Chesapeake (65 page)

‘We run risks,’ the spokesman said.

‘But,’ one of the correspondents interrupted, ‘by Thursday night we could have our resolutions flying to all the colonies. Men in New Hampshire would know where we stand, and in Georgia, too.’

Steed thought: He wants to dispatch letters because his job is to dispatch letters. Aloud he said, ‘We will be placing our necks on the chopping block, you know that.’

The chairman caught the significance of Steed’s use of
we
and
our.
‘Then you will be with us?’

‘I will.’

‘Thank God. We did not want to move without you.’

But when the eleven patriots had gone, fortified perhaps by Steed’s acceptance but frightened for sure by his mention of the chopping block, Jane demanded to know what had taken place, and when Simon told her,
she was furious. ‘What are you doing, you pitiful little tradesmen? Are you challenging the king?’

‘I hadn’t thought of it that way,’ Steed said quietly.

‘You’d better! A gang of foolish, untraveled boors and clods from Patamoke are going to tell the King of England what to do? Is that what you propose?’

‘I hadn’t expressed it that way.’

‘How do you express treason?’

Simon pondered this question for some moments, then said, ‘I’d rather imagined that a group of men on the scene wanted to advise Parliament of certain facts which might otherwise be overlooked.’

‘What presumption!’ Jane cried. ‘You! You are going to advise Parliament!’

‘If I lived in England, I would be in Parliament. There is no one in Parliament, Jane, who even approaches my knowledge of Maryland.’

‘That’s sheer vanity, Simon.’

‘Let me express it another way. Every one of those eleven men who met here knows more about what to do in Maryland than any member of Parliament.’

‘John Digges! He collects muskrat skins!’

‘And he knows muskrats, and how to tan them, and sell them, and what’s good for others like himself.’

‘Simon, if you presume to meet with those men and send insulting resolutions to the king, I would expect soldiers to come here and arrest you and maybe hang you.’

‘I run the risk of just that,’ Steed said, but no amount of railing altered his decision.

On Thursday morning he asked two slaves to sail him to Patamoke, where he landed at noon. After reporting at the store to satisfy himself that no tea was on the shelves, he repaired to the boatyard, where Paxmore had the
Whisper
almost ready to launch; it was a handsome vessel, and the thin lines of caulking along the bottom formed beautiful patterns. But when Steed asked if Paxmore proposed to join the meeting at the courthouse, the latter said firmly, ‘No. Thee is heading for waters in which I cannot follow.’

‘I’d like to have your signature,’ Steed said.

‘My wife wanted me to attend, too, but I’m not one for signing petitions. I don’t know where all this is going to lead.’

‘You heard Turlock. It leads to war. And war leads to nothing. But we’re on a course that cannot be altered.’

Paxmore repeated that he would not participate in the meeting, but he surprised Steed by showing him three keels chopped out of oak and a pile of spars waiting along the edge of the shed. On the day the
Whisper
was launched, a new schooner would be started.

Fourteen men convened. Steed did not speak; he sat severely alone on the dais, and when the clerk started to take down what the various speakers said, he shook his head firmly and the writing stopped; he explained that he wanted no permanent record of who made which proposals, lest at some future date it be used nefariously.

The assembly was as ridiculous as Jane had predicted: a group of partially educated farmers and petty tradesmen presuming to advise a king, but they wrestled with explosive ideas, and the simple truths they elucidated would form one of America’s significant summaries of grievances. When the speeches ended, Steed rose and reminded the committee, ‘We are here to asseverate our allegiance to the king, and to seek his understanding cooperation. I will not sign unless we include an affirmation of loyalty.’ All agreed, and when this was provided, the document was read:

Thirteen men walked forward, one by one, to sign, and then the pen was handed to the chairman, who signed boldly in the place reserved for him, Steed of Devon, and before the sun had set, the two energetic correspondents were on the way to Annapolis with the document which they labeled
The Patamoke Determination.

