As the Bradford sailed from the harbor at Gibraltar, Zachary stood on deck marveling at his luck. Less than six months ago he had been a homeless orphan, raped (although he didn’t know that word) and relying on the charity of others to help him. Now he was in a new part of the world, new to him at least, he had a job and a purpose, and he wondered what the future held for him.
Something else was happening to him, and he wasn’t sure what or why. He had noticed that lately he had a feeling in his groin which he hadn’t had before. In addition, he was aware that his penis had grown. Sometimes at night he lay in his hammock and gently massaged it and it immediately grew hard. He had experienced ‘stiffies’ for as long as he could remember, but as he had grown down there, they were more obvious. That embarrassed him and he wondered what was going on.
One night as he lay in his hammock, he felt the new feeling once again. A tension in his penis grew and then he felt it throb a few times. He had no idea why that happened, but he was sure he liked the feeling.
Over the next few weeks the throbbing grew stronger and he realized one night that he had shot some fluid out of his penis. Farm boys usually knew all about what was happening but a city boy like Zachary,─ especially a shy one like Zachary─ sometimes didn’t have a clue. That didn’t stop him. He wondered if he could ask someone, but he would be mortified to do that.
He decided that if he was going to shoot liquid, he’d be better off standing at the rail when he shot. Nearly every night, he sought out the shadows on the deck hoping that crew members who were on watch wouldn’t see him.
One night as he stood at the rail pumping away, he became aware of someone coming up beside him. Immediately, his penis became soft.
“Oh ho,” said Tony. “Caught you.”
Although he was so embarrassed he could barely speak, Zachary asked If Tony could tell him was happening.
“You don’t know?”
“No,” Zachary replied. He was blushing furiously but since they were in the shadows, Tony couldn’t see.
“Okay. Do you know how babies are made?”
“Um… not really. I just know that it takes a man and a woman.”
Tony nodded and proceeded to tell Zachary the facts of life, or at least his version. When he finished, Zachary asked, “Do you mean I could be a father?”
“Yup.”
“But I’m not old enough.” Then a realization came to him. “Oh goodness. So, when Max stuck his dong in my rear, he was trying to make a baby?”
Tony giggled good-naturedly. “No, he was just getting his rocks off like you were doing when I appeared. C’mon. I’m hard as the rock of Gibraltar. Let’s do it together.”
As soon as Tony pulled out his organ, Zachary grew hard again, and together they pumped away until they both shot.
When they finished, Zachary asked, “Do all the crew members do this, even the officers?”
“Sure, probably even that pompous little prick, Midshipman, Stanley. They’re careful about when and where they do it, but you just got caught. Lucky it was only me! Most of the others would tease you no end.”
Zachary didn’t sleep much that night. He was too busy thinking about what was happening and what he had learned. He was also very grateful to Tony for telling him and still respecting him.
At Gibraltar, the ship had taken on marines in addition to its complement of sailors. The first task of the squadron was to reestablish peace with Morocco. A peace treaty between that country and the United States had been signed in 1786, but more recently Moroccan pirates had been attacking American merchant ships in the Mediterranean.
Since they were going into a war zone, the crew began to talk of prize money, which they received if they captured an enemy ship and brought it to harbor. Tony told Zachary that he didn’t know whether powder monkeys were given prize money, but if they were it would be a paltry amount unless they captured all the warships in the Mediterranean.
Commodore Preble had sent some of the ships to Tripoli to continue a blockade there. The blockade had been set at the mouth of the harbor in Tripoli, but it met with varying degrees of success, as the Tripolitan pirates continued to operate more or less at will. Although American warships carried more firepower, the Arab ships ─ polaccas and xebecs ─ were faster than the large American ones and could easily outrun and outmaneuver them.
Xebecs were traditionally fitted with huge triangular or lateen sails. Three-masted polaccas were a mix of square sails on some masts and lateen sails on the others. Both ships had shallow drafts and were very fast. Polaccas could carry up to 400 men and 40 cannon. Their usual attack method was to attach their ship to the ship of their victims and swarm aboard. They were not fond of cannon exchanges.
