Edward, a dour-looking man, helped Daniel to
spread out and weigh down his charts on the dining room table. Six
men and over a dozen women then crowded closer to see them. "Before
we ink the agreement that will take you onto my ship and to the
colony of Plymouth, I wanted you to understand the route I will
take, and the length of the passage, and the risks."
First he pointed out England, the Cape Verde islands off the coast of Africa, the Carib Islands, the Floridas, and Massachusetts. He kept circling his finger first to the south west from England to Africa, then straight west to the Caribbean, then north along the Floridas to Massachusetts and then east back to England.
"The trade winds go like this,” or so he had been told. "In a giant circle around the ocean. In the winter there are storms in the north and gentle winds in the south, while in the summer there are storms in the south and gentle winds in the north. That is why we must leave now and go south-west along the coast of Spain and Morocco so that we can catch fair winds to the Carib islands before the great southern storms begin."
"But there are storms here now, and it is freezing even inside the houses,” Edward's wife Anna, a horse-faced woman, pointed out. "And you expect us to survive them in your little ship?"
Yesterday he had given them all a tour of the Swift Daniel at Queenhithe quay just upstream from the Tower of London. With all of them aboard it had seemed like a much smaller ship. "My,” he caught his words for he had almost said 'seer', which to these Brownist religious zealots would be the same as saying 'witch'.
"Uh ... my clan can read the storms, for we have sailed the North Sea since time began. February will be very cold but the winds will be light and from the north east. As they blow us further south, our frozen butter will become softer and softer, until it completely melts. When it melts we will turn west across the great ocean. We will be cold for a week at the most."
The early and frigid winter had decided, finally decided, his whole clan that they must think seriously about moving their village of Wellenhay to a warmer place. It was not uncommon for the freshwater Fens to freeze over for a few days each winter, but this year even the salty Fens near Wellenhay island had frozen over, and not just for a few days. All of January they had been able to walk all the way to Ely on the ice. His friend Robert Blake had supplied the crew from the port of Lyme, where times were hard because few trading ships used that port anymore.
Robert was also coming along, and since Daniel was unknown to the crew, yet they had all crewed for the Blake family before, Robert had been elected captain. It was yet another blow to Daniel's ego, but he could not fault their choice. Daniel's only experience at mastering a ship was in the North Sea, while Robert had years ago mastered a ship on a voyage to Morocco which now would be the first leg of their route to the New World. He had promised Robert that he would never confuse the roles of ship's owner and ship's master.
"So we will sail southwest along the coast of the continent, passed the Canary Islands, until we reach the Cape Verde islands, and then ..."
"But those islands are Portuguese,” Edward interrupted. "And most of the way is in Spanish waters including the Canaries and the coast of Africa."
"Our king, bless his neck, wants to be a friend to the Papist kingdoms,” Daniel explained. "England is at peace with both Spain and Portugal, and my ship is registered in Bridgwater and sails under English colors. Now, as I was saying, we will take on water on the African coast and wait for a promising wind and then sail straight across to the Caribe. We will then explore the islands we pass as we sail north towards your Plymouth Colony. We will stop long enough in Plymouth for you to make a decision on whether to stay there or not, and then we will cross back to England with the summer winds of the northern ocean."
"But that is such a long way around,” Horse-face pointed out as she moved her finger in a straight line from England to Plymouth. "Why not go straight across? I think you are taking the long way only so you can search for a good island for your own village."
"That is not true, not true at all,” Daniel replied. He moved his finger clockwise around in a circle on the chart. "Pretend that my finger is the winds. In the center, where my finger never touches, there is no trustworthy wind. We could be becalmed for a month, or swung around on fickle winds. The route I explained is the route that every ship takes. It was the Portuguese explorers who first discovered this Volta-do-Mar, the Turn of the Sea."
"But it is such a long way around,” Horse-face insisted. "How long will it take?"
"On a sailing ship, the shortest way is the way of the wind. If we are lucky with the winds, two weeks to the Canaries, four to the Caribe, six to Plymouth, and four back to England. So three months if we do not stop anywhere."
"And if we are not lucky?"
He did not like Horse-face's attitude, but he stopped himself from telling her that it could take the rest their lives. The crew would have understood such a jest because such was the reality of sailing the seas, but not these landlubbers. Such a jest would just frighten them. "As much as double if we are very unlucky, but that time would not be spent on the sea, but in a port waiting for better winds."
