Chapter 4 #2
The frigate’s bow chasers opened fire, balls howling overhead.
One smashed into the quarter, showering the deck with splinters.
A gunner fell screaming, his leg mangled, while another shot tore through the shrouds, blocks and rigging crashing down.
For a breathless instant the mainmast trembled, but held.
“All hands to stations!” Jon roared. “Stand by to wear ship!”
The Tyrannicide leapt as her sails filled, the helm hard over. Gun crews ducked as the enemy’s fire raked the water, geysers of spray leaping high. Each boom of the frigate’s guns seemed nearer, each impact shuddering through the Tyrannicide’s planks.
“Bear away for the shoals!” Fisk snapped.
Jon’s jaw clenched. They were running for their lives, and all depended on reaching shallower water where the frigate dared not follow. The enemy closed, minute by minute, the thunder of her bow chasers like a storm breaking on their heels.
Another crash aft, followed by smoke, blood, the cry of a wounded seaman. Still the Tyrannicide flew on.
At last, the sound of the frigate’s guns thinned, the shots falling short. With one final boom, the Royal Navy ship fell away, unwilling to hazard the shoals.
Jon drew a ragged breath, scanning the deck. Blood on the planks, scars in the timbers. But her mast still stood. Two prizes safe, headed for Salem, one lost, and the Tyrannicide herself alive to fight another day.
On the quarterdeck Fisk exhaled, his voice rough. “That was a narrow scrape.”
Jon’s eyes stayed on the horizon, the salt wind whipping his face. “Narrower than I care to see again, sir.”
Salem, Massachusetts, 5 August 1776
THE BELLS OF the East Church tolled slow and solemn, their iron voices rolling over the rooftops toward the harbor. Eunice walked with her mother and Hannah through the summer heat, their steps quiet on the worn brick of the path to the church’s door.
Inside, the air was still and heavy with the mingled scents of pine pews, beeswax, and the faint scent of salt carried in on the breeze.
Light spilled through the tall windows, falling across the congregation in pale stripes.
The air held the mingled scents of summer dust and the waterfront a few streets away.
Eunice sat near her mother, Hannah between them, her small hands folded solemnly in her lap. Above the pulpit, the high, white-painted sounding board caught Reverend Diman’s voice and sent it ringing through the congregation, as he read from the proclamation calling for a day of prayer and fasting.
“We are gathered,” he intoned, “to humble ourselves before the Lord, to seek His mercy on our new country, our new state, and to ask Him to preserve this land and those who fight for her liberty…”
Her father’s voice was grave, speaking of the dangers at sea, the hardships endured, and the need for divine protection over “our brave mariners, who hazard all in the cause of liberty.”
Somewhere beyond the horizon, Mr. Haraden was under sail, perhaps in pursuit, perhaps being pursued. Without warning, a shiver prickled at the base of Eunice’s neck, as if a shadow had passed over her spirit. She gripped Hannah’s hand a little tighter. “We must pray for your papa.”
Hannah bowed her head, her lips moving with a prayer, her brow furrowed in earnest concentration.
Eunice glanced down at her young charge and felt a swell of pride.
But even as she bowed her own head to pray, her thoughts wandered to the sea.
Her father’s words were meant for all sailors, yet in her mind they wrapped themselves around one man’s name.
She tried to push away the flicker of unease, the image of canvas straining before the wind, of gun smoke drifting over dark water, but it settled in her like a shadow.
She prayed all the harder, for his safety, asking God to bring his ship home.
When the congregation rose to sing, the voices were strong and sure, yet in Eunice’s mind they were undercut by the echo of distant thunder, or was it the boom of a ship’s broadside imagined across the miles?
As they left the church, a gull’s cry pierced the stillness, faint but clear. Eunice saw the bird wheel inland, fighting the wind as if fleeing some unseen storm.
In the shallows off the coast, 6 August 1776
JON’S COAT WAS streaked with soot, his hands blackened where the gun crews’ smoke had found him. His eyes smarted, and the faint burn of powder hung on his clothes, a reminder that they’d been too close to the British guns.
The Tyrannicide had clung to the safety of the shallows until the frigate was long gone, her deeper draft keeping her from the chase. Only then did Captain Fisk order the sails eased and the wounded tended.
