Chesapeake (64 page)

Who, indeed? Since that fateful day in 1765 when Parliament arbitrarily imposed a Stamp Act requiring a trivial fee on commercial and legal paper, newspapers and almanacs, Teach Turlock and Marylanders like him had sensed intuitively that Britain was trying to place its collar upon the colonists, and he resisted like an untamed dog. He had never used one of the items taxed—how could he, being illiterate?—but he had known danger when it appeared—‘It ain’t right.’ He had continued to resist each subsequent act of Parliament which infringed his freedom, for he saw with primitive logic that if London succeeded with the tea, it would transfer its strategy to other areas until all rights were strangled.

Teach could not have expressed even one of his conclusions in a reasoned sentence, but his crafty, analytic mind recognized tyranny in whatever subtle form it took. ‘The rector, the king alike. He steals my land. He steals my taxes. Together they steal my freedom.’

He represented the thinking of most colonists, and now when he sailed his black schooner boldly into the Choptank they applauded, for he was their spiritual champion even though his lack of education prevented him from being their spokesman. He trailed the
Fair Rosalind
right to her berth at Patamoke; he did not enter the inner harbor, but anchored in the Choptank, where he could watch the celebration on shore as the tea-ship docked, delivered its papers to the authorities, and welcomed aboard the English tax collector, who inspected the tea, calculated its value and submitted a bill to Simon Steed as the consignee. Only when the tax was paid, and the submission to England legalized, did Turlock row ashore.

His arrival caused a commotion, for his daring behavior at sea had elevated him to the rank of hero, but he did not look the part. He was forty-two years old, extremely thin, bearded, barefooted, dressed in two rough garments which fitted him poorly, and quite dirty from months at sea. He wore no belt, but the rope that held up his trousers also held two pistols, and when he slouched along, these moved awkwardly, banging against his raw hipbones. He wore no hat, but since he was taller than most men, his shaggy head was prominent, bespeaking a rough kind of leadership.

‘Where’s Steed?’ he asked as soon as he reached the customs office.

‘He went to his store.’

Moving with the easy rhythms of a man who had slipped through marshes and along forest trails, he walked toward the Steed emporium with three of his sailors trailing behind, but when he reached the store he told his men to wait as he went inside. Steed was not visible. ‘Where is he?’ Turlock asked, and the young Steed nephew who was managing the place indicated a room in the rear.

‘Hullo, Simon.’

‘Turlock! Aren’t you brave, coming into port?’

‘The tea.’

‘What about it?’

‘You paid the tax?’

‘As required.’

‘Don’t sell it.’

‘But it’s paid for. People want it.’

‘Simon, don’t sell it.’

They talked in this manner for some time: a plea from Turlock not to sell, a reply from Steed that it was a normal business transaction. They got nowhere, so Turlock shrugged his shoulders and left, but when Steed employees sought to unload the tea and take it to the family warehouse, Turlock’s sailors prevented them. There was a scuffle, nothing much, and the young Steed manager ran to the wharf, calling upon
Fair Rosalind’s
crew to drive off the troublemakers, but when the crew moved forward to help unload the tea, the gaunt figure of Teach Turlock interposed.

‘Don’t touch,’ he said quietly. He made no move toward his guns. He merely stood barefooted at the wharf-end of the gangplank and advised the Steed sailors to drop their bundles of tea and withdraw. They did.

All that day Turlock stood guard, and at dusk a rowboat from the black sloop came ashore with nine more of his sailors, who positioned themselves about the gangplank.

The next two days saw increased tension. The justices came to the wharf and warned Turlock that he must not interfere with the unloading of a cargo properly paid for and properly taxed, but the resolute captain merely said, ‘No tea.’ There were no army units stationed in Patamoke, and the constable’s single deputy could in no way oppose the will of these brigands, but if the general public could be mobilized, the freebooters could be disciplined and the tea could be landed.

So the justices appealed to the people of Patamoke—and a strange thing happened. The people listened respectfully, weighed what the learned men had to say—and concluded that they were wrong and Turlock was right. One man reminded the crowd, ‘They took his land and he takes their tea.’

‘We’re not talking about land,’ the justices complained. ‘We’re talking about tea.’

