Part 5 (1/2)
”The house stood about three hundred yards back from the river, on ground which fell away in a gentle slope towards the waterside. The main entrance was from the east; and at the rear--on the level of the drawing-room and a dozen feet or so above the sloping hillside--was a broad veranda commanding the view westward to the Jersey Highlands and southward down the bay to the Staten Island Hills.” The fanciful description goes on to picture Captain Warren sitting on this veranda, ”smoking a comforting pipe after his mid-day dinner; and taking with it, perhaps, as seafaring gentlemen very often did in those days, a gla.s.s or two of substantial rum-and-water to keep everything below hatches well stowed. With what approving eye must he have regarded the trimly kept lawns and gardens below him; and with what eyes of affection the _Launceston_, all a-taunto, lying out in the stream!”
I have called the description of the house ”fanciful,” but it is really not that, since the old house fell into Abraham Van Nest's hands at a later date, and stood there for over a century, with the poplars, for which it was famous, and the box hedges, in which Susanna had taken such pride, growing more beautiful through the years. Not until 1865 was the lovely place destroyed by the tidal wave of modern building.
The Captain kept his town house as well,--the old Jay place, on the lower end of Broadway, but it was at the Manse that he loved best to stay, and the Manse which was and always remained his real and beloved home. In 1744 his seaman's restlessness again won over his domestic tranquillity and he was off once more in search of fresh adventures and dangers. Says the _Weekly Post Boy_, of August 27th, in that year:
”His Majesty's s.h.i.+p _Launceston_, commanded by the brave Commodore Warren (whose absence old Ocea.n.u.s seems to lament), being now sufficiently repaired, will sail in a few days in order once more to pay some of His Majesty's enemies a visit.”
And it winds up with this burst:
_”The sails are spread; see the bold warrior comes To chase the French and interloping Dons!”_
It was in the following year that he signally distinguished himself in the historic Siege of Louisbourg, winning himself a promotion to the rank of Rear Admiral of the Blue, and a knighthood as well! It may seem a far cry from Greenwich, New York, to Louisbourg, but we cannot pa.s.s over the incident without sparing it a little s.p.a.ce. Let me beg your patience,--quoting, in my own justification, no less a historian than James Grant Wilson:
”This Commodore Warren was one of those indefatigable and nervous spirits who did such wonders at Louisbourg, and it is with particular pride that his achievement should be remembered in a history of New-York, as he was the only prominent New-Yorker that contributed to Ma.s.sachusetts'
greatest Colonial achievement.”
The capture of Louisbourg may be remembered by some history readers as a part of that English-French quarrel of 1745, commonly known as ”King George's War,” and also as the undertaking described by so many contemporaries as ”s.h.i.+rley's Mad Scheme.” The scheme _was_ rather mad; hence its appeal to Peter Warren, who was exceedingly keen about it from the beginning.
Louisbourg was a strong French fortress on Cape Breton Island, commanding the gulf of the St. Lawrence. Its value as a military stronghold was great, and besides it had long been a fine base for privateers, and was a very present source of peril to the New England fishermen off the Banks. As far back as 1741 Governor Clarke of New York had urged the taking of this redoubtable French station, but it fell to the masterful s.h.i.+rley, Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, finally to organise the expedition. He had Colonial militia to the tune of four thousand men, and he had Colonial boats,--nearly a hundred of them,--and he had the approval of the Crown (conveyed through the Duke of Newcastle); but he wanted leaders. For his land force he chose General Pepperrill, an eminently safe and sane type of soldier; for the sea he, with a real brain throb, thought of Captain Peter Warren.
Francis Parkman says: ”Warren, who had married an American woman and who owned large tracts of land on the Mohawk, was known to be a warm friend to the provinces.” He was at Antigua when he received the Governor's request that he take command of the ”Mad Scheme.” Needless to say, the Captain was charmed with the idea, but he had no orders from the King! He refused almost weeping, and for two days was plunged in gloom. Imagine such a glorious chance for a fight going begging!
Then arrived a belated letter from Newcastle in England, telling him to ”concert measures with s.h.i.+rley for the annoyance of the enemy.”
Warren was so afraid that some future orders would be less vague, and give him less freedom, that he set sail for Boston with a haste that was feverish. He had with him three s.h.i.+ps,--the _Mermaid_ and _Launceston_ of forty guns each, and the _Superbe_ of sixty. But those two wretched days of delay! He fell in with a schooner from which he learned that s.h.i.+rley's expedition had started without him!
I daresay, being a sailor and Irish, our Captain expressed himself exhaustively just then; but he recovered speedily and told the schooner to send him every British s.h.i.+p she met in her voyage; then he changed his course and beat straight for Canseau, determined to be in that expedition after all. He certainly was in it, and a brisk time he had of it, too.
