"Trafalgar"
by LLEWELLYN HOWLAND
1
I WAS emotionally a little above myself, for it was the day I had graduated from kilt skirts to trousers, when I first made acquaintance with melgers. These delectable sweetmeats, which I believe were a compound of molasses caramel, chopped beechnuts, and snowy icing, lay hidden in the belly of a big glazed jar of deep blue, shot with white cherry blossoms. The jar — after that introduction an irresistible siren — was confined in a locked closet in a quiet old mansion house not a stone’s throw from that of my grandfather in New Bedford.
Far from the water front and business center of the port, these two houses stood screened from other neighboring rooftrees by the interlacing branches of the great American elms that bordered the streets of this region. Lofty tunnels of cool, green shade in summer, gray Gothic cloisters in winter, these streets were graceful at all times and gave a dignity and charm to the buildings and gardens they served. Here none of the paneled front doors were ever locked, so that it became an almost daily habit of mine to slip through the chalky white one where Grandfather’s seafaring treasures lay, or the dark green one where, if Fate were kind, a melger might be the reward of virtue.
A turn of the heavy cut-glass doorknob, and the green door could be swung open on well-oiled, noiseless hinges, revealing a long narrow entry stretching to a half-open door on the left, through which streamed light enough to discover a straight, uncompromising staircase with its mahogany handrail dully polished by time’s touch, and a tall grandfather clock whose steady beat gave life to the otherwise dim silence.
Here by unbreakable law one paused and gave the password: two low notes, whistled. If an answering whistle came from the room beyond the halfopened door, a glow of pleasure speeded the pulse and set the feet racing across the dull bronze carpet and the threshold into the room of many enchantments where Aunt Lee, the frail mistress of this household, held her court. If the whistle was not answered, the visitor stole sadly out into the prosaic world.
A cold October day with a blustering northwest wind, and the thought of the savor of melgers brought on a sudden desire to lie snug behind the green door. Luck was with me that afternoon, for my whistle was answered, permitting me to enter my “chamber of delights” where the fitful afternoon sun streaming in through west windows brightened the leather bindings of the books on their shelves covering one entire wall, and warmed the faded carpet to a glow. A fire of maple logs smoldered in the gray, marble-faced fireplace, and a breath of heliotrope from the glazed plant room that opened to the south hallowed all with its incense. But as always it was my aunt’s welcoming smile and her gentle kiss that kindled the feeling of changeless security and faith which enfolded me in this sanctuary.
Born of the moment, some impulse urged me to ask if I might roll a big terrestrial globe, on its casters, from its place under a tallboy to the hearthrug, where I could lie at ease with a reading glass and by a touch revolve and cant the world to any plane or angle to suit my fancy. Presently I was prone at Aunt Lee’s feet, sailing swiftly across oceans and striding over continents. Suddenly, through the glass, two crossed swords and “Cape Trafalgar” wheeled into sight to arrest my voyaging. What was the significance of the crossed swords under a name that rolled so pleasantly over my tongue? I pondered for a moment, for I knew idle questions were not encouraged in this room. Then I chanced it; —
“Aunt Lee, what do crossed swords mean?”
“Places where great battles have been fought,” came the answer, and “ Which one are you looking at?”
“Trafalgar — but I thought that was a city square in London. And here it is in Spain.”
A silence followed — so long I turned away from the globe to look at my hostess. She was gazing at me yet through me, her thoughts evidently far away. At last her eyes came back from their distant quest; she patted the vacant end of the sofa beside her and invited me to “come and sit close.”
When I was perched on the deep seat with my legs straight out before me, she said: “You know, it’s a strange happening that you should have picked out Trafalgar to ask about today — for it’s exactly eighty-two years ago this afternoon that Lord Nelson, in command of a fleet of English ships, met and defeated, off that Cape you were looking at, the combined armada of French and Spanish men-of-war that Napoleon — ‘Boney’ — had sent against him. One of our own ships from New Bedford, the Ann Alexander, played a small part in this battle. I’ll read you an old, old letter all about it.”
Going to the tallboy, she presently came back with a packet of papers. Drawing a low table in front of us, she sat down again beside me, loosed the faded ribbons holding the packet together, and after a moment’s search spread out several square sheets giving way at their creases and closely covered with crabbed writing, the ink browned by age. And here is the story as she read it to me fifty-five years ago.
