A Call to Arms Read online

  Weeks looked up from the ship’s waist and snapped a salute. “You sent for me, sir?”

  “Yes, Mr. Weeks. We have spotted an enemy cruiser to larboard and we shall clear for action. Have the men stand by the guns and courses and await further orders. We shall not lower away the boats just yet, but prepare the tackle to do that smartly.”

  “Aye, aye, sir!”

  Boatswain’s pipes sent all hands aloft or alow to execute the evolutions for battle that the ship’s officers had drilled into them since the day Portsmouth departed Boston. Fires were extinguished and cabin bulkheads dismantled, including those defining the captain’s cabin beneath the quarterdeck. The gun deck was hosed down and sprinkled with sand for better footing should blood be spilled. Anything wooden and portable that could explode into lethal shards if struck by enemy shot was stowed in the lazaret or the hold under the orlop—or in the ship’s boats to be towed astern. When all was ready, the gun deck resembled what it was built to be: a substantial floating battery devoid of everything and everyone not required to work the guns. Topside, sailors stood by to brail up the main and fore courses while Marine gun crews loaded the smaller 6-pounder guns with grape or round shot. Down on the orlop, the ship’s surgeon worked side-by-side with his mates and the loblolly boy to push together the midshipmen’s sea chests to fashion an operating table, then laid out the flesh saws, bone saws, canvas tourniquets, forceps, and other instruments that to the ship’s company represented surgical torture and mayhem.

  Weeks was about to inform the captain that the ship was properly cleared when cries erupted from aloft.

  “On deck there! She’s tacking over! She’s coming astern of us!”

  Midn. Edward Osborn raced aft from the base of the mainmast, where he had been stationed to relay messages from crosstrees to quarterdeck, and took the steps leading from the waist to the quarterdeck in record time. “Captain,” he panted after a hasty salute, “the corsair has changed tack. She’s coming astern of us!”

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. Osborn. I heard that myself,” Richard said dryly. He clapped a firm hand on the boy’s shoulder and in a low yet stern voice said,” Don’t ever run on deck again, or it will be the worse for you. It’s unbecoming an officer and it looks bad to the men. You should have learned that by now.”

  “I understand, sir. I do apologize, sir. A quick stride on the weather deck is the limit,” Osborn said, reciting the rule of naval regulations too often flouted by young, overzealous midshipmen eager to execute an order or inform a superior officer.

  “Good lad. Now, return to station.”

  To the boatswain: “Mr. Weeks, in a moment we shall come into the wind. I’ll have the courses brailed up, but leave them hanging in their gear. And make ready to set the t’gants and lower away all four boats. And you may call down Cole and the other lookouts.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Weeks saluted and pivoted. “Hands to lower away the boats! Up clews and buntlines! Stand by the t’gants!” As boatswain’s mates piped men to action, Weeks strode to the forecastle, his customary position in battle, to direct the handling of the critical foresails and foremast sails.

  As sailors in the waist hauled up the main and fore courses to their yards, Richard said to the sailing master, “Mr. Smythe, bring her into the wind. When the courses are up, bring her back on her current course. When the corsair lies a hundred yards astern of us, you may fall off on a parallel course with her, whatever that course may be. Pull within fifty yards of her, but no closer.”

  To a midshipman on duty as messenger from quarterdeck to gun deck he said, “Mr. Hardy, go below and advise Lieutenant Lee and Lieutenant Meyers to run out the guns, both sides, and have the crews stand by the larboard guns.”

  Hardy snapped a salute. “Aye, aye, sir!”

  To the captain of Marines: “Mr. Corbett, you may deploy your Marines on the tops and behind the nettings.”

  Carl Corbett acknowledged and summoned his sergeant of Marines.

  To his first lieutenant, Richard said, in a low voice, “Well, Agee, that should about do it. All we can do now is wait.”

