CHAPTER 2.
In his ill-spent year at Harvard, when Favian was fourteen, he had read a translation one of the professors was making of an Icelandic saga. It had afterwards struck him, when he had been in the Navy for some years, that the berserkers about whom he had read in the saga were a kind of primitive version of the naval officer. The lives of both revolved around those few hours in which they were actually in combat; and the rest of existence, in contrast to those whirlwind, bloody moments, was tinged slightly with the unreal. The Norse berserkers lived only for battle; in combat they would often foam at the mouth, throw off their armor, and charge like mad animals, like bears or ravening wolves, straight for the terrified enemy. In times of peace they were out of place, drank heavily, and were morose, quarrelsome, sullen, and most dangerous.
The naval officer was a more cultivated form of the same animal, Favian thought, but the resemblance was more than casual. Naval officers were as high-strung as the racing horses Jehu Markham raised on his land in New Hampshire, and as nervous. For seven years Stephen Decatur and Favian Markham had worked toward the ends accomplished in ninety minutes of battle with the Macedonian— the vindication not simply of their tactics and their place in the service, but of their very existence. For seven years they had endured the tedium of peacetime service, the humiliation of serving in useless, unseaworthy gunboats while fine American frigates were neglected; they had survived the purges of officers, where some of the best had been sacked to serve the Republicans’ political ends, or simply because the Navy was to be reduced and there were too many. The overall monotony of service had been broken by quarrels, by duels, and by the massive rupture over the court martial of James Barron for the peacetime capture of his Chesapeake by the British Leopard— for months the Navy had been divided into two camps, as ready to battle one another, like a collection of drunken Norse, as to avenge their humiliation by the British. Like tempered steel, they were in need of constant honing to keep them sharp. The constant battles for precedence, for advancement, the duels with one another or with officers from other navies, other nations, kept them on their toes, and served to remind them of the deadly purpose of their existence. It weeded out the dull or the cowardly or the simply unlucky, and kept the rest on the razor’s edge of danger, where a misstep could plunge them into peril or death.
Favian remembered well the infamous suggestion, after a duel had narrowly been averted between the twenty-year-old Midshipman Decatur and Richard Somers, that Somers was “too fond of the lee side of the mizzenmast,” whereupon Somers had no choice but to call out every other midshipman in the ship, with the chivalrous Decatur acting as his second. There were six opponents altogether, and Somers proposed to fight them all in one afternoon: The first wounded his right arm, the next his thigh; he fought the third sitting down, Decatur holding up his wounded arm so that he could fire his pistol. The other midshipmen apologized, and afterwards no one questioned Somers’s courage. But Favian wondered if that accusation had been in Somers’s mind later, on that dark night in Tripoli harbor, on a hopeless, foolish mission to demolish the harbor with a boat crammed with gunpowder, when Somers, refusing to surrender, had put a light to the powder train, blowing up himself and his crew and his enemies in one glorious, fiery spectacle, illuminating the pages with which Clio would inscribe the record of his once blotted, oft vindicated courage. It had been a Viking funeral worthy of the greatest berserker.
Favian knew that Decatur still carried part of a ring that Somers had broken into thirds on his departure: a third for Decatur, a third for Charles Stewart, a third for himself. Two thirds of the ring were still in the service: a piece of Somers’s carried by Decatur on the United States, another piece with Stewart in Washington, or wherever that talented, brilliant man was now. The other third had blown up gloriously, lighting the way by example. This rather than disgrace, Somers’s action had clearly stated; and the service was filled with men who would endorse the action, particularly after James Barron had been forced to surrender Chesapeake to Leopard in peacetime and had undergone such degradation since. No one knew where Barron was now; some said Europe. It didn’t matter. As far as anyone in the service was concerned— with the exception of what remained of the Barron-Elliott clique— he might as well have died aboard the Chesapeake.
The officers of the young Navy— mostly young, battle tested, high-strung, fiercely competitive— constituted, Favian knew, an elite, although they were an elite drawn from the egalitarian ranks of a republican society. They lived in monk-like isolation behind their wooden walls, conducting their lives by a code that few outside their brotherhood could ever hope to understand. None in the civilian world— not even any in the Army— had ever submitted themselves to the testing undergone by the young naval men. The presence of the naval elite was looked upon with unease and distrust by the American republic— Jefferson and his Democratic-Republicans had won office partly on a platform of restricting naval expansion, if not eradicating the junior service altogether. Jefferson, exponent of equality, hating any elite that wasn’t Virginian, had purged the Navy’s ranks, and Favian himself had almost been flung from the service on account of his civilian brothers’ uncompromising federalism; but somehow he had been allowed to remain, and he suspected that this was because of the intervention of Decatur and old Commodore Preble.
