Chesapeake (71 page)

There was nothing he could do. He could send no imploring letters to Nantes, for no mail could penetrate the blockade. He could not try to slip across to France himself, for Captain Turlock was absent in the Caribbean. And he could not even board his family sloop and sail to Virginia to help fight Cornwallis, because English patrol boats dominated the bay. Powerless, he had to stay on Devon, watching the disaster; he was not even aware of the greater disaster that had overtaken his two schooners at St. Eustatius.

Captain Turlock, in the
Whisper,
had been highly pleased with Simon Steed’s nephew, Norman, as skipper of the new
Victory.
He was venturesome yet obedient to signals, daring yet prudent in protecting his ship. ‘He’ll make a fine captain,’ Turlock told his son as they watched the young man.

Together they had made three runs to St. Eustatius, transporting enormous cargoes, which Simon Steed sold at profit to the hungry armies of General Washington. They were now beginning a fourth sally, and if they could somehow smuggle the two schooners into Boston or Savannah, they stood to make a fortune. So as they drifted easily southward through the Virgin Islands, keeping watch for any English prowlers, Captain Turlock invited his colleague aboard the
Whisper
for a final consultation. ‘The trick this time, get in and out as fast as possible.’

‘Always before we’ve taken time.’

‘Something warns me things are different,’ Turlock said.

‘How?’ the younger man asked.

‘England is getting ready for the kill. Too much movement.’

‘I saw nothing coming down.’

‘Me neither,’ Turlock grunted. ‘But things are changed. In fast. Out fast.’

Norman Steed could not comprehend how a man could see nothing and be told nothing and yet sense that somehow the world had changed. He paid his respects to Captain Turlock and rowed back to the
Victory,
but when the two schooners passed St. Maarten, that strange island half French, half Dutch, he saw that Captain Turlock had launched a boat,
which came scudding across with an imperative: ‘At St. Eustatius the
Whisper
is to enter first. Keep a close watch.’

But when they approached the golden isle nothing had changed. There were the forested masts, the bustling porters, the reassuring Dutch flag drooping heavily in the still air. Indeed, there was so little breeze that when Captain Steed’s
Victory
reached the entrance in good condition for an easy turn to starboard, the vessel made that turn, which put her into the harbor some distance ahead of the
Whisper.
But as the sleek new schooner moved to anchor, for there was still no room at any of the wharves, a shattering gunfire broke out, the mast of the
Victory
was carried away, and her young captain lay dead with two musket balls through his chest.

It was Captain Turlock’s intention to storm into the harbor and revenge this craven act, but no sooner had he broken out his four guns than Mr. Semmes cried, ‘Captain! Those ships are all English!’

And that was true. Admiral Rodney, commander of the Caribbean squadron, had at last grown choleric over the insolence of the Dutch in maintaining this treasonous entrepôt, and with a squadron large enough to blow the island out of the sea, had captured it. Then, craftily, he kept the Dutch flag flying, luring freebooters like young Norman Steed into the range of his guns. St. Eustatius was no longer golden; it was lead and iron.

In a rage, Teach Turlock turned the
Whisper
away, leaving young Steed dead, the
Victory
lost and her Choptank crew headed for the Old Mill prison at Plymouth. Numbed with fury at having been so tricked, he stormed through the Caribbean, tackling any English vessel he came upon. On one glorious cruise, years before, he had taken one prize for each of his four guns, the best a freebooter could hope for. Now he took two for each gun, and the booty in the bowels of his schooner became enormous … and a tantalizing misery.

For he could land it nowhere. The principal reason why he had been free to rampage through the myriad islands was that England had moved her major battleships northwestward to encase the colonies in a rim of iron. The strangulation that General Washington had feared was under way, and there was no device by which Teach Turlock could land his captured booty.

And then, one day in late August as he languished off the Carolinas, hoping to find some refuge, he overtook a small fishing boat containing American watermen, and they gave him tremendous news: ‘The French have come!’

