To Glory Arise (Privateers and Gentlemen) Read online

  “Nyborg sent us a case of twelve-year-old port,” he said. “He confiscated it from some smuggler or other. I know port’s supposed to be for after meals, but it’s damn good stuff, Jo, and my of claret and hock have suffered from the heat.”

  Nyborg was the local head of customs and a man of great influence with the Danish administration of St. Thomas. Denmark had not declared its opinion as to the war between the American colonies and Great Britain; yet Nyborg, in flagrant violation of the neutrality laws which Denmark professed to respect, had sold the Markham brothers Danish guns, powder, and shot— and the majority of the guns were twelve-pounders, as well, and Danish twelve-pounders were larger than their British equivalents. Twelve-pound guns, which both Pope and Piscataqua carried on their broadsides, were almost unheard-of in a privateer. They would outgun many British sloops-of-war.

  “We’re supposed to decant port,” he said, “but Roxana’s been using the decanter as a chamberpot, and somehow I haven’t—”

  “That’s all right,” said Josiah hastily.

  “Port is not good at sea,” Malachi said. “The motion of the ship is unkind to it. We’ll have to drink the case before we leave— port’s only for port, eh?” He knew that Josiah would limit himself to two cupfuls, and then the rest would be his. His and Roxana’s.

  He bowed his head while Josiah prayed, not out of devotion, but out of respect for his brother. Though he had eaten an hour before, he didn’t mind two dinners in a row, out of courtesy to Josiah if nothing else. He could eat all day and never gain an ounce of fat.

  “I’ll give it another week,” he said, after Josiah’s amen. “Then I’m off. I won’t miss the spring convoys even if it means I might be found a pirate.”

  “Jehu is expected any day,” said Josiah.

  “I’ll forge a letter of marque if I must,” Malachi said. “We’ve been outfitting right under the noses of the British and Tortola’s less than thirty miles away. It’s only a matter of time before they send a cruiser to demand our ejection. How Mr. Nyborg will react to that I can’t predict.”

  “We have paid Nyborg well,” Josiah growled. “If he betrays us—”

  He left the thought unfinished; they both knew they could do nothing. Denmark was neutral in the struggle between Britain and her rebellious colonies; that Nyborg had been bribed in order to allow two American privateers to outfit right under the nose of Government Hill did not disguise the fact that it was against the law and custom of war. Officially, Piscataqua and Alexander Pope were merchant vessels, owned by subjects of His Britannic Majesty, and were busily buying cannon, powder, and shot, raising very large crews, and holding gun and cutlass drill only to protect themselves against possible attack by American rebels. The truth, in this March of 1776, was something quite different.

  It was not yet known whether the British had made up their minds to treat American privateers as pirates; they were certainly under no obligation not to. Pirates could be hanged, on the spot if necessary; privateers operated at the behest of their legally constituted governments, which issued them privateering commissions or letters of marque in order to prove their legitimacy. Whether the British would treat an American letter of marque with the respect due that of a government not in rebellion was problematical, but the Markham & Sons expeditions preferred to sail under a cloak of legal authority if they could.

  Yet time was running out. The month of April saw most of the merchant shipping in the Caribbean moving to rendezvous points such as Jamaica or Antigua, where they could assemble into West Indies convoys and sail to England before the hurricane season began in summer. They were vulnerable to cruising privateers as they made their way from the myriad Caribbean islands to their assembly points, and Josiah and Malachi wanted to be on hand. Moreover, it was usually possible to rake in a few prizes after the convoys were already assembled— merchantmen were notoriously lax in keeping convoy discipline, and the escorts, often slower than the ships they presumed to chase, could not be everywhere.

  And there was further need for haste. Their Danish base was a short distance from Tortola and the other British Virgin Islands; British commerce was in and out of Charlotte Amalie almost weekly, and it would be a miracle if the British authorities were not aware of their presence. The British were notoriously short of ships, however, and there were no men-of-war stationed at Tortola. Yet a fast frigate, armed with a demand from His Britannic Majesty’s government to eject the privateers forthwith, could be sent from Antigua in a matter of days. The Danish administration would be fully within their rights if they refused such a demand; but Denmark was very far away, and the British Leeward Islands Squadron very near, and the Danes would refuse such a demand at their peril. Charlotte Amalie could be harassed, blockaded, or even taken.

