The Albatross

Four bells sounded on the foc’sle of the USS Albatross. The shrill whistle of the bosun’s pipe pierced through the sound of waves crashing against the hull. The blinding sun had begun to rise in the distance, casting a red sky that covered the eastern horizon. The officer of the deck, Lieutenant James, watched as a heavy storm started to form in the distance.

The Albatross was a 24-gun frigate whose keel was laid in Bristol in 1801 and taken from the British in a bloody battle off the coast of Maine in 1808 by the USS Congress.

Her captain, Commander Jacobson, had received orders to get underway on Lake Ontario to keep shipping lanes into the St. Lawrence River open. Commander Jacobson had been ordered to sink or take as prizes any British ships he encountered.

Commander Jacobson was known as the “Nelson of the Great Lakes.” He was a tall man with a broad chest and eyes so blue they rivaled the depth of the ocean. He was well-educated, holding a degree in Naval History from Oxford. He had never lost a ship, and his crew would follow him through the River Styx if it meant being in his company. He was not friends with any of his crew, however; he believed that by making friends with the foremast men they would see him as weak, and when the moment most demanded it, they would fail him.

As the crew prepared to turn over the watch, Lieutenant James, a freshly promoted officer who had already earned the respect of the crew, peered through his looking glass toward the horizon. The tip of a mast had crested above the horizon no more than an hour before.

“Is she flying any colors, Lieutenant?” asked Mr. Robison, walking alongside him. Mr. Robison was the Albatross’s sailing master, a man in his late fifties whose first underway onboard the USS Congress had helped capture the Albatross from the British. This was his last venture out to sea. Four months before coming aboard the Albatross, he had proposed to his sweetheart, Anna May. She didn’t like the idea of him going to sea during these turbulent times, but they needed the money for the wedding, and he had promised her he would always return home to her.

“Not that I can see. Set a course to 183 and let fly the jibs. We’ll try and lose her in the fog, if you please.”

“Aye, sir.” Mr. Robison touched the brim of his hat and bellowed the orders to the crew. As the foremast men scrambled up the rigging like monkeys, he confidently walked to the wheel of the Albatross and turned it until the bow of the ship was pointed directly at the heavy fog.

At the ship’s stern stood Commander Jacobson with three midshipmen, each holding a shot of line. The oldest of the three was a twelve-year-old boy named William Bell. After dropping out of grammar school the previous year, his father had made an agreement with Commander Jacobson to send him to sea in the hopes of making a name for his son as a naval officer.

“Master Bell, show me—how do you tie a bowline?” asked Commander Jacobson, in an attempt to teach the young midshipman seamanship.

“The rabbit runs out the hole, around the tree, and back into the hole,” William told his captain, tying the knot. When he was done, he proudly presented the line to Jacobson.

“Excellent. I’ll make a sailor out of you yet, Master Bell. And remind me, what exactly is a shot?” he asked, holding out his length of rope.

“Six feet, sir,” responded Mr. Bell eagerly.

“Could be my own son with how fast you learn the art of the sailor,” Commander Jacobson told Bell, smiling.

Commander Jacobson tossed his shot of line into a bucket and walked to the end of the ship. He placed his hands on the railing at the absolute aft end of the ship and saw the vessel on the horizon. Jacobson looked at it for a moment, then sighed.

Since turning into the fog, the ship had gotten closer. Above the horizon could be seen the three masts indicative of a man-of-war. The crew of the Albatross began to congregate along the railing. The chatter of the crew rose above the bell. Several of the sailors, who had sailed on the Great Lakes their whole lives, spoke to each other.

“I’ve seen that ship before,” one bosun’s mate said.

“They say that’s the ship that sank the USS Spearhead. Helmed by the damned, it is,” another seaman said.

“Whatever it is, we’ve got the weather gauge! We’ll catch them between the devil and the deep blue sea!” Commander Jacobson exclaimed to the crew.

As the Albatross rolled further into the fog, the waves began crashing over the side of the ship, threatening to take any seaman overboard. The sailors all grabbed hold of a line hanging from the mainmast to keep from being washed over the side. The ship began to pitch further to port and starboard until you could reach over the side and touch the water, and the fog thickened until you couldn’t see more than a foot in front of you.