Favian hated the Navy. It was not the elitism he detested, for he was an elitist himself, and politically a Federalist, though not so fanatic a one as Alexander Hamilton, and not so public a one as the officers who had the misfortune to be cashiered because their opinions differed from those of Thomas Jefferson. He hated the Navy for what it had done to him. He had joined, at the age of sixteen, because he was without a profession, and by the age of seventeen or so, young Americans were supposed to have settled into the avocation that they were to practice for the rest of their lives. He had tried a year at Harvard, and found the education there redundant after the brilliant tuition he’d had under his father and mother, and his studies had suffered because he’d had it all before. He’d tried reading law and found it dull; he’d entered the family business and found it worse. His parents had sought through consultation to discover the answer. The ministry? Jehu and his wife were freethinkers. The sea? It was the old family profession, before the Markhams had become more concerned with investing the old money than making the new. Favian’s cousin Gideon was already serving as an officer on one of the family flotilla.
But Favian had also been brought up within his family’s martial tradition. Jehu had been a Revolutionary privateer, as had his brothers, Josiah and Malachi, and their example had infected Favian with a youthful fantasy of himself on the quarterdeck of a man-of-war, a sword in his hands, and pistols stuffed into his belt. Malachi in particular provided an inspirational example—the hellion brother, mercurial and passionate, who had cut for himself a brilliant career amid the smoke and flame of battle. He was one of the few privateersmen to defeat Royal Navy ships, placing his name alongside the immortals, Joshua Barney and Silas Talbot; he had wrecked the enemy frigate Melampe; taken home the crack Indiaman Royal George, with her holds choked with spices, porcelain, and silver; and then, in command of Royal George, captured Bristol, a fifty-gun British man-of-war— a battleship with two tiers of menacing heavy guns, and larger than any ship the United States had yet built for her Navy. The vast memory of the Bristol, the new American flag floating over her shot-scarred decks, had inspired the young Favian to ask his father to send him to sea, not in a Markham ship, but as a midshipman in the new Navy.
His father had approved. Jehu Markham had been educated at two schools, Oxford and the sea. He had married the Honorable Anne Fairbank, daughter of a baronet, and possessed certain traditional ideas concerning the employment of younger sons. The Navy had just embarked on the war with Tripoli, and promotion might come fast for the bold and the talented.
Jehu had always been just a bit defensive about family history. He had transformed Tom Markham, the able seaman who had jumped ship in Boston to found the New England branch of the family, into “a naval gent in the Dutch Wars.” And privateering, in which the Markhams had made most of their fortune, was a profession tainted with self-interest. Privateers were often accused, with some justification, of piracy, and they were accused also— and this was far worse from Jehu’s point of view— of not being gentlemen. Pay in the new Navy could only be described as miserly: a captain in the American service earned only twelve hundred dollars per annum, less than one fourth that of his Royal Navy counterpart, and he also took a far smaller share of the prize money. Favian’s decision to volunteer was clearly made without pecuniary consideration and could be taken as the act of a person devoid of self-interest and high in patriotism— annexed to his name, the initials USN could scarcely refrain from reflecting honor upon the rest of the family. And the Navy was a genteel service as well; Truxtun and Preble both insisted on raising mannerly officers as well as fighters, in direct contrast to the rough-and-ready tradition handed down by the old Continental Navy.
And so Favian was sent to the war with Tripoli, on the corvette Boston under Captain Daniel McNeil. A year later, under another captain, he still had not seen Tripoli, but he had stood amid a fragrant orchard in Spain, a pistol in his hand, ready at the drop of a handkerchief to kill a Spanish midshipman as terrified as he was. The world of the naval officer had made him its own.
And for this he hated the Navy. For if the service encouraged some traits, it denied others. If it encouraged bravery, it denied the reality of fear. If it admitted war, it refused anger. If it upheld an ideal, it also refused to admit the existence of anything contrary to that ideal. Favian had believed in the myth, once— until those seven years of peace had given him a dose of another sort of reality. He could not believe in it again; but if he hid from others his moments of doubt, his secret self-loathing, perhaps he could become one of the gods of the new cult, one of the Prebles, Decaturs, Somerses, or Stewarts.
But now Favian was confronted by the British version of the serving officer, which had at first been imitated, then surpassed, by the American variety. The British had been beaten, and were plainly mortified; the stunned white faces of the officers looked out at him with the eyes of poleaxed oxen.
After Favian brought his prize crew aboard, he’d been conducted to the quarterdeck to meet Captain John Surnam Carden. Carden looked thoroughly defeated, shrunken in his powder- and blood-streaked coat, the antithesis of the confident, proud, somewhat boastful man Favian had met only months ago. Like the other officers, he wore a stunned look on his countenance; unlike them, he showed resentment and anger as well.
