Rough Passage to London(40)

The wind was coming up quickly from the north, bringing with it a gray stampede of squalls. Foul weather, he thought to himself, unpleasant, but good packet sailing weather. The sun was now hidden behind the incoming storm clouds. Morgan buttoned up his pea jacket and pulled his woolen hat down firmly over his head. He might have to reef sails sooner than he thought. He walked past the slanted stretch of the ship’s main deck where the animals were kept, acknowledging the sailor on watch as he walked over to the windward side, feeling the cold north wind on his cheeks. The rain and the gusts were now stirring up the ocean. They only had a few passengers in steerage on this trip, twelve people in the saloon, and a cargo of tobacco, beeswax, and hides. He flexed his knees and moved his body forward and backward, feeling at one with the seesaw motion of the ship. He breathed in deeply as he cast away his doubts and felt a surge of self-confidence. This was his first trip as first mate. Even though he knew the captain of the ship would be coming up on deck soon, for the moment he was the commander and the ship was under his watch.

The coast of Ireland was now well behind them and Morgan was surprised as he calculated that the ship had probably covered over a hundred miles in the last eight hours. Moments later, Captain Christopher Champlin surfaced from below and looked up at the men in the yards. He was a man much like his brother, medium height with a head of thick, wavy hair, and dark, perceptive eyes. He was frugal with his compliments and quick to express his disfavor.

“Mr. Morgan, get those men up on the royals and the topgallants. Trim those sails.”

Morgan picked up the trumpet and started shouting.

“Reef the foresail, men. And set the main topgallant close-reefed!”

“Main topsail haul!”

Ochoa signaled to Morgan that he might have a problem. One of the big bucko Irish sailors on board, a six-foot-tall brute named Callaghan, didn’t move but stood there defiantly refusing to obey orders. He had also bullied several others not to lift a finger. Morgan had never liked this surly man with his sneering face, bald head, and strangely pale blue eyes. He was a rule breaker who never stopped cursing. He was always the last out when the men were mustered. Taciturn and disdainful, he was always looking for an excuse to dodge the work on a dark night. Now he was cursing at his fellow sailors, urging them to blow the man down.

Champlin’s face was beet red.

“Mr. Morgan,” he said sternly. “Go knock some discipline into that miserable Irish devil’s head.”

Some mates enjoy exercising their power over men as the ship’s enforcers, but Morgan did not. He preferred to use common logic as a persuader instead of pain from a belaying pin. When that didn’t work, he would think of innovative punishments that didn’t involve flogging. He had already put one belligerent sailor into a large canvas bag and hoisted him up the mast. He left him there all curled up in a ball, swinging back and forth in that bag for several hours. He came down panic stricken and gasping for breath. As far as Morgan was concerned, the job of first mate was all about gaining and earning the respect of the crew rather than beating them into submission. Christopher Champlin, on the other hand, preferred a bully mate with an iron fist and a voice of doom to spread the fear of God into the sailors.

Morgan walked over, but before he could lay a hand on the man, the sailor rushed at him. If it weren’t for Icelander and Hiram, Morgan’s authority on deck might have been seriously challenged as he had not been prepared for a violent attack. The two sailors, who had stood by Morgan whenever there was a flare-up, knocked the Irishman onto the deck and presented him to the first mate for punishment. Instead of beating the man, Morgan ordered him out to the isolation of the jib boom, which sailors called the widow maker. He was ordered to stay there at the tip of the thirty-foot-long bowsprit for the next twenty-four hours.

“Try your hand alone, Mr. Callaghan,” Morgan said to him with compressed lips. “Test your courage and endurance with Old Man Neptune. Maybe by tomorrow you will have learned the value of a ship’s company all working together.”

Morgan watched as the frightened but still defiant man pulled himself along the pole out to the very tip. Just then, the Hudson’s bow plunged into a deep trough, sending the jib boom and the man below the surface. Moments later, the bowsprit emerged from the waves and the man, drenched and shivering, was still clinging on. He had lost his hat, and his stringy wet hair dangled over his fear-stricken eyes like a wet mop. His shoes had been washed away. A long day and night awaited him, dwarfed as he was by the immense waves washing over him. Just before nightfall, Morgan took pity on the man clinging to the jib boom and ordered Callaghan to be pulled back on deck, where he was put to work holystoning the icy-cold decks.