The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [154]
The tragedy was quickly followed by comedy. Back in Boston a few months later, Greenwood signed on with the Race Horse, captained by Nathaniel Thayer, bound for the West Indies. In the middle of the night, serving as watch, he saw a ship sailing toward him. He summoned the captain, who always feared capture, and the commander ordered sails rigged for a getaway. It turned out that the vessel was a prize captured by the British and captained by a woefully inexperienced sailor trying to bring her to a port. The ship had been floating around the Caribbean for days, completely lost. Captain Thayer seized the ship himself, promising the grateful British officer that he would get his crew to Barbados and release them.
He told Greenwood to serve as the new captain and take five crewmen to bring the ship to port. That night Greenwood nearly ran into a huge British man-of-war sailing nearby. He knew he could neither outfight or outrun the ship, but might trick her commander. In the dark, their captain knew just as little about “Captain” Greenwood as the American knew about him. The novice captain had a man-of-war trumpet on the ship and a single, small, swivel-gun cannon. He sounded the trumpet and shouted with convincing bravado that he would sink the British ship if its commander did not heave to and surrender. There was no response from the man-of-war’s captain, trying to figure out what ship was out there in the dark, and if it was in range for his guns.
Greenwood then loaded the tiny swivel gun with two cannonballs and a strong gunpowder charge and fired in the direction of the ship. The sound was similar to that of a large cannon and it was loud enough, and menacing enough, to scare the British captain, who turned and sailed away as quickly as the night wind could carry his vessel. He must have thought he had engaged John Paul Jones himself.
On board Greenwood’s ship there was a combination of fright and laughter. The charge and double load had blown the small gun out of its locks and sent it sailing across the deck, crashing into everything in its way. When Greenwood related the story to the captain of his mother ship, whom he met in port, the captain howled with merriment.
“Captain Greenwood,” who had recently turned twenty, decided to become a real captain just a few weeks later. He took the money he had earned from privateering and with a ship’s mate, Myrick, purchased a schooner in Baltimore and won a contract to carry a load of corn to an ironworks on the Patapsco River, nine miles southwest of Baltimore on the Chesapeake Bay.
The two rookie captains then embarked on one of the most inept cruises of the Revolution. They were supposed to sail behind another schooner to the ironworks, but left port late when Greenwood lingered too long at a nearby tavern. Lost in the middle of the Chesapeake, the sailing “expert” had to ask directions to the mouth of the river from the captain of another schooner that passed by them, much to the embarrassment of Myrick.
No sooner did they start up the river when, according to Greenwood, a “monstrous” storm arose. Instead of heading for a safe inlet on the river, or simply anchoring and lowering their sails to ride out the furious winds, the two captains tried to sail through it. They soon lurched into each other on the deck when the ship ran aground on a sandbar. Greenwood was determined to keep sailing. Instead of waiting for the light of morning and the tide