They told of General Lafayette, that conceited but brave man, who had marched into Virginia, restoring order and maneuvering so brilliantly that he had General Cornwallis cooped on the York Peninsula. They spoke of a powerful effort, through all the colonies, to reinforce
Lafayette and bring the war to a conclusion. And then they reported the most electrifying news of all: ‘They say a French fleet has arrived to clear the Chesapeake!’

‘That means we can get home!’ Turlock cried, and within five minutes he was clearing his decks for a swift dash north.

How beautiful the
Whisper
was as she sped toward Cape Hatteras, wind to larboard, her bow cutting into the waves, her decks aslant, and young Matt forward peering for sight of Cape Henry. Gulls followed, wheeling and dipping, and sun glistened on the lines. It was good to be heading home in time of trouble, to stand with one’s own kind against the enemy.

Off Hatteras they intercepted another boat, and its occupants confirmed the incredible: ‘French ships guarding the bay! You’ll have easy entrance!’

Now that the shoals of Hatteras were safely passed, Captain Turlock piled on more sail, so that the
Whisper
leaped through the waters, making the speed that Levin Paxmore had predicted, but as the rich voyage neared completion Turlock knew that it was not one of triumph, for he had lost his sister ship, and he damned the English, hoping that the French would smash them.

Then came the cry—forward—from young Matt: ‘Cap’m! Battleships! All English!’

And there, moving majestically toward the entrance to the Chesapeake came four great ships of the line:
Royal Oak,
74 guns;
London,
90 guns;
Invincible,
74 guns;
Intrepid,
64 guns. With grand indifferent motion they rolled in the swells, indomitable, relentless. They saw the
Whisper
but ignored her; they knew they could not catch her in the open sea. Their job was to crush the French intruder; that done, annoying craft like the
Whisper
could be easily handled. She would be driven from the seas.

But now Matt cried again: ‘Cap’m! More!’ And seven more gigantic ships loomed from the horizon, the most powerful ships of the English navy.

‘Cap’m! More coming!’ And eight more towering vessels, terrifying to the sailors on the small
Whisper,
hove into sight:
Monarch, Centaur, Montagu, Ajax.
They came like platforms of death, monstrous engines of war rolling in the sea like whales impervious to the small fish surrounding them. When the line had passed, Captain Turlock asked Mr. Semmes to make an entry in the log:

The French could not have been in a weaker position to engage the English squadron. Some days earlier Admiral de Grasse had arrived at the mouth of the Chesapeake with a squadron of twenty-four ships, but imprudently he had anchored his flotilla inside the headlands; worse, he had given liberty to almost half his crew, who were now foraging the shores of the bay for food and water. Still worse, since none of his ships were copper-sheathed like the English, they were perishing from the worms. And worst of all, his position allowed him no room in which to maneuver. He was trapped, and when scouting boats rushed in with news that Admiral Rodney was bearing down with the entire Caribbean squadron, he realized his peril.

If De Grasse had been a prudent man, he might have surrendered then and there, for the enemy had every advantage except one: the British ships were sleek-bottomed and free of worm; their crews were complete and battle-hardened; they had the advantage of the wind and ocean space in which to maneuver; and they had guns of shattering power manned by the best seamen in the world. The only disadvantage the English suffered was that Admiral Rodney, a tested leader in battle, was not aboard the ships; his place had been taken by an indecisive gentleman of little battle experience named Gatch.

The accident which caused this substitution was one of those misadventures which occur from time to time, as if to prove that human history can never be an exact science: the English government had sent to the Caribbean their best admiral, Rodney, and a plethora of their best ships. Victory over De Grasse was ensured. But when Rodney captured St. Eustatius he became so bedazzled by the riches there and so mortally tempted by a chance to steal some four million pounds for himself, that he dallied among the warehouses and wasted time among the overflowing shops, and in the end even requisitioned a small squadron of the best battleships to convoy him back to London in style. His absence, and especially the absence of the diverted ships, gave the trapped French squadron one slim chance of escape.

