The Story

Captain Isaac Biddlecomb is en route to Philadelphia where the Charlemagne is to become part of the new Continental Navy. Along with the usual suspects aboard the brig is Virginia Stanton, to whom Biddlecomb has finally proclaimed his love and to his great relief has found it reciprocated. Also aboard, and less welcome, is John Adams, Congressman from Massachusetts, who has hitched a ride back to the capitol.

After an unpleasant brush with the British frigate Glasgow the Charlemagne arrives in Philadelphia, where more surprises await Biddlecomb. The Naval Committee, in their on-going attempt to appease the Southern Colonies, appoints a North Carolina man, Roger Tottenhill, to be first officer of the Charlemagne in Rumstick's place. Unfortunately, the man is an intolerable bore, and Biddlecomb does not look forward to serving with him, but his attempts to get rid of him are for naught. And Tottenhill, as an added bonus, brings with him thirty recruits (all sprung from prison) who have among them one Amos Hackett, a sea-lawyer who's sole amusement in life is to spread discontent among ship's crews.

With this unfortunate crew, Biddlecomb et al sail with Commodore Ezek Hopkins and the American fleet on the first ever naval and marine corps operation in United States naval history.

Author's Note

The Continental Risque is perhaps the most historically accurate book I have written, insofar as it involves an actual historical event and sticks very close to the facts of that event, using all of the real characters involved. In fact, the crew of the Charlemagne and the Stantons are the only fictional characters in the story. In an effort to make certain of the accuracy of the book, my wife and I bravely spent a week in Nassau, walking the path of the American invaders, seeing the sights that they saw, drinking the fruit drinks they drank, lying on the beaches that they lay on...

Sticking so close to the facts of the thing, it turned out, presented some real obstacles. The foremost was the ease with which the Americans took Nassau. The Nassauvians did little more than retreat from one post to the next, until finally they capitulated with never a casualty on either side. Great for the original American invaders, but no so hot for dramatic purposes. But of course Biddlecomb does not get off that easy - there are problems enough aboard the Charlemagne to keep him hopping. For research on this book I was able to draw on the few journals still extant, along with official reports on both sides, British and American.

Chapter One

The Sound

Captain Isaac Biddlecomb turned and stared over the taffrail of the Charlemagne, brig-of-war. Four miles astern and dead in line with their wake was a British frigate, a powerful enemy in all out pursuit. Again.

The only odd thing about being thus pursued was how familiar it felt, as if being chased by the Royal navy was a daily routine. To be sure, they had been chased so often in the past year that Biddlecomb had reason to feel that way. And while the familiarity failed to ameliorate his fear, it did much to mitigate it.

They were being overtaken, of that there was no doubt. But in their favor, they were half way down Long Island Sound, heading for Hell Gate and the East River and the many islands and inlets around New York, with no more than four hours of sunlight left. And that, he felt, with a confidence born of experience, made their escape a near certainty.

He considered the sensation brewing in his gut, the vague terror that was as familiar as the sight of the frigate astern. He was reminded of the time, fifteen years earlier, when as an ordinary seaman he had discovered that laying out on a yard to reef sail in a howling storm was no longer a new and terrifying experience. It had become, rather, an old, familiar terrifying experience.

And so it was here, in early November of 1775, after nearly a year of fighting in a conflict that was not quite a war, for an end on which few agreed, Isaac Biddlecomb found himself once more in the all too familiar position of being chased by a frigate of the Royal navy.

He had, in the past year, been chased by the frigate Rose all over Narragansett Bay. He had been chased by the Cerberus through the Caribbean and through these northern waters after leading a mutiny aboard the brig Icarus, a vessel of the Royal Navy aboard which he had been impressed. He had been chased by the frigate Glasgow in Bermuda in his ill-fated attempted to liberate British gunpowder from that island, and chased by the two-decker Somerset clear across Boston Harbor to the American lines.

So Biddlecomb was not overly surprised, when, that morning, with the Charlemagne just south of Block Island, the lookout aloft reported the sails of what might well be a man-of-war hull down on the eastern horizon.