Carden blinked continuously. This wasn’t a reaction to the defeat, because he’d blinked as well on his visit to Norfolk, but apparently was a reaction to some earlier injury.
Favian saluted. “I think we should get a new foresail up, Captain Carden, don’t you think?” he asked. “If you will send an officer to conduct my men to the sail locker, we can get it set up and relieve this rocking.”
“Do as you like!” Carden snapped, and turned away blinking. Favian waited stiffly for an apology, then saw it was not coming.
“Mr. Hope,” he said. “If you’ll conduct us?”
The way to the sail locker passed through scenes of unimaginable horror. Dead men lay strewn along the path, rolling in their own gore and in the salt water that cascaded down the hatches; the survivors seemed demented, some lying weeping on the decks, others dancing hornpipes in perverse celebration of their own survival, their every footprint reddening the planks. At one point a group of tars armed with capstan bars tried to block their path, intent on exacting retribution for their dead comrades, but Hope burst into anger, shouting as furiously as if he, too, had gone mad. His roaring was difficult to understand— these British officers seemed to have developed some new, affected way of talking, as if there were a grapeshot in their mouths, and Favian supposed it was imitative of the prince regent, in the same way that the previous generation of officers, with all their hemming and hawing, had imitated George III. But Favian caught the words “... flogging ... lash ... grating ... backbone” and so supposed that Hope was threatening them with his favorite punishment. The British shellbacks, defiant, tried to answer back; but Hope left them no breathing space, and eventually they retreated. The old forecourse was roused on deck, and the American prize crew sent aloft to knot and splice the damaged foremast rigging and then get the sail aloft and spread.
The British seamen stood about and watched, impassive or hostile. Crews of another nation, more used to defeat, would perhaps have better accepted their downfall, but the British crew simply felt cheated out of a triumph that rightfully belonged to them. The officers seemed scarcely better; Carden was uncivil, and Hope’s cooperativeness barely concealed a rage that had already exploded once, and that took fire again when Favian sent the fifteen-striped American flag up the repaired foremast halyards.
“It’s British deserters that won you this triumph, I’ll warrant,” Hope said bitterly. “Traitors who will turn on their own kind.”
“There is not an Englishman aboard our ship,” Favian replied coldly, deliberately putting an edge to his voice, reminding Hope of where he was and with whom he was speaking— the man to whom he had surrendered his sword. “And if there are,” Favian continued, “it shows only that Englishmen under American officers fight better than they do under their own.”
Hope glared at him, then abruptly turned and walked away, as Carden had done. Favian realized that he’d spoken too harshly, and that Hope’s turning away had been self-control asserting itself. If Hope hadn’t done so, he might have struck Favian, and then there would have been no choice but pistols somewhere, in some dawn, and a blot on the whole business. He’d have to be more careful.
The foresail was bent and caught the wind and was trimmed as it turned the beaten frigate’s stern to the waves; the hellish roll turned to an easier pitch, and Macedonian’s well deck ceased to ship water. Now the well could be sounded and the pumps manned. With Yankee backs bending to work the pump handles, and seawater gushing from the pumps, Favian, Nicholson, and a party of their men began a tour of the ship, descending into the bloody chaos of the lower decks. The surgeon’s cockpit had entirely overflowed with wounded, and they were stacked up in rows on the berth deck, men rudely bandaged and awaiting treatment mixed with those who would now require no attention at all. Favian descended into the cockpit, seeing the surgeon, naked except for his bloody leather apron, working feverishly by candlelight. “We’ve got sail aloft, so it should be easier for you, sir,” Favian said, trying to picture how much worse this scene had been with the ship rolling uncontrolled at every wave.
The surgeon looked up, his face baleful in the light of the candles. “You fellows have made wretched work with us, Mr. Markham,” he said. Apparently he recognized Favian from Macedonian’s stay in Norfolk.
“Shall I try to send for our surgeon, sir?” Favian asked.
“I should think he’d have enough work, Mr. Markham. You there, bring the light closer, so I can stitch this artery.”
“Not at all, sir,” Favian said. “We had only six men wounded, and I’m sure they’ve been cared for long since.”
There was silence in the cockpit as the surgeon, his mates, and the wounded absorbed the shocking news. The only British consolation for their defeat had probably been the thought that the American frigate, too, had been badly punished. But only six men wounded? The scope of the victory was stunning.
“We’ve another table for your surgeon, if you will send him, sir,” the surgeon said.
“Yes, sir,” Favian said. “Mr. Nicholson, go on deck and try to hail United States to bring Mr. Trevitt aboard. Or use a signal hoist if you can remember the number. The rest of you, follow me.”
