China Jewel (7 page)

“Yeah, but I trust you. We don’t need to create a mystery out of all proportion. I find any dirt existing anywhere, I’ll know where Bill’s company stands. You see what I mean?”

“If we find something evil, it could hurt your son too,” she said. “Jamie is associated with the Peregrine as part of its crew.”

He was silent, thoughtful.

She stood up, her eyes excited like Cutter had seen them so many times when she was deep in the middle of one of her research projects. “On the other hand, I don’t know how much I can do for you.” She began looking through some of the volumes at her massive bookcase. As she took down books, she told him more about the early Chesapeake brigs.

She said, “They were called ‘pilot boat built’ or ‘Baltimore clippers’ and sailed fast for their time. Many of them never got registered. The craft often used several names depending on what kind of business they were involved in.”

“Like what?” asked Cutter.

“Most of them beat up national laws in one way or another. Their captains smuggled, ran slaves from Africa to the Caribbean. They traded opium in China. Boats like the Peregrine relied on speed to outrun the police. You have to remember these Chesapeake boats were unique. This type had certain high-speed sailing characteristics. They rode low to the water, with sharp ends from deadrise or empty dead space where the boards slant upward. They had raked masts to change the angle of moment so the bows would stay in the water without the buoyancy they lost from the sharpness. They carried lots of sail area.” She added, “The best ones were built in and near River Sunday in small hidden harbors.”

Cutter said, “From the records we have, this ship was always used in something legal. Her Quaker owners would not have stood for anything crooked.”

“May be true, assuming the merchants knew for sure what their captains did when they weren’t looking.”

She went on, “Some of the faster brigs carried legal cargoes, perishables such as fruit. The tea had to be carried back fast too. The importers had Federal regulations that allowed them to put off paying their import duties for up to eighteen months. They could bank and leverage their tax funds to buy more tea, then pay off the earlier taxes with additional profits. The faster the boat could make the trip, the more money made. Also, the fast boats demanded higher freight rates.”

“Time is money,” said Cutter. “So how do we find out what the Peregrine was up to?”

“First let’s make sure we didn’t miss anything in the regular sources.” She went back to the shelf. She lifted down a gray-jacketed book and carried it to her desk, pushing aside other documents.

“Well worn. You use it a lot?”

“A history of the clipper ships of the early period,” she said as she opened it, and began thumbing. “It’s one of the few copies still available. I love touching it.” He noticed the pages were brown with age.

“What’s the difference between early and later period?” asked Cutter.

“Later period was after 1850. It started when the shipbuilders learned how to make the big three-masted clippers, the ones most people call clipper ships.”

“I wondered about that because our boat only has two masts.”

She added, “The later vessels had a different hull design, more rounded to carry more freight. They got speed because of size and amount of sail, not so much from the knifelike Chesapeake lines.”

“So we’re looking for only the two-masted ones, the brigs.”

“Yes. Some two-mast topsail schooners, not brigs, sailed in the China Trade too, but mostly brigs because their square sails allowed the boat to perform better. You see, the trade winds pushed the boat in the right direction but the boat had to have them blow from behind to get real speed. The square sails were good at doing that. The schooners mostly sailed across the wind and so had to tack and maneuver a lot.”

“The bigger clippers had huge square sails.”

“You got that right. They also had large hulls and with all the sails they really moved fast. Of course they needed more sailors to set all those sails. So, the steamers with smaller, less expensive crews won out and the use of sailing clippers died.”

She thumbed through the index. “Nothing on your Osprey. Let’s find out about the Peregrine.”

Two references applied to ships called Peregrine. One was for a three-master built in 1850. Katy said that many times the shipbuilders would use the same name on a later ship, especially if the namesake had been fast.

She read the other entry:

“The Peregrine sailed as one of the fastest Baltimore clippers of this period. Owned by the Quaker firm of Williams Tea of New York, she made a record passage of 56 days from Callao Peru to Lintin Island, off Canton, China in 1835 which was not surpassed for several years until the advent of larger vessels.

