The Captain`s Vengeance

AFTERWORD

Ah, N'awlins, the "Big Easy"… the city where I once had four Hurricanes and closed Pat O'Brien's at dawn, then thought that I was Jean La Fitte, after an LSU-Ole Miss football game at Baton Rouge! I'd driven down with a couple of "Good Ol' Girls" from Ole Miss whom I had met in Memphis. Ole Miss lost 66-6, Archie Manning was quarterback and playing in a cast on his arm, so they took the defeat, and their cry of "Hoddy-Toddy, Christ A'mighty," much like Dionysius's Greek followers took "Evoe!", a reason for serious boozing.

Thanks to Louisiana State University Press for The Founding of New Acadia by Carl Brasseaux and Africans in Colonial Louisiana by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall; and to Pelican Publishing of Gretna, Louisiana, for reprinting George W. Cable's 1884 book, The Creoles of Louisiana for the description of the city and its citizens' character, or lack of it. He did know them best!

Creole and Cajun character names were chosen blind from the indexes in these books, and others, so if anyone whose family name is mentioned may wish to take umbrage, consider this…

I am well armed, and know how to use them.

Boudreaux Balfa's name was inspired by one of my Bluegrass-Americana CDs, where I found several Cajun-Zydeco cuts done by Dewey Balfa (are we kinfolk?) and his family band, though I recall that his family reside on Bayou La Fourche, not Barataria, so as Dewey Balfa said in the liner notes, Toujours Balfa! and more power to 'em, 'cause they're great! I'm trolling for a free CD, Dewey!

For my rendition of Cajun diction, blame that famous Cajun comic, Justin Wilson, with whom I spent a day doing a couple of TV commercials in Memphis in the '80's, when I was a producer-director at WMC-TV.

For the Tennesseans, I borrowed a few of my own kin from my old stomping grounds round Campbell, Claiborne, and Knox Counties, Tennessee. My maternal grandmother, Mary Susan Bowman Ellison, spoke of a cousin of her youth, Jim Hawk McLean, in the Powell Valley, which is halfway between La Follette, Tennessee, and the Cumberland Gap. Every spring, or when a wild hair hit him, Jim Hawk and his cronies would build a flatboat and head downriver to the Mississippi, then raft down to Vicksburg or Natchez, sell their produce and the boat, then buy horses and good breeding stock and come home up the Natchez Trace to Nashville, the Cumberland Trail to Knoxville, all for a lark. They'd sell all but the best mounts in Knoxville, then return to the Powell Valley (originally Powell's!) with half their cash money for the year, so I couldn't resist working a Jim Hawk Ellison into the tale!

Yes, there was a Panton, Leslie Company, a British firm that traded with Indians, Spanish, and frontier settlements. It's mentioned in both The South In The Revolution, Volume Three of A History of the South by John Richard Alden (LSU Press) and The Southern Frontier, 1670 to 1732 by Vernor W. Crane (W. W. Norton Co.). Both provide "dirt" on the many plots and schemers who wished to expand westward along the entire length of the Mississippi, the United States plans, the British scenarios, and the individual states' activities. And, yes, by 1799, President Adams and Congress did wrangle over the costs of a military expedition to boot the weak Spanish out of the Old Southwest! It was up to President Thomas Jefferson to buy it in 1803.

General James Wilkinson was a paid Spanish agent, since 1787. No one could figure out how he was paid, 'til someone noticed, in the wake of the Aaron Burr filibustering conspiracy of 1803-04, that it was odd for barrels of flour and meal to go upriver from New Orleans. The barrels were too heavy and when finally opened were found to hold sacks or small barricos of silver coins! Wilkinson planned to seize Kentucky, Tennessee, or both, as his personal kingdom, at the same time he commanded all U.S. Army troops in both states or territories.

Thanks again to Bob Enrione at CBS in New York for research on Spanish money, its contemporary value, and how it was shipped. All of the New

World was short of solid specie, and Spanish dollars were good just about everywhere. There was a shipload of six million, Bob said, so I got "inspired." Not only is Bob a great source for fun facts, but he also once owned enough brass muzzle-loading naval guns to fit out a brig o' war, and he and his wife are multiple cat "adoptees," hence in the good folks' column.

