The Story

Captain Isaac Biddlecomb, having narrowly escaped with his life after being pressed aboard the British brig-of-war Icarus finds himself reluctantly in command of the American brig-of-war Charlemagne. Built by his mentor, William Stanton, to be a privateer, the Charlemagne is on loan to the fledgling Rhode Island navy to combat the depredations of Capt. James Wallace and the Rose.

Meanwhile, back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gen. George Washington and his handsome aide-de-camp Edward Fitzgerald, discover a shocking and hitherto unknown scarcity of gunpowder. Among their ideas to rectify this problem is one suggested by a group of Rhode island patriots; send a ship to Bermuda to capture a store of gunpowder there. And the man they suggest for the job is...you did guess it...Isaac Biddlecomb.

But, as it happens, the plan is a trap, set in place by one of the "patriots" to capture Isaac, who in the eyes of the British navy is Public Enemy Number One. Set up from the beginning, Biddlecomb knows he must escape or hang, and he knows he must bring gunpowder back to Washington or the cause is lost and, more to the point, he will be humiliated in the eyes of the woman he loves.

Author's Note

***WARNING: The following reveals things about this book that will have a negative impact on suspense for those who have not read it. If you do not want to know who done it, read no farther.***

The Maddest Idea came to life at the juncture of two historical events that were not, if fact, related. The Charlemagnes exploits are based loosely on those of the sloop Providence, a replica of which sails today. It was Providence that recaptured the Diana from Wallace and was dispatched to Bermuda for gunpowder which was gone by the time she arrived.

At the same time that I was reading about the Providence I read about Metcalf Bowler, well-know Rhode island patriot who was also a British spy. It was only in the 1920's that that came to light; a Dictionary of American Biography that I read, published ten years earlier, spoke of him in glowing terms. When I read those too things, that little light went on, just like in the cartoons, and a novel was born.

In Maddest Idea I did something that I had not done before nor will I do again, something for which I was called to the carpet by at least one reviewer: I killed a real historical figure in a way that he was not really killed. I agonized over that, and in the end decided to do it, since most people had never heard of him, and I now regret the decision. Oh, well. At least he deserved it.

Anyone interested in the real story of Providence and Metcalf Bowler is directed toward the excellent Valour Fore and Aft, by Hope Rider.

Chapter One

Captain Isaac Biddlecomb steadied his telescope against the backstay of the armed brig Charlemagne and fixed the distant topsails in the lens. The ship he was watching was just visible at the southern end of Narragansett Bay, and he imagined that she had just cleared out of Newport. He considered for a moment the clarity of the air that allowed him to see that far, even with a glass. He would expect such fine visibility in Rhode Island during the winter; for mid-July it was exceptional.

Through the lens he watched the topsails turn and flutter as the vessel came about on a new tack. He had seen those topsails in the daylight only once before; still, he was in no doubt as to which ship they belonged. She was, on that particular summer day in 1775, the most powerful ship within one hundred miles. She was a British frigate, the Rose of twenty guns, Captain James Wallace commanding. She was the enemy.

Isaac Biddlecomb was a few months into his twenty-ninth year, having spent the past sixteen of those years as a merchant seaman. Of those sixteen years at sea he had served as a ship's captain for the last five, a successful merchant captain with a reputation for fiscal cunning. Still, he was not a man who stood out in a crowd; his height was an unremarkable five foot ten inches, not fat though certainly not thin, dark brown hair tied in a queue and hanging down just past his shoulders.

It was only on the quarterdeck, on the captain's stage, the weather side, that he became more than just another sailor. He stood there now, hands clasping a telescope behind his back, a well worn cocked hat pushed down over his head. In grudging deference to his current attachment to the fledgling Rhode Island naval force he wore a long blue coat over a passably new waistcoat and white breeches; not a uniform by any stretch but clothing more formal than he would have worn on the quarterdeck of a merchant ship under his command. He hooked a finger under his neck cloth and tugged at it with mounting irritation.

