The Midshipman Prince Read online

  The Midshipman

  Prince

  by

  Tom Grundner

  Fireship Press

  www.FireshipPress.com

  The Midshipman Prince - Copyright © 2006 by T.M. Grundner

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-935585-33-6

  BISAC Subject Heading:

  FIC014000 FICTION / Historical

  FIC032000 FICTION / War & Military

  Address all correspondence to:

  Fireship Press, LLC

  P.O. Box 68412

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  Or visit our website at:

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  3.0

  To my brother, Ken, who would have enjoyed

  Reading this book as much as I enjoyed

  writing it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  LUCAS Walker did not want to open his eyes. He did not even want to continue living, but that was irrelevant. He knew he had to do both.

  His world was pitching wildly. From his position, flat on his back in his cabin, it was as if he was motionless and the planet itself had gone insane. The timbers of the old merchantman, normally softly groaning, had been shrieking in agony for the past twelve hours. This had done nothing for Walker’s head, which felt like it would explode any minute.

  Below deck on a sailing ship was a fetid place even in the best of times. Beneath the main deck, beneath the orlop deck, beneath the cargo hold, lay the bilge. This was the nearly flat area where the ship’s floor and the ribs met the keel. Because it was the lowest place on the ship, it was the place where all forms of liquid collected. Most of it was water that had slowly worked its way in between the ship’s planks; but it contained other fluids as well—fluids that formed a soup consisting of seawater, urine, blood, decaying rats, spoiled vegetables and, more recently, vomit. It was the latter that proved too much for Walker and he knew he had to get on to the upper deck as soon as possible.

  Walker exited his passenger cabin and, staggering with the roll of the ship, made it to the aft ladder leading to the upper deck. Crashing through a storm hatch he immediately knew he had made a mistake. He had gone from purgatory to hell.

  At first, he couldn’t see a thing. The howling wind was blowing the rain nearly horizontally and it was attacking every inch of his exposed skin with needle sharp stings. Turning downwind he was able to open his eyes enough to locate the rail, stumble over to it, and dry-heave for the third time that night. Turning back amidships, he slid down to the deck and sat there in abject misery.

  He was a 22-year-old failure; there was no other way to put it. He had drunk his way through three teaching positions and was now on his way to Charleston, South Carolina to try again. Try again? He thought. Try again and do what? Fail again? When you go from Harvard, to getting run out of Mrs. Harrison’s Academy for Discriminating Young Ladies, you know there isn’t much left. Still, he knew he had to try.

  His despondent reverie ended in a curious way, however, when he suddenly became aware of a concert that was going on around him. The captain had taken down all sails except for a small storm jib that hung precariously between the foremast and the bowsprit. This scrap of canvas was intended to keep the bow of the ship pointed downwind so the ship, in theory, could run before the storm; but, the rest of the lines were barren—barren and singing.

  Set into motion by the violent wind, the various ropes were vibrating, each creating their own unique sound. At the low end were the big preventer stays that ran from the bow to the main mast. In the middle were the topmast and topgallant stays; and several octaves above these were the Martingales up forward and the buntlines up high. Walker forgot his depression and seasickness; and for a moment, he was a child again. He was lost in the wonder of the world around him—the thing that caused him to become a natural philosopher, a scientist, in the first place.

  It took him a while to stand-up again, partially because he was so sick and partially because of the violent motions of the ship. He could handle it when a ship pitched. He could handle it when it rolled. He could handle it when it yawed. However, when it pitched, rolled, and yawed at the same time, Walker was out of his league.

  He no sooner got to his feet when he looked aft just in time to sea a huge wave tower up over the stern and crash down upon it. A wall of water was sluicing down the main deck to engulf him as he clung to the rail. He spit out a gob of seawater, and for the first time that evening felt a stab of genuine fear.

  His fear was justified. Walker couldn’t have known it, but his fate had already been sealed by an unusually warm summer off the coast of Africa and a careless workman in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

  That summer had been the hottest and driest in anyone’s memory on the Cape Verde Islands. They said a pan of water set in the sun would evaporate in the time it took you to turn around three times. The conditions were no different out on the ocean. Water—tons of it—was evaporating off the surface of the ocean and rising high in the atmosphere. There it would cool and condense, releasing energy. The air spewing out of this chimney would be driven by that energy back to earth, which would form powerful winds, which, in turn, would be sucked up by the newer rising, hot, moist air, and continue the cycle.

  At first, it was just a very nasty thunderstorm. However, the cycles continued and it developed into a tropical depression, then a tropical storm. At this point, the coriolis effect of the earth’s rotation started the clouds spinning around a central core—and the up-draft/down-draft cycles continued. Eventually the storm dropped into one of the West African disturbance lines and, pushed by a high-pressure area over North Africa, set forth into the Atlantic headed west by northwest.

