That Time a Spiceship Crashed the Civil War

*Log Entry, 18-Goddamn-62:* I’ve seen sea-freaks that’d make a kraken blush and storms that could strip the sin from a bishop, but I ain’t never seen a Tuesday get this bollocksed up. Picture it: Hampton Roads, Virginia. Two of the ugliest bastards ever shat from a shipyard are about to beat their iron dicks together. On one side, the Rebels’ floating barn roof, the CSS *Virginia*. On the other, the Union’s glorified cheesebox on a raft, the USS *Monitor*. A proper mechano-fuckfest for the ages. Cannons are primed, asses are puckered. Then, out of a fog bank so thick you could carve it and sell it as cheese, comes a ship. Not a steam-puffer or a clipper, but a full-blown, 16th-century *carrack*. A high-sterned, pot-bellied Portugee spice hauler called the *Nossa Senhora da Carga Surpresa*—Our Lady of the Surprise Load, and ain’t *that* the truth.

The lads on the ironclads just… stopped. You could hear a mouse fart in Norfolk. This thing was a goddamn wooden-walled ghost, a three-masted relic smelling faintly of cloves and Jesus, and it had stumbled into the world’s first-ever demolition derby for armored sea turtles. Imagine the skipper, some poor bastard named Captain João “Johnny Big Spices” Fonseca. One minute he’s dreaming of unloading his nutmegs and mace all over a willing Lisbon merchant’s daughter, the next he’s staring at two smoke-belching iron demons that look like they were designed by a drunk blacksmith with a grudge against God. An eyewitness—some gibbering Union lieutenant I shared a bottle of snake-oil with later—swore he saw Captain Fonseca make the sign of the cross, then take a long, soul-searching pull from a clay jug, presumably after his bowels had voided themselves with the force of a 12-pounder carronade.

Well, you can’t just let a boat carrying more wealth than the entire Confederate treasury just sail on by. The battle-lust between the *Monitor* and the *Virginia* immediately went limp. Suddenly, it was all about bagging the spice-bitch. They started posturing and maneuvering, less like warships and more like two fat, clumsy sea lions fighting over the last fish at the zoo. The Rebs wanted the cargo to sell to the French for guns and gold. The Feds wanted it because, well, fuck you, that’s why—blockade rules, bitch. All the while, the Portuguese sailors were running around their decks, waving crucifixes and probably promising to build a thousand cathedrals if they survived this encounter with Satan’s personal navy.

This is where my man Johnny Big Spices proved he had a pair of brass ones to match his cargo hold of pepper. As the two ironclads closed in, he gave an order. His crew, bless their terrified hearts, started heaving sacks overboard. Not gold, not silver, but fine-ground pepper from the East Indies. Tons of it. The wind caught it and whipped it into a devastating, nose-tickling cloud that drifted right over the dueling ironclads. What followed wasn’t a cannonade, but a *sneeze-onade*. A cacophony of achoos, coughs, and wet hacks echoed from the iron hulls. Men were blinded by tears and their own snot. The great, historic battle of the ironclads was called off on account of a catastrophic allergy attack.

While two of the most advanced warships on the planet were rendered helpless by a seasoning, the *Nossa Senhora* limped towards the coast, its captain likely inventing several hundred new Portuguese curse words. They say she ran aground near Kitty Hawk, spilling a king’s ransom in nutmeg onto the Carolina shores. For the next fifty years, every Christmas cake baked in the Outer Banks had a certain… *je ne sais quoi*. And a market value of twelve dollars.