CHAPTER 1
The room’s design was unmistakably nautical; there was not a straight line in it, from the perfect arching curve over the stem windows to the immaculate grace of the inward-leaning bulwark— even the commodore’s table was curved, its corners rounded, set up on swooping, flowingly carved legs. The gunports were triced up; the three stern windows were open to , reveal the green Jersey shore on the horizon, and windsails were set up atop the open skylights. A fitful Atlantic breeze drifted through these apertures and provided a thankful relief against the New York early summer, occasionally stirring the stacks of papers set up on the commodore’s table, and cooling the sweat of the assembled captains in their blue and gold. They, defying the heat in their full-dress coats and massive epaulets, proceeded with the business at hand— for the business was serious, the court-martial of a brother officer for the loss of his command.
The officer being judged was Captain Favian Markham, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and late of the Experiment brig— both man and brig famous for what had become known as Markham’s Raid, a circumnavigation of the British isles in which forty-odd enemy ships were set ablaze... famous also for the destruction of the enemy brig Teaser in a yardarm-to-yardarm fight the summer before, and famous as well for the subject at hand, the wreck of the brig on a Maine sandbank last autumn, with a loss of her first lieutenant, her pilot, and all but twenty-three of the eighty-odd men who had been aboard.
It was June of 1814, and the nation was at war: assembling for the purposes of a court-martial the minimum number of five captains, each busy with his own wartime affairs, had taken months. During that time the accused Favian Markham had been fortunate not to have been removed entirely from duty; he’d spent the months in New London, under nominal arrest and unable to wear his sword, supervising the building of what— had the misfortune in Maine been avoided— would have certainly been his new command, the twenty-two gun ship-sloop Shark, due for completion by the first of the year. But the five captains had at length been assembled, and for the last hot, humid week had been toiling in the commodore’s cabin of the frigate President, praying for a cool breeze and sifting the evidence.
The American service was small, and the accused captain knew most of the men who would decide his fate. The president of the court, Commodore John Rodgers, was a crusty veteran, at forty-three years of age something of an old man in this young service, the former captain of the President, unlucky (it seemed) in war and now en route to take command of the defenses of Baltimore. Favian had known him early in the war, when Favian had been first lieutenant on the United States and Rodgers, commanding a squadron that had included United States, President, Congress, and Argus, had groped his way across the Atlantic in search of a Jamaica convoy that had proved to have had too great a start on them— Rodgers had then turned around and come home, the voyage showing no profit. Rodgers, Favian knew, was a short-tempered, blustering man, vain and snappish. The heat and lengthy testimony had shortened his fuse, and he barked left and right, sending witnesses and clerks flying; but as to how this would affect his verdict Favian could form no conclusion.
Commodore Rodgers’s decision to turn away from the English Channel, that first summer of the war, had precipitated an explosion on the part of the man sitting on Rodgers’s immediate right: Commodore Stephen Decatur, new captain of the President and commander of the New York defenses, a man for whom the word audacity had surely been coined... the greatest hero of the young Navy, and the model to every ambitious junior. Favian had reason to suppose Decatur would favor the accused: Favian had been considered a protégé of Decatur’s ever since he had volunteered, back in ’04, for the ketch Intrepid that had sailed into Tripoli harbor under Decatur’s command and burned the captured Philadelphia. The two had been linked ever since. Favian had fought alongside Decatur in Preble’s bombardments of Tripoli, leaping in hand-to-hand combat from boat to boat; he had served in Decatur’s gunboat squadron on the Delaware between wars; he had been Decatur’s first choice for executive officer of the United States, the ship that two years before had taken the British frigate Macedonian, turning her into a mastless hulk in the process, rerigged her in mid-Atlantic, and sailed her home to a jubilant American welcome.
Decatur had spent the trial leaning back in his chair, his black eyes half-closed, a grim smile often visible through the close-cropped, curly black beard. The beard, recently grown, gave Decatur a faintly piratical appearance, somehow subverting the clean-shaven, gold-laced dignity of the court, as he must have known it would— Stephen Decatur had always known how to stand out in a crowd.
Sitting on Decatur’s right was another old shipmate, Captain Charles Stewart, another magic name connected with the Mediterranean and Tripoli, another of the generation of officers known as “Preble’s boys.” The red-haired Irishman was a friend, pressed onto the court-martial while traveling to Boston in order to take command of the Constitution. Stewart, oddly enough, had once commanded the vessel Favian had wrecked; back in the year 1800 he’d captured the Deux Amis, as well as the Diana commanded by Hyacinthe Rigaud, a Haitian pirate known as the King of the Picaroons. Favian knew that, despite the amused, somewhat impudent way in which Stewart chose to regard the world, he was unquestionably one of the most dangerous men in the Navy, and possibly the most intelligent.
On Rodgers’s immediate left was a man Favian did not know well, Captain Jacob Jones; even though Jones was currently stationed in New London, Favian had not seen him often, as Jones seemed to spend most of his time in transit from one place to another, inspecting the condition of the squadrons on the Great Lakes and on Champlain, writing memoranda to Washington on the construction of the steam battery in New York... Jones, even though he had not been to sea in a year, was a very busy man.
Jones was a long-nosed man of forty-six, which made him older than anyone else on the court, older even than Rodgers; he had practiced medicine and law before entering the Navy at the very advanced age of thirty-one. He had served in the Mediterranean but Favian had not known him there, for Jones had been on the Philadelphia when it was captured; he’d spent most of the war in a Moorish jail. At the opening of the current war he’d commanded the Wasp sloop in her celebrated action with the crack brig-sloop Frolic, which he had shot to pieces in about twenty minutes, killing or wounding ninety of her 107-man crew.
