Chapter 8

They left the fifth of September in the hopes that by the time they reached the last third of their voyage that the ocean’s waters had cooled and the hurricane season would be at an end.

As Josie, Rhoda, Lenora and Selena became more comfortable around John they joined them in their bed and made love to them both. They spent a great amount of time in bed but definitely not sleeping. There couldn’t have been a more pleasurable way in which to pass the time away and stay away from the other passengers and crew.

The other passengers were a mixed lot, a Captain and his aide-de-camp were on their way to Havana, Cuba, as was a plantation owner and his wife and three children. A newly frocked priest was also going to Havana.

The plan was to stop at Havana first unloading all of the cargo and most of the passengers, then load the ship with sugar ansail for Charles Town, Carolina. There the Captain hoped to sell some or all of the sugar and load tobacco leaves to take back to Spain.

The trip around Spain in the Mediterranean was pleasant. The days were warm with azure sky and the dark green waters and low waves. At the Straits of Gibraltar the Captain Alfredo Esteban Rohaus, a portly gentleman ordered that the ship sail into the Port of Gibraltar, there they picked up many barrels of wine filling the holds to the brim.

John observed the loading and found the securing of the barrels to be dangerously inadequate. He approached the Captain,

“Captain Rohaus, surely you are going to better secure those barrels. If we hit rough weather just one of those barrels getting loose could sink the ship!”

“Senor, I am the Captain of this ship, and the owner! You are but a passenger! A living kind of cargo! You have no say in how I run this ship! The cargo is adequately stored and nothing else needs to be done! Now, get out of my sight or I shall have you flogged!!”

It took all of John’s willpower to resist killing the man with his bare hands. The Bosun grabbed John and pulled him away and back to their cabin. This turned out to be the first of many disagreements that John would have over the running of the ship. The Captain was a harsh disciplinarian, punishment was invariably flogging, usually with a whip, but sometimes a knotted cat of nine tails was used. This was particularly used on crewmen that the Captain didn’t like. Four times John stepped in and stopped what he felt was going too far.

One of the crew had dropped a belaying pin from the yard of the mainmast that hit the deck inside a couple of feet of the Captain. It had been an accident, but the man had been bound and was to receive thirty strokes of the cat. That many strokes would kill even the hardiest man. John had witnessed the entire incident and knew with certainty that it had been an accident. After five strokes he stepped between the Master-at-arms and the seaman being flogged and stopped the man from inflicting further punishment.

“Captain Rohaus, I witnessed what happened, it was truly an accident and not an attack on your person! I will not let you kill or maim for life, an innocent man! This punishment is over!”

The Captain was flummoxed, he turned red in the face and was in such a rage that he couldn’t catch his breath, he couldn’t believe a mere passenger would have the gall to halt a punishment he had ordered. Could he have caught his breath he had intended to have the man take the place of the seamen. But he couldn’t get his breath to speak the order. It’s just as well because the crew was beginning to see that this passenger was a better leader of men than their Captain and it would have been a close decision between the crew, as to just who they would follow. The Captain was helped below and spent three days recovering in his stateroom. One by one most of the crew and officers thanked John for stopping the punishment.

Mary and Josie spent almost all of the time on board in their cabin. They would come up on deck for an hour to watch the day transition into night, watching from the bow as the sun sank into the waves. Another day closer to their destiny.

The ship put into Havana ninety six days from Spain it was Saturday, October 9th, 1683 it had been a very hot summer and the heat had not broken going into fall. It had been a miserable last three weeks on board the Virgin. The Captain had managed to navigate into the Sargasso Sea, an area of the Atlantic that was notorious for slake wind, The Doldrums. If not for the oars they kept stored, they would still be stuck there.

Mary, Josie, Rhoda, Lenora, and Selena had stayed cool by staying naked and throwing a bucket into the ocean and pulling it back into their cabin and pouring it over themselves. By the time they reached Havana they were beyond tired of being doused in salt water three or four times a day. The water would evaporate and cool their bodies, but the salt remained behind, in their hair, on their bodies. They would rub the salt off of each other, but even that became tiresome. They are desperate to get the salt off of their bodies.

The ship had to be unloaded and then be loaded with sugar, this took three days. The Archer family found an Inn in the city and spent the next three days taking freshwater bathes. They also, of course, spent a lot of time making love. They did go out to eat once the heat dissipated after the sun went down, and enjoyed the clubs and dancing offered. But the three days passed quickly and they boarded the Virgin on the morning of the 13th of October.