And when the strange ship hauled her wind and set studdingsails aloft and alow in what was without question pursuit, Biddlecomb had ordered the brig's canvas stretched, had turned her bow northwest to pass Montauk Point and run into Long Island Sound, and had settled into the monotony of eluding a stern chase. He was tired of being chased, and wondered if his grudgingly chosen career as a naval officer would ever entail attacking, as opposed to running away.

"I must say, Captain, your calm demeanor does much to bolster the confidence of your passengers," a feminine voice broke the quiet on the quarterdeck. Biddlecomb pulled his gaze from the frigate's sails and looked over at the leeward side where Virginia Stanton leaned against the rail.

She was dressed in a hooded caraco jacket over a silk dress that flared out at the waist and draped down off of the wire hoops of her false hips. Her hands were thrust into either end of a fur muff to defend against the cold winter air. From beneath her hood and cotton mob cap her brown hair tumbled down around her ruddy face, her girlish smattering of freckles, her playful smile. Peaking out under the long skirts Biddlecomb could see the toes of her old and well-worn riding boots. Despite himself and his assumed air of detachment, he smiled as well.

"I am pleased that I can be of some comfort to you, Miss Stanton," Biddlecomb said, smiling broader still at their sham of formality. He wanted to rush across the deck and grab her in his arms and kiss her, a long, lingering kiss, and would have done so had they been alone.

"With any luck at all we'll shake them off through Hell Gate or around Long Island," he said instead.

"Hell Gate, is it?" said William Stanton, Virginia's father, who stood beside her at the leeward rail. Stanton squinted at the hilly shoreline of Connecticut, ten miles north of them, then at Long Island, ten miles south. The Charlemagne was running nearly dead down wind in a fifteen knot breeze, running west south west through Long Island Sound toward the point where that bay narrowed into the East River, with it's cluster of islands and the wild dog leg turn through Hell Gate.

"Tide's on the ebb now," Stanton observed, "Water'll be running like a son of a bitch through Hell Gate by the time we get there."

It was an observation by an experienced mariner, and Biddlecomb could hear no implied criticism in Stanton's tone. Stanton, he knew, understood the situation perfectly. There was every chance that the frigate would not dare follow them through the treacherous passage. It was very rare for big ships to go through that way; indeed it was rare for any ship, big or small, to risk itself among the rocks, islands and back eddies of that twisted passage, particularly at the height of the ebb when the water crashed through the Gate like a flash flood.

And even if the frigate did dare to follow them, and assuming they both made it, on the other side were any number of rivers and bays around New York in which they could hide or at least keep ahead of their enemy until nightfall. Once it was dark the Charlemagne could disappear. Virginia's confidence was not misplaced, or so Biddlecomb assured himself, and her obvious admiration of his boldness in turn bolstered his own confidence.

"Did I ever tell you, Isaac, of the time I took the old Providence through Hell Gate, back in the winter of '64...or '65, one of those?" Stanton asked.

"No sir, I don't believe you did," Biddlecomb lied, running his eyes over the Charlemagne's rig and her waist as Stanton launched into the story, as well worn as Virginia's boots. From long experience Biddlecomb nodded and smiled at the appropriate spots but his thoughts were on the condition of the vessel under his command. To any observer a mile or so away, or to anyone unfamiliar with the way of ships, she was a lovely sight; well proportioned, her sails set and drawing, her rig taught and blacked down.

But a closer look would reveal the crazing in that facade. Her mainmast was fished five feet above the deck; stout lengths of timber lashed around the circumference of the mast to take the strain where the actual wood had been nearly shot through. The red paint on the inside of the bulwark and the linseed oil on the outboard side were variegated shades of dark and light where sections of the brig's side had been knocked flat and then repaired and freshly finished. The main topgallant sail and the fore topsail were brand new and stood out from their worn and much patched brethren aloft. The Charlemagne was a tired vessel.

It was over a month before that she had fought a running battle with the two-decker Somerset, racing across Boston Harbor, and was nearly beaten to death before Biddlecomb ran her aground at the feet of the American Army encamped in the hills surrounding the city and laying siege to the ministerial army there. Along with the Charlemagne Biddlecomb had brought in a prize, the Mayor of Plymouth, loaded to the deckhead with gunpowder, that precious compound of which the American forces were in desperate need.

