He fell three times on the twelve-block journey to the river. Twice he was prodded to his feet by a soldier’s bayonet. The third time, a black man came out of the whistling, shouting mob and helped him to his feet. The slave carried Nolan’s blanket over his shoulder and led him the last desperate steps to the quay. Nolan kept his head high but dared not look into the crowd; he dreaded seeing Wendell and feared that his heart would break if he caught sight of Lorina or Alden.
Jeered at from shore, Nolan went aboard an armed galley and was rowed down the James River toward Norfolk. Below Richmond, the river became still and the clouds grew increasingly dark. Thunder rumbled in a lowering sky, and during the long, black night Nolan was kept on deck. By the time the sun rose livid above the Elizabeth River, Nolan had been soaked to the skin. As the galley came into Hampton Roads, all of the officers stood watch and Nolan saw the reason for their keen attention to duty.
Norfolk spread to the south, a low, commercial place pricked here and there by steeples. There were dozens of merchant ships in the confluence of the James and Elizabeth Rivers, all of them looking shabby. Conspicuous among them were a whale ship hard aground near Willoughby Spit and a China ship careened by Ragged Island, both forlorn and empty, victims of a British blockade. The officers aboard the galley pointed their telescopes, and as Batten Bay passed to starboard, Nolan could see the three tall masts of the frigate USS Chesapeake. That once proud ship listed to port, her yards gone by the slings and several of her port lids beaten in. Tops and yards strangely out of plumb, the frigate looked like a toy cast aside in some gigantic tantrum. That impression was made sinister by the ochre tailings of blood—human blood that even now daubed her sides.
Just weeks ago, Chesapeake had been preparing to escort a convoy of merchants to the Mediterranean. Not yet out of soundings, just off Cape Henry, Chesapeake was set upon by HMS Leopard. The British frigate ranged alongside, demanding that Chesapeake heave to and submit to a search. The American ship refused; words were shouted back and forth, and the British fired first. In the initial broadside, three of Chesapeake’s crewmen were blown to bits and a score wounded; and most appallingly, Captain Barron had struck his colors. He then allowed the British to board his ship and take into custody four of his sailors who the victors claimed were the king’s subjects.
USS Chesapeake limped back into Hampton Roads, little more than a floating wreck. The incident came very near to sparking a war; it succeeded in blackening the prestige of the American Navy. Emboldened by the timidity of Chesapeake, the British advanced a squadron into the mouth of the bay, moving up from Lynnhaven Inlet and anchoring finally just off the Hampton roadstead. A pathetic line of American gunboats was all that lay between three British ships of the line and the city of Norfolk. Day after day the British stopped and searched arriving ships, removing men they claimed were British citizens. No American vessel dared put to sea. Norfolk was, for all intents and purposes, under blockade. Valuable cargos piled up in warehouses, fortunes were extinguished, and merchantmen swung in endless circles, tide after tide.
Nolan was put aboard a United States schooner fitting out to run the British blockade. The captain received him with cold civility, and while the ship took aboard powder and stores, Nolan was largely ignored. After his long night in the rain, Nolan came down with fever, and as Kosinski had predicted, he eventually was taken by a dangerous pneumonia. Without much sympathy, the surgeon’s mate bled him and made Nolan swallow a strong, stinking brew of sulfur and fenugreek.
Each time a boat came alongside with supplies or men, Nolan expected letters. None came, nor would they ever come. Confined to his hammock, unable to lift his head, he stared through the gun ports at the beaches and wharves, looking for the familiar shape of Fitzgerald on horseback or Lorina or Alden in a carriage. He would never see them.
Working double tides, the schooner completed her stores and then took on powder and shot. As all was made ready for sea, a last boat pulled off from Norfolk, bringing the diplomatic pouch and a set of papers confirming Nolan’s incarceration.
The original copies have long been lost, and the cover letter, too—perhaps the souvenir of some captain’s clerk. But copies there were, one for the ship’s log and another for the captain’s confidential file. Written out in fair copperplate, a duplicate in a leather envelope would accompany Nolan from ship to ship for the rest of his life. Oddly, Philip Nolan would never actually read the instructions handed down about him, though he would figure them out soon enough. They read, in their entirety:
The Office of the Secretary of the Navy at the City of Washington
To the Master Commandant of the United States Armed Schooner Revenge
Sir—
You will receive the person of one Philip Clinton Nolan, late a lieutenant in the United States Army. You will take the prisoner aboard your ship and prevent his escape. During his confinement he is to be exposed to no violence of any kind, but under no circumstances is he ever to hear of his country or see any information regarding it.
Your instructions are to remain a confidential matter, and the officers and men on board your vessel will take any arrangements acceptable to themselves regarding his society.
Under no circumstances is he ever to hear of his country or to see any information regarding it; and you will especially caution all the officers under your command to take care that in the various indulgences which may be granted, this rule, in which his punishment is involved, shall not be broken.
Before the end of your cruise you will receive orders, which will turn said prisoner into another outbound ship. It is the intention of the government that said prisoner shall never again hear of, or return to, the country that he disowned.
Respectfully,
R. Southard
for the Sec’y of the Navy
Under the signature was a notation in purple ink. It read: “Approved, dispatched, Tho. Jefferson.”
From that moment on, no member of the crew said a word to Nolan, and a silent Marine stood guard over him, watch upon watch. On a moonless night, USS Revenge weighed anchor and made her way past the ships in the outer roads. Nolan crawled up the companion ladder and found a place to sit in the forepeak. Revenge showed no lights and ghosted first past Old Point Comfort and Thimble Shoals, then south by east into the mouth of the bay.
With muttered commands, Revenge cleared for action, and the smell of slow match wafted fore and aft. Nolan pulled himself to his feet and gripped the larboard rail next to one of the short, deadly carronades. The crew was tense, determined, all of them infuriated that an American ship should have to skulk out of her own home port like a smuggler. But there was little choice; from Lynnhaven Inlet a British squadron was anchored in a wide crescent: a trio of 74-gun ships of the line—Bellona, Triumph, and Bellisle—and between them the frigate Melamphus and the store ship Cichester, all of them spoiling for a fight.
As Revenge turned by Desert Cove, her gunners kept a grim vigil. Patrolling among the British ships were guard boats with dark lanterns and muffled oars. Every man aboard Revenge knew what would happen should the schooner be seen—the glare of signal rockets and then a merciless series of broadsides delivered point-blank.
But a rainsquall did them a kindness. The schooner slipped though the outer anchorage and close through the Cape Henry Shoals. A thin sliver of moon rose above the trees near Little Creek and was quickly swallowed by cloud. Revenge glided through the shoal waters, dark and silent. In the bow, Nolan listened to the leadsman whisper, “By the mark, three, and a half three,” like an incantation.
The rain fell steadily as they coasted near the mouth of Lynnhaven Inlet, and then past HMS Leopard herself. The frigate towered in the darkness, masts and rigging obscured by blowing cloud, and her bright gun ports open, throwing rectangles of light into the drizzle. From somewhere within, a fiddle tittered away and men could be heard laughing and singing. Aboard Revenge, all hands strained their eyes against the darkness, but the British did not watch as keenly, and the schooner made her way out undetected.