Rough Passage to London(114)

The gentle lap of the water against the ship’s wooden hull made him think of their new home. With four children now, the Morgans had moved out of New York to a house on the Connecticut River in Saybrook on the corner of Main Street and the Boston Road, not too far from the New York ferry landing. It was a gracious two-story home with an expansive rooftop terrace, ideal for views of the river, that was large enough for Eliza’s mother to move in with them. He wondered how much longer he could keep up as a packet shipmaster. He was forty-four years old and he was well aware that his four children were growing up quickly, mostly without a father. Most packet ship captains did not last on the job for even five years. Only a dozen or so had retained command for fifteen years. Yet he had been a packet ship captain now for nearly twenty. He had crossed the Atlantic well over one hundred times. He thought of his old first mate, Dan Stark, who had been lost at sea six months ago on a cold winter voyage aboard the Mediator, his first command. He knew it could easily have been him. In the back of his mind he wondered how long his good fortune would last. Morgan’s late-night reverie was again interrupted by the sound of creaking oarlocks from a small boat. The sound of the water slapping up against the ship’s hull increased in intensity. He wondered to himself who could be rowing around his ship at this time of night.





The methodical sound of oars splashing the surface of the water soon faded, and Morgan went back to his task of writing letters. Just as he was finishing up sealing and addressing the last of the small letters, he thought he heard the sounds of muffled footsteps and the creaking of deck boards over his head, but then there was silence. He dismissed these noises as his imagination and he retired to his berth and fell asleep.

A sudden banging on his door jolted him awake. Morgan sat upright as Whipple stumbled into his quarters carrying a lantern. The man’s shirttails were hanging loose, his pants unbuttoned, and he was barefoot. His face was flushed.

“Lord sakes, what is it, Whipple?”

“An intruder, Captain! Someone’s inside the ship!”

“What? Where?”

“The chain locker. I heard lots of noises. The kind of scurrying and shuffling that could only come from a human crittur, Cap’n.”

Morgan told Whipple to go rouse the two stewards just forward of the main cabin. Then he quickly put on some clothes and grabbed his two pistols. The four men met up on deck. Lowery and Junkett had thrown on their stewards’ jackets over their bare chests, and each of them had a kitchen cleaver in their hands.

Whipple led this small group down the stairs from the upper hold into the lower cargo hold, swinging his lantern high in a wide circle and holding his knife out with his other hand. They were now deep in the belly of the ship below the water line. It was like descending underground into some large coffin, cold and damp, the stale air ripe from the heavy anchor hawsers. Morgan clutched his two pistols, keeping them high and ready. They were surrounded by a dark, shadowy maze of crates, bags, and barrels filled with flour and clover seed, as well as bales of tobacco and hogsheads of turpentine. He could hear the tiny claws of rats scurrying around. The big deck timbers below creaked as they tried to walk quietly through the lower hold. Whipple stopped suddenly and motioned for them to listen. The noises were coming from the center of the ship down in the bilge area below them.

They approached the hatch that led down to the bilge. Morgan could hear a scraping, and a grinding as metal carved through wood. The two stewards clutched their cleavers holding them in front of them. Morgan motioned Whipple to extinguish his lantern and with the sudden blackness now extending over them, they could see a dim light emerging through a hole in the lower deck. There definitely was someone in the bowels of the ship, deep in the bilge.

Morgan went first, delicately and slowly opening the hatch. The stench of the rank decay from muddy water dredged up from the river bottoms filled his nostrils. He felt his way down the narrow ladder. The reek of the bilges was so strong he had to breathe through his mouth, trying not to cough. The others followed, touching each other in the dark so as not to get disoriented. They could now hear a louder scraping of metal and a man’s labored, heavy breathing. The bilge area had so little headroom they had to crouch. There they remained for a few minutes, not daring to move. Morgan held out his cocked pistols toward a faint hint of light that glimmered behind one of the ship’s knees amidships.

“Who’s there? Show yourself or I’ll fire!” he yelled out.

The noise abruptly stopped. The faint light disappeared. There was no answer. For what seemed like an eternity to Morgan there was total silence. He wondered if he should fire. Suddenly, they heard the sound of fleeing footsteps, heavy breathing, and the frantic scratching and banging of someone running on all fours. Whipple lit his lantern and held it up high, straining to see down the narrow gloom of the inner cavity of the ship. Now they could hear crashes and curses as the intruder ran and stumbled to the stern of the ship away from them. The four of them gave pursuit, running and scrambling like hunchbacks as they followed the thudding footsteps ahead of them.