The Guardship

“Very well, then, I shall do it myself.” He gestured to the Prizes and they fell to unbattening the hatch, knocking the wedges out to free the tarpaulins.

“No, no, no time for that,” Marlowe said. “Ax men, just cut it open. Just cut through the tarpaulins and grating.”

The four men in the boarding party whom Marlowe had ordered to carry axes leapt up on the hatch and raised the blades over their heads.

“No, no, belay that!” the master shouted, mere seconds before Marlowe’s men destroyed his tarpaulins and hatch gratings. “Boatswain, see the hatches broke open.”

The guardship’s men stood in silence as the Brothers boatswain and his gang undid a morning’s worth of work, hauling back tarpaulins and lifting off the gratings. The stay tackle was let off and swung out over the gaping hatch, and three of the Prizes climbed down into the dark hold with slings to go around the casks.

George Wilkenson and his father and the master watched with sullen expressions, arms folded. They said not a word, but Marlowe knew that their silence would be short-lived.

Twenty minutes later, the Prizes had a half-dozen hogsheads swayed out and standing on the deck. Marlowe looked them over, walking slowly between them, shaking his head. “This does not look good, I fear. Bickerstaff, be so kind as to measure this.”

Bickerstaff laid his measuring stick across the top of the cask and then against its side, and he shook his head as well. “Thirtysix inches on the head, fifty-two inches tall.”

“Thirty-six…” Marlowe said. “Is that true for all of them?”

Bickerstaff moved down the line, measuring each. “Yes, I fear. They are all the same.”

“Well, sir,” said Marlowe, turning to Wilkenson, “this is a bit of a problem. A legal-sized hogshead is thirty-two inches by forty-eight inches. I might have looked away, you know, had just one or two of these been a bit oversized, but as it is we shall have to measure them all.”

George Wilkenson’s mouth fell open, Jacob’s eyes narrowed with rage. “Measure them all?” George managed to say. “Do you propose that we sway them all out to be measured?”

“I see no other way that it might be done.”

“Oh, to hell with you and your petty harassment!” Jacob Wilkenson shouted. “You do not fool me, you are just trying to get back at us for condemning your trash tobacco. Well, it was trash, sir, and we were within our legal right to burn it! It was our duty!”

“And I am likewise within my right to inspect your casks, and it is likewise my duty. And from what I have seen so far, you are in violation of the law.”

The Wilkensons and the master of their ship stared at Marlowe for a long second but said nothing.

The salient fact-and every man aboard knew it-was that Marlowe was absolutely right. The hogsheads were above the legal size.

What they also knew, though it was hardly worth pointing out, was that every hogshead in the fleet was above legal size. With duties and handling charges set per the hogshead and not by the pound of tobacco contained within, it was a great savings for the planters to cheat a bit on the size of their casks, and most customs officers, for some small consideration, looked the other way. They all did it, which was how Marlowe knew he would catch Wilkenson in the crime. But their all doing it did not make it any more legal.

“Damn your impudence, who do you think you are?” Jacob Wilkenson broke the silence. “You most certainly will not sway out our entire cargo!”

“Indeed? And who shall stop me?” The Plymouth Prizes were gathered in a semicircle behind their captain, looking every bit the band of bloody cutthroats, with pistols and cutlasses thrust into their sashes, axes and muskets cradled in arms, and their heads bound in bright-colored cloth.

“You do not scare us, you and your band of villainous pirates,” the master growled.

“We have no interest of scaring you, sir, only in enforcing the law. And it looks as if there is quite a bit of enforcing that needs doing.”

“Look, Marlowe,” George Wilkenson spoke. His voice was low, his tone reasonable. “If we are in violation of the law, by some unhappy mistake, then I apologize for that. Levy the fine and we’ll pay it and be done with it. After all, the convoy sails in two days.”

“The convoy, sir, sails when I say it sails. And as to-”

“I say, Captain Marlowe?” Bickerstaff called up from the hold where he had gone down to inspect. “I say, look here.” He emerged from the scuttle, and in his hand was a clump of fragrant brown tobacco.

“Is this bulk tobacco? Surely they are not carrying bulk tobacco?”

“Great mounds of the stuff, crammed into every corner of the ship.” Bulk tobacco, tobacco shipped loose and not prized into a hogshead, had been strictly prohibited by act of Parliament since 1698, though, like the oversize casks, it was unlikely

that any ship in the convoy was not carrying it, so profitable was it in clandestine sales.

“Why, sir,” Marlowe turned to the Wilkensons and the master, “I am shocked, shocked to find this. This is no more than smuggling, damn me, and you one of the leading families in the colony. I am sorry, but I cannot let this go.”

“Just levy the damned fine and get off my ship!” Jacob Wilkenson all but shouted.

“This is beyond a fine, sir. Either you will get this tobacco in hogsheads of a legal size, and the bulk as well, or you shall not sail.”

“Not sail?” the master growled. “And how do you propose to keep us from sailing?”

“By removing every sail from your ship, sir, if you do not comply. Now I suggest you get to work. You’ve a great deal to do.”

Less than three hours later the Wilkenson Brothers looked like a beehive, with workers swarming over her, racing to get the cargo in order before the sailing of the fleet. Even if it had been legal to sail unescorted, which it was not, it would have been suicide, with the pirates that swarmed around the Capes and infested the sea between the coast of America and the Caribbean.

Of course, pirates would not even be an issue after Marlowe took their sails.

Marlowe imagined that the Wilkensons had considered complaining to the governor, but they would have realized that doing so would be folly. What would they say to him? That Marlowe was being unfair in forcing them to obey the law?

Rather, they and their people worked like men possessed to make their cargo legal. They brought new hogsheads down on sloops, from where, Marlowe did not know, and laboriously hoisted each old cask out of the hold and broke it open to reprize its contents into the new, smaller cask.

The tobacco on the Wilkensons’ ship, having been prized once already, was much easier to prize again, but still this operation consumed two full days, with the men of the Plym

outh Prize laying odds and making wagers on whether or not they would finish in time. When Marlowe found himself unable to sleep he would take a turn on the guardship’s deck, and from there he could see the sailors and the field hands toiling by lantern light in the waist of the Wilkenson Brothers, breaking open hogsheads, emptying them, reprizing the tobacco, and storing them down again.

On several occasions the Wilkensons sent a man over to invite Marlowe to inspect their progress, for fear no doubt that he would demand the new casks be brought up again once they were stowed down. He declined these invitations, each time sending his word as a gentleman that he would trust another gentleman to honor his agreement and the law.

Two days later, with the tobacco fleet making ready to sail, the job was done. The Wilkensons’ sloop cast off from the ship’s side and began to beat northwest up the James River, and from the deck of the Plymouth Prize Marlowe could hear the ringing of hammers as the wedges in the battens were driven home. He was impressed. He never thought they would finish in time.

“Boarding party, are you ready?” Marlowe asked. Gathered in the waist was another armed party, much the same as the first, but bigger.

“Ready, sir,” said Lieutenant Rakestraw, leading the gang.

“Very good. Into the boat, then.”

“Tom,” said Bickerstaff, standing at Marlowe’s side, “is this entirely necessary? Have we not had vengeance