The Witch’s Fleet

Abigail Weech, John F. Corrigan

Description

Everything happens for a reason. There are no coincidences!
In 1807, a young, Philadelphia woman of special gifts is accused by the religious authorities of practicing the black arts. Although the investigators can find no evidence that she has ever used her talents to harm anyone, they proceed to attempt to apprehend her to stand trial.
She anticipates them – which is her way – and flees to the frontier which, in 1807, is the sleepy fishing village of Erie, Pennsylvania.
It is now five years later. 1812. The sleepy fishing village of 400 souls finds itself on the front lines of a war against the British Empire. Among them walks a young woman of special gifts. The Brits have no idea what they are up against!

Sujets

• Thrillers
• Erie
• Armada de los Estados Unidos
• Pensilvania
• Erie, Pennsylvania
• History of the United States
• Witchcraft
• Pennsylvania
• Mystery
• Witches
• Suspense
• United States Navy
• Fiction
• Pennsylvanie
• 1812

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 26 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663242358
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

AUTHOR OF THE STORYTELLERS
THE WITCH’S FLEET
JOHN F. CORRIGAN WITH ABIGAIL WEECH


THE WITCH’S FLEET
 
 
Copyright © 2022 John F. Corrigan With Abigail Weech.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
 
 
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4234-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4236-5 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4235-8 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022913440
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 07/22/2022
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Prologue
 
Chapter 1The Landsman
Chapter 2Port of Call
Chapter 3And Then He Went Under
Chapter 4And I as Well
Chapter 5The Three Coins
Chapter 6The Three Letters
Chapter 7More Than Anyone Could Possibly Imagine
Chapter 8The Clan of the Wolf
Chapter 9A Disconcerted Fear
Chapter 10It’ll Get You Too
Chapter 11For Everything There Is a Season
Chapter 12Hatchets and Knives, Fingernails and Teeth
Chapter 13She’s Very Dead I’m Afraid
Chapter 14Her!
Chapter 15As Your Right Hand Is to Your Left
Chapter 16Say a Prayer
Chapter 17Frustrated Guardian Angels
Chapter 18I Think She’s Perfect
Chapter 19The Room at the Top of the Stairs
Chapter 20An Evil, Knowing Grin
Chapter 21The Hooded One
Chapter 22The Last Patient
Chapter 23What Does It Mean, Nancy?
Chapter 24Almost an Island
Chapter 25A Godforsaken Eve
Chapter 26The Comeuppance
Chapter 27The Handmaiden
Chapter 28The Other Side of the Sky
Chapter 29If I Close My Eyes, I Can See Them
Chapter 30Lest They Think Him Mad
Chapter 31A Fine Night’s Work
Chapter 32A Miracle Is What It Would Take
Chapter 33Pieces of Mouse
Chapter 34There Is Something Strange about Her Now
Chapter 35A Perfect Day to Fly
Chapter 36Do birds fly for fun?
Chapter 37Bring It On!
Chapter 38If You Can Fog the Mirror
Chapter 39We Do Not Curse at Miracles
Chapter 40The Different Days of a Different Time
Chapter 41The Mousetrap
Chapter 42The Devil’s Daughter
Chapter 43Is Anyone Else Alive?
Chapter 44A Little Clutch of Lingering Souls
 
Endnotes
Bibliography




ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks go out to:
Mike Martin, Captain Sabatini and everyone with the Niagara League.
Linda Bolla and everyone at the Erie Maritime Museum, Erie, Pa.
George Deutsch at the Hagan History Museum, Erie, Pa.
Betsy MacKrell at the Erie Cemetery association
Ron Mattocks at the Crawford County Historical Society
Cover art by Patti Larson at Patti Larson Photography and Designs
www.pattilarsonphotos.com
Front piece: The Battle of Lake Erie – Getty Images
All other illustrations by Alexandria Tackett

For the people of Erie!
The descendants of heroes!