In one of the coincidences of which war is so fond, Wasp had that very afternoon been captured by the British Poictiers, a seventy-four-gun liner that could have turned her into driftwood with a single broadside, and which, due to battle damage, she could not escape.
Despite their lack of acquaintance, Favian was well aware of the ties that bound him to Jones: there was the Philadelphia, which Jones had helped to surrender and which Favian had helped to burn; there was the very neatness of the Wasp-Frolic action, imitated by Favian’s own fight with the Teaser. More importantly there was the Macedonian, which Decatur and Favian had captured, and which Jones now commanded. Macedonian currently sat on the Thames river mud at New London, bereft of its crew, which had been transferred to Isaac Chauncey’s command on Lake Ontario. Macedonian would not be sailing anywhere soon, and so Jones, with little to do but run errands for the secretary of the Navy, had been pressed onto the court-martial board.
The only man on the board of captains with whom Favian was not acquainted at all sat on Jones’s left; he was Commodore Lewis, a thin, beak-nosed Tartar of a man subject to temper and indigestion. He had spent the war in command of the New York flotilla of gunboats, which could scarcely have improved his disposition— while every other man present had been given his chance for glory and prize money, Lewis had spent his thankless hours rowing over the waters of New York harbor and Long Island Sound, hoping that a sudden calm might strand an enemy merchantman within reach. Apparently a few such merchantmen had been so stranded, and the prize money might have provided some comfort; a few months ago there had been a neat action with the frigate Maidstone at Goshen Point, in which two score of American coasters, covered by the gunboats, had escaped capture; but if this feat had granted Lewis any relief from his discontent, it was impossible to tell. Lewis, like Rodgers, had continued to snap out at every witness, at the clerk, at the deputy judge advocate, at the marine guards. Favian could not help but conclude that the man would oppose acquittal; he was so obviously opposed to everything else.
Such were the men who were to judge Favian’s conduct; such was the complex network of friendships, rivalries, envies, duties, scars, acquaintances, comradeships that bound them together in service to the Navy. Six of the Navy’s twenty active captains— over one-quarter of the senior officers currently on service— were gathered in the commodore’s cabin of the President, participating in the court-martial of one of their number. No wonder it had taken so long to assemble them. If the British somehow managed to enter New York harbor and cut out the President, it would be a crippling blow. The room glittered with gold lace, epaulets, and the decorated hilts of presentation swords, and every man on the court-martial but Jones and Stewart was wearing the silver stars of a commodore on his shoulder straps.
There was something odd that happened to men like these, Favian thought, when assembled in full uniform and in one another’s presence, when they were made so aware of their own power and privilege. The loyalties and friendships somehow grew less clear; or perhaps they were submerged beneath the one crucial loyalty, to the Navy. Considerations of friendship would have little place, Favian knew, once the Navy and the Navy’s good demanded a sacrifice. Stephen Decatur and John Rodgers had been friends with James Barron, but they had voted against him after the affair with the Leopard, knowing the friendship would end in bitterness— and so it had.
When Favian faced these five in their gilt-edged lapels and epaulets, he knew he was not facing a board composed chiefly of old friends and acquaintances, but facing rather the Navy incarnate. The loyalties here ran to the Navy for which they had all risked their lives; though each would use his private knowledge of Favian to reach their judgments— it was unfair, he supposed, that all these interweaving webs of friendship should be so used, but unfair in what sense? It was unfair, Favian supposed, that each might be prejudiced by previous acquaintance; but Favian himself was inclined to think the other way, that it was manifestly unfair of the Navy to use his friends and acquaintances’ knowledge of his character for the Navy’s iron purposes. Yet he was himself a Navy man, he supposed, by habit and training if not inclination, and he understood the necessity— but that did not end the resentment.
Despite having an understandable interest in the trial’s outcome, Favian found his attention wandering frequently, and he suspected that of the men in the room only the clerk, who had to write everything down, was paying proper attention. Lord, this was a tedious business! First the paperwork— for a brig that had been lost with its log and every record it contained, there was an almighty great deal of it: a copy of the report of the surveyors who had found Experiment sound and seaworthy when it had been refloated in 1812, Favian’s reports finding her ready for sea and pronouncing himself satisfied with her equipment, a copy of Favian’s official report of Markham’s Raid, together with an itemized list of the damage suffered during the fight with the Teaser (“Item: one carronade slide, 18 lb., cracked by glancing roundshot, gun itself undamaged.”) and Favian’s official comment that, with some minor repairs, some knotting and splicing and patching of torn sails, Experiment would be ready for sea.
The deputy judge advocate— in effect the prosecutor— a short, pugnacious civilian attorney named Robinson, said to be a particular protégé of Aaron Burr, had tried to make the most of this. He had leaped to his feet, and with a flowery address that would have sent an entire roistering Irish wake to sleep, pointed out that the weight of the written evidence produced thus far showed that Experiment had not foundered from any fault in its construction, but rather from another cause. “Error on the part of its officers,” Robinson had concluded, “ought not, by any means, to be excluded.”
“This court is capable of drawing its own conclusions, God rot you,” Commodore Rodgers interrupted. “And this court will also be mighty obliged, you poxed bastard, if you deliver us no more speeches. Don’t write that down.” This last was addressed to the clerk.
Robinson’s eyes almost leaped from his head, but he mastered himself well, considering that he was unused to the manners of the older generation of Navy officers. “I shall endeavor, sir, to adopt the laconic mode,” he said.
“Just be brief with it,” Rodgers had said, muttering “you pompous little shit” under his breath.