“According to the Canton newspaper of that time, she lost a famous race with a British boat, the Willow.”

“I know about that one,” said Cutter. “Our English competitor won’t stop reminding me.”

He added, “Her captain was quoted afterward as stating ‘Peregrine will come back. She’s not finished yet.’ We have his words in a sign across the back of the boathouse at Jolly’s shipyard. It cheered up the workers this spring as we put together the hull.”

“Inspiring.”

She read further. “Here’s the ship’s port of registration. It also states she traded in the Pacific for many years.” Her finger moved across the page. “Did you know she sank off New Jersey in September 1840 on a return trip from China?”

Cutter smiled. ”One of our competitors reminded me of the sad fact at a recent race meeting in New York.”

She closed the book. “I know from other research a coastal storm that particular April sank ships all up and down the East Coast.”

Katy decided to research the original registration of the Peregrine. She rummaged through small drawers in a wooden file case. After a few minutes of searching well-thumbed index cards, she jotted numbers on a pad of paper.

“Come on.” They entered a dimly lit room. He noted rows of books with circular stairways among high files. He smelled mildew mixed with the odor of old paper and leather. He followed her up the steps, his eyes watering. At the topmost level she kneeled in front of dusty cardboard boxes.

“Microfilm,” she said as she pulled out small boxes and started off again to a film machine. After going through several reels, she found the right year. Soon, the two of them were reading the Peregrine document.

The form was rectangular with preprinted words in old type showing the registration city, New York. It had been filled out in ink, now faded, on March 11, 1832. The length and width or beam, and the depth of hold of the ship were described. She read, “She was 104 feet long, 25 feet wide, about the size of a small ocean-going yacht. It always amazes me how small these boats were.”

She pointed to a space, “The brig was built in River Sunday, Maryland, in April, 1831.”

“Yes,” said Cutter, “And registered to Williams Tea of New York City on March 11, 1832. “

“You see what is interesting?” she said, looking up at him, her hand on the machine control knob.

Cutter hesitated, then asked, “Why was Peregrine registered a year after she was launched?”

“Perhaps she sailed somewhere else before being listed. She may still have been in the employ of your company. We’ll have to find where she traveled. ”

Katy talked as she rewound the tape. She told him how the owners had to find cargoes to export to the Chinese market. They sold copper, cotton goods, opium, and used silver to buy the tea. It was practically barter, trading one good for another. “Opium was legal to ship from America. It was illegal to import into China.

“I have something else I want to show you.” She put away the microfilm and they returned to her office. He enjoyed the way her hips moved as he followed her. He had hoped he would have more time for the two of them when the ship was on its way. Now he was busy chasing this mystery. So far Katy proved he had cause to worry. Getting to the bottom of this Osprey story was not going to be easy.

At the side of the lobby downstairs, the museum walls had been decorated with a special exhibit of maritime items. They displayed clipper ship memorabilia from Baltimore’s heyday of shipbuilding and trade. Some of the pieces advertised fast passage to the California Gold Rush. Others were worn newspaper notices of shipments leaving for Europe and China. Two small oils in gilded frames were hanging as treasures in the middle of the wall.

“We set up this display last month to honor the building of the Peregrine. The television stations filmed it and interviewed us.”

“I watched you.”

“Many of these ships traded products from Baltimore. It is part of the city’s heritage too. We collected items to show the activity in ships and maritime trade.”

When she reached the painting on the left, she turned to Cutter and said. “We have this oil on loan from a New York City collection.”

The picture showed two primitive images of brigs, their sails set out to run before the wind. “That’s the Lady Baltimore from here and the Siren from New York racing south along the coast of Brazil. These ships were built locally about the time of the original Peregrine. Few paintings of the era and none of the ships themselves exist, so I particularly wanted this picture here.”

Cutter remembered how similar the present day start out in the Atlantic had looked to this painting. They too had run before the wind with their sails spreading large blooms of white.

