Master Mariner

THE LIFE AND VOYAGES OF

AMASA DELANO

Captain Amasa Delano, 1763-1823



BY
JAMES B. CONNOLLY

1943

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CHAPTER XIII

Homebound the Voyager

IT WAS MORE THAN FIVE YEARS since Amasa had sailed from his own country in the great ship Massachusetts; and here he was now, ten thousand miles from home, without money and without a ship.

Consul Joy and other friendly souls who knew the story of the Hector tried to assure him that his losses were owing more to hard luck than to mismanagement. If the Hector had arrived in Calcutta six months sooner, he and his partners would have had a fortune. Amasa agreed that the six months might have made the difference, but off by himself he was comparing his situation to that of the Hector when she was caught in that northeast monsoon and stripped of her sails off Ceylon. The officer of the watch was caught unprepared for any emergency. The officer in charge of the Hector's venture was himself, Amasa Delano, and he hadn't prepared for all the emergencies of commerce.

Amasa had sent word early to Van Brann in Canton of the likely ending of the Hector venture. It eased him much when he got word back that, however the Hector venture would end, he--Van Brann--would not go bankrupt. He would be collecting some insurance for his part. A good friend, Van Brann, and a canny Dutch trader, thought Amasa. Those Dutchmen in the East, take them by and large, were smart traders.

Well, he had tried his luck and here he was penniless. Nothing for him now but to head for home and begin over.

The ship Three Brothers was about to sail for Philadelphia, and her owner, Jeremiah Stimson, said why yes, of course, Captain, when Amasa applied for a passage.

A friendly and generous soul, this Stimson, who put himself out to cheer up Amasa's drooping spirits; and it pleased Amasa immensely when he was able to render him a valuable service on the run through the Indian Ocean. Stimson's captain was pronouncing the ship unseaworthy while they were still midway of that ocean, and demanding of Mr. Stimson that he put in to the Cape of Good Hope and have the ship surveyed.

Amasa knew that a survey in a foreign port almost surely meant that the ship would be condemned, and Mr. Stimson, as her owner, would then be laid under a heavy and unnecessary expense for extensive repairs. Amasa was especially alert to Mr. Stimson's interests because of the waterfront gossip in Calcutta that Mr. Stimson had put his captain in the way of making more than his captain's pay, and now here he was, the ungrateful soul, for putting his owner to needless expense. So goodhearted an owner should be protected. Amasa also suspected the captain of looking forward to picking up some extra money for himself by calling for a share of the profit from the contractor to whom he would award the job of reconditioning.

In Amasa's code, in the code of any honest ship captain, disloyalty to an owner was a serious crime. He now spoke to Mr. Stimson and, without voicing any suspicion of the captain, said that aboard the ship were seamen capable of judging a ship's condition without recourse to a foreign board of survey. Yet further, he, Amasa Delano, had been born in a shipyard, had been a master builder of vessels, and was competent to make the survey alone and without expense to Mr. Stimson.

For further proof of his fitness Amasa cited the case of the repairs he had made upon that Danish ship in Canton after a board of survey had condemned her as beyond repair, and the satisfaction his work had given the owners. To clinch his testimony he told of the time he had been called in to survey that ship of a thousand tons in Bombay after a jury of twelve men had condemned her as beyond salvage.

Amasa went on to tell of how the jury in Bombay followed him over the big ship; and how he directed the carpenters to open the work at the places most likely to be decayed, such as under the lower port sills, the waterways, the false stem, the hooden ends, the main transom, the feet of the counter timbers where the decks come, the lower deck around the hatchways, the different places between wind and water, and so on and so on. What Stimson knew of a ship was to pay her bills, and Amasa's sales talk, loaded to the hatches with a shipbuilder's vocabulary, convinced him that here was a man who knew what he was talking about.

And further, after listening to Amasa's passionate disquisition on ship construction, even the captain of the Three Brothers agreed with Mr. Stimson that Captain Delano probably knew whereof he spoke. And so, after their arrival in Cape Town, Mr. Stimson had the Three Brothers placed in dry-dock and named Amasa to look her over.

Amasa found nothing out about the Three Brothers that could not be remedied at moderate expense. Let Mr. Stimson provide him with sound timber to replace certain rotten parts, and he would see his ship putting to sea without recourse to any expensive overhauling. And that before too long. Yes sir-r!

Amasa hunted down all the hard timber that report said might be available and suitable for his purpose in Cape Town. Finding nothing there to meet his shipbuilding standards, his conscientious soul drove him to making a wagon journey to look over a ship that had been cast away miles up the coast.

