A Call to Arms Read online

  A Call to

  ARMS

  A Call to

  ARMS

  A NOVEL BY

  WILLIAM C. HAMMOND

  NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS

  Annapolis, Maryland

  Naval Institute Press

  291 Wood Road

  Annapolis, MD 21402

  © 2012 by William C. Hammond

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hammond, William C., 1947–

  A call to arms : a novel / by William C. Hammond.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-61251-145-0 (ebook) 1. United States. Navy—History—18th century—Fiction. 2. United States--History, Naval—To 1900—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.A69586C35 2012

  813’.6—dc23

  2012028105

  This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 129 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First printing

  Contents

  Prologue

  One: Batavia, Dutch East Indies, May 1801

  Two: Bermuda and Hingham, Massachusetts, October 1801

  Three: Hingham, Boston, and Portland, November 1801—May 1802

  Four: Boston, Massachusetts, June 1802–July 1803

  Five: USS Constitution, August–September 1803

  Six: USS Portsmouth, October 1803

  Seven: Malta, October–November 1803

  Eight: Syracuse, Sicily, November 1803–January 1804

  Nine: Tripoli Harbor, February 1804

  Ten: Tripoli, Egypt, and Syracuse, March–June 1804

  Eleven: Off the City of Tripoli, August 1804

  Twelve: Off the City of Tripoli, September 1804

  Thirteen: Cyrenaica, Tripoli, Winter–Spring 1805

  Fourteen: Hingham, Massachusetts, April 1805

  Fifteen: Derne, Tripoli, April–May 1805

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  About the Author

  In loving memory of my sister

  DIANA H. O’NEILL

  In war there is no substitute for victory.

  GEN. DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

  Prologue

  THE CONVENTION of Mortefontaine, signed in September 1800, ended the Quasi-War with France. The Caribbean had provided an inspiring testing ground for the infant U.S. Navy, which over the course of two years had proven its mettle against French privateers and heavily armed French frigates. The treaty’s terms were generally favorable to the United States and reestablished “inviolable and universal” peace between the two countries.

  The dispatches defining the terms of the treaty that reached Washington in early October bolstered the spirits of President John Adams if not his chances for reelection. Each of the sixteen states chose its own election day, and the voting that had begun in April was just wrapping up when the military packet boat arrived from Brest. The campaign had been a bitterly fought affair between two rivals who had once been close friends and colleagues. In the end, by the margin of just one vote in the Electoral College, Thomas Jefferson was elected the nation’s third president. Aaron Burr was elected his vice president.

  The new president’s stance vis-à-vis the military—specifically, the Navy—remained a subject of some concern, especially in the commercially vibrant New England states. Their merchant fleets were the life-blood of the American economy and the British-held West Indian islands. Those fleets were now carrying their trade around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. Enterprising New England shipping families—the Cutlers of Hingham, Massachusetts, among them—had opened the doors to the exotic Spice Islands of the Orient and the riches those lands promised. In these Far Eastern waters, however, lurked pirates eager to seize American cargoes. Would President Jefferson truly cut naval expenditures at a time when America desperately needed a strong navy to protect these vital trade routes? Would he willingly sacrifice the blood of American sailors just to save money, as his new treasury secretary, Albert Gallatin, seemed to be advocating? Most Federalists viewed such a policy as not only penny-wise and pound-foolish, but treasonous and suicidal as well. And it seemed uncharacteristic of Jefferson.

  Was he not the man who, fifteen years earlier as minister to France, had angrily proclaimed force to be the only deterrent to terror? Did he not, as vice president under John Adams, argue that maintaining a substantial naval presence would be cheaper and more honorable than kowtowing to Barbary tyrants? On this issue, at least, Jefferson seemed more federalist than the Federalists.

  But the facts were indisputable. One of Jefferson’s first acts as president was to approve the Peace Establishment Act, which summarily cut the size of the U.S. Navy. USS Constitution and other magnificent ships of war were being laid up in ordinary, and officers worthy of promotion following the Quasi-War saw their promotions deferred or denied and found themselves languishing on the beach at half pay.

