Stirling: The Quest To Create An Eden

STIRLING

The Quest To Create An Eden

by John Ivor

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A man’s reach should exceed his grasp

or what’s a Heaven for?

-- ROBERT BROWNING

There are two things to aim at in life

first, to get what you want;

and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the

wisest of mankind achieve the second.

-- LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH

I CHANGED the world ― not a boast but obvious when you look at an atlas. Humanity should be grateful, yet is not; I get short shrift in the histories.

The maps show my stupendous achievement, yet people show it best. My dream still pulls them to The Great Southland, for it is their dream also, an ember glowing deep within the ashes of despair. Look at them.

From the hunger and the slaughter; from the political and religious cauldrons of Europe and Africa and Asia and America, the poor, the hopeful and the dispossessed follow the dream. Others, as ever it was, come perhaps in greed or as desperate outlaws, yet theirs is the same motivation: a fresh start. Free from social disruptions, the beacon of opportunity beckons.

That beacon for all was raised by me, and, yes, I was indeed a striver as indicated by my family name, Stirling, derived from an ancient Viking word. A striving seagoer, I brought enlightened living to a savage wilderness.

Few of the dreamers have heard of me, Captain James Stirling, Royal Navy, and fewer care, yet my haven remains. It is ready for everyone, ready for you who read these words. My beam dominates the southern hemisphere and shines for the world ― my irrepressible dream, the soul of Australia.

Let me tell you how I did it against impossible odds. The idea came soon after I invaded the United States. I recall a fog of cannon smoke blinding my vision but nothing could reduce the noise of the guns blasting. My guns. They rained destruction and death upon the Americans, whose flimsy coastal defences were built in haste and futility against the might of the world’s greatest navy. My navy.

My task was to eliminate those forts, enabling our brave British troops to launch their shore landings. We were teaching the Yankee upstarts a lesson long overdue.

It was June 1812, tense time for the world. The US Congress had finally and foolishly declared war on Great Britain. Their feeble excuse was alleged interference by Britain’s navy, allegedly violent, against American shipping. Of course, as explained by my Uncle Charlie, veteran seadog, our interference was simply seapower in action.

As a necessary clamp on France, the Royal Navy had banned all trade by every nation with any French-held port, and we took firm action to police this ban. As a result, American merchants were cut off from France, their major trading partner. In retaliation, misguided hawks in the US House of Representatives resolved to seize the whole of Canada, a wealthy British possession. Thus do politicians and merchant princes rock the world and rule an individual’s destiny.

Seapower, Jim boy, said my uncle the admiral.

See this. The Royal Navy has 97 ships on the transatlantic station against a pathetic 16 in the US Navy. You will go show the Yanks what seapower means.

Loud on the worth of seapower was Uncle Charlie, and short on cautious shilly-shally. His blunt logic dictated action. Do it, he commanded me. Britannia rules the oceans and therefore the planet.

But seapower failed Britannia and Uncle Charlie in this particular conflict.

MY warship, the Brazen, was a sloop of 28 guns, and I felt no qualms about wrecking the American forts; even though my grandmother herself was American, from a wealthy banking family, the Willings of Philadelphia. Having renounced the King, these cousins grew rich in rebellion, and even helped to draft that damnable Declaration:

We hold these truths to be self-evident

that all men are created equal;

that they are endowed by their

Creator with certain inalienable rights;

that among these are life, liberty and

the pursuit of happiness . . .

Stuff and nonsense. The day we are all equal, who will command a ship? Here is the Captain, here is his Crew, a crew that’s subordinate and yet essential. Without the crew’s labour the skipper’s seacraft is confounded. Each needs the other. Here is the conscientious Master, here his willing Servants, the perfect social pattern.

And how many Americans practise equality today? Their national charter of independence was a fine-sounding theory but soon was smothered in the dash for fast bucks, an ideal which American people ― of all classes ― appear to hold dearest to their hearts.

That day, the marshy shores of Chesapeake received my glorious bombardments as I helped to clear the way for Britain’s army. My demolition of the forts was almost unopposed.

