Master Mariner

THE LIFE AND VOYAGES OF

AMASA DELANO

Captain Amasa Delano, 1763-1823



BY
JAMES B. CONNOLLY

1943

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CHAPTER XVII

Tropic Fevers Set In

TIME TO BE GETTING ON with our work," said the commodore. The officers laid markers on the graves of shipmates who had died, the vessels put to sea, and Amasa was ordered to lay the course for Batavia in the Dutch island of Java.

It was blue sky and blue sea again, cloudless sky and smooth sea day in and day out. Amasa liked being at sea, any time and anywhere; but there were days walking the hot deck, with the tar oozing out of the seams, when he sighed for a splash of rain in his face, the cool breath of a North Atlantic easterly, for even a day or two of a hard winter nor'wester, with snow riding down the back of it.

Amasa located several uncharted islands on the wide road to Java; but they were all little islands, scattered lumps of coral with a layer of washed--up sand atop; useless islands, offering no safe anchorage for a ship in distress, nor green treeage, nor running streams for the taking on of needful wood and water for a ship's company.

Useless islands for ships of trade they were, but the navigator in Amasa thought they might rate a closer examination; and, thinking so, he would point one out to the commodore; and the commodore would raise his long spyglass. Then: "Chart it if you think it worth it but I'll not hold up to look closer," he would say, and replace his long glass under his arm and resume his pacing of the windward side of the quarterdeck.

Amasa was learning things. The discovery and exploration of islands was not the end and aim of this South Sea expedition. Back home he could not understand why Major Shaw was allowing his new great ship to be framed and planked with green timber. He understood now. The major was in a hurry to get her into the eastern trading. That was the great thing--trade. Amasa, who had never thought of the sea as merely a place for trading, now took to nourishing the thought of going in for some of this eastern trade himself someday.

Southerly the expedition sailed for a good offing from Timor; southerly for a few days, then westerly they headed, with Sunda Strait for the turning mark. The sun heretofore had been rising over their bow. Since New Guinea it had been rising astern; and it would be rising astern until they cleared the south coast of Java and entered Sunda Strait.

They were two weeks out of Timor, and sailing leisurely for want of a breeze of wind, when they overhauled three Dutch snows. The three snows were proceeding even more leisurely than themselves, and at sight of the two English ships one of the snows signaled a wish to speak. It turned out that the retiring governor of Dutch Penang was a passenger in the speaking snow, and he was taking his family and household goods to Batavia, his idea being to indulge himself and his family in the pleasant social life of his own kind of people in Batavia until a ship would be sailing for his homeland, which was Holland, where he and his wife and children hoped to spend the rest of their days in peace and quiet.

The three snows were rigged Malay fashion--that is, as proas, a rig Amasa did not favor--and now the governor was hailing that he was short a navigator. His snow had left Penang with a navigator; but he was dead of a fever; and neither of the other two snows had shipped a navigator, and now the governor did not know exactly where he was, and could the English officers set him right?

Amasa gave him the course and distance to Java Head (Sunda Strait); the governor's snow squared away, and her two consorts swung in astern of her; and Amasa reflected somberly on the shortsightedness of otherwise intelligent human beings' putting forth in three vessels on a voyage with only one man among them who could even shoot the sun, let be make use of the stars and the moon, to tell them where they were.

They heard more of the governor's snow later. The wind had been in the southeast, a fair wind for Java Head, the day the Dutch governor spoke them; but that night the wind went into the northwest, a strong head wind. Before morning it increased to a gale, and the governor's snow was driven back to the eastward and southward, far off her course; and atop of that, her mast carried away, and she drifted around, a derelict on a wide, wide sea. She drifted for weeks.

The governor's snow stayed afloat and was eventually sighted, and the governor and his family and the crew were rescued; but by then little was left of the governor's effects. It was six months after he left Penang before he arrived in Batavia. Sympathetic Amasa spared space in his diary to record: "The loss of nearly all his property, the defeat of his plans for a life of ease and retirement, and the consequent anxiety and distress, made his story and condition very painful to us and to all who knew him." The two other snows were never heard of again.