2
On board ship Ann Alexander
LEGHORN. 11/25/1805
MY DEAR WIFE: —
As thee will see when thee receives t hese presents I am still here in this ancient port. I am in good health under Divine Providence and trust this finds thee in like case. On my first arrival the events and perils of the voyage were of such recent occurrence, and I was in such haste to advise thee and George Howland [the owner of the Ann Alexander] of our safe arrival, that my mind was jumbled and I could only touch on the exceptional happenings.
But the passing of the days has ordered my thoughts and made clear how mercifully our affairs have prospered by the help of our Heavenly Father, and I want that thee should share my deep gratitude and comprehend the character of one of the episodes of this voyage wherein we encountered without injury to our lives or property an outburst of the evil passions of mankind in a manifestation terrible to witness even in small part as we did. So I will attempt to describe this collision of great fleets of ships in battle where the mastery of the seas was at hazard.
Thee must understand that early on twenty-first day ult. after a week of overcast weather, when having run our distance I was uneasy as to our position and hoping to raise the land about the Straits [Gibraltar], many sails to leeward of us were reported from aloft. The wind was light at northwest, and while I was fearful of falling afoul of French or Spanish letters of marque or worse with the weather what it was, I held our course (a little south of east) in hopes I might raise a landfall. The strange sails were headed south when first sighted and shortly faded away.
With paltry airs during early forenoon our way was very moderate. By five bells, from fore topgallant yard where I went with my glass in hopes to pick up land, I discovered a great press of sails to the eastward and more sails to the south, all headed north. With the breeze so light and a heavy and growing swell from SW it was hopeless to come to the wind to beat out of the pocket we were fairly caught in. Accordingly I shortened sail and let her sog to leeward toward what I could now make out to be two squadrons of heavy vessels under a press of sail bearing down obliquely on a raffle of ships beyond.
Thus we proceeded till shortly after noon, when of a sudden a great smoke commenced to billow up from among the ships we were drifting down on, which soon became so thick as to shut them from view, the sluggish wind being too light to lift the pall. As we continued to be hove up and up and then dropped by the great following seas with glassy sides and barrel tops just ruffled by the gentle breeze, it appeared to me we were being drawn by some mysterious magnet into a boiling pot the steam from which was riven here and there by darting tongues of flame, while across the heaving floor came an ever increasing thunder that finally made the ship quiver so that I realized the heft of the broadsides that were being touched off in that mighty cannonading.
And here, I do assure thee, had the weather been such that I could do so to advantage I would have altered course to edge away from these parts, but as we lay, there was nothing we could do but pray for a change that would allow us to move with speed to one side or the other of the battle that in a half moon about two leagues in length stretched athwart our bows. But here the wind if anything took off so that we were impelled more by the scend of the sea than by the tug of our canvas as we approached more near — ourselves in awed silence except for the creak of our spars and rattle of the reef points on our sails when we were becalmed in the troughs; the thunder of the guns coming up to us in waves, not continuous as thee’d expect.
For a while I began to hope that, what with the smoke and the desperate fierceness of the engagement, we in our little barque might drive by the southern horn of the battle unnoticed. It was not to be, however, for about 2.00 p. M. the smoke and gunfire grew spotty and we could see and be seen more clear, and I thought, I have surely brought my pigs to a pretty market if I get among those ships after they cease fighting. And then came a puff of stronger wind more from the west and we were suddenly in the midst and a part of sights and sounds and happenings beyond belief. The sea about us was peppered and pocked with wreckage; every swell as it hove up crested with riven spars, sails, boats, and great ships — some rolling, plunging hulks, some still under command of canvas and rudder, one on fire; and everywhere human bodies — some alive and many, many dreadfully dead.
Here concern for my own neck and the ship and cargo forsook me and I tell thee I was for a time beside myself with anger at man’s cruelty and a great pity and desire to help the poor wretches adrift in the terrible disorder. 1 had our longboat hove out and directed our people who manned her to stand by close aboard us and pick up such as were alive as we might come upon. Also streamed overboard lines, ends of braces, and floats in hopes some might be used by those adrift. By now I had lost count of time and cannot tell thee what we did or how, but sudden out of the confusion our boat was alongside again and we had rigged a gin on larboard main yardarm and were hoisting poor half-drowned fellows— one a young woman mother naked — on deck like jigging mackerel.