  This storm—this hurricane—had Walker’s ship in its grasp.

  Walker fought his way aft, toward the quarterdeck. In between gusts of wind and water, he could see the captain and first mate hanging on to the binnacle box in front of the wheel with safety ropes tied around their waists.

  Moving closer he could see a look of deep concern on the captain’s face, a look of despair on the face of the first mate, and a look of sheer terror on the faces of the four helmsman who were trying to maintain control of the large, bucking, wheel.

  The ship was taking the seas on the stern, which is just where the captain wanted them. They would be all right as long as the ship maintained that position relative to the storm; but one slip of the wheel, a parting of a rudder cable, a rogue wave running counter to the sea state, anything that would cause them to rotate sideways to the main waves, and they would be finished. If just one of those enormous waves hit the ship in that position, it would roll it over like a turtle.

  The carpenter’s mate came on deck to report to the captain. Walker couldn’t hear the conversation; he could only make out isolated words. “Water rising.” “Pumps” “Keep-up” “If this continues, she’ll...” After a moment, the captain dismissed him and the mate began to stagger forward and down into the innards of the ship.

  Walker looked aft. He couldn’t see very far but what he saw literally took his breath away. Huge, green, angry waves were forming behind the stern. Waves that looked threatening at a distance became more and more frightening the closer they got. As they reached the stern, some of them towered 25 and 30 feet above the poop deck before roaring down. Yet each time, miraculously, the ship would lift her tail, point it up the wave’s slope and ride it out.

  Walker had never been this afraid. It went beyond the visceral fear he had known previously. It was a fear that numbed him—that froze his limbs and locked his
brain into psychological immobility.

  Still... Maybe... he thought. Maybe we can somehow come through this. If only... Dear God! What was that?

  And this brings us to the workman in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

  He was, in fact, a good workman. Well, usually he was, anyway; but this morning was different. He had had a real knockdown, drag out, fight with his woman. She was arguing about money, he was complaining about the kids, and neither was talking to the other—just yelling. By the time he got to the shipyard, his mood was foul and he was prepared to take it out on anyone who got in his way. Unfortunately, no one did; so, he wound up taking it out on his work.

  His job that day was to nail the strakes in place that would form the starboard bow of the merchantman on which he was working. Quite frankly, he didn’t care how the nails went in as long as he could pound on something. Some went in properly, some went in crooked, some went in bent, some boards had three nails, some had the regulation two, and some had only one. He simply didn’t care that day.

  The people who later caulked the hull noticed his workmanship, but said nothing. Other workmen who were fastening the large protective copper hull sheets in place also noticed it, but they too said nothing. After all, why get a fellow worker in trouble? Live and let live, right? And those nails stayed just the way they were for nearly eight years.

  If the merchantman had not run into a hurricane, it still might have been all right. She might have sailed for many more years without mishap. However, she was in a hurricane; and it was not all right.

  Walker knew he needed to find some rope, something—anything—to tie himself down. He grabbed the rail again as the ship’s stern lifted up the side of an especially large wave and started to slide down its face; but this time things were different.

  One nail, on one board, which had been pounded in crooked and bent over, gave way. This popped out its neighbor, which took with it the next board that only had one nail in it to begin with. Because the boards had not been properly steam curved, they sprang outward opening up the leading edge of a copper sheet. This sheet opened up several more poorly nailed boards, which sprung open more copper sheeting. In a matter of seconds, a ten-foot section of the starboard bow had opened-up like a zipper. Boards and sheeting that were supposed to keep water out, had formed themselves into a huge scoop that was funneling tons of water into the ship.

  The merchantman started her long slide down the face of the wave, and then abruptly shuddered to a stop like a child’s sled hitting a snow bank. She paused for a few seconds, and slipped the rest of the way down cocked at a funny angle.

  The captain spun around to the helmsmen. “What have you done, you fools!”

  The quartermaster who had charge of the helm screamed back into the storm. “Nothing, sir. We did nothing. Everything was going fine until she suddenly... It wasn’t us, sir!”

  But the captain had more to worry about at the moment. The ship was now broadside to the waves and another monster was preparing to break over them. The green beast slammed into the ship like a giant sledgehammer, snapping both the main and the mizzenmasts with cracking sounds that sounded like small cannon blasts. When the wave cleared, Walker could see the masts bent over at crazy angles, still supported by a few shrouds and stays. Worse, Walker looked over at the helm and saw that it was gone. The helm, binnacle, helmsmen, and captain were nowhere to be seen. The first mate was picking himself up and moving his lips and jaw as if shouting, but no sound was coming out.