Around and about him the crew of the Charlemagne was engaged in the chaos of setting sail and clearing for action. The smell of fresh paint, tar, new manilla running rigging and canvas overpowered any scent from the brackish water or the shore. This was hardly surprising; the Charlemagne was a brand new vessel. Only yesterday they had crossed the last of the new man-of-war style yards with the sails, cut navy fashion, bent on. This morning was the first time that she had ever been underway.

"Sheet home the fore topgallant sail! Haul away your halyard!" Biddlecomb heard Rumstick's booming voice over the din of rushing feet and the running in and out of the brig's guns. Ezra Rumstick was acting first officer, a big man, over six feet tall and two hundred and fifty pounds and had a voice to match. "Avast haul...!" Rumstick's shouted order was cut short by the sound of tearing and flogging canvas. "God damn that bloody sailmaker to hell!" he cursed, firing off a string of obscene invectives aimed at the craftsman who had built the Charlemagne's new suit of sails.

Biddlecomb looked aloft. The fore topgallant sail was torn clean in two from foot to head, the canvas blowing forward and flapping like a tattered ensign.

"Hands aloft!" Rumstick called. "I want the number two topgallant sail bent! Lets go!" Four men leapt into the rigging and scrambled aloft as if driven by the force of his voice. Four more ran down the forward hatch to wrestle the number two fore topgallant sail topside. Rumstick leapt up the short ladder to the quarterdeck and stepped over to the larboard side. He swept of his hat and held it out from his side in a smart salute.

"Ezra, must you salute every time you come aft to speak with me?" Biddlecomb asked as he grudgingly swept off his own hat. "It's a great nuisance. You're as bad as Whipple," he added, nodding his head over the starboard rail. Directly abeam of the Charlemagne, and one hundred yards away, sailed the sloop Katy, her big gaff mainsail winged out in the following breeze, three of her six four pound guns run out and men stationed at her numerous swivels.

"Whipple ain't such a bad commodore," Rumstick said, replacing his hat. On the Katy's high quarterdeck the portly figure of Captain, now Commodore, Abraham Whipple could be plainly seen, standing alone at the larboard rail.

"He's a first rate merchant captain, and I've no doubt he's a first rate naval captain. I just wish he wouldn't take this navy thing so damned seriously."

"We're at war, Isaac. I think it's customary to take it seriously."

"I believe you were coming aft to tell me about a fore topgallant sail?" Biddlecomb changed the subject. Rumstick never missed the chance to expound on his extreme political convictions, like some fire and brimstone preacher, and it annoyed Biddlecomb greatly. The fighting at Concord and Lexington, and just recently at Bunker Hill, had only served to whip Rumstick into a greater frenzy.

The two men stepped up to the break of the quarterdeck where they could see past the main topsail to the men on the fore topgallant yard. The torn sail had been lashed into a canvas sausage and a gang on deck was lowering it down on a gantline.

"God damned sailmaker left a panel out. We tore it clean in two sheeting it home. Bolt rope parted, must have been rotten," Rumstick explained.

"That sailmaker's either a thief or an idiot. Both, I'll warrant," Biddlecomb said. He watched the men aloft shuffling out onto the yard. They were taking the Charlemagne into a fight before they had had a chance to put her through her paces, to find and correct the little defects like the poorly made topgallant sail that they had just discovered. It was not what he considered a good idea.

Biddlecomb did not think of himself as the captain of a naval vessel. He knew little about it, and when he stood on the quarterdeck and looked down the line of guns he felt entirely at a loss, like an actor who is thrust out on stage without benefit of a script or director. Despite Rumstick's assurance that he was born for such work he felt like a fraud, and it was a feeling that he loathed. He found the traditions and trappings of the military to be irritating in the extreme.

