Chapter 8

In August of 1777 Anne Amelia Conroy celebrated her eighteenth birthday at the old plantation known as Pirate's Luck, a rambling manse on the Eastern Shore with acres of worn-out tobacco land, overgrown pastures, a rickety pier, crooked tobacco barn and rude slave quarters. Her father, with tears in his eyes, gave her a strand of matched freshwater pearls that had been her mother's.

They dined on Bay oysters, roasted duck and home-cured ham. The junior Dulanys crossed the Bay, sailing through a fast-moving squall line that nearly blew them onto the shoals of Kent Island. They arrived wet and unhappy.

The table talk centered on the weather, the new constitution and the brawling government in Annapolis that was busily confiscating the property of loyal citizens and on the mystery of General Howe's plans to capture Washington and crush his puny army.

Jamie Dulany said that watermen had told him that a huge British fleet had been spotted moving up the Bay and that oystermen had reported horse bodies in the water near the mouth of the Potomac.