Age Is Just a State of Mind

This has, in some ways, been a hard year. In April I had a hip replacement; in May a root canal; and in August a dental crown, an infection form an ingrown toenail and an infected throat cyst. So I have been almost continuously on antibiotics, not to mention the antibiotic eyedrops I take for three days before and a week after I get poked in the eye with a sharp stick (hypodermic needle) every couple of months to treat the eye that had a stroke sometime back.

Somewhere along the line I started dropping things. No sensation of letting go; they just suddenly were falling out of my hand. When I spilled a whole mug of coffee on the heirloom carpet my son-in-law inherited from his mother, I cleaned up the spill and then called the doctor. A Nerve Conduction Test confirmed Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. So now I'm waiting for surgery on my wrist. Of course, after the surgery I will take more antibiotics.

I figure that by the time this year is over, my bugs will be resistant to every antibiotic on the planet. Thank heaven there's still charcoal.

Right after my hip surgery, I seemed to be progressing swiftly, but after I graduated from the walker to the cane, progress slowed down. My daily walks with the dog dropped from 40 minutes to 20, and eventually down to 5 or 10. It's a good thing her daddy walks her twice a day because I haven't been able to at all for a good week now.

Turns out, I was pushing too hard and need to slow down. Oh-oh. I'm the kind who prays, "Lord give me patience --right now!"

The constant exhaustion worried me, but that is simply the result of healing. When I broke my leg 30 years ago, I found that every time I sat down, I fell asleep.  Between that and the new knowledge that the anesthetic doesn't completely leave the body for a full year, I can relax and stop thinking that my body is deteriorating.

I used the cane too long, though, and my back started killing me -- with pain much greater than the arthritic hip had caused before surgery. It takes only the slightest misalignment to throw off this intricately designed and complexly integrated body of ours. So I have given up all walking aids. When I first get out of a chair, I shuffle and hobble awkwardly for the first couple dozen steps, but then I'm all right. The back is improving daily.

I have managed to cook supper almost every day, but often that means grabbing something from the freezer. And I have completed a few writing assignments, but not nearly enough. I have even, with much prayer and trepidation, agreed to be the PR Officer for my church, sending articles to the conference publication. I sent one in last month. My daughter, a TV newswoman, took most of the pix because I was hurting too much to get in position.

So I think I can be forgiven for thinking I was sinking ungracefully into old age. (See? I was getting to that.) But my daughter and grandson put an end to such thoughts as we were returning home from grocery shopping.

My daughter told me she had been reading about someone's 70-year-old parent, "And my first thought was, 'What would it be like to have a 70-year-old parent?'" When we both burst out laughing, my 16-year-old grandson wanted to know why. We told him that I am now 71.

"Since when?" he demanded.

I assured my daughter that she will never know what it's like to have a 70-year-old parent. I will be forever young. In fact, since I am really only 25, I wonder how on earth she managed to get to be older than I am.

Book

If the book sometimes seems to contradict itself it's because this is a work in progress. For instance, I originally named Joseph's companion Garrett Perrin. Two chapters later in his Autobiography, Bates mentions that his companion was Forbes, no first name given. So I kept hte Garrett and changed the last name to Forbes.  I have also made the change in my Document files, but not in the post.

You are my Beta testers, so feel free to post your comments on what I've written.

Enjoy!

KIdnapped!

High Seas Adventures

Chapter 4 – Kidnapped!

By Ellen Weaver Bailey

This is a slightly fictionalized version of the biography of early-19^th-century seaman Joseph Bates. While all of the events are strictly true, his Autobiography often lacks detail, so I have added logical dialogue, names and actions to fill in the blanks. I have also somewhat modernized the language.

Arriving safely in Liverpool, Joseph Bates and Garrett Forbes found lodging at a seaman’s boardinghouse run by Mrs. Whitby, a middle-aged widow. The two young Americas spent most of each day at the docks, asking about possible berths on a ship going to New Bedford. One evening shortly after their arrival, they relaxed in the common room of the boarding house, listening to the talk of the sailors and Mrs. Whitby’s friendly chatter.

“’Ow did ye like the scouse tonight” she asked, and she expected an answer. A positive one. The men murmured appreciatively.

“Is that what you call that delicious stew?” asked Joseph. Mrs. Whitby appeared scandalized. The English sailors in the room chuckled and settled down to watch the show.

“Stew is it?” Mrs. Whitby demanded, visibly aggrieved. “Why, ‘tis never mere stew I’d give ye! ‘Tis good Liverpudlian scouse!

“Scouse!” cheered the grinning Englishmen.

“Scouse,” said Joseph.

“No, no! Ye’re sayin’ it wrong. Say “scouse.”’

“Scouse,” repeated Joseph obediently though he thought he had said it right the first time. Forbes smirked as Mrs. Whitby shook her head.

“Well then, you try it!” Joseph exploded at his friend, embarrassed at being the center of amused attention. But Forbes had no more success. Although to the Americans, their pronunciation sounded exactly like the landlady’s, the other men kept laughing, and Mrs. Whitby kept shaking her head and mourning their bad pronunciation. After making them each try it several times, she sighed resignedly.

“You Yanks nivver say it right,” she mourned, then brightened. “Ye’d better work on learnin’ Eglish!” And with that, she returned, grinning, to her kitchen.

The rollicking laughter that ensued was cut off by the pounding of boots outside, and the door was thrown open. A uniformed naval officer stomped inside, followed by a dozen rough-looking armed men. There was scrambling as English sailors fled the room. One man was so desperate to get away that he dove right through the window. Without opening it first.

“Stand where ye are!” roared the officer. “The first man to move, dies!” And his men’s pointed weapons proved that he meant it. Mrs. Whitby rushed back into the room, alarmed by the noise and shouts, and caught sight of the intruders.

“Press gang!” she breathed, her face whitening. Joseph and Forbes looked around at the sailors frozen in place, trying to figure out what was going on but too prudent to call attention to themselves. The officer began making the rounds of the room.