That attitude notwithstanding, he was already famous in the colony for inciting a mutiny aboard a British brig of war, the Icarus, onto which he and Rumstick had been pressed. Together, and with the men of the Icarus, they had fought their way back into Narragansett Bay. They had made it half way to Providence before the Rose, the same Rose now on the far horizon, had beaten the ship into kindling. Any thoughts that he had entertained of himself leading men into battle died that night, along with more than half of the Icarus's company.

And then his employer and mentor William Stanton got the notion of privateering. Stanton was a prominent radical in Rhode Island, as well as one of the colony's most wealthy merchants, and like many of his ilk he saw privateering as a way of helping the cause and greatly enriching himself all at once. He built the Charlemagne and asked his favorite captain, more an adopted son than an employee, to take command. Biddlecomb could not bring himself to refuse.

But a privateer was one thing; as a privateer one assiduously avoided fighting, avoided risking men's lives, and he had had enough of leading men to the slaughter. One night of that was enough. One night of slaughter, and then seemingly endless nightmares, dream images of dead men waving to him from the shatter wreck of the Icarus, barely visible through the dark water. The thought of sleep terrified him now. He would not be a naval captain. But a privateer was different.

Then a week before the privateer brig Charlemagne was to get underway, Captain James Wallace, patrolling Narragansett Bay in the frigate Rose, captured two American packets, the Abigail and the Diana. As if their capture was not outrage enough, he then fitted them out as armed vessels to use against their former owners. The Rhode Island General Assembly purchased the Katy and appointed Captain Whipple to command her, and Stanton loaned to that fledgling navy his new privateer and her captain. And now, together, they were going to take the packets back.

"Number two fore topgallant sail's bent, sir." Nathanial Sprout, the Charlemagne's acting boatswain, addressed the officers from the waist. Sprout was no taller than Biddlecomb but he outweighed the captain by a good eighty pounds. His girth was not composed of the fat of lethargy, but the solid mass of physical power. Nathanial Sprout was every inch a boatswain.

"I'll get that set, sir, if the panels're all there," Rumstick said, saluting again.

"Very good, Mr. Rumstick," said Biddlecomb, scowling as he returned the salute.

He let his eyes wander over the Katy, the flagship of their tiny fleet. She was a lovely example of the craftsmanship of the New England shipwrights, fast and weatherly. Her armament seemed pathetic, even in comparison to the little Charlemagne. But Whipple took pride in her, and cheerfully drove her into battle as if she was a first rate ship of the line.

Two small bundles rose up a flag halyard to the Katy's yardarm. They reached the yard and broke out into bright colored signal flags.

"Oh for God's sake."

"Signal from the flag!" David Weatherspoon piped up brightly. Weatherspoon was fourteen and serving in the capacity of midshipman. He dug through the signal book that Whipple had created for his little fleet. "Enemy in sight," he announced at last.

Biddlecomb put his glass to his eye and swept the lower reaches of Narragansett Bay. Whipple couldn't be referring to the Rose; she had been in sight for the past twenty minutes. He fixed the frigate in his lens. She was closer now, much closer, making for the Rhode Island fleet, beating straight into a light breeze from the north. But it would take Wallace some time to come up with the Americans, no matter how weatherly his ship or how well he sailed her.

He stepped down off the quarterdeck and made his way forward. To larboard and starboard the men were just running out the guns, buckets of water and smoldering slowmatch beside each. Rumstick stepped over and walked forward with him.

"Cleared for action sir," the first officer reported.

"In a mere forty-five minutes."

"This ain't a man-of-war's crew, Isaac, this is the first time most of them have cleared a ship for action. Most of them ain't even sailors." He was hurt by the implied criticism, and Biddlecomb was immediately sorry for his words.

"You're right, Ezra, of course. I'm sorry. I've a great deal on my mind."

"I can well imagine. But remember, you've been captain of a proper man-of-war, so its natural this crew seems slow to you. They don't have your experience in these matters."

"`Captain of a proper...?' Well, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. God help us all." In the brief time that he had commanded the Icarus Biddlecomb had learned as best he could the art of commanding a man-of-war as he battled the vessel back to America. It had been a perfunctory and brutal training. "God help us all," he said again.