  The Markhams’ elder brother, Jehu, had remained in America to obtain privateering commissions for them all; Josiah had been sent ahead to meet Malachi in the Indies, where Malachi had already chosen Charlotte Amalie as the place to outfit his ship. It had been two months since Josiah had first dropped anchor, but nothing had been heard from Jehu.

  “How would a letter of marque begin, Jo, d’ye know?” Malachi asked, still thinking about the possibility of forging one. “ ‘In Marine Committee, Philadelphia,’ and a date?”

  “I suppose we can find a model somewhere,” Josiah said. “Nyborg might find an old one.” He smiled grimly. “Do you think we can turn privateer for th’ British? Would it pay?”

  “The pickings would be slim, Jo.”

  “Aye. That they would, youngster.”

  Malachi, hearing the word “youngster,” knew that the port was having its effects on his steadfast brother. He poured Josiah a second cup and turned the conversation to technical matters.

  “I think you can get more speed out of Piscataqua, Jo,” he said, “at least if the wind is within two or three points of your stern. Hoist you a gaffsail on the mainmast, on the other side from your mainsail, and sail wing-and-wing.”

  “The ship is unhandy enough as it is.” No ship would ever be handy enough for Josiah.

  “Yet it could be done, if speed was all that was necessary. Fix a preventer backstay if the mast isn’t secure enough. The gaffsail can be lowered easily enough if you need to maneuver.”

  “ ’Twill keep the foresail from drawing.”

  “If your gaffsail is as big as your mainsail, it won’t matter; speed’s the important thing. Have another cup, Jo.”

  “Nay, Malachi. Two is enough.”

  “Doesn’t the port suit you?”

  “I like it well enough, yet it will not do well to return to my vessel tipsy, if I’ve forbade my sailors liquor.”

  Malachi shook his head. “That’s bad policy, Jo. Your men will drink on the sly. The reason for a liquor ration is to keep the drinking within limits.”

  Josiah shook his head. “Liquor is money. We’ve got to keep our enterprise within bounds.”

  “You were foolish enough with your money when you were buying Herr Nyborg’s twelve-pounders. And you pay Reverend Gill as if he were an officer, and tithe to him besides, and even let him draw an officer’s share of prize money!”

  “That’s my own business, Mai,” Josiah said. “And as for Nyborg and his greasy ways, I agreed that I paid him too much. He sold you the new iron guns, and I was left with the old bronzes. Damn him, two of those bronzes are a century old if they’re a day, and likely to bust at first fire!”

  Oho, Malachi thought. Josiah was feeling his liquor, as that “damn” attested. Josiah used the word as his father had, after serious consideration and with the trust and expectation that it genuinely called down the wrath of an angry Jehovah upon whatever pitiful wretch had been so singled out for perdition. That Josiah saw fit to damn Nyborg was, in an odd way, a compliment to the Dane’s villainy.

  There was a pounding overhead, the sound of feet running on the poop. A clatter on the poop ladder was succeeded by shoes clacking down the narrow passage to the day-cabin’s do
or. There was a hasty knock.

  “Beg pardon, Captain,” called Stanhope’s high-pitched voice.

  “Come in, Mr. Stanhope.”

  The partition slid open, and Stanhope’s horsy face, long nose above underslung chin, thrust inside.

  “Beg pardon again, Captain,” he said, “but Governor Wentworth’s coming into port, and she’s got a prize!”

  Malachi was on his feet in an instant, calling for Roxana to bring him his stockings; he seized his coat and hat from the peg and told the blinking Stanhope, “My compliments to McVie the bosun and tell him to call all hands. Quickly now!”

  “Yes, Captain,” Stanhope vanished from the day cabin, leaving the partition door open behind him. Malachi swore.

  “That lubber hasn’t even learned to say ‘aye aye,’” he spat. “Roxana! My silk stockings!”

  Josiah, impatient, forgot to resent the presence of Roxana as she, all giggles, helped the cursing Malachi to draw on his stockings. Governor Wentworth was their brother Jehu’s Yankee snow, and she was with a prize. A prize! Three-eighths of the value of the captured vessel would go to the Markham & Sons Corporation, in which the three brothers were all equal partners; one-eighth to Jehu as captain of the privateer, the rest to officers and crew.

