Catch the Wind: My Journey with Caroline

Caroline and I settle somewhere sunny, close enough to overhear Sailing Master Adams but out of everyone’s way. As I watch the crew work, a boy no older than seven scrambles up through a hatchway lugging a bucket of water. He’s barefoot, with his hair tied back. He drops down to scrub the deck with a flat stone. When I nod toward him, Caroline explains he’s a powder monkey, the nickname for a ship’s boy who runs gunpowder to the gun crews once fighting starts. My voice comes out squeaky as I admit I can’t picture a kid that small doing something so dangerous.

Caroline mentions she once met a boy just like him, one whose parents had both died and left him nowhere else to go. The sailors took him in, and he seemed proud and happy serving aboard a navy ship. Squeezing the compass in my pocket, I think of my own War of 1812 ancestor. I’d always pictured him as a grown sailor, maybe even an officer like Adams. But now I wonder if he was really just a kid, too.

Adams calls out that we’re nearing the spot, and Caroline hops up to guide him around the bend toward a hidden cove. Once I’m on my feet, I see the cove is perfect. Forest and soggy marsh crowd the shoreline, tucking a small bay behind a curving hook of land. Even I can tell a British ship sailing past wouldn’t spot us in time. I tell Caroline it’s a brilliant plan, and she beams, saying she can’t wait to tell her father about it.

A shout cuts her off before she can. Lieutenant Woolsey already has his brass spyglass raised, and when we creep closer, I spot a ship out on the water. Caroline asks nervously whether it’s British, and I silently hope it isn’t.

Lowering the spyglass, the lieutenant confirms it and orders Adams to give chase. Adams asks what to do about the two of us. Woolsey, seeming to have forgotten we were even aboard, quickly sends a sailor to row us ashore so the ship can go after the enemy instead. Caroline argues that there’s no time to waste putting us ashore, that they should be showing the British who rules this lake. But the lieutenant insists it isn’t safe for us and that we’re going ashore first, no matter what.

Caught between Caroline’s determination and the lieutenant’s concern, I have to decide, right now, which one of them to agree with.