The Power and the Glory (40 page)

“Steady . . . steady . . .
Now, men! Now! Fire!
”

Five carronades roared as one, seconds before a measured broadside of long guns erupted on the deck below, all guns trained on the enemy's bow. Masses of hard, hot metal pummeled the French frigate, caving in strakes, shoving her bow off the wind and broadside to
Constellation
as the rage of carronades tore through enemy ranks like so many bowling balls on a green, cutting, slicing, and carving in a macabre feast of death, destruction, and mayhem.

“Reload!” Richard shouted on the weather deck.

“Reload!” Sterrett shouted on the gun deck.

The broadside was repeated.
La Vengeance
, dangerously cut up and caught unaware by the carronade onslaught, fought to come off the wind and turn away from the devastation. On her foredeck, French sailors and Marines threw up their hands, staggered backward, cried out in agony. American Marines in the tops added to the onslaught, lobbing grenades onto
La Vengeance
's deck and bringing swivel guns and musket fire back into action. It was sheer butchery. No Frenchman was left standing. Some, perhaps crawling aft, were pinned in tight against the smashed-in bulwarks, escaping the bodies and body parts strewn in expanding pools of blood forward. After a third broadside exploded from
Constellation
, the great ocean fell silent, as though the two combatants, each stunned to the core, had paused to take stock of the carnage and chaos each had wrought against the other.

As
La Vengeance
slewed off the wind, nothing but her bowsprit, lower foremast, and mizzenmast remained standing. Nonetheless, the sails on those damaged spars remained functional. As she drifted apart and away, she began listing to larboard, suggesting that at least one shot from
Constellation
had hulled her at the waterline.

“
Damnation!
” Truxtun swore under his breath. He watched in agonizing frustration as the lights in his enemy's gun ports faded into specks in the distance.
Constellation
's body was too bruised and battered to give chase. “We had the bastards!”

“
Have
them, is how I see it, Captain,” Waverly countered. “If that floating hulk isn't done for, then I'm a farmer from Tennessee.”

“Watch out the mainmast!” Boatswain Bowles suddenly cried out, pointing upward.

With an almighty rip and a resounding
crack!
the mainmast, which had teetered ominously during the engagement, its supporting shrouds and stays sprung by enemy fire and its base battered by multiple whacks of round shot, snapped in two just above the deck and toppled sideways. Crashing against the larboard bulwarks, it lay motionless for a split second like a giant oar shipped inboard, balanced on its yards, before it rolled over and splashed into the Atlantic, still tethered to the ship by two lengths of rope. Four topmen went with it, along with James Jarvis, midshipman. One topman, still alive, slung an arm listlessly over a yard and was dragged behind in the water. Two others floated beyond him, belly down. Jarvis was nowhere to be seen, presumably trapped somewhere under the heavy shroud of canvas.

Richard glanced at Truxtun, who gave him a brief nod in reply.

“Mr. Bowles!” Richard shouted forward. “Retrieve those men and ax those ropes! Get the wounded below to the surgeon! Fix stoppers to the two masts and rig temporary shrouds and stays!”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Bowles called back. A shrill of whistles from his two boatswain's mates awoke the crew from their postbattle stupor and drew their attention away from the horrific sight of their shipmates lying about them, many of them dead, dying, or grotesquely maimed.

As the gruesome work got under way, Nate Waverly stood with hands on hips, surveying the damage to
Constellation
's rigging. Halyards, lifts, braces, sheets. Lines of every purpose and description lay in unruly coils and long serpentine formations all over the deck. Aloft, from what could be seen of holes and tears in the faint light, not a single sail had escaped damage. “We'll have a hell of time beating north with this rig,” he commented matter-of-factly, his creased face gray with fatigue and concern.

Forward, despite mind-numbing exhaustion, sailors worked feverishly to comply with the first lieutenant's commands, motivated, perhaps, by the simple blessing of being alive and
able
to work. No one, from captain to captain's clerk, paused to think of the horrors about to unfold on the surgeon's table down on the orlop. Or of the sharks beginning to circle and thrash about in the waters close by, drawn to the surface by the smell of blood dripping from the scuppers. Soon enough, these demons of the deep would be rewarded with a banquet of sawed-off limbs heaved overboard by a surgeon's mate.