  The principles of Yankee commerce— the backbone of New England— were reflected in those portions. The backers were rewarded for their risk, the captain for his enterprise, the officers for their loyalty, and the men for doing their duty. With such incentives, Josiah was certain that British merchant shipping would be swept from the seas within a few years; and the Markham brothers, their industry and risks rewarded, would be rich men. Praise the Lord, for success would show His favor!

  Malachi hopped into his shoes, crushing the heels, and clattered down the hallway to the maindeck, his brother treading heavily after.

  “Request permission to mount the quarterdeck—” Josiah began. Malachi possessed certain formal eccentricities regarding a captain’s privileges.

  “Yes, for Christ’s sake!” Josiah forgot to wince at the blasphemy.

  Malachi dashed up the poop ladder, was handed a telescope by the pop-eyed Stanhope, and trained the glass on the vessels weathering Hassel Island. Josiah followed, seizing a telescope from the rack on the taffrail, and had it trained by the time Malachi gave his low whistle.

  “Not one prize, but two!” Malachi shouted. “Are you blind, Stanhope? And one’s a British cutter, by the nailed Christ!”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Stanhope. “The cutter was masked by the brig.”

  Governor Wentworth, a sweet-hulled snow built for smuggling a mere four years before, was being preceded into port by two vessels: one a round-bottomed merchant brig, the other a swift-looking little vessel with a single great mainmast and a running bowsprit, armed with eight or ten guns. Both craft were flying a British ensign below the American Rattlesnake Flag!

  “Jumping Jupiter!” cried Josiah, who took care to swear only by pagan gods. Malachi handed the telescope to Stanhope. He ran to the break in the poop and looked down at his men. Only about a third were aboard, the rest on liberty ashore. They did not have to be called; they mobbed the waist of the ship, peering eagerly in the direction of the prizes. “Man the shrouds!” Malachi bellowed. “Man the shrouds, you lot of Yankee bullocks!”

  His adjective was not entirely appropriate, since only about half his crew were his hard core of Yankee seamen, those he had brought with him when he’d last left New England two years ago, before the outbreak of war, and the others brought by Josiah two months before. The rest were a mixed bag he’d taken on in Caribbean ports in order to build his crew to fighting strength: they were Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutchmen, Danes, Swedes, a few Englishmen who did not seem to mind fighting their own countrymen. About one in five were black, though they were hard to tell at first glance from the others, so burned were the whites by the hard Indies sun— they were only distinguishable as Europeans by their weekly bath under the deck-pump, where they revealed their corpse-pale buttocks.

  Racing, cheering, they ran for the shrouds, and their women— thirty of them at the moment, wives, lovers, and whores, black and white and every cinnamon shade between—came running up through the hatches. The women were normally confined below decks, where they would not offend the sensibilities— or inflame the lusts— of the officers. Laughing and proud, a few women actually ran up the shrouds with the men; and the rest, some clad only in dirty petticoats, ganged together in the waist, peering and laughing at the prizes coming into harbor.

  “Three cheers for each prize as she passes!” Malachi shouted to his men. “And three cheers and a tiger for Governor Wentworth!”

  They roared as the prizes passed, waving their arms and hats; the hats flew into the air as Governor Wentworth sailed nonchalantly by, her sixteen guns run out, firing the salute to the Danish flag. Through his telescope Malachi could see his brother Jehu standing on his poop, dressed in an elegant cutaway coat, a tall three-cornered hat on his head, his sword at his side.

  It was the sword, Malachi had heard, that had cut the pistol from Lieutenant Dudingstone’s hand, aboard the Gaspee four years ago, on that dark night in the New Providence channel. Malachi hadn’t seen his brother since before the Gaspee incident, not since the news of their father’s death had reached them. He wondered how the precise, cold, and rather foppish man he’d met five years ago could have turned into such a dashing— and treasonous— smuggler.

  “He’s changed her name!” Josiah exclaimed. “Look you, Yankee Venger! I like it.”