“Useless,” he said indicating a man with a wooden leg.

“Too old,” was his judgment of another.

“Weakling. Wouldn’t last a month,” he dismissed a third. When he came to where Joseph and his companion stood, the officer’s eyes widened.

“Well, well, well, a pair of likely lads,” he said, smiling evilly “What country are you lads from?Scotland? Ireland?”

“We’re American!” Joseph blurted indignantly. The officer faked a huge laugh, and his press gang echoed him.

“Americans!” he scoffed, looking around at his gang. “They say they’re Americans.” His men jeered. Joseph and Forbes pulled out their “protections,” an early form of passport.

“Here!” Joseph shoved the papers angrily in the officer’s face. “This proves we’re Americans!” The officer slapped the papers away without looking at them.

“Obvious fakes,” he said. “Seize them!” The press gang leaped for the two young men. Joseph’s first instinct was to fight against the grasping hands, but the officer put an end to that by drawing his sword. Firelight glinted off the razor edge.

“’Ere!” he commanded. “Come along quietly if ye don’t want a taste of me blade.” The two young men were frog-marched to a place called the “rendezvous,” though Joseph was more inclined to call it a filthy underground hole.

“Why is this happening to us?” Forbes asked Joseph. “What’s a press gang, anyway?” Joseph hugged himself against the chill of the concrete cell.

“The navy is in desperate need of sailors to crew their ships fighting Napoleon,” he explained, “so press gangs stalk the waterfront and kidnap men, forcing them into the Navy.”

“Why do they have to kidnap men? Can’t they recruit enough?” wondered Forbes. Joseph snorted in reply.

“Conditions in the Royal Navy are so bad that no man in his right mind would join voluntarily,” he explained.

“But – but – we’re Americans!” Forbes protested.

“I’ve heard of this – seizing Americans and making them serve. Sometimes they even board American ships and claim sailors are deserters from the Royal Navy. It’s disgusting!” said Joseph. “But I never expected it to happen to me,” he added mournfully.

The next morning, April 27, 1810, Forbes and 18-year-old Joseph were taken before a naval lieutenant. Their protests that they were Americans were once again ignored.

“Why, that can’t be,” said the lieutenant smoothly. “I have a man here who says he knows you to be Irish.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Joseph blurted, “You can tell by our speech we’re not Irish.” His reward for this clarification was a punch in the back of the head.

“We will hear what Maguire has to say,” the lieutenant said. “Private Maguire, you say you know these men?”

“Aye, sor,” said the private in a flat voice, as though reading from a script. “Both men ‘ave been known to me for years. Sure an’ this one,” indicating Joseph, “lives roight down the street from me mither and faither in Dublin.”

“That’s a lie!” shouted Joseph. The punch this time sent him sprawling.

“It’s clear that you are the ones lying,” the lieutenant stated calmly. He nodded, and strong hands pressed a shilling into the right palm of each, wrapping the American’s fingers around the money.

“You have accepted the king’s shilling,” pronounced the lieutenant in an official voice. “Therefore, you are hereby ordered to join the Royal Navy.” Four men grabbed them, one holding tightly to each arm, and with the lieutenant leading with his drawn sword, the two Americans were marched through the streets of Liverpool. Just like a couple of condemned criminals thought Joseph in fury at the humiliation. People stopped to stare at the procession, and there was no sign of sympathy in their gazes. Joseph held his head up, refusing to act like a criminal.

When they reached the River Mersey, they were rowed out to the Princess, a British warship anchored in the middle of the broad inlet. Here they were locked into the prison room on the lower deck with 60 other kidnapped Americans. The men were all of one mind, their attitude expressed by the sailor who seemed to be the leader.

“The way I sees it,” said the older tar, “we was taken illegally, with no provocation on our part.”

“Aye! That’s true,” echoed his listeners.

“So, anything we do to regain our liberty is justified!”

“Here, here!” cried the Americans, agreeing as one.

“What do you suggest we do?” asked Joseph, ready to take some action, any action, to be free again.

“We bides our time,” said the old salt, “and we watches. Sooner or later we’ll get our chance.”

The chance came a few days later, when most of the ship’s complement went ashore to bury a shipmate who had died of illness. Several of the Americans had a suggestion.

“While they’re gone, we can break the bars and bolts out of the porthole,” said one.

“Yeah, and then we can escape out the hole and swim for it,” added another. “The current is strong here and it’ll take us out of sight in no time.” Working quickly, they soon had a hole large enough for a man to slip through. But they weren’t quite quick enough. Just as the first man was reaching up to the hole, a boatful of returning officers rowed alongside.

“Hello! What’s this then?” barked an officer, spotting the open hole.

“Those Yanks are tryin’ to escape!” declared another.

“We’ll soon cure them of that,” vowed the captain.

As soon as the officers boarded the ship, they ordered the Americans up on deck. One by one the prisoners were stripped to the waist, tied to a grating and lashed with the cat-o-nine-tails, a vicious whip of nine long, braided and knotted ropes fastened to a handle. All the prisoners were forced to watch the whippings and listen to the screams the victims were unable to hold in. Hour after hour, the torture went on, as the sun sank toward the horizon. About 9:00 o’clock that evening, Joseph was grabbed and pulled toward the grating.

“Belay that!” the captain ordered. “It’s too dark. We’ll continue in the morning.”

Joseph breathed a sigh of relief. He had a reprieve! Of course, that meant he had the whole night to listen to the groans of the  miserable victims and think about his own turn, coming first thing in the morning. It was a very long night. At dawn, the prisoners were once again summoned up on deck, but before the Britiash could resume their vicious work, a message came for the captain.

“Well,” he humphed, “it looks like the rest of you Yanks will escape your just punishment. I’m ordered to transship the lot of you to that frigate weighing anchor over there.” The transfer went quickly, and a few days later the prisoners arrived at the docks in Plymouth. As the frigate entered the harbor, Joseph could not take is eyes from the vessel tied up at the wharf. The Salvador del Mundo, a three-decker Spanish ship of the line of the Santa Ana class, had been captured by the British at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, back in 1797, one of the early conflicts of the French Revolutionary Wars. In England it served as a harbor, or barracks, ship, and it was now to serve as a prison ship for 1500 kidnapped American sailors.