In the early months of 1775 Teach Turlock’s private war against England came to an abrupt halt. He lost his sloop.

He was drifting lazily back from Barbados with a legal cargo of sugar, salt and slaves when he was hailed by an English customs frigate whose captain wished to conduct a routine search. Since Turlock carried no contraband, he should have submitted, but he was so antagonistic to authority that he resisted. When the English captain ran out his guns, Turlock fled.

In a decent vessel the waterman would have escaped, for he was much the better sailor, but his old, hog-backed sloop was in sad shape and was
quickly overtaken, but with dusk approaching, there was still a likelihood that Turlock would escape, so the frigate began firing, and one heavy ball struck Turlock’s mainmast, shattering much of it and leaving the topsails flapping in the wind.

This enabled the English captain to close, but instead of finding a chastened merchantman waiting to be boarded, he found a little battleship preparing for hand-to-hand combat. ‘Put down those guns!’ the English captain called as the ships were about to touch, but before he could repeat the cry, shots were being exchanged and a full-scale naval engagement was under way.

The English won. Three of Turlock’s sailors were killed, and when the rest had been herded aboard the frigate, the old black pirate sloop was set ablaze and Turlock, in captivity, had to watch it sink into the Atlantic, while his crew was chained for transport to London.

‘Piracy, mutiny, firing on His Majesty’s ship,’ intoned the captain. ‘You’ll be hanged, every one.’

But as the frigate entered the North Atlantic it was overtaken by a speedy privateer out of Boston, and now a second battle ensued, with the English losing. The American prisoners were unchained, and after the English vessel had been stripped, it was turned over to Turlock and his gang, who now had a fine London frigate in place of their hog-backed sloop, and with it they captured an English trader making for Plymouth.

But when they sailed victoriously into the Chesapeake they were met by a Virginia patrol boat; it led them to Jamestown, where their prize was confiscated by the government. They were shipped back to Patamoke, where Turlock announced, ‘Fought two battles. Lost two ships. Wound up flat on my ass.’

For several weeks he tried to find a vessel, but although he was a hero to the mob, he was a pirate to the gentry, and it was they who were the owners. So he retired to the marsh, and was hunting squirrels one day when he happened to look across the waving grass and saw, returning from a surreptitious voyage to Jamaica, the finest schooner he had ever seen, Mr. Steed’s
Whisper,
long and slim and heavy with sail. It sped by the marsh, seeming to float above the waters, and as it disappeared toward Patamoke, Turlock said, ‘That’s my next command.’

His campaign started that day. When Simon Steed came down to the wharf to inspect his schooner, there was Teach Turlock, bowing properly and saying, ‘Fine schooner, sir. If you let me take her out … profits … profits.’

The idea was so preposterous that Steed ignored it, but when the
Whisper
was empty, there was Turlock suggesting, ‘They’d never catch me in this.’

Steed did not propose to risk his heavy investment on a barefoot rogue, but one day when he visited his Patamoke store Turlock presented him
with a substantial reason: ‘Soon we have war—real war—and do you think he can captain the
Whisper?’
And with his thumb he pointed toward Captain Allworthy.

The question had perplexed Steed. Allworthy was a substantial man and a good sailor, but he was hardly right to command an important vessel if war threatened. He would not be valiant in running blockades, and so the first seed was sown.

It germinated some days later when the
Whisper
began loading spars to be sold in France, for as Steed watched on the wharf, Turlock sidled up to him and said quietly, ‘Let me sail to France. Learn the waters. Then give Captain Allworthy the new one Paxmore’s building.’

The idea was so sensible that Steed hesitated for a moment and looked into Turlock’s eyes. What he saw was a dedication so powerful that on the spur of the moment he capitulated. ‘All right. Get aboard as second mate. See what you can learn.’

When the
Whisper
sailed down the Choptank toward the bay, Teach Turlock was aboard, bearded and barefooted, feeling her sway, sensing her power and her problems. As they passed Devon Island he saluted and muttered, ‘Simon Steed, you’re goin’ to be proud of what this schooner does,’ and at night he would lie in his hammock, tracing her lines from memory, recalling how each rope passed through the blocks and where it was secured. And he could feel each of her movements and how she took the various waves.

Most interesting was his relationship to Captain Allworthy, of whom he had spoken so poorly. He paid the man great respect, following him when possible and listening to all he had to say, for he realized that this man knew the sea. For generations, dating far back before the first words of the Bible were composed, certain men like Allworthy had attained through study and experience a sense of what a wooden ship could do. This knowledge, transmitted from one generation to the next—Phoenician to Greek to Gaul to Anglo-Saxon to the herring fisherman off Newfoundland—constituted the lore of the sea, and when its customs were observed, the ships came through; when they were not, the ships landed on rocks. And no captain in that unbroken succession could have explained what exactly he knew. On this voyage, Teach Turlock joined the procession.

When the
Whisper
came home to Patamoke, he stood by the wheel, his heart racing with excitement, for he saw that Paxmore had launched the next schooner; its masts were already in place. He said nothing, but watched like a marsh eagle as Captain Allworthy went down the plank to report to Mr. Steed, and he held his breath as the owner came aboard.

‘Well, Mr. Turlock, are you ready?’

‘I am.’

‘The
Whisper’s
yours.’

‘You’ll hear good reports of her,’ Turlock said.

But later, when he sailed a small boat out to Devon Island to discuss strategies, he ran into trouble, for Jane Fithian was disgusted that her family was placing a major schooner in the care of such a man. ‘Look at him! Can’t read or write! Barely speaks two words together. He’s the worst sort of American.’

When Simon tried to explain why Turlock was precisely the kind of man needed in these uncertain times, she said indignantly, ‘Can you imagine him arriving in London and meeting with the captain of a proper English ship? Laughable.’

‘In the years ahead, Jane, my captains won’t be going to London.’

‘Are you speaking more treason?’

‘I’m facing facts. Teach Turlock is the man we need.’

‘Then may God have mercy upon us.’

‘And on England.’

He said this with such depth of feeling that even she could see that he had reached a great fork in some imaginary road he had been traveling, and for a moment she wanted to share his experience; instead she said, ‘To throw Turlock into the Atlantic with an armed schooner is like throwing a lighted bomb into the bedclothes of King George.’

And the more he reflected on this remark, the more apt it seemed. But even he was not prepared for some of the things his unpredictable captain was capable of, because when the time came for sailing, Steed went aboard for a last-minute inspection, and what he saw pleased him. The sailors were content to work for a local hero like Turlock, and under his direction they had trimmed the
Whisper
excellently. The hogsheads were lashed with extra care, and all was shipshape, but as Steed was about to depart, satisfied that at least the traditional amenities were in order, he spied in a corner of the captain’s room a red-headed boy who could have been no more than seven.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Matt.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘My son.’

‘He’s not sailing with you?’

‘Got to learn sometime,’ and he told the boy, ‘Take Mr. Steed to the gangplank,’ and the little fellow moved down the passageways with an expertness that showed he had already memorized his portion of the
Whisper.

The fact that Jane Steed argued with her husband about colonial behavior toward England did not mean that their married life was either tense or unpleasant. She loved her pompous husband and considered his attempts
at being an English gentleman amusing. He was generous and kind-hearted, and he indulged her in the petty expenditures which gave her so much pleasure. From the first she had wanted a slave who could sew in the French manner, so he had bought her one in Annapolis. When she heard that an actual theater had been erected in that city, she wanted to cross the bay to see for herself, and he took her. And when she protested if anyone called her an American or a Marylander, insisting that she was English, he agreed: ‘Jane’s from London. A Fithian, our factors.’ And whenever he said this, she seemed to glow and feel better, for she always thought of herself as an English gentlewoman.