Chapter 9
“The greatest man is he…who is calmest in storms, and whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is the most unfaltering.”
– Seneca
THE TYRANNICIDE WAS lighter of crew than Jon liked.
Success had cost him dearly. Every prize taken had meant sending off officers and hands to sail her into port, and now his brigantine sailed lean, her decks crowded with goods but her watches thin.
Even the cabin boys had stepped into duties beyond their years.
Johnny Deadman, Bobby Grover and Joshua Trask were fetching coffee to the quarterdeck, powdering cartridges in the magazine, and scrubbing decks, all with the wiry energy of the young.
The Massachusetts held close off their larboard quarter as dawn light spilled across a restless Atlantic. Jon had his glass trained on a sail to windward, a single ship running eastward, ripe for the chase. Then the lookout’s cry split the air. “Three sail bearing down!”
Jon swung his glass and his stomach clenched. Warships, unmistakable, hulls dark and bristling with guns, their sails straining in the morning breeze. A squadron. Not three, but nine, looming larger with every heartbeat.
“The Royal Navy,” Thorndike breathed beside him.
Jon’s jaw hardened. “Aye. And with us square in their sights.”
With the Massachusetts close enough to hear, Fisk hailed across the water, “What’s our play, Haraden?”
Jon’s answer was crisp, grim. “We run!”
The two brigantines surged ahead together, bows driving into the swells, their masts straining under every inch of canvas.
Side by side they fled, chased by the gray wall of the squadron.
For hours the Massachusetts clung to the Tyrannicide’s wake, Fisk’s voice sometimes faintly heard over the wind as he bellowed orders to his own crew.
The Tyrannicide’s timbers creaked as she strained eastward, but the great British men-of-war pressed closer, their guns glinting like hungry teeth.
Hours passed in a blur of canvas adjustments, shouted orders, and the heave of the Atlantic.
By evening the chase had scattered. A single British frigate pressed hardest on their heels, her long guns already booming across the water.
Jon caught sight of Fisk’s brig luffing away to the north, hauling to the wind in a desperate bid to shake pursuit.
“The Massachusetts is breaking off,” Thorndike cried.
Jon’s heart clenched, but he thrust down the fear. “He must do what he can. We’ll do the same.”
“We’re too heavy, Captain,” Thorndike said, voice taut. “She’ll not outpace them carrying all this.”
Jon’s decision was instant. “Lighten the ship. Guns first.”
A gasp rippled across the deck, but the order flew. Crews ran to the batteries, heaving cannon from carriages, tumbling them overboard one by one. “Better we lose our guns than our lives,” he muttered under his breath.
The brigantine shuddered as iron splashed into the sea, her broadside gone. Jon ordered the stores overboard next, casks, spare timber, anything not nailed fast.
Johnny Deadman clung to a rail, wide-eyed, then darted to help heave a water cask toward the gunport. Jon caught his eye, gave a sharp nod. Even the boys were doing their part.
Freed of her burden, the Tyrannicide lifted on the swell, riding lighter, faster.
The sea foamed white at her bow. The gap widened, inch by inch, the roar of British guns fading astern.
By nightfall, the Massachusetts was lost to sight, swallowed by the heaving dark.
Astern, the enemy’s lanterns dwindled, their chase abandoned.
Jon leaned on the taffrail, chest heaving, hands raw from the day’s work. The ship was stripped, her teeth gone, her belly empty, but she was free. Ahead, faint and welcome, the lights of Bilbao, Spain shimmered through the night haze.
Safety at last.
Bilbao, Spain, early June 1777
BILBAO’S HARBOR CRADLED the weary Tyrannicide, her masts stark against the green hills that rose steep from the water.
The quays bustled with Basque fishermen mending nets, women carrying baskets of oranges and onions, and stevedores shouting in Spanish as they rolled wine casks down to waiting ships.
The air was thick with tar, salt, and the smell of smoked sardines.
Here, among friendly strangers, the American brigantine found refuge.
Local shipwrights helped her crew patch sails and caulk seams, while fresh cannon were hauled aboard from the foundries upriver.
Chaplain Marsh led the men in a prayer service on the deck, giving thanks for deliverance and Providence’s continued favor.
Once repairs were made and the ship provisioned, Jon wasted no time venturing out to sea. On the 6th of June. the Tyrannicide fell in with the British merchantman Chalkley, her hold stuffed with goods. The merchant captain quickly struck his colors, and Jon sent her back to port under a prize crew.