The praise, bordering on adoration that had followed that feat had been overwhelming. For the next month, after working the battered Charlemagne up the Charles River to Cambridge, Biddlecomb had seen to the Charlemagne's repairs during the day, and allowed himself to be toasted in all circles by night. In a year of novel situations he found himself in the most novel, and most pleasant of all. He was a hero.

They did the best that they could, setting the Charlemagne to rights, but Cambridge was not a maritime center and the facilities for repairing a vessel were less than adequate. So rather than hope for a new mainmast they split their damaged spars into long fishes and bound them with rope to the mast, and patched their sails in those instances where there was material enough left to patch.

And in those cases where the canvas could not be patched, or the lines long spliced or the spars fished they tried their best to wrest stores from the few chandlers in the area, but acquiring new supplies, it turned out, was even more difficult then repairing old.

On the first of November the General Court of Massachusetts had passed an act to issue letters of marque to ship owners with a thought to go privateering, and these private men-of-war were gobbling up stores at a prodigious rate. So confident were the privateersmen in the profitability of their ventures, and so eager were they to get to sea, that they were quite willing to give the chandlers three times the asking price for needed materials, a largess that the beleaguered Continental Army could never hope to match. And so the poor Charlemagne, commissioned by General Washington, whose authority over naval matters was at best questionable, had to settle for the scraps left by the privateers.

He had written to William Stanton in Bristol, informing him of his whereabouts and the events that had led him there. He had written to Virginia as well, and if he had not, at the last instant, been able to pour out his affections with as much abandon as he had intended, he nonetheless made it clear that he was not writing with any sense of mere platonic affection.

A dozen times at least he had informed Ezra Rumstick, his long time friend and the Charlemagne's first lieutenant, that he would be leaving for Bristol forthwith. And every time something - an unplanned meeting with General Washington, crucial negotiations with a chandler, some aspect of the Charlemagne's repair that required his attention - had come up and stopped him. So he planned and waited and fretted about Virginia's feelings for him.

It was midway through their third week in Cambridge when Biddlecomb resigned himself to the idea that he would not be going to Bristol any time soon, and that there would be no new mainmast. The next morning he began the job of fishing the old.

It was a job that he was supervising personally, and by mid-afternoon it was all but done. "Vast heaving!" he called out to the men on the capstan. The line running from the main mast to the capstan was hauled nearly to the breaking point. He put his hands on it and tried to flex it back and forth but it was unyielding. Along its length drops of tar were oozed from the strands.

"That's well," Biddlecomb said. He glanced over at the wooden dock to which the Charlemagne was tied. William Stanton was standing there, and beside him Virginia, familiar faces from another place. He stared for a minute, confused, trying to place those faces with this location. Then Stanton leapt on to the gangplank and ran aboard, arms outstretched and embraced him, unaware of or unconcerned about the tar with which he was liberally splattered.

Biddlecomb squeezed the old man in turn, and looked over Stanton's shoulder at Virginia, still standing on the dock. She smiled, her wide smile, in parts amused and mocking and affectionate and gave him a tiny wave.

He was about to call out to her, his mouth was open, when Stanton released him, grabbed him by the shoulder and half spun him around, shouting "Rumstick!" as the hulking first officer stepped up, grinning, hand outstretched. There followed half an hour of introductions, congratulations and technical discussions, during which Virginia stood off to the side, smiling to mask her boredom, and Biddlecomb was able to get no more than a "Good to see you so fit, Captain Biddlecomb," from her by way of conversation.

At last Biddlecomb was able to pull Stanton from the boisterous camaraderie and invite him and his daughter below. "There was some fine madeira, wonderful stuff in the great cabin of the Mayor of Plymouth that I reckoned to be fair spoils of war," he said "won't you join me in a glass? Virginia?"

"Delighted! Lead on, sir," Stanton said and the three of them, Stanton, Virginia and Biddlecomb, made there way down the narrow after companionway. They crossed the gunroom and stepped into Biddlecomb's quarters which carried the traditional, if perhaps, for that cramped space, pretentious title of `great cabin'.

