Rough Passage to London(41)

Four days later, a drizzle was falling on the deck. The Hudson had completed the journey up the Channel and into the Thames. A pilot boarded the ship near Sheerness and a small steamer threw them a line. As the ship rounded Cuckold’s Point and passed the busy London Docks, the sailors spotted the buoys and the lock chamber that marked the entrance into their new destination, St. Katherine’s Docks, nestled underneath the Tower of London. The ancient fortress’s reputation for torture and death seemed dark and imposing from the vantage point of the river. The old turrets and towers stood in sharp contrast to the newly built St. Katherine’s with its mortared walls and long, massive brick warehouses that lined the quays. These smaller docks were designed to handle as many as 120 ships. As the packet pulled into the sheltered waters, the dockmaster was there waiting to review the ship’s manifest. Once they were tied up and the ship secured, he stood by overseeing the unloading of the cargo, a process that usually took one to two days.

On one of the first evenings ashore after that cold November voyage, Morgan met Laura at a tavern in Change Alley. It was in the middle of a busy commercial section of London bounded by Lombard Street, Cornhill, and Birchin Lane. This narrow alleyway was filled with lively coffee shops, fine-quality ship chandlers, and goldsmiths from Lombardy. It was a perfect place for a sailor to take a young woman he wanted to impress. On their way there, he had been surprised when a well-dressed stranger, some English dandy from the fashionable West End, tipped his top hat to Laura, saying something in French he didn’t understand. “Mon plaisir, mademoiselle. I trust I will see you on Thursday, comme d’habitude.” Morgan had asked who he was. She had looked flustered and said that she didn’t know. Morgan wanted to believe her, but all his instincts told him she was lying. He kept his doubts to himself. He knew it was best for him not to rush to any sudden judgments.

“I ’ave something to tell ye, Ely, that I know will interest ye,” she told him coyly that evening as they walked down one of the shadowy alleyways adjacent to Lombard Street.

Morgan looked at her inquiringly, wondering if she was going to reveal something personal about herself.

“The man ye were asking about, William Blackwood, ’e’s here in London.”

“How do you know that?” he asked incredulously.

“’E’s been seeing a girl I know named Mary. She works upstairs in the tavern my sister runs. You know, the White Bull Tavern. She says ’is ship is tied up in the West India Docks. It ’as just been repaired at a nearby yard.”

“The Charon is here in London?” Morgan was taken aback by this startling news.

“Yes, but Mary says ’e won’t be ’ere long. His ship ’as been replanked and caulked and is ready to set sail. That’s why I was so anxious for yer ship to arrive. I thought ye would never get here. Blackwood told Mary ’e’s leaving to go to India and China for several years. He says he’s exporting Bengali opium to Whampoa.”

“An opium trader,” Morgan mumbled to himself. He smiled at Laura. Any nagging doubts about her had disappeared. All suspicions about her character and activities were now completely forgotten.

The next day Morgan told Hiram the news. They both decided that the best thing to do was to find Blackwood’s ship, the Charon. If by some chance they found it, perhaps he could find Blackwood and confront him. He didn’t know what they would discover. Between St. Katherine’s Docks and the West India Docks were several miles of dangerous roads through London’s East End, certainly not walking distance, so they took a hackney cab along Ratcliffe Highway and Commercial Road.

To gain access to the West India Docks, they pretended they were drunk, although in Hiram’s case, this role was more real than Morgan would have liked. The guards laughed at them and let them pass. This was a far bigger dock area than the new docks at St. Katherine’s. There were hundreds of ships inside the walls, loading and unloading. Morgan stared at the long rows of brick warehouses. Some of them were five stories high and filled with stacked hogsheads of sugar above ground. The vaults for rum below ground were more than a half-mile long, separated by brick firewalls to minimize the risk of fire. Like the other enclosed dock areas on the Thames, the quays were alive with men unloading hogsheads of West Indian sugar and barrels of rum. Morgan inquired where the ships being rigged up for departure were and soon they were walking briskly along the north quay.

In the distance, all the way at the end of the docks, they could see men high up in the masts of one ship that had recently been caulked and painted. She was sleek and low in the water with the looks of a raked-back brigantine. Morgan could tell that this ship was built for speed. Her hull was too low in the water to be a merchant ship or a frigate, but it was sharp in the bow with an attractive sheer back to the stern. Morgan thought that she had the look of a Baltimore-built topsail schooner. A rush of adrenalin swept over him as he realized that this ship might be the Charon. He and Hiram tried to get closer by telling the guards who stopped them that they were returning sailors, but this time they were turned back.