Episode 2: Boston Bill in Baltimore
The day they arrived was the start of the Blizzard of ‘14. They had stayed in inns along the way and Klondike had been posted outside the door where he could keep an eye on them and the buckboard. Bill had a hard time finding enough food for Klondike on the road. Back home it was fairly easy since he had an agreement with a local farmer to deliver fresh meat daily. Bill bought grain and eggs to mix with the meat to balance his diet. Bill would go to the local market and buy chickens or squirrels and boil them and skin them for Klondike. Even though Seabreeze was eating for two and Bill always had a healthy appetite Klondike needed twice their combined meals.
Money wasn’t a problem since Bill had saved over half of every dollar he made from the business. The cottage they rented was run down. The roof leaked, there were large cracks in the corners of each room, and fireplace didn’t have a proper draft. Bill patched the roof first so they could get rid of the dozen or so buckets that were strategically placed throughout the house. Next came the fireplace. He had heard that making the chimney shorter or taller would change the dynamics of the draw. Bricks were expensive so he tried lowering the chimney a foot at first. When that didn’t work he went up eighteen inches, again nothing. Another six inches, nothing. Another six, nothing. At two feet over original height—success. Finally the cracks in the walls, which took the most time to repair because every room had them.
Bill would ride the horse into town to pick some odd jobs, but his right hand stopped him from doing many of the jobs he would have been good at. He would accept more unskilled, manual types of work, which left him tired at night. Seabreeze was busy with the baby and keeping up with the housework. Bill didn’t like riding a horse but men didn’t use buggies unless they had a woman with them. Eventually he found a job at a local tobacco farm doing repairs on farm equipment and the buildings on the plantation. Bill picked up the smoking habit while working on the plantation. Seabreeze forbid him from smoking in the cottage, so he built a shed out back where he worked on various things that needed repair. Bill was never out of things to do.
Seafoam grew up fast and Bill took plenty of time to answer questions she had about everything. The only subject Bill wouldn’t talk about was Elizabeth. He just couldn’t bring himself to talk about her at all. The story of the widow was working well so far. There was little chance of anyone from Darkwood Dock coming to Baltimore and even less chance of the reverse happening.
Bill had never been a religious man so he found paying the Church of England 40 pounds of tobacco each year particularly unfair. He was able though to work something out with the plantation owner to get the tobacco for the tax as well as his own use, which became considerable within months of starting to smoke, at a discount. Bill didn’t spend the kind of time he used to as a young man in the bars. But he was no stranger either. The talk of every bar in Baltimore was the Catholic plot to kill every Protestant in Maryland with the help of the Indians. Actually it wasn’t just Protestants, it was anyone that wasn’t a Catholic. This talk of massacres and religion and politics was new to Bill and he longed for his old life in North Carolina. The Maryland had been planted by Lord Baltimore an English Catholic. When the Protestants revolted over talk of a massacre, George I took over the colony and Catholics were not allowed to practice their religion until 1776. Then there was a border dispute with William Penn that didn’t get settled until 1767 by the surveyors Mason and Dixon.
Seabreeze applied for a position as schoolteacher when Seafoam was five and could join her as a student. Seafoam learned about the sea and world from Bill and from Seabreeze and from books in the house. By the time she started school she could read and write and speak French, Spanish and of course English. Like her mother before her Seafoam was shown the wonders of the ocean. Her eyes got wide when Bill would tell her of distant shores and foreign lands. The elephants of India, the rites of islanders of the south seas, the jungles of Africa, the camels of Arabia, the cannibals of New Zealand, the canals of Venice, all were part of her world.
As a young girl, her constant companion was Klondike. At night he would lie beside her bed until morning. If she woke up in the night she could reach over the side of the bed and feel his thick coat and his heavy breathing. During the day he would follow her every where she went. There was a short bench in the front yard and she would use it to get on top of him and ride him around the yard. Klondike was careful to adjust his movements to offset any leaning that may occur as she slid back and forth and sideways. When she started school he would follow both of them to the schoolhouse and sit outside until recess when all the children would take turns riding the massive dog then follow them home in the afternoon. One day soon after she started school, three drunk men approached her mother and her on their way to school on a path that was still new to them. Two of the men held Seabreeze and asked what the hurry was. The third bent over to say something to Seafoam. Had the men not been so drunk they would have seen Klondike following close behind. Before the third man could get his hands on Seafoam, Klondike was airborne. When he hit the ground he had the man’s head in his jaws and spun around to face the other two men. When he spun his canine teeth punctured the man’s neck right next to the main artery and any additional force would cause major gushing. The man lay still clearly in shock from the impact of the attack. The other two men tightened their grip on Seabreeze and demanded she call off her dog. The older of the two men pulled a knife but before he could get it to Seabreeze’s throat klondike landed in his chest. All four hit the ground and in the skirmish that followed Seabreeze rolled to one side and grabbed Seafoam and ran back towards the house where they kept a loaded rifle above the fireplace. She called to Klondike but all they could hear was growling and screams of men in pain. The screaming stopped and Klondike showed up at the door with blood all over him. Seabreeze gave him a bath and checked for wounds. Nothing, there wasn’t even a scratch on him, but she did have to pull some pieces of meat out of his gums, she wasn’t sure if they were from breakfast or the men that attacked them.