"Oh, damn me," Stanton said, "I've a message for Rumstick. Please excuse me for a minute." And with that he was out the door.

And they were alone. "Well, Virginia," Biddlecomb began. His eyes were fixed on her face. Her smile was fading, not gone, but changed into something else; a frustrated desire, perhaps, to say something, a desire for him to say something. He stopped and looked at that smile but he could think of nothing to say.

And then the desire rushed over him, an aching need, a physical thing and before he even knew that he was going to speak he said "I love you, Virginia."

"I love you too," Virginia said and suddenly he was across the cabin and wrapping his arms around her small frame and she was wrapping her arms around his shoulders and they were kissing, long and desperate. He could feel the curve of her waist even through the riding cloak and the silk dress and bodice and shift, could feel her breasts pressed against his chest.

He wanted to hold her completely, to feel every part of her pressed against every part of him. He wanted to say so much to her, he wanted to laugh with joy, but he did not. He could not stop kissing her, he could not stop the venting of years of suppressed passion.

From somewhere beyond the cabin he heard the scuttle door open and heard boots on the ladder but he could not pull away from her. He heard boots coming across the gunroom and at last he stepped back, his hands still on her waist, seeing nothing but her eyes. Then he dropped his hands to his side and turned just as Stanton stepped back into the great cabin.

"You know, Isaac, about those wedges under the woolding there on your fish..." Stanton began, and his eyes moved between Biddlecomb and his daughter, then back to Biddlecomb. The old man could be obtuse at times, but he was not so obtuse that he could not see what was happening there. The great cabin was silent, and Biddlecomb could hear Rumstick topside calling orders to the men on the capstan.

"Yes, sir, the wedges?" Biddlecomb asked at length, and with obvious relief Stanton leapt into the subject of repairing damaged spars.

"In any event," Stanton said, after giving his advice on fishing spars, "I received a letter from Hopkins...you know Steven Hopkins? Of the Providence Hopkins'? Delegate, former Governor?"

"I know of him," Biddlecomb said. Indeed it would be hard to live in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and not know of Steven Hopkins.

"Well, Steven wrote and asked if I'd like to serve his committee, Assistant Secretary of the Naval Committee, or some such nonsense."

"Naval Committee? What does the Naval Committee do? I wasn't aware that there was even a navy."

"It just happened, officially," Stanton said. "They just authorized the purchase of a few ships and formed this committee. So now there is a navy of sorts, a bunch of merchantmen they're beefing up and turning into men-of-war."

Stanton's tone left little doubt as to his position regarding that plan. "Nonsense, of course, as you well know. If you want a man-of-war you have to build a man of war, like Charlemagne here. No merchant brig could have lived through the pounding she's taken. But I reckon there's neither time nor money to build new..."

"So Hopkins asked you...?" Biddlecomb cut Stanton off. If he was allowed to get full underway with this line of thought, Biddlecomb knew from long use, there would be no stopping him.

"Yes. He said they need people working for them that know ships, understand what's required. I reckon my involvement in the Rhode Island navy gave him the idea I know something of naval affairs."

"You know as much as anyone in the Colonies, I should think."

"Well, I was honored, to say the least, and I accepted right off. I had to take Rogers, of course, I'd be lost without him, and I couldn't leave Virginia alone, so we're moving the whole household to Philadelphia."

Biddlecomb glanced at Virginia. She was excited about the trip, he could tell as much, excited to live in the biggest city in the Colonies.

"It was my thinking, you know," Stanton continued, "that you and Charlemagne would be best off going to Philadelphia. That's where its happening, in the naval line."

"You see a place for Charlemagne in this navy they're forming?"

"I do. I reckoned when Charlemagne was ready, why, we'd all take passage to Philadelphia. Kill two birds, you know. I'd a mind...I mean I had thought that, if it is agreeable to you, perhaps Charlemagne might just be leased to the Naval Committee. You're to retain command, of course," he added.

Biddlecomb smiled and nodded his head. Stanton was being as political as he could; despite the familial aspects of their relationship, Stanton was in fact the outright owner of the Charlemagne and could do whatsoever he pleased with her.