The two men arrived at the bow. Biddlecomb stood on the heel of the bowsprit and swept the horizon with his telescope. Off the northern end of Gould Island he saw the sloop, the former packet Diana, the ship for which he had come.

She was as familiar a sight as the islands beyond or the wooded shores of Rhode Island to larboard. The little sloop was well known on the Bay, like an acquaintance often seen strolling the neighborhood. She was on a larboard tack, and with her sails drawn in she looked lean and fast, plunging north against the wind, an occasional flash of white water boiling around her cutwater and streaming aft along her oiled sides, even in the light air. She lying as close to the wind as she could, and that was very close.

The Diana was no longer a benign packet. Biddlecomb could see flying from her masthead the white ensign with the red cross, the Union Jack in the upper left corner. There were carriage guns on her deck, six in all, run out from gunports pierced through the sloop's bulwarks. The upper deck was crowded; there were at least thirty men aboard her. When sailing as a merchant packet her crew had never numbered above ten.

That was all that he needed to see. "I'm laying aft, Mr. Rumstick," he said. "See that the men are at quarters and ready to jump."

The brig was just drawing abeam of the southern end of Prudence Island when the Charlemagne's captain took his place alone at the quarterdeck's weather rail. He looked over the taffrail at Dyer Island in their wake.

It was there, just past Dyer Island, that the Rose, lying hove to, had opened up with her murderous broadsides. The memory of the lightning and thunder of gun fire, the screams of the wounded men, the dark blood on the Icarus's deck, were as vivid now as they had been on the night of that one-sided battle over three months before.

He forced himself to remember those who had survived; Israel Barrett, Appleby, Dugan and the rest. They were safe now and better off then they had ever been, given a sizable bounty by William Stanton and hurried off to western Pennsylvania, beyond the reach of the British navy.

But that was less than half the crew. The bones of the rest, the bones of his friends, the men who had trusted him, lay among the wreckage of the Icarus in the deep cold water of the Bay. They had followed him because he had tricked them into thinking that his was a good idea, and now they were dead. Images of the slaughterhouse that was the Icarus's deck floated before his eyes.

He had come as close to dying as any of them, of course, but that thought did not bother him, indeed it rarely occurred to him. He had led other men to their deaths; he might as well have fired the shots himself that tore them apart and spilled their blood on the white planking. The memory haunted him, tortured him when he could no longer resist the urge to think about it.

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? Biddlecomb was afraid that he would be sick. He squeezed the quarterdeck rail tight, felt the sweat under his palm, slick on the oiled wood. He swallowed hard. He could not allow himself to be sick in front of the men. The Icaruses had been butchered by their own navy, he told himself, not for the first time. But he had led them to it. He had led them to it.

"Diana's coming about, sir," Rumstick said in a low voice.

Biddlecomb startled and looked up. He had not even heard Rumstick approach. He looked over the big man's shoulder. The former packet was on the starboard tack now and heading more directly toward the two Americans. "Thank you."

Rumstick followed his gaze out toward Dyer Island. "Men die in war, Isaac," he said after a pause. "They was men-of-war's men, and they made a choice."

"I know, Ezra. Thank you." He looked forward again. The Diana was almost a mile away, but on their converging courses the three ships were closing fast. The Rose was now clearly visible even without the telescope. She was on a starboard tack, clawing north as fast as she could, which was not nearly as fast as her fore and aft rigged consort.

"We best think of how we'll engage," Biddlecomb said. His stomach knotted and he was again afraid he would be sick. Damn it, damn it to hell, he thought. He was tired of fighting this demon. He looked aloft at the spread of canvas; foresail, topsails and topgallants as well as the huge gaff headed fore-and-aft mainsail, winged out to starboard.

"Let's clew up the foresail," he began, starting to work out solutions to potential crises. The knot in his stomach eased. "Then set the jib. Take the best seamen you have and station them at the braces, the gunners'll have to fend for themselves," he said.