Not a week later they snapped up the Eagle, another British prize, this one heavy with cargo. Johnny Deadman nearly burst with pride, crowing to anyone who would listen, “Captain Haraden doesn’t miss his mark, not once!”
Jon allowed the boy his boasting. In truth, each capture stoked his own fierce satisfaction. He had slipped the jaws of the British squadron, and he was not done yet.
But as the Tyrannicide rocked gently in Bilbao’s harbor, her new guns secure and her crew refreshed, Jon felt the pull of home stronger than the sea wind.
The prizes were already consigned to the merchants’ agents ashore, their cargoes to be sold for the profit of state and crew.
Now his duty was to carry his own ship, lean, fast, and ready, safely back across the ocean to Massachusetts.
Nantes, France, 21 May 1777
JOHN FISK SAT in his cabin on the Massachusetts, quill in hand, careful not to smudge the ink as the ship’s motion jostled his hand. He paused, staring out the stern windows at the Loire, crowded with masts and French merchants bustling on the wharves.
He’d reached a safe harbor, but there was no word of Captain Haraden. He had put off his report to the Board of War as long as he could. Now, he wrote steadily, though his hand tightened on the page.
I regret I do not have the pleasure of advising you the Tyrannicide is here with me.
On the seventeenth at nine in the morning we gave chase to a ship standing to the eastward and came up fast. At three we got within two miles of the ship, then saw three sail in the N.E.
bearing down to us, and then the whole squadron appeared.
One of said sail hoisted English colors.
I bore away and made sail from them; the ship gave me chase.
Captain Haraden bore away also, chased by another ship.
The ship came up with us fast. At nine at night, I hauled my wind; Captain Haraden bore away before the wind.
At half after nine, I lost sight of Captain Haraden and soon after, lost sight of the ship.
At ten, I saw three flashes of guns, which I suppose the ship fired at Captain Haraden.
I am afraid the ship took him, as I have not heard nor seen anything of him since.
Setting down the quill, he pressed his brow with ink-stained fingers.
Rumors had already reached Nantes that the mighty Foudroyant, a Royal Navy ship of the line, had been seen patrolling the coast. Fisk almost fancied he could hear her guns in memory, echoing across the Bay of Biscay, thunder that had not yet spent itself.
He shook the thought away, blotted the page, and sealed the letter.
A French clerk waited discreetly at the cabin door to see it delivered to the packet bound across the Atlantic.
Soon the words would make their own perilous voyage, and in Salem they would fall like shot through the heart: Captain Haraden lost, the Tyrannicide taken.
Salem, early June 1777
THE NEWS CAME first in murmurs at the wharves, carried ashore from a coaster out of France.
By evening it was on every tongue: the Tyrannicide had been chased by a British squadron off the Bay of Biscay, and Captain Haraden was lost. Some swore a ship of the line had taken him, the dreaded Foudroyant with her towering guns.
By morning, the talk reached the market at Essex and Central Streets. Martha heard it from the fishmonger, who shook his head as he wrapped her cod. “They say your captain’s gone, Martha. Taken, or worse.”
She snapped her head up. “No. Jonathan Haraden’s too sharp for them, you’ll see. He’s bested worse odds.”
But the fishmonger only sighed, and Martha’s voice faltered as the denial turned to dread. She came back to the house with her basket heavy, her step heavier still.
Mrs. Mason was in the parlor with Hannah and Polly and the Gloucester Haraden girls. Martha blurted the rumor before she could stop herself.
Hannah froze, eyes wide as saucers. “Papa? Taken?”
Mrs. Mason was on her knees in a moment, in front of the child’s chair, drawing her close. “Hush, love. We do not know the truth yet. Rumors run faster than fact. Your father is cleverer than most men afloat. If there is a way clear, he will find it. God will guide him.”
“She has the right of it,” said Martha, wanting to encourage the child.
The next day was Sunday. The pew was full. Andrew and Lydia Haraden sat close with their brood, their faces solemn. Martha in her best cap, lips pressed tight, sat next to Silas.
Hannah clutched Mrs. Mason’s hand and her locket in the other. Polly leaned into the governess.
The reverend’s voice carried from the pulpit: prayers for the sick, for the soldiers in the field, and for those at sea, “especially Captain Jonathan Haraden, master of the Tyrannicide, and his men, whose fate we know not but commend to the keeping of Almighty God.”
“Amen,” Silas rumbled, his seaman’s growl breaking the silence, and the congregation echoed him, a low murmur of assent.