Suddenly, the fog at the stern of the Albatross began to glow a crimson shade of red. The shadow ship had fired at them. The whole crew threw themselves to the deck. An ear-splitting explosion rang out as a chain shot barreled through the rigging of the ship, snapping a line that was holding the sails. Splinters of wood flew in every direction, planting themselves in the cheeks of nearby seamen and leaving a slow but steady stream of blood dripping onto the deck.

Before the order to beat to quarters was given, the sailors were already scurrying all over the ship to make ready for battle. The Marines began to climb up to the mainmast with their muskets slung over their shoulders. The gunner’s mates ran below deck to prepare the cannons. The ship’s surgeon started to dump sand on the deck of his compartment to prevent slipping on blood while he operated on casualties.

While the crew prepared for battle, a bone-crushing scream of terror and agony pierced through the commotion. William Bell had been hit by the line when it snapped; his foot was attached to his leg only by a thin sliver of skin. Blood pooled around him as he lay on the deck, while other sailors stepped over him to prepare for battle. Lieutenant James saw him and ran over.

Without saying a word, Lieutenant James bent over and gingerly picked up Bell. By this point, Bell had gone pale and was drifting in and out of consciousness, his limp body tilting with the ship’s rocking. Lieutenant James carried him below deck to the surgeon and laid him on the table.

The ship’s surgeon, a very experienced physician who had trained in New York, looked up at the lieutenant and then down at William Bell.

“Hold him down, Lieutenant,” the surgeon commanded.

Lieutenant James obeyed and pressed his hands against Bell’s shoulders. Meanwhile, the surgeon unrolled his medical kit. It consisted of saws, blades, and mirrors of various sizes and levels of intimidation.

The surgeon pulled out a saw, grabbed Bell’s calf, and placed the teeth right above the ankle. At that moment, Bell’s eyes shot wide open, as if being risen from the dead, and he let out a soft whimper.

As the surgeon sawed off the end of the foot, Lieutenant James started to gag and turned his head in the opposite direction.

Within a minute, the foot was detached and lying in a bucket in the corner of the compartment. The surgeon tightened a tourniquet around the stump and wiped his blood-soaked hands on a rag draped over his shoulder.

Lieutenant James patted William Bell’s shoulder and turned to go topside. When he reached the doorway, Bell stopped him.

“Sir, tell me again what they say about the ship’s bell, will you?”

“It’s the voice of the ship and of the sailors that sail it,” Lieutenant James told him softly.

Hearing that brought comfort to William Bell, who let a small smile creep along his face as he closed his eyes.

Lieutenant James turned, left the surgeon’s compartment, and proceeded back up topside. The crew was ready, all staring at the approaching ship. The words HMS Birdwhistell could be seen painted on the quarterdeck.

The HMS Birdwhistell had 124 guns and was the British pride of the Great Lakes. It had sunk and captured over 25 ships on the lakes since its launch.

Mr. Robison stood at the helm of the Albatross, determination in his eyes. Commander Jacobson stood next to him, tall as the mast, undeterred by the difference in speed and firepower between the Albatross and the Birdwhistell.

“Hold fast, Mr. Robison. Wait for my command.”

As the Birdwhistell came alongside the Albatross, the Birdwhistell’s captain yelled the order to prepare to board. The sailors rushed around grabbing cutlasses and gangplanks.

“Now!” bellowed Commander Jacobson.

Mr. Robison threw his weight onto the ship’s wheel, turning hard to port so that the stern of the Albatross faced the Birdwhistell. The sailors on the British ship, who were preparing to board, lost control of their planks and dropped them into the water.

Mr. Robison kept turning the wheel so that the Albatross peeled around, bringing the port-side gun deck to bear on the Birdwhistell’s stern.

At that moment, the gunner below deck yelled, “Fire!” All twelve cannons fired in perfect unison, amplifying the sound of the explosion. The Albatross’s cannons peppered the stern of the Birdwhistell, blowing out her rudder.

With no rudder, the Birdwhistell was dead in the water, at the mercy of the wind in her sails.

As the aft end of the Albatross passed by the Birdwhistell, a group of seamen stood with torches in hand, throwing them onto the deck of the Birdwhistell. One landed next to a gun mounted topside, which instantly caught fire and exploded, setting the deck ablaze.

A group of British sailors ran over with buckets of water to control the inferno, but the fire spread too quickly. The blaze crept from the aft end onto the mast, setting the sails ablaze, then began to work its way inside the ship.