  Navy Secretary Benjamin Stoddert was so frustrated by the president’s flip-flopping that he resigned his post and returned to civilian life. So poor were the Navy’s prospects that the first four men who were then offered the post declined the honor.

  It was not top-level resignations, however, that soon forced the president’s hand. It was the Barbary States. For centuries the rulers of the Barbary regencies had relied on piracy, extortion, and bullying to extract annual payments of tribute from European nations whose merchant ships plied the Mediterranean. True, they did not demand such tribute from England, France, or Spain, whose well-armed navies could fight back. But even these maritime powers offered consular gifts of jewels and coin and naval stores to maintain the goodwill of the Barbary rulers—and, not coincidentally, encouraged pirate attacks on ships of lesser nations to cripple commercial competition. The petty despots were only too happy to oblige. The merchant ships of Greece, Denmark, Naples, and other Christian nations continued to find their cargoes appropriated and their crews enslaved until ransoms were paid for their release. And the annual tributes rose ever higher.

  American ships suffered in the same way, especially in the late 1790s when the infant U.S. Navy was preoccupied in the Caribbean. More than a hundred American merchant sailors had been seized and imprisoned, some for more than a decade. A peace treaty signed in Algiers in 1796 had proved ephemeral, as peace treaties involving the Barbary States usually did. The rulers of these nations relied on the booty their corsairs brought back not only to enrich themselves, but also to provide the wherewithal to add warships to their fleets and promote their reign of terror on the high seas. All this was justified, in the eyes of man if not of Allah, as a jihad, a sacred war against Christian nonbelievers.

  Yusuf Karamanli, bashaw of Tripoli, was particularly put out. He felt slighted by the Christian nations, inferior in their eyes to the dey of Algiers, the bey of Tunis, and the sultan of Morocco, and he placed the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of the new American president. Thomas Jefferson had not yet paid the $225,000 Yusuf had demanded to ensure peace between the two nations. Nor had he paid the $25,000 in annual tribute that Yusuf claimed had come due; nor even the paltry sum of $10,000 to console the bashaw for the death of former president George Washington. Compounding the problem, because of a recent treaty with Sweden, Tripoli was now at war with no nation. Tripolitan sea captains and crews were growing restless, a potentially dangerous state of affairs for a despot whose sole source of power lay in his military.

  By May 1801 Yusuf Karamanli had h
ad enough. The six-month deadline of the ultimatum he had granted the United States to pay had come and gone. Worse, rumor had it that an American naval squadron was on its way to the Mediterranean to protect American shipping in the region. These upstart Americans had insulted him, his country, and the glory of Allah for the last time. Following a vote in the Divan whose outcome was never in doubt, he ordered his soldiers to march to the American consulate, chop down its flagstaff, and toss the Stars and Stripes over the city walls into the sea.

  Tripoli had declared war.

  One

  Batavia, Dutch East Indies, May 1801

  DECK, THERE! SAIL HO!”

  The cry of alarm came from high above on the mainmast crosstrees. Below on the weather deck, hard by the helm, Agreen Crabtree shielded his eyes and peered up into the fierce equatorial sun. “Deck, aye! What d’ you see, Hobbes?”

  “Two sets of canvas, sir,” the lookout called down. “Lateens.”

  “Where away?”

  “Fine on our larboard beam.” The lookout pointed in the general direction and added, “Standing southeast by east on a starboard tack.”

  “Ensigns? Other identification?”

  “None that I can see, sir.”

  “Very well, Hobbes. Keep me informed.”