The Bradford was one of the ships commanded by Preble to sail to Tangier, Morocco, and settle into the harbor, threatening by their presence a possible attack on the city. Preble, with an American diplomat, spent nearly a month there, backed up by his ships in the port, negotiating with Mowlay Sulayman, the ruler. Ultimately, an agreement was signed in September, 1801, and the American ships sailed east without an enemy behind them.
From Tangier the ships bypassed Algiers and Tunis and rejoined the rest of the squadron at Tripoli. During the voyage, they occasionally saw Arab ships, but the Americans left those ships alone because Preble knew that his ships couldn’t catch them. The blockade of Tripoli attempted to prevent ships from either entering or leaving the harbor. Some of the Arab ships were large, square-rigged ships which had been merchant ships captured by the Arabs, but many of the ones in Tripoli were polaccas or xebecs. That was because the entrance to Tripoli harbor was shallow in spots, and navigating it in a large ship was hazardous, as the Americans were to find out to their horror.
As time passed, the American ships in the blockade grew low on potable water, and the Bradford and another ship were dispatched to Malta, where the friendly British possession would supply the American ships. The crossing of the Mediterranean north to the island of Malta was uneventful. Zachary was one of the crew assigned to fill the water casks. He wasn’t yet strong enough to carry a full cask, but he could take the casks to the stream to be filled while larger crew men carried them back. It was tiring work and the boy felt hot and sticky with sweat well before the time came when he could stop.
It took several days to fill all the water casks the ships had brought. With all that weight now in her hold the Bradford sailed very differently, so the return to Tripoli took longer. In addition, the direction of the winds wasn’t very helpful.
When they arrived, the crew quickly learned that an American frigate, the Philadelphia, had run aground in the entrance to Tripoli’s harbor. The captain, William Bainbridge, had ignored Commodore Preble’s written orders to the effect that no American frigate was to attempt to enter the harbor. The commodore knew the charts they had were woefully inaccurate and there were invisible shoals beneath the water surface.
Bainbridge had tried everything he knew to free his ship from the shallows. He cut away his anchors; he had the forward guns thrown into the harbor hoping to raise the bow off the rocks; he jettisoned the aft guns; he unloaded virtually everything of any weight in the hold including the water. Still, the ship remained fast. In desperation he had all the weapons, ammunition, and powder thrown overboard with no luck.
On the Bradford, Zachary and Tony could hear Preble on the Constitution cursing loudly, something to the effect of having Bainbridge’s balls. “I don’t think he’s talking about cannon balls,” observed Tony as they both laughed. In any event, that was not possible because the Philadelphia was soon boarded by the Tripolitans. Bainbridge and all his crew were taken prisoner. It was well known within the fleet that prisoners of those pirates became slaves with no hope of release unless someone bought their freedom. At that time there were hundreds of slaves in the Mediterranean region.
Meanwhile, the American sloop Enterprise, while patrolling nearby, had captured a Tripolitan ketch. The lieutenant in command on the Enterprise, Stephen Decatur, claimed the ketch as a prize and returned with his ship and his prize to the squadron outside Tripoli.
Someone ─ whether it was Preble or Decatur is not known ─ suggested that they use the captured ketch, now renamed the Intrepid, in a raid on the Philadelphia. By cover of night, Decatur and a volunteer crew would sail quietly toward the harbor, board the frigate, and if refloating it was not possible, set it afire to prevent it from becoming a pirate ship.
There were many volunteers, and Decatur chose a fit, responsible crew. In the darkness, the Intrepid was quietly loaded with men, including some Sicilian volunteers who spoke Arabic. Most of the men were to remain below the deck so it would appear that there were only a few men on board. They were armed with cutlasses and pistols but were ordered to use the latter only as a last resort. For as long as possible this was to be a silent raid.
The Intrepid sailed very slowly towards the Philadelphia, while the men huddled nearly on top of each other below deck and the crew on the blockading ships stared into the darkness, trying to make out what was happening. Unseen, the Intrepid sailed silently until it reached its target. The raiders quickly and quietly scrambled aboard the Philadelphia and completely overcame the Tripolitans on board. Some dove into the harbor; some were slain where they stood.
