Zachary managed to grab something to eat with his messmates before being on duty in the forenoon watch from 8 to 12.
As soon as the Bradford was clear of the harbor, the captain ordered more sail and the ship gained speed, heading east. It was a beautiful day with a following wind and soon the ship was making almost 8 knots.
Although he was on watch, Zachary had little to do. He joined men who were raising sails but otherwise simply observed.
Tony stood with him at the rail. “Make the most of today,” he said to Zachary. “This is rare weather indeed.”
The boys became aware of two dolphins which appeared to be swimming along keeping the ship company. Or was the ship keeping them company? The boys couldn’t decide.
They shared a snack when they went off duty at noon and the afternoon watch took over. Although they hadn’t slept much the previous night because of the call to quarters to set sail, neither was really tired.
About a half hour later, the first lieutenant, Mr. Phelps, appeared on the quarterdeck, announced to the bo’sun that they would exercise the guns, and ordered him to beat to quarters. Within six minutes, all the gun crews were at their posts while other crewmen were in the rigging ready to carry out any orders they received.
The gunner’s mate was in charge of everything having to do with the ship’s guns, including seeing that they were properly maintained and fired and being certain that the supply of cannon balls, powder, matches, and other essentials were where they should be and available when the call to quarters sounded. In addition, he trained the gun teams and taught the crew in the use of small arms. If it went ‘BANG’ it was in his province.
The Governor Bradford’s guns were 18-pound carronades. They were easier to handle and required fewer men in a gun crew than a true cannon. Carronades could deliver crippling broadsides at an enemy ship or could devastate that enemy’s crew with grapeshot as well as scrap metal. The first training was confined to firing broadsides.
At first only the starboard guns would be fired.
Each member of a carronade’s team had a specific job. To fire the gun, a bag or cartridge with a measured load of powder was shoved down the barrel of the gun by a man with a rammer. It was followed by a wad or piece of cloth which was also rammed in. Then a cannon ball went in. A device was thrust through a touch hole to break open the bag of powder. Only then was the gun run forward through its gun port in the side of the ship. It was aimed by the captain of the gun crew. When he was ready a man inserted a friction primer attached to a lanyard into the touch hole. Standing carefully to the side, the man pulled the lanyard. The friction primer ignited the powder which exploded, and the ball shot out of the muzzle. The gun was on a sliding mount, so when it recoiled it was controlled by ropes and the mount. It was then in position to be reloaded, but not until the sponger, another member of the gun crew, put a sponge on a long pole in a container of water and sponged out the inside of the barrel. If this wasn’t done properly, when the next cartridge of powder was inserted into the gun, it could explode and, as Tony explained, all hell could break loose, including the possibility of a loose cannon literally careening about the deck.
Meanwhile, the powder monkeys were hurrying down to the magazine in the hold to get more cartridges. They had to be able to go and return in the time it took to load and fire the guns.
Zachary emerged onto the gun deck with his cartridges just as the guns went off. This was the first time the guns had been fired, and he was so startled that he dropped the cartridges, but apparently that did no harm. With his heart in his throat, he delivered the ammunition to his gun crew and returned to the magazine for more.
The crews exercised the guns for over an hour. When they finished, each gun was cleaned and left loaded so that it could be immediately run out and fired in a battle.
Zachary was exhausted. He sat on the deck looking around him and saw other powder monkeys doing the same. By eight bells he was more than ready to eat. The meal consisted of some sort of undefinable meat and some peas. The rest of the crew each got a drink of grog, but powder monkeys were considered too young and had to make do with water.
Zachary had no trouble falling asleep in his hammock that night.
In the forenoon watch the next day the guns were exercised again. In the afternoon they were once more fired for over an hour.
As Zachary was awakened for his watch duty in the night, he heard that the wind had shifted and had picked up force. When he stepped on to the deck, he nearly lost his balance as the wind buffeted him from the side. He moved slowly onto the deck but had difficulty remaining upright.
