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SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION
For the Freedom of the Sea
A Romance of the War of 1812
BY
CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY
Copyright 1899
TO
WILLIAM T. SAMPSON, A Rear Admiral in thy Navy of the United States,
IN HEARTFELT APPRECIATION OF THE PROFOUND STRATEGY, BRILLIANT TACTICS, AND UNWEARIED VIGILANCE OF HIS GREAT CAMPAIGN IN THE WEST INDIES, TO WHICH HIS GLORIOUS VICTORY OF JULY 3, 1898, WAS A FITTING AND WELL-EARNED CULMINATION
For the Freedom of the Sea
CHAPTER I
The Beautiful Anne Fitzhugh
THE beautiful Anne Fitzhugh sprang from one of the proudest and oldest of those great Virginia families, whose achievements in the past had given that fair Commonwealth such remarkable pre-eminence in the small family of nations, which then made up the United States of America. The beautiful Anne Fitzhugh's pride in her ancestry was as great as her descent was long.
That they had been Tories in the Revolution in no way diminished her reverence for the name she bore. She even looked upon the warm friendship, which had subsisted between her father and a certain other great Virginian of so exalted a character that he had been chiefest in all the nation —and through whose paramount influence the family estates, somewhat diminished in extent and curtailed as to revenue, had been saved from confiscation, which was the American reward for unappreciated services to King George III —as a blot on the escutcheon of the family history.
Everybody was astonished, therefore, when she married Mr. George Fairford of New York, since he was nobody in particular — nothing but a gentleman — no ancestral estates, no ancient name, nothing but money! His father had been, or was, in trade! — Think of it —a shopkeeper, or a merchant, or something of that sort, whose large means, at his only son's disposal, had permitted him to journey to the far land of Virginia, where he had the unspeakable audacity and unparalleled good luck to captivate the belle of the State, broad acres, ancient name, beauty, pride, — all there was, in fact.
The wedded life of the young couple, in the beautiful old place at Blakely, on the Chesapeake, the Fitzhugh place, of course, for the bride positively refused to live in Dutch and plebeian New York, passed pleasantly enough. Mr. Fairford was entirely conscious of the exalted station of the lady who had honored him, and indeed did not lack information on the subject, which was supplied by kindly disposed friends, as well as by the lady herself, when her pride got the better of her discretion, which was not infrequently. The situation had not yet become too entirely unbearable, however, when Providence, jealous of the honor of the Fitzhugh's, it was believed, terminated a connection so damaging to their pride by removing the modest husband to that sphere where, since there is no giving in marriage there, he could scarcely hope by his fascinations to capture another Fitzhugh!
During their brief period of wedded life, Madam Fairford, nee Fitzhugh, as she loved to subscribe herself to the end of her days, had magnificently borne a son to — well, to herself; an act, it was thought, of great condescension on her part to the exigencies of family life. The young man inherited some of his mother's beauty, much of her unbending pride, and a little of the sternness of disposition which came from old Colonel John Parke, whose portrait in the hall, with its piercing blue eyes, had looked fiercely down upon many generations, which had lived and died since his day; he had also a touch of his father's sunny gentleness at times.
But it had not yet appeared what he should be, or what he might have become under the stern regimen of his proud and beautiful mother, who took herself and her family so seriously that, when a few years after Mr. Fairford's death she removed to England as the bride of another wanderer — Sir James Heathcote of Heathcote Hall, in the county of Surrey —she was not sure but that she had made another mesalliance.
"In Virginia," she was wont to say to her meek husband, "other people think it an honor to be shot dead by a Fitzhugh; we are not one of, but actually, the first family of Virginia! While you, sir, I find, are only a small country baronet of James the First's creation! Where I was born, I have been accustomed to precede every one, while here I must follow every red-faced country girl whose father happens to be a degree above you. "Tis a shame, Sir James, and I did not expect it." Alas, that not even the pride and glory of the Fitzhugh's could break the Median laws of precedence!
Sir James happened, as had been her first incumbent, to be a gentleman (indeed, Mistress Fitzhugh could have married no other), and was of the same modest, retiring disposition. He was not without a certain simple pride of birth of his own; but when he first mentioned, in his deprecating way, that his people had come over with William the Conqueror, Lady Anne crushed him with the stare she had inherited from Colonel Parke, and which generations of Fitzhughs had intensified until it was most disconcerting, indeed; and added a cutting remark about William the Conqueror being a most improper person, of no birth at all, scarcely to be named in the presence of a lady, etc. As another act of great condescension on her part, Lady Anne had borne another son to — well, to herself as before, and young Richard Heathcote inherited all of his mother's pride and none of his father's mildness.
Poor little Blakely Fitzhugh Fairford was left behind to the tender care of his mother's friends and relatives in Virginia when his mother followed — no, led Sir James back across the seas. He was thus early deprived of that love and care which even the sternest mother feels for her offspring, and which was lavished upon his more fortunate step-brother in Heathcote Hall in such measure that the fondest and most doting peasant woman could not have surpassed it in intensity and degree, while Blakely was more or less forgotten.