The deputy judge advocate, from that hour, had kept almost entirely to question and reply, assuming it the way to the president’s heart, and Rodgers’s comments had been chiefly confined to directing the witnesses to speak up and telling the clerk not to write down his profane asides. Favian saw the way the wind was blowing and concluded that it was favorable. He had not hired an attorney to aid in the defense, and it seemed that Rodgers had a grudge of long standing against attorneys, dating, probably, from the month-long Barron court-martial five years before, on which Rodgers had also sat as president. Favian, too, kept his remarks short and to the point.
Once the court had sifted through the written evidence, Favian called his witnesses: the quartermaster on duty at the time of the wreck; the acting bosun, Gable, a short-tempered man built like a prizefighter who demonstrated no discernible awe at the massive array of gold and braid; the corporal of marines (the sergeant having drowned); a master’s mate; the two helmsmen; the two surviving midshipmen, Stanhope and Tolbert, the third mid— Dudley, little fifteen-year-old Dudley— having been drowned, lost with Hibbert, the lieutenant, and the two dozen men who had been clinging to the foremast when it had torn loose and gone on the rocks.
The evidence was clear and positive: Experiment had driven ashore the enemy privateer Loyalist during a rising gale, and then in attempting to escape the clutches of the coast had been driven by a backing wind toward a cape. With no room to wear around and no possibility of tacking, Favian had club-hauled her and got her off— an unprecedented maneuver, Midshipman Stanhope reported, club-hauling a brig off a lee shore and destroying a clipper-privateer in the same afternoon.
“God damn your scholarship, sir,” Rodgers said. “Don’t write that down.”
Stanhope begged the commodore’s pardon and continued, remarking that if the wind had not veered six points Experiment would have got off scot-free, and before Rodgers could damn his opinions Robinson leaped in to point out that Stanhope’s remark assumed as true what the court-martial was assembled to discover and was therefore inadmissible— so Rodgers damned Robinson instead and ordered Stanhope’s conclusions inserted in the record, remarking between curses that Stanhope was a fucking officer and perfectly capable of reaching an opinion regarding a fellow officer’s seamanship.
Robinson was so cowed, or so amazed, by this performance that it was left to Captain Lewis to elicit the information that Midshipman Stanhope’s tenure in the Navy had been short; that he was a new-made midshipman when Experiment had first got to sea in late March of 1813, and so his entire sea experience had been during the few months before the brig had been wrecked. “We may judge, from Mr. Stanhope’s experience, just how greatly to value his opinions,” Lewis concluded blackly.
Questioning by the court brought from Stanhope a personal note: after the wreck, when Experiment was being pounded to bits on the mudbank, and he and the rest of the crew had been trying to rescue themselves, he had been saved from being swept overboard by none other than Captain Markham, at considerable cost— six of Favian’s fingernails had been pulled out by the roots while trying to grasp Stanhope’s slick oilskins. Favian saw the eyes of the court flickering, in sick fascination, to the doeskin gloves he now wore. His hands had not, actually, been incapacitated, but three of the fingernails had grown back black and malformed, and the other three had not grown back at all, their place taken by massive slabs of scar tissue; Favian wore gloves to avoid his hands’ ugliness from distracting people, and so that he would not have to go through the entire tedious story every time he made a new acquaintance.
Midshipman Tolbert, the next witness, had fortunately been in the service a longer time than Stanhope, four years. Favian knew that he had just recently failed his examination for lieutenant, which should have cast some doubt on his knowledge of seamanship as well, but that fact, luckily, was not brought out by the court.
Tolbert could have passed for a son of Rodgers: they had the same damn-your-eyes stare, the same short temper, the same pugnacious manner. Tolbert confirmed the by now familiar story of Experiment’s last hours, confirming what the others had confirmed, that Favian had showed no sign of fear or panic, that his orders were clear and sensible, that he was, in Tolbert’s opinion, a good seaman. “The best,” Tolbert volunteered, “that I have served under. His escape from the British frigate in the Bristol Channel was prodigal.”
Since Rodgers had not objected to this remark Favian asked Tolbert to describe the incident in question, and Tolbert gladly complied. The picture he painted was vivid: Experiment’s being pursued by a frigate sailing three feet to her two, night coming on, the launching of a boat with a lantern fitted at the masthead to lead the frigate astray, the boat’s crew recovered by means of lifelines, the morning sun showing the horizon clear. Favian could see the story’s effect on the assembled captains, the sudden dreaminess in their eyes as they viewed the scene Tolbert was painting: the heavy boat swaying out on the yardarms, threatening to smash against the brig’s bilges as the sea rolled her, the frigate coming closer and closer, too close to trust to the cover of darkness in which to make an escape, the hours of tense night watch, men and officers alike straining their eyes for sight of the pursuit, the final exhalation of triumph as the morning revealed an empty sea.
Even Lewis could find no disparaging remark to make, and Tolbert was dismissed, to hold himself in readiness should the court require him further, et cetera; Tolbert stiffly saluted the court, then turned to salute Favian— a bold compliment, for it was not required by the regulations. Rodgers, noting that it was past noon, dismissed the court for dinner. Even before Favian had left the room with his blue-coated marine escort the papers were being shuffled off the table along with Favian’s sword, which the court was keeping in its possession until the verdict could be reached.
The court dined on the same table behind which they sat as judges, and the noon break for dinner was growing longer and longer. Favian, under arrest, could not eat with the captains, but had been saved the burden of dining alone by Archibald Hamilton, a new-made lieutenant, former midshipman on the United States and son of a former secretary of the Navy, who had offered the hospitality of the wardroom. Favian would dine and sup with Hamilton and the other officers of the President; in so doing, he had found himself growing nostalgic for his own days as a lieutenant, when there was always company and a man was not, forced, by the burden of his double epaulets, to dine in solitary magnificence.