Now Turlock spoke. ‘No tea. No tax. Soon we lose everything.’ The parliamentary complexities were beyond the understanding of common people, but they grasped the danger in this insidious tax, and the attempts of the justices to enlist them in opposition to Turlock failed.

He did not gloat at their defeat. Instead he walked quietly to the Steed store and there initiated a discussion which was to determine the subsequent behavior of all who lived along the Choptank. Neither Steed nor Turlock allowed the argument to become heated, and such threats as were made were couched in the subdued terms used by two long-time adversaries striving to reach a sensible solution to their impasse.

‘The tea will be landed,’ Steed warned. ‘Soldiers will be sent from Annapolis.’

‘They’ll find no tea.’

‘Why not?’

‘We talk today. We talk tomorrow. Tomorrow night we burn your snow.’

‘That’s destruction!’

‘It’s old. Seventy years. All patches.’

‘You’d burn the
Rosalind?’

‘Simon, it’s war. In Barbados, men from Massachusetts told me.’

‘England will crush us. Teach, if you burn my snow, England will drive you from the seas.’

For the first time in their discussions Turlock smiled, a grimy, hairy, self-confident smile. Four times now he had gone up against the English in naval actions, and while it was true that on three of those occasions they had forced him to run, he was confident that when a hundred privateers like himself were at sea, there would be no chance of eliminating them all. He did not try to rebut Steed’s arguments; he smiled.

And in that quiet arrogance he conveyed a message to the merchant that no words could have achieved. Steed said, ‘You think war is inevitable?’ ‘Mmmm.’ ‘You think we can win?’‘Mmmm.’ ‘You think the seas can be kept open?’ ‘Mmmm.’ ‘You think Boston is going to stand firm?’ ‘Mmmm.’

Again and again these two men, who had operated together only as co-defendants in the tithe case, reviewed the situation, and after two hours had passed, Steed said, ‘I’d like to bring Paxmore in,’ and Turlock nodded. So the Quaker was sent for, and he appeared, gray and cautious.

‘Turlock thinks there’s bound to be war,’ Steed said.

Anxiety showed in Paxmore’s face, and he said, ‘Oh, I hope not.’

‘You afraid?’ Turlock growled.

‘Yes, because England will destroy us.’

‘But what if we don’t have actual war?’ Steed asked. ‘Just irritations. Can we keep the sea lanes open?’

Now Paxmore was obligated to speak as a proud shipbuilder. ‘The
Whisper
will not be taken. Her speed will astonish.’

‘When will she be ready?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘And you’ll start on the others?’

‘I already have.’ And with this admission Paxmore knew that he had committed himself to war. He wiped his forehead.

The three men sat in the small office, and no one spoke. Flies buzzed and Turlock followed their flight from window to door to ceiling, waiting for the frightened leaders to make sensible comment. Finally Steed asked, ‘Paxmore, if war does come, can we win?’

‘No.’

‘But you seem resigned to have it come?’

‘England’ll win, but she’ll learn that she must treat us better.’

‘Exactly how I feel,’ Steed cried. ‘We’ll have war. Turlock will see to that. But there’s no chance we can win. We might gain some minor concessions.’

‘We’ll win,’ Turlock said with great force.

‘How?’ the other two asked.

‘By holding on. Tomorrow night we start. We burn the
Rosalind.’

‘You what?’ Paxmore cried.

Turlock rose to his full height and looked serenely at his two frightened neighbors. ‘When we stood in court we knew this would happen. Build your schooners, Levin. Simon, you arm them. This is war. Tomorrow night it reaches Patamoke.’ He turned and left.

Paxmore, shaken by the possibility that the snow might be intentionally burned, asked, ‘Did he mean it?’

‘He did. It’s a symbolic act, and I shall make no move to stop it.’ He allowed time for this to register, then said, ‘And neither shall you, Levin. We sail to Peace Cliff … now … to look for spars.’ And to protect himself, he announced to various persons in the store that he and Paxmore were headed for the woods in back of Peace Cliff, to look for tall trees. They were on the porch of the telescope house, watching night shadows fall across the river, when the sky behind them brightened, with flickers of reddish light darting upward from the eastern horizon. Paxmore bowed his head in silent prayer, but Steed watched the flickering shoots until they died.