“I quite agree, Mr. Waverly,” Truxtun said, his voice containing a neutral, faraway quality that was unusual for him. “Which is why we are not returning to Saint Kitts. “

“Where to, then, sir?”

“Port Royal. We can make repairs there.”

 

Constellation
WAS CRIPPLED. Her body and soul remained intact, but her mobility was threatened by the loss of her mainmast and the damage to her rigging. Her rudder, while serviceable, had also taken a hit. The odds were long, but should an enemy warship happen upon her, she would be hard-pressed to present her broadside.

Jamaica lay approximately 700 miles to the west, and Saint Kitts only 150 miles northward. But Nate Waverly was right: sailing upwind under these conditions would prove challenging if not impossible. Heading westward meant that
Constellation
would have the wind at her back, a point of sail that would put the least strain on a makeshift jury-rig and allow stability for carpenters and sail-makers to make minor repairs and adjustments along the way. Better still, since the trades blew predictably from the northeast, it was unlikely that
Constellation
would have to alter course until she reached Port Royal.

First order of business: clear away the debris on the weather deck and make
Constellation
as shipshape as possible. Second order of business: burial at sea for the fifteen American dead. Captain Truxtun in full dress uniform presided over the somber proceedings alongside his commissioned and warrant officers and the ship's complement of Marines, less those six lying alongside their nine shipmates amidships, each entombed in a pure white shroud of flaxen sailcloth. After Truxtun had read the service and committed the bodies to the deep, Richard dismissed the mustered divisions. As a reward for a job well done—and as an act of mercy—he divided the crew into four watches of two hours each rather than the customary two watches of four hours each, a watch bill first introduced to the Continental navy by Capt. John Paul Jones. Such a regimen allowed the men, in rotation, to sleep for eight hours straight, a rare luxury at sea but one desperately needed by men living on the edge.

The week's voyage to Jamaica proved uneventful but ultimately disappointing. The morning after
Constellation
dropped anchor off naval headquarters at Port Royal, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker was piped on board with full military honors. He was keen to learn more about the battle with
La Vengeance
—the first details of which had begun to
wend their way through the ubiquitous web of British intelligence—and unhappy to inform Captain Truxtun that, alas, he was unable to supply a new mainmast for
Constellation
.

“I must apologize on His Majesty's behalf,” he said to Truxtun and his first lieutenant in the after cabin, “but we have no spars to spare. The war in Europe, you understand. You can see for yourself that I command a somewhat smaller squadron than I did during your last visit. Of course, ever since your navy entered these waters, our navy has had less need of our own ships, which is why My Lords of the Admiralty have recalled so many of them to home waters.” He smiled as a steward bowed before him, offering a glass of claret from a tray. “You have been most helpful to our cause, and for that His Majesty is most grateful. I am pleased to report that attacks on our merchantmen are down considerably from a year ago. Most sectors report no hostile activity of any sort in months. As a result, your merchant captains, and ours, are free to sail wherever the winds of profit take them.” He raised his glass. “Cheers, Commodore. Cheers, Lieutenant. Here's to ridding the seas of vermin.” He took a healthy sip, as did Captain Truxtun. Richard left his glass on the table.

“What of Toussaint L'Ouverture?” Richard asked after Hyde had set his glass down with a contented sigh. He well recalled his conversation with Hugh Hardcastle in Barbados and was curious to know the extent to which the term “vermin” applied in the admiral's mind.

“I am pleased to report that General Toussaint has succeeded in his campaign,” Parker replied, as though Richard's question fitted comfortably within the scope of the conversation and his own ethical view of the world. “He doesn't rule the entire island—by agreement, the Spanish have retaken control of the central and eastern portions—but he does control all of Saint-Domingue—or Haiti, as he intends to call the colony once Napoleon grants independence. You should be proud, Lieutenant. As Haiti's first president, Toussaint will preside over a government based on your American model.” He smiled broadly. “A rather impressive achievement for a former slave, what? Makes one rather proud to have had a hand in the making.”