Decatur determined that the frigate could not be floated and proceeded to torch the ship as his men returned to the Intrepid. As soon as Decatur was aboard, the small ship returned to the squadron, where men at the rails of all the ships were admiring the conflagration engulfing the Philadelphia and cheering Decatur and his men. In a way, many of the men and boys were sad to see the destruction of the Philadelphia because they considered it the most beautiful American naval ship of the time, but they understood the necessity and certainly didn’t want the frigate attacking them.
When word of the raid eventually reached the United States, Decatur became an instant hero.
Much of the duty of blockading was humdrum and boring, but the powder monkeys, like all members of the crew, were kept busy during their watches. They polished brass that was already shiny and scrubbed decks till their backs and arms ached. Zachary told Tony that after this voyage he hoped never to see a scrub brush again.
So, the powder monkeys were happy when the Bradford was ordered to conduct merchant ships through the Mediterranean. This duty took them to ports like Naples, Palermo, Syracuse, Gibraltar, and even Cairo. Crew members were not allowed on shore in any of the ports for fear some might desert, so the boys had to be satisfied by what they could see from the deck of their ship. But that activity soon became humdrum as well. Zachary couldn’t believe that he was actually bored sailing from port to port.
The ship had no surgeon, but it did have Mr. Carruthers, the surgeon’s mate, who was not as experienced as a surgeon and had no degree. His tasks included setting fractures and treating illnesses brought on by the warm Mediterranean atmosphere. In times of battle, he was expected to extract bullets, amputate limbs, and suture sword gashes.
However, he was also a born storyteller, and he often situated himself on the deck by the mainmast telling stories to anyone who wanted to listen. He usually had a rapt group of boys and men listening. His repertoire included folk stories from the Appalachians, Bible stories (usually highly embellished), tales of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and a smattering of folktales which he had picked up in his travels to other lands.
The boys were particularly fascinated by the stories of the Greek and Roman gods. They learned about Zeus and the home of the gods on Mount Olympus. They also heard that the god was a very highly sexualized god and had numerous wives and children. There was a good deal of merriment from the listeners when all this was explained.
Perhaps their favorite story was the tale of Odysseus and his many adventures as he sailed home after the battle of Troy. Carruthers told of the lotus-eaters, of Odysseus outsmarting the Cyclops, of the Sirens calling to the sailors, and of Scylla and Charybdis, pointing out that the Strait of Messina, a narrow stretch of water between Sicily and Italy, had very strange, contrary currents which created whirlpools known as Scylla and Charybdis. “You’ll notice,” he said, “that most captains sail to the west around Sicily rather than attempting the straits, even though going through the strait is much the shorter route.”
On a warm, fall day, the Bradford was sent to Alexandria, Egypt, to escort a merchant ship west through the Mediterranean and past Gibraltar. Even though it took several days to reach Alexandria, they found that the merchant ship wouldn’t be ready to depart for another two weeks. That gave the crew of the Bradford time to lay in fresh water and food.
Zachary often gazed off at the minarets of Cairo in the distance, wishing he could go to the city and explore. But as usual, the boys were kept aboard the ship.
When the merchant ship, the Mary Day, was at last ready to depart, the Bradford sailed just ahead or beside it as they headed slowly west. Captain Whitmore disliked the task of escorting merchant ships because they were slow, and he felt as though he was holding the Bradford back, but he did his duty, keeping a constant watch out for other ships.
One day, the cry of “Sail ho!” came from the top.
“Where away?” the captain called.
“Dead ahead. Coming out of the sun.”
The crew peered ahead, but the setting sun made it almost impossible to see any signs of a ship.
At last the sun set just enough and they saw a palacca heading towards them.
Captain Whitmore tried to keep the Arab ship well to the south of him, but the palacca was too fast and too maneuverable.
“Boatswain, beat to quarters,” the captain called out.
As soon as the order was given, men assembled at their larboard cannons while powder monkeys raced below for powder. When the men were at their guns, the captain ordered them to load with scrap metal.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Appleton was distributing small arms among the crew and the marines climbed with their muskets into the rigging where they would have a chance for a good shot down into the pirate ship.
Zachary arrived on deck with powder cartridges just as the palacca sailed next to the Bradford and attached itself with grappling hooks to the larger ship.
Immediately, the captain ordered, “FIRE,” and the nine carronades boomed in unison.