The storm that wrecked the Dutch governor's snow and sent her two consorts to the bottom was quite a storm. It was a typhoon, and Amasa forgot all about his rain in the face, or snowy North Atlantic, while it blew. The Panther and the Endeavour were driven two hundred miles back to the eastward before that typhoon was done with them; and while being so driven, the Panther sprung both her masts. She also had most of her sails blown away and numerous seams opened. It was a weary, wet time for all hands. The storm lasted fifteen days, and--Amasa speaking--"It blew as strong at times as I had ever seen, even in the winter Atlantic, north or south. After three weeks battling the gale, we arrived in Palo Bay which lies across from Sunda Straits in the island of Sumatra."

Palo was notorious as one of the unhealthiest ports in all the South Seas, the land by the harbor side being all low and swampy, deep with stagnant water and a thick green--yellow scum on the surface. The sickening fumes arising from that swamp turned their sleep into a nightmare; but the two ships had taken a severe beating, an immediate overhauling was a necessity, and there they had to stay--at least for a time.

The two crews turned to at setting up new masts and rigging under Amasa's direction; and they were making good progress when they took to going sick and dying. "Sometimes death followed the sickness of a single day. The first symptom of disease was a dizziness in the head; then violent fever. Sometimes the bowels swelled, a lethargy succeeded, and the patient died without a groan. We lost twenty men in ten days after the sickness set in."

The frequent deaths stirred the commodore to a change of scene. The two vessels had each only one topmast in place when he gave the order to put out of the damn port before all hands would die on him. They put in to the harbor of Pencoolen (Benkulen now), which was also in the easterly end of Sumatra and hard by the Strait of Sunda.

Pencoolen wasn't a preferred anchorage, having no protected mooring places from south or west winds, nor was it a truly healthy port; but the commodore was for it because of its being an English port and having a fort with a garrison of fifteen hundred men. Most of Sumatra was held by the Dutch, but the English held a part, and here were English officers, a change from the Dutch officials of Amboyna and Timor.

Officers cooped up together in the cabin of a crowded ship are apt to get on each other's nerves after months at sea; and so this meeting with officers of a brother arm of the governmental service so far from home was--well, it was a great occasion. McCluer's officers spent all their time ashore with the garrison officers and took up shore quarters with them; and, having been long ago accepted as one of themselves, Amasa was let in on their barracks junkets: that is, when he could spare an evening off from reconditioning the two vessels.

Military duty at the barracks amounted to little more than changing guard and posting sentries. Only when they scented Dutch military activity did they take their garrison duty seriously. Parties with much wassail were the order of the social days and nights--and Amasa was grateful for being included. If his English friends were far from home, he was yet farther.

While at Pencoolen Amasa learned what he could of the natives, and he looked into his old friends the flora and fauna:

"The natives were largely Malays and Mahometans. Such as had any choice in the matter lived in cultivated valleys in the hills. Cock fighting was the national pastime. The pheasants were reported beautiful--which I took on trust, seeing none myself. Parrots were abundant, and alligators numerous. Swimming parties posted guards against prowling alligators. The country was rich in mineral resources--a valuable territory for either England or Holland. An agreeable country to live in for those born in it."

The commodore was for lingering in the pleasant garrison quarters of Pencoolen. The barrack buildings were high set enough to catch the fresh air from off the mountains. Very high mountains, snow-topped mountains. It was a salubrious climate for the officers in the elevated barrack quarters, but the crewmen living down aboard the vessels in the harbor weren't finding the climate salubrious. They again took to dying of tropic fevers, and the commodore realized that he had to conserve them, or some day, and that before too long, he would have no men to sail his vessels. And there was conscientious Amasa reminding him regularly that the anchorage in the harbor wasn't too safe from the southerly and westerly gales. Regretfully the commodore gave the order to move coastwise to the safer and healthier anchorage of a little place called Rat--Island--Basin. Amasa cheered up:

"Rat-Island-Basin lies in latitude 3° 51' south and in longitude 102° 21' east. Here is pure air and good riding. The island is in the open ocean and not more than a quarter mile across in any direction. A coral reef extends a mile or more on the southwest, west and north sides of it, furnishing a safe place in which four or five ships of a thousand tons may ride with safety. Heavy anchors and chains are found in this basin, belonging to the English East India Company, for the convenience of their ships."

Here were conditions made to Amasa's order for the completion of the repairs to the two vessels. For a beginning, they could do with another spare anchor each, and here was the place to pick up the same. Chains and anchors from English East India Company ships lay on the bottom in varying depths of water--five, six, or more fathoms. To salvage chains and anchors, it was the custom of visiting shipmasters to hire native divers to go down with a rope in hand and tie the rope to the loose end of the anchor chain. With the leave of the local governor, any English East India or government ship could salvage an anchor for herself.