"Unless we are becalmed."
He wanted to say 'or eaten by sea monsters' but instead he said, "Yesterday on the ship I told you why we chose the Swift for this voyage. It is a galliot, and therefore is as fast under oar as under sail. We will never be becalmed for longer than the daylight hours, because in the cool of the night all of us can take turns on the oars."
"So how long will we be delayed while you search for a warm island?" Edward asked. "There are so many islands." It was a fair question.
"I know exactly what I am looking for, so most islands that we pass will be of no interest. You see, my clan are dairymen, and fishermen, and traders so we need an island with dry land and water for our herds, and fish for our nets, and close to the trade routes of ships, yet hidden from view and easy to defend. If ever we find such a place then we will stop for a few days, or a week, to explore all around it. But this you know already, for it is why I am charging you only half of what other ships would charge you for passage."
"You mentioned risks, what risks?" Edward's cousin, a London carpenter, asked. These folk were all from London. The few men were tradesmen setting out to start a new life in the New World. Mostly the passengers were women on their way to join husbands who were already in New England. Two of the women were taking their young children. None of them knew anything about the sea, or about making their way beyond the cobbles of a town.
"I assume that you mean other than the usual risks of a sea voyage?" Daniel took care answering this. He needed to be truthful without making the long list of risks seem daunting. "There is a small risk that other ships will try to capture the Swift. England is a peace with the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and France, so their fleets will help us rather than hurt us."
"What about pirates?"
"Ah, yes, there are pirates. The Swift is less at risk from pirates than the normal pinnacles and fluyts that sail these routes. The Swift is a galliot, which is the type of ship favoured with African pirates because it is fast under sail, fast under oar, and very fast under both. Because we can row into the wind we will be able to escape most other ships. On your visit to the ship you saw our cannons. Once we are in warmer waters I will train the crew to be gunners, as I was trained by the Dutch navy.
Besides, this is one of the safest times to be an English ship. Ever since the Dutch defeated the Spanish and Portuguese fleets off our south coast, the Dutch fleet has controlled the seas, even the Caribbean. I bought the Swift from the Dutch Navy in good faith, and they will keep that faith by defending us from pirates.
There is the risk of sickness. In the heat of the tropics, water and food quickly spoil. Sun fever is a problem for fair-eyed folk like ours. There are tropical sicknesses that we have never heard of. There are plants and snakes and fish and flies that we have never seen before, so we do not know which are poisonous. The greatest risk is that many of us will fall sick at the same time. We are not so foolish as to allow that to happen."
With a nod and a smile Daniel left Edward's folk to speak amongst themselves, while he walked over to the short, dark-haired man leaning against the far wall. Together they moved through the house to the front room.
"Well, you convinced me," Robert Blake told him. He looked around at the spacious room. "I think the Cromwells did well in buying this house. They will be happy here. Lots of room for their children."
"Betty's father bought the house for them,” Daniel replied. "And he will hold Oliver's feet to the fire until the debt is repaid. So, I hear that Oliver has made enemies of the king and the House of Lords."
"He has become John Pym's bulldog. By that I mean that he makes all of Pym's fiery speeches for him, so that Pym can dance forward afterwards and pretend to be the balanced diplomat to quell the tempers and bargain for whatever serves the reformers best."
"And yet nothing gets done."
"That is because everyone is spending too much time wooing the House of Lords," Robert replied. "The Commons woos them to get them to pass the Bill of Attainder against Lord Strafford, you know, the king's deputy in Ireland. The king woos the lords to get them to block it."
"What is this attainder thingy?"
"It means taking away all rights from a person. His right to wealth and property, inheritance and titles, and even his right to life."
"But Strafford was just one of many. What about all the rest of Charlie's henchmen?"
"Ah, but he is the easiest target." Robert explained. "If we can force through the Attainder Bill for him, then we can force it through for others."
"But the king would be a fool not to stop it. Who knows where that may lead to, even to his own neck."
"Well, after they win against Strafford the Reformers will go after Archbishop Laud. We must do that to keep the Scottish Parliament on our side. Personally, I think we should exclude the death sentence from the Bill of Attainder. Take everything from them and their families, and then transport them to the New World. If they were left alive then Charlie and the lords would stop blocking the bill. To my way of thinking it is more important to stop the tradition of inheriting power and privilege, than to take bloody revenge against a few men who, if not for their wealth, would be nobodies."