They walked along the orlop, examining the damage at the ship’s waterline. Macedonian’s carpenter had made a good job of plugging most of the holes, at least to the point where their leaking was under control; and now that the rest of the shot holes were no longer shipping water steadily, he and some of his mates, aided by Favian and his men, patched up those remaining. When Favian returned to the deck, he was informed that the pumps had begun to make headway against the water in the hold.
United States’s big thirty-six-foot pinnace was crawling over the water toward them, and Favian, recognizing Decatur’s straw hat, met his captain at the entry port. Decatur, incredibly, was still dressed as he had been during the battle, still in his black homespun coat and blue trousers; he would step aboard the beaten frigate looking more like a farmer than a successful captain.
Favian smiled at the irony. He had tried his best, white gloves and all, to show himself the proper officer, treating the occasion and himself with all the dignity he could muster. Decatur, in black homespun, would be undercutting Favian’s dignity; but more importantly, he would be showing himself, by contrast, as unique. It was a clever piece of psychology, demonstrating himself not only as rudely dressed in plain republican clothes, but in stark contrast to his officers; he would be showing himself off the more, adding another piece to his legend. Favian almost laughed. It was too perfect.
Decatur came up the entry port, followed by Archibald Hamilton. Favian saluted with bared head. “Captain Carden is on the quarterdeck, sir.”
Decatur’s black eyes gleamed with eagerness. “Aye, I’ll meet with him presently,” he said. “But what of the ship! Will she swim, Mr. Markham?”
“She’ll swim as long as we care to keep her afloat,” Favian said. “The pumps are undamaged, and gaining. We won’t have to evacuate her in a hurry, like Guerrière.”
“Will she swim as far as Rhode Island, d’you think?” Decatur asked.
Favian was stunned. Take the prize home? Across the Atlantic, in October, with the mizzen shot away below decks and the fore and main topmasts gone? He had assumed they would empty Macedonian of her crew and useful supplies, then burn her, as Hull had burned Guerrière.
“Th-the hull’s sound, sir,” he said, stammering with surprise. “I don’t think there’s enough in the way of spars.”
“Survey the spare spars. We have spares in the United States, in any case,” Decatur said. He looked over the decks, and for the first time absorbed their horror, the dead lying in pools of water, the living wandering aimlessly over the planks, or weeping over their fallen comrades. Decatur sobered instantly, his eyes reflecting the misery of the men on Macedonian’s decks.
“I’ve brought enough men with me to start cleaning this up, at any rate,” he said quietly. “You’ve done a good job, Mr. Markham, with what you had. I’ve brought the surgeon with me. Now where’s Captain Carden?”
Carden was still on his quarterdeck, still stewing in his own hellish misery. Yet, recognizing Decatur, he endeavored to do his duty; visibly steeling himself, and blinking furiously, he unclipped his sword from his belt and walked to Decatur to surrender it.
“Sir, I cannot receive the sword of a man who has so bravely defended his ship,” Decatur said, to Favian’s utter surprise. “But I will receive your hand.”
Such high style coming from a man in a homespun coat! In Favian’s professional judgment, Carden deserved to lose the sword if ever a captain did; his tactics had been abominable and his manners worse. Favian felt the weight of David Hope’s sword clipped to his own belt, and grimaced. There was no way to get out of this situation with credit. If he returned the sword, he would look foolish; if he kept it, he would seem churlish. But Hope seemed to have disappeared, allowing him to postpone his decision.
“My God,” Carden was saying. “I’m the first British naval officer ever to strike his flag to an American. What will they do to me?”
Knight you, probably. Favian thought. That’s what they did to Pearson when he struck to John Paul Jones. The ranks of the service would close over one of their own; Carden would be court-martialed, but extenuating circumstances would be found, and he would be complimented for his bravery, and probably given another ship to lose. So much the better for us, Favian thought.
“You aren’t the first, sir,” Decatur was saying. “Dacres surrendered Guerrière to the Constitution in August. You hadn’t heard, sir?”
For once Carden stopped blinking. He scarcely seemed to credit the news, chilly comfort though it was. “No,” he said. “I had not.”
But Decatur had already turned to Favian. “I’ll take the ship’s officers off,” he said. “Have Nicholson survey the spars lashed down on the well deck. You can make some effort to clean up here, and perhaps get a maincourse up.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Pass the word for the British officers to gather their belongings and assemble at the entry port in five minutes.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Favian uncovered to Decatur and Carden and went down to the waist, where he set the men Decatur had brought to securing and fishing the mainmast, and sent messengers to find Macedonian’s scattered officers. Hope returned in a few minutes, red faced, as he argued with the messenger Favian had sent after him.
“Admit it, man!” Hope almost shouted. “It’s no secret, not once you open your mouth.”
“I was born in Harrisburg,” the man replied. “How many times do I have to say it?”
