Master Mariner

THE LIFE AND VOYAGES OF

AMASA DELANO

Captain Amasa Delano, 1763-1823



BY
JAMES B. CONNOLLY

1943

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CHAPTER XVI

Southbound for the Sealing

AMASA FOUND A GOOD MARKET in Canton for his sealskins, picked up a cargo of sugar in Batavia, and here he was, home again (November 1802) and now holding his head up after a moderately successful voyage.

He now gave the Perseverance a much-needed overhauling, bending on a new suit of sails, reeving new running gear, laying a new sheathing of copper over her white oak bottom planks, and mounting a battery of twelve six-pounders for a finishing touch.

There she was now, his well-built ship, good as new after her three years of banging into strong winds and high seas, ready again for typhoons or pirates, or what else she might meet in her next sealing voyage to far waters.

While he was at the business of refitting the Perseverance, reliable brother Samuel and a promising young brother, William, were building a vessel of sixty-two tons' burthen. When completed, Amasa fitted her out also as a vessel should be fitted for a long voyage, rigged her as a schooner, named her the Pilgrim, and gave her six cannon for armament.

As principal owner of both vessels, with no heavy shareowner to gainsay him, Amasa had his way with both vessels. When they were ready for sea he combed the Boston waterfront until, with what of his crew held over from his previous voyage, he had shipped sixty prime seamen.

The Delanos of Duxbury had lived by and off the sea for generations before Amasa. Amasa and Samuel were qualified shipmasters for any quarter of the globe. Amasa named Samuel to go master of the Pilgrim and signed William as a hand in his own ship, the Perseverance. This venture was to be the great one in the sea history of the Delano family. The three brothers were venturing their life savings in the voyage. It would make or break the family. He had never before sailed for foreign ports with a troubled mind, but he was sailing so now. Danger of being lost? No, no! At least, not on his own account. He did fear the possible money loss to his brothers William and Samuel. He had induced them to invest their entire life savings in a sealing expedition to the uncertain waters of that day for American sealers. There were dangers too, but no real worry to that.

Amasa was also taking along a helpless nephew of seven years, who had to be tended like an infant, he having lost the use of both arms. It was Uncle Amasa's hope that a sea voyage might invigorate the weak little body. It wasn't an exceptional procedure for two or three members of a New England family to ship together for a salt-bank fishing trip-five months was a long time to be gone in the fishing-but here was a wholesale investment of life and capital of all the male members of the Delano family in a voyage that was to take four of them to the far side of the globe.

I entered into a contract that had a powerful effect on my feelings; and moreover I found myself less active in body and mind than when I was 25 years of age. I considered the responsibilities I was under when I took from my parents all the sons they had, and one grandson; and from my sisters all their brothers; and there were other near connections who might have tender feelings for their absent ones; and the importance it would be to them all, was anything to happen to our vessels, so that they might never come back. All these important causes came under consideration, together with the extraordinary uncertainty of the issue of the voyage, as we bad nothing but our hands to depend upon to obtain a cargo, which was only to be done through storms, dangers and breakers, and taken from barren rocks in distant voyages. The foregoing considerations were sufficient to arouse the sensibility and put the mind of any man on a stretch.

This was from a man who had been taking all the perils of the sea as casually almost as he took the air he breathed. He was of a breed that, ashore or at sea, held no fear for whatever might happen in their chosen way of life. The home stayers of that day might fear for what an evil sea might be doing to their kinsmen on that sea; but the kinsmen out to sea were not worrying for themselves. And so for Amasa Delano: danger to himself out to sea-well, there it was, and no avoiding it, and so why worry? But what the voyage meant to his kinsmen ashore--there was a thing to worry over. The ship Perseverance, of just above two hundred tons --a proper tonnage for sealing-and the sixty-two ton schooner Pilgrim put off for the South Seas on a September day in 1803. Amasa was then in his forty-first year, and nigh on to thirty years of his life had been years of toil and exposure and peril at sea and ashore.

Amasa was all for a full ship-rigged vessel himself. The Massachusetts, the Panther, the Eliza, and the Hector of the South Seas had been such. And he had tried out his full-rigged Perseverance under hard conditions, and she had behaved as he expected her to behave, which was well; but the Pilgrim, now, she was schooner-rigged. He would have to find out about her.

It eased and gratified him when he found the Pilgrim giving a good account of herself on their southbound course. She lacked something of his own vessel's speed, but she showed herself an able sea boat.