They sailed westward and kept the island off the starboard side as they sailed around the west end of the island and turned north, then east. They passed between the Florida Keys and Cuba. Then they caught the Gulf Stream and rounded the southern tip of Florida and headed north. To the east John noticed that a huge storm was bearing down on them. Even though the relationship between him and the Captain is shaky at best, John approached the man. Immediately the Captain bristles at him as he comes closer, he turns and attacks screaming invectives at him. He had pulled a knife and there was no doubt that he meant to kill him. Not armed himself and outweighed by his assailant by eighty pounds, John was having trouble keeping the knife away from his body. Suddenly a shot is heard and the Captain is shot, he teeters for a moment next to the starboard railing before toppling over and disappearing into the depths. John turns his head and finds his wife standing ten feet from him with her smoking pistol in her hand. She rushed to him and hugged him, happy to have saved his life. He had been slashed in two places. Both wounds are deep enough that stitches were required.

Mary helps her husband back to their cabin, she takes his shirt off and cleans the wounds by pouring Scotch Whisky in them. Then placing the needle in thread in a bowl filled with the whisky and having him drink the rest of the bottle. Waiting for a few minutes to let him drink and let the crude anaesthetic work, she started stitching. Josie, using clean cloth from some of their dresses, keeps the fresh blood from making his skin too slick to grab and bring together to sew. They worked for just over two hours, alining the skin and making the curved needle pierce the skin about an eighth of an inch from the edge of the cut and an eighth of an inch apart from one another. It was a blessing that the Captain’s blade had such a sharp edge, there wasn’t any tearing that a dull blade can inflict. The shortest cut was six inches and took forty eight stitches. The longest one was eight inches and took sixty four. Both wounds were three quarters, to an inch deep. When she had finished she poured more alcohol from a new bottle onto both wounds and then bandaged them as best they could. John had fallen asleep.

They went out to talk to the crew, twice they had come in wanting to talk, but she shooed them out both times. When they walked out on deck, they were greeted with clapping and cheering. They were happy to be rid of their Captain and they had observed the fine work she had done in fixing John’s wounds. Looking to starboard she saw that the storm was closer and that nothing had been done to the sails. Looking at the first officer she asked,

“Are you not going to reef the sails or run to the barrier islands on the shore? The third option is to get away from the shore or that storm will put us permanently on the beach!”

“You are right mum, but in less we can find a cut between the barrier islands we are going to get caught too close to maneuver and we’ll be pushed ashore, if we had reefed the sails the sea would have become rougher than it was and we knew you had to have a steady hand. We still have an hour before that storm hits us. I have men aloft looking for a cut that might be deep enough. They have ten more minutes to look, then we’ll beat to the east and gain some distance from the shore. Then we’ll reef the sails or bring them into the locker and turn into the storm. If we do that it’ll be a rough ride!

Just then a call was heard from one the two of the lookouts, a river was spotted that had created a deep water cut through the barrier islands. If they could get through there they could find shelter up the river. They also spotted a fort on the shore on the other side of the barrier island. One of the crew yelled out,

“It’s St. Augustine, the fort is Castillo de San Marcos!”

“Prepare to turn into the cut. A turn to the larboard, drop the topgallants and the mizzenmast sails! But stay aloft, the other sails will come down once we find shelter! Prepare to man the oars!”

The ship quickly slowed and traveled through the cut, turning into a bay of sorts, they once again turned into the wind and dropped all of the ship’s sails. The men manned the oars and a cadence count to synchronize the rowing, it was slow going but twenty minutes later they were across from the impressive fort. This part of the barrier island was much wider and had huge trees that would help to shelter the ship from the winds. A seaman was already at the bow with a sounding line. The First Officer ordered another turn to that larboard side and the man in the bow started calling the depth it was deep enough to get ten feet from shore. The ship’s boat was already in the water as the bow grounded softly into the bottom and stopped. The boat took the ends of two ropes, each rope was three quarters of an inch thick and were attached to rope that was over an inch in diameter. The boat held four crewmen who jumped out with the smaller ropes and ran for two huge live oak trees well inshore. The two man teams rounded the trees and began pulling the thicker rope ashore and around the trees then they tied them off with bowline knots to anchor the boat to the shore. Then they rowed the boat to the stern of the ship and an anchor was lowered to them with a rope attached, they rowed out at a forty five degree angle about seventy five feet and dropped it in the water. They did the same thing on the starboard side.