There really was a Girandoni air-rifle. Austria bought 1,800 to 2,000 of them and "got shot of 'em" right-quick, too. In 1805 Lewis and Clark took air-rifles on the Corps of Discovery trek, and theirs, made in America, worked a lot better. Almost anything else would.

Pierre and Jean La Fitte, hmmm. I couldn't resist slinging them into a novel set round New Orleans and their future infamous haunt on Grand Terre, in Barataria Bay. Even if they were enigmas! None of my research sources on them-including a Young Adult nonfiction book I bought that tried really, really hard to make slave dealing, slave stealing, piracy, and murder sound like just grand, Politically Correct fun-can agree on where Jean La Fitte was born: Bordeaux, Port-au-Prince (Haiti), or Cartagena? He was nineteen in 1799, he was ten! He went to a military school on Guadeloupe, Martinique, or in France. He was part-Jewish and his family had run afoul of the Spanish Inquisition and had fled to the Americas, Jean being born in 1782. Now, there's a good reason to prey on Spanish ships; they'd tried to turn your grandparents into tiki lanterns! The only point of agreement is that Jean La Fitte was a sharp businessman but a horrid sailor who'd heave up his innards on anything but a dead-calm sea.

Anyway, whether Jean La Fitte was seventeen, fourteen, or twelve in early 1799, he could have been part of Jerome Lanxade's crew, serving an "internship" in murder and mayhem, so why the hell not?

Stodgy academics may take umbrage, but let me put it this way: "It's my bloody book, so sod you, write yer own! Pee-Aitch-Dees… Pee-Aitch-Dees! Wwee don' need no stinkin' Pee-Aitch-Dees!" And let me refer any thin-blooded revisionists to my earlier statement about Louisianans' family names…

"I am well armed and know how to use them."

Lewrie's and Pollock's "appreciation" about the best way to get at New Orleans: it was shorter, quicker, and cheaper than trying to float an army down the Mississippi and, at the time, would've worked! Could it be that Lewrie's plan mouldered in a soggy Admiralty basement 'til 1814, the mouse-nibbled thing was pulled out and given to General Sir Edward Packenham when he went up against Andrew Jackson? Robert V. Remini's The Battle of New Orleans (Penguin Books) lays the whole thing out, though Packenham "screwed the pooch" just as Lewrie suspected any British Army might, since "daring" and "quick" weren't in their vocabulary. And will a Commodore or Rear-Admiral Lewrie play a role in it, hmmm?

So, the bad guys have had their "stuff " scattered to the wind, and Lewrie has come out smelling like rose-water again; not only successful, but fairly damn rich for a change, when a "chicken-nabob," fresh-returned from India with ?50,000, was thought immensely wealthy.

Will money soften Caroline's heart? Whoever that spiteful and incognito scribbler is that writes anonymous letters to her detailing his amours has run out of fresh material and knows nothing of Lewrie's Caribbean doings. Might she ascribe to the views of Clinton backers, "That's old news. Let's just… move on"? Or will it still be "Hell hath no fury"?

I planned on killing off Charite de Guilleri, but she's one of those characters who grows on you. Will she escape her dull relations and find a powerful sponsor, and… who might it be? We left ol' Guillaume Choundas an American Navy prisoner on his parole, but never count him out 'til you drive a stake through his heart; he's harder to kill than cockroaches. Could it be?

Will the cats stop marking territory, now Nicely's gone? Will Midshipman Gamble fit in aboard that floating mad-house, HMS Proteus? Will Lt. Lan-glie's marital prospects towards Lewrie's ward, Sophie, be improved, now that he's in for a goodly share of "chink," too? And those mongeese… how did the Marines find them so far from India and the island of Trinidad, and how'd they smuggle it (them) aboard in the first place?

Will Alan Lewrie stay tagged as "The Ram-Cat," or will "Iron-Bound" become his new sobriquet in the Royal Navy?

All I can say, for now, is… stay tuned, buckaroos, and…

Prospero: I'll deliver all.

And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales,

And sail so expeditious that shall catch

Your royal fleet far off-

My Ariel, chick,

That is thy charge. Then to the elements

Be free, and fare thou well-please you draw

Near.

Exeunt Omnes.

– The Tempest, Act V, Scene 1

William Shakespeare