"Aye, sir," said Rumstick and he hurried forward. So glad was Biddlecomb to have this to occupy his mind that he returned Rumstick's salute without a thought.

The foresail rose like a curtain revealing behind it the Diana less than a quarter mile away. Biddlecomb was startled by how quickly the distance was closing, but the Diana had always been fast, and the Charlemagne and Katy were swift sailors as well. The Diana was still on starboard tack. If she held that course she would pass down Katy's starboard side, and the Katy would shield her from the Charlemagne's guns and possibly prevent the Charlemagne from getting into the fight.

Commodore Whipple stood on the Katy's quarterdeck, his arms raised as a servant buckled his sword belt around his waist. He looked for all the world like he was surrendering and Biddlecomb smiled at the sight. Then he wondered if he should have brought a sword. He did not in fact own a sword, save for his fencing foils, the one sport for which he had a passion, but they would be useless in a real brawl. In any event it was too late. If it came to hand to hand combat he would find something with which to fight.

The Diana was less than five hundred yards away, still on a starboard tack. Then suddenly she turned up into the wind and her small square sail braced around and came aback. Her speed dropped until she lay hove too, as if she were fixed to the bottom.

"What ship is that?" the Diana's officer called through a speaking trumpet.

Commodore Whipple answered immediately. "Rhode Island ships Katy and Charlemagne. Bring too. Bring too or we will sink you immediately!"

The two colonial ships were silent, all eyes on the sloop. Biddlecomb wondered if she would turn and run for the protection of the Rose's guns. Then her square sail braced around and filled and the big mainsail was sheeted in and the Diana resumed her previous course, heading as directly as she could for the Americans.

"Give that rascal a shot!" Whipple called and instantly a swivel gun fired from the Katy's bow.

A puff of smoke belched out from the Diana's side and a jet of water shot up between the two colonial ships.

"Signal from the flag," Weatherspoon piped, and a moment later "Engage the enemy."

"Acknowledge, Mr. Weatherspoon," said Biddlecomb, only half listening to the midshipman. He could see the men crowded onto the packet's deck, the blue coated officer aft. What will he do? Biddlecomb tried to plumb the stranger's mind. As thorough as his understanding was of the ways of man, an understanding honed to a fine edge through hundreds of hours bartering for cargos all over the Atlantic, he was only now beginning to understand the machinations of a mind that wanted him dead.

The former packet, now less than two hundred yards away, flew up into the wind, her big jib flogging as she turned. She tacked smartly, settling on her new course, now heading for the Charlemagne. He would come up the Charlemagne's larboard side, Biddlecomb realized, run the Diana into the brig, and his large and disciplined crew would pour over the rail in a rush of boarders, overwhelming the Charlemagne's crew. Or so he intended.

"Mr. Rumstick! I believe they're hoping to grapple, larboard side!" There was little time; the Diana was no more than one hundred yards away. "We'll spin on our heel right in front of them! Stand ready at your braces! Starboard guns will fire, then all hands to the larboard guns! Let's go! Starboard your helm!" This last order he called over his shoulder to the men at the tiller.

If the Charlemagnes had not been able to grasp those hurried orders there was nothing for it. Rumstick at least would understand. From the corner of his eye Biddlecomb saw the helmsman pushing the tiller to starboard. The Charlemagne heeled slightly as she came broadside to the wind, and overhead the yards braced around to Rumstick's direction. Forward the captain of number one gun peered over the barrel and out the gunport.

"Fire as you bear!" he shouted. The captain of number one gun stepped back and brought the slowmatch down to the touch hole. The gun roared out and slammed back on its breeching and the crew abandoned it as they ran to the larboard side. Pieces of bulwark were torn from the Diana's larboard bow. The boarders who had gathered there now jumped back and ducked below the rail.