Seeing his mother and his brother, some three years younger than himself, at more and more infrequent intervals—in fact, Lady Anne's visits to the ancestral acres, which were the only occasions upon which she saw her son, gradually diminished, until they finally ceased altogether — the connection between mother and son was kept up by a yearly letter, which grew more and more formal with each repetition. His mother's picture in miniature, however, hung in his room, and, in larger shape, looked down upon him from over the mantel in the dining-room; and the haughty beauty of the pictured face appealed to his artistic nature so strongly that, with it and the faint recollections of childhood, he created for himself an ideal mother, very far removed, indeed, from the real one, to which he gave all the devotion and love of his bereft little heart. A passion for this, his own creation, grew upon him until the lonely little boy developed into a man, when he clung to this semblance of family relationship left him like a ship to her anchor.
The Virginia estates were carefully managed for Lady Anne's benefit, and the revenue regularly sent to England, where, with prudent forethought, it was safely invested for young James' future benefit. Fairford did not suffer thereby, being in the enjoyment of a sufficient competence from the estate of his deceased grandfather, the New Yorker "in trade." He made his home in Virginia, when he was at home, with old Colonel Barrett, a distant connection of his mother, whose place adjoined her own. By profession he was a sailor — an officer in the American Navy; he had been a midshipman under Truxton on the Constellation, getting his first taste of war when that fortunate ship defeated La Vengeance and L'Insurgente. Afterward, with Decatur at Tripoli, he had taken further lessons, and now was rated first lieutenant of the U.S.S. Constitution 44, Captain Isaac Hull, lazily swinging at her anchor in the deep water of the Chesapeake Bay, at the foot of the hill opposite Blakely Hall and the Barrett place.
Singularly enough — and we can only account for it by pre-supposing a strain of roving blood in the Fitzhughs — one of them had been a pirate, a buccaneer, or, let us say as did the family, "a gentleman adventurer," in the old days when the risks were great, the takings many, and dead men told no tales on the Spanish main — Richard Heathcote was also a sailor; and, at present, third lieutenant of H. B. M. S. Guerriere 38, Captain James Richard Dacres, which, in company with H. B. M. S. Lion 50, Captain Henry Cunningham, was moored not far from the Constitution on this gentle spring evening, in the year of grace, 1812.
The three ships had been anchored near each other for some days past, and there had been much visiting among the officers. Fairford had warmly welcomed his brother to Virginia, and the ties of relationship between them had made the transition from acquaintanceship to affection an easy one; though the feeling upon Fairford's part was deeper than upon that of Heathcote, as was natural, since the one was practically motherless, and the other rejoiced in home affections of the deepest kind.
There had been rumors of war, and two partial engagements, at least, had occurred between ships of the two countries; and, while there had, as yet, been no open rupture or declaration of war, the feeling of the Americans had been so strained that it was only a question of days until the breaking point would be reached. The high-handed arrogance of the British Navy, the cruisers of which stopped peaceful American trading ships on the high seas when and where it was convenient to them, sometimes violating our harbors for the same purpose, and took from them such men for their service as pleased them, under the plea that they were deserters or British subjects, or what you will:— without any plea at all, in fact — had awakened such a feeling of rage and indignation that, when the various councilor acts, necessitated by the greater wars which England was conducting with her great Continental rival, were brought into operation, the end was certain.
The claim of perpetuity of dominion over a citizen, which implied that no man could change his domicile, nor renounce his allegiance, nor become a citizen of another country, was one which could be maintained only by force of arms, not of right. England found it most difficult to maintain and man that immense and most efficient navy, which, after all is said and done, was the great bulwark of liberty, and insured the final triumph of democracy over imperialism as the principle of government, during the earlier years of the century. This was a sufficient cause for English statesmen and administrators to disregard the rights of individual men and institute the odious press gang. They were compelled to maintain discipline in their ships by the frightful methods of punishment in vogue, and to use American ships as recruiting stations. Naturally this did not avail to excuse their conduct from an American point of view.
Between the Berlin Decrees of the French Emperor, and the Orders in Council of Great Britain, the commerce of the United States, upon which the prosperity of the nation at that time depended, was practically at an end. When the British openly disregarded the protection which should be given by the flag on the ocean, looking at the Atlantic as they did the Mediterranean, "as a British lake," it was high time to strike. Indeed, it was strike or die; many people said strike and die; in either event action was imperative and necessary, and national death preferable to a further submission to the British claims. When the American flag no longer protected American citizens, on shipboard, or wherever it floated above them, the blow must be struck, and struck hard for the freedom of the sea.
In view of these things, Sir James Heathcote, accompanied by a distant connection of his, Miss Evelyn Heathcote, having left his wife, who became more and more English, though not less of a Fitzhugh, with each succeeding year, at home, came over to Virginia to look after the ancestral estates. If possible, he hoped to make some permanent arrangement for their safekeeping during the coming and inevitable war. Sir James and Evelyn were the guests of Colonel Barrett and his daughter Margaret for the time being, and a delightful friendship had sprung up between the two young girls. On the evening in which this story opens, the captains of the Constitution and the Guerriere, Captain Cunningham being indisposed, with Fairford, Heathcote, and such other of their higher officers as could be spared from their duties, and several officers of the American Navy, were dining at the Hall, preparatory to a ball to be given after supper.
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