They were bruised and splinter-cut, but no lives had been lost. Her mast still stood, though a shot had torn through the quarter and left the deck scarred. Jon felt the ache in his jaw ease a little. They had escaped, but only just.
By the time they made their slow turn homeward, the two captured prizes, the St. John and Three Brothers, were long gone ahead, bound for Salem.
Their arrival would spread the news of the Tyrannicide’s victories through the streets, sending spirits soaring and purses ringing in anticipation of the prize court’s ruling.
What Salem would not know, not until the Tyrannicide limped in days later under patched canvas, was the rest of the story: how a third prize had been in their grasp, and how the pursuit of a British frigate had forced them to cut her loose and run for their lives.
Salem Harbor, mid-August 1776
EUNICE STOOD AMONG the knot of townsfolk gathered on Derby Wharf, the summer air thick with the mingled scents of tar, seaweed, and the salt of low tide. The water glittered under a high sun as she shaded her eyes searching the harbor until a ripple of excitement ran through the crowd.
“There she is!” someone cried, pointing.
Out beyond the anchorage, a single-masted sloop crept in under patched canvas, her lines still proud but her rigging streaked with soot. Even from shore, Eunice could see the scars, a jagged splintering at her quarter, smoke-dark smudges along her rail.
The Tyrannicide.
As she drew nearer, the crew came into view, lean, salt-stained men moving with the weary precision of those who had faced the enemy at sea.
And there, at the rail, was Jonathan Haraden.
Whole, thank God, but his coat was streaked with soot and salt, the cuffs frayed where powder burns had scorched the cloth.
The wind lifted strands of his sun-streaked brown hair from its queue, and for a moment, as they drifted free, he looked straight toward shore, toward her, though she knew he could not possibly pick her out among the press of onlookers.
A flood of relief washed through her, chasing the tight knot that had lived in her chest since the bells rang on the day of prayer.
Yet the sight of him, so near, marked by the smoke and fire of battle, yet unscathed, left her throat dry.
This was the cost of the victories Salem had already been cheering for days.
This was what her seamen risked for liberty.
The London Coffeehouse, 15 Central Street, Salem, mid-September 1776
JON STEPPED FROM the mild afternoon into the London Coffeehouse, thick with pipe smoke and the mingled scents of coffee, rum, and brine. A favorite haunt of merchants and seamen, the coffeehouse was also the meeting place of the Salem chapter of the Sons of Liberty.
Doors stood propped open to the street. Light slanted across tables crowded with charts, broadsides and mugs.
His gaze caught on a Boston broadside tacked to the wall lamenting British victories in New York.
The lines told of General Howe’s rout on Long Island and Washington’s evacuation of the city. A sober defeat.
Turning from the broadside, he scanned the crowd, spotting Fisk, Stockman and Benjamin Moses sitting at a corner table with mugs and pewter cups scattered before them. Fisk waved Jon over. “You’re just in time, Haraden, to hear my argument for converting our sloop to a brigantine.”
Jon took the empty chair. A cup of coffee slid to his hand. “This should be interesting,” he said, as he took a drink of the dark, bitter brew.
“With a brigantine rig, square on the foremast, fore and aft on the main,” said Fisk, rapping his knuckles on the wood, “she’ll carry more canvas and give us more combinations of sail.
For a West Indies run, that square sail is worth gold.
She’ll handle better off the wind, ride steadier in a seaway, and the pull will be shared between both masts instead of all the strain on one. ”
Stockman frowned into his cup. “More sail aloft means more work aloft. And square sails require different skills. We’ll need extra topmen to make and shorten canvas. Seventy-five hands are stretched thin as it is once prize crews are off.”
Moses leaned in, eyes bright. “Just a few sharp lads who can climb fast are all that is required. She’ll be swifter and more easily maneuvered as a brigantine.
She’ll hold her course, even in rough seas, so the gunners can stay at their pieces.
And with square canvas to drive her, we choose the range, not the king’s cruisers. ”
Jon ran a thumb along the rim of his cup.
“Two masts make her quicker to heave to and better to claw off a lee shore. Close-hauled she won’t outpoint a fine schooner, but with the wind behind her, she’ll all but run away from the slower ships.
In the trade winds, that speed is what counts.
The West Indies won’t feel half so far once she’s re-rigged.
” He glanced up. “And the next frigate that sights us may think twice about the chase.”