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.