At Canseau they were all tied up three weeks, drilling and waiting for the ice to break, but they were thankful to get there at all. The storms were severe, as may be gathered by this account of their efforts to get into Canseau, written by one of the men: ”A very Fierce Storm of Snow, som Rain and very Dangerous weather to be so nigh ye Sh.o.r.e as we was; but we escaped the Rocks and that was all.”
Pepperrill was thankful enough to see the Captain and his squadron,--it was four s.h.i.+ps now, as the schooner had picked up another frigate for him,--but the two commanders were destined to rub each other very much the wrong way before they were through.
Pepperrill was a man who took risks only very solemnly and with deliberation, and who was blessed with endless patience. Warren took risks with as much zest as he took rare food and rich wine, and in his swift, full and exciting life there had never been place or time for patience! When the siege actually commenced, the poor Captain nearly went wild with the inaction. He wanted to attack, to move, to do something. Pepperrill's calm judgment and slow tactics drove him distracted, and they were forever at odds in spite of a secret respect for each other. In speaking of the contrast between them, Parkman, after describing Pepperrill's careful management of the military end, says: ”Warren was no less earnest than he for the success of the enterprise.... But in habits and character the two men differed widely. Warren was in the prime of life, and the ardour of youth still burned within him. He was impatient at the slow movement of the siege.”
The Siege of Louisbourg started by Warren's and Pepperrill's demand that the fortress surrender, and the historic answer of Duchambon, the French commander, that they should have their answer from the cannon's mouth. It is not my purpose to tell of it in detail, for it lasted forty-seven days and strained the nerves of everyone to the breaking point. But one or two things happened in the time which, to my mind, make our Captain seem a very human person. There was, for instance, his amazing kindness, as unfailing to his captives as to his own men. When the great French man-of-war _Vigilant_ came to the aid of the beleaguered fortress, Warren joyously captured the monster, in full sight of Louisbourg and under the big guns there. It was this incident, by the bye, for which he was knighted afterwards. The French captain, Marquis de la Maisonfort, who was Warren's prisoner, wrote in a letter to Duchambon: ”The Captain and officers of this squadron treat us, not as their prisoners, but as their good friends.”
Warren went wild with rage when he heard of the horrors that had befallen an English scouting party which had fallen into the hands of a band of Indians and Frenchmen, and hideously tortured. He wrote stern protests to Duchambon, and it was at this time that he urged Pepperrill most earnestly to attack. But the more phlegmatic officer could not see it in that way. Warren then argued with increasing heat that by this time the French reinforcements must be near, and could easily steal up under cover of the fog which was thick there every night. When Pepperrill still objected he lost his temper entirely, and said and wrote a number of peppery things. ”I am sorry,” he said, ”that no one plan, though approved by all my captains, has been so fortunate as to meet your approbation or have any weight with you!”
Pepperrill explained imperturbably that Warren was trying to take too much authority upon himself. Captain Peter sent him a furious note: ”I am sorry to find a kind of jealousy which I thought you would never conceive of me. And give me leave to tell you I don't want at this time to acquire reputation, as I flatter myself mine has been pretty well established long before!”
And then, as full of temper as a hot-headed schoolboy, he brought out a letter from Governor s.h.i.+rley expressing regret that Captain Warren could not take command of the whole affair,--”which I doubt not would be a most happy event for His Majesty's service.”
Even this could not shake the General's superhuman calm. He was indeed so quiet about it, and so uniformly polite, that his fiery a.s.sociate was simply obliged to cool off. He was of too genuinely fine fibre to bear a grudge or to make a hard situation harder, and he consented to compromise, saying truly that at such times it was ”necessary not to Stickle at Trifles!”
At last the time came for action, and on the seventeenth of June they took Louisbourg, in a most brilliant and stirring manner, and Warren was so wild with delight that he could not contain himself. He scribbled a note to Pepperrill which sounds like the note of a rattle-pated college lad instead of a distinguished naval commander: ”We will soon keep a good house together, and give the Ladys of Louisbourg a gallant Ball.”
He probably gave that ball, too, though there doesn't seem to be any record of it. He certainly had a beautiful time going about making speeches to the troops, amid much cheering; and dispensing casks of rum in which to drink his health and King George's! He was made the English Governor of the fortress temporarily, and when the news of their capture reached England both commanders were knighted and Peter Warren was made Rear Admiral of the Blue.
And in the height of the excitement a s.h.i.+p arrived at Louisbourg one fine day bearing Susanna herself, who had come in person to see that the hero of the day was really safe and sound!
A letter written from Louisbourg on September 25th, and published in the _Weekly Post Boy_, gives this account: