Chesapeake (69 page)

‘Will you report your enthusiasm to Paris?’ Steed asked bluntly. ‘Socially, of course. Politically? I’m afraid, dear fellow, you haven’t a chance.’

Dutifully he went to each of the firms with which he had done business—the Baillys, the Brisard du Marthres, the Pucet Fils—and from each he heard the same story: ‘The colonies cannot win. Accept the best peace available and get on with it.’

He took the long overland journey to Lorient, a port in which the more adventurous firms maintained headquarters, but they, too, were doubtful: ‘We French are practical. If there was any chance you could maintain your independence of the English, we’d back you ten thousand percent. There is no chance.’

The firm of Berard, with which Steed had conducted much business, organized a formal dinner honoring Steed, not as a political negotiator but as a valued customer, and when the important gentlemen of the area were assembled, a Monsieur Coutelux summarized their attitudes:

Disheartened, Steed returned to Nantes, went aboard the
Whisper
and consulted with his crew. ‘I must stay in France until help is assured. But you’re free to roam. Captain Turlock, are you willing to risk another run through the blockade?’

‘Always.’

‘Your luck may run out.’

‘I’ve tricks I ain’t used yet.’

So it was arranged, on credit, that Captain Turlock should load the
Whisper
with cloth, brass fittings, salt, ships’ compasses and all the compact manufactured goods for which the starved colonies yearned, hurry home and return to pick up Steed. So on a bright day Turlock sailed down the Loire and out into the Atlantic.

When he was gone, Steed began his serious work. Patiently he returned to each merchant, explaining in colloquial French why the colonies deserved help in their resistance to England. ‘I know we’ve been fighting them since 1775, with no results. But we’re still in the field, and we’re getting stronger. Believe me, dear friend, we’re getting stronger.’ When they laughed, he asked, ‘Then why did you entrust your cargo with my captain? Because you know he’ll penetrate the blockade. In seven months he’ll be back for another shipment. You know that.’

He returned to Lorient, went down the coast to La Rochelle, and the more he talked the less he accomplished. He was, perhaps, too French to argue well the cause of the colonies; he could not convey the thundering actuality of the Blue Ridge farmer or a Massachusetts weaver. And then, when his fortunes were at their lowest, he was rescued by a fellow American who spoke the vernacular.

Benjamin Franklin, chief advocate in France for the colonies, came down to Nantes to meet with the leaders of that city and Lorient and La Rochelle. The Montaudoins placed at his disposal a small château, in which he held court, and there Steed met him.

He was well past seventy, bald, paunchy, squint-eyed, and as lively as a chestnut on a griddle. He affected a costume that was aggressively American, including a coonskin hat and a gnarled cherry-wood cane. He spoke abominable French with a vigor that made his pronouncements sound fresh and challenging. At the big dinners he gave he rejected sentimentality and never spoke of America’s valiant struggle; he appealed always to the fundamental interests of France, and the more mundane he made them the better.

‘We’re doing your dirty work, and all we seek is tangible support. We seek the privilege of trading freely with your port cities, with profits for you. We want to establish in the New World a counterbalance to the Old, and this will be of advantage primarily to you.’

He was an amazing man. He had brought down from Paris a mysterious woman introduced merely as Madame de Segonzac; her identity and her relationship to Franklin were not explained, but Franklin paid her deference and relied on her to persuade his guests. He also delighted in walking through the streets of Nantes and visiting those shopkeepers who had imported for the occasion the remarkable mementos then flooding Paris: teacups with Franklin’s portrait set in porcelain; snuffboxes decorated with enameled coonskin caps; silken pillows with embroidered portraits; and broadsides containing his bespectacled countenance and quotations from
Poor Richard.
It was these homely, pragmatic aphorisms which endeared this uncouth American to the French; in his barbarous way he spoke their language. But nothing he accomplished in Nantes surpassed his performance one afternoon when he was strolling along a crowded street near the wharf. There an enterprising merchant from Corsica had imported three of the large china chamber pots containing on their sides portraits of Franklin, and on their insides glazed representations of the coonskin cap. Hundreds had been sold throughout France, but these were the first in Nantes, and when Franklin saw them he stopped, spoke to the Corsican, and watched approvingly as one of the pots was placed in the middle of the street. Then, as sailors guffawed, he showed them what he would look like sitting on his own crockery. There was much cheering, and within two days the story had reached most of the western ports.

In his large meetings he never seemed serious, but he always was. He conveyed only one message: The United States shall prevail. And before he had been on the seacoast a week he began convincing those sturdy merchants that it was in their interest to back the fledgling country, not because the United States was relying upon philosophical principles derived from France, and not because there was an inherent brotherhood
between the two countries, but because by doing so, the French could gig the English and at the same time earn a batch of livres tournois.

For two months Franklin and Steed worked together, and after Turlock had brought the
Whisper
back to Nantes and the time came for parting, the older man said, ‘Simon, your help has been invaluable.’

Steed, aware that he had supported Franklin only half-heartedly, since he did not believe in an ultimate American victory, mumbled, ‘I accomplished nothing. It was you they wanted to hear.’

‘I was the clown, attracting their attention. It was imperative that you be there to represent the other side of our effort.’ He laughed, then chucked Steed under the chin as if he were a boy. ‘You were the respectable element, and believe me, Steed, the French businessman hungers for respectability. They never deal with banks that are on the verge.’

Then he became serious. With a firm hand he pulled Steed around until they were facing. ‘When we started our work you didn’t believe we could win. I could see it. Do you believe now?’

‘I’m confused. It seems to me we should stay with England.’

