Sisters of the Sea SHIP WRECK

Copyright (c) 2020 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

SISTERS OF THE SEA

SHIP WRECK

By R. Peterson

“We’ve a nasty-fog and a three mast purse running off the port bow,” Pollyanna Nottingham called from the enclosed platform high atop the main mast. “Her waterline lingers just below her gun ports. King George surely must be soaking his feet in the bilge … as he counts his gold!” Captain Loretta DuPont signaled Polly with a wicked smile showing that she had got her report on the potential booty while her former hand maid Fiorella quickly searched for the chase with a spyglass. “Ah! Just a wink.”

            “Did you perhaps spy a jack to go with fat George before she vanished?” Loretta asked the ship’s gunner as she finished the last swallows from a bottle of rum. In fact the entire crew was drunk. Someone had discovered a lost cask in the hold and a celebration was underway. The fog and the storm had fell on them suddenly.

            “Aye,” Fiorella said carefully placing the stolen metatarsal telescope, finely-crafted in Rotterdam, into a wooden case just as Polly slid down the halyard. “She does in fact call herself the Mary George and she showed all the lads a Red Ensign before she slipped into the bed-sheets.

            “A Royal bumper then?” Loretta snickered as she paced the deck. She corked and then threw the empty bottle into the sea. “A message for my mother!”

            “Lads?” Polly laughed as she dropped from the crow’s nest. “We’ve but forty-four soiled wenches aboard this tub … and that’s being over generous.”

            “Perhaps our king desires a dirty kiss.” Loretta suggested.

            “The truth of our lot brings me to tears.” The more than three-hundred pound Fiorella looked ready to weep. “It was nine, October of 1796 when I last had a scratchy beard wetting my neck. It was inside the Blue Dolphin in London. He was drunk of course and mistook me for a pretty-boy sailor! But these Keelhaulers we’re chasing thinking we be men … might give us an edge.”

            “There be no king in that tub but maybe rum, so do we dare the mist and the Devil’s breath to take her?” Polly asked.

            “How much of a dive is it to Davy Jones’ sea chest?” Loretta called to Alison Drescher who had been pulling line at the bow ever since the pirate ship approached the fog. Margaret Waldheim, the ship’s navigator was holding the wheel at helm while the stout sisters, the former farmwives, Penny and Renny rolled a second twenty-pounder across the upper deck.

            “I show three fantom and falling,” Allison yelled back as she lifted the weighted and knotted rope.

            “Mice will flee even a tiny tempest … but not the wise with our thicker tails,” Penny boasted.

            “We’ll be hanged yet … though every drop of water swear against it!” Loretta laughed with Renny as she remembered the words from a famous London playwright.

            “Captain,” Polly said. “We’ve got more than an overloaded freighter and fog to vex us.” She pointed to the dark, rolling horizon behind them. “I don’t need a spy lens to see that’s a cruel squall sneaking upon our backside.”

As if the collaborate Polly’s remarks, a gust of wind blew up Loretta’s short dress which she wore over men’s pants. She smiled as she smoothed it down with her hands.

“Drop the skirts and go in tender,” Loretta ordered the eager women crowded around her. “I smell gull nests … even if I can’t hear them. No treasure buys a scratched hull!”

Polly laughed. “You sound more like a pirate every day!”

Seventeen women scampered up the rigging to lower all but one small sail. Another twenty others hurried below deck tamping cannon and loading muskets. The day’s prize was just a fight away.

And the Sea Witch slowly sailed into the treacherous vapor.

-------2-------

                It was beginning to feel like a trap … but a merry one. There was no one better at the ship’s wheel than Maggie Waldheim but the haze thickened and she gasped as she narrowly missed a huge rock that loomed out of the fog. “That tide-stone was as large as a Pompey knocking-shop!”

“Bring the paddles from the bilge,” Loretta ordered. “We might have to push away the next bugger that fancies a hug!”

A dozen women who had just finished taking down all but one sail went below deck to retrieve the twenty foot oars which were kept for emergency use when accosted by doldrums.