  Agreen cursed under his breath as he glanced down at the rudimentary chart he held in his right hand. Until recently, the waters that defined the gateway to the fabled Spice Islands had been off-limits to American merchantmen, and ship captains of other nations were still reluctant to share information that might aid a competitor. The chart merely indicated that the waters in these western regions of the Sunda Strait were deep, while those off Java, across the strait, offered hazardous shoals and sandbars—and thus, so sea lore cautioned, treacherous tidal currents. Agreen ran his left hand through his shoulder-length, reddish-blond hair as he considered his choices. He quickly concluded that he didn’t have any. Falcon had sailed too far into the strait to wear ship or take some other evasive action. He had to maintain his present course and try to weather Cape Tua on the southeastern tip of Sumatra before jibing her over to eastward.

  The cry from aloft brought Caleb Cutler up to the weather deck through a hatchway amidships. His eyes scoured the ocean to larboard before he strode aft toward Will Cutler standing by the mainmast chain-wale. “Good morning, Will,” he said somewhat nervously. “What do we have?”

  “Good morning, Uncle,” Will replied cheerfully, adding in an equally cheerful tone, “Trouble, it would seem.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  Will deferred to Agreen, whom he and Caleb joined by the helm. “Two vessels are approaching us,” Agreen explained. “It’s possible they’re coastal traders, though I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. Wrong rig. And they’re on a course of interception . . . there.” He pointed ahead to the northern limits of the strait where a mere fifteen miles separated Bakahuni on Sumatra from Merak on Java. “I’d bet a month’s pay that we’re lookin’ at a pirates’ reception committee.”

  “Pirates, you say?” Though no one doubted Caleb’s courage, he had good reason to fear pirates.

  “Most likely.”

  “We’ve seen pirates before,” Will scoffed, “and not one of them has been able to catch us. We haven’t fired a single shot.” Then, hopefully, “Think we will this time, Mr. Crabtree?”

  Falcon carried six long 9s as armament, though she was not a ship of war. She was a double topmast merchant schooner, the fastest vessel in Cutler & Sons’ merchant fleet. But most vessels in these Far Eastern waters, whatever their pedigree, carried guns for protection against freebooters and cutthroats. Despite her new brass guns, Falcon’s speed was still the best deterrent to being attacked and boarded.

  “Careful what you wish for, Will,” Agreen muttered grimly. He wasn’t at all surprised that Will Cutler relished the prospect of a fight. Everyone in Hingham, Massachusetts, was familiar with the lad’s fiery nature. Agreen sighed and tried to calculate a way out of this mess; he found none. “Our friends out there obviously have an interest in us. And given our circumstances, there’s only one way t’ discourage that interest.” He glanced at Caleb. “With your permission?”

  “Of course, Agee,” Caleb said. “Do what you think is necessary.” Caleb Cutler’s family owned Falcon, and he managed the wide-ranging commercial interests of Cutler & Sons, but he knew only too well that in a showdown at sea, the power and prestige of his position accounted for naught. “You have command of this vessel.”

  “Very well.” Agreen looked hard at Caleb’s nephew. “Will, take the tiller and maintain her present course. Do not—I repeat, do not—alter course without a direct order from me or Mr. Weeks. Understood?” Will nodded and took the tiller. Agreen walked forward to where his mate awaited his orders. “Are the guns primed and loaded, Mr. Weeks?”

  It was a rhetorical question. Although Falcon’s crew had not yet fired the guns in anger, they had drilled with them nearly every day since leaving Boston three months ago.

  “They are, Mr. Crabtree.”

  “Very well. Call out the gun crews, larboard side.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  In short order, Peter Weeks had each crew of four men standing by a gun with its lashings cast off, its tampion removed from the muzzle, and its barrel loaded with a cylindrical flannel bag filled with 4% pounds of powder and a 9-pound ball rammed down the bore to the breech. Assigning men to the guns left only a skeleton crew to sail the schooner, but the wind was blowing fair from the southwest, and the lack of fetch in these sheltered waters churned only a modest chop. Behind each gun, in specially designed rectangular containers, lay additional round shot and chain shot and, for hotter action close in, canister and grape shot. Rammer, sponger, loader, and wormer: each sailor understood his assignment and awaited orders from the gun captain—who, for each gun, was Agreen Crabtree. He had learned his trade while serving as a naval lieutenant with Will’s father in Bonhomme Richard under Capt. John Paul Jones during the war with England, and, during the war with France, under Capt. Silas Talbot in USS Constitution.