“Blast it, man, you’re lying!” Hope replied.
“What’s the difficulty, Mr. Hope?” Favian asked, conscious of the two swords rattling at his waist; he’d have to make his decision soon. “What’s Ewald here supposed to be lying about?”
“I’ve never heard a clearer Northumberland accent in my life!” Hope said. “But this man won’t admit he’s a traitor.”
“I’ve never been a traitor to nothing in my life!” Ewald roared. “I was born in Harrisburg! That’s in Pennsylvania, you blasted lunatic!”
“I know that dialect—” Hope began.
“Heinz Ewald an Englishman?” Favian asked, amazed beyond all measure that any British officer could mistake the Pennsylvania Dutch ship’s corporal for any man of his own island.
“Proof, Markham,” Hope said triumphantly. “I knew there were Britons behind those guns.”
“I ain’t never even seen England!” Ewald said. “Let alone North Bumberton, or wherever it is you say I come from.”
“He comes from Pennsylvania, Mr. Hope,” Favian said, “He’s been on board for at least two years.”
“Five!” Ewald snapped.
“And he’s clearly speaking with a Dutch accent. His parents were immigrants, and Harrisburg is an area with many Dutch and Germans.”
“Protect him if you like, Markham, but it is futile,” Hope said placidly. “I know what I know.”
“Fuck what you know,” said Ewald.
“Ewald, that is enough,” Favian interposed. “Mr. Hope is a British officer, and he may believe what he pleases.” Even if it is contrary to fact, he thought, but did not say it.
British officers, many with their gear, were bundled together in the battered waist of the frigate, looking like schoolboys on holiday who had somehow involved themselves in combat.
“My dunnage is being used as an operating table by your Mr. Trevitt,” Hope said. “I hope you will not send me away without my baggage.”
“I hope you don’t take us for pirates,” Favian said. Hope would get his blasted chest back later.
“I am sure,” Hope said, his anger breaking out at last, “that I don’t know by whom I have been taken.”
You’ve just lost your damned sword, my boy, Favian thought with savage satisfaction, and he felt a roar bursting from his throat. “Into the boat with you, Hope!” he shouted. “There are no conditions to your surrender, and if I want your balls I’ll have ’em!” There was a shocked silence at this enormous breach of courtesy. Then Hope and his fellow officers, without regard for precedence, were bundled into the boat; Decatur followed, with an apologetic, yet secretly amused, smile; and the pinnace returned to United States, leaving Macedonian to Decatur’s fuming first officer.
Later, hours later, Favian became grateful for the chilled feeling of detachment that had come over him during the battle and had continued, despite his single outburst, throughout the night; he was thankful for the reflexes of the trained officer, which seemed to function automatically, in the place of his own percipient mind. He set Decatur’s men to assembling corpses, laying them out on the deck preparatory to burial at sea, the men trying to find the bits of arm or leg or gut that belonged to each body. Most of those who had died in the fight had been flung overboard so as not to hamper the working of the ship, but nearly all of them had been killed by roundshot, which meant mutilation, and pieces of them inhabited the deck, along with the bodies of other men who had died since the fighting ended. Favian recruited some of the Macedonians to sew up each body in sailcloth, with a roundshot at its feet, preparing them for burial. The Americans were set to work securing the mainmast rigging, and then the main-yard, which had been shot away in its slings. After the yard was secured and fished, a new mainsail was got aloft, and the running rigging rewove. A piece of twelve-inch cable was run from the bowsprit to the foretop, and a staysail run up. Macedonian could now sail downwind, albeit slowly, and maneuver if it had to, though within a narrow range of limits.
And then it was discovered that the Macedonians had broken into the spirit locker and become reeling drunk, both on rum and on the eight hundred dollars’ worth of Madeira that had been brought aboard just a few days before. Favian was forced to lead a party of men below, armed with belaying pins to brain a few of the more belligerent Britons, and secure the locker, under the guard of two teetotaling Yankees— preparatory to heaving overboard, the next day, every bit of spirit that could be found, in case the thought of those waiting casks tempt not only the vanquished, but their conquerors.
In the meantime the Macedonian’s surgeon, aided by Dr. Trevitt of the United States, continued to operate on the lines of wounded filling the cockpit. Their drunken comrades danced above the wounded, singing old melodies, conspiring to get the injured drunk as well. Their cacophony— old songs mixed with the shrieking, moaning wounded— and the babbling of those driven mad by defeat or horror, continued through the next morning, when Favian, stomach burning with dyspepsia, trying and failing to snatch a few hours’ rest in Carden’s shattered cabin, finally gave it up and returned to the deck. Drawing on his gloves, he found them stiff with dried blood— when had that happened?— and threw them into the sea.