‘We’ve started something of magnitude,’ he said, but Paxmore, terrified at the consequences, remained silent.

It was characteristic of the Steeds of Devon that once they settled upon a course, they maintained it until a conclusion was reached, and in the agitated weeks following the burning of the tea, Simon hardened his thinking about the threat of war. ‘I shall always remain loyal to the king,’ he told his wife.

‘I should hope so,’ she said, as if there were no alternative.

‘But if Parliament persists in transgressing our natural rights …’

‘What natural rights do colonials have?’

‘You sound like the member of Parliament who said, “In London the thinking head, in America the working hands and feet.”’

‘Of course! The purpose of a colony is to provide wealth to the homeland, and I think it shameful the way you allowed a filthy pirate to burn your tea.’ She had no words strong enough to condemn his supine surrender.

‘The people refused the tea.’

‘They’d have taken it if you’d shown any fight.’ She railed at the pusillanimity of the authorities and said that three English soldiers in uniform could have stopped the whole affair. ‘What’s more,’ she added, ‘I think that Turlock told you about the burning in advance. So that you and that sickly Paxmore could scuttle out.’

Ignoring this clever deduction, he said, ‘My real irritation stems from the fact that the colonies are not being used properly. The only possible justification for England’s owning a colony in a new land is to experiment here with methods that can’t be introduced in the home country.’

‘You do talk the greatest nonsense, Simon.’

‘I want to keep Maryland a part of England, but only if we retain the right to our unique development.’

‘Maryland develops as England develops, and that’s that. Your job is to serve the king.’

An opportunity to serve arose in the summer of 1774, when a committee of eleven leading citizens of Patamoke and surrounding territories convened to discuss events occurring at scattered points throughout the colonies. Two of the members had some time earlier volunteered to serve as local reporters to the Maryland Committee of Correspondence, whose job it was to maintain contact with committees of like intention in other regions. Inflammatory documents from Boston had been forwarded to South Carolina, and the correspondents in that state reported how they, too, had resisted the importation of tea.

In July the Patamoke committee sent a deputation to Devon to discuss the possibility of Steed’s chairing a meeting that would review the situation in the colonies and draft a statement of local intention. Two boats sailed into the creek, and when the somber men came up the brick-lined path to the big house, Jane Steed was stiffly courteous. In times past she had entertained these men on happier occasions and knew them by name, but now she could guess at their purpose and it repelled her. ‘Come in, gentlemen,’ she said with obvious reserve. ‘Place your hats on the table. My husband will join you shortly.’

The men were pleased at another chance to see the leading mansion of their district and commented idly on the fine decorations. Jane stayed with them briefly, then excused herself, for she wanted no part in this
seditious gathering, but when her husband appeared, he got right to the heart of the matter. ‘I’m sure you haven’t come so far on trivial affairs.’

‘We have not,’ the leader said, and he asked the two correspondents to outline the present condition of the colonies.

‘In Massachusetts, endless problems with the governor. In South Carolina, near-rebellion. In New York, confusion. And in Virginia …’ Here one of the writers paused, dropped his pompous style and said, ‘Gentlemen, we can thank God for Virginia. That colony has notable patriots.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘Writing. Arguing. Defending all of us with their cogency.’

‘Who?’

‘Jefferson …’

‘I have little regard for him,’ Steed said.

‘Madison, Wythe.’

‘Has Byrd spoken?’

‘He has not. He seems afraid.’

‘That bodes ill. The Byrds are the best of the lot.’

‘And the most timorous.’

‘So what do you propose for the Eastern Shore?’

‘For the entire shore, nothing. For Patamoke, everything.’

And these quiet, conservative businessmen, most of them self-taught, expressed their fears and hopes. Events were deteriorating. As in New York, all was confusion. The colonies were like a rudderless ship wallowing in the troughs, and it was incumbent upon men of good will to state their positions. This the men of Patamoke were prepared to do.

‘We shall convene a meeting in the courthouse, Thursday instant,’ one of the merchants said. ‘We think you should preside, Simon, and that we should state our determinations.’

‘This is a grave matter,’ Steed said. ‘If we sign and publish a document that …’