The stranded ship furnished no suitable timber. And then?

"I then took the best which could be had in Cape Town, unsuitable though it was, from which I made two breast hooks as strong as I could. I then drew the stem into place as nearly as possible, put in bolts as thick as could be useful, horsed whole strands of cable into the hooden ends, made them as hard as hemp could make them, filled with pieces of wood corner-wise over the cauling, making it bear on the stem and the bows, and spiked it fast and strong."

It wasn't quite the job of repairing that Amasa would have done in a completely equipped shipyard like his father's back in Massachusetts, but the Three Brothers was now a tight ship who would not now have to call all hands to the pumps for the rest of the passage home.

Stimson took on fresh provisions, wood, and water, and the Three Brothers put to sea; and to her owner's delight, even as Captain Delano had promised, she showed herself drum tight all the long rest of the passage to Philadelphia.

Amasa had no ship's duty to keep his mind and body busy during that tedious passage in the Three Brothers. He had nothing to do except walk the deck and ponder the years he had spent without profit in the East. That sort of thinking for months on end didn't tend to brighten him up for a homecoming.

Amasa stepped ashore in Philadelphia a depressed man, and with only his gold moore souvenir to show for his long absence. It looked as if he would have to walk home to Boston and expend his gold moore for food along the road; but Mr. Stimson guessed he owed Amasa a few dollars for that job of ship overhauling in Cape Town. Amasa arrived home with his gold moore still in his pants pocket.

Ships' officers returning from the China trade generally had substantial gains to show their folks at home. Captains in the trade frequently returned with a fortune; and that after far less than a six years' absence.

It was begin life all over again. And his equipment? He was past thirty years of age; he knew the ways of ships and the sea and--to an extent--the ways of men in sea commerce. Not all their ways did he know--that Hector experience taught him that he might still be young for his years in some trading ways. Physically, he was as sound and strong as one of his father's ships fresh off the stocks; but more than a healthy, powerful body was needful now. He summoned his inner reserves to meet the new conditions.

Amasa was now the ship captain walking the streets of his home port, greeting and being greeted by old acquaintances, after an unsuccessful long voyage. And so:

"The spirit with which I met my friends in my native country after so long an absence was far different from what it would have been had I not been the sport of so many disappointments. The smile upon my countenance was mingled with mortification, and my observation was alive to every symptom of neglect or affected pity, which might appear in the conduct or salutations, of my acquaintances. My experience has taught me how different is the reception to which a sailor meets after a prosperous voyage from that which he finds when his hands are empty, his dress threadbare, and nothing but his wants abundant."

At this stage Amasa visualized the return from a successful voyage of a captain in the China trade.

"The fullness and richness of his presents produce a smile and a welcome which form a painful contrast to the cold and scanty sympathy accorded the unsuccessful mariner. This train of thought, however, may very easily be followed too far and become unjust to the character of human nature."

Amasa was fair enough to allow that his depression was distorting his judgment, and that some good people were still standing about:

"It is unquestionably true that the poor and disappointed man is often too jealous on this subject, and puts an erroneous and unjust construction upon conduct which is neither mercenary nor heartless. There are many whose good feelings are not measured by the prospect of remuneration, but flow more warmly as there is less expectation of pecuniary reward. It must be acknowledged that I never saw my native country with so little pleasure as on my return after the disastrous termination to my enterprises and my hopes in the Far East."

His final summing up was:

"The shore, on which I would have leaped with delight, was covered with gloom and sadness to my downcast eye and wounded mind. Whatever resolution and stubbornness may be able to accomplish in outward conduct, the heart must feel its losses and its mortifications, and reveal to conscience the secret of our affectation in the indifference which we assume for the moment of meeting and salutation."

Having painted the darkest possible picture of his prospects, Amasa set about cheering himself up. 'What now? He was thirty-two; a ship captain without a ship, but what of that? He had another trade. If no ship was awaiting his master's hand to take to sea, there was still a living for him ashore. Ships were still being built, and what he could do in a shipyard before he left home was no secret. And so:

"I went to work with what skill and strength I bad and with what spirits I could revive within me. After a time they returned to their former elasticity. I took the head of a ship yard as master builder, and found the benefit of employment in the restoration of my cheerfulness."