“Do you really believe that the sciences would ever have originated and grown if the way had not been prepared by magicians, alchemists, astrologers and witches …”
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
PROLOGUE
WELCOME TO 1807
• Life expectancy is 60.9 years.
• The United States—once a collection of British colonies—has been an independent nation for thirty-one years.
• The population of the United States is 7,239,881.
• There are seventeen states.
• Thomas Jefferson is president.
• King George III is king of the British Empire.
• Napoleon Bonaparte has crowned himself emperor of France and is bent on world domination.
• A going rate for skilled labor is $1.00/day.
• A day laborer is paid $0.10/day.
• The lowest denomination of minted US coins is the halfpenny (ha’penny).
• The fishing village of Erie, Pennsylvania is twelve years old.
• It has a population of four hundred.
• The British Royal Navy—the most powerful in the world—has 1,017 ships.
• The US Navy has … 17.
CHAPTER 1
THE LANDSMAN
June 22, 1807
Aboard the frigate USS Chesapeake at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay
THE LANDSMAN WAS shaking like the frightened young man he was. He had not, before this, considered himself afraid of heights, but then he had never been at heights such as these. Oh, he had worked at higher tasks sure, but those past elevations had at least the decency to hold still. The precarious perch upon which he now found himself held no such thoughtful considerations.
Nay—as he desperately clung to line and spar, these new heights rolled and pitched beneath his naked feet with sickening suddenness. Forward and then back, rising and then plunging, he struggled to hold his balance and his breakfast. He struggled to focus on his task and suppress his innate fear.
He had volunteered for this duty, as he thought it to be the toughest job aboard ship—and he was right.
I must stop volunteering , he scolded himself.
“Gads! Are you Irish?” The shouted voice of the able seaman posted out to his right on the yardarm now commanded his attention. The dark face of the African, Quintin Moore, erupted into a toothy grin as he beheld the stark fear in the eyes of the newcomer. “I swear, I tain’t ne’er seen a man so blatantly Irish!”
The landsman—the sandy-haired, freckled lad with the milk-toned skin-hardly responded to the exclamation of the able seaman. His attention was surely elsewhere, his eyes lost to the distant mist that shrouded the southern horizon.
“Irishman!” Quintin screamed at his new shipmate in a voice sure to drill through the Atlantic winds that swirled about them.
The landsman jerked and swiveled his head Quintin’s way. “I heard yee, African!”
The reply did not satisfy Quintin’s concern. The landsman wore a stunned countenance. His hands clamped the wooden yardarm with a grip that had his knuckles pressed white. Quintin had seen this before—the shock of a landsman on his first day working in the tops.
“Look at me!” Quintin’s voice was stern and demanding and the words uttered with enough force to penetrate any stupor.
The landsman shuddered and complied.
The ship rolled on the ocean, rising with the advance of each swell and then dropping suddenly into the following trough. Up in the ship’s rigging, the vessel’s motions were exaggerated—like being at the business end of a whip. The masts lashed from side to side and then forward and back again. Quintin, the able seaman, had become inured to the adventurous ride. To the landsman, however, the new experience was equal parts nauseating and terrifying.
To fall from this height was a death sentence carried out either by the unforgiving timber deck directly below or the man-swallowing, suffocating sea that seemed to literally reach up to snatch at him every time the ship pitched in its direction.
All that now stood between his life and that awful death was the ropewalk beneath his feet—a single run of one-inch-thick rope that hung suspended a few feet below the yardarm. Presently, this “platform” supported the combined weight of the African, the Irishman, and two other topmen who were working the opposite end of the spar. Their bare feet clutched at its wet, slippery fibers as best they could. The landsman now prayed to his God for its long life. His eyes drifted back to the horizon.
“Do not look out there!” Quintin would have smacked the inattentive landsman were he not positioned as he was just out of his reach. “Look to my eyes, damn you! That’s it! That’s it! Look to my eyes right here—right now! Don’t look out there … or over there … and, whatever you do, don’t look down! Just keep your eyes here on me and this task we have before us. Do as I say and you probably won’t die this day!”
Quintin Moore had stood out on this yardarm thousands of times before, setting the sails, taking them in, or just seeing to the maintenance of the heavy canvas. Many of those times had been spent in the company of some such novice landsman ordered aloft to learn at the hands of the veteran able seaman. Today was no different, and those novices no less unsure, except that this man had volunteered for work as a topsman, something rare among run-of-the-mill, quaking landsmen, even those eager to make themselves useful. So, Quintin eyed him with some small measure of respect.
The four men set to work setting the canvas sail, unloosing it from its cocoon-like form. They worked in concert with the two other men stationed to their left on the larboard side of the yardarm.
It took less than a minute to free the canvas and unfurl it, lettin