Here, Joseph and Forbes became friendly with Silas Lynch, another young sailor from Massachusetts. The bulk of their conversation was about escape.

“We’ll escape or die in the attempt!” Lynch declared, and the other two agreed.  They managed to get hold of a rope, and they knotted a blanket to the end to extend its reach. They hid this contraption and carefully watched the routines of the ship. On the chosen night, they watched the shift change of the guards and then went into action.

First, they raised the hanging port, a hinged shutter that covered the porthole. Opening the shutter provided a sort of umbrella to help hide their activity.  A friend agreed to close the shutter after they had escaped. They tossed out the end of the rope and were glad to see that it reached clear to the water. Forbes went first, pausing at the porthole.

“You’ll follow?” he asked. Joseph assured him he would. Forbes then slipped down the rope to the water, followed immediately by Joseph. Before Joseph reached the water, though, the cry rose:

“Man overboard!” cried a British sailor with sharp ears. At that, their friend dropped the shutter in panic, alerting the guard to the attempted escape and the location of the escapees. Fearing he would be fired on, Joseph slipped down into the water and swam to a ladder, hoping to hide under it and escape detection. Unfortunately, an office chose that moment to descend the ladder, planning to board a ship’s boat to search for the escapees. Joseph was holding onto the ladder when the officer’s hand touched his.

“Here’s one of them!” bellowed the officer in a voice Joseph was sure could be heard all the way to London. And catching sight of Forbes a moment later, “And here’s another!” Josph and Forbes were hauled aboard the ship, where they faced the ship’s angry officers.

“Who are you?” demanded the officer who had found them.

“An American!” declared Joseph defiantly.

“How dare you try to swim away from the ship? Didn’t you know you were liable to be shot?”

“I am not a subject of King George!” spat Joseph. “I was trying to regain my rightful liberty.” He gave the officer glare for glare.

The two escapees were kept in close confinement for 30 hours, and then they were separated. Joseph never saw his friend again.

With 150 other sailors, all strangers, Joseph was hustled aboard the Rodney, a 74-gun troop transfer ship with a crew of about 700. The newcomers were mustered on the quarterdeck, and then they were allowed to go down to their dinners. Except…

“Bates! You will remain here,” ordered Captain Bolton, who then handed a piece of paper to First M ate Campbell. Campbell read it and his face turned dark with anger.

“Scoundrel!” he muttered. Captain Bolton then mustered all 100 men of the ship’s boat crews on deck.

“You see that fellow?” he demanded, indicating Joseph.

“Aye!”

“Yessir!”

“If you ever let him get into one of your boats, I’ll flog every man in the boat’s crew. Is that clear?”

“Aye, aye, Sir!”

“Very well, you may go to your dinners.” The crews hurried below, but Joseph stood rooted to the spot, wondering what would come next.

“You, too, Bates,” the captain threw over his shoulder as he turned away.

A few hours later the Rodney departed the dock under full sail to confront Napoleon’s forces in the Mediterranean Sea. As Joseph stood on the deck, watching the old city of Plymouth recede, he wondered if he would ever be free again.

The Doomed Voyage

High Seas Adventures

Chapter Three – A Doomed Voyage

By Ellen Weaver Bailey

This is a slightly fictionalized version of the biography of early-19^th-century seaman Joseph Bates. While all of the events are strictly true, his Autobiography often lacks detail, so I have added logical dialogue, names and actions to fill in the blanks. I have also somewhat modernized the language.

When the Fanny docked again in New Bedford that November, Joseph felt like a king. For the next several months he lived on his tales of his first ocean voyage. Prudy, for one, never seemed to tire of hearing about his adventures, and he swelled with pride at her rapt attention. Eventually, he needed some new stories. By mid-May, he was at sea again, heading this time for Archangel, Russia. His dreams were coming true; he was seeing the world!

What he saw first were icebergs. With the other hands, Joseph gazed in fascination at these huge “islands of ice,” as they were called, floating on all sides and dwarfing the ship. A strong westerly gale drove the ship forward as a dense fog shut down, limiting vision to a mere ten feet or so. At midnight, Joseph’s shift felt their way to the hatches and retired below to their hammocks.

An hour later, they were jerked from sleep by the helmsman’s frantic cry of “Iceberg!” followed immediately by a horrifying crunch and a jarring crash. The impact threw Joseph across the forecastle, slamming his head against the bulkhead and knocking him out.

Slowly, he came to. For the next few seconds he exerted every fiber of his being to draw a breath. With relief he felt the air rush into his lungs, but he still couldn’t move or speak. He could see a hand lying on the deck. He assumed it was his and that it was attached to his arm and shoulder, but he couldn’t prove it at the moment. He had so sense of physical connection. He heard an urgent voice and looked up to see Warren Palmer, a shipmate about ten years older, leaning over him and calling his name.

“Joseph! Joseph! We’re trapped!” Joseph forced himself to speak, but the words came out reluctantly and inexpertly.

“What…ya…mean…trapped?”

“The rest of the crew went up on deck and shut the hatch! I don’t know where the ladder is!”

“Ladder?” Joseph’s brain was having trouble processing information.

“Yes! The ladder! We need to find it so we can get out of here!” Palmer’s voice was panicky. With his help, Joseph struggled to his feet, and they began to search for the ladder. Their desperation grew amid the noise of disaster. Timbers shrieked as though the ship were being torn apart. Men on the deck above screamed in fear, begging God for mercy. Forgetting their New England reserve, the two doomed sailors clutched each other around the neck, groaning and crying in despair.

As Joseph thought of the teachings of his Christian father, his mental agony was so crushing he couldn’t speak. I’m about to die! He thought. I’m going to go down with the wreck of this ship, to the bottom of the sea, and I am totally unprepared to meet God. I have no hope of Heaven. I’ll be damned forever!