  Agreen seemed unsettled. “Wait for what? For her t’ rake us?” He was referring to the most precarious position in which a ship of war could find herself: an enemy directly astern pouring a withering broadside into her defenseless bowels, smashing round shot through her stern glass windows and down the full length of her decks, killing and maiming everyone caught in their path, dismantling the ship’s rudder and shattering her steering mechanisms, and leaving her adrift on the sea like a gull with clipped wings to be destroyed or captured at her enemy’s pleasure. Many a fierce battle at sea had, against all odds, been either won or fought to a draw by an otherwise doomed ship that had somehow managed to maneuver herself into position to rake her adversary’s stern.

  “No. Her captain can’t believe we’d just sit here and take it. He must have something else in mind.”

  “What, in God’s name?”

  “I have no idea, Agee. But I’ve a sense we’re about to find out.”

  Within the hour the enemy corsair’s deck and three pyramids of canvas were clearly visible to those on the weather deck and on the gun deck below watching through open ports. She had her starboard guns run out from behind bulwarks that resembled parapets atop a castle’s fortifications; the barrels of her eight black cannon protruded through thick wooden embrasures. When the corsair had advanced to within a hundred yards astern, Josiah Smythe, as ordered, brought Portsmouth off the wind on a parallel course. Sailing under a reduced rig of topsails, driver, and jib, Portsmouth was quickly overtaken by the Tripolitan sailing under a full press of canvas.

  No sooner had the corsair’s truncated prow drawn even with the frigate’s mainmast than her three forward guns opened fire with round shot. Each shot missed its mark. Within seconds the frigate’s larboard stern guns answered; on the weather deck, Marine gun crews opened fire with the smaller guns. From behind the nettings on the quarterdeck and waist, and from up on the fighting tops, other Marines pummeled the corsair’s weather deck with swivel gun and musket fire.

  It seemed to be no contest. The corsair’s guns went quiet as sailors on her top deck frantically began waving their arms in the air. As if to underscore their intent, they made a show of hauling down their ensign.

  “Well that was easy,” Agreen commented as he watched the national flag of Tripoli sliding down its halyard.

  “A little too easy, to my mind,” Richard muttered. He studied the enemy warship intently. She was moving forward now at less than five knots, her progress slowed by sail hastily reduced. It was as though the Tripolitan captain was making every effort to cooperate in the Americans’ victory.

  “This is likely their first encounter with an American frigate,” Agreen reasoned. “Maybe they weren’t expectin’ such firepower.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, whatever the reason, she’s surrendered to us,” Agreen stated the obvious. “So what now, Captain?”

  Richard chewed on his lower lip, mulling over that question and keeping his eyes glued on the enemy vessel. Prior experience in the Navy had taught him how to respond to an enemy defeated in battle and how to respond to an enemy victorious in battle. But it had never taught him how to respond to an enemy who surrendered before a battle had truly begun. “Pass word for Seaman Cole,” he said.

  Within the minute, Harvey Cole stepped hesitantly onto the quarterdeck. Only once before had he been summoned to such hallowed ground, and he timidly glanced about as he slow-stepped toward his captain. “You sent for me, sir?” he ventured after a salute.

  Richard returned the salute. “Yes, Cole, I did. Be at your ease, man. I require your assistance, is all.”

  “Sir?” Cole’s expression remained tense although his body relaxed a little.

  “Do I understand correctly that you learned Arabic while in prison in Algiers?”

  “I did learn a little, sir,” Cole confirmed.

  “A lit
tle is all I need.” He handed Cole a speaking trumpet. “I want you to tell the captain of that corsair to heave to and remain under our lee. I am going to send a boat over and he is to receive it with all honors. Can you do that?”

  “I can try, sir.”

  “Good man.”

  Cole raised the trumpet to his lips and shouted through it, tentatively at first, then with more authority, conveying the message as much with the motions of his free hand as with his words.

  “What’s your plan?” Agreen inquired as the awkward dialogue between the two warships progressed.

  “My plan is to send Lieutenant Meyers over to her with Boatswain’s Mate Clausen and a squad of Marines. Meyers can spike the guns and toss her other armament overboard after he has placed the officers and crew under guard. We’ll need a few of those hands to help sail her to Malta. Escorted by us, of course. Have you a better plan to suggest, Lieutenant?”

  Agreen shook his head no.

  “Well, then, let’s get to it.”