Favian followed the marine officer down a companionway to the wardroom, watching the back of the man’s swollen, reddened neck. The marine lieutenant was a newly appointed provost marshal, given the duty just this morning when it appeared that his captain had been conveniently indisposed. The new provost marshal scarcely seemed happy about the new duty; he clomped down the companion as if his boots had been surfaced with lead. Favian wondered if the marine was upset with him, having formed an opinion as to Favian’s guilt, or whether it was the heat and boring duty; his question was answered as the marine entered the wardroom and skimmed his hat over the dinner table.
“Damn that Rodgers! Damn that fat old lady with commodore’s stars!” the marine spat, venom in his every word, his voice pitched high enough so that the wardroom were compelled to notice it, but low enough so that it wouldn’t carry to the deck above, where Rodgers was tucking in his napkin.
“Mr. Howell. Mr. Hamilton,” Favian bowed— or bobbed, rather, since he was already bent far over to keep his six feet, four inches from encountering the deckhead.
“Favian, have some claret,” Hamilton said, his pleasant features scarcely ruffled by the marine’s bile. “I see you have met our Mr. Twiggs, your honorable escort.”
“Bastard buggering trial is just the farce I knew it would be,” Twiggs growled. “Trying a thorough seaman for doing his duty, and putting that shy, shy old grunter in charge.”
“Careful now, Mr. Twiggs,” said Hamilton. “I won’t say you’re wrong, but we must not speak so in front of our guests. We have buffalo steaks today, Favian, and fresh peas.”
“The fellow is shy, for all his big talk and swearing,” said Twiggs, sitting down to his wine glass. “What manner of prize money could we have got had we been captained by a proper hackum, and not by a gross, fat, blustering, vain, quarrelsome, niggling… Where’s our prize money for the Belvedere, I ask you? The quarterdeck full of officers who knew their duty, ready for action at last; I with my marines, every man among ’em ready to let fly at the enemy— and what does that old woman do? Yaw to present the larboard bow guns, sirrah, and then yaw again to present the starboard bow guns— yaw one way, yaw t’other way, fill and back, back and fill, shilly and shally, and the end of it was the enemy making its escape. All that was needed was a real fire-eater in command, not scared to sail right up to pistol-shot range and fire off the whole broadside. That would have put an end to ’em— we could have been as famous as the Constitution, with money and promotions all around!”
“Twiggs,” said Lieutenant Howell, “enough. Commodore Rodgers has been sent to the Chesapeake.”
“God save Baltimore, then,” Twiggs murmured. “I’m heartily glad to see a real man in command of President— this ship has always deserved better than she’s got, and Decatur will bring us luck.”
The claret brought even more color to Twiggs’s reddened face. The steaks, cut from the few bison still wandering wild in western New Jersey, were brought in from the officers’ galley, fried in onions, with the promised peas in a pewter bowl. The conversation was civil but, aside from Twiggs’s outburst, not at all lively: the officers avoided discussion of the trial occurring above their heads, and most of Favian’s recent career, because his conduct was related to the trial, was also out of bounds. Several days ago the wardroom had exhausted the subjects of whether the Peace Commission would achieve its object any time soon; the course of nautical affairs; the British pillaging in the Chesapeake; the interesting way a confrontation was shaping up on Lake Champlain, where Favian’s old Constitution messmate Thomas MacDonough was facing a British squadron much more powerful than his own; and on Lake Ontario, where Commodore Isaac Chauncey’s strange lack of motion seemed to have resulted in distress to General Brown’s Niagara army. Brown had either beaten the enemy or been defeated himself— the exact truth seemed to be open to interpretation, since it appeared that Brown had driven the British off the field of battle only to withdraw himself, with the British in pursuit. The wardroom had put it down to the rather inexplicable way the army in general seemed to have been behaving through the war, but at any rate it seemed Brown would have been better off had Commodore Chauncey’s Lake Ontario squadron taken the bit properly in its teeth and attacked their British opposition under Commodore Yeo.
All this ground had been thoroughly covered in the first three days of the trial, with the officers being properly noncommittal on the subject of Commodore Chauncey and his persistent failure to engage the enemy decisively— no doubt he was in possession of intelligence that showed it unwise to attack, or perhaps he’d been ill; at any rate, there were few subjects open to conversation save politics and the weather. But politics was out: Favian was of that rare breed, a War Federalist, and his family had made their name in Federalist politics back in New Hampshire, whereas Archibald Hamilton was a died-in-the-wool Republican, his father having served as Secretary of the Navy under Madison. The other members of the wardroom were aware of this and kept off the subject. And the weather had remained hot and humid throughout the trial, with the barometer rising and promising worse, so conversation in general languished. This, for the most part, suited Favian well, at least today, for he would offer himself as a witness that very afternoon.
The fresh peas more than made up for the lack of conversation, however. Favian, though he had been ashore for close to a year, had been at sea often enough in his career to enjoy a proper delight in the sight of fresh vegetables, and he consumed his share of peas with great joy. The wine was adequate, the conventions of the wardroom informal enough so that he could open his coat and loosen his neckcloth against the heat, and the court-martial would be over, one way or another, fairly soon.
The last pea had been long devoured, Howell’s watch had been called, and Favian was well into his second cigarillo before the single gun boomed to signal that the court-martial was to resume. Favian adjusted his uniform, squared his cravat, carefully touched the fashionable devil-may-care spit curls on his forehead and cheek to make sure they were in place, and then followed Twiggs’s red neck back up the companion to the commodore’s cabin.
The assembled captains appeared to have fed well; they were all leaning back in their chairs, seemingly convivial— all but Lewis, who was leaning his mean little body forward on the table, resting on his elbows, his pinched face looking forward with a malicious intensity. Favian was beginning not to like the man at all.
“Have you any further witnesses to call, Captain Markham?” Rodgers asked, having called the court to order.
“No, sir,” Favian said. “I should like, however, to testify myself, if the members of the court should be willing to interrogate me.”