And he learned that his unsuccessful voyage had not turned all the old backslappings into a cool "How do, 'Masa." Stanch friends there were who were still hailing him warmly; and above all, his own kin were showing him the old friendly faces; and none quite so stanch as good old Samuel, the younger brother he had saved from drowning, who had been carpenter of the Massachusetts. Samuel knew that big brother Amasa was making and would continue to make a fairly comfortable living at the shipbuilding; but Samuel also knew that Amasa would be happier out to sea, and he himself was now yearning for another sea voyage.

He presented a project for Amasa's consideration. Let Amasa and himself build a ship and Amasa take her for a sealing voyage to the South Pacific. To Canton then for a market, and a cargo of teas or silks or whatever for home. Samuel, of course, was to go along too. The master mariner in Amasa leaped to brother Samuel's plan. And then the shipbuilder in him viewed the project: The ship would have to be new, good, and strong. No old or decayed ship for any voyage of his again. No sir. Never again for him an Eliza leaking fourteen hundred strokes an hour from the China Sea to the Île de France. That common expression of parsimonious owners: "She will do well enough for another voyage"--no, no. Such economy defeats itself, as he, Amasa Delano, could tell all the parsimonious owners from Boston Bay to the China Sea. Said the shipbuilder Amasa in exact terms:

"There must be no doubt of the fitness of a ship for a long voyage. She should be qualified for the hazard without an if or a but. She should be at least 200 tons, and never 400, as so large a ship is never required. She should be always coppered, and the metal should be fresh, and she should be armed according to the tenor of the voyage."

Amasa and Samuel put their shipbuilding earnings into the new project. The ship was built and launched and fitted out, and a company was formed to finance her against a likely three years' voyage. She was named the Perseverance and manned for a South Pacific and a possible northwest coast of America voyage, and a run home via Canton. A crew of thirty men were shipped.

Amasa's directions for taking charge of an expedition on this occasion could very well serve as a handbook for owners and captains contemplating a voyage to any far waters in that sailing-ship day; and parts of it would do no harm for a power-ship commander of today to ponder:

"If the ship goes to China with what is necessary for that market, she should have from six to ten guns at least, some of them long to reach distant objects. Every part of the armament should be of good quality that he who commands may always know on what to depend. The guns ought all be of one calibre to prevent the mistakes that are usually made in taking cartridges, shots, ladles, sponges, rammers, in time of action. Also let every article of rigging be good, and let every ship have a surplus of all kinds of canvas, blocks and twine and ropes."

The foregoing wasn't all, and so:

"The provisions should be of good quality and put up in such good order as to be unquestionable. Put the bread (biscuit) in new casks, or in those which have been filled with brandy, and are well dried, any other liquor tending to give the bread a bad taste. They must be airtight or the bread will surely spoil. Butter, lard, and pickles should be put into double casks, the outside one filled with salt or brine. The beef and pork for such a voyage should be packed with peculiar care, and the cheap kind in the market should not be purchased."

Amasa never forgot his friends. He put in a plug for one in the provision trade: "I have had beef put up by Samuel Gregg, which I have carried in a voyage to Europe and into the tropics, and out of a hundred barrels, I never opened one in which the beef was not as sweet as when first put up."

He tacks ship for a wallop at dishonest outfitters: "As a contrast to the beef furnished by Samuel Gregg, I have known beef which was put in in this place [Boston] spoil in six months, and be thrown overboard."

And more than the heavy rations should have a shipmaster's attention:

"There should be a large stock of beans, peas, dried apples and whortleberries, pickled cabbage, pigs feet and ears, tripe and pickles of various kinds. Take plenty of livestock and a great abundance of water. Let the hold and all parts of the ship be thoroughly and constantly aired. Keep the hatches off in good weather, employ wind sails constantly to force the air below, and thus preserve the provisions or a perishable cargo. Have frequent overhaulings to see if the casks be out of order, inspect the powder and have it turned over once in every two months. Mark one side of every powder cask with an X. Stow that side up, and in two months set that side down. One half the powder will be spoiled without this precaution."

Vaccinium myrtillus (whortleberry) The tannin and anthocyanine-rich berries of this plant are both astringent and anti-bacterial, making them the best treatment on earth for all types of diarrhea--strong enough to treat dysentery, mild enough to treat children. The dried berries are chewed, or made into a decoction or unsweetened juice. Also used for improving eyesight (especially night vision) and vascular health.

Having personally attended to the foregoing items, Captain Amasa Delano informed the shareholders in the venture that he was putting out to sea. And where bound exactly? Exactly? The exigencies of the voyage would determine that, answered Captain Amasa.