Ocean Escapes
Stories similar to this that you might like too.
As the last of the ship’s company left the quarterdeck, the wind fell. The sail hung limply, a pale ghostly white in the gloom then was suddenly whipped out by the sudden gale, flapping wildly as it snapped and cracked on the rigging; a single sail now alone, a lonely flag fluttering on its mast.
It took less than five minutes before the sails were cut away, the canvas torn off with a few well-aimed blows from the yardarm. Then the captain came forward to look down at his ship. His first thought, as always, had been for her; he would not have taken this voyage if he had not loved her as no man ever loved a woman.
She was beautiful, strong-minded, and courageous – she deserved better than what they were about to do to her. But when he looked up, across the darkening ocean, he knew that there was nothing more anyone could do.
For some time now, he had feared that something like this might happen. He should have been prepared. They were too far out in the Atlantic, far from any port, too distant for help. Their only chance of survival lay in speed, in putting distance between themselves and the British navy.
There had never been a moment when he could be sure that they could make the journey without running into one of their frigates or sloops of the war patrolling these waters. Now, with the ship’s crew all gone below to eat, he could hear the sounds of fighting from above decks, the shouts, and the curses of the soldiers being sent below to sleep.
In a couple of hours, even the officers would be asleep – the last remnants of discipline would soon be abandoned. The crew must be made ready for the worst; if the ship ran aground on a rock in the middle of the night, or caught fire in a sudden squall, the captain and his remaining officers would have to deal with the problem.
That would be bad enough – but if it happened after a fight when the men were drunk or exhausted? If any of the crew were killed, the captain would face a court martial. It was best to avoid such things where possible, so the captain tried to get through the remainder of the voyage quietly and unnoticed.
But now it seemed inevitable, and as he stood gazing at his helpless ship, he could feel himself getting angry: anger that had long since turned to despair, which had been replaced by an overwhelming weariness and sorrow.
His mind was numb; what little energy he had was focused on keeping his own spirits up, on maintaining control until his death, however much that might come.
His heart was heavy, yet at the same time, he felt a sense of relief – for he had known for months now that he would die on this voyage. For weeks he had dreaded it. Even during the short journey from the island to Jamaica he had been filled with fear, knowing that once they got underway his fate would be sealed.
When they set sail from Jamaica, he had hoped that the wind would blow them northward, to the Caribbean, perhaps towards Cuba or Haiti, where he might find some small vessel that could carry him away safely. But the winds had blown in the wrong direction; instead, they had headed south, straight for the open Atlantic.
He had known that this was impossible; he had told the men as much. Yet he had been unable to prevent them from going – for the same reason that he was now powerless to stop them from destroying the ship.
The captain was a good officer, well-liked by his men, whose authority had been respected throughout the voyage. He had been given command because he was a competent seaman, a man who knew how to handle a ship in difficult conditions.
He had also been given command of the ship because he had been loyal to the governor, and to the Crown. He had served the colony loyally and had seen many of its inhabitants punished. He had been present when Governor Bell received the news that the French had landed in Jamaica.
He had watched as the man who had been chosen to lead the expedition against the French was hanged. And when the governor’s successor arrived, he had seen another man hanging from the yardarm of the ship.
Now he was about to pay the price for this loyalty.
He had not wanted to go back to Jamaica. He had been offered a posting in France or Spain but had refused, insisting that he return to his home country. He was tired of being away from England, of sailing in strange waters, of living in exile.
He wanted to see his family again and live out his life in peace. He had done nothing that merited the punishment meted out to him by his superiors, but neither did he deserve to be exiled to America. He had no desire to leave Britain, sail around the world in search of gold or slaves, or seek revenge on the French for their attack on Jamaica.
All he wanted was to return to his wife and children, to take up a quiet post on one of the merchant ships that plied the seas between London and Jamaica.
But there was no way of returning home. Instead, he found himself on a ship bound for New Providence Island in the Bahamas, a place where he knew few people and was unlikely to be missed. The only thing that gave him comfort was the knowledge that he would die before the end of the year.
It would be easy to say that the captain was a coward, that he had run away rather than face the consequences of his actions. That would be unfair, though; he had tried to do his duty and had been rewarded with exile. He had always believed that he would be safe once they reached the islands, but now he knew that it was not to be.