There was something of a smile on Rodgers’s face— a scowling sort of smile, but a smile. Favian had spent years serving under Decatur, and Decatur had conducted the inquiry on poor James Barron after the latter had surrendered the Chesapeake in peacetime; Decatur had also served, against his will, on the court-martial. One of the few comments Favian had ever heard Decatur make on the Barron trial was a criticism of Barron’s manner of defense. Barron had never testified as a witness, which had been taken by some as an admission that he was afraid of cross-examination, and had instead chosen to read into the record a closing plea running to eighteen thousand words, full of rhetorical flourishes inserted by his attorney, some of which managed to so twist the syntax that the point of the sentences was quite obscured. The patience of the court had been exhausted after the first few thousand words or so, and the florid style had annoyed them. Favian would try to give the opposite impression; he would allow himself cross-examination as if he had nothing to fear, and he would keep his closing plea brief and his classical allusions to the minimum.
Decatur, leaning forward, occasionally mopping his brow with a handkerchief, undertook most of the interrogation. His questions led efficiently through the series of events: the dirty weather in the offing, Favian’s decision to look into one last bay before beating up to get sea room, the appearance in the bay of the Loyalist privateer caught in the act of pursuing a local ketch, the chase in the rising gale that put Loyalist aground when she failed to stay, the wind backing and threatening to put Experiment onto a cape as she tried to beat out to sea. Favian had club-hauled her then, a desperate maneuver to avoid destruction, and had succeeded in getting Experiment onto the other tack, perfectly capable of beating out of the bay; but at the worst possible instant the wind had veered, heading them again. With no possibility of escape Favian had cut the masts away and thrown out two anchors, hoping to ride out the storm, but the cables had parted on the foul ground and the brig had smashed itself to pieces on the mudbanks.
“How many reefs had ye in yer tops’ls?” Lewis asked.
“Three reefs in the tops’ls, two in the main,” Favian said.
“Ye did not find it necessary to close-reef yer fore-and-aft mains’l?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“It was not, then, a raging hurricane, a giant storm? Ye had yer tops’ls set, yer main, yer jib?”
“A storm jib, sir.”
“Answer my question, sir!” Lewis snapped. “Was it a great storm or not?”
“It was a sufficient storm, sir,” Favian answered, far too quickly, “to drive the Experiment aground.”
Damnation; he had been goaded into losing his temper. All too easy to do in this heat. Favian composed his features, feeling sweat trickling down his spine, seeing Lewis with a crabbed grin on his pinched face, the light in his eyes triumphant. A gust of wind whistled down the windsail, ruffling the clerk’s papers.
“Have ye, Captain Markham, been in worse storms?” Lewis asked.
“I have, sir,” Favian said. “I have endured worse storms on numerous occasions. But never on a lee shore, never on foul ground.”
“Very well, Captain,” Lewis said. He leaned back and took a breath while waiting for the clerk to catch up. “I should like to address the question,” he said finally, “of how ye came to be in command of the Experiment brig during this storm in the first place, after ye were ordered by the secretary of the Navy to relinquish command and report to New London.”
The clerk held up his hand to hold Favian’s answer until his shorthand had caught up with the question; Favian snatched a glance at Lieutenant Twiggs, the provost marshal, who was reddening, it seemed, to the point of apoplexy. It was pleasant, Favian thought, to have an unabashed partisan in the room, particularly as this was the line of questioning he’d been dreading. The circumstances in which he found himself aboard Experiment that day had been somewhat irregular, and his principal witness had been killed in the wreck. He had hoped this matter would have escaped the court’s attention entirely.
“The order from the secretary was, I thought, provisional,” Favian said. “It ordered me to proceed to New London ‘as quickly as circumstances permitted,’ or words to that effect.”
“And in your view the circumstances did not permit?”
“No, sir.”
Lewis put on his finest sneer, leaning forward, his inky eyes glittering. “Ye are aware, Captain Markham, of the particular regard with which the United States Navy is accustomed to view its orders?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That perhaps there might be a reason for an order, a reason of which the recipient might be in ignorance?”
“I am aware of that possibility, sir.”
“And yet you chose to disregard an order from the secretary of the Navy, Mr. William Jones, that you report to New London?”
“The order, sir, was not written in imperative terms. I arrived in New London a month following the wreck, and discovered that work on the Shark had not commenced, and was not to begin for several weeks.”
Lieutenant Twiggs was turning the color of a fresh-boiled lobster. The man will surely die of a stroke before he is forty, Favian thought.
“But you did not know this at the time of your decision to remain aboard Experiment?” Commodore Rodgers asked, his florid face showing some interest.
“I did not, sir.”
Stephen Decatur leaped rapidly into the breach, ready to come to Favian’s aid. “I think it might be useful to follow the chronology of Experiment’s last weeks,” he said, “to discover the reasons Captain Markham had for remaining aboard.”
Rodgers gave Decatur a gimlet-eyed look. “If the commodore feels it absolutely necessary,” he said.
Decatur did not bother to reply, but sprang straight to the questioning. “Experiment, under your command, defeated Teaser on what date?”
“The third of August, 1813.”
“Were any officers killed in the action?”
“Yes, sir. Sailing Master Bean, and Midshipman Dudley.”
“And you returned to Portsmouth on what date?”
“To the best of my recollection, that would be the sixth.”
“Was the Enterprise brig under Lieutenant Burrows present in Portsmouth at that time?”
“Yes, sir.”
The deputy judge advocate was on his feet, apparently quite happy to maneuver himself onto Rodgers’s good side with a plea to keep the trial brief. “All respects to Commodore Decatur, sir, but I fail to see the relevance of this line of questioning,” he said.