  The next wave came down harder than the previous one, only this time after heeling way over on her side; the ship did not completely right herself. She had taken on so much water from the hole in her bow that she could not swing back. She just stayed laid over on her side. That made the third wave a killer.

  The third wave slapped the ship 20 feet sideways and finished tearing open the hull on a line running from the starboard hawsepipe to near the foremast. The lurch was so violent that it threw Walker into the water. When he surfaced, he could see the ship rapidly going down by the bow. All he could think about was the crew and passengers who were trapped below. Every hatch except the storm hatch that he had gone through earlier had been firmly battened down to keep the ship watertight. That same water-tightness was now locking nearly 75 people below decks on a ship that was sinking. Walker thought he could hear them pounding and clawing at the hatch covers to get out. He couldn’t hear them of course—not in that storm—but it was something he would nevertheless have nightmares about for the rest of his life.

  Walker was a reasonably good swimmer, but it was not long before the weight of his waterlogged clothing began wearing him down. Just as he was about to give up, he spotted a spar floating in the water not far away. It must have been one of the spare mainmast spars they kept stowed on deck and was a good 16 inches around at its thickest point. With his last remaining strength, he paddled over, swung himself up, and laid on it with an arm and a leg dangling on each side. In that position, he passed the night. The storm seemed to accept the death of the merchantman as appropriate tribute, and soon after began to die down.

  Walker did not think about his fear. He did not think about the nasty bump he had on his head. He did not think about his incredibly bad luck. He thought about one thing and one thing only—how utterly and completely alone he was.

  * * *

  This day began like any other for the men of the HMS Richmond; all hands were at battle stations. It was like that on every underway ship in the navy. They had gone to full battle readiness just in case the light of dawn should find them staring into the gun ports of an enemy ship. It was better to greet the sunrise with loaded guns and an alert ship’s company then be sorry. That the Richmond had the previous night come through one of the worst storms of the year mattered not at all.

  “On deck there. Foremast here. All clear!”

  “On deck there. Mizzenmast here. All...”

  “On deck!” The mainmast lookout cut in. “Man overboard! Man overboard!”

  Captain Charles Hudson spun around and walked to the stern taffrail. The ship’s Master, John Rooney, had already turned aft and was looking out over the water. Rooney yelled back to the mainmast lookout, “Where away?”

  “Two points off the starboard bow, Sir.” Then added, “And about 150 yards out.”

  “The starboard bow,” Rooney muttered. “How could there be a man in the water off the bow?” They were miles from land and there were no other ships anywhere in the area.

  The two hurried to the starboard rail of the quarterdeck. Rooney tried to shield his eyes from the glare with his hand while the captain popped open his telescope and adjusted it to the correct focal point for his eyes.

  “There’d better be something out there or I’ll have that lookout’s balls for breakfast,” Rooney growled.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Hudson looking hard through his eyepiece.

  “Helm come about directly into the wind,” he called to the helmsman who was on the deck below them and immediately in front of the quarterdeck. “Mr. Rooney, take in those tops’ils.”

  What Hudson had ordered was the equivalent of slamming the brakes on the ship. They were cruising along on topsails, but by turning directly into the wind, the sails would be taken aback. Instead of pushing the ship along from behind, the wind would be in front, pushing the sails back into the masts and stopping the ship like a giant invisible hand.

  “Mr. Rooney, now sway out a boat and have a detail go fetch that poor bastard in.”

  While Rooney was shouting orders to the Bosun of the Watch, Hudson picked up the megaphone that was hanging on the quarterdeck rail.

  “Fore and main. Away aloft! Trice up and layout,” he called and the ratlines leading to the fore and main topmasts were suddenly teeming with men scrambling up them. He waited a minute as the men sidestepped out on the yardarms and took in the stunsail booms to get them out of the way. He then lowered the megaphone pointing it to the main deck.

  �
�Loose the topsail sheets,” he ordered and several groups of men grabbed lines that held the topsails taught and loosened them from the belaying pins to which they were tied.

  Pointing the megaphone to the masts again, “Take-in topsails.” And the men on the yardarms started to grab handfuls of canvas sailcloth, pulling the two sails up and securing them in a loose bunting.

  The ship was now at a dead stop.

  * * *

  Walker awoke from an exhausted nap to feel sunlight scratching at his eyes. His head ached; his shoulder felt as if a sledgehammer had hit it; but, worst of all, he was hopelessly confused.

  In a rush, the events of the previous night came back to him and he sat up to look around. He expected to see the death warrant of an empty ocean. Instead, he saw the most beautiful thing he could imagine. A few hundred yards away was a ship lowering a boat. Unable to trust his eyes, he sat up on the spar, started waving his arms and yelling. He was surprised when his yell came out as a mere croak.