In the midst of this a great double-banked barge with a lad in the stern sheets came shooting up on our starboard side and hailed in English, asking to see my manifest. I told him to come aboard and welcome and I would show him, for it was pleasant to hear an English-speaking voice and by his looks he might have been a boy from home. Jumping into our mizzen chains he directed his people to stand by for a hail, and climbing on deck came to attention and asked me if I was the captain of the vessel.
He was desperate quick in his talk and very anxious to know what our lading was. I made out he was a midshipman from H.B.M. frigate Euryalus
— Captain Blackwood — and had been dispatched to board us and learn whether we had such cargo as could be useful to the British fleet. I1 explained, as we were going below, how we were consigned to Leghorn and that I judged I should be held accountable for all goods on board, but he brushed my talk aside and very polite but firm told me to give him my manifest. This done he checked it through, handed it back to me, and hurried on deck again.
Hailing his boat to come alongside he told off ten men and a petty officer to come aboard us — directed me to brace sharp up and, pointing out a great vessel to the north of us that was very much cut up and a wreck so far as spars, ordered me to lay my ship to windward of her and heave to when in that situation, saying his men would assist me to do so with all possible dispatch. Then off he went in his barge to rejoin, as I suppose, the Euryalus and report to his captain.
We had no choice that I could see but to obey this youngster’s orders, as the hands that had come on board were armed with cutlasses and looked as if they knew how to use them. They were a good crew and gave us a hand to get our longboat on board and fast, coil down our gear towing over side, and swing the yards so that we could lay a course for the station indicated. The bo’sun, if that was his title, when I had a chance to talk to him told me that the English under Admiral Lord Nelson’s command had well beaten the French and Spanish who had come out of Cadiz the day before and he thought had taken eighteen or twenty prizes and that the ship we were headed for was the Royal Sovereign with Admiral Collingwood, second in command, on board her.
It was getting toward late afternoon when we reached our station and I had a spell when I could look about. While everywhere seemed destruction and confusion at first, I assure thee I could see that the English were making well-ordered progress toward securing the prizes they had taken and saving all lives they could, now that their enemies had ceased to resist. Boats were passing in all directions and all English vessels were swarming with hands repairing damage — and all this work going forward in spite of the ever growing swell, the forerunner of a gale of wind.
The sun as he sank lower broke through the clouds for a time and lit up everything with a red glare. A ship well to leeward and some north of us blew up in a tower of flame and a noise like the trump of doom. 1 confess to thee I felt homesick then and prayed that I might come safe out of this clinch I’d fallen into, but before I could pity myself too much a half dozen boats came alongside and two officers boarded us and made themselves known. They first thanked me for saving such people as I had and transferred them to their flotilla. They then told me it was reported Lord Nelson had died of wounds received early in the engagement, and handed me a document ordering me — but very polite — to deliver all my deals, staves, parcels of oak timber, apples, tobacco, and certain of the flour lading, “to H.B.M.’s fleet, Admiral Collingwood in command, off Cape Trafalgar, Spain, this twentyfirst day October, A.D. 1805.”
I asked them how I was to get my pay for all this and was told I should retire to the cabin with one of them and arrive at a fair bargain while the other would supervise the discharge of the articles listed. There was no doubt they meant business and were in a hurry, and being powerless to resist I gave orders to our crew to open the hatches and to tally with the English as cargo was discharged into the boats. I found my man fair and reasonable and when we had struck a price on the items he explained that we should go on board the Admiral where the paymaster of the fleet would settle with me. I would tell thee these gentlemen’s names but I was so bustled and disturbed in all these transactions that I have forgot them if, as I suspect, they told me.
When our business was over we went on deck to find the discharging of our holds proceeding like clockwork, and not long after that I found myself in the stern sheets of one of the British boats racing down alongside the great three-decker [Royal Sovereign] that lay plunging and wallowing in the swell. She was painted yellow in broad bands with black ports which gave her a checkered appearance, all smoked and scorched like a lamp chimney with untrimmed wick, and everywhere gouged and splintered and stove in. As she rolled away from us her new coppered bottom would heave out and I could see where she’d received shots below the water line and must be leaking very considerable. We had to jump for it to get onto her Jacob’s ladder as both the boat and she lay so uneasy. We boarded her through a port on the deck above the orlop. Here indeed were the infernal regions. Gear of all sorts smashed and splintered, spills of blood underfoot, soursmelling powder smoke drifting in layers, but mercifully for me all was dim and the crew in squads driving on their various work in a wonderfully ordered fashion. Every plank and timber in the ship was squawking and groaning, and over all I could hear pumps working full bore.