“Yes, sir,” Richard said, inwardly thinking, a slippery fellow, this Admiral Parker. A man of rank and polish and apparent sincerity who manifests no guilt for the duplicitous role he played in the affair—or remorse for the thousands of lives that role had claimed—and who now takes credit for the outcome! In truth, Toussaint had prevailed not because of men like Hyde Parker, but in spite of them. But Richard
decided not to press the point. Doing so, he realized, would serve no purpose.

Truxtun, perhaps reading Richard's thoughts, changed tack. “Admiral,” he asked, “is it true you have no notion of where
La Vengeance
might be at the moment? Or her disposition?”

“Just so. We know where she is not: Basse-Terre. What we suspect, assuming she remains afloat, is that she is somewhere off to the south where the prevailing currents would take her. We shall soon have this puzzle solved, and when we do, we will notify your Navy Department posthaste.” He glanced over at Richard. “By the bye, Lieutenant, you will be interested to learn that Captain Hardcastle has put in for duty at Spithead, and his request has been granted. More's the pity. He was my finest officer and I shall miss him. I hope he finds the action he is seeking.”

“Yes, sir,” Richard said straight-faced, knowing full well why Hugh Hardcastle had put in for duty at Spithead.

“Well then, Admiral,” Truxtun ventured, “I think our business here is finished. I offer my thanks once again for allowing us to transfer our wounded to your hospital ashore. In a few days we shall be sailing for Virginia. I understand there are American merchant vessels in Kingston who wish to depart with us.”

“Quite so, Captain. In the meantime, let our dock master know what provisions we can supply for your cruise home and what repairs our dockyard might make to
Constellation
before you leave. I am putting a dispatch vessel at your disposal, should you wish to send word ahead of your intentions.”

“Thank you, Admiral. That is most generous of you.”

“My honor, my dear sir. My honor.”

A week later, under a more substantial jury-rig,
Constellation
weighed anchor and accompanied a convoy of seven American merchantmen northward through the Windward Passage. Helped along by fair winds and the swift-flowing Gulf Stream, she reached Hampton Roads in respectable time. Awaiting her at the Gosport Navy Yard on a cool, blustery, brilliantly sunny afternoon in late March was a welcome whose like no one on board could have anticipated.

Hardly were they within the confines of the large natural harbor when seventeen warships—a fair representation of the forty-eight warships that now constituted the U.S. Navy—erupted in a series of sixteen-gun salutes. Officers and Marines on deck and sailors arrayed in the top-hamper on ratlines and footropes stood in silent tribute to
Constellation
as she coasted to her mooring. Ashore, fife-and-drum bands struck up lively tunes as civilians who had assembled en masse at the docks waved hats and added their huzzahs to the din of rockets exploding high overhead.

The next few hours on board ship were frenetic. Dignitaries of various political and military stripes either came on board or sent word that they would be coming. Excited chatter abounded about the battle with
La Vengeance
, to such a degree that fact became difficult to distinguish from fiction, heroics from bravado. This much, at least, was known:
La Vengeance
had made it to the Dutch island of Curaçao, where her captain—a Frenchman named Pitot who reported to his superiors that he had been attacked by a ship of the line—had driven her onto a sandbar to keep her from sinking. On board, among other passengers, were thirty-six American prisoners-of-war who were subsequently released for helping to save the lives of a large number of distraught French dignitaries.
La Vengeance
, however, could not be saved. She would never sail again.

Accounts of the battle—relayed to the American press courtesy of British intelligence, reports sent ahead by Captain Truxtun, and several of the thirty-six American prisoners on board
La Vengeance
who had recently arrived back in the United States—electrified the young nation. Accolades poured in via congratulatory speeches, letters, and written communications dispatched from the halls of Congress.

Not all of the communications were of that sort, however. On the day Richard arrived in Hampton Roads he received a letter by military post that was addressed simply to “Lt. Richard Cutler, USS
Constellation
” and written by the hand of the one he held closest to his heart. He stared down at the cursive flow, wondering how on earth she could have known his whereabouts and troubled by what that knowledge might portend.