American gunners, apart from a few trained by the French, always became over-excited through lack of discipline, and therefore inept. They were not blessed with accuracy in returning my fire and their clumsy aiming even struck some of their own fortifications, a trait I observed with some glee. Once I had read the prevailing wind, I could sweep in from the sea, often at dawn or dusk, and demolish a bastion with horrendous broadsides.

The Brazen was a difficult moving target for those shore gunners, and furthermore was itself a superbly accurate gunnery force, thanks to the driving constancy of my shipboard drills. We received the odd cannonball in reply, an occasional lucky hit, but nothing like the deathly fury of a sea battle between equals. It seemed to me that the Yankee declaration of equality was nothing more than wishful thinking by hopeful underdogs.

Declare what equality you will, I bellowed wildly at the shore as we tacked for another broadside. You'll never be equal to the Royal Navy. Those crew close by to hear me gave a cheer and bent to their cannon. Stout British tars, ever willing.

I KNEW Britain’s two-pronged war-plan, and considered it to be unstoppable. Of one prong I was a vital part, smashing the forts. The other was farther north, in the great Bay of Hudson. Up there, troopships had been debarking 11,000 seasoned fighting men from Europe, including the cream of German George’s mercenaries. These had advanced down the Hudson Valley, but once removed from their naval support were halted by the enemy’s freshwater fleets.

Seapower was all very well, and American inequality in skill and numbers well proven, but I had to concede one thing: those bloodily blasted Americans and their flimsy coastal forts could cringe smugly behind a strategic accident of geography.

Although unable to control their own surrounding oceans, the Americans had nevertheless created an inland navy. Improvise! It should have been their national motto. If you ain’t got it, invent it.

In order to invade Canada, the Americans hauled freshwater boats over the mountains and, presto, established command of the great lakes and rivers. This threatened to halt the advance, from the north, of Britain’s superb soldiery.

The answer was a second front in the south, an invasion in which my fort wrecking was all-important. I needed no further incentive, and shared the triumph of Britain’s ever-victorious gunboats along those punished shores.

Later, with the coastal defences a shambles, 4000 British infantry were ferried ashore in Chesapeake Bay, under the command of General Robert Ross. They pushed back twice as many of the enemy and captured Washington, the capital.

As our Tommy Lobsters swarmed over the lush lawns to occupy the White House, US President James Madison fled with his family. English officers claimed they sat down to a meal, still hot, which the President and his loved ones had abandoned in haste.

Afterwards the British regiments put the White House to the torch and pressed on to Baltimore. Here, the fleeing Americans turned and made a stand, fortuitously killing General Ross and thereby forcing the gallant Brits back to the boats.

The war planners have decided that a third British offensive is called for, said Uncle Charlie, who was one of those planners himself, as a Vice-Admiral and ruler of our wealthiest colony, Jamaica.

Off ye go, Jim boy, and blast ’em again. Seapower! Do your special thing in the Mississippi Delta. It’s a vital commercial artery for the cotton plantations. It’s how they ship out their top commodity. America’s war effort will collapse when we take New Orleans. It’s the key to the whole south.

After the Brazen and other gunboats swooped on the Mississippi and again shattered the coastal ramparts, the incoming British invasion force of 50 ships was unopposed, except by Mother Nature. The biggest obstacle to our troops was the swampy terrain.

The mighty Mississippi’s maze of inlets presented a formidable challenge. We overcame it by transporting no less than 8000 soldiers upriver in rowing boats, a long haul of 70 miles.

Each naval vessel had to provide its quota of rowers for the hand-blistering task. For me it was a proud moment. My call for volunteers ready to row in the face of enemy snipers was immediately successful. I took this as proof of their respect and confidence in my strong but fair leadership.

Some captains, however, with crews less loyal, provided an ironic twist to the forthcoming battle by detailing pressed crew who had American backgrounds. The seizing of such individuals from American ships on the high seas had been one of the niggling quarrels between our two nations. I made a point of debarring such personnel. Fairness apart, you could never really tell which side these blighters were going to be on.