"A fine plan. I would be honored, of course, to serve as an officer in the navy of the United Colonies, and frankly I'll be quite pleased to see a real navy come together, converted merchantmen or not."

It was another week before they were blessed with the right conditions for slipping past the blockading squadron; quarter moon with a promise of morning fog, light airs from the northwest and an ebb tide just past midnight. A pilot was summoned, a man whose local knowledge encompassed every shoal, rock and shifting bank of sand, and in the darkness the Charlemagne's dock lines were singled up and topsails loosened off.

"Mr. Rumstick," Biddlecomb called forward. He spoke in a loud whisper; there were enough people in Cambridge of dubious loyalty, and enough time for such people to get word to the Royal navy, that he did not care to advertise their departure. He was about to follow the hail with orders to set the fore topsail when a coach and four came rumbling and creaking down the quay. The driver reigned the horses to a noisy stop as the door was flung open.

"Ahoy, there! Ahoy, is this the Charlemagne?" a voice called from the dark interior of the carriage. Biddlecomb wondered if there was anyone in Cambridge who was not startled awake by the noise.

"Yes," he called back, hesitantly.

"Are you getting underway?" the man in the carriage demanded next.

It was irritating in the extreme that any degree of secrecy was now lost, and Biddlecomb was not about to begin shouting out his intentions like a town crier. "Look, here..." he began when the man in the carriage cut him off.

"Of course you're getting underway, singled up and topsails loosened off, I must be quite blind." The stranger stepped out of the carriage and wrestled a large bag out of the dark interior which he carried over to the Charlemagne. The driver of the coach snapped his whip and the vehicle rumbled off into the dark. The stranger dropped his bag on the quay and glared at the sailors staring back at him.

"You there, take this on board," he snapped in a tone that demanded obeyance, and much to Biddlecomb's further annoyance the sailor leapt ashore and snatched up the man's bag and carried it on board, as behind him the bag's owner clambered over the bulwark.

Biddlecomb turned to William Stanton, who was standing on the starboard side of the quarterdeck, hoping that he might have some explanation. "I think that may be..." Stanton began, but before he finished the stranger was up the quarterdeck ladder and making his way aft. He was not a tall man, and the lines of his conservative black coat showed him to be on the plump side. His long hair - he wore no wig - was tied back in a queue and a civilian style cocked hat was on his head.

"Are you Biddlecomb?" he asked.

"Captain Biddlecomb. And as such I will not..."

"Yes, I am fully aware of who you are. Good show with the powder, by the way. I'm John Adams, and I'm sure there's no need to explain who I am. I shall be taking passage to Philadelphia with you. And I will say simply that the British would willingly lose half their navy to capture me, so please do not take any unnecessary risks. You there," he pointed with his walking stick to Midshipman Weatherspoon, "take my bag and show me to my cabin." With that he turned and went forward, then disappeared down the scuttle.

"Oh, yes, Isaac" Stanton said, "I'm afraid there was one other arrangement that I failed to mention."

And now, four days later, Biddlecomb stood on the quarterdeck watching either shore of Long Island Sound slip past and enjoyed the relative calm of being chased by a frigate.

From the moment the Charlemagne had successfully slipped out of Boston Harbor, passing at least one British man-of-war so close that they could hear the ship's bell ringing out in the fog, he had endured Adams presence in the gunroom and his loitering about on the windward side of the quarterdeck, quite contrary to maritime etiquette. He had endured Adams suggestions and his criticisms and his condemnation of all but a handful of his fellow congressmen.

Fifty yards off the larboard beam a seal rolled its sleek body out of the water. "Oh, Virginia, look at this," he said when the door to the after scuttle burst open and with it came Adams' grating voice and Biddlecomb knew that his moment of peace was at an end.

"Honest to God, Rumstone," Adams was saying to first lieutenant Ezra Rumstick who was, as he had at every opportunity, tagging behind Adams like a big dog, "if we keep referring to ourselves as `United Colonies' we shall never rid ourselves of the notion that we are but colonies and not free and independent states, as we should be. It's bad enough that I can't get those blockheads in Congress to refer to us as the United States, I should hope that at least men such as yourself, one of the Sons of Liberty, hotheads though they are, could be depended upon to say `United States.'"