The fire brought down a jackstaff onto the hatch leading topside. It quickly turned the inside of the ship into an oven, forcing the crew below to peel off their clothes to cool down. This left their bare skin open to the heat, which licked at their bodies, leaving many of the seamen red and blistered.

Before any British sailor had even noticed, the fire reached the gun deck. This compartment, the length of the Birdwhistell, was packed with over 100,000 tons of gunpowder for the cannons. In less than the blink of an eye, the powder caught fire, causing an explosion that could be heard as far as Montreal.

What remained of the Birdwhistell began to sink, taking with it any unfortunate soul who had not jumped over the side. The few British sailors who managed to survive the explosion swam helplessly in the frigid waters of Lake Ontario, begging and pleading with the crew of the Albatross to be taken aboard.

The crew of the Albatross cheered and whooped wildly. This wasn’t the first time they had managed to sink a ship much heavier and more heavily armed than themselves.

“Lower the ladders, bring the survivors on board,” Commander Jacobson said in a didactic but merciful tone.

Without hesitation, the crew obeyed, tossing ladders and lines over the side to bring the survivors aboard. While the few bloodied survivors attempted to grab the lifelines, many couldn’t hold on—the burned skin on their fingers peeled off like gloves. Out of the 300 sailors onboard the Birdwhistell, only 23 were able to be brought aboard the Albatross; the rest were condemned to spend their everlasting souls in Fiddler’s Green.

When all 23 survivors had been brought aboard, Commander Jacobson shouted to his crew:

“Bind their hands, we’ll take them back to Port Oswego.”

The survivors didn’t react. It was as if they hadn’t processed the captain’s words. When a group of American sailors approached with shots of line in hand, the survivors sprang onto the crew of the Albatross, killing two unsuspecting seamen in one fluid movement. From their waistbands and pockets, the survivors produced knives, marlinspikes, and even a cutlass.

In one final hail-Mary, the survivors of the Birdwhistell made their last stand on the deck of the Albatross. The fighting lasted only ten minutes before the Albatross’s crew defeated them. In that short span of time, the survivors managed to kill three more sailors of the Albatross—two young sailors on their first voyage out to sea, and the sailing master, Mr. Robison.

The battle was over. It all took less than three hours, and at the end of the day, five sailors of the Albatross had been killed, with all 300 of the Birdwhistell sent to Davy Jones.

The fallen sailors’ lifeless bodies lay limp on the deck, swaying gently with the pitch of the ship. Sea spray came over the side of the Albatross, washing away the blood.

“Throw the Lameys in the drink,” ordered Lieutenant James with an inflection of disgust in his voice. “And prepare to give last rites to our fallen shipmates,” he muttered, a crack in his voice.

The crew instantly began to scurry around the deck of the Albatross, sorting out British sailors from their friends. Once all the British sailors’ bodies had been tossed over the side with a splash, the fallen crew of the Albatross was laid out shoulder to shoulder.

Lieutenant James walked up to the bodies and closed their eyes.

“That way they look like they’re sleeping,” he said to himself.

When that act was done, their bodies were wrapped in sailcloth and stitched at the top.

Commander Jacobson walked out on deck, dressed in his dress uniform and holding a prayer book. The medals of several battles glistened in the sunlight, letting out a soft clink with every step.

The bosun’s mate piped the command to attention, and the crew all bowed their heads. Commander Jacobson spoke clearly, enunciating every word.

“Eternal Father, who keeps and guides our soul. May you have these sailors sail the seas on high and guide them to your eternal home.”

He then began to read the names of the fallen:

“Michael Anthony, Quartermaster”
“John Montgomery, Bosun’s Mate”
“Nigel Walker, Able Seaman”
“Joshua Peters, Able Seaman”
“Nicholas Robison, Sailing Master”

“We commend their bodies to the deep. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Lord bless them and keep them. Amen.”

And on that word, their bodies were dropped into the sea to be swallowed up by the blue, pounding waves.

The bosun’s mate piped the order to carry on, and the crew walked toward their watch stations.

“Lieutenant James, take the helm, if you please. I have the deck. Plot a course for Port Oswego. We’re going home.”

“Aye, sir,” responded Lieutenant James, touching the brim of his hat.