Rough Passage to London(10)

There were ten other sailors who came aboard at the same time he did. Some of them were dandied up, wearing tarpaulin hats with long black ribbons streaming behind them. Others had uncombed hair with untrimmed beards. They wore an assortment of stained woolen jackets and dirty canvas trousers that looked and smelled slept in. Morgan swung his small duffel over his shoulder. He suddenly had the urge to turn and run as fast as he could. But then he thought, he had no place to go. That sobering thought kept his feet anchored to the deck.

At that moment, he saw the wavy black hair of Captain Champlin emerge from below decks. He remembered how frightened he had been at Fickett’s shipyard on that first day in New York. He had been told to go there by a man at 68 South Street. He had waited for hours standing by the sawpits, watching men with two-handed saws slice through huge oak beams. Showers of sawdust filled the air. He had asked several workers if they knew Captain Champlin, but no one paid much attention to him. He was about to give up when he felt a firm hand on his shoulder. He had turned around quickly, almost jumping out of his pants at the sight of a big-headed man with a black top hat, bushy, arched eyebrows, and a large, protruding jaw. For one frightening second he had thought Champlin was his father and he had come to take him home. Instead, he’d reassured him that he was a lucky sailor to be going out on the maiden voyage of John Griswold’s newest ship.

“You know the difference, Morgan, between this here ship up on the ways and a transient ship?”

Ely had shaken his head.

“Quick voyages with no delays in port. That’s the difference between this ocean packet and a transient ship. Sailing on a schedule, that’s what people want now, son, no matter what the weather or the season.”

Morgan had smiled weakly.

Champlin had patted him on the back as he pointed to the large looming sides of the ship up on the ways. The hull, made of live oak, had just been painted; some of the workers were now varnishing a strip that ran across the middle, from bow to stern. Riggers were busy installing the three masts.

“No shipping firm is providing regular packet service yet from New York to London, and Mr. Griswold aims to do just that. This will be his flagship. Imagine that son, we’ll be haulin’ the mailbags from New York to London and back again with all the important correspondence and all the news! I reckon we’re like a stagecoach on the Atlantic highway. A floating bridge from New York to London, you might say.”

Morgan had nodded as Champlin laughed and slapped him on the back. With the lecture over, he had then sent Ely over to the sawpits. For the next month until the ship was launched, he had worked at the shipyard, sleeping on the floor of a temporary work shed along with many of the workers, and some of the sailors who would soon be his close companions.





All that flashed before him as he saw the captain greet his cabin passengers with a ready smile and a handshake. As Ely surveyed the flushed deck of the Hudson, he turned to look at some of his new shipmates. He already knew some of them from the yard. Most of them were Americans from New England. Some of the men near him were laughing about a girl named Molly. Most of the sailors loved to talk about the grog shops they’d been to, the quantity of spirits they’d drunk, and the saucy women they’d encountered ashore.

“Like a cat that’s ketched a mouse, that g’hal can’t help thievin’, but this time I fooled her,” said a snub-nosed, red-faced man.

“How so?” asked a bald-headed sailor, whom the others called Curly Jim. “Why, I hid my money in my boots. I didn’t give her any opportunities.”

“That so,” said Curly Jim as he pulled out a quid of tobacco. “I reckon she gave you plenty more than just opportunities.”

“What do you mean by that?” replied the leering sailor.

“A case of the French pox.”

The men laughed and hit one another, continuing their banter and carousing. Morgan’s unease grew with every step he took onto the ship’s deck. He could see his shipmates were a hardened, tough group of men, most of whom were still drunk from shore leave. He jumped suddenly at the sound of some commotion behind him. Crouching up against the bulwark, trying to make himself as small as possible in case there was a fight, he watched as two sailors started to push and shove each other.

“You stole it! That’s where you got the money, you hornswoggling scalawag.”

“I ain’t stole nothin’.”

A short, muscular man with eyes that gleamed like black river stones was accusing another with a pockmarked face of being a thief. Pretty soon the two men were exchanging blows, and the surly sailors were cheering on the fight. A curly haired man wearing a blue jacket and a black leather porkpie hat, who was checking off the sailors’ names by the foremast, quickly stepped in to break up the scuffle. He lunged at the men, beating them with a belaying pin, and kicking them after they fell down. Morgan remained crunched up against the bulwarks, terrified by this display of raw brutality.