When she finished bathing Klondike they went on to school using a round a bout way on the main road. All the children were waiting when they got there. She sent one of the older boys to get John Spencer, foreman of the Baltimore plantation. John was the closest thing to law and order the colony had. He sent two of his men over to the school to investigate. Seabreeze put Sarah, her assistant, in charge until she got back. The men were well armed so she felt safe enough to return to the path. As they got close Seabreeze wished Bill was with them or at least more men were along. There were two men on the ground, only one was moving. Spencer’s men recognized the attackers right off as two of the three Plower brothers. The Plower clan had been terrorizing the colony for years. There were rumors that the family that went missing in ’09 was killed over a land dispute with the Plowers. The men said that the Seaworthys should leave the colony within the hour, before word gets back to the clan of the death of the youngest son. One of the men threw the surving brother over his shoulder and started back to the plantation. Seabreeze headed off to find Bill at work. Bill was in an out building working on an old well pump when Seabreeze burst in. He was quiet throughout the telling of the story then said they better get home. He knew they were on their own. The stories of the Plower clan were endless. Even Lord Baltimore was supposed to have backed off in a dispute with the clan over a small strip of land close to the water.
Bill, being a careful man, had secretly dug a 5×5x5 foot cellar under the cottage and lined it with three inch thick slabs of rock. The entrance was in the floorboards of the kitchen and a steel plate was used to secure it from inside. Air channels were run out from the cottage and surfaced under bushes. Water, food, and an airtight potty were also down inside. Bill helped his daughter, granddaughter, and Klondike climb down the narrow passageway. He didn’t want Klondike getting hurt in the inevitable attack that was coming. The cellar was also stocked with three loaded pistols and reloading powder and shot for dozens of additional firings. There were two swords and half dozen throwing knives. But the first obstacle a man would face would be the biggest set of teeth and jaws in North America driven by more muscle than three men combined.
The day went slowly as he sat hidden in the heavy brush with his riffles. He figured they would come for him and his family as soon as they heard what happened. None of the townspeople would come to their defense. He wouldn’t have asked them to anyway. He didn’t like owing other people for anything. So he waited there in the shadows. He had cleared just enough branches to a clear shot to the front of the cottage. Behind him was underbrush enough to hide him after the shots. He placed reloads in several locations, so no matter where he had to go in the fight he would be close to a hidden stash of powder and shot. Bill was a quiet man that tried to think of everything ahead of time. And when he felt he had no choice whatsoever he had taken men’s lives in the past. But now that his family was in danger, his resolve was like steel. He was determined that no matter how many angry men showed up—none would leave. The morning turned into afternoon, which turned into dusk. In the distance he could hear the horses of many men coming, the ground shook from the weight of so many men on horseback. When they pulled up there all kinds of screaming and yelling about taking care of the killers. The Plower clan included five brothers, each with one to four sons each, so Bill was hearing at least a dozen men dismounting and cocking pistols and riffles.
In spite of the stories about him being able to stop men in their tracks with just his mind, there were limits. First, the man needed to know the legend of Billy Boy so fear could do its part and second, the more intelligent the man was the more subject to suggestion he would be. These men were neither category. He went over in his mind the location of each stash as he waited for the first good shot since it would be the last element of surprise shot. The leader went right up to the door after sending five or six around back to stop any chance for escape. The leader then said to come out and the women wouldn’t be hurt. They just wanted the father and the dog. Bill took a deep breath lined up the neck of a man right behind the leader and the leader’s head, then slowly squeezed the trigger. Bang! The shot ran true and two men fell without a cry or whimper, just flopped to the ground like dropped rag dolls. What followed was a dozen rounds fired into the cottage windows, along with plenty of curses and cries about those devils got pa! At the end of the volley of shots to cover up the direction Bill was firing from, Bill used his second rifle and finished a third man. This of course caused more wailing and hurried reloading of their firearms. Bill took this time to reload his first and second riffle. The anguish in their voices was real as love ones hit the dusty ground dead, not wounded to fight another day. The next hour was a blur of firing, running, reloading, firing, feeling around for a stash, reloading, firing, running on and on. Towards the end they threw torches in the windows and as the cottage went up in a blaze of crackling timber, Bill knew he couldn’t fire on them anymore without them figuring out he was outside the cottage with them. A wagon was pulled up front of the cottage and bodies were piled on while they checked for life signs of the fallen. Because of the dark and the bad angles of some of his shots there were wounded on the ground, screaming in pain and calling for someone to help them. Bill carried a British Army issue bayonet he kept was so sharp he had to replace the custom sheaths every couple of months because the edge had cut through the leather just from the friction of walking along. In the dark, away from the dying flames Bill finished many of the wounded where they lay crying for help. The driver of the wagon and three on horseback were all that remained of the small army that had showed up hours before. The rest of the night was spent following these men home picking them off one by one until finally the driver felt Bill behind him saying you’re the last.
As daybreak came to the cottage Bill was just finishing up packing the buckboard with whatever supplies were stashed in the cellar. All the other possessions were destroyed except the iron, steel, and stone items, which were carefully packed in the back, next to Klondike. They let Seafoam sleep as long as possible since several hard days of travel lay ahead.
By the time John Spencer arrived late in the morning, Bill had covered the opening with flat rocks in the area and brushed the tracks they made when leaving out to the main road. John Spencer was no fool but when he declared there were no survivors to the bloody battle, no one asked any questions. Questions like, were there bodies inside the ashes of the cottage? or where did the buckboard go? The town was peaceful for the first time that anyone could remember, and there wasn’t a reported rape until after the official founding of Baltimore ten years later in ’29.
For years people in town speculated on how it was possible for a small family with a big dog could kill seventeen well-armed men. The town erected four head stones over the burnt remains of the cottage to honor the small Seaworthy family and the biggest dog any of them had ever seen.
TO BE CONTINUED!