Nor was the ship’s real name something as vapid as the Flower. Instead, her true papers showed her to be an American naval warship, the Liberator, and she’d been chosen and named for this singular mission. That she was a regular navy ship and not a privateer or a pirate was a distinction that meant a lot only to the officers and men of the Liberator, all of whom couldn’t wait to paint over the ridiculous name of Flower. So far as they knew, she was the only regular navy ship the Colonies now had. John Hancock had signed the commission a few months earlier and it was clearly of dubious legality. The officers and men of the Liberator didn’t care. She and they had a job to do.
The frigate did not put in at the major port of Kingston. Instead, she anchored in a cove a dozen miles away from the city. This did not attract undue attention. Many planters had their cargoes unloaded at places more convenient to them than the town. As long as duties were paid, no one cared. And if duties weren’t paid, then sometimes nobody cared either, especially when a bribe to an underpaid local official was cheaper than paying duty.
When darkness fell, there was no one to see the ship’s boats lowered. They were filled with heavily armed Marines who were dressed as ordinary seamen, a fact that they accepted as necessary but resented nonetheless. They were proud of their uniforms, particularly the leather collars that kept their heads proudly upright.
Captain Samuel Nicholas commanded the Marines. Nearly forty, he’d served with Jones when, in 1775, the pugnacious little Scotsman had command of the Alfred and attacked the British in the Bahamas. Thus, neither he nor Jones were strangers to each other or to the Caribbean waters.
Nicholas marched his men quickly overland to their target, a sprawling farm compound a couple of miles inland. However, it was no longer a farm. It was a prison.
It was a little after midnight and all was quiet when they approached. A handful of the stealthier Marines reconnoitered ahead and returned with the information that only a few British soldiers guarded the compound and seemed to be uninterested at best. After all, where would the occupants go even if they did manage to set themselves free?
The Marines waited until a squad was in position to block anyone from escaping down the road to Kingston.
A scream and a musket fired. Nicholas cursed-surprise was lost. “At them,” he hollered and his men swarmed into the compound. British guards tumbled out of their barracks and were quickly and brutally cut down by Marine muskets and then by cutlasses and bayonets. It was over in a couple of minutes, and a score of dead and wounded British soldiers were sprawled on the ground, while a handful of others stood with their hands in the air.
“Any of them get away?” Nicholas asked and no one was certain. Nor could the British commander tell them. He had fallen with a musket ball in his neck. The Marines would assume the worst and make all haste back to the ship. Nicholas was suddenly aware of scores of eyes watching him and his men from behind the barred windows of the prison buildings.
Nicholas gave the order and the prison buildings were broken into. Scores of confused and bleary-eyed men poured out and stared at the Marines who stared back in dismay at the wretches. The men the Marines had come to liberate were thin to the point of being little more than sticks. Many of them were half naked and their backs bore signs of floggings. Some couldn’t stand up and Nicholas suddenly despaired of getting them back to the ship anywhere near as quickly as planned.
Nicholas swore and sent a runner back to Jones with the bad news. It would take longer then planned, and he would need additional manpower from the Liberator to help with the men they’d freed while the Marines maintained a rear guard.
Damn, he thought. But that was the way with plans. They never worked out as they were supposed to.
Thus, it was mid-day before the last of the wretched men had been aided across country, and then been helped aboard the Liberator, and put below decks. Some of the freed prisoners had to be carried, which meant that litters and stretchers had to be improvised, and all of them needed to be aided during the slow, tortuous journey back to the waiting ship. Many of the Marines and crew of the Liberator wept openly at the misery they were witnessing, while all of them treated the freed prisoners with a degree of tenderness and compassion that would have surprised those who’d seen them in battle.
Fortunately, no attack from the city materialized. While the crew of the Liberator made ready to sail, the freed men were given soup and fruit and some seemed to improve dramatically. Food and the prospect of freedom will do that to a man, Jones remarked to Nicholas, even though more than a few of them had vomited their meals.
As they raised anchor and put to sea, a small cutter showing the British flag rounded the point of land that had shielded them. Jones ordered the guns run out and a dozen cannon made ready to blow the tiny vessel out of the water. The cutter mounted only swivel guns.
“Chain shot and aim for their rigging,” Jones commanded as the cutter came within range.
Twelve cannon fired as one. The two masts on the cutter disintegrated and the little ship began to wallow helplessly.
“Are we going to sink her?” Nicholas asked.
“Nay,” said Jones in his thick Scottish accent. “They’re now no threat to us and, besides, let them describe us to their British masters. It won’t matter. In a matter of hours, this ship won’t resemble the one that they saw.”
A small, thin man with a scraggly beard and dressed in rags stood before Jones. “On behalf of all of us, dear sir, thank you. A few more months and we might all be dead.”
Jones bowed. “You are more than welcome, sir. Now, may I ask who you might be?”
“John Adams,” he replied.
Jones smiled. He knew they’d struck gold in Jamaica. Adams was one of the surviving American leaders they’d wanted most to free. “Welcome aboard.”
Adams smiled and Jones winced. Several of Adams’ teeth were missing and others were rotten. They had paid a terrible price in their Jamaican prison. They had survived, sort of, but the health of many of them was doubtless ruined. Jones wondered why the bastard British hadn’t killed their prisoners outright instead of letting them live on in agony. Because the British were bastards, he decided.
“Captain Jones, may I inquire as to our destination?” Adams asked.
Jones wished he had a simple answer for Adams and the others. So much was out of his control. Almost everything would depend on the actions of others many hundreds of miles away. His plans called for him to call at a French port for food and news of the war and, if all was well, he would choose between Boston and New Orleans as a destination. And if all was not well? Well, he thought he could find a place, but the current political situation was complicating matters. During the revolution, the world was against Britain, but now, the world was on her side and against the madmen in revolutionary France. A handful of islands remained under French control and these were being ignored by the British, but they represented nothing in the way of long-term safety. The only good thing about the fighting in Europe was that it had pulled away many of the Royal Navy warships that ordinarily prowled the Caribbean.
In truth, the only nation he could think of that might be sympathetic to the American cause was Russia, where Catherine the Great ruled. He had no idea just how he might make it to St. Petersburg if he had to, although he did have a Russian flag in his quarters and a letter from Catherine inviting him to come and join her navy. He wondered what either would get him if a British seventy-four gun ship of the line stopped him.