Palmer’s thoughts led him in a different direction.

“I wish I could get my hands on that captain! This is his fault!” he snarled.

“What do you mean?” asked Joseph, startled out of his spiritual agonizing.

“When I was at the helm last night, I heard the first mate begging the captain to round the ship to and wait till morning when we could see where we were going. But, oh, no! ’Don’t worry, we’re past the ice,’ the captain said. ‘We have to keep going; we can’t waste time.’

“Can’t waste time! He threw our lives away because he was in a hurry!” Spittle flew as Palmer soundly cursed the negligent captain.

Just then, the hatch flew open and a face peered into the forecastle.

“Anyone down there?” shouted a sailor.

“Yes! The two trapped crewmen cried in unison, and within moments they were up on deck.

Not that this improved their chances of survival. The bow of the ship was jammed up under a shelf of ice, and the wind filling the sails pounded the hull against the berg. Between the roaring gale and the crashing seas, the vessel seemed about to be smashed to pieces. Picking his way through the wreckage, Joseph arrived at the quarter deck, where he saw the captain and second mate on their knees, pleading with God to save them.

“Mercy, Lord!” cried the captain in panic.

“Have mercy on us!” echoed the terrified mate.

Meanwhile the first mate and several crewmen were trying to hoist the longboat. Joseph snorted. Even with his limited experience, he could see that if the boat were successfully launched, the pounding waves and ice would reduce it to kindling in moments. Just then his attention was jerked back to the captain, whose cries had reached a new level of panic.

“What are you doing, Palmer?” the captain shrieked, struggling against Palmer’s grip on his arm.

“Throwing you overboard!” yelled the furious younger man, dragging his commander toward the rail.

“Let me alone!’ howled the captain. “In five minutes we’ll all be in eternity!”

“You first!” stormed Palmer. “You got us into this!”

“Wait! Palmer!” Joseph leaped across the tangled debris and grabbed his shipmate by the shoulder. “We still have a chance! Come help me work the pump!”

It took a moment for his words to penetrate Palmer’s fury. The young man shook his head as though to clear it, and then with a sneer he flung the blubbering captain away from him to follow Joseph. They began working the pump with great energy although Joseph didn’t really expect it to work; he had just wanted to keep Palmer from committing murder. To his surprise, though, they were soon rewarded with a giant sucking sound as the pump began clearing water from the hold. Hearing this sound of success and seeing the captain still helpless on his knees, the first mate took command.

“Let go the tap-gallant and topsail halyards!” he called. “Let go the tacks and sheets! Haul up the courses! Clew down and clew up the topsails!” Seamen leaped to obey, the wind spilled from the sails, and the ship backed away from the cleft in the ice, settling down on an even keel broadside to the berg. The crew took a cautiously relieved breath and surveyed the damage. There was good news and bad news.

The bad news was that everything forward of the foremast was destroyed, and the mast itself seemed on the brink of toppling. If the yards and mast struck the ice, the ship would tilt to one side, allowing the heavy seas to wash over the deck and complete the destruction of ship and crew.

On the upside, the ship was strongly built. Breathlessly, the sailors watched and listened in the darkness. Eventually they realized that the waves were pushing them away from the ice. There was hope, but because of the darkness and the height of the iceberg, they couldn’t see if the way ahead was clear, so they were helpless to do anything to guide their craft.

Through the night hours, the sailors worked in the dark to clear away the wreckage. About 4:00 a.m., they heard the lookout’s cry.

“Horizon sighted -- and there’s daylight!” A cheer went up from the sailors. They had passed the iceberg! There was light to see by! The ship could be steered again!

“Hard up your helm,” shouted the captain, his confidence restored, “and keep the ship before the wind!”

Fourteen days later, the damaged craft limped up the Shannon River in Ireland, where she was refitted for the voyage to Russia, and they were soon on their way again. As they neared the Baltic Sea, they joined a convoy of three hundred British merchant ships protected by a fleet of Royal Navy vessels. The warships were necessary because Napoleon controlled most of Europe, and he had declared that any ship coming from England or carrying a cargo from England would be stopped and both ship and cargo confiscated. Denmark vigorously pursued this policy.

But first, the convoy had to negotiate the dangerous Mooner Passage, known for bad weather. Sure enough, no sooner had they entered this narrow strait than a violent storm burst upon them. Darkness closed in as wind and waves battered the ships, the threat of destruction growing by the minute. Finally, the commodore hoisted a lighted lantern, the signal to anchor immediately. The crews anchored their vessels, but the storm was so fierce they could not relax. It was a long, tense night.

When morning came, Joseph and his shipmates watched as, one by one, anchor cables broke and many of the merchant ships, helpless before the gale, were driven disastrously onto the rocks. Then their own cable parted! Working furiously, the crew crowded on all the sail they dared and ran before the wind. In this way, they managed to stay afloat, running before the wind. Within 24 hours, they found themselves well ahead of the convoy. The captain called a council of all hands.

“We have a decision to make,” he told the crew. “Do we wait and rejoin the convoy, or do we go on? Joseph was puzzled.

“Why is it a hard decision?” he asked.

“We have a fast ship, and it’s keeping us ahead of the storm, which is good, of course,” said the captain. “However, we’re so far ahead of the convoy, the commodore might think we’re running off to join Napoleon, so he may fire on us. On the other hand, if we slow down, the storm may do us in.” The vote was unanimous: sail on!

A few hours later, they rejoiced to hear the captain’s announcement: “We’re out of reach of the commodore’s guns!” The sailors cheered. Almost immediately, though, their cheers turned to exclamations of dismay.

“What’s that?”

“Yow!”

“Hey! A cannonball just splashed right next to us! I thought we were out of reach!”

“It’s not the commodore,” said the captain, grimly. “It’s those two ships over there.” Sure enough, two armed vessels were approaching, with obvious hostile intent. The captain had no choice; he rounded to, and the whole crew stood silent as their ship was boarded by Danish-speaking sailors who looked as hostile as the cannonballs.