By the time the oars were brought on deck it was already getting dark. Six women manned both port and starboard sides with their long poles stuck out like quills. A couple of women began to sing … and then the entire drunken crew did.

            “Drip us in the water … but none will ever drown.

            We’ll rot inside a tower cold … if hangman can’t be found.

            To wear a rope is braided gold … around our perfect necks.

            Is what we pray to Neptune’s Gods … with knees upon the decks.

            So push the storms upon us … and wash us with your rain.

            Until the gallows call to us … we’ll never know the  pain.

            So close the door on sinking ships … and open it no more.

We were ever born to hang … us  mighty forty-four.”

Lighting flashed and illuminated a nightmarish scene as Maggie held her breath, steered the ship away from a jagged reef and then breathed to the sound of applauding thunder. Renny and Penny each snapped an oar. The side of the hull sounded like a bear growling as it scraped the mossy rock hidden below the surface. It began to rain madness. Icy sheets of water tumbled from the sky and were quickly picked up and flung by an angry wind.

The witch is thirsty … and she’s drinking!” One of the women from below deck reported with a smile.

“Leaking?”

“Maggie! Get us out of here,” Loretta ordered.

Harsh winds were blowing away the fog. The navigator had the Sea Witch halfway turned when another flash of lightning showed the merchant ship they’d been pursuing slipping between two wave-tossed reefs. “Let fat George have his hellish harbor,” Loretta yelled. “If he thinks this be safety … his hull must be loaded with hatter’s rats!”

-------3-------

            By the grace of providence, or by expert seamanship, the pirate ship was somehow fleeing the tempest. Most hands topside delicately angled the single sail as the Sea Witch sailed against the wind. It was once again growing light as if an entire night had passed and not less than an hour. They passed the knocking rock and hoped to be free of the storm when a final flash of lightning struck terror into the hearts of all the women on deck. A sixty gun ship-of-the-line passed through the Sea Witch’s wake and narrowly missed crushing the stern.

            “When the Devil throws a party all of England comes a running!” Polly gasped.

There was little time to laugh … or even smile at her joke. A startled royal sailor manning a stern gun near the huge British ship’s aft fired once before they were out of range and wood fragments exploded as a twenty pound ball of iron split the hull and crushed the Sea Witch’s rudder.

The huge Man of War vanished into the daylight as the fatally injured pirate frigate was once again blown back into the nightmare. This time six oars broke and the center mast bent wildly and then snapped as the ship crashed into the rock.

Three women with oars were swept over the side. The wind, huge waves and the leaking hull kept the frigate from righting itself.

            “We’re sinking!” A woman gunner screamed as the terrified crew from below swam onto the deck.

            “Into the barrels if we can!” Loretta yelled just before a piece of broken mast knocked her to the planks. Polly and Maggie helped her to her feet; her head was bleeding. It took precious moments to untangle line about her legs. Then a wave washed them all over the side.

The Sea Witch had six assorted longboats each one with a capacity of up to twelve sailors. Only three made it into the water before water washed over and submerged the decks. Less than ten women left the sinking ship in the boats … the rest sank or flapped about in the water. Cries of help were muted by the wind or even more ghastly … smothered by bubbles.

Maggie and Polly swam through the wild and churning sea and somehow managed to lift their injured captain into a dinghy with two women rowers. “Where are the sharks?” A dripping Polly demanded. “We were promised sharks!” A wide eyed Maggie plucked a floating bottle from the waves. “A message to your mother?”

Loretta seemed disoriented - half out of her mind. Not even the insane wit of Polly could lift her spirits. She slipped from their hands suddenly and stood up nearly capsizing the craft. The wind and the rain blew her hair outward on all sides. Blood ran down the sides of her face and her eyes shone as bright as stars. With her arms outstretched, she looked like a banshee showing terrified travelers the way to doom!

“I tremble in the shallows! But I still pay the Devil for his bits of treachery!” Loretta screamed before they pulled her back down.

TO BE CONTINUED …