The morning also brought a cessation of the anarchy aboard the Macedonian: The crewmen, weary with wounds or debauch, had fallen asleep in the ship’s comers, few managing to make it to their hammocks. Nicholson brought the results of his survey on the state of the spare spars, which had been stowed, as was the custom, on the well deck: Almost all smashed, Nicholson reported.
“Why does the captain need a report on the spare spars?” Nicholson asked, bemused. “Does he want to make sure we all get our proper share of whatever Congress gives us in lieu of prize money?”
“Captain Decatur intends to rerig Macedonian and take her home,” Favian said, “We’re going to run the British blockade to New England.”
Nicholson’s eyes widened. “Good lord,” he said.
“Aye, it’s almost beyond belief. But I think it can be done. We’re going to make a bark out of her.”
Favian had been considering the matter since Decatur had first made his intentions known the day before, and had lain awake, with the howls of the wounded in his ears, calculating stresses and purchases, running through his mind the inventory of United States’s own spare spars. Getting topmasts up and down was not an unusual procedure in itself; but doing so on a totally dismasted ship— with the chain plates, the pin rails and fife rails smashed by roundshot, as well as the bumpkins and chesstrees and other fixtures to which the standing and running rigging, which supported the masts, were fixed— and doing so without the aid of a well-equipped dockyard— was, to say the least, uncommon. Favian, who considered himself a scientific sailor, who operated a vessel through the power of reason and not with what seemed to be the mystical, instinctive approach of the old shellback, felt that the job could be done, if the weather stayed mild.
“We can do it,” Favian said, allowing his face to assume an expression of manly confidence.
“I’m certain we can, sir,” Nicholson answered; there was a certain abstract withdrawal in his eyes, and Favian knew that he, too, was totaling United States’s inventory of spare spars and masts.
“Mr. Nicholson, I’ve discovered something that may be of interest,” Favian said, turning to a small locker set abaft the barricade, the rail between the quarterdeck and well deck. “A mechanical log, Nicholson,” he said, opening the locker and removing a case covered in fine leather and brass. “Have you seen one before?” He opened the case to reveal a long, arrow-headed machine of gleaming brass and copper, and heard Nicholson’s gasp of appreciation.
“‘Massey’s Recording Log, a.d. 1810,’” Nicholson breathed, reading the label.
“We should search the master’s cabin and the wardroom to see if instructions for its use can be discovered,” Favian said. “Its principles are clear enough, but I’m not certain how the dials are supposed to be read.”
The United States’s logs were the traditional sort, of wood, trailed astern at the end of a knotted line. One operator would invert a sandglass, usually of twenty-eight seconds, while the other would count off the number of knots as the log line ran off its spool, stopping when the sand ran out of the glass, giving the speed of the ship, in “knots.” Massey’s Recording Log was obviously designed to simply record the speed at which it was trailed astern, dispensing with the calculations needed by the traditional logs. There was a wedge-shaped head equipped with three dials protected by a sliding cover; behind the head, attached by a half-inch brass wire, was a projectile-shaped length of copper, with three fan blades made of brass, clearly designed to be turned by the water as the machine passed through its element. As the rotating part spun, it would turn the brass wire connecting it to the head of the machine, which would in turn record the number of revolutions and translate the information into knots per hour. Favian found himself enchanted by the beauty and usefulness of the thing; it was the sort of invention he had long maintained would be standard equipment in any rational, more scientific American Navy— it was a pity the British had invented it first. But Massey’s Recording Log had been made a lawful prize, and Favian had a suspicion that this particular recording log was going to have a long life aboard the United States— after, of course, Favian had studied it thoroughly, and made it the subject of a monograph addressed to the Secretary of the Navy, expressing its usefulness and perhaps recommending improvements.
Favian, standing on the quarterdeck explaining the log’s usefulness to Nicholson, heard a burst of French from the deck below, and saw a group of men carrying instruments, drums and fifes and trumpets, appear on the well deck. “What in blazes is that?” he asked, amazed.
“Oh. I forgot to tell you, sir,” Nicholson said. “It’s the French band. Carden captured them from a Frenchie some time back and wouldn’t let them go. He let them hide in the cable tier during the fight. He let the Frenchmen hide below,” he said, indignant, “but he made the Americans in his crew fight us. Three were killed.”
“D’you have the names of the survivors? We can invite them to replace our casualties.”
“I have their names, aye, sir. But what I forgot to tell you was that the band wishes to play us a concert.”
“Now?”
“Aye, sir. To celebrate their freedom.”
“Send them to the United States. We don’t have time for concerts here.”