“Pirates!” spat some members of the crew.

“Nay, not pirates. Privateers,” responded the Danish captain, who could speak English, after all. “We have letters of marque from the king, authorizing us to attack and seize any enemy ship.”

“But we aren’t enemies of Denmark,” protested the first mate.

“We know you were sailing with that British convoy that piled up on the rocks. That makes you liable to seizure and confiscation.”

“Confiscation?” echoed the supercargo in a strained voice. He was part owner; confiscation of the ship and cargo meant financial ruin for him. “We’re not British, we’re Americans!” he protested.

“You will appear in court in a few weeks,” went on the privateer, ignoring the sputtering of the supercargo. “In the meantime, you will be held in jail in Copenhagen.”

            While they waited in jail, the crew were allowed to move around to each other’s spaces. One day early on, the supercargo edged up to Joseph.

            “Listen, young Bates,” he said in a low voice, “when you get into court, testify that we came directly from New York.”

“But we stopped in Ireland – “ Joseph began.

“Ssst! Don’t say that!” the supercargo insisted, looking around furtively. “Tell the court we’ve had nothing to do with England. We don’t have any English cargo. And above all, we were not part of that convoy!” Joseph was stunned. He had never told a lie in his life.

“Do as I ask, and I’ll make it worth your while,” the supercargo promised. “Some of the others have already agreed. Be a good lad and stick with your shipmates.” Joseph’s mind was in a whirl. He could certainly use the money, but… How would he ever face his honest father again if he told this lie? He shook his head.

“You might as well,” urged the supercargo. “Others already have. You don’t want to be odd man out, do you?” Joseph took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”

“Tchah!” the supercargo turned away in anger.

The youngest member of the crew, Joseph was called first to testify. There was no jury. Instead, three judges sat at the high bench. Joseph tried not to show his nervousness as he took his place in the witness box.

“You are very young,” intoned the deep voice of the chief justice. Stung, Joseph stood straighter and tossed his head of long, dark curls. “Are you sure you understand the nature of an oath?”

“I certainly do,” Joseph answered with confidence.

“We’ll see,” continued the judge, unimpressed. “Look at that box next to you.” For the first time, Joseph noticed the box, about 15 inches long and eight inches high, with a hole on the side that faced him.

“In that box is a machine that will cut off the thumb and first two fingers of anyone who swears falsely in this court. Hold up the thumb and first two fingers of our right hand.” Joseph did so. “There, you have sworn to tell the truth,” said the judge. Now, put your right hand in the box.” Carefully, Joseph did so. He didn’t want to take a chance on tripping whatever mechanism was inside.

As the judges questioned him, he just as carefully answered with the complete truth: the refurbishing in Ireland, falling in with the British fleet, the storm that separated his ship from the convoy and the capture by the privateers. Each time he spoke, he tensed, afraid that the judges might not believe him and would activate the slicing machine. At last he was dismissed and returned to the jail. He lost no time in telling the other crew members about the threat of the box. As a result, even those who had decided to lie forgot the supercargo’s promised reward and told the plain truth. Later, they met a Dutch crew, who showed their hands, minus thumbs and forefingers. The threat had not been a bluff.

Joseph and his mates were allowed to return to the ship for the time being, but both ship and cargo were declared confiscated. They had also lost any chance of getting paid, so they had to find another berth as quickly as possible. By now it was nearly winter. Joseph haunted the waterfront until one day he saw a Danish brig being readied to sail.

“Ahoy the ship!” he called in English as he walked down the wharf. A face looked over the railing.

“What you want?” asked the Dane.

“I’m looking for a berth,” returned Joseph. “Where are you headed?”

“A bert’?” asked the seaman in a Danish accent. “We are going to Pillau, Prussia [now Baltiysk, Russia].You want to go t’ere?”

“Any port in a storm,” cheerfully answered Joseph, who did not know where Pillau was, but having been through a stormy trial of his courage, all he wanted right now was to get out of Denmark. He knew only a few Danish words, but the Danish captain knew quite a bit of English, and soon the 16-year-old seaman was aboard the brig as its newest crew member.

His relief soon faded, however, as the ship proved to be a leaky tub. With shifts of sailors operating the pump 24 hours a day, they were barely able to keep it afloat. An exhausted Joseph was glad to say goodbye when they finally limped into the harbor of Pillau.

There he signed on with an American brig coming from Russia. The brig would head back down the Baltic Sea – at least the Danish privateers would leave this ship alone, since it came from Russia, which was an ally --  through the Scottish islands in the North Sea to Belfast, Ireland. But it was a winter voyage, on a ship that proved to be just as leaky as the last.

Worse, the captain was stingy, cruel and addicted to hard liquor. Continuous intoxication only worsened his temperament. Again, the crew pumped continuously in shifts to rid the ship of enough water to keep it barely afloat. This was especially hard since all they had to eat were scanty rations of ship’s biscuit, or hardtack. Inevitably, there were complaints, but these merely infuriated the drunken captain.

“Do what I tell ye, ye filthy varmints!” he raged. Any more complaints and ye’ll work with no rations at all! See how long ye can keep it up then!” Too drunk to realize that if the sailors became too weak to operate the pump the ship would take him down along with them, he grew ever more threatening to the shivering, exhausted men. “Faster on that pump! Harder! Or I’ll keelhaul the lot of ye!”

At last they reached Dublin, where Joseph and Garrett Perrin, another young American, immediately crossed the Irish Sea as passengers to Liverpool, where they planned to get a berth that would take them back to New Bedford. Joseph hoped they would be able to find a berth without delay. He could hardly wait to tell Prudy all about his adventures!

Chatper Two -- Overboard!

High Seas Adventures

By Ellen Weaver Bailey

This is a slightly fictionalized version of the biography of 19^th-century seaman Joseph Bates. While all of the events are strictly true, his Autobiography often lacks detail, so I have added logical dialogue and actions to fill in the blanks. I have also somewhat modernized the language.

