Rough Passage to London(124)

“Once we set sail we would chase this ship, or I should say escort it, all the way to the West Indies. When any other Royal Navy cruiser patrolling the Caribbean would come close, we would flag them off, pretending like we were on a chase. In the early years, we would drop off our cargo in Jamaica, secretly at night. But once the English abolished all slavery, our destination was always the same, one of them bays between Cienfuegos and Trinidad on the south coast of Cuba. We would come in at night and stand watch as that slave ship would unload its human cargo. Nothing was said to those of us in the crew, but days later, all of us would get a special compensation in gold coins and Stryker would tell us to stow our blabbers.”

“How many of these passages did you make?” asked Morgan, stunned that his friend had been part of a slaving operation for so many years. Hiram seemed to be his own worst enemy with the decisions he made and the company he kept.

“Two to three passages a year, sometimes as many as six hundred crammed into a ship half the size of the Southampton. Word was that most of them would end up on American plantations in the South going through New Orleans. Sometimes to avoid suspicion we would on occasion hand over that slave ship to the Royal Navy authorities in Jamaica with a story about all the slaves drowning and the blackbirders killed. It helped polish Stryker’s record and reputation as a successful slave catcher. Then Blackwood would show up months later with a new ship.”

Morgan was silent, troubled by what he was hearing. Where was Hiram’s conscience? Where was his moral compass? It seemed like trouble was the man’s constant companion, and bad luck was his lot in life.

“So why did you desert, Hiram? Was that story about an English blockade all a pack of lies?”

Hiram seemed almost relieved to answer this question.

“No, I had heard that rumor, but it was only that, hearsay.”

“So what was the real reason?”

“I knew too much. They didn’t trust me I suppose. I’d seen Stryker’s eyes, cold and dark, looking at me. I knew I was in trouble if I didn’t get away. I had seen names and dates, information that made me a potential threat to the operation.”

“Who else was involved?”

Hiram squirted another gob of tobacco juice over the side as he looked toward the shoreline, and then finally, awkwardly turned to face Morgan.

“Stryker sent me down to his cabin one day to fetch the chronometer, and that’s where I spied the shipping papers and the contracts he kept on his desk along with his ledger book. As you know I am not much of a book learner, but I did look them over. I suspected he was cheating us tars. Stryker had a record of all the trips we had made and the number of Africans dropped off. There were lots of signatures, including those of some American plantation owners from Mississippi and Georgia, some Spanish or Portuguese names. I couldn’t make much of them numbers and fancy words except that all of the papers referred to the business as Ophion Trading Partners. I knew that Blackwood was supplying manufactured goods from Britain to barter for the slaves, but what I didn’t know was how big a network it was. There was a list of all the people involved, the Portuguese agents in Cape Verde and Africa, Cuban customs officials, even manufacturers in England, the ship captains and the crew, and the money. The records went all the way back for decades. All the names were there. I opened the ledger with the company’s name on it and it looked like the same ship took weapons, textiles, and brass hardware from Liverpool to West Africa, then slaves to Cuba, and then sugar and tobacco back to England. Here is the surprising part. The ledger showed the financing came from England. This whole devil’s plan is operating under the noses of the Foreign Office and the Admiralty.”

“Did Stryker find out you read these papers?”

“He barged in his cabin door, all scary looking and mad. I reckon he must have just remembered he had left all those papers on the desk. Fortunately, I wasn’t reading nothing when he walked in, but he looked me up and down real suspiciously. Sometimes I wonder if he wouldn’t have killed me then and there if it weren’t for a cry for all hands on deck right at that moment. I think he always wondered how much I knew about his partners and this company. He was downright hostile to me after that.”

“Is that when you decided to jump ship in Portsmouth?” asked Morgan frowning.

“That’s right, Ely,” he said with a sigh.

“Why didn’t you tell any of this to me before?”

“I couldn’t, Ely. I just couldn’t. I was too scared to tell you about the slaving.”

“That sounds like pickled nonsense to me,” Morgan said tartly, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.