  When both vessels were hove to and lying perhaps twenty-five yards apart, the frigate’s cutter was freed from the line of four boats astern and brought forward against her larboard hull. Blue-uniformed Marines armed with muskets and pistols scrambled over the railing and rappelled down the frigate’s hull into the boat. They were followed by the coxswain, the boatswain’s mate, the sergeant of Marines, and, last of all, in deference to his rank, Lieutenant Eric Meyers.

  As Meyers settled in at the stern sheets and the oarsmen prepared to shove off, something on the corsair’s deck caught Richard’s eye. At first he took scant note of it, thinking it was an illusion—sunlight, perhaps, reflecting off the sparkling sea. But again it caught his attention. On closer inspection it looked like a ball of light, ever so tiny, dancing within the gun embrasure. Now there was another one, a few feet away to the left. And now a third: three little fireflies flitting about behind high bulwarks directly above the enemy’s guns.

  Then it struck him a sickening blow. “Son of a bitch!” he breathed. “Everyone down!” he screamed. He ran to the larboard railing and leaned over. “Mr. Meyers! Into the water! All of you! Into the water, now! They’re about to fire on us!”

  Just as those in the cutter heaved themselves over the side, the starboard guns of the corsair erupted in a searing broadside so concentrated and so well synchronized that it shoved the Arab warship back broadside against the Mediterranean. Twelve-pound balls lashed the frigate and shattered the cutter alongside, pulverizing muscle, bone, hemp, and wood in one horrific, blinding sweep. Armed Tripolitans sprang up from behind the bulwarks and fired a broadside of musketry as sailors in the rigging let fly all canvas. The corsair surged forward, fleeing toward the protective shoals and shallows of the Tunisian coast.

  After few moments of stunned disbelief, those aboard Portsmouth began to gather their wits about them. His ears still ringing from the blast, Richard seized hold of the larboard railing and struggled to his feet. To his intense relief, he found his first lieutenant already up and about. “We’re going after them, Agee,” he cried. “Those bastards won’t get away with this!”

  Richard glanced over the side and saw several bodies floating facedown in the water and a few survivors weakly treading water or hanging onto flotsam. One of them, praise God, was Eric Meyers. “Mr. Meyers!” he shouted down. “I’m going to let loose the boats.” He walked to the stern, untied the rope that connected the three remaining boats to the mother ship, and yanked them in close. He let go the end of the rope and heard the end splash into the sea below. “Have the men get on or hang on. We’ll come back for you. Do you hear me? We’ll come back for you!”

  Meyers acknowledged with a weak wave and started sidestroking toward the nearest boat.

  “Mr. Weeks!” Agreen shouted. “Crack on all sail—everything we’ve got—and get her under way!” He glanced aft at the sailing master, who was limping over to the wheel. A red splotch of blood was clearly visible on his trouser leg. “My. Smythe, are you badly hurt? No? Glad t’ hear it. Now chase down that corsair! Take careful note of our new compass bearing. We’ll need t’ follow a reciprocal course on the way back here.”

  Tripolitan cruisers were widely recognized for the speed their narrow beam and tall rig could draw from even a modest breeze. Speed lay, after all, at the heart of piracy. But as fast as the corsair might be, a light American frigate straining under a full press of canvas was faster. As the minutes ticked by to a half-hour, Portsmouth slowly but surely closed the gap between the two vessels; after an hour she was nudging up on the corsair, a cable’s length off to larboard.

  As soon as the chase commenced, Richard had ordered the dead and wounded taken below to the ship’s surgeon and the weather deck cleared of useless ropes and pieces of wood blasted free during the ambush. Richard’s eyes confirmed on the weather deck, and Lieutenant Lee confirmed by messenger from the gun deck, that the damage could have been much worse. Two men lay dead on deck, and several were floating in the water by the boats. And while any shipmate’s death was to be lamented, Richard’s keen eye and cry of warning had saved many lives. Or so Agreen had consoled him.