Joseph raised his face to the breeze as the brig Fanny slipped from her mooring in New Bedford and glided out of the harbor, headed for New York and London. It was June of 1807, a month before his 15^th birthday, and he was a real seaman! He could hardly wait for the adventures to begin.

It didn’t take long. A pilot took the wheel as they approached the city of New York by way of Long Island Sound and the East River.

“All hands on deck!” commanded Captain Terry

“All hands on deck!” echoed First Mate Eldridge as men scrambled from every part of the ship.

“We’re approachin’ Hurl Gate,” announced the pilot. “Sailors call it Hell Gate, and there’s a good reason fer that. This here passage is narrow, so the tides tear through like bull seein’ a red flag. Many ships have been lost like that” -- he snapped his fingers –  “ ‘cause of a moment’s inattention.” Then he appointed each man to a station to manage the sails.

“Stand at your station with no jabberin’. Watch me and listen fer my commands. If we run into trouble, ye’ll need to hop to instantly, or none of us is goin’ to be writin’ home about it.” Joseph stood silent among his shipmates. Each crewman kept his eyes on the pilot, afraid to move, ears straining to hear his voice above the crashing of the waters in the strait. When the ship winged its way safely through, every man drew a relieved breath. Joseph was impressed with the knowledge and skill of the pilot. Promptness and exertion brought us through a perilous situation, he told himself. I’ll remember that.

In New York, they took on a load of wheat, so much that it spilled into the hatchways.

“We’ll be lucky if we don’t sink from the weight of so much cargo,” worried Adams, an old hand.

“We’ll be all right,” Captain Terry assured him. Joseph hoped the captain was as knowledgeable and capable as the pilot had been.

All hands boarded the ship the night before they were to sail although some of them were rather late in coming on board. Eldridge left it so long that it was full dark as he approached the vessel, and he had to carry a lighted lantern to find his way up the plank. But even that didn’t save him from slipping over the edge into the strong, swift current, between the ship and the wharf. He yelped as he was pulled under. Thinking fast, Adams slung a coil of rope under the wharf, on the off-chance that Eldridge would catch it.

He did! It was a struggle against the powerful pull of the water, but at last he was hauled safely up onto the deck. When he could breathe in anything but terrified gulps, his first thought was of the lantern.

“It’s down at the bottom of the river,” he mourned, with good New England thriftiness.

“No, it’s not!” exclaimed Adams. “It’s right there in your hand!” Heads swung toward Eldridge’s right hand, where he clutched the lantern in a death grip, and the crew found it impossible to restrain their laughter. The good humor was interrupted by a cry from the wharf.

“Ahoy the ship!” All heads swung back toward the gangplank, where a man about 20 years old was climbing swiftly in the dark. Captain Terry greeted the newcomer.

“We’re carrying a few passengers,” said Terry. “Do you wish to travel with us?

“I’d love to, but I don’t have the money for the passage,” said the young man.

“Well, then, why have you come?” asked the captain.

“My name is Moore, and I’ve come all the way from Philadelphia,” said the man. “There’s a book I want, and I can’t find it anywhere here. I’m told it might be available in London.” He drew a deep breath.  “My question is, may I work my way to London on your ship?” The captain was so surprised it took him a moment to answer.

“Well,” he said, thoughtfully, “you did a god job of climbing the gangplank in the dark – and without even a lantern.” The crew’s focus returned to First Mate Eldridge, who grinned sheepishly. “But you realize, you’d be going as a green hand on a voyage of six or seven months. The work would be harder and the pay lower than for experienced seamen.”

“I’ll work as hard as I need to, if only I can go with you. I really want that book.” So the determined Mr. Moore was hired on. Since Joseph was also new to sailing and his job description as cabin boy was that he would do any work the captain told him to, he and Moore often worked together. What a man! To work so hard, on the chance of finding a particular book. The teenager was impressed.

The voyage out was pleasant, and they made good time into the English Channel.

“Hey, what’s that?” called out a sailor. There in the water were numerous kegs, tied together into groups, with buoys attached.

“Lay to the main tops’l!” ordered the captain, and the crew lashed the main topsail to the mast. A few snickering sailors lowered a boat  -- they knew what they would find -- and soon returned with several kegs, which were quickly broached.

“Gin in this one!” yelled a sailor, triumphantly.

“I’ve got good French brandy here,” exclaimed another.

One by one, all the kegs were found to contain the illegal liquor. Party time! Crew members surged toward the kegs, but the captain’s upraised hand stopped them in their tracks.

“Contraband,” said the captain grimly, for the benefit of those sailors who had not come this way before. “Brought in from France by smugglers. When the revenue cutters chase ‘em, the smugglers throw the kegs overboard. If they’re caught with the goods, the fine is so high that it pretty much ruins them financially. For life.”

“Why do they attach buoys?” asked Joseph. 

“To help them find the cargo after the revenuers leave. But even if it’s lost, though, they can make up the money on their next voyage.”

“Can we keep these?” asked a sailor, still hopeful.

“No way,” replied the captain. “If we were caught, I could never pay the fine. And we’re heading right into London. We’re sure to meet revenuers.” The sailors groaned mournfully as they tossed the kegs overboard.

  As soon as the Fanny arrived at the dock, she was boarded by officers of the Royal Navy.

“Good thing we didn’t keep those kegs,” a sailor murmured out of the side of his mouth as the officers flung open the hatches.

“My word” exclaimed the group’s commander as he gazed down at the golden cargo, “there’s so much!” All the officers knelt and ran their hands through the grain.

“So clean and dry!” exclaimed one.

“This’ll be a boon to our sailors when they go out to face old Boney,” said a second.

“Yes, with good grain like this, our boys‘ll be strong enough to fight off Napoleon Bonaparte and all his allies,” their commanding officer concluded. “Well done, Yanks! We’ll be glad to buy your entire cargo. Name your price.”

At this, Captain Terry beamed. The Fanny was obviously a lucky ship, he thought, with typical sailor superstition.