On the sixteenth of October Amasa took notice that the Pilgrim, she being astern of the Perseverance at the time, had come into the wind. What now? Amasa laid his main topsail aback and waited. The Pilgrim was soon on her course again and speaking the Perseverance. Brother Samuel hailed to report the loss of the cook overboard. Their exertions to save him had failed.

Well, there was a bit of hard luck, a cook being a most useful man aboard ship, especially on a long voyage. Amasa having shipped no spare cook, he hailed Samuel to break in one of his crew to the job. Salt beef and salt cod and potatoes made up a good part of their eatings--a fresh cook shouldn't take overlong to break in.

At four o'clock of a November morning the Pilgrim's swinging side lights showed that she was coming into the wind. Amasa came into the wind and waited. The Pilgrim was speaking the Danish schooner Experiment, Captain Giamberry, from the West Coast of Africa with 105 slaves between decks for St. Croix in the West Indies. Ships passing in the night frequently hailed to render mutual courtesies. Brother Samuel had hailed the Dane to ask if he would mind standing by till daylight while he and his officers would be writing letters home. The Danish captain would, and did.

Amasa thereupon shouted: "I'll have letters for home too." For the next two hours Amasa and six or eight of his ship's company busied themselves writing letters. When the sun came up Amasa got into his whaleboat and handed over a thick packet of letters to the Dane. He also brought along a cask of salt beef and a sack of potatoes, these being what any ship's crew could relish at any time. The grateful Danish captain squared the account with a pig, a cluster of fowls, and a bag of yams.

Next day Amasa spoke a Spanish frigate out of Cádiz to Buenos Aires, and he hailed her; and her obliging captain stayed hove to for two hours while Amasa and his officers wrote more letters. The letters via Buenos Aires arrived home eventually, but not the letters via the Danish vessel bound for St. Croix. She was lost with her entire crew and the 105 slaves.

Amasa never missed a chance to add to his store of water, which he always spoke of as sweet water, or pure sweet water when he found it good.

While off Trinidad, in the Caribbean Sea, he noted a stream of water running down a north hillside to the sea. He could have landed there in pleasant weather, but this day a surf was rolling up on the sandy beach, so he sailed to the south side of the island, and there he espied a beautiful cascade of Water coming down over some rocks on a high hillside. It was pure sweet water when they tasted it, and they filled their buckets on the high hillside and filled their casks at the foot of the hill from their buckets. It was as pleasant a water party as any shipmaster could ask for. Goats and hogs were also roaming around. Wild ones, probably, Amasa guessed. At least no owners were in sight; and, goats being always good provender for a ship at sea, Amasa and his officers shot a boatload of them.

Amasa checked up on his chart latitude and longitude here and found the chart correct; but when he came to check up on his next island of call, styled Saxenburg on the chart, he found no island where the chart said. But farther on he checked up on the islands of the Tristan da Cunha group, as laid down on the chart by Sir George Stanton of the Lord Macartney embassy to China, and they were where they should be-oh, a shade off, yes, but near enough right to prevent a ship from piling herself up on them by daylight, or by night if her captain kept his lead going as a shipmaster should. Amasa sailed around the Great Tristan Island, and he noted some streams of water, but none conveniently placed for a ship's service.

While on his previous voyage Amasa had reports of good sealing in the islands off the south New Holland coast; and for that coast he was now heading, and he was for making the passage by way of the Cape of Good Hope. And, having before this sailed that Cape both westerly and easterly, he knew something of how the passage should be managed.

In making a passage to Van Dieman's Land (New Holland coast) by way of the Cape of Good Hope between the 20th of September and the 20th of March, it is best always to keep in as high a latitude as 40 south (ten degrees south of the Cape) by which means there will be a very steady westerly winds. I say that because in passing near the Cape or any other high mountainous land, a ship will always be subject to strong gusts of wind, and they frequently continue for a great length of time. The Gulf Stream also comes out from between Madagascar and the Main (African east coast) and runs around the Cape with such velocity that it creates a mean sea.

At 40 degrees south latitude and 103 degrees east longitude the Perseverance and the Pilgrim parted company, with Amasa's instructions to brother Samuel to make the best of his way to King's Island, which Samuel would find in Bass's Straits, between New Holland (Australia) and Van Diemen's Land, and there wait for the Perseverance.

Amasa possessed no chart of King's Island or of any other island off the New Holland coast, that coast being as yet only meagerly surveyed