She explained how the brigs like the Peregrine would trade down to Valparaiso, Chile or Callao, Peru, and then pick up cargoes for Canton. They’d also go to Batavia for opium from Turkey, then sail on to China for tea.

“What about the slave ships?”

She pointed to the other painting. “This is from our own collection. It’s a portrait of a US Navy brig in an encounter with a slaver stopped off Africa. The US and Britain were fighting the international slave trade by this time.”

Cutter noticed how the slave ship had its sails in tatters. Life boats were being rowed to the Navy ship.

“That’s the capture of the Black Joke, launched in Baltimore several years before and sold to slave merchants in Cuba. She had three hundred slaves aboard, including children, when stopped.”

He observed, “It’s as if Baltimore showed two faces with these boats, one good and one evil.”

She said, in a serious tone, “Like most of us, Jim. No one is perfectly good or evil. That’s why I put those paintings side by side.”

No one else was in the room. “More?” she asked, winking over her shoulder, her hand reaching back for his. Cutter nodded. She led him to another section of the museum. “It’s our newspaper room,” she smiled. “I want to look at some of the Baltimore press. Sometimes we can find notices of a ship’s departure and arrival which will help on identifying cargoes and owners.”

At another microfiche reader they began going through issues of the Baltimore shipping reports. Each issue printed tiny listings of vessels coming and going from the port as well as cargoes and origin or destination.

For an hour they went through the newsprint. Near the date when the ship was registered in New York, they found the first notation. “The brig Peregrine, owned by Williams Tea of New York left for China with cotton goods from our Maryland factory.”

She said, “That confirms she was owned by Williams and sailing under the Peregrine name. A large cotton cloth factory existed near Baltimore.”

Katy wanted to verify the sinking. “We have only a little chance that it would be reported in a Baltimore newspaper when it happened in New Jersey.”

Nothing was in the paper of September 1840. She opened another fiche. “I like to check for several months afterwards. Newspapers in those days were often days and weeks behind on news. Wait, Jim. Here it is.”

“October 10 1840. The loss off New Jersey of the Brig Peregrine, built in River Sunday, in the recent terrible storm which was also suffered here, has been reported from New York. It was on a return voyage from China. Captain Tolchester and the crew were drowned. All that was left of the fine brig, one of the fastest in the China Pacific trade, was the jolly boat. By the Lord’s providence was found, within the boat, wrapped in oilcloth, a copy of the Bible belonging to Richard Tolchester, the Captain of the ill-fated ship. One section of the ship’s wooden nameplate with her name was recovered in the surf. This established the brig was indeed the Peregrine, lost with all hands.”

She looked up at him, “You know, saving your butt ought to earn me dinner.”

Later, at her condominium overlooking Baltimore harbor, they were lying in bed. In the dark background the tiny flame from a thick candle spread gently moving shadows over their bodies. Earlier, at dinner in their favorite Fells Point restaurant, they had talked a long time, about the Peregrine, his son, as well as the book she was writing on Civil War costume. He liked talking to her about her interests, listening to her intelligent brain discuss problems, watching the way she moved her mouth as she spoke. Now, in bed, he couldn’t see her face as he gently stroked her bare leg.

“Do you remember how we got together?” she asked.

“Five years ago. I was researching the purchase of factory land for a stateside project. It was a strange job for me because usually Bill had me doing something overseas.”

“You worried about pollution on the real estate.” Cutter remembered how he had gone to the museum to check out an old Baltimore street atlas. He wanted to find out any background on that property.

He said, “You were an assistant curator in those days,” he said.

She grinned, “You were the most handsome real estate man I had ever seen.”

“You were the most beautiful history professor I had ever seen.”

“You took me for a coffee down in the museum cafeteria.” The back of her hand gently touched his cheek.

“I liked that little restaurant.”

“They’d be happy if you told them you thought it was a restaurant.”

“Well, it’s not big but we had fun.”

“You came back every day for a week before you asked me out.”