“Captain Terry,” said Moore after the officers had left, “could I have an advance on my wages so I can buy the book? I – I might not have enough cash with me.” He looked both eager and fearful at the same time.

“It’s not usual for sailors to be paid until the end of the voyage,” said the captain. The young man’s face fell. “But I’ve been impressed by your willingness and hard work. I’m convinced you’re not about to jump ship. Sure, I’ll cheerfully pay you for the time you’ve put in.” Thanking the capnaib, Moore took the money and headed out into the city. Late in the afternoon he did return, waving the book over his head.

“I found it! I found it!” he exclaimed triumphantly as he ran up the gangplank, and all the sailors cheered.

With the cargo unloaded and paid for, the captain ordered the crew to prepare for the voyage home. First, they had to replenish their water supply. Joseph knew their water barrels were nearly all empty and was glad they would be refilled. But he was shocked when the empty barrels were lowered into the filthy Thames and hauled back aboard, trailing water streaked with green, red and yellow mud. Joseph couldn’t help making a face at the sight. A nearby sailor clapped him on the shoulder.

“’Feart of a little Thames water, me lad?” he teased. Joseph nodded. “Don’t worry,” the sailor continued. “All the muck’ll settle to the bottom, and we’ll drink the clear water off the top. It’ll taste fine. Trust me.” Joseph nodded weakly.

“I still say, give me good spring water from Vermont or New Hampshire,” he said, causing the sailor to guffaw and clap him on the back again.

“If yer gonna be a sailor, me lad, ye’ll be eatin’ and drinkin’ worse than this. No room for namby pamby misses aboard ship.” Joseph squared his shoulders and stood up to his full height, determined to prove his manliness. Not another word would he say about the disgusting-looking water.

Nothing happened for the next 18 days, as the ship sailed past Land’s End and out into the North Atlantic. Then, one Sunday morning, a shark was spotted following the ship. Very little was known about sharks in those days, and the crew delighted in relieving their boredom by scaring the passengers – and themselves – with tales they had heard about these ferocious creatures.

“A shark’ll follow behind a ship when someone on board is sick,” said one sailor, looking wise. “When the person dies, the shark catches the body as it’s thrown overboard, and eats it up.”

“If a person falls overboard, a shark’ll swallow him whole,” said another. This was a chilling bit of news for a 15-year-old cabin boy.

“Naw,” a third disagreed. “The shark bites ‘im in two and then swallows the pieces.” Somehow, the thought of being eaten in two pieces instead of one did not comfort Joseph much.

“Let’s catch the shark!” suggested one of the crew. So they dangled a piece of meat over the side, hoping to lure the marine creature close enough to grab it with a barbed gaff and haul it aboard. But the shark would not be moved. It kept its position somewhat to the stern of the ship.

“That way, it can see anythin’ that falls from either side of the ship,” said an old sailor. “Then it’ll swim up – and they can move fast – and catch whatever falls as soon as it hits the water. Maybe before it hits.” After a few hours of this, though, everyone lost interest in the shark and went about their business.

Along toward evening, a bored Joseph decided to climb the main-topgallant masthead to the crow’s nest, which may have been simply a barrel nailed to the mast, and see if he could see another ship, -- or anything -- on the water. Nothing. The sea was an endless blank slate. With a sigh, the boy began to descend the rigging.

He was about 50 feet from the deck when he missed a handhold, bounced off the rigging and plunged into the sea! The cold waters of the north Atlantic closed over his head.

The Beasts of Midnight

I enjoy “camping out” in the shed with the cats, and I’m glad the possums come in to eat and tank up on water. Maybe all that water they drink is the reason their fur is so soft. It gives me a good, Sam-Campbellish feeling to provide for critters, domestic and wild. I haven’t been able to sleep in a bed since the electric scooter accident back in ’04, so I have a new recliner out in the shed, and it is very comfortable.

At night I leave the shed door open slightly, winter and summer, so the cats and possums can go in and out at will without waking me up. Because they will. The possums scratch at the door, and the cats meow until they get my attention and roust me out to serve them. Last night, though, it got so cold by midnight in spite of the heater that I got up, put a full food dish outside (a water dish was already out)  and shut the door, hoping Bright was up in the loft instead of out in the cold. Hurry Possum got shut in with the rest of us because she was too scared to go out the door with me standing there, and I was too tired to go back to bed, wait for her to leave and get up again to shut the door. I told her to curl up in a snug spot and go to sleep. Then I returned to the recliner and pulled the covers over my head.

But possums are nocturnal animals. That means they don’t sleep at night. They roam around. They crunch food. They turn over wastebaskets. And hiding under the covers does not shut out the sounds of their scrabbling little feet as they climb and fall, then open and inspect my boxes of stored belongings. At one point, I felt a tug on the sheet, and, thinking it was one of the cats, I pushed back the covers and opened my eyes so I could see to pet it. It was Hurry, climbing up over the arm to take possession of the recliner!

At sight of me, she dropped to the floor, where she continued her explorations, accompanied by the rattling of rakes and shovels, occasional crashes of unknown objects and the slide of a stack of documents from the desk onto the floor.

By 3:00 o’clock I couldn’t take any more. After righting the wastebasket, I held the door open and ordered Hurry to leave. She froze in place, blocking the doorway so that Bright, who had been out in the cold, had to jump over her to get back inside, where he immediately leaped onto the cat condo and from there up to the loft. I gave up and returned to bed with the door still open. For the rest of the night, I heard occasional possum-cat squabbles over the food dishes, but I returned the covers to the over-the-head position and ignored the fights.

Eventually I fell asleep, just in time to be jerked from a deep slumber by the alarm.

High Seas Adventures Chapter One – Dreams of Adventure

This story is taken primarily from the Autobiography of Joseph Bates.