Holding onto the mainmast, he looked up to see if men were in the rigging altering the sails, but he couldn’t see a thing. Soon, he heard shouting from above when the men called to each other as they took in some sails. He felt sick from the violent motion of the ship. He was able to make his way to the rail where he leaned over and vomited again and again.
By the end of his watch, he felt totally empty. Rain had begun to pelt down, and he was drenched. There was nothing he could do about that. It was beginning to grow light, but he doubted he would see the sun that day. What concerned him more was the movement of the ship. The harder the wind blew the more the ship tossed around, up and down and side to side. He wondered if when the ship rose on a swell and then came down it would simply continue to go down to the bottom of the sea. That thought scared him.
He was joined by Tony, who asked if he wanted to get something to eat. Then he looked at Zach and said, “My God, I’ve heard of people turning green, but I’ve never seen it before! You’d better find a place to lie down.”
“Is the ship going to sink?” asked the frightened boy.
“No. This is just a little squall. We’ll get much worse storms than this.”
Surprised, Zachary returned to his hammock but it was swaying so much he couldn’t climb in, so he lay on the deck below it where he was at least protected from the rain.
In less than hour the squall passed. The wind and rain stopped, and the sun came out. The ship was still rolling about some from the disturbance of the ocean, but even that calmed down in time.
The day passed with more exercising of the guns. Zachary was beginning to get accustomed to hearing the guns while racing up and down between the gun deck and the magazine and maintaining his balance on the deck.
The next morning when he awoke for his watch at 4 AM, he was aware that the ship was nearly still. He emerged from his hammock onto the deck and realized that there was almost no wind and the ship was enveloped in fog. Someone in the bow of the ship was blowing a horn to warn other ships of their presence.
As he stood looking over the rail, Tony joined him.
“I’ve not much idea of where we’re going, but at this rate we’ll never get there,” he laughed.
“Aren’t we heading east?” asked Zachary. When Tony nodded Zachary continued, “So we must be going to England or the continent.”
“Not necessarily,” replied Tony. “We could be heading towards Africa. One of the lieutenants told me we would be joining a fleet, but he didn’t know where.”
“Are we at war with anyone?”
Tony thought for a minute before saying, “Maybe the Berbers.”
“Who are they?”
“They’re the Arabs in the north of Africa, on the Mediterranean coast. I heard that they’re capturing our merchant ships and taking everyone aboard for slaves.”
“Slaves!” exclaimed Zachary. “I thought only the Americans had slaves.”
“Oh, no, the Moslems do too.”
“What are Moslems?”
“They’re people, mostly Arabs, who believe in Mohammed, and they think he has given them the right to make slaves of any who are not Moslems.”
“I never heard of them before.”
“Well, growing up in Boston you probably wouldn’t,” Tony smiled.
“What else do they believe?”
“I really don’t know, but maybe we’ll find out if that’s where we’re going.”
By noon the fog had lifted but the sea was empty and there continued to be almost no wind. What there was blew from in front of them, so the ship felt like it might possibly be going backwards a little, although all the sails were furled except the topsail on the mainmast.
Captain Whitmore paced the deck impatiently, muttering to himself. The sun beat down on the crew, and as there was no cooling wind, they sat around the deck in whatever shade they could find, sometimes lowering a bucket over the side to bring up sea water which they poured over themselves.
Just before sunset, the wind shifted to the northeast and became stronger. As far as the captain was concerned, northeast was still the wrong direction, but he turned the ship toward the southeast and she began to move. Through the night and all the next day the ship had to beat to windward to make any progress at all.
From time to time, Zachary observed the midshipmen on the quarter deck receiving instruction. Sometimes they practiced with swords or pistols. Midshipman Stanley seemed rather tentative when practicing swordsmanship. Often, the lieutenant in charge spoke to him, sometimes appearing to encourage him but, more and more as time went on, venting his frustration on the boy. The midshipman certainly didn’t seem to be enjoying himself.