“I am trying to ascertain the chain of command north of Boston during the late summer of last year,” Decatur said smoothly, his white teeth flashing from amid his dark beard. “It may prove relevant, as it bears upon Captain Markham’s decision to remain aboard Experiment.”
Rodgers gave Decatur a resentful glare, but in the end huffed, “Very well, Commodore Decatur, if you think it’s necessary. But keep it brief, for the love of God.”
“Thank you, Commodore Rodgers,” Decatur said, with his best deferential smile. He turned to Favian. “Do you recall why Enterprise was sent to the coast of northern Massachusetts?” he asked.
“I did not see Lieutenant Burrows’s orders, but he confided to me that it was on account of the Loyalist privateer that had been raiding the coastal trade.”
“Do you recall the date on which you heard the news of Enterprise’s encounter with the Boxer?”
“Yes, sir. That would have been September the eleventh.”
“And what did that news contain?”
“It was reported that Lieutenant Burrows had been killed while the Enterprise was engaging and capturing an enemy brig.”
“And what was your reaction?”
The question brought a pang of grief to Favian’s heart. William Burrows of the Enterprise had been his closest friend ever since their first acquaintance in Tripoli; they had shared much, including the knowledge that each was, in his own unique way, unsuited for the Navy to which they had dedicated their lives. With Burrows buried in Portland, there was no real friend left in whom to confide, no one to whom Favian could speak his heart and be understood. The loss was a bitter one, even after all these months.
“I called in our liberty men,” Favian said, answering Decatur’s question with a fair disregard for the truth, though not for the facts, “and took Experiment to Portland, where I understood Enterprise had gone with its prize. We arrived the next morning.”
“At this time, who was the senior naval officer north of Boston?”
“The commandant of the Portsmouth Navy Yard, sir. Captain Hull.”
“And did Captain Hull give his permission for this excursion?” Lewis interrupted, his face set in a malicious sneer.
“I sent him a message,” Favian said. “Captain Hull did not reply before Experiment departed port.”
“So ye did not await the judgment of your superior officer?”
Favian felt his fists clench as he tried to keep his temper. “Permission was not strictly required,” he said, “as my orders of the previous March still applied.”
“And the orders were to seek out enemy privateers off the American coast and in Canada?” Decatur asked, quickly jumping in to take command of the questioning.
“Yes, sir.”
“What were your reasons for setting out for Portland?”
“If the rumor of Lieutenant Burrows’s death was true, that would imply that his lieutenant, Mr. McCall, was in command of both the Enterprise and the captured Boxer. I did not know whether Mr. McCall was wounded, or how many of his officers had been killed or injured. Although I know Mr. McCall to be an efficient officer, I concluded that it might be a better use of the officers available if an officer of command rank were to be in Portland, and another man-of-war present, both to render assistance to Mr. McCall, if he should require it, and to discourage any British prisoners from attempting to retake the Boxer. I believe my letter to the commandant of the Portsmouth yard, written while we were preparing to leave port, mentioned these reasons.”
There: he had journeyed entirely into the realm of falsehood. Though he had in fact given these reasons in a note written that afternoon, they were merest sophistry; in truth he had run to sea in a fit of anxiety and grief that had so overwhelmed him as to give him little choice. There had been no alternative: he had run to Portland to find out if the rumor was true, whether his closest friend had been killed. His own men had been amazed at his driving; he had nearly torn the sticks out of Experiment as he piled on the canvas to run up the coast to Portland; he had come very close to running onto Cape Elizabeth as he shaved inches from his course.
“And were any of the Enterprise’s officers injured?” Decatur asked.
“Captain Burrows had been mortally wounded, dying some hours after the fight, and Midshipman Kervin Waters had been killed.”
“So Enterprise was able to make use of the resources provided by Experiment?”
“I believe so, sir.”
“And,” Decatur added, making a sweeping gesture with one arm, “it is true, is it not, that as a result of Enterprise’s and Experiment’s victories over the Boxer and Teaser, the British made the decision to withdraw all their brigs of war from our coasts?”
“Irrelevant,” droned Robinson, raising a finger, delighted, presumably, to be able to raise a point of order without crossing Commodore Rodgers’s hawse.
“Commodore Decatur,” Rodgers frowned, “I hope you recollect my instructions to keep things brief.”
“Yes, sir,” Decatur said.
“Captain Markham, upon what date did ye receive word of yer promotion to the rank of captain?” Lewis asked.
“That would have been the thirteenth of September, sir, though I did not receive word that the promotion had been confirmed by Congress until about a month later, immediately prior to my journey to New London.”
“Are ye aware, Captain Markham, that a fourteen-gun brig is insufficient to support the dignity of a captain of the United States Navy?” Lewis demanded.
“So is a gunboat, you hypocritical wretch,” Favian almost replied; but he bit it off short, containing the short-leashed temper that had been the terror of United States’s lower deck, and replied instead, “I know that it is so considered by some.”
“Then what in blazes were ye doing aboard Experiment a week following news of yer promotion?” Lewis asked loudly. “I cannot for the life of me see what ye were doin’ aboard at all!”
“I remained aboard at the express invitation of Experiment’s lieutenant, Mr. Hibbert,” Favian said. He felt the rage inside him boiling still, as lobster red as Lieutenant Twiggs’s neck. “He desired me to stay aboard until we had made up our losses in officers.”
“If ye had not gone ashore, Mr. Hibbert would have been in command of Experiment, is that not true?” Lewis continued.
“He would, unless the secretary of the Navy chose to put another captain aboard,” Favian said.
“D’ye find it unusual, then,” Lewis demanded acidly, “that a junior officer should turn down his first chance at independent command?”
“It is not the usual practice.”
“It is a pity, is it not,” Lewis continued, malevolent, “that this unusually modest Mr. Hibbert did not survive to confirm your statements.”