Captain Turlock, of course, did not know of Rodney’s absence, and when dawn broke on the morning of September fifth he shuddered. Watching from a safe distance to the east, ‘like a gnat watching eagles,’ he said, he saw the great ships of the English line form like an arrow and move toward the mouth of the bay, where the trapped French ships could be destroyed one at a time. ‘It’s to be a massacre,’ he told Mr. Semmes, and to his son he said, ‘When you become a captain, never let yourself be caught at the mouth of a bay.’ Then, remembering his disaster at St. Eustatius, he added, ‘Nor at the mouth of a harbor, either.’

‘Look, Cap’m!’ Matt cried, and in the distance, barely visible, came the first of the French warships.

‘My God!’ Mr. Semmes cried. ‘They’re going to run it!’

There they came, a line of vessels with almost no chance of escaping, with no room for subtle maneuvering or the arts of war, just forging blindly ahead, out of their trap and trusting for a chance to reach the open sea:
Languedoc,
80 guns;
Saint Esprit,
80 guns;
Marseillais,
74 guns.

‘Look!’ Matt shouted, and there came the most powerful ship afloat, the gigantic
Ville de Paris, 110
guns.

‘They’re going to make it!’ Mr. Semmes cried, slapping Captain Turlock on the back, but the captain said nothing. For more than an hour he just stood there, staring at this incredible scene of twenty-four disadvantaged French warships turning the tide of battle by an act of supreme courage. When the last of the line stood free, away from the confines of the bay and ready to form a battle line, he turned to Mr. Semmes and said, ‘We saw it. No one will believe us, but we saw it.’ Like a deer breaking loose from dogs, De Grasse had leaped his barriers and gained space.

Belatedly the English admiral responded. His prey had sprung the coop, but there were tested maneuvers for countering the move. ‘Wear all ships!’ he signaled, and the men aboard the
Whisper
gazed in grudging admiration at the manner in which the heavy English battleships responded. At one moment they were headed directly into the mouth of the Chesapeake, a minute later they were jibing, and four minutes after that they had turned inside their own wake to head in precisely the opposite direction, taking a course which must produce a collision with the French ships, unless the latter bore away.

By this maneuver the English regained their advantage. They had the wind off their larboard quarter; their heavy guns bore down upon the French; they retained the choice of movement. ‘Watch!’ Captain Turlock whispered to his son. ‘You’ll never see this again.’

Majestically, ponderously the two lines of ships drew together; at top speed they moved at less than three miles an hour, but their weight was so formidable that Matt could almost hear the crunching of spars.

Each line was about five miles long. At the rear they were four miles apart, which meant that these ships would not close fast enough to participate in the battle. But the lead ships moved ever closer … four hundred yards apart … two hundred … a hundred … and finally close enough for pistol shots.

‘When are they going to fire?’ Matt asked.

‘Soon enough,’ his father said, and of a sudden a massive burst of flame exploded from the English ships, and cannonballs ricocheted with fearful effect across the French decks. The battle for the future of America had begun.

Matt would never forget the impact of that first English salvo. Wooden cannonballs had been used in hopes they would throw jagged splinters
through the bodies of French sailors, and that is what happened. Before the smoke had cleared, the decks of the French ships were red, and young sailors sped about with buckets of sand to help the gunners maintain their footing, but before the latter could prepare their guns, a second volley of wooden balls exploded, adding to the devastation.

‘Why don’t they fire back?’ Matt cried in frustration.

‘They fight different,’ his father explained. ‘Watch the English spars.’ And when Matt did, he saw that whereas the French gunners accomplished little in disrupting the decks of their enemy, they were beginning to knock down his masts and sails.

‘Who’s winning?’ Matt cried.

‘No one knows,’ his father replied, and for two agonizing hours under a dying summer sun the guns roared, and the implacable ships moved ever closer; even pistols reverberated. The lead ships of the English line created unimaginable devastation on the French decks, already undermanned, and for a while it seemed that the French must crumble. But toward dark the terrible efficiency of their gunfire began to take its toll. Down came the soaring English masts, down fluttered the gallant sails. One English ship after another began to limp, and then to falter, and finally to fall away.