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Book Proposal by Errol Lincoln Uys
BOSTON - BOOK THREELONG WHARF
I 1790-1803 BENJAMIN STEELE and his classmates from Latin School gather at the foot of State Street cheering the captain and crew of Columbia, the first American ship to girdle the globe. Nothing thrills Ben more than the sight of Attoo from “Owyhee.” The young Hawaiian’s scarlet feather cloak is set with golden suns, his head crowned with a dazzling feather helmet. Attoo moves like a living flame walking arm in arm with Captain Robert Gray to the State House steps where Governor Hancock greets them, His Excellency resplendent in Saville Row’s finery. Ben and his mates vow to end their dreary days on Old Latin’s benches. Ship’s boys they’ll be sailing the oceans to Owyhee and the China Sea! “Oyes! Oyes! Oyes!” Oysters! What better way to launch their new careers than a feast at Holbrook’s mart! Oysters and porter flow like a river on this banner day in Boston. Come evening and a ten year old admiral is hard put to plot a straight course from Town Dock down Washington Street and home. It’s Ben’s good fortune that his parents are celebrating with Captain Gray and he can turn in to repair his wits for the terrors of Latin’s Master Apthorp Gould. “Sweeney” has been known to whip every boy in his school, one after the other, laying on each stripe with a ditty: “If you’ll be good, I’ll thank you; if not, I’ll spank you.” Ben’s parents, Dr. William Steele and his wife Bess Tiptree, the quartermaster’s daughter, live with the widowed Emory Steele in Purchase Street. Eighty-year-old Emory and his nephew Robert control the struggling Steele & Sons. The decayed Steele Wharf has been sold and filled in for land use. The business is now centered on a warehouse at Long Wharf with one brig Prudence and a mosquito fleet of fifty-ton coastal vessels. The year 1792 sees Boston split over a new band of heretics, as unsettling as the great sinners of the past. Sarah Steele is at the center of a storm that breaks over the City on a Hill, her salon a gathering place for “foreign agitators who put modesty and every kindred virtue to the blush!” Sarah is the richest woman in Boston. Bibliophile Edmund died six years after being swept out of Boston with the Loyalists in 1776 leaving his entire estate to his widow. Sarah quadrupled her fortune with shrewd gambles in trading voyages. In 1783, for example, she invested in a ship sent to the Falkland Islands, where the crew collected thirteen thousand sealskins. New York dealers offered fifty cents a pelt. Sarah turned them down and ordered the ship to sail around the Cape of Good Hope to Hong Kong where Chinese merchants shelled out $5 a piece. The storm around Sarah has its origin in her experience with General Burgoyne’s Blockade of Boston. Governor Hancock is happy to strut like a peacock on his own stage but adamantly refuses to consider a petition to open a theatre. The friends of the drama meet at Sarah’s house and boldly take matters into their own hands. A committee is formed and funds collected for Boston’s first temple of culture in a renovated stable on Board Alley (Hawley Street.) Madame Steele’s aide-de-camp in this battle is a rough diamond in her circle of genius and eloquence: Lieutenant-Colonel Loyal Trane fought against the Redcoats from Saratoga to Yorktown and is just as ready to combat the Bluestockings of Boston. When the Continental Army disbanded, Loyal returned to Boston where his father Jethro and three siblings are gunsmiths. Loyal is no craftsman but does a good business selling pieces from the Trane works. He belongs to a land syndicate that owns a sizable part of Mount Whoredom re-christened “Mount Vernon.” One of Loyal’s close friends is the young architect, Charles Bulfinch, who is also a devotee of theater and agitator for its freedom. Loyal is thirty-four and unmarried though it’s common knowledge that Madame Steele and Colonel Trane are lovers. The Bluestockings point to their affair as a glaring example of immorality and impiety promoted by vulgar theatricals. The New Exhibition Room opens on August 10, 1792 presenting a ballet called The Bird Catcher that features a minuet de la cour and gavotte. Six weeks later the company offers a series of Moral Lectures, in realty forbidden works of Shakespeare in disguise. By late November, the Tragical History of the Merchant of London is in rehearsal with actors coming from Drury Lane to mud-bound Board Alley. The theater’s enemies counter-attack in the Chronicle indignant that “foreigners should palm themselves on a republican people with tales of love between My Lord and Lady in this land of liberty and equality.” On December 5, as Act One of The Tragical History ends, Sheriff Jerry Allen serves a warrant closing the New Exhibition Room and arresting its manager. The audience riots, tears down the state’s coat of arms and tramples a portrait of Governor Hancock. Loyal Trane calms the mob but on the next day they assemble in force at Faneuil Hall to support manager Harper. When his case is dismissed on a technicality, Sarah sponsors a victory dinner at Julien’s Restorator to fortify Mr. Harper and his company. Within the year, Governor Hancock makes his final exit and the law becomes a dead letter until its repeal. Sarah and her circle establish a stock company to erect and operate the Boston Theater on Federal Street, “a triumph of taste and liberal feeling over bigotry and prejudice,” which opens its doors in February 1794. Loyal and Charles Bulfinch risk everything in a “tontine” building scheme that seeks subscribers for sixteen elegant brick homes on Franklin Street modeled after the row houses of Bath, England. The Tontine Crescent is completed but fails to find enough backers bankrupting Bulfinch and almost ruining Loyal. Notwithstanding, the Crescent becomes the most desirable address in town, Sarah occupying Number Eleven, a magnet for fashionable Boston.