Now the expedition should be getting on to Batavia; and Amasa, a powerful swimmer since his boyhood days, saw no need to wait to hunt the shore for the services of a native diver. He put in for the duty of salvaging an anchor for the Panther. The particular anchor he chose for salvage lay in five fathoms of water; and over the vessel's side he went with his line in hand.

It was clear water in the Basin, and Amasa's brother officers leaned over the Panther's rail to observe his technique. He wasted no time making the bottom, because of having to work fast if he would do the job on a single breath. With head bent, he was intent on the business of securing his line to the anchor chain when he felt something poking him in the ribs. Something cold. He thought he heard voices shouting to him, but he assumed the cries were from his brother officers instructing him how to get on with his job, and he needed no instructions from them for this sort of job. He felt the something cold poking at his ribs again. He took time out to look away from his chain and anchor. What he saw was an enormous shark, and the cold something against his ribs was the shark's nose.

Now Amasa had learned first-hand that sharks abounded everywhere in eastern waters; but in the matter of sharks in Rat-Island-Basin, he had been told that they were not numerous there, and those there were mostly of the harmless kind. Mostly? There was a word to set a man thinking.

Amasa's impulse was to give over the job of salvaging his anchor and signal to be hauled to the surface. Then he thought a bit. He might as well stay where he was and finish his job. If here was a bad shark he would be tearing into him while he was being hauled up; and so, with his windward eye on the shark, he went on with the job of securing his line to the anchor chain. He finished his job, signaled to hoist away, and started kicking his way to the surface. The shark went up with him, and they gazed at each other, eye to eye, in the clear water. All this time Amasa was also under the necessity of holding his breath.

The shark turned away at the surface; and after a while--that is, when Amasa was breathing normally and could listen with composure--Malays in the crew were clustered around him and assuring him that it was a friendly shark. "A time to tell me now that I'm clear of him!" said Amasa.

The natives further informed Amasa that if he had thought to thrust his hand at the shark he would have swum away. To that, Amasa retorted that both his hands were busy.

While at Rat Basin the commodore ordered his consort vessel, the Endeavour, to be sunk here, in hope of destroying the vermin with which she was overrun. Back home Amasa had listened to housewives deploring the presence of vermin--minor vermin, such as cockroaches and ants. They should make a long voyage to the eastern tropics, thought Amasa. There they would truly have something worthwhile deploring.

From out of the Endeavour's below decks came centipedes, scorpions, white ants, rats, snakes, and cockroaches. Millions of cockroaches. The pests had mostly come aboard ship with landing parties bringing back wood. The white ants were the worst. When a landing party saw white ants in the wood they were gathering, they usually left the wood behind. Only when wood was an extreme necessity would they risk the white ants; and always they moaned later for taking the risk. The bite of the black ant was extremely painful, but give white ants their time in a vessel and they would ruin any ship--so Amasa spoke of them. "After six months of white ants aboard a ship her beams had been known to fall out of their places, from not being able longer to bear their own weight."

Amasa reported the two ships fit for sea again, and the commodore said farewell to Rat-Island-Basin. Even then, after weeks of recuperation, scores of the crewmen were still in sickbay. Some officers also. Amasa was feeling swell himself.

The two vessels proceeded eastward, passed through the Strait of Sunda, and so on to Batavia, the great port of Java.

Amasa viewed the harbor and was enchanted:

"A seaman could sail the latitude and longitude of all the eastern islands and find no harbor like Dutch Batavia. It is filled with small islands, which break the force of the wind to vessels at anchor there. A thousand ships may ride in safety. On the island of Onroost are excellent dockyards and conveniences for building and repairing ships. There is six to eight fathoms for anchorage with good muddy bottom for holding. A complete harbor for the good of a ship in from sea."

He went ashore, and after a day there he reported it a handsome city to view. "I have been 15 miles in every direction and found everywhere the highest cultivation, the most elegant country seats for the gentlemen of fortune."

After two weeks in Batavia he was revising his first rating of the city and the surrounding country. "The unhealthiness of the place had forced many of the proprietors of the elegant country residences to desert them, after having spent immense sums upon them. Swamps and morasses render the air pestilential, the drinking water rots the intestines, putrid fevers rage."

