SERVING WITH RODGERS
The origin story of "crazed pirate".
“Good. I didn’t have to tell ya twice. Now grab a stool, feed the goat sumthin’ and pay attention. I’m only going to tell ya once.” The Bosun
You pollywogs are gonna learn sumthin’ about your commanding officer even if I have ta beat it into ya with a piece of drift wood.
I first served with John Rodgers before either one of us was in the navy. He was captain of a merchant ship and I was the Bosun. On a freezing cold night in the North Sea, Rodgers ordered some of the crew to go aloft and knock the ice off the rigging.
They refused. And, before I could get my first curse word out of my mouth, Rodgers stripped off his jacket and shirt. Bare-chested, told the crew, “Look what a MAN can do!”
He put a mallet in his teeth, and climbed that frozen rigging like a squirrel goin’ for the last nut on a tree. And, the crew scurried up right behind him.
A little while after that, back in ’98, we both signed up for the Navy for the Quasi War. For some reason beyond comprehension, they commissioned him as a junior lieutenant. And assigned us to the Constellation.
We attacked and captured the French frigate, L'Insurgente. Rodgers commanded the prize crew, which consisted of Rodgers, me, some midshipman named Porter, and ten pollywogs like you. No Marines. Just us.
We sailed her just fine with Constellation right beside us. But, of course, a gale hit us out of nowhere and pushed a lot of wind and waves between us and them. Why is that a problem, you ask? Well, let’s start with a baker’s dozen of us versus 160 of them. Worse still, the Frenchies threw all of the grates overboard right before they surrendered. Meaning, we couldn’t just lock’em up in the hold. But Rodgers is on our side. So, we still had the advantage, as those Frenchies were about to find out.
He had us gather up all of their weapons when we first set foot aboard that frigate. We prodded them down into the hold anyway and kept guard on them with blunderbusses pointed at them the entire time.
The gale turned into a squall and that turned into two days of sailing through it with just the 13 of us handling the ship and guarding the prisoners until we made St. Kitts. We got that frigate refitted, the navy promoted Rodgers to captain and gave him command of it.
Alright that’s enough lesson for the day, Go back to Lieutenant O’Keefe. He owes me a few more favors. God Bless’m. Now git!