The crew exercised the guns again that afternoon, simply to stay in practice according to the gunner’s mate.
Early the following morning, clouds appeared in the western sky and began moving to the east. By noon they had overtaken the ship. As they passed, the winds changed direction, and with a strong west wind the ship gained speed and began to heel over on her starboard beam. Once almost becalmed, she now raced ahead.
By the next watch thunder and lightning seemed right above them. The thunder sounded to Zachary as though all the water barrels in the hold were being rolled about on the deck. Then came the rain, gently at first and then harder and harder, so loud it sounded like drum rolls. Those who were off duty sought such shelter as they could, but the fact was that there wasn’t much. Many of them got soap, stripped, and showered in the downpour. Tony convinced Zachary to get clean while he could, and soon the other powder monkeys joined them and all of them were bouncing around in the rain, naked and laughing.
As the rain continued, nobody bothered to put their clothes on again except the officers, for whom nakedness on a ship was not dignified. But then, they had dry quarters.
The rain continued for two days, and the air grew cooler, so that it was no longer comfortable to be undressed. The sailors donned their soaking clothes, knowing that they wouldn’t dry off until the sun came out.
On the third day the rain began to taper off, and by noon the sun was out and the sky was blue. The wind calmed some, but it was still coming from the west, so the ship continued to plow through the sea.
“Ahoy the deck,” came the call from the lookout posted at the foretop. “Ship approaching on larboard bow.”
“What kind of ship?” asked the captain.
“I can’t tell yet. She seems to have three masts.”
“Is she flying a flag?”
“None that I can see.”
Turning to the boatswain, the captain told him to run up the British flag.
“We’re not British,” said Zachary. “Why would he do that?”
“It’s become a common tactic when meeting an unknown ship, to fly a flag other than your own until the situation becomes clearer,” Tony answered.
Many of the crew crowded the bow as the unknown ship came slowly over the horizon. By the time the captain could see it with his glass, he saw that the ship’s cannon muzzles were out of their ports.
“Beat to quarters,” ordered the captain, and immediately the gun crews went to their guns while others went up in the rigging to manage the ship.
As the two ships approached each other, the captain muttered, “She’s a British frigate. She could make mincemeat of us.” Turning to the bo’sun again he ordered the American flag to be raised and to set a course which would steer them well away from the frigate, which made no move to engage them.
On they sailed, through fair weather and foul, with helpful winds and those which tended to slow the ship’s progress.
At last one day the cry “Land ho!” came from the tops. As the ship continued eastward, those on the deck could soon see the land, although they had little idea of where they were.
Captain Whitmore ordered the ship to turn south. He assembled the crew on the gundeck and spoke to them from the quarterdeck.
“The land you see on our larboard side, is Portugal. We will continue south to the Straits of Gibraltar, proceed through the straits into the Mediterranean, and enter the harbor of Gibraltar. There we will meet the rest of our squadron, restock the ships supplies, and, when all is ready, head towards the North African shore of the Mediterranean, where we intend to engage the pirates who sail from ports there. Part of our duty will be to escort our merchant ships through the Mediterranean, which up until now has been the sea dominated by pirates.”
As the Governor Bradford approached the Bay of Gibraltar, members of the crew who had never been there looked out and up in awe at the white face of the Rock of Gibraltar towering more than 1300 feet above them.
The bay and the town were on the west side of the rock. The ship sailed into the harbor and dropped anchor. There were other American ships in the harbor, including the USS Philadelphia, the USS New York, and the schooner USS Enterprise. The USS Constitution was expected soon.
Captain Edward Preble was to be commodore of the fleet. When his appointment had been announced, it had caused some hard feelings, especially aboard the USS New York, where Captain Rodgers had seniority over Captain Preble, but orders being orders, Preble was commodore and Rodgers had to swallow his pride.
Resupplying the ships required several days, but at last the squadron was ready to head out to its first port of call, Tangier, Morocco, which was just across the Strait of Gibraltar.