CHAPTER 3.
“I wish I was a cabin boy aboard a man-o’-war.
Sam’s gone away, aboard a man-o’-war.
Pretty work, brave boys, pretty work, I say.
Sam’s gone away, aboard a man-o’-war.”
The chantyman’s baritone boomed over Macedonian’s deck, the men at the capstan singing along on the chorus. Favian’s strange engine rose over the pitching quarterdeck, lines dangling from its peak.
“I wish I was a purser aboard a man-o’-war.
Sam’s gone away, aboard a man-o’-war.
Pretty work, brave boys, pretty work, I say.
Sam’s gone away, aboard a man-o’-war.”
Favian had improvised sheers out of a pair of United States’s spare topmasts: Sixty-four feet long and lashed together near the masthead, they formed a triangle with their heels spread apart as far as the width of the poop would allow, and were secured by temporary shorings and tail tackles leading fore and aft. With the heels planted on the deck, the head of the triangle lay out over the stern, and was now being lifted by the power of men at the capstan until it lay directly over the hole where the new mizzenmast was to be placed. The head of the sheers rose slowly to the strains of the chanty, revealing the complicated lashing and the series of blocks and lines necessary for the work: a fourfold block to raise the mast; a girt-line block at the end of one of the masts, to hoist a man in case of an emergency; four guys, two leading forward, two aft, to support the sheers once raised, and to make slight adjustments to their position. It had taken two days to prepare Macedonian to receive its new mizzen, and another day to transfer the spare spars from United States to the captured frigate. Favian, his flesh pale and ill through his sun-brown tan, stood on the quarterdeck, giving fretful, nervous instruction to the men at the guys as the jury sheers rose.
“I wish I was an officer aboard a man-o’-war.
Sam’s gone away, aboard a man-o’-war!
Pretty work, brave boys, pretty work, I say.
Sam’s gone away, aboard a man-o’-war!”
That chantyman had chosen an unaccountably tedious melody, to be sure. The paired topmasts lurched skyward, helped on occasion by the surge of the sea beneath Macedonian’s counter. From above, Favian thought, the quarterdeck would look like a mass of gaping, upturned faces, as everyone watched the engine rise.
“’Vast heaving, there!” Favian barked, and the chanty cut off in mid-chorus. The sheers hung mute over the poop, the blocks swaying. Favian walked beneath them, peering upward. “Give the forrard guys a haul, there!” he said, perceiving a minute adjustment necessary, and the sheers edged forward. “Belay! Belay, all!”
That part done, anyway. The fall was unrove from the capstan, and the jury mizzen was tugged, cursed, and kicked into place; the lower purchase block was lashed on a little above the mizzen’s center of gravity, to cant it upwards. Once again the hands marched to the chantyman’s baritone, the capstan pawls clacking into place, and the jury mizzen rose from the deck, swaying dangerously with the scend of the sea.
The mizzen had started its existence as one of United States’s spare foreyards, eighty-two feet long; one end had been carved with the carpenter’s adze to prepare it to fit the step below, bolted to the keelson; the other end had been given trestletrees, for the men to stand on while they fixed the rigging in place. The spar rose, clearly looking the improvised piece of furniture that it was, and for a moment Favian felt a lurch of doubt: This will never work...
But of course it will, he assured himself. A spasm of pain shot through his stomach, just below his breastbone, and he pressed his hand to it.
“’Vast hauling! Tail on to the backrope! Haul away, smartly!” The head of the jury mast rose until the mast was nearly vertical. “Ease the purchase fall. Handsomely, boys!” Slowly the mast descended, sliding into place. The carpenter was sent below to help ease the mast’s heel into its step. The heel of the mast was guided carefully through the four decks until howls from below stopped the entire procedure. It seemed the mast would not fit. His stomach rumbling like Vesuvius, Favian ordered the mast raised a foot while the carpenter did some hasty adze work; the mast was lowered again, and this time it fit snugly into place.