  Throughout the chase Richard’s eyes never wavered from the corsair’s stern. He burned with the outrage and blasphemy the pirates had perpetrated. Damn them! Damn them! His own brother Caleb had wasted ten years in a stinking hellhole of a North African prison for the crime of being born an American. For wanting to follow in his older brother’s footsteps. Heavy on his mind as well was the image of Ashley Bowen, Caleb’s cellmate who had risked all to escape the inescapable and return home to his bride of six months. He was caught, inevitably, and dragged back from the desert to the prison. His Muslim captors first tortured him and then impaled him, still alive, on a giant hook attached to the outside of the city walls. His shipmates were forced to listen as his cries for mercy slowly faded to moans of agony and then to whimpers of despair, until at last his spirit was released. Ashley’s grieving bride had only now begun rebuilding her life.

  And here, today, cutthroats just like them had committed an act so vile, so abhorrent, so utterly beyond any acceptable code of human behavior or rule of war that it defied comprehension. The news that Adam Bright, a Cutler & Sons topman with four years of service, was one of the sailors pronounced dead brought hot tears of rage to Richard’s eyes. Barbary pirates had heaped atrocity after atrocity on helpless Americans. By God, it was time to answer their abominations, and he, Richard Cutler, now had the means to do it.

  Agreen stepped close. “Our bow-chaser can deliver a warning shot from here, Captain. Shall I send word to Lieutenant Lee?”

  “No,” Richard said with iron resolve. “The time for warning shots has passed.”

  A pause. Then: “If we’re going to fire on her, I suggest we haul up the courses.”

  “No,” Richard grated. “We shall douse no sail.”

  Agreen drew a deep breath. He understood as well as anyone the danger of a stray ash wafting up from the gun deck or weather deck and setting fire to a lower sail. Or the damage an enemy shot could inflict on such a sail. But he said nothing. The look on his captain’s face did not invite suggestions or recommendations.

  Those in the corsair must have sensed the hopelessness of their plight as the distance between the two warships narrowed. The blue-hued coastline of Tunis lay enticingly ahead on the southern horizon, but the distance was too great for the corsair to reach it before being overtaken. Her officers could do the math as accurately as the Americans, and the answer they derived could offer little hope of survival in battle. The corsair had already shown her cards, and the realization that she had overplayed her hand had no doubt already dawned on them.

  “She’s lowering her ensign,” Agreen observed. “She’s surrendering . . . again.”

  “Mr. Roberts,” Richard snapped. The midshipman on duty stepped forward and saluted. “Advise Mr. Lee to stand by the larboard battery. Then report back here.”

  “Aye, aye, s
ir.”

  “Mr. Corbett,” Richard said, “are your guns loaded with grape? And you have deployed your Marines?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well. Stand by and await my order. Mr. Smythe,” he snapped, “bring her to within fifty yards.”

  The tables had turned. It was now Portsmouth pulling even with the corsair’s stern, then with her midships. Those aboard the corsair waved their arms back and forth in the air as they had before, but this time with a great deal more urgency. Two of her crew in the stern unhooked the red, green, and white ensign from its halyard and held it up for those on the frigate to see, as if to convince the Americans that this time they were serious about surrendering.

  “Mr. Roberts,” Richard said, “you may advise Mr. Lee to commence firing.”

  Agreen stood stone-faced.

  The midshipman saluted. “Aye, aye, sir.” He strode briskly forward to the large open rectangular hatchway amidships. “Mr. Lee,” he shouted down through cupped hands. “The captain sends his compliments and you may commence firing.”

  Almost instantly Portsmouth’s larboard side erupted in yellow flashes, orange tongues, and a spew of white ashes in a vicious blast that shook the very fabric of the frigate. Above, on the weather deck, smaller guns exploded canisters of grape across the deck of the corsair as swivel guns barked and muskets snapped. Portsmouth was sailing fast with all plain sails set to royals, and she swept past the corsair in what seemed an instant, without a single enemy gun fired in reply.

  At the taffrail, Richard raised a spyglass to inspect the damage. He could not see much. Thick smoke enveloped the corsair in a grayish shroud. Across the span of turquoise sea they could hear the pitiful moans and screams of men wounded or dying, and Richard watched with satisfaction as her foremast teetered back and forth, back and forth, before toppling over toward her bow. The mast disappeared into the murky smoke, taking with it into the gloom a good slug of the standing rigging. He nodded at Agreen.