TheTroubleshooters.com Home                   Catalog                   World War 2                   World War 1                  Links

Patton's Troubleshooters Book                        Patton's Troubleshooters DVD

IN the long winter days and longer winter evenings, spent in the rude quarters of the officers on shore, before the ships were ready, a great change came over Paulding.  From a landsman he became a sailor.  The country sports and tastes in which he once delighted no longer had any charm for him.  He was haunted by a passionate longing for the sea, and he had an eager and intense desire to find himself abroad upon the wide ocean, with only the oaken keel of a staunch man-of-war between him and blue water.  He studied earnestly the few books on seamanship that he could get hold of.  In the multitude of duties there was no time for the regular instruction of the midshipmen, many of whom were as lately joined as Paulding, and they had to pick up what they could from the older officers.  All, however, were zealous and anxious to learn, and this, with their attention to duty, developed in them a surprising efficiency when the time came that their services were needed.  Paulding found that among the older and more intelligent sailors there was a vast fund of practical information to be got at, and he succeeded in mastering a great deal of this, especially through Danny Dixon.

Now, although Danny never mentioned any achievement of his life except the ever-memorable one, when he was a powder-monkey on board the Bon Homme Richard, this last was the most insignificant event of his whole career before the mast.  His experiences dated back to the naval duels with French ships in the quasi-war of 1799, and he had been in all the splendid actions before Tripoli, besides several dashing engagements during the present war.  He had won great praise from his superiors on more than one occasion, to say nothing of a snug sum of prize money.  But Danny regarded his part in these as perfectly trivial and uninteresting, and rested his whole claim to distinction upon his passing the powder up, when the immortal Paul Jones fought his ship as no other ship was ever fought before or since.  Danny grudgingly admitted, when hard pressed by Paulding, that "Cap'n Truxtun, he done right well with them French ships" ; and "Cap'n Decatur, he didn't show no white feather afore Tripoli"; and "Cap'n Hull and Cap'n Lawrence, they acted seaman-like"; but any comparison between his own exploits on these occasions, and the famous fight of the Bon Homme Richard, always irritated him extremely.

"Now, Mr. Paulding," Danny would say with an air of great vexation, "whatever do you want to hear, sir, about them Frenchmen on the Insurgent for?  Not that I'm a-sayin' the Frenchmen didn't fight like good 'uns, but when a 'Merican rights he wants to fight a Johnny Bull—not a Johnny Crapaud.  Ain't you never heard, sir, "One Frenchman can whip two Portygee, One Englishman can whip all three?"

The two were sitting in a warm corner of the rough ship house under which the Ticonderoga was being built, and the only light that pierced the gloom of the great interior was from a ship's lantern hung against the vessel's side.  Paulding was sprawled, boy fashion, over one of the long guns intended for the ship's armament, which was temporarily housed there, while Danny sat, with his hands on his knees, on a cask turned bottom upward.

"Yes, I've heard that, Dixon," answered Paulding in a wheedling voice; "but it seems to me that what you actually saw of the Constellation and L'Insurgente fight was more interesting, because you were in the thick of it, while on the Bon Homme Richard you were nothing but a powder-monkey; and you couldn't know much or see much, or do much, in your position—I mean, in comparison with being a gun captain, as you were on the Constellation, and firing your gun twenty-seven times."

At this slur upon his earlier achievements Danny's face was a perfect picture of disgust.  His eyes rolled around in horror and despair, and he literally gasped for breath.  "Mr. Paulding, sir—Mr. Paulding—O Lord! O Lord!" groaned Danny; and then, his feelings being entirely too much for him, he started up and began to waddle around the ship house, hitching up his trousers indignantly, while he indulged in a sailor's growl.  All this amused the little midshipman very much, who sat laughing to himself and kicking his heels against the gun.

"Now, ain't this the roughest I ever see!" complained Danny, bitterly soliloquizing.  "Comparin' a powder - monkey aboard the Bunnum Richard to a gun cap'n that fired his gun a matter o' twenty or thirty times on the Constellation!  May I never see grog ag'in, if I hadn't ruther been a cook's boy aboard o' the Bunnum Richard than a master's mate on the Constellation!  And I thinks more on a handy billy aboard o' the Bunnum Richard than the Constellation's mainmast! Not that Cap'n Truxtun warn't a mighty good cap'n, but CAP'N— PAUL—JONES! "  Here Danny's emotions entirely overcame him, and he ran his hands violently through his hair, kicked the unoffending cask over, and then righting it, plumped down angrily on it, much to Paulding's enjoyment.

"But, Dixon," cried Paulding, still laughing, "didn't Captain Truxtun himself compliment you on the way you worked your gun, and give you a handsome pipe for keeping your finger on the touch-hole when the blood was pouring from a musket-ball wound in your arm?"  " Well, yes, he did, Mr. Paulding—and I got that 'ere pipe now in my ditty-box, and I smokes it every 9th o' February—that was the day we licked the Insurgent.  But if I had took my finger away we would 'a' lost that shot sure, and that was the one' that done for the Insurgent's mizzen riggin', and cut the mast off short besides.  But my arm didn't hurt much, Mr. Paulding.  French bullets somehow don't tickle like British ones; and it seems to me that bullet didn't hurt near as much as that 'ere whack I got over the head with a broom from a cabin-boy on the S'rapis."

Paulding laughed more than ever at this, but Danny was perfectly serious, and thought it no laughing matter.  Pretty soon, though, Paulding had got him to begin, and Danny condescended to be coaxed into a communicative frame of mind.

"Well, sir, since you takes such a interest in little spats like that 'ere one with the Insurgent, Mr. Paulding, I'll tell you all I knows.  The Constellation was a mighty good ship—I ain't never see such scantling as was in her, except in the Constitution— and we couldn't help shootin' good, 'cause Cap'n Truxtun, he give us target practice till our arms was most wored off at the stumps.  One o' them little reefers—beg your parding, sir, one o' them midshipmites —would take a target about as big as he were hisself—and there warn't very big reefers neither on the Constellation—and put it about a mile from the ship.  Then the cap'n would come on deck, and he would say, 'Now, my men, for every shot you put in that 'ere target you shall have a pound o' 'backy.'  Well, sir, it's strange how that pound o' 'backy improved our eyesight.  We'd p'int that gun, and seemed like we couldn't miss the target if we tried.  So when the time come, and we had a great big forty-four-gun frigate for a target, why, Mr. Paulding, anybody that can't hit a forty-four about half a cable's length off, ain't no gunner.  Why, jest look at Cap'n Paul—"  "But what did you do when you first sighted L'Insurgente?" asked the little midshipman, adroitly heading Danny off on the subject of Captain Paul Jones.