Ben is fourteen when he sails for Europe with his father. Doctor William is in poor health and believes the voyage will be beneficial. Ben attended Latin School until he was thirteen, with the idea that he would go on to Harvard like William. He’d made several coastwise voyages with the mosquito fleet, a life he far preferred. After one semester at college, Ben entered the counting-room on Long Wharf. Six months later, he became ship’s clerk aboard Prudence. The brig sails first to Lisbon to trade fish and rum and ship a cargo of rice and flour for Le Havre. They sell this at a profit of two hundred percent but to get payment have to go to Paris. At the Place de la Révolution on July 28, 1794, they witness the bloody efficiency of Le Guillotine with sixteen beheadings in twelve minutes, including the execution of Robespierre. Ben and William are delayed at Paris for three months letting Prudence sail without them to the Baltic port of Kronstadt opposite St. Petersburg. Boston ship-owners have been trading with the Russians for a decade voyaging as neutrals to avoid harassment by French or British cruisers. Ben and his father travel overland through Germany stopping at Baden spa en route to Hamburg where they take a ship to Kronstadt. The onset of winter strands Prudence until spring. Ben revels in the chance to explore the capital of Catherine the Great, befriending fifteen-year-old Alexis Salikov and his sister, Eugenia, from a landed family whose estates he visits. The wretched condition of hundreds of serfs makes a deep impression on the young American fresh from the Terror in Paris. The Salikovs view the French madness with horror but with half a million Russian nobles are confident their class will endure. The Salikovs have only the barest notion of America, the visiting Bostonians as exotic as their own remote Kazakhs and other Tartars. When William falls gravely ill, the Salikovs open their doors to him and his son. In February 1795, William dies at St. Petersburg. One week later, Silas Cummings, captain of Prudence succumbs to pneumonia. It’s up to Ben to organize the ship’s crew and ready the vessel for her return voyage. He’s barely fifteen but proves himself a shrewd trader haggling for a cargo of hemp, iron and duck that will clear $26,000 for the ship’s investors. When the Baltic ice breaks, Prudence is first to get away. Her young master stands alone at the taffrail wearing his father’s sable-lined silk greatcoat and suddenly much older. In August 1799, four years after he brings Prudence home, Ben prepares for a voyage to the other side of the world. A make or break venture for Steele & Sons, Robert Steele entrust the nineteen-year-old with command of a new ship and Sarah who is the single biggest investor in the voyage gives her nephew her total blessing. Ben attends a farewell dinner at Tontine Crescent, a favorite who lights up the eye of his discerning hostess. Taller than average, Ben has pitch black hair, a square determined brow, and clear blue eyes whose straight look bespeaks loyalty and indomitable energy. There’s a slight roguishness that doesn’t go unnoticed by a worldly aunt no stranger to merry mischief. Madame Steele’s banker, Gladwell Somersby, and his daughter are at the table. Julia Somersby is a tall, slender eighteen-year-old with a winning smile, her hostess seeing an excellent match for a bold young mariner. Sarah wishes Ben Godspeed on his long voyage counseling him to do what’s right and proper for a Boston man: “Come back and marry a Boston girl!” Ben’s voyage lasts from August 1799 to May 1802 and is typical of the adventures of captains who made the name of “Boston” synonymous with America’s China trade. The eighty foot Lady Sarah is two-hundred-and-twenty tons, carrying a crew of thirty-two and armed with ten carriage guns and eight swivels.
At Tontine Crescent, Ben is saddened to find Sarah grievously ill. She lingers until September dying with her lover and her nephew at her bedside. She leaves the bulk of her fortune to Ben and a legacy to Loyal Trane. The 1803 theater season brings Miss Adaline Woolcott from Theater Royal, Covent Garden to offer “A Cure for the Heart Ache,” which does wonders for a grieving colonel. Loyal and Adaline marry, the actress continuing to work her cure on stage and in private, a prolific player who gives the colonel seven sons and three daughters. All their children are strictly forbidden to go on stage. By 1806, Boston’s merchants enjoy unprecedented prosperity, few more successful than Steele & Sons. The trading house owns seven ships and carries a major share of the New England-Canton trade. On July 4, as Bostonians turn out on the Common to celebrate the third decade of American independence, Ben surrenders his own freedom to marry Julia Somersby. They choose a spot on the western slope of Beacon Hill for their home, just a stone’s throw from the spring where Reverend William Blaxton danced with his forest nymph.
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