No time for looking about was given me as I was bustled through, over and around to a berth lit by candles in the stern where an officer and a crew of clerks were very busy with books and papers. Here after considerable formalities between my two officers and the paymaster I was identified and tallies presented with prices against the items. A clerk made up the total, which was submitted to me and if correct asked to receipt.
This done, another clerk counted out six canvas bags which I was told contained £500 each and I was handed still another bag with the odd amount counted into it in gold and silver to bring up the sum required. My conductors told off the squad of men they’d brought with them; my money bags were picked up, the paymaster shook my hand, and off we marched to board the boat again. As I went down the side I wondered how in all this confusion my pay would fare and I was not easy in my mind about it until I was back again on the deck of my own ship with all seven of the bags beside me.
One of my good friends (for by now I felt the two officers were friends) had not left the flagship with us but the other was still along and came on board the Ann in order that he might get my receipt for the safe delivery of the specie, all very regular and well ordered and showed what wonderful discipline and good feeling existed throughout this British fleet, and when I expressed my astonishment was told that there was not a man high or low in the thousands in the British navy but what would cheerfully lay down his life to please and oblige Lord Nelson who had just given his life to save them all from the clutches of “ Boney.”
With his receipt buttoned into the pocket of his tight uniform coat my friend thanked me in the name of the Admiral for my compliance with their requests; told me in his opinion a SW gale was brewing up, that our position was six leagues W by N of Cape Trafalgar, and shaking my hand and advising me to get off shore on the larboard tack jumped into his boat and was gone in the darkness which had now fallen.
I can tell thee I took that advice to get off shore as there was every sign of bad weather near-by. There was considerable wind from WSW by this time and the great difficulty at first was to keep the ship slowed down in the press of boats and wreckage so as to avoid collisions. By 10.00 P.M. I judged we had made good about five leagues to NW. I owe this to the Almighty who must have had a special eye to our safety. To get out of that battle field was up helm and down helm, wear and tack in a bad dream of hurry, and growing wind and a heavy sea with lights and boats and hails and gun and rocket signals all around.
We carried lights ns ordered by the officers when we left the ship to board the Admiral. This arrangement of lanterns must have been a night signal of the British, for while we were hailed and cursed considerable by boats, we were not ordered to come to and finally worked clear of the whole raffle and could set more sail and begin to get the ship along on desired course. After midnight it blew a gale and from then until eight next morning we made some progress in a NNW direction under double-reefed topsails and fore topmast staysail. After this hour it blew so strong we hove her to under close-reefed topsails main spencer and storm jib.
This gale lasted four days, two of which wc spent on larboard tack and two on starboard. The distress this weather must have brought to those battle-torn ships we had so lately seen filled me with a great pity for them and a thankfulness for our comparatively easy situation. Meantime I had opportunity to count my money and found it all in gold coin except for the odd silver to make up my full account. After this, considering the possibility of French privateers boarding us beyond the Straits, I hid all ship’s treasure in a rudder trunk by removing and replacing cabin paneling. When this was done I would tell thee of a sudden I felt all abroad, my knees went slack and I had a great desire for hot tea, of which I drank many cups, but could not eat until after a long sleep. All hands had the same complaint but on the third day of the gale, with the sharpness of what we’d seen worn off by repose, all our people had recovered to their normal health.
On 10/27 we passed through the Straits with a strong breeze at SW and rain squalls which allowed us to lay our course for this port.
3
AT this point Aunt Lee ceased reading and a healing silence followed. Gradually I became conscious of the gentle hissing of a green log on the fire and the steady ticking of the clock. These sounds seemed to ease the aching tension that had seized me while Captain Snow and the Ann Alexander rolled and pitched through the sulphurous hours of the other October afternoon so long ago. But it was not until Aunt Lee had left the room, to return presently with the blue jar, and I had a melger slowly dissolving on my tongue, that I came fully awake to the present and the familiar surroundings, while the vividness of suffering bodies “jigged ” from great heaving seas faded to less sanguine shades and outline.
Years later — in fact not so long ago — I stood staring up at the stiff effigy of Lord Nelson surveying London from the top of his lofty column — when suddenly, before my astonished eyes, the now almost forgotten blue jar slowly resolved itself from the soft gray sky until, bulky and clear cut, there it stood aloft, for me the true symbol of Trafalgar.