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Samuel’s Saga

Steve Bailey

    I am Samuel, not Sam, and I’ll strike down any man who dare calls me Sammy. Before the war, I worked on merchant ships. They called fellows like me Tars, Jack Tars. We lived a rough life on board sailing ships, tossed about and washed about in violent storms, taking dangerous cannon fire from pirates, and living with the threat of flogging on orders from a captain who ruled the ship like a king rules a country.
    A voyage could take six months, sometimes longer, and when we reached a port, the authorities kept us confined to the nastiest part of town. Press gangs coming off British navy ships to force us into service on their vessels found this corralling convenient. I managed to dodge these maritime ruffians by staying ever vigilant while ashore and not succumbing to the temptations of drink. Still, I felt a sense of relief whenever I managed to get back on board a merchant’s vessel.
    My life as a Tar began shortly after my fourteenth birthday when I sailed out of Jamacia on a ship from Massachusetts owned by a man named John Glover. I worked on several of Glover’s ships, collecting callouses on my hands from hauling up sails with wet ropes and occasionally feeling the lash of a cat-o nine tails on my back, but all the while learning skills that made me a proper sailor. I grew tall. From this work, I got solid muscles and, from the sun, a dark tint on my black skin.
    My shipmates came from everywhere. Most came from the colonies and England and Ireland, of course. Our crew had Arabs who faced east and prayed to their god several times a day, Narragansetts from New England, Cherokee from the southern colonies, and Africans, dark like me. Yet, as we struggled through the adversities of our vocation, bonds formed that surpassed our differences. We knew each other as fellow Tars. As hard as my seafaring life could be, my situation did not compare to a slave toiling in the stifling heat of a sugar cane field.
    The war forced American merchant ships into port. John Glover, a supporter of the colonies in this rebellion, left his fleet in anchorage and promised to continue to pay us wages if we would fight for the cause. He created the Marblehead Mariners, and this Jack Tar became a Continental soldier, never to return to the sea.
    One afternoon as we enjoyed some free time playing cards and listening to music emanating from a concertina, a regiment from Virginia called the Culpeper Militia ambled onto the line intending to bivouac nearby. Seeing me, they began hurling slurs, and when these Virginia farmers insulted the Marblehead Mariners for having black men and Indians in their ranks, a brawl ensued. As I took and gave punches, I thought it odd that men brought together in service to fight a mutual foe engaged in fisticuffs with each other.
    Suddenly a large man on horseback rode into the fray, dismounted, grabbed my pugilistic adversary and me by our shirts, lifted us into the air, and threw us on the ground so hard I thought he had broken my back. As I struggled to stand, I saw for the first time the commander of the Continental Army who sent me flying to the ground. We stood at attention, and General Washington gave us a scolding and promised the cat-o-nine if any of us repeated such undisciplined behavior.
    A well-dressed black man stood near the General, holding the reigns of two horses, and as Washington walked with the Culpeper people to assign a campsite a short distance from us, my curiosity pushed me to this man.
     He called himself Billy Lee and served the General as a valet. I learned that Billy Lee rode next to the General all the time and excelled at all things equestrian. He offered to teach me how to ride a horse, and I accepted.
    I loved horseback riding. In a full gallop, I sailed over the land like a ship with a strong wind behind, gliding over a calm sea. I took care of the powerful animal Billy Lee acquired for me, washing it, brushing it, and providing an abundance of forage.
    Once I became adept at horsemanship, Billy Lee approached the General and proposed that I serve as a messenger for him. Accordingly, I rode across the countryside of Pennsylvania, delivering dispatches to other generals as our commander planned his Christmas Day surprise on the Hessians at Trenton. On the night of the attack, I left my horse and joined my fellow Marblehead Mariners as we crewed the Durham boats that ferried the army across the Delaware River. I then resumed my duties as a messenger on horseback.
    As the war went on, the action shifted to the south. When news arrived that the British had positioned themselves poorly in Virginia, the General moved most of the army to his home state to surround our enemy at a place called Yorktown. I felt the end approaching and pondered what new life awaited me with this horse. Unfortunately, my destiny took an ugly direction.
    During a late afternoon in early October, as I rode through the colorful foliage of a Virginia fall, men in green uniforms surrounded me and forced me to stop. I recognized them as loyalists to the King. All five of them had muskets with bayonets. I told them if they stacked their guns, I would fight them all, but when three of them raised their weapons to their shoulders and aimed at me, I did what they commanded and dismounted. Then, after confiscating my dispatches, they tied my hands with rope, stripped me of my uniform, and said they could make some money selling me.
    These green-clad villains took me to their camp, betting on which would bring them more money, me or my horse. One of their officers kept the horse, but my captors traded me to a camp follower for some gold coins. That man sold me to another who chained me to other black people and made us walk south for several days.
    The plantation owner who bought me saw the scars on my back and assumed that he had purchased a troublesome property. So, he instructed his overseer to chain me to a metal pole embedded in the ground at night, making a nocturnal escape impossible.
    Now enslaved, I work in a sugar cane field that stretches from the plantation’s great house to a bluff overlooking the ocean. I toil in stifling heat, the sun beating mercilessly on me as I cut and carry the cane. Whenever I look up from my labor towards the sea, I can see the white sails of merchant ships beginning or ending their voyages. They sail past me, never towards me. I turn back to the cane and curse the day I got on a horse.

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