But the Frenchmen had already struck up the “Marseillaise,” and Favian had no choice but to respect the anthem of a co-belligerent, or whatever France was. France and the United States were fighting the same England, but were not allied; Madison was being careful not to involve his country in wars against France’s other European adversaries, Spain, Portugal, and Russia, with whom the United States had no quarrel. But American privateers sheltered in French ports, and the Revolutionary anthem deserved respect on that count at least; Favian doffed his hat and called his crewmen to attention. The French anthem was followed by a brave, if unpracticed, rendition of “Yankee Doodle.” The American prize crew seemed stunned by the sight of the French band rendering patriotic songs on the scarred, bloodstained deck; those few British crewmen present scowled, no doubt feeling another betrayal— if Macedonian had been the victor, the same eight-piece band would be playing “Heart of Oak” and “Britons, Strike Home.”
As “Yankee Doodle” wound to a well-deserved halt, Favian quickly interrupted before another tune was begun and thanked the musicians in French for their playing, asking them to hold themselves ready to be sent aboard United States to play for its brave and victorious captain, Stephen Decatur; he then told them to dismiss. There was a great deal of work to be done, and although music might have made it go faster, or at any rate more pleasantly, there was so much to do that there was no place for the band to stand in peace and play.
For instance, the Macedonian had to be very thoroughly cleaned, from the orlop upward; the action of the tropical sun on the bloody decks, the bits of flesh and bone still scattered about from the action, would soon have the frigate smelling like a charnel house, and there would be risk of contagion. The channel pumps were manned and the decks rinsed with seawater. Swabs and holystones were brought out, and the decks cleaned, then scoured thoroughly with vinegar and gunpowder.
Then the Macedonian’s guns were properly secured. A number had been shot from their tackles during the fight, but had been tripped up by their British crews to lie on their sides, preventing them rolling about the ship with each wave like mad, brazen-bulls, perhaps roiling into the main hatch and crashing through the ship’s bottom. New tackles were rove, and the guns carefully righted and lashed into place. Favian tried to shift as many as he could to larboard, to keep the damaged bilges as far out of the water as possible, for the next item on the agenda of repairs was to replug, more permanently, the shot holes that had been temporarily plugged the day before.
The business of the shot holes took two days, with one crew working from inside the battered ship, another hanging down Macedonian’s tumblehome in rope chairs, and yet others working the pumps in shifts. In the end Macedonian still leaked, but in a normal sea a half hour’s pumping out of every twelve sufficed to keep the bilges reasonably dry. The task Favian dreaded came next. Macedonian still lacked a mizzenmast, and had no spar remaining long enough to serve as one. Masts were usually lowered into ships by a sheer hulk, a mastless ship with a crane that was warped alongside, able to drop a mast into a ship gingerly and without trouble. Favian would have to do without one, and he would also have to improvise a mizzenmast out of a spar originally designed for other work. For this Favian had himself rowed to United States to consult with Decatur, while Nicholson supervised further repairs. It would be some days yet before any masts could be put in; until Favian could be certain that the chain plates and other fixtures supporting the masts were thoroughly surveyed and repaired. Before he knew that new masts wouldn’t rock out at the first wave, he did not intend to add so much as a royal mast to what Macedonian currently carried.
“It won’t be an easy job,” Favian reported to Decatur, “but we can do it. We’ll bark-rig her and take her to Rhode Island for the antiwar Federalists to gawk at!”
Decatur’s black eyes twinkled merrily. “Imagine what those who claimed the Navy could never hope for victory against the British will say when a genuine Royal Navy thirty-eight comes sailing to New England! Now which of our spare spars will you need?”
Favian explained his needs while Decatur made notes, then concluded.
Decatur smiled. “Thank you, by the by, for the band. They provided a luncheon concert today for the hands and for our guests, although I suspect the medley of patriotic tunes was not to the liking of Captain Carden and company. That band is surprisingly good. I’m tempted to keep ’em aboard, like Carden, when we reach port.”
“I’m glad you enjoy them, sir,” Favian said smoothly. “I’m certain they would look impressive leading a victory parade in New York.”
“Aye, they would,” Decatur said, absorbing an idea that, though it had not occurred to him first, still pleased him greatly.
“And how are our guests overcoming the boredom of the passage, sir?” Favian asked.
“Ah, they wander over the ship, making notes which it pleases them to hide,” Decatur said offhandedly. “Lieutenant Hope has claimed to have recognized sixty British subjects aboard, either from listening to their speech or some such reason, or because they serve the guns we named Nelson and Victory. He turned white when he heard Nelson’s crew were deserters, and refused to believe they were born Americans; he talked of flogging and hanging till nightfall.”
“He claimed Heinz Ewald was British,” Favian said. “You should have seen the Dutchman glare!”
