The Blue, Deep, and Strenuous Sea

Nathan looked up at a somewhat hoarse call from his captain, “Make sure to lock up the deckhouse before you leave!” then looked back down at the soaked and dirty boards beneath his dark and rotting boots. He sighed, then swept with slightly more loathing. The list he carried was long and thick; yet he mustn’t blame his fellows for their leave—He, Nathan, was the private; And the clandestine cleaned when the others cared not to. After the Boards, he would unload the tea they carried from England into the dock-side supply house. His captain’s leaving words left him with yet another chore, and he would leave the deckhouse alone at the end of the day. He thought of a rhyme of a captain that was forced to leave his high and grand duties and see his crewmen’s’ torturous troubles:




The dock was filled, the furrow billed
the Crewmen all did moan.
The Captain John had led them on
the plank to have them thrown.

Then as he called, “The first one fall,”
The albatross did loose,
“My work to do is here for you,
You captain of this rouse!”

The Captain, tossed, did fly and lost
His hat, his coat, and buttons,
Then fell onto the deck to rue
The sight of his slaves glutton.

This made Nathan smile. The thought of his own voracious leader scrubbing the planks under his rule was a coveted and highly alluring attraction. He thought back to times when he had begun his labor as a dock worker, December 19, 1769, four years ago today—

“What’s your name?” the prior admiral of Boston Harbor  had asked in a bored and utterly arduous voice.

“Nathan Taylor,” the boy said with anxious enthusiasm, “I’ve seen you working on the docks! I can’t imagine the joy of working over the Atlantic coast, where at any time you can look out to the blue, deep, and strenuous sea, and think of the times you’ve been upon it.” Oblivious to this act of giddiness just displayed the Admiral asked,

“And your Naval history?”

“Make that none, Sir.” Nathan replied, nonplussed at this lack of reaction to interest.

“That’ll make you a private, if you’re sure you don’t have any background dock experience?” He lazily stood from his chair, as though it were protocol after such interviews, then held out his hand.

Nathan shook it, the scarred and unsupportive hand.

--With a dour and grating frown, he thought, Now, after four years in the service, I know this to be the worst decision I have made in this short and insignificant existence of mine, and continued sweeping the boards with perhaps a bit more malice than he had earlier.

At this moment he heard at least four score men shouting at the top of their angry lungs. He looked up, past the ship deck he swept, over the English tea his ship carried, and across the plank that separated the boat from the shores of Boston to see triple a dozen white men dressed as Indians round a building’s corroded corner. They all looked at the ships in the harbor in unison, found three in particular and pointed, each at a different carrier. Nathan Taylor the private dock worker looked at where the manic men’s arms aimed: Many at dock two, some at dock five, and one lone forefinger at Nathan’s nose.

There were seconds of what felt like silence, and in a flurry of motion, as savage men hefted spears, waved Gladsden Flags, and jumped in frenzied pleasure, they split in three and galloped to each tea ship. He saw a man tarred, feathered and left to die, watched men thrown overboard, and witnessed murder in seconds too slow to measure. Then in a flourish he felt himself roughly grabbed, tossed from arm to arm, and thrown off the side of the ship over the handrails he’d cleaned moments before. In a flash, he saw the blue, deep, and strenuous sea, then all was darkness.

-Lewie II