The Charlemagne continued to turn, presenting more and more of her broadside to the oncoming sloop. One by one the six pounders roared out, blasting dark holes in the Diana's sails and knocking pieces of her hull into the air. If their range had been further than the twenty yards that it was, Biddlecomb knew, the Charlemagne's neophyte gunners would not have scored so many hits.

Number seven fired, the aftermost gun on the starboard side, and the last of the gun crews raced over to man the larboard battery. The Charlemagne was still turning, showing her stern to the Diana as the sloop continued her pursuit. The headsails began to flog as the brig came up into the wind. It was time to tack.

"Helm's alee!" Biddlecomb shouted to the helmsmen. "Let fly the headsails! Mr. Weatherspoon, cast off that leeward mainsail sheet."

The bowsprit was pointing north and Biddlecomb felt the changing angle of the wind on his face. The bow swung up into the wind, up and up. "Mainsail, haul!" he shouted, but the words were lost in an explosion of gunfire. The deck jarred under his feet and with the bellow of the guns came the sound of shattering wood and breaking glass.

The Diana had turned to bring her broadside to bear on the Charlemagne's exposed stern. Small arms fire crackled and Biddlecomb could see the muzzle flashes through the smoke of the broadside. Musket balls thudded in the rail and plowed thin furrows across the deck at his feet.

No time for this, he thought as he turned his back to the Diana. He looked aloft. The main sails were braced around and starting to fill. It was time to order the foresails braced around as well.

The Diana fired again, her small cannon sounding inordinately loud over the short span of water. He could hear the sound of round shot crushing wood, could feel the impact in the deck beneath his feet, and knew that his great cabin below was reduced to wreckage.

"Let go and haul!" he shouted and the fore yards squealed around. They were through the wind now, and Biddlecomb turned to concentrate on the enemy.

"Larboard side, fire as you bear!" he ordered and the aftermost gun went off.

The Katy was fifty yards away, trying to get into the fight, firing as best she could into the Diana. Whipple was standing on the quarterdeck, his sword in his hand, his face frozen in a broad grin as he drove her into the fight. He seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself. The forward most of Katy's four pounders and half a dozen swivel guns fired at once, their report sounding more like big muskets than cannon.

The Diana tacked just as the Charlemagne had, the British officer still hoping to grapple and board the American. Broadside to broadside, separated by no more then thirty feet of water, the two vessels pounded away. Thick white smoke hung between them, like the densest fog, and was whisked away in patches by quirks of wind, giving Biddlecomb sundry glimpses of his adversary.

"Mr. Rumstick, we'll have that foresail, if you please!" he called forward and seconds later the big sail was again set and drawing.

With the extra canvas the Charlemagne drew ahead of the Diana but could not shake her. Whipple had managed to bring the Katy in closer, and now both Americans were pouring fire into the British sloop. The activity on the Diana's deck was furious, the muskets firing as fast as they could, firing over their larboard and starboard sides, the gun crew working frantically at their weapons. A section of the Charlemagne's bulwark crumpled and Biddlecomb saw one of his men fall, eyes wide, clutching his thigh.

He felt the Charlemagne heel, ever so slightly, in a cat's paw of wind. The breeze lifted the smoke like a blanket and carried it away. He put his telescope to his eye, and at that short range he was able to see every detail of the activity on the Diana's deck. A gun captain was pointing at him and the gun crew trained the cannon around until it was aimed straight at the Charlemagne's quarterdeck.

It's not polite to point, Biddlecomb thought ridiculously. The man straightened, a linstock with smoldering slowmatch in his hand. Biddlecomb tensed for the blast of the gun. He hoped desperately that it would not be canister shot. He wondered if in the next instant he would be dead. And then, before he could fire the gun, a musket ball shattered the gunner's left arm.

The man grabbed the broken limb, tossing the burning slowmatch aside. Confusion seemed to sweep across the Diana's deck like grapeshot. Biddlecomb saw some men freeze as if turned to stone in various attitudes of surprise and horror. Others dropped their weapons and fled fore and aft. And then the Diana exploded.