Chapter One – Dreams of Adventure

“Man your stations! The pirates are boarding!” The stalwart Captain of the East Indiaman knew the dangers of the Malacca Strait, and he had trained his crew for just this sort of encounter. For some time the sailors were able to hold off the assault with their modern flintlocks, manufactured in the famous works at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Each firearm could be shot only once because reloading took too long in the heat of battle. The sailors dropped their spent guns to draw their swords and daggers of fine Toledo steel, also supplied by the forward-thinking captain, and slashed at the lines holding the grappling hooks to the rails of his merchant ship.

Seeing a pirate strike his first mate, the brave captain rushed to the rescue of the downed man, brandishing his own sword. The pirate fell back, but a sudden blow from behind knocked the captain’s weapon to the deck. Drawing his dagger, the captain spun to face this new threat and saw the grinning pirate leader holding his blood-drenched sword aloft.

“Now I have you!” snarled the pirate. “Now you die, Mr. Bates! –“

“Mr. Bates!” the schoolmaster’s voice yanked Joseph from his daydream. The 14-year-old lad sprang to his feet.

“Well?” the schoolmaster asked impatiently. “Do you have the answer for us?” Joseph stared, his mouth open, unable to think of anything to say.

“You were attending, were you not?” asked the teacher sarcastically. “You did hear the question?”

“Er – uh – n-no, Sir” Joseph stammered. The teacher’s face darkened into a scowl.

“Very well, come to my desk and hold out your hands.”

Joseph walked to the teacher’s desk, a distance that suddenly seemed miles long. There were a few snickers form the other boys in the room. Joseph was just happy that the girls’ class met in the other room. Not everyone believed in education for girls in 1806, but the people of New Bedford, Massachusetts, were proud of their academy, sponsored by Joseph’s father and other community leaders, which educated both sexes. They did not go so far, however, as to imagine that boys and girls should be taught together. Joseph knew Prudy’s face would wear an expression of intense sympathy, and that would be harder to bear than the boys’ snickers.

He clenched his jaw as the teacher’s sturdy wooden ruler smacked down across the back of his fingers once, twice, three times, inflicting agonizing pain. He managed to not cry out, but only just. It hurt so badly he wondered if he would ever be able to use his hands again, but he gave no sign of his suffering. There were no snickers as he made his way back to his seat.

“Perhaps that will teach you not to daydream in class,” snarled the teacher, sounding an awful lot like the pirate leader in Joseph’s daydream.

As soon as school let out, Joseph hurried from the classroom and out the boys’ door. Sure enough, here came Prudy from the girls’ door. They met in the middle.

“I heard what happened, Joseph,” she said in her no-nonsense way. “Come home with me, and I’ll put some witch hazel on your fingers.”

“Oh, I’m all right, Pru- er, Miss Nye,” he said. Joseph and Prudence Nye, a year younger, had been best friends since they were preschoolers, but just recently he had begun to see her as a girl. He found himself flushing and stammering whenever he was around her. Prudy carefully took his hands and turned them over.

“Not all right at all,” she said. “Come along. And don’t ‘Miss Nye’ me. We’ve been friends too long to go all formal now.” She led him to her house, where he greeted her mother and sister and received a liberal dabbing of witch hazel over his knuckles. Then he hurried home to do his chores before supper. He ate slowly, and then reluctantly opened his math book on the kitchen table. It was hard to keep his mind on the Rule of Three when visions of sailing ships kept intruding.

“Mother,” he said, turning to where she bustled about. “Would you speak to father about letting me go to sea?”

“Oh, Joseph, surely you don’t want to do that,” said Mother. “Sailors lead low, immoral lives. They suffer terrible diseases from exposure to all kinds of weather. You would ruin your constitution and destroy your soul.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I promise. My schooling will be finished in a few months, and I have to do something.” His eyes, like his voice, were pleading. Mother sighed.

“Why don’t you go into business with your father?” she suggested. “Or become a doctor like your brother Aaron?”

“I don’t want either of those. I want to be a sea captain. I want to explore the world. I want to see for myself what it looks like on the other side!” Joseph’s voice rose n excitement.

“You realize that nobody starts out as a sea captain. You would have to work for years and years as a common seaman, in the worst conditions.”

“Of course, I know that. I can handle it, I know I can. If you and Father would only let me go!” Joseph was almost hopping around, he was so desperate to carry his point.

“Well, right now, you just do your homework. I don’t want you to get punished by the schoolmaster again.” Joseph subsided into his chair.

“Yes, Mother,” he mumbled, his head hanging.

Finally, his parents accepted that he was not going to be happy until he went to sea, but they worked out a scheme with Uncle Barnabas that they thought would cure him.

“A few days of seasickness, and he’ll change his mind quick enough,” Uncle Barnabas assured them. Joseph was called into the parlor.

“Joseph,” said Father, “we have arranged for you to take a short voyage to Boston and along the coast, with your Uncle Barnabas here.”

“If you’re sure you want to go,” teased Mother.

“Yes!” exclaimed Joseph. “I mean – Aye, aye” He smartly saluted his uncle, who laughed to see his eagerness.

The voyage had the opposite effect of the one his parents had hoped for. It confirmed for Joseph that the sea was the life for him. With sighs of reluctance, his parents capitulated.

“Your father has arranged for you to ship as a cabin boy on the Fanny,” Mother told him.

“It’s a new ship, commanded by Captain Terry,” Father said. “It will sail from New Bedford to London very soon. You don’t have much time to get ready.”

Time! Joseph needed no time. He was ready to go right now. Well, of course, he had to say goodbye to Prudy first, and pack his trunk, but those things wouldn’t take long. He hurried to Prudy’s house.

“Are you annoyed with me because I’m going to sea?” Joseph asked her. “After all, you thought I was going to be a minister.”

“Oh, I’ve known for some time that you were over that idea,” said Prudy. “And my father was a sea captain, remember, so I know what it’s like to wait for—“ she broke off with a blush. Joseph’s voice was very soft as he responded.

“You will wait for me?” he asked, almost timidly. Prudy raised her head and looked him in the eyes.

“Yes, I will wait, as long and as often as I need to,” she declared.