Rough Passage to London(100)

Morgan was dumbstruck by this news. It was both encouraging and unsettling. Who was this man?

“He walked away, but then all of a sudden he turned around and smiled, not kindly either, and said how he’d been here on the Connecticut River once long ago when the town of Essex was called Potapoug.”

A slight chill went down Morgan’s back as he pondered that cryptic clue. An English sailor who knew the name Potapoug, he thought to himself. That was strange. The words of John Taylor came to mind. “Big Red,” he’d said. “A man by the name of Big Red had been pursuing him.”

“You should keep the journal, Josiah. I will leave it up to you whether or not you share this with our mother, but I’m guessing you’ll decide to keep it private for now. No one wants father to start raging again. Until we find out more about what happened to Abraham all those years ago, maybe it is best to stay silent.”





PART IX





I have learned early to understand that wherever there is an Englishman in the question, it behooves an American to be reserved, punctilious, and sometimes stubborn.

—James Fenimore Cooper, Gleanings in Europe





22





1843

Morgan pulled himself out of his cabin berth, walked over to a small looking glass hanging from the bulkhead, and stared at his face. In the glass he saw a still-youthful man, although he was thirty-seven years old. Not in bad shape, after more than twenty years on the North Atlantic. No gray hairs on his head, a brown, weathered, clean-shaven face framed by well-trimmed whiskers, a few furrows above his nose, but a mostly smooth forehead. As he soaped and lathered his face with the hog-bristle brush to begin shaving, he could hear the creaking of the horse carts carrying hundreds of workers into St. Katherine’s Docks. A chorus of stern dockmasters began shouting out orders for more men. The docks would soon be filled with the familiar squeal of rope and tackle as the men began the labor of loading and unloading cargo. It would be another hot August day on the docks.

As he scraped the straight razor across his soapy cheeks, his thoughts turned to Abraham. After all these years, the horrifying words in his brother’s journal still shocked him. There hadn’t been any further clues. The mysterious Englishman who had approached Josiah in Lyme had not resurfaced. Morgan had concluded that the man must have been either misdirected or misinformed. There had been no sign of John Taylor despite his repeated inquiries in the New York boarding houses frequented by sailors. He had almost given up hope. He had spent the last twenty years of his life on the North Atlantic, trying to solve the mystery of his brother’s disappearance. It still sickened him to think that Hiram Smith was probably dead, all because of his quest. Yet he had continued with his mission, uncertain about his destination, drawn ever forward by some unseen, unknown force.

As a boy, he had always told himself he would find Abraham for his mother’s sake, but she had died in March of last year with the snow still on the ground. His father was also gone. He had passed away in 1839 at the age of eighty-three. He thought of his mother’s quiet, melancholy face. He knew that his decision to go to sea had caused her much worry and sadness. He and Josiah had never shared with her what they knew about Abraham. They both felt it would cause her too much anguish. He still wondered if they had done the right thing.

Then Josiah had written that when they discovered her body in the morning they found the old letter from John Taylor clutched firmly in her hand. He remembered how he had cried that day. She had never given up hope. Maybe that stubborn determination was what was still driving him.

He stared at himself steadily in the looking glass, not so much out of vanity as out of self-examination. His features may not have changed that much, but as he looked into his own eyes, he wondered if he was looking at a stranger. As often happened when he was alone, his thoughts turned to Eliza. They had two children now. The eldest, William, was five years old. Ruth was two. With the children to take care of, Eliza was no longer accompanying him across the Atlantic. The turning point for her came with the sudden death of her father in March of 1837. Morgan had tried to console her, but she would often sink into somber moods and worry about her mother.

After the arrival of William a year later she had told him that she was staying ashore in their home on East 22nd Street. The thought of Eliza brought back the painful memory of their parting before this last voyage. The vision of her tears, and their two small children’s mournful eyes, had stayed with him. She was now pregnant with their third child. He had promised he would be back in time even though he wasn’t sure he would be. She had pleaded with him to stay, but he had refused, saying the shipping line needed him. These first voyages of his new ship were too important, he told her. The truth was he often sailed with a heavy heart, feeling guilt for having left and lost in dark thoughts about himself. He wasn’t sure what he wanted anymore. He was a man who was drawn to the sea. But he was also a father and a husband.