  The snow had originally been named after Benning Wentworth, the legendary Royal Governor of New Hampshire; but however legendary— and legendarily corrupt— Wentworth was, his name was hardly suitable for gracing the stern of an American privateer in service of the rebellion, particularly as the current Governor Wentworth was a staunch Loyalist. Malachi turned to his crew.

  “Mr. McVie!” he called. The Bosun, legs astraddle the mizzen crosstrees, answered.

  “A double rum ration for all hands, to celebrate!” Malachi bellowed. More cheers, and more flung hats, many of which ended in the drink. Malachi frowned at the improvidence of his crew, who would have to buy more hats. He was generous with his own money, as generous as any foremast man, but for all his personal liberality— particularly regarding Roxana, where he pursued a minor infatuation and bought off his conscience at the same time— he was also a captain and shipowner, and not a man to waste the Corporation’s money. He knew that it took money to make money, and had spent the Corporation’s funds lavishly equipping his privateer, particularly in the matter of the extravagant broadside of twelve-pounders, but he fully expected to realize a more substantial profit because of his expenditures. Yet the hands’ throwing their hats away annoyed him, until he reflected that it would be he who would sell them new hats from the slop chest, and such spendthrift behavior was bound to have its silver lining.

  “Mr. McVie!” he called again.

  “Aye aye, Cap’n.”

  “Herd those women below decks.”

  “Aye aye, Cap’n.”

  Malachi turned to his brother. “Josiah, shall we use your gig?” he asked.

  “Aye,” Josiah said, and then muttered, “If the crew is not falling-down drunk.”

  The crew of Josiah’s gig were plucked from the long line of seamen waiting for their rum, fortunately before any of them had filled their cups, and sent jumping into the gig that still lay warped to the main chains. Malachi and Josiah descended more leisurely, jumping into the gig’s stern with practiced ease, Malachi carrying two bottles of port beneath his coat. A bottle for each prize.

  Yankee Venger, formerly the Wentworth, had barely anchored alongside her captives and put off its local pilot, before the gig hooked onto her chains. Josiah, mindful that protocol dictated the senior leave the boat first, scrambled up the ship’s side and was helped in by Jehu’s first officer, Ellyat, a deacon’s son with a well-filled red waistcoat an
d a round, beaming face. “Welcome aboard, sir,” he said. “You were expected.”

  “Well met, Josiah,” said his elder brother, Jehu. They clasped hands and Josiah grinned.

  “Congratulations, Jay,” Josiah said. “You’ve struck the first blow. May many more follow!”

  Malachi then followed Josiah on deck, having at first had difficulties managing the entry port one-handed, his left hand wrapped firmly around the necks of the two bottles.

  “Jehu, hurray!” he called, embracing his oldest brother, pounding his back with his free hand. “You’ve beaten me to it, curse you!”

  “damme,” Jehu said. “I’m bein’ hugged to death by a Cossack. Whence came that beard?”

  “D’ye like it?” Malachi asked. “I’ve never been able to shave comfortably at sea. Now that I’m a captain, I’ve decided to set my own fashion and let the whiskers grow.”

  “It’s laziness,” said Josiah.

  “Most uncivilized, truly,” said Jehu. His speech was English through and through, but it was not entirely affected. He’d been sent to England as a child to be educated properly as the heir to the Markham business and to become a gentleman. The plan had succeeded beyond Adaiah’s expectations— or his liking— and Jehu had acquired along the way an M.A. from Brasenose College, Oxford, the eccentric speech habits of a country gentleman, and the daughter of a baronet for a wife.

  “Yet, surely in a state of nature man walked about unshaven,” observed Jehu, “and as such the beard may be an admirable thing, as a means of bringing one closer to the ineluctable grace, the unity of thought and action possessed by our common ancestors. However, the shaving of the whiskers is undoubtedly a token of a man’s removal from the beasts, and as such a sign of progress and civilization.”

  “Balls,” said Malachi. “I brought you some admirable port; shall we drink it?”

  “Yep, you ain’t civilized,” Jehu decided. “Gentlemen, meet my officers: this is Ellyat, my first; Porter, my second; Konrad, my third. Mr. Hook, the bosun. Now let’s go below; we have much to discuss. Mr. Porter, it’s your watch, I believe.”