Rough Passage to London(57)
Morgan made a small offering of rum to Neptune that morning as a way of acknowledging his good fortune. The passengers below decks emerged later that day as the weather improved, knowing nothing of their narrow escape. However, some of the sailors were well aware that their young captain had almost driven them onto the rocks. As he paced the decks, Morgan could sense their eyes looking at him, distrustful and fearful. That night as he stood watch by the main mast, he thought he could hear voices. Some sailor was humming the chantey “Blow the Man Down.” He pulled out a cigar and lit it. The whispering from the shadows and the humming then stopped, only to be replaced by a profound silence, broken intermittently by the sound of a creaking block, a splash of a wave, and a man snoring from the forecastle. With the glowing cigar in his teeth, Morgan stared out into the black void, his mind filled with self-doubt and broken self-confidence.
Just then the man on watch yelled out, “Light on the port bow!” It was the Lizard lighthouse in Cornwall. The ship was now well into the English Channel, and Morgan puffed on his cigar appreciably as he looked forward to landfall even more than he had savored their departure three weeks earlier. He wanted someplace to hide from the critical eyes on board ship that followed him both above and below deck. He hadn’t felt so unsure of himself since those first voyages when he was a cabin boy and the vile Mr. Brown forced him up into the higher yards.
PART VI
I find the sea-life, an acquired taste, like that for tomatoes and olives. The confinement, cold, motion, noise, and odor are not to be dispensed with. The floor of your room is sloped at an angle [of] twenty or thirty degrees, and I waked every morning with the belief that some one was tipping my berth.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits
14
1834
The distant bells of many churches were striking the hour as the cabriolet left St. Katherine’s Docks on its way to the Old Jerusalem Coffee House in the commercial part of London known as Change Alley. The cool morning air on that sparkling June day refreshed Morgan and gave him a sense of well-being. He lit his first cigar of the day and listened to the comforting clopping of the horse’s hooves on the cobblestones, still wet from an early morning rain shower. He had been a shipmaster for three years, but he still wasn’t accustomed to many of the different business tasks he was expected to perform while in London. One such job was to promote his ship with shipping agents in London’s Change Alley. He was dressed formally in a long-skirted blue coat, a white shirt with a dark cravat, and his polished Wellington boots. As he fondled his black top hat, he thought about how much had changed in his life. Dressed as formally as he was, it seemed as if he was overreaching his station in life. He almost didn’t recognize himself. He knew he had changed, but these fine clothes he wore still seemed a mask. He reached into his coat pocket and touched Abraham’s old pennywhistle, stroking the smooth lead surface. This is my compass, he said to himself softly.
As they neared Gracechurch Street, Morgan could see the tip of the lofty dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in the distance. His mind wandered back to that difficult passage three years earlier when he first became shipmaster of the old Hudson. He felt the same way now as he did then, awkward and strange. He smiled at his naivete, thinking about how much older he felt now, but also more experienced. It had taken time, but he had gradually won the men’s respect. Even his first mate, Mr. Nyles, had a grudging admiration for his abilities now. He started calling him a lucky captain ever since they had avoided running aground two years ago by kedging their way out of a tight spot off the Irish coast with several small anchors even as a strong headwind threatened to blow them ashore. If it hadn’t been for a helpful ebb tide that pulled them away from the rocks, events might have turned out differently.
Below deck, he had learned many of the skills of being packet-polite. He could now sit at the head of the table, smiling and chatting his way through multiple courses. He still had trouble giving elaborate toasts, but he’d learned to keep his well-heeled passengers entertained by telling wild sea tales and sailors’ jokes and offering to play backgammon and chess. The secret of being packet-polite, he had decided, was to have a ready smile, a quick wit, a helping hand for the ladies, and a plentiful supply of port and sherry. Still, relations with some of his more arrogant English passengers posed special challenges. At times he had trouble controlling his temper. A particularly cutting remark would transport him back to that fearful night as a boy on the river. Back then he had seen the British as the enemy. Now as a captain and one of the Black X Line’s ship owners, he had come to appreciate the benefits of trade and commerce with England. That thought helped him temper a dark feeling about the English that occasionally swept over him.