The pestilential swamps were the trouble. Amasa quotes an Englishman who had lived there a long time:

"Of the strangers who come to reside in Batavia, three out of five die of fever in their first year. The Dutch East India Company loses annually one fifth of its resident servants. Even the prospect of quickly amassing a splendid fortune wasn't holding for any length of time in Batavia Dutchmen who could live in anything like comfort back in their old country."

The English and Dutch in the East weren't giving each other any the best of it in their reports, so Amasa subtracted something from that one in five residents dying every year; but he could himself sniff a heavy effluvia hovering over the city.

That English report added: "Many offices and professions are thus necessarily entrusted to persons little qualified for fulfilling theft duties; and it is worthy of remark that one of theft clergymen was once a barber. And the principal physician had been a barber also." Amasa saw nothing criminal in being a barber, but it was an interesting item, and-possibly--true.

Amasa knew that the Dutch back in Holland were great people for canals. He counted one river and fifteen canals running through Batavia. Bridges spanned the canals and the one river. Anything in the building line interested Amasa. He inspected the bridges and had only high approval for the manner of theft construction. The abutments were of stone, the flooring of the hardest of wood, the iron braces of sufficient size.

The canals were all faced with stone. The mouth of the river, where it emptied into the harbor, was kept clear of mud by a great number of Malay slaves. Of the 100,000 inhabitants, only 5,000 were Europeans. The other 95,000 included emigrants of every nationality in the East except the Japanese. The Chinese were the shopkeepers and the most industrious. The Malays were the most lawless. The Malay killers of that day were even more expert at their business than the gangster killers of our own prohibition days. Amasa was told, the authority being unquestionable, that:

"The Malay krees men reckoned three or four guilder sufficient wages for a killing. Give one the money, point out your man, and be was good as dead. The chief of the Malays just before our arrival in Batavia was publicly branded for his villainies. He left such a smell behind him that his people were waiting for the air to clear before choosing a new chief."

Amasa's old acquaintances, "the native Amboynese, a bold, boisterous and turbulent people, were not allowed to dwell within the limits of the city. When they had done theft day's work they were herded by the soldier guards to a certain quarter of the suburbs for the night."

Java was a country of vast natural resources and so thickly populated that free labor was to be had for ridiculously small wages.

Batavia at this time was rivaling Canton in its foreign commerce. Ships were leaving with regular frequency and full cargoes of rice, coffee, and sugar for the ports of the Western world. To guard and nourish theft eastern commerce, the Dutch and British governments were keeping fleets of warships cruising from the eastern island to theft homeports in the Western world.

There was no looking over the side of a ship in the harbor of Batavia without sighting the fin of a shark, usually those of numerous sharks. Cooks of the ships at anchor fattened them with their pails of galley garbage. The sharks would bask under the warm surface with their wicked little eyes sometimes showing. A garbage pail would be emptied over a ship's lee rail, and--whpp!--before it had fairly hit the surface the sharks would be there in schools. No friendly Rat-in-Basin sharks here. No sir. The water of Batavia Harbor was pleasantly warm for swimming, and Amasa liked to swim, but he let the sharks have his share of the swimming in the harbor of Batavia.

Crocodiles in great numbers infested the river and the canals of Batavia. Amasa could abide the sharks, they being sea creatures who had to eat to live; and when their territory wasn't encroached on they took theft toll only of what came theft way in the sea. But the crocodiles were a hideous menace, hiding under the surface of the river and the canals and pouncing on careless bathers.

Amasa was one day standing at the noon hour in the front doorway of Batavia's principal hotel. The hotel door was not far from one side of a canal. A Malay child was playing on the opposite side of the canal. Stone steps here and there were leading down to the canal for the convenience of boatmen. While the nursemaid was gossiping with her back to the child, the child crept down a stone step landing. While Amasa was looking icily on, a crocodile swooped up from the canal, picked off the child, and made away with him. Amasa was only fifty yards distant, yet before he could reach the canal bank the crocodile and the child were gone under the surface of the canal.

While his ship lay into Batavia Amasa saw quite a bit of the luxurious living of the high-placed government and Dutch East India Company officers. They had their extensive compounds, spacious residences with much land about them, and boatloads of servants. And food! And drinks! It was Amboyna and Timor again, but on a larger scale.

It was a great life for whoever liked that kind of life. Amasa wasn't for it for himself. He was pleased when the sailing signal was hoisted and the order came to lay the course for the Sooloo (Sulu) Islands.