That last goad was too much; Favian could no longer contain the explosion. “It is a greater pity, is it not,” he roared, seeing the board of captains suddenly lean back away from him, as if shifted by a hurricane wind, “that this court sees fit to abuse the name and honor of a dead officer, in order to play at rhetoric!”
Red memories flashed in his memory: Hibbert seconding him in that duel in Norway; Hibbert defying the surgeon in order to stagger on deck after he’d been wounded in the fight with Teaser; the agony of composing the letter to Hibbert’s family that announced his pointless death; the further agony of his visit to Hibbert’s father back in Portsmouth, half-recovered from a series of strokes and unable to keep the tears from his eyes at the mention of his only son... Damned if Favian was going to let Lewis refer to Hibbert in that sneering tone!
Rodgers’s eyes, for the first time since dinner, seemed to have opened fully. “The clerk will strike that last question and reply from the record,” he said. “Captain Lewis, you will restrain your zeal.”
“Aye, sir,” Lewis said with a smug little smile, happy to have drawn Favian out; but before he could complete his work Decatur came smoothly to the rescue.
“Perhaps Captain Markham could explain how many of Experiment’s officers were absent,” he said. “It might throw some light on Lieutenant Hibbert’s decision.”
“The bosun had been absent since April, detailed to take a prize to Boston,” Favian said, breathing more easily now, his anger, always swift to rise and swift to vanish, ebbing now. “He had not yet rejoined. Mr. Bean, the master, had been killed in the fight with Teaser, as had Mr. Dudley, a promising midshipman. Of the three midshipmen remaining, Mr. Brook was only fifteen, too young to step into a lieutenant’s part; Mr. Stanhope lacked experience; and Mr. Tolbert—” Here he hesitated; Tolbert had been a trial throughout Experiment’s cruise, a jut-jawed pigheaded pugnacious blundering glory-struck trial, fascinated with the code duello, exposing his life to every hazard whether the service required it or not, challenging Midshipman Dudley to combat with pistols... but on the other hand Tolbert had been a favorable witness, and it would not serve either courtesy or the interests of the service to publicly blot Tolbert’s name in the official records of another officer’s court-martial. It might even be, by Tolbert’s lights, a challengeable offense; Favian was not going to weather a hurricane, a shipwreck, and a court-martial only to fall under the dueling pistol of a blockheaded midshipman.
“Mr. Tolbert,” he concluded a bit lamely, “was at that time unpracticed in the navigation of a deep-sea vessel.”
“Mr. Hibbert,” said Captain Stewart, inserting himself into the line of questioning, “was reluctant to put to sea after the Loyalist without his proper complement of officers?”
This was redundant, betraying Stewart’s friendship; but if it was going into the record, Favian thought, it might as well be laid on with a trowel. “Yes, sir,” Favian said. “The Loyalist was known to have a large crew, experienced and practiced. For a privateer, that is,” he added, not wanting to publicly suggest that a mere sea-going mercenary could possibly equal a man-of-war, although he knew damned well— his own family history was evidence enough— that a well-disciplined privateer’s crew could prove the equal of many a naval vessel, and that privateers were usually faster and nimbler sailors as well.
“Just so,” said Stewart, recognizing Favian’s tact.
That proved to be the end of the court’s questioning, and the deputy judge advocate’s cross-examination was mercifully brief, trying to wring the last ounce of advantage out of the irregularity of Favian’s remaining on board Experiment during the critical week, trying to imply “disobedience” without actually naming it, and edging toward the conclusion that, even if Favian were not actually disobedient, he had not done quite the gentlemanly thing by staying aboard a vessel considered below his dignity, and in denying his worthy subordinate his first command. Not being a naval man, the exact technicalities of Experiment’s going aground seemed a little beyond him, and he steered away from the subject, apparently considering Commodore Lewis’s questioning to have done the job for him.
Favian then made his closing plea. It was a great deal shorter than Barron’s famous eighteen-thousand-word address— he had actually gone so far as to count the words, and there were less than two thousand altogether, 1,572 to be exact. They summed up his position neatly enough, that he had stayed aboard Experiment at the request of her lieutenant and for the good of the service, that the brig’s crew had performed faultlessly and with great heroism the afternoon of the wreck, and that it was only due to the infernal perversity of an autumn hurricane that the brig was destroyed at all.
As he spoke, Favian realized that his sword, which the court was supposed to keep in its possession until its decision was reached, had been cleared from the table at dinner and not returned; presumably it had been stowed somewhere in the after cabin or in the commodore’s privy. This was quite irregular, and annoying because Favian had given the court the presentation sword given him by the town of Portsmouth following the Teaser victory; it was decorated with reminders of the battle, and Favian had intended the sword to remind the court of his past services and victories. But it would not do for Favian to mention it to the court; their little lapses should go unremarked.
His plea delivered, Favian gave a fair copy to the clerk, bowed to the court, and returned to his chair. Rodgers looked at his watch at the exact moment that six bells echoed down President’s windsail: another hour to supper.
“The court will consider its verdict,” he said. “The provost marshal shall escort the prisoner to the wardroom. Everyone else will clear the court.” Rodgers had now ended the public portion of the court-martial. Now would commence the second part, the secret deliberation of the five-man jury. Each captain would be under oath not to reveal the contents of any debate; there would be no record kept; the decision would be made by majority vote, the officers voting in reverse order of seniority, the most junior first. It was an odd system, at variance with American nonmilitary codes: it was based on Roman, rather than English, codes of justice, and had been borrowed wholesale from English naval law by John Adams, the author of the Naval Regulations.
“I hope,” Rodgers said, eying his fellow captains, “that this business can be concluded quickly. We have two cowards, three cases of theft of Navy stores, one card cheat, and a sodomite to try after this, and I’d like to end it all as soon as possible.”