"Edward is waving to me that they are ready to sign the contract,” Daniel warned his friend. "Come, we must both sign it."
* * * * *
All pilgrims, all idle crew, and all animals had been cleared from the upper decks and sent down into the cargo hold where it was safer and relatively warm. The only animals they carried on the Swift were chickens for fresh eggs and sheep for fresh milk, and those only because four of the thirty pilgrims aboard were under three years of age.
Up on deck it was definitely not safe or warm. You couldn't walk without slipping on the pebbles of ice on the planking. You couldn't grab anything with your bare hand without your skin freezing to it. You had to wrap a loose knit scarf over your mouth else your breath froze to your beard. The worse part, though, was that Robert had not stopped complaining for his entire watch. "If the wind changes now, Danny, we'll not be able to trim the sails. The lines are frozen in the blocks."
"I know."
"The freezing spray is weighing down the sails. If they don't collapse they will certainly tear."
"I know."
"Yer carrying too much ..." Robert repeated yet again.
"I know, I know, I know. And just what do you expect me to do about it? Our only choice is to use the rudder to keep the sails from beating themselves to death, and our only chance is to outrun this cold before the wind changes."
"Yer carryin' too much sail."
"Well, yes I am, and do you know what.? There is absolutely nothing I can do about it, now is there?" The Swift was lateen rigged, which was normal on Mediterranean ships, and on the caravels that the Portuguese had used to explore the world, but rare on ships of the northern seas because of how clumsy they were to tack. Tacking meant lifting the top end of the lateen yard over the top of the mast. Not easy in calm seas, never mind northern seas.
Luckily the Swift had been re-rigged by a Dutch naval yard. It was still a lateen with each of its short masts crossed diagonally by a long yard to hold up to the long edge of the triangular lateen sail. The difference was that it was the center point of the yard which was affixed to the mast. This was a simple yet ingenious solution to the danger of tacking a lateen and typical of modern Dutch ingenuity. They had solved the problem that had plagued lateen rigs since the time of the Phoenicians.
On the Swift all they need do to tack was to haul the top end of the yard down until it was horizontal, and then swing the horizontal yard to the other side of the mast so they could reverse which end of the yard was forward and down. Best of all, this could all be done without climbing the mast. Even if something went horribly wrong, they could leave the great yard horizontal as if it were a square rig but carrying a triangular sail.
The two triangular sails were now spread out over opposite gunnels like immense butterfly wings so that the smaller rear sail would not block the wind of the larger fore sail. There was nothing wrong with running like this before a light wind, but you had to trim them fast if there was any change in the angle or the strength of the wind, otherwise the huge force of the sails could push the bow or the gunnels under the waves.
Today, with the halyards frozen in the blocks, they were but one good gust of wind away from a nose dive. Even if the blocks hadn't been frozen, it would be suicide for any man to haul on a line with the decks so coated in icy pebbles. "How long until sunrise?" Daniel asked. The skies were clear to the horizon, which accounted for the frigid air pushing them away from land. He could see a faint glow of light to the east. France was over there, somewhere.
"An hour, but it's so cold that the sun won't make any difference to the frozen decks."
"It will if we spread charcoal dust on the decks. It will help the sun to melt those damned ice pebbles. Then at least the crew can move about."
"To do what exactly?" Robert spoke the cruel truth of their situation. "Shit Danny, take a look at those tell tales." The colorful ribbons nailed to the top of the masts were no longer facing forward. "The wind is shifting!" There was panic in his voice. With the tackle frozen they were at the mercy of the wind and had only intelligent use of the rudder between them and disaster.
Robert dived for the spokes of the wheel to help Daniel to turn it. It was hard steering because it was half frozen in place. Together they inched the bow ever so slightly east, checked the tell tales, inched it again, checked again, inched again. And so it went for a half an hour until they were sailing on a course almost towards France. And then Daniel felt the most wonderful thing, a drop of ice water running down his nose. The ice on the yard above his head was melting. The freshening wind was from the ocean, not from the continent, and it was warm enough to melt ice.
"You've got horseshoes up yer arse, Danny,” Robert muttered into the frozen breath on his scarf.
"So do we all,” Daniel replied.