“We should probably encourage the British in their illusions,” Decatur said. “It will prevent them from discovering the true cause of our victory.” His amused eyes turned serious. “I mean to see you promoted for this, Favian,” he said quietly. “I won’t rest until you have your command. You’ve deserved it, these last seven years, and I won’t forget your loyalty.”
“Thank you, sir,” Favian said. “It has been a distinct privilege to serve under you.”
And strangely, Favian found that it was true. Though he saw through much of the Navy, he had still spent every year, since his sixteenth birthday, in the uniform; he had helped to make, and certainly lived by, its growing body of tradition and myth, and he was not entirely immune to it. He felt a clear, unalloyed pride at being the hand-picked subordinate to the most famous hero of the Navy, knowing it was perhaps the most singular honor that could have been bestowed on an officer of his rank. And as he felt Decatur’s level gaze and heard his words, spoken not for the benefit of Clio but as simple truth, he felt the same kind of boyish, glowing achievement he’d felt when the crew of the Constitution had run aloft to cheer them when the Intrepid, Decatur at the helm, had returned from Tripoli harbor.
It was the same way he’d felt when old Preble fed him one of his rare compliments, light-headed, a tad wobbly.
Strange, the return of this puppy conceit.
He doffed his headgear. “Sir, I think I should return to Macedonian to supervise the repairs.”
“Very well. You seem to be holding your hand over your stomach. Is it the old problem again?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Have you spoken to Mr. Trevitt?”
“No, sir.”
“Do so. We can’t afford to have you ill.”
*
Stephen Decatur watched his subordinate make his way out of the cabin, then turned to the stern windows, seeing Macedonian pitching on the sea, battered, scarred, the American gridiron flag flying bravely from its stump of a foremast. Favian Markham’s plan would put sail on her, topsails and topgallants, royals even, a regular pyramid of sail to drive her across the Atlantic and to New England, where she’d be taken into the United States Navy to fight against her builders. Perhaps, one day Favian would command her in battle with the British, once Favian achieved command rank.
Decatur had always found Favian correct to a fault: punctual, reliable, a scientific sailor, gifted, a good conversationalist at dinner, and a learned one. In action he had never seen Favian hesitate; it was as if Lieutenant Markham had plotted every move several turns in advance. Perhaps his mind was too facile, too intelligent; perhaps, with Favian’s ability to so clearly see all sides of an issue, he would have made a better judge than he made a naval officer. Or possibly Favian found that judicious pose convenient; perhaps he so glibly adopted the attitudes expected of him as a way of maintaining his own inner reserve, keeping his own self separate.
Decatur knew human nature well; he knew it instinctively, as some men knew the sea or the tangled affairs of politics, and he knew that Favian, for a long time now, had been keeping a part of himself back. There was nothing, of course, that Decatur could be expected to do about it; as long as whatever face Favian chose to present the world was competent and did its job, Decatur knew it would not be proper to intervene. Everyone, and perhaps most of all the men aboard a crowded man-of-war, needed a little piece of privacy apart from everyone else: a private journal, a secret treasure trove, filled with trinkets and souvenirs, bits of scrimshaw, a musical instrument that allowed a person to retreat into music...
But Decatur had seen Favian’s look before, and it had usually been on people who had given up the Navy, thrown it up to become something else. Favian had stayed with the Navy, though, even in those frustrating gunboat years, when his reserve had grown, and when any day Decatur had expected him to fling down his resignation. Perhaps one day the resignation would come, hut until then Decatur would compliment him, and work for his promotion, knowing he was giving his first officer only what the man deserved. Favian’s talents were undeniable. How he would handle a command of his own was anyone’s guess— there were other ways of leading men than Decatur’s, and Decatur knew it— but Decatur knew that Favian had the technical skill, and the experience, to make for a promising commander. In any navy not so continually purged, from within and without, and in a service that hadn’t had to tread so carefully in Washington, Favian would long since have been given a command, even if it was only a paper promotion to lieutenant commandant and the command of a schooner. But the Federalist connection had worked against him, and even after the thaw in political and naval policy that had come with Madison’s presidency, Decatur had been unable to secure Favian a promotion. But now, with Macedonian’s capture, Lieutenant Favian Markham could no longer be overlooked. And Decatur had a plan, one simmering in his political brain, to make that notice stick.
Still, it would be interesting to discover what kind of a commander Favian would make. Would he create another persona for himself, Decatur wondered, an artificial captain into which, like hand into glove, he inserted himself? Or would something of the real Favian Markham, whatever he was, come forth at last? It will be interesting to watch, Decatur thought.
Favian’s launch bobbed on the sea, curving toward Macedonian’s battered bulk. The sun gleamed from Favian’s single epaulet. Decatur sighed. He was having the British officers to tea in his cabin that afternoon, and he was already tired of them.
He would serve captured tea, of course.