah Markham had said, Gideon’s father and Malachi’s brother; and from Josiah that was no mean praise. The praise had been echoed by Malachi’s former brothers-in-arms, many of whom Gideon had known around Portsmouth in his youth: Captain Andrew Keith, John Maddox, the blaspheming and free-living Finch Martin— all agreed on Malachi’s skill, charm, and brilliance. Malachi had gone barefoot and bearded in an age when merchants affected gentility; he had fought a duel, and in battle recklessly exposing himself to danger; he was impious, profane, and indiscreet; he could judge the wind within half a point and steer his privateer by the seat of his pants; and his love for an English noblewoman was a family legend.

  Josiah and Malachi had cruised together for years. They had destroyed the British frigate Melampe and captured a stunning bag of prize ships, including a thirty-gun Indiaman; but Malachi alone was responsible for his stunning victory over the British fifty-gun man-of-war Bristol, the only such ship taken in open sea battle by the American forces during the entire war— bigger, in fact, than any of the large English frigates America had captured during the current struggle.