* * * * *
For two weeks they had made good time sailing southwest using the light winds from the ocean. Much of their route had been well over the horizon from any land so as to stay out of sight of the Spanish and Portuguese navies, and more important, the Barbary Pirates. Every day the wind had been warmer, and every day the sun had been warmer. Today however, the wind had swung around to be off the continent rather than off the sea. A different continent. It was hot and dry and dusty, both the continent and the wind from it.
The pilgrim women, after long days of not much to do, had been busy all morning stretching lines and hanging clothes and blankets over them to dry them and sun them and air them. Everyone was running about lightly dressed and enjoying the absence of the funk of damp wool, and the scratch of it against their skin. Behind the blankets near the starboard gunnels, the women and children were taking turns bathing under buckets full of warm, clean sea water. Those women waiting for their turn were watching the crew bathe on the other side of the ship.
"Here she comes," Daniel warned Robert, who was oblivious to anything other than scanning the coast of Morocco with the looker in hopes of spotting the headland that would assure him that they were well south of the pirate republic or Salee that controlled the northern Barbary Coast of Morocco. By 'she' he meant horse-faced Anna, who was quite pleasant when she wasn't complaining, which was never.
"Captain,” she always called him captain, "have your crew no shame?"
Robert looked towards the nude men scrubbing a winter of filth and funk from their bodies. "The shame of fit healthy bodies, or the shame of scrubbing them clean?"
Daniel quoted, "Shame is in the eye of the beholder, mam. If you went and washed their backs for them, they would be finished all the sooner."
Robert shot him a hard stare to shut him up but Daniel just snickered, so to Anna he said, "Madam, could you be so kind as to have the bedding folded and put back in the hold? We may need to change course soon, and I would hate for anything to blow overboard." She stubbornly stared back at him, but then relented and went off to tell her women.
"What course change?" Daniel asked, defensive of his skill as a helmsman. "I am making good time, and with no wallow."
"There are sails ahead of us. A lot of sails. Once the women have folded their things, point her further out to sea."
It took the women an hour to finish bathing and fold the laundry and carry it to safety. By the time the Swift changed course the sails were no longer on the horizon but in clear view less than two miles ahead. Robert was staring through the looker, both at the ships ahead, and at the headlands. "I know where we are. I can just see the great walls of the fortress at Qualidia. That means that the closest safe port is Safi about a half day's sail south. At least I hope Safi is still safe for us."
"Do you still have friends there?" Daniel asked hopefully.
"The uncle I was named for used to be a factor in Safi and he was friends with the Emperor of Morocco. To my knowledge he is still there, though I doubt he is still the agent for the Barbary Company. Not since the company split into two."
Robert rarely spoke of his times in Morocco and Daniel never pushed him to. Every man eventually did things that he would rather forget. From what he had been told about the Barbary Coast, it was a place of nightmares. The seas around the pirate Republic of Salee were the home hunting ground of corsairs in fast ships, and Salee had a slave market that traded in Christians.
Robert didn't know what to make of the ships ahead. It looked like a dozen small ships trying to waylay one large trading fluyt. Certainly the smaller ships, all lateen rigged, were sailing rings around the fluyt even though the fluyt had every sail filled. "Damn, the fluyt is flying Dutch colors,” he said as he pulled the looker away from his eye. "I suppose we are obligated to go and make sure that they are not under attack. It's your ship, Danny. You can forbid it of me and I will accept your judgement." Daniel's answer was to change course towards the ships.
Robert opened his mouth and began yelling orders in a loud voice. "All women and children get below decks! All men find your weapons and report to your cannon. Load everything with pistol shot and lye to repel boarders. This is not a drill." Daniel had drilled the men in the cannons every morning this week, and once a day even fired some powder off just to show what the noise and smoke was like. Only once had he drilled them using cannon balls, for balls were an attacking load and they had no desire to attack anyone. Their best defense was to run, and if they couldn't run, then grapeshot was their next best tactic.
Once the men were running to do his bidding, Robert walked over and loaded the swivel gun. Daniel had brought just one of his two Malay swivel guns on the Swift, so as not to leave his village's other ship, the Freisburn, defenseless. He loaded it with powder only, for he would use it as a warning shot to get the other ships' attention. "Tell me when I should fire it, Danny." Daniel could see the all the decks from the wheel, so he would know when the cannons were all loaded and primed.
"Give them your warning,” Daniel said after about a half an hour. They were now within cannon ball range of the ships, but not yet within grapeshot range. The swivel gun was a mini cannon, more like a giant blunderbuss than a ship's cannon, but it boomed like a cannon. The warning shot had the strangest effect on the many small ships that were circling the great fluyt. They broke off circling and instead changed course towards the Swift. "Shit!" was Daniel's only comment.