Favian smiled tightly at this; a quick verdict would almost certainly be in his favor. He detected little anxiety in himself; he knew that Stewart and Decatur, at least, were prejudiced in his favor, although Lewis worried him. Since Rodgers would only vote in case of a tie among the other four, Jones would cast the vote that would create the tie in the first place. Though Favian didn’t know Jones well enough to be sure of his vote, he knew there was a factor working in his favor: Jones had lost his own Wasp to the enemy, had been tried and found innocent; for Jones to vote for Favian’s condemnation was to cast doubt on the verdict of his own trial.
“By God, another week of this and I shall go mad!” cried Twiggs, loosening his cravat as soon as he had gained the safety of the wardroom. “No wonder Captain Beekman faked sick! Would’ee like some ice punch? Here’s to acquittal, and your next command!”
“You’re too kind,” Favian said, raising his glass. They found a deck of cards and played piquet for the length of more than a glass— it was just shy of eight bells, and Favian was four and a quarter dollars the richer, when a midshipman came down the companion to tell them they were wanted.
Absurdly, as Favian retied his neckcloth and cravat, he found his heart beating like a man-of-war’s drum— sheer madness, considering he was to be acquitted. Yet Lewis had been so damnably persistent, harping on Favian’s staying aboard Experiment following his promotion; and of course Favian did not know Jones well enough to be sure of his vote. Suppose Jones and Lewis had both voted against him, and Rodgers had been forced to cast the tie-breaking vote. Rodgers was notoriously short-tempered; suppose the crusty commodore had been so annoyed at having to be here at all, delaying the journey to his new command, that he had voted against Favian out of sheer spleen?
Favian took his hat from the table, followed Twiggs up the companion, waited while Twiggs beat on the great cabin door and announced the prisoner. Rodgers’s voice answered, and Twiggs opened the door.
Favian’s eyes instantly turned to his smallsword resting on the table before him, and before the court had spoken a word he knew it was over— he had been acquitted. The Navy had adopted British customs in regard to courts-martial: if the accused was an officer his sword was taken from him and held in custody by the court athwart the table; if he was found guilty, the sword was turned with its point toward the accused; if innocent, the sword was returned to him hilt-first.
The hilt was toward him, and the court’s members, even Lewis, bore pleased, relieved smiles. He barely heard the president reading the decision of the court, that the said Captain Favian Markham, USN, was not guilty of violation of Article XIX, to-wit, that he, through intention, negligence, or any other fault, suffered a vessel of the Navy to be stranded, run upon rocks or shoals, or hazarded in any way. Commodore John Rodgers then stood and picked up Favian’s sword, holding it out to him. “1 should like to shake the hand of a brave officer,” he said, “and to wish him all joy and success in his new command.”
Favian breathed out the required compliments— he hoped he had not been an awkward witness, he hoped the trial was not overlong, he thanked the court for their thoroughness and their verdict and hoped to do them honor with the Shark. He took the sword, shook the hand of each member of the court and of the deputy judge advocate, and clipped the sword to his belt.
“I hope you will sup with us,” Decatur said with an easy smile, as the sound of eight bells came ringing down the skylight.
“Honored, sir,” Favian said, shaking his hand again.
“Damme if I know why this case ever came to trial,” Rodgers said. “I can’t think what Brierly had in mind when he conducted the inquiry.”
“Lieutenant Brierly is a most scrupulous officer,” Favian said, willing at that moment to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.
“Scrupulous! In wartime! Ha!” Rodgers scorned, and then turned to Decatur. “Commodore Decatur, I wonder if my clerk might borrow your desk for a space of a moment— I have a brief order to dictate.”
“Of course, sir,” Decatur said.
There was a bustle to turn the court-martial’s bench into a supper table, clerks clearing and servants setting six places. Favian received the congratulations of Lieutenant Twiggs, and turned to find Commodore Decatur standing by his side.
“I thought you should like to know, Favian,” Decatur said in a low voice, “that the verdict was unanimous. No point in entertaining suspicions about who voted in favor and who voted against. I thought I’d relieve your mind.”
And forestall a possible service feud, Favian thought, understanding Decatur’s unstated motives without any need for prompting. Favian had served with Decatur for far too long not to know Decatur’s motivations. The James Barron court-martial had created enough bad blood to poison the next three generations of sea officers, and Decatur had been splattered with more than his share— it was obvious why Decatur wanted to anticipate any resentment between Favian and Commodore Lewis, even at the expense of the oath taken not to reveal the vote.
“Thank you, sir,” Favian said.
“I think,” Decatur said, “that after all this time, Captain Markham, and considering our equivalence in rank, that you might call me Stephen.”
Favian grinned. “I am honored,” he said. “Stephen.”
“Captain Markham.” It was Commodore Rodgers, holding a freshly inked letter in his hand, with mischievous triumph in his eyes. “I hold in my hand your orders,” he said. “You are to report aboard the United States ship President, there to replace Commodore John Rodgers on the court-martial proceedings being conducted thereon, in order that the latter might proceed to his new command in the Chesapeake. God give you joy, sir.”
Favian, heart sinking, looked down at the letter that Rodgers had just placed in his hand. Two cowards, three cases of theft of Navy stores… with all the formalities, his number one coat and cocked hat, the two heavy gold epaulets, and in all this heat! My God, Favian thought, the most dismal duty imaginable. He could almost wish himself back in the gunboat service.
“Well, Favian,” Decatur said, thumping him on the shoulder, “at last you’ll begin to earn that seventy-five dollars per month, eh?”
“I suppose I shall,” Favian said weakly.
The seventy-five per month was not enough, he thought, not nearly enough.