Skeletons On The Zahara by Dean King Read Free Book Online

exemplified the spirit of the day. The ad, situated in the prime upper-right-hand corner of the newspaper's front page, billed the Commerce as a “staunch fast sailing brig” able to stow sixteen hundred barrels and ready to receive cargo in three days.
    In the meantime, Riley discharged his hold full of bricks and hay, which Talcott & Bowers also advertised. In New Orleans, captains could fill their vessels with every kind of commodity imaginable, including a batch of two hundred bear skins available when Riley was there. As an experienced supercargo, Riley would have been given loose parameters as to what to carry on the middle passage of his triangular route. He would have been equipped with introductions in New Orleans and a number of European ports, based on the good reputations of Justus Riley and Josiah Savage. Though the owners would rely on Riley's discretion to make the best possible deal here, they presumably gave him more detailed instructions regarding what to bring back for their stores in Hartford and Middletown. Talcott & Bowers lined up a cargo of tobacco and flour for him to carry to Gibraltar, “principally on freight,” according to Riley, meaning the brig owners were compensated for hauling the goods and did not share in the risk or profit of selling them at the other end.
    Rugged and raw but eminently stylish, half cosmopolitan, half frontier, New Orleans was nothing if not a place of opportunity. The two ordinary seamen, Francis Bliss and James Carrington, asked to be discharged so that they could seek theirs. Archie Robbins recorded only that they “objected to going a voyage to Gibraltar, to which place the vessel was bound.” In their stead, John Hogan and James Barrett, two ordinary seamen from Portland, Massachusetts (now Maine), decided to try their luck in the Commerce. Riley gave the command to set sail for Gibraltar on June 24, six days after Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, a fact that had not yet reached America.3
    On the Atlantic crossing, the men had time to become familiar with one another's habits, quirks, and skills. Porter and Robbins became close friends. Burns put his musical talents to good use. Clark and Deslisle entertained the crew with war stories. At Chippawa, two miles above Niagara Falls, Ketchum's company had held out against three times its number of redcoats in fierce fighting in the woods. At the Battle of Lundy's Lane, the bloodiest battle ever fought on Canadian soil and one that ended the American offensive in the Loyalist British colony, they had laid a trap at Portage Bridge and captured British General Phineas Riall and part of his staff, wounding Riall in the right arm in the process and stunning the enemy.
    The old-line Connecticuters had a reserve of family tales to fall back on. Just as the Savages and Rileys had a history of going to sea together, so did the Rileys and Robbinses. One story was always sure to produce hearty laughs. When Frederick Robbins, Archie's uncle, had decided to further serve his country by outfitting and sailing on board a privateer, he asked his neighbor Captain Jabez Riley to take command. Two men more unalike are hard to imagine. A wealthy farmer and veteran of Bunker Hill, Frederick was an erect military man, who in later years took to dressing in a velvet-collared indigo coat and ruffled shirts, riding in fancy carriages, and drinking French wine in crystal goblets. Jabez Riley, a chuff seaman not given to extravagances, buried his savings in an orchard on his property, hidden even from his wife.
    To no one's surprise, their partnership was short-lived. Early on their first cruise out of New London, they dropped anchor in a hopeless fog, only to find themselves, when the veil lifted, practically kissing a British frigate. The two had plenty of time to hash out their disappointment on board the infamous death-ship Old Jersey, where they rotted for months before being exchanged for Hessians taken by Washington.
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