He was still loyal to the Crown; he could never desert it. But he could not bear to spend the rest of his days in exile, far from his loved ones. So he took a ship back to England and arranged for his body to be buried at sea. This was a common practice among sailors and was often used as a means of disposing of corpses that washed ashore.
It was thought that if a corpse remained on land then it could be reanimated by the devil and that its soul would become attached to the land, making it impossible for anyone else to live there. By burying bodies at sea, the souls were released into the water, where they became part of the great oceanic current.
The captain had been a good man, a kind man, a fair man. He deserved better treatment than this. He deserved the chance to see his family again. He deserved an honorable death. But all these things were denied him. Instead of being buried at sea, his body was brought to shore and placed in a coffin.
Then it was taken aboard the brigantine and thrown overboard so that it was lost forever.
As for Captain Bell himself, he died on deck, with the other survivors of the massacre. There was a brief flurry of activity as the remaining men fought to save themselves from the attackers, but soon they began to lose heart and give up hope of survival.
They had no weapons; their only defense was to fight with their bare hands. As the Frenchmen closed in on them, some men fled below decks to escape the violence, but others stayed behind to defend what little they owned. A small group of the captain’s crew tried to fight off their assailants, but they were outnumbered and overpowered.
The captain was cut down first, and then his second-in-command, a young man named James Smith. The rest were killed quickly, stabbed, or shot in the back as they lay helpless on the deck. The few who escaped alive were dragged below deck, where they were tied together and left to die. One of them was a boy named William Hodd, who was just sixteen years old.
William was a tough lad. His father had been a fisherman, and he had learned how to fight at an early age. When he saw the Frenchmen coming towards him, he drew his knife and ran to meet them. He was brave and strong, and he managed to kill several of the attackers before he too was slain.
He fell dead on the deck, his blood soaking into the wood, and those who survived watched in horror as the bodies of their comrades were hacked apart by the axes of the invaders.
The last of the attackers was a tall man with long hair and a long beard. He wore a red cloak over his armor and carried a great sword in one hand. He was the most fearsome of all the pirates, and he stood at the front of the line of French soldiers, shouting orders at the men under his command.
As he came closer to the ship, he raised his sword high above his head and slashed it down, cutting through the ropes that held the brigantine to the ship. The two ships drifted apart, and then the Frenchmen boarded the brigantine.
They were ruthless killers, and they did not hesitate to use whatever force necessary to achieve their ends. Many of the men aboard the brigantine were tied together and dragged along the deck while the pirates searched the ship for valuables. The men who resisted were beaten or stabbed.
Others were forced to surrender their possessions or threatened with execution – and even if they did not resist, they would still suffer as a result of their defeat.
The pirates stripped the brigantine of everything that was worth taking. They stole the cargo of wine and spirits and looted the ship’s stores of food and fresh water. They also made sure that none of the survivors could escape, tying them up in groups of ten in one of the ship’s cabins, and leaving them there until they died of thirst or hunger.
Some of the pirates kept watching outside the door of the cabin, ready to attack any man who tried to escape.
The Frenchmen were cruel and merciless, but they were not stupid. They knew that they could not stay in the area for very long, so they set about looting the brigantine and preparing to leave. Before they went, however, they gave the captain’s body a decent burial at sea.
They laid him out on the deck, wrapped him in a shroud, and covered him with a heavy wooden cross that they had carved themselves. Then they lowered him into the water and sent him away to join his ancestors.
Captain Bell’s body was not alone. Other bodies floated in the water around it, including those of his crewmen who had tried to defend him. The Frenchmen took their weapons and anything else of value and left the ship to float on the waves.
It was a terrible sight, and the surviving members of Bell’s crew were too traumatized by what had happened to look after the bodies of their companions. So they were left to drift on the ocean, slowly sinking beneath the surface.
There was nothing that could be done to save them. The brigantine was beyond repair, and its crew was dead. Even if some of the men had been able to swim ashore, they would have had no way to survive. The nearest land was far away, and there was no shelter for them there. They would have died of exposure within days.
When the Frenchmen had finished looting the brigantine, they put her to rights again and sailed off northwards, carrying their booty to the next place where they could sell it. They did not bother to look back at the ship that had once been theirs, but they left it drifting on the sea like a broken-down ghost ship.
It was many months later that one of their own ships came across it. By then, it was little more than a wreck: just a few scraps of wood that bobbed on the waves, listing badly to one side. There was nothing that could be salvaged from it, and the Frenchmen ignored it completely.
The End