Excerpt
London and Portsmouth, England
May 1, 1812
I, Tom Cringle, two days before my thirteenth birthday, have made the decision of my life: to go to sea.
It came upon me this morning with the smell of tar, oranges, tobacco, sun-bitten wood, salt-eaten rope, and cargoes from Africa, Arabia, and even good old Cornwall, just down the crumpled coast from our lodgings here in London.
Well, you cannot imagine the sense of the sea, you land-loving folks who keep to the cobbled streets. I know because we live so close to the harbor, where the great ships come in. Even in the night, I hear the hawsers straining and the masts creaking and the flags of sails unfurling. And it is then, too, I hear again my father's voice as he tells his own brave stories of battles, tempests, shipwrecks, and other perilous encounters. It was from him that I first heard of dogwatches, and salt junk, and the curious, restless urge a man gets when dreaming of going upon the great sea.
This morning I have made my decision, so, for better or worse, it's off to sea with me. Off to the dream I've held in my heart since my father was taken in a storm aboard the ill-fated voyage of the Labrador Cutter, a merchant ship, some eight years ago.
You might wonder why the death of a father would make his son crave the shipwreck sea. Yet there it is, no mistake: I so love the waves, their sparkle, their lisping danger. And, if it be my fate to die upon, or in, the brine, let it be so, for I am my father's son. And, like him, my fortune awaits me, for better or worse.
That said, the day passes as any other except that I put hand to pen and write a plea to my mother's brother, Sir Cuthbert Holloway, a Lord of the Admiralty. Not every lad, to be sure, has such opportunities, such family connections. And, as I say, let fate carry me on its windward way because I'm prepared, and have been since I sat on my father's knee, hearing sea chanteys of mermaids fair and pirates foul.
Copyright © 2000 by Gerald Hausman