"Yes, of course, sir," Rumstick said, "and truly I am accustom to saying `United States'. I don't know..."

Adams moved with his usual brisk pace up the quarterdeck ladder and aft to where the captain stood. "Captain Biddlecomb," he began. Biddlecomb looked over Adam's shoulder to Rumstick and reminded his first officer, through a narrowing of his eyes and a tilt of the head, that it was his, Rumstick's, duty to keep passengers from harassing the captain on his private side of the quarterdeck. Rumstick, by way of answer, merely rolled his eyes and shrugged.

It was in fact shocking to Biddlecomb to see the degree of sycophancy displayed by Rumstick, an attitude that was most unlike anything he had seen from his friend before. Rumstick stood six foot two and was close to three hundred pounds, the most powerful man that Biddlecomb had ever known. Like any professional seaman Rumstick accepted the ship's hierarchy without question, but beyond that he had never been know to behave so like a serf in the presence of his lord and master, radical revolutionary that he was. When Biddlecomb mentioned it that morning in the privacy of the great cabin, Rumstick had said simply "But Isaac, that's John Adams," as if that were all the explanation required.

"Captain Biddlecomb," Adams said again, "I trust you have made some provision to elude that frigate?"

Biddlecomb looked Adams in the eye for long seconds before replying "I have, sir."

"Isaac, you may recall, has a long history of getting out of such situations," Stanton said, crossing over to the weather side. "I should think that this situation is a trifle compared to what he just did in Boston."

"Yes, and bravo, I say, but it is this frigate, not the one in Boston, that concerns me," Adams continued. His voice conveyed not the least bit of fear; he seemed to view the frigate now chasing them as the same type of minor irritant that plagued every aspect of his life.

"I'm not certain they'll care to follow us through Hell Gate," Biddlecomb said, "but even if they do I should think we'll be able to keep away from them until nightfall. In any event it would take a bit of extremely bad luck for them to run us down now."

He said the words with little enthusiasm, indeed he was hardly thinking as he spoke. The chief of his attention was drawn down into the waist, just forward of the break of the quarterdeck, where the carpenter was sounding the well, gauging the depth of water in the Charlemagne's bilge with the iron sounding rod. He was not at all comforted by the carpenter's expression.

It had occurred to him five minutes before that the motion of the Charlemagne was somewhat sluggish underfoot, but he had noticed that sensation at other times when the wind was so far aft of the beam and so he dismissed it.

The men had been working the pumps an hour per watch; a lot of pumping, but not an excessive amount for a vessel that had seen such hard use without heaving down. Still, the water that had just flowed from the pumps was clear and clean; not water that had long been in the bilge but water fresh from the sea.

The carpenter pulled the sounding rod out of the well. His expression was, if anything, more distressed that before. He handed the rod to his mate and disappeared below.

"Hancock!?" Adams was saying, quite loud, apparently in response some comment of Rumstick's. "Oh, Hancock's fine as a delegate, but, by God, did you know that the man wanted to be Commander-in-Chief of the Army, in Washington's stead? Can you think of it? I mean, Washington's no Alexander himself, but Hancock?"

"Isaac, is there something wrong?" Stanton asked in a low voice, glancing over the taffrail at the frigate, now three and a half miles astern. Biddlecomb's quarterdeck face, his expression of unflappable calm that he had developed through long practice, failed to conceal from Stanton his churning stomach and his sense of pending disaster.

"I should think we'll hear from the carpenter directly," Biddlecomb said, "And then I'll be able to answer that."

It was less than a minute later when the carpenter burst out of the after scuttle like a startled pheasant and fairly ran up the quarterdeck ladder and aft. He stopped in front of Biddlecomb, saluted, and without waiting for acknowledgement said as calmly as his heaving for breath would allow, "We sprung a plank, sir, right up by the bow, and damn me to hell if we aren't taking on water like a son of a whore."

Biddlecomb nodded his head. It was what he had suspected, and it was, by any definition, a bit of extremely bad luck.