Upriver, waiting at New Orleans to oppose the British flotilla of rowboats, was the outnumbered militia of Tennessee lawyer Andrew Jackson. But many a lawyer thrives on long odds. This defending general, as it happened, was later to become seventh president of the United States.

Left fortless by my efforts on the strategic coast, General Jackson’s plight at New Orleans was grim. He had entrenched on the river’s left bank with nowhere to fall back should his small force be swept away, as was likely. Sad to observe, his long-rifled marksmen, hunters from the Tennessee woods, performed a seeming miracle. With a terrible ease and remorseless repetition, their keen-eyed firepower picked off our rowers and the clumped redcoats.

Nuthin but a lil ol turkey shoot, is how one vulgar chronicler described it afterwards.

Although tasteless and heartless, this comparison was accurate enough. Yet it was also a libel against the British general, Sir Edward Pakenham. This shrewd veteran had commanded a division at Salamanca in the European wars, and he opted for a fast and bloody frontal assault.

He led it in person, storming towards the enemy’s makeshift barricades of stacked cotton bales. Thus inspired, our main British column advanced heroically over swamp, almost directly into the death-dealing mouth of an 18-pound battery. The column was also raked by batteries on either side, together with the accurate volleys of the Tennessee sharpshooters.

Sir Edward died in the brave but costly half-hour action, in which the British casualties totalled 2000 while the United States lost only 71. Their firepower that day nullified our seapower.

This was the Battle of New Orleans, fought on January 8, 1815, and when our mauled and defeated lads Sdrew pluckily back to the fleet it was the end of the war.

Unknown to the contenders at New Orleans, peace had been signed a fortnight earlier by the British government, on Christmas Eve.

The Wangler’s daughter

YOU'LL love Ellen, said Uncle Charlie. She's a wonderful girl. I recall how his eyes of Royal Navy Blue sparked at me, and how his chin jiggled in merry arrogance, as if about to fight the Frogs or the blasted Yankees.

Wonderful girl. A creature of wonder indeed, I thought without giving reply, a wondrous heroine of fantasy. And, possibly, a total fiction in uncle's striving, optimistic imagination.

Ellen the young, Ellen the fair, Ellen the saviour of my stilted career, perhaps, now I was shorebound at 28 years of age without a prospect. Ellen the lovably wealthy, whose daddy owned half of India.

We Stirlings, traditional strivers, had some peculiar family traits. Rapaciously foremost among these was a fervour to marry for money. I encountered it after peace put an end to Britain's rampages against America. This curtailed my quest for prizemoney on the high seas, alas, before I had collected much more than the price of my uniform.

I was young then and given to flights of fancy, and was persuaded by Uncle Charlie’s alluring strategy: A bold boarding, lad, wins the prize. Chin up, Jim boy, and follow me.

Lacking only cutlass and pistol, he led on, his wide, white-breeched backside preceding me across the portico, and up the steps to the mansion’s magnificent entry and the prize that was named Ellen. Down on the gravel driveway, a yardboy was holding our horses.

Uncle's mood said swing-rope and at ’em, and many was the time I had shared his pre-battle euphoria. Unwavering was he. Predatory. Irrepressible. Like him, I could be all of these, but not now. Not here in the genteel English countryside.

Here on Ellen’s doormat, threshold of my greatest opportunity, I was reduced to jelly-kneed panic by mere thought of the desired maiden. Did I say her father owned only half of India? He was looting the other half under voracious trading contracts imposed on India’s rulers by the British Raj. The filthy-rich status of Ellen’s pa put her a stretch beyond even my extended ambitions.

My fears had grown progressively worse as our nags trotted closer to the square-rigged hedges that marked the boundary of the vast Mangles lair. We had been on the estate for more than 10 miles, a ride that took us through four villages and wide horizons of pasture, like a green ocean where cows and sheep floated in a vista shimmering to the high distance.

With each new evidence of the endless wealth, my confidence had sagged another knot, even though Uncle referred to his old chum as Manglewangles, a schoolboy nickname from long ago. The Wangler can fix anything, he promised. He's looking forward to meeting you.

And fixing me?

"His daughter will save