  The sun was approaching its zenith before the mystery sails closed to within view of those on the schooner’s deck. Each man watched in silence as the two vessels—each with the high forecastle, lateen rig, and raked masts favored by local brigands—followed an oblique line of interception slightly ahead of Falcon to larboard. Beyond them, the islands of Krakatau, Sebesi, and Sebuku hovered low on the horizon before the lush green mountains of Sumatra.

  “Mr. Weeks,” Agreen said when the vessels had approached to within two miles, “stand by the helm. At my signal, have Will veer two points off the wind.” He had considered sending Will below for his protection and ordering Weeks to take the helm, but that, he knew, would be problematic because the young man would refuse. Nineteen-year-old Will, the future of Cutler & Sons, insisted on taking every risk the crew took. He had made it clear even before the cruise began that he would not accept any sort of special treatment or attention because of his name. While he did not challenge that argument, Agreen realized, as did Caleb, that beneath Will’s lofty stance blazed an almost reckless desire to prove his mettle. Both men also understood that if anything were to happen to Will on this cruise, they would have to answer to Will’s mother. Katherine Cutler had been none too pleased when she learned that Will would be sailing with Agreen in Falcon. She relented, grudgingly, after her husband intervened to explain the business rationale behind the decision.

  Standing by the forward larboard gun, Agreen studied the two mystery ships through a long glass. As he had expected, they had not altered course. A swift mental calculation of distance and relative speeds suggested that they would intercept Falcon in thirty to forty-five minutes. Speed provided no advantage now. Convergence was inevitable. They had closed to within a half-mile: a daunting distance for most long guns. But a long 9 could be fired with greater accuracy at a greater range than a shorter-barreled, wider-bore gun. Which
was why it was so often used as a bow-chaser on large naval warships.

  Agreen looked aft and signaled to Weeks. Weeks relayed the order to Will, who slowly coaxed the helm up. Falcon veered off the wind to lie on a parallel course with the two other vessels. Agreen knelt low beside the gun and sighted its barrel over the broad stretch of glittering turquoise water. Accuracy was not the aim of this first shot. He was simply sending a message.

  He stood up. “Firing!” he shouted. With a yank on the firing mechanism he struck hammer on flint. Sparks sizzled down a quill to the main powder charge in the breech, and an explosion of orange flame and white sparks sent the 2,800-pound gun carriage careening backward and a 9-pound ball streaking forward.

  All hands searched for the splash, and there it was—a plume of white water gushing up between the two vessels.

  “They’re not convinced, Captain,” a member of the gun crew commented moments later. “They’re maintaining course.” As if to underscore that remark, the lead vessel fired a blank charge to windward, an internationally recognized signal of hostile intent.

  “Well, then, let’s convince ’em.” Agreen walked a short way aft to the middle gun, larboard side. He knelt down and peered over the top of the brass barrel until he had the lead vessel wavering in his sights. He shook his head. On the uproll, where he could sight the best, the gun was aimed too high. A hit to her rigging wouldn’t account for much. And more likely than not he’d miss her altogether. No, he needed to hit her near where her captain would be stationed. “Pull out the quoin two notches,” he ordered a member of the gun crew.

  “Better,” he said to himself when the gun had been lowered. To Weeks he shouted, “Bring her off a quarter point,” motioning with his right hand for emphasis.

  Weeks relayed the order aft, and Falcon veered further off the wind.

  Agreen suddenly held up the flat of his palm. “There! That’s it! Hold her steady!” He stood up. “Firing!” he spat out as he yanked the flintlock lanyard. Another explosion. Another squeal of wheels as the red-painted carriage rocketed backward until checked by its breeching ropes. A second 9-pound ball screeched northward.