Cheering hands went aloft; the standing rigging was set up, and the rake of the mast adjusted. While Favian saw to the lowering of the jury sheers, he would leave Nicholson to rig the running rigging and the driver— it would be a loose-footed driver, because there was no spare boom, but it would at least allow Macedonian’s rig to be balanced, so that the frigate could do other than sail downwind. For the topmasts of which the jury sheers had been composed, Favian had other plans.
The hands were given their midday dinner and whiskey and then cheerfully went back to work. A new lower cap— the massive piece of wood that actually bound lower mast and topmast together— was swayed up the mainmast, its forward, round, leather-padded hole widened to accommodate United States’s bigger topmasts, its rear, square hole carefully checked to make certain it would fit over the top of the lower mast when the time came.
The masts of a warship were built in three sections: the lower mast, towering seventy or more feet above the deck on a United States-class frigate; the topmast, rising perhaps another sixty-five feet from the lower mast and supported by the trestletrees and the cap; and the topgallant mast, an equally long though lighter mast fixed atop the topmast. Each mast in turn was supported by an intricate network of stays and shrouds, which kept it from whipping right out of the ship at each wave, and which supported the mast when sail was set aloft.
Getting up a new topmast meant, first, maneuvering its sixty-five-foot length to the right place on the deck. Hoisting it the length of the lower mast, pointing it so that it would rise through the lubber’s hole on the maintop, then lashing it to the lower mast while the proper lines were rigged to get it up farther, and the cap was placed above it. Then the mast would have to be threaded like a sixty-five-foot, straight, solid piece of yarn through the padded leather hole on the cap, the needle’s eye. Once it was threaded, it would be lifted almost its full length up the mast, where it would be fidded into place, and the shrouds and stays that normally kept it from rocking out would be rigged. And then the same procedure would have to be repeated for the fore-topmast.
Between the time it was hoisted into place and the time the first shrouds were rigged, there would be nothing whatever supporting the topmast should it decide to whip out of the ship. There would be no yards aloft, and certainly no sail, so wind pressure would be minimized; and the operation would be done in good weather, with a following sea, so that the mast shouldn’t be tempted to roll out; but still, the thought of that sixty-five-foot piece of wood standing unsupported, atop a ship floating nearly dismasted on the open sea, gave Favian a pronounced ache somewhere near the back of his skull.
A deep breath. “Let’s begin. Rig the hawser.” A stout twelve-inch hawser was led forward from the capstan, up to a block on the head of the lower mast, then down, lashed along the length of the topmast so that it would keep the mast’s head uppermost during its ascent, brought through the fid hole in the topmast’s heel, brought up, and hitched around the head of the mast. Members of United States’s complement were assigned to the capstan, the maintop, and the deck. The work began.
“Sway away!” the chantyman’s baritone rang over the ship, feet stamped, capstan pawls clattered. The hawser sprang taut; the topmast trembled, lurched, and began to rise. There was a faint cheer from the men on the deck. Scraping its heel across the planking, leaving a deep gouge that would require hours of holystoning to smooth, the topmast lurched skyward. Favian’s eyes narrowed as he looked into the bright sky.
“I wish I was a bosun aboard a man-o’-war.
Sam’s gone away, aboard a man-o’-war!
Pretty work, brave boys, pretty work, I say.
Sam’s gone away, aboard a man-o’-war!”
Good lord, that chanty was dull. The men at the capstan trudged in their endless circle, and the topmast rose. His neck craning back, Favian saw the head of the mast approaching the maintop.
“’Vast hauling!” he snapped. The chanty died, and the tramping. “Bear the head into the hatchway.” This was the easy part. The men in the top lashed lines to the head of the topmast and, timing their movements to the pitch of the ship, pointed the topmast by main strength to the lubber’s hole. “Sway away, handsomely.” Capstan pawls clacked slowly, the mast inching upward, until a shout from aloft told Favian the job was done. “Avast! Lash the topmast to the lower mast. Timber hitches, boys.” The lashings would support the weight of the topmast while the arrangement of the hawser was changed. “Fix the cap to the lower masthead.”
