Chapter One

 

June 1766—somewhere off the coast of the Bahamas

 

“BETTER REPENT NOW, BOYS, AND get your souls in order,” said Captain Carl Phillips, laughing as he observed his sorry-looking crew. “If you think it’s hot now, just imagine what Hell will be like.”

Adam Fletcher wanted to chuckle. In fact, the dark-haired eighteen-year-old tried, but the best he could do in the stifling heat on board the deck of the Carolina Gypsy was to mop the sweat off of his face and from around the back of his neck with his handkerchief and let out a little “Heh!” as he looked over at his friend Martin, who was equally miserable.

“Damned doldrums,” said Charlie Phillips, the ship’s mate and younger brother of the captain as he leaned back against the rail and looked up at the mast, as though if he watched the sails long enough they would begin to move.

For two days the sixty-ton Bermuda sloop had been stalled somewhere east of Nassau in windless seas.

The blond-haired, ruddy-complected Captain Phillips was an experienced sailor who had spent plenty of time sitting under a scorching sun in still ocean waters, as had his younger brother, Charlie, who at age twenty-four was about eight years his junior.

The Phillipses were from a long seafaring tradition. In fact, their father and all of their uncles had been sailors and sailmakers. And as was the case with all of the men employed by Rogers’s Shipping Company, the Phillipses had a personal connection to Emmanuel Rogers. In their case, their grandfather and one of their uncles had sailed with Emmanuel during his pirating days.

There were only seven men aboard the Gypsy for this trip: Captain Carl Phillips; Mate Charlie Phillips; three regular seamen—Fred Canady, Ed Willis, and Ricky Jones; a cooper, Martin Smith; and the cooper’s apprentice, Adam. Their final destination was Havana, but first they had to make a stop in Nassau before continuing to sail south and then west towards Havana.

Captain Phillips didn’t seem fazed by the stifling heat of the windless seas, but Charlie, who had an anxious disposition, never had gotten used to it. For Adam and Martin, however, it was their first time passing through anything like it.

“Hey, Cap’n,” said Adam. “What’s the longest stretch you’ve spent without moving like this?”

Captain Phillips pressed his lips together pensively, then grinned and said, “About a week, I reckon.”

Charlie, who was the spitting image of his older brother, only thinner, studied him for a minute, then said, “When? I don’t remember us ever bein stuck out like this for a week.”

Carl laughed. “Maybe you haven’t but I have, when you was a little thing.”

Charlie rolled his eyes to express his doubt.

Martin made no effort to hide his skepticism. “When was it, then, that you were stuck like this for a week?”

“One of the first times I went out on the Gypsy—’bout twelve years ago. Abner Blake was the captain then. And I didn’t say we was stuck for a week. I said it was about a week. We took her to Bermuda, and we went through one stretch where we were stuck in irons in seas that looked like a lake.”

“Were you scared?” asked Adam.

The captain nodded his head low and said, “What do you think?” He laughed. “Damn right I was scared! I thought we was all gonna get cooked under the hot sun. ’Twas even worse than the sun we’re under now, bein it was the middle of August then rather than the start of June.”

Martin pulled off the cloth he’d tied around his head to keep his sandy curls off of his face and used it to wipe his brow. “What about you, Adam? You scared now?”

Adam rolled his eyes at his friend and gave a dismissive “Tsk!” He said, “Well, it’s hot. I’m sweating like a pig, and I won’t say that I haven’t considered the possibility we might die out here, but no, I’m not scared. Mostly just impatient. How ’bout you? You scared?”

Martin wrinkled his brow and chuckled. “No.” He swallowed hard and said, “Of course not.”

“I’m just ready to get to Havana . . . Get this cargo unloaded and have a few hours of shore leave so I can take care of my business.”

“Good Lord, boy!” came an unmistakable twangy voice. Adam knew who it was, but he still turned around to see that it was indeed Fred Canady. The straw-haired thirtysomething-year-old was coming up the ladder from below deck after disappearing for about twenty minutes to go to the head. “I reckon we’ll all be glad to get to Havana, so we can stop hearin you go on and on about your business,” Canady said.

“Right. Because your endless stories about all those friendly women who you find in every port are so much more interesting to listen to. To listen to things the way you tell ’em, it’s a wonder you aren’t dead from some kind of pox,” Adam remarked, laughing.

Canady tipped his head and slyly cocked his eyebrow. “Guess I’m just lucky,” he said.

“Or full of bilge,” said Martin. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?” he asked. “I’ve seen oysters that are better lookin! I reckon any woman goin home with you would expect payment in advance.”

The others all howled with laughter.

“It’s my dazzlin personality they love,” quipped Canady, unembarrassed. “We can’t all be as handsome as you, Smith.”

Cocky as ever, Martin stroked his chiseled, stubbly face and flashed his blue eyes. “No, I don’t reckon you can.”

The banter was all in good fun. Fred Canady was without question a rough-looking man. He was one of those people whose face looked angry all the time, in spite of the fact that he was a joker at heart. Martin Smith, on the other hand, was known throughout Carteret County as an unabashed Casanova. In fact, he’d once even tried to work his charms on Adam Fletcher’s thirty-five-year-old mother, but much to Adam’s relief she had the good sense to be unmoved by Martin’s advances.

It was a wonder the two had become such good friends, but at twenty-six, Martin was the youngest cooper at Rogers’s Shipping Company, and in the year since Adam had been bound apprentice to Emmanuel Rogers, Martin had become like a big brother to him.

The previous spring, when Adam had first learned he and Martin would be traveling to Havana on board Emmanuel’s sloop as the ship’s coopers, he could barely contain his excitement. His mother, Mary, on the other hand, fell apart when she learned he’d be making the trip. After all, she’d just gotten over nearly losing him at the hands of a nefarious plot by another local merchant. In an effort to calm Mary’s nerves, Emmanuel promised her he would wait and send Adam the following spring—after his eighteenth birthday—rather than having him go on the autumn trip, and Martin assured her that he, along with the whole crew of the Gypsy, would look after Adam and make sure to bring him back in one piece. Everyone knew she was not at all happy about the situation, but she acknowledged that it was a small comfort knowing everyone would be looking out for him, and said she’d hold Martin and Emmanuel personally responsible if anything happened to her son on the voyage. Her threat had no teeth, as there was nothing she could’ve done if something did happen to Adam, but they all thought so highly of Mary that no one wanted to disappoint her.

 

THE SUN WAS ABOUT TO set when tall and lanky Ed Willis, a blond-haired twentysomething, announced, “Look! The topsail!” He pointed up the mast as a gentle breeze was causing the uppermost sail on the vessel to begin to flap. Just as the men all looked up to see it, the jib and mainsail began to puff up and fill with wind. The men, who for the most part were hardly religious, cheered and were nevertheless thanking God for getting them moving again.

Within hours, though, their joy turned to new fear as they moved from fair winds into a violent storm. The men were being pelted with fast and heavy rain that came down in sheets, so much that they could barely see. Their foul weather coats—at least they might be called that—were made of canvas that had been waterproofed with a coat of tar, but they could do little to help keep them dry in the current conditions.

“Are we in a hurricane, Cap’n?” Adam yelled over the noisy torrent.

“Not this one, Mr. Fletcher,” he shouted back. “I reckon it’s just a squall. Makes no difference, though! We have to push through it either way.”

Adam nodded. “Yes, sir.”

None of the men slept that night, as they all had their positions on deck tending the sails and the lines.