Franklin did not protest. ‘Let’s go to your schooner,’ he suggested, and when they sat in Captain Turlock’s cabin he said forcefully, ‘Simon, we’re destined to win. I know our armies are in retreat everywhere and we’ve no navy. But the great sweep of human desire fights on our side, and we cannot be defeated.’ He pointed out the cabin door and said, ‘Look at him. The new American.’ And there stood Captain Turlock, barefooted, grimy from working on his ship, clothed in near rags, but ready to storm his way into Bristol port if asked. ‘Why did you choose him for your captain?’ Franklin asked.

‘Because he knows … he knows what a ship can do.’

‘General Washington chose you to come here because you know. You know what a plantation can do. Now open your eyes, son, and see what a collection of men like you and Captain Turlock can accomplish.’ He rose in a state of euphoria and orated as if he were trying to persuade the merchants of Nantes: ‘We can remake the world. Simon, we’re going to win.’ And from that moment in Nantes harbor, Simon Steed never doubted; he cast aside his cautious love for England, his romantic longing for the old securities, and leaped into the full tide of the revolution.

As a result of what he and Franklin achieved in the next week, the solid business community of the French coast awakened to the probability that the United States might indeed win their war of attrition and become a major commercial center. Opposition to French involvement in what had hitherto been regarded as merely another idealistic uprising diminished, and the way was paved for the vigorous participation of that remarkable trio of French military geniuses who would join Lafayette in helping the United States maintain its independence: Rochambeau, Bougainville and, above all, De Grasse.

When the time came for Steed to sail back to Devon, Franklin confided, ‘I’ve written to the Congress suggesting that you be named agent for the southern states.’

‘For what?’

‘For the acquisition of supplies.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Ships. Men like Captain Turlock. Scatter them over the face of the ocean. Bring in muskets and powder and chain and cloth for uniforms. Steed, an army survives on things … like chickens and brass cannon. Get those things.’

Simon Steed was the kind of man to whom such a specific suggestion was a command, and on the spur of the moment he asked Franklin, ‘What should I take back now?’ and he was astonished at the reply: ‘Nothing. Leave Nantes with empty holds.’

‘Such a waste …’

‘Speed to St. Eustatius.’

‘That tiny island?’

‘Tiny but powerful. It’s owned by the Dutch, and we’ve been assembling there a body of munitions you’d not believe.’

‘What do we use for money?’

‘Credit. Your credit.’

‘Seems very risky.’

‘We’re engaged in a risk so grave it terrifies me. Your risk comes at St. Eustatius.’

So they parted, each man engaged in a gamble of staggering dimension: to fail meant ruin and death at the hangman’s trap; to win meant the establishment of a nation founded on new principles whose possibilities were only dimly understood. In the hostile port of Nantes, where no man believed America could survive, Simon Steed had convinced himself of those new principles, and to them he was willing to dedicate his fortune and his life.

‘We’ll sail tonight,’ he told Captain Turlock.

‘Empty?’

‘Yes. To St. Eustatius.’

‘Never been there,’ Turlock said, but he was ready to go.

That any mariner could find St. Eustatius was a miracle, but a greater miracle awaited him when he did find it. For it was one of the smallest islands on earth, a volcanic, rocky pinpoint lost in a cluster of islands north of Guadeloupe. Captain Turlock, seeking it through a bank of clouds, had almost decided it did not exist, when his son cried, ‘Cap’m, land to starboard,’ and there, emerging from the sea like a mysterious sentinel, rose the jagged shores of St. Eustatius.

As the
Whisper
maneuvered to enter the minute harbor Simon Steed was overwhelmed by what he saw: a shoreline crowded with great warehouses; so much cordage and cotton that bales were left standing uncovered; no police, no soldiers, no naval guns protecting the place; and in the cramped waters between the headlands not less than sixty vessels. He found out that five or six heavily laden ships put into port daily bringing goods from Europe and Africa, while an equal number left carrying those goods to the embattled American colonies. As one British admiral, furious at the insolence of the place, complained, ‘It’s the richest small island that ever was on earth.’

It existed in a fairy-tale atmosphere; it was owned by the Dutch, who were at war with nobody, but the goods coming to it were dispatched by merchants of all nations: Russia, Sweden, Portugal and, especially, France and England. This last was particularly aggravating to the British: English chandlers who refused to supply English warships in Plymouth surreptitiously consigned their best goods to St. Eustatius, where they were sold to American vessels fighting England. Also, many a stout merchantman sailing from London with papers for Italy or Greece changed course dramatically south of the Channel and hied off to St. Eustatius, where profits were trebled.

Captain Turlock could not tie up to any dock; thirty vessels were ahead of him. But from his anchorage he rowed ashore to purchase the materials of war needed along the Chesapeake: the strongest English cordage, double-thick French brassware, muskets from Austria and salt from Poland. He bought wisely, from a score of different merchants speaking many different languages, and when the bills were totaled he had Mr. Steed issue letters of credit. With the
Whisper
loaded as heavily as its timbers would allow, he hoisted anchor and set out for America, having no idea of how he would penetrate the English blockade or what port he would put in to if he succeeded.

It was a bright, sunny run before the wind, but it ended abruptly, for a major English squadron patrolled the Chesapeake and not even a canny dissembler like Turlock could slip through. He sailed north toward Boston, but was intercepted by an American frigate, a pitiful affair with untrained crew and few guns, whose captain cried on speaking-trumpet, ‘Turn back! You can’t get into Boston.’ So the
Whisper
and its priceless cargo drifted south, hoping to land somewhere in the Carolinas, but they, too, were rimmed by English warships, and at a meeting of desperation Turlock told his owner, ‘Mr. Steed, the best we can do is beach her somewhere in the Delaware Counties. Carry the goods overland.’ Mr. Semmes agreed that no other strategy was practical, so Steed had to approve. ‘But you’ll lose twenty percent in pilferage,’ he said. To which Turlock answered, ‘You’ll add forty percent to the price.’