Robert had a few more choice words to say than just that. He was interrupted by Daniel saying, "The fluyt is signaling to us. It's the flag for 'friend'. Does he mean him or the flotilla of small ships? Does he mean for us to come and help a friend, or that he doesn't need help because the other ships are friends. Bloody signal flags." Daniel thought for a second. "If I change course and go straight for the smaller ships, I will be on a fast tack. At that speed they won't be able to grapple us, and they would be fools not to get out of our way. What do you think, Rob?"
"Do it."
Daniel spun the wheel until the bow of the Swift was pointing directly at the line of small lateen ships. The sails groaned at the rigging as they filled, and the ship heeled slightly with the power in the sails, and the Swift gained speed and kept on gaining. On this sideways angle to the wind, they could sail triple the speed of the wind, because the sails never ran out of fresh wind. As he expected, the small ships were careening out of the way. Just as the Swift came even with the stern of the fluyt, Daniel spun the wheel again and the bow turned into the wind and immediately slowed and then drifted close to the fluyt.
Robert had a lad run up Dutch colors under their English colors, and then put his hailing horn to his lips and yelled out in Dutch, "We are not pirates, despite the lines of the ship." The Swift was a lateen galliot more at home with corsairs of the Barbary Coast than English traders. "Do you need help?" The ship was a fluyt out of Haarlem and fluyts were known for being efficient at carrying cargo but helpless in a fight. He wondered at such a ship traveling these pirate waters without an escort.
"We are good, for we are protected by a passport from the Emperor of Morocco,” came the reply from the other ship's master. "The local ships were trying to convince us to take on some Qualidia folk as passengers to Safi. Jan Janszoon is now the governor of Qualidia fortress, so you can understand our reluctance to stop and take them aboard."
At the name Janszoon, Robert shuddered involuntarily and seemed to lose his thoughts. Janszoon was one of the leaders of the Barbary Corsairs, though he had originally been commissioned as a privateer by the Dutch to raid Spanish shipping. He and another Dutch privateer-turned-Mussulman-pirate by the name of De Veenboer had pillaged far beyond their original privateer license.
Janszoon had at one time been the President of the pirate Republic of Salee, north of here and it was those pirates who had preyed on the coasts of Devon and Cornwall and Ireland, and had kept a base on Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel. If not for them, King Charles would not have created the Ships Money tax to refit his navy. But no, this was not what caused Robert to freeze in place. He had his own personal reasons to fear Janszoon.
Both ships had spilled wind from their sails so they could run in parallel while the masters yelled greetings to each other. It meant that the six small, lateen rigged ships had once again caught up. The closer they came, the more nervous were the Swift's gunners. Each of the ships was manned by at least a dozen men, all of them looking very much like pirates. One of these ships was maneuvering between the fluyt and the Swift, which may have been a boarding tactic because the Swift could not fire grape at it without hitting the fluyt.
Standing at the bow of the ship was a woman, and not a local woman either, because she wore Dutch skirts and her fair hair and pink face were not covered from the eyes of men. "Take me aboard!" she was yelling. "Take me home to Holland or at least take me to Safi where I can buy passage on another ship. Take me anywhere, but away from here!"
"Is it a trick?" Daniel asked Robert suspiciously, "to get us to slow enough to be boarded?"
The sight of the woman brought Robert out of his stupor enough to hail her in Dutch, "Who are you and where do you hail from?"
"I am a Christian woman from Haarlem, and I beg to you take me away from Qualidia."
Daniel called softly to his friend. "Does she expect us to believe that she is escaping from some danger, and yet she has an escort of six boats? Boats filled with what look like coastal pirates? It must be a trick."
"Trick or not, it has worked. The fluyt is spilling more wind. They are slowing to take her aboard. Swing the Swift in behind the fluyt's stern so we can keep the rest of these buggers away from her by threatening them with a broadside."
Robert's tactic worked. The other boats kept their distance while the fluyt took the woman aboard. Once the fluyt was moving again, all of the local boats put about and made for Qualidia. "What now?" Daniel asked.
"Trail the fluyt. She carries a passport that will have her welcomed into Safi, and hopefully we will be welcomed as her escort.
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Pistoleer - Slavers by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14