The heavy cap was wrestled up and dropped over the mast’s square head. Top mauls banged it into place, the hollow drumming echoing over the sea. Favian’s stomach was surely afire. “Rerig the hawser.” The hawser was cast off while the timber hitches supported the topmast’s weight; the hawser was rerove from the capstan forward through a snatch block, up to the maintop, through a block hanging from the larboard underside of the cap, down again to a sheave at the very base of the topmast, up again to where it was lashed near the top of the mast to keep it head uppermost, up still to another block beneath the starboard underside of the cap, then down to the deck. It looked like a giant, slightly irregular rope letter, Favian thought—the letter M.
Favian looked at his watch: almost four o’clock. Time to feed the prisoners, then his own men. This job was going to be finished after dark. Astern he heard a squealing of sheaves; Nicholson was experimentally hauling aloft the new driver gaff. “Mind the vangs there,” Nicholson was saying. “Very well. Belay.”
“Mr. Nicholson—it’s almost time for supper!” Favian called.
“Aye, sir. Shall we resume this after we eat?”
“Aye, may as well. Good work, all. You’re dismissed until we feed the prisoners.”
Favian went without supper: He had been fasting for two days, trying to starve his dyspepsia into submission, thus far without success. He had suspected the tactic would be futile, but it had worked once, some years ago. The only sure cure was the use of opiates, over a forty-eight-hour period, but the last thing Favian needed was to be lurching about the prize giving orders in an opium daze. Supper, feeding the Britons and then the prize crew, took two hours. Then Favian reassembled his gang in the fading light of the westering sun. The hardest part remained: threading the needle.
“Maintop detail aloft. Cast off the timber hitches. Man the capstan. Sway away! Handsomely, lads ... handsomely!”
“I wish I was a captain aboard a man-o’-war...” The chantyman sang out again, but at a reduced pace; the capstan pawls clicked over slowly. The sheave at the heel of the topmast uttered an attenuated squeal that made Favian shudder as if fingernails had been drawn over a blackboard. The topmast inched its way upward, the men at the top dragging, by main strength, its head through the leather-padded hole in the cap. Favian squinted upward against the bright sky. The blue he could see through the cap’s hole seemed to be narrowing. Was it done? Yes— no blue at all now.
“She’s threaded, sir!” a man at the maintop roared.
“Avast!” Favian shouted. “’Vast hauling!” Glorious. Favian, exhaling profoundly, discovered that he’d been holding his breath.
“Very well,” he said. “Cast off those lashings. And be careful casting off the lashing on that hawser— it’s going to snap out straight, with the weight of the topmast on it, and I don’t want anyone cut in half or flung from the ship.”
“Aye aye, Mr. Markham. We’ll be careful.” A man lowered himself cautiously into the lubber’s hole, one foot braced on a futtock shroud, and leaned toward the lashing. Favian felt a cramp beginning in his neck from the strain of looking skyward.
The lashing was cast off. The topmast dropped three feet, the hawser snapping straight with a bass thrumm that reverberated throughout the captured frigate, awesome in its power. Nothing was holding the mast upright but the fact of its being threaded through the cap.
“Masthead, there!” Favian called. “Is all well?”
The crewman rose through the lubber’s hole to stand on the maintop. “Deck there—aye, sir, all’s well.”
“Sway away, then!” Favian shouted. “Cheerily, lads!”
The dreary chanty rose again, and massively the topmast began to slide skyward, its sheave shrieking, threatening to drown the voice of the chantyman. As it rose, its tip pitched slightly from wave motion, and Favian gnawed his nether lip: If the damn thing pitched out now ...
It stood ninety feet above the deck, then a hundred, then a hundred ten. Favian massaged the aching muscles of his neck, blinking sweat from his eyes. He knew the British captives on United States would be watching, Carden and Hope and the rest, anticipating some Yankee clumsiness that would bring the whole jury rig down in ruins. The mast rose above the trestletrees.
“Avast!” The mast had been raised high enough. Its head whipped slightly in the breeze. The maintop hands wrestled with the heel of the mast, bringing it into place.
“Lower away!” The mast dropped a foot, then found its place. The hawser slacked. Top mauls echoed as they banged the fid into its place.
“We have a topmast, lads!” Favian roared, and the hands cheered. “Aloft with you, to rig the standing rigging!” Favian ran to the shrouds with the men, climbing the main shrouds slowly, a bit unpracticed, but steadily enough; he used the futtock shrouds, dangling inverted over the sea, disdaining the lubber’s hole, and swung himself into the tops to be met with grins by the swifter and more proficient seamen.
Favian was either in the maintop or hanging from a shroud until two hours past midnight. The hands worked by the light of the stars, the moon, and a few inadequate lanterns, and in the end the main-topmast was secured, shrouds and backstays and topmast stays supporting its great length against the attack of the elements. Even after the work was done, and he was below in Carden’s cabin, pressing his hand to the place below his breastbone where the pain had lived for days, Favian was unable to rest easily. The final piece of work was done at night, by tired men; perhaps he had allowed them to make a mistake. Were the larboard deadeyes turned too tight—or perhaps not tight enough? What if the new rigging went slack, as new rigging often did?
Favian was irritable the next day, snapping at the men, shouting at the chantyman when he commenced the same tedious song. The fore-topmast was got up in a similar fashion in the morning, and rigged in the afternoon. The next day, topsail yards and topgallant masts were swayed up, and more sail set; Macedonian began to speed through the waves, a growing bone in her teeth. Favian took the wheel to get the feel of her; she fought the helm, but eventually answered— in any case, she answered better than she had with only fore and main courses aloft. Favian sent up the fore-topgallant the next day and was delighted with the success of it; the main-topgallant followed. To set royals or not? Using United States’ big topmasts and spars, Macedonian was setting much more canvas than with her own, more modest original equipment, and the royals might put too much strain on her. Though the driver in him urged the experiment, Favian kept the royal yards down; he’d save them for an emergency.
The new rigging slackened, as Favian had expected; but it was noticed and the slack taken up. Nicholson and Archibald Hamilton kept tireless watch alongside Favian, going aloft to feel with their own hands the tension on the shrouds, keeping a sharp eye on the oversize spars and canvas. Some two weeks after United States captured Macedonian, and having lost some ten pounds from his normal weight, Favian finally allowed himself Dr. Trevitt’s prescription, and stayed abed for a full twenty-four hours with his head and guts swimming. The pain in his stomach abated, and he returned to duty, dosing himself carefully. It would be weeks yet before Macedonian would see land.
The frigates’ course took them with the trade winds on a long sweep through the tropics, outside the Bahamas and inside the Bermudas, careful to avoid both Hatteras and the squadrons of British warships blockading Sandy Hook and all the southern ports. Macedonian sailed well, despite a tendency, from the improvised sail rig, to gripe; she was a beautifully made ship, the pride of the Woolwich dockyards. The weather was kind, even after the tender northeast trades gave way to the brisk winter westerlies, which sent the prize crew scurrying for the deadeyes to slacken the contracting rigging. Not a single sail was sighted.
A few minutes north of latitude 41 degrees north, calculated by dead reckoning in a dense fog with the aid of Massey’s Recording Log, the leadsman brought up coarse sand at nineteen fathoms, then coarse gravel at eleven, and the two frigates hove to, knowing they were just south of Martha’s Vineyard. The fog clearing, they weathered Gay Head, passed The Sow and Pigs, The Hen and Chickens, and sailed for Providence Sound. It was the sixth of December, 1812, and New England was about to go mad with joy.