A Darker Sea: Master Commandant Putnam and the War of 1812 (A Bliven Putnam Naval Adventure, Band 2) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

James L. Haley is the award-winning author of the Bliven Putnam Naval Adventure series, including A Darker Sea and The Shores of Tripoli, as well as numerous books on Native American, Texas, and Western history, and historical and contemporary fiction. His two biographies Sam Houston (2002) and Wolf: The Lives of Jack London (2010), each won the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas (2006) won the Fehrenbach Award of the Texas Historical Commission. His most recent nonfiction is Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (2014).

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***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2017 James L. Haley

Prologue: The Hound in Blue

In his cabin at the stern of the brig Althea, Sam Bandy dressed as he sipped the morning’s first cup of coffee, rich and full-bodied, from Martinique. Sped into Charleston on a fast French ship with a dry hold, it tasted of neither mold nor bilge water. He was lucky to have gotten it in, avoiding the picket of British cruisers who, in the never-ending mayhem of the Napoleonic wars, sought to sweep all French trade from the seas. It might well have ended in the private larder of an English frigate captain. Now he had brought a quarter-ton of it to Boston, tucked into his hold along with the cotton and rice that one expected to be exported from South Carolina.

Yes, the life of a merchant mariner suited him, and it endlessly amused him. If one wanted a bottle of rum in Charleston, the cane was grown in the West Indies, where it was rendered into sugar and its essential byproduct, molasses. Thence they were taken by ship and, passing almost within sight of Charleston, delivered all the way to Boston, or Newport. There the scores of Yankee distilleries manufactured the rum, which then had to be loaded and taken back south to Charleston, which was halfway back to the Caribbean. And money was made at each exchange.

Sam ascended the ladder topside, coffee in hand, snugging his hat upon his head—a blue felt Bremen flat cap that a German sailor had offered him in trade for his American Navy bicorn. Sam had surprised the German with how readily he accepted the exchange, for in truth he felt no sentimental attachment to it at all. There were several considerations that impelled him to separate from the Navy. The death of his father during the Barbary War and the disinterest of his brothers placed the responsibility for their Abbeville plantation on his shoulders. And the Navy’s penchant for furloughing junior officers for months at a time, and then recalling them without regard for the seasonal imperatives of planting or harvesting, he could not accommodate. Most important, on his voyage home from the Mediterranean on the Wasp, he had brought the daughter of the American former consul to Naples, and she had become his wife. Naturally he wished to provide her and their growing family the gracious life he had known, and shipping provided them a measure of comfort even beyond that of their neighbors.

And this would be a profitable trip. Their South Carolina cotton for the Yankee mills had brought him eighteen cents per pound and paid for the trip, leaving the rice, some indigo, and the Martinique coffee as pure profit. Topside, he observed his first officer, Simon Simpson, directing stevedores down into his hold. Simpson was astonishingly tall and brawny, dishfaced, with wild black hair; he knew his trade but was not overly bright, but then, apart from captains, what men who became merchant sailors were?

Their lack of schedule suited Sam; they had tied up halfway out the Long Wharf, selling until his hold was empty, and his taking on new cargo could not have passed more conveniently. As he reflected, Boston’s famous Paul Revere was in his mid-seventies, but still innovating, still trying his hand at new business. His late venture into foundry was a rousing success, and Simpson lined the bottom of Althea’s hold with cast-iron window weights, fireplace accoutrements—andirons, pokers—and stove backs. Nothing could have provided better ballast, and atop these he loaded barrels of salt fish, all securely tied down. This left room for fine desks and bookcases from the celebrated Mr. Gould. Upon Sam’s own speculation, apart from that of his co-owners of the ship, he visited Mr. Fisk’s shop and bought a quantity of his delicate fancy card tables and side chairs, for which he expected the ladies of Charleston to profit him most handsome. Fisk’s lyre-backed chairs were in the style of Hepplewhite of London, and when Sam visited Fisk and Son to make the purchase, it caught his ear that more than one patron expressed his pleasure that Fisk’s fine workmanship has soured the market for Hepplewhite itself, so disgruntled had people become with the British interference with their trade.

The Long Wharf, with its glimpse of Faneuil Hall at its head, the taverns he had frequented in their nights here, the dockside commotion, the frequent squeals of seagulls, the salt air beyond his West Indies coffee, all left him deeply happy, but he was ready to go home. “Mr. Simpson!” he called out.

Simpson left his station at the hatch and joined him by the wheel. “Good morning, Captain.”

“Good morning, Mr. Simpson. The tide begins to run in three hours. Can we be ready by then?”

“No question of it, we are almost finished.”

“Excellent. Now, if you please, divert two of those Fisk chairs to my cabin. There you will find on my desk a package, addressed to the Putnam family in Litchfield, Connecticut. Take it to the post office and dispatch it. The Port Authority is right close by there. Arrange a pilot for us, come back, check the stores, and prepare to get under way.”

Ah, the Putnams. Sam did not miss the Navy, but he missed Bliven Putnam. Their midshipman’s schooling together on the Enterprise, their learning the handling of sabres together, their fighting Barbary corsairs together, even their fumbling attempts to bridge the cultural gap between Connecticut and South Carolina, and their punishment together at the masthead of the President mandated by Commodore James Barron for their having fought each other all had bonded them in a way that would have been imperishable even had Barron not compelled them to swear their friendship to each other. Sam could not absent himself from the ship for a week, which would gain him only a day’s visit to Litchfield, but he could send Bliven a sack of this rich coffee.

By ten Simpson had returned, and Sam hoisted the flags, signaling his imminent departure. With crew counted and hatch secured, Sam cast off, moving ever so slowly under a single jib and topsail into the harbor. The wind was from the northwest, which could not have served them better.

At the end of the wharf the pilot boat appeared, a small, sleek, low-waisted schooner, which hoisted Althea’s name in signal flags. Sam answered and fell in behind her gratefully. In Boston’s shallow bay the tides ran swiftly; once, he visited the other side of the city when the tide fell just to see the sight of Back Bay emptying out as fast as a man could walk; such flats were no place to get trapped. But this pilot very clearly knew what he was doing; the schooner was under a full set, and Sam had to loose his courses to keep up. They passed through the channel between Long and Deer Islands, and could see Lovell Island off their starboard bow. At this point the pilot came about, wishing Althea fair sailing; Sam signaled his thanks and steered east-southeast for the northern curl of Cape Cod. If the wind held, they should round the cape and be halfway down that seemingly interminable spit of sand when dark fell. He would be safe on a southerly course and well clear of Nantucket by morning, when he could set a new course, if the wind permitted, west-southwest for Long Island.

If it were not for the knowledge of going home, Sam would not relish the southward voyage. South by west was the most direct course to Cape Hatteras, but that would place him in the very teeth of the irresistible, opposing push of the Gulf Current. More distant in miles but infinitely faster it was to steer closer inshore along the mid-Atlantic and follow the eddying cold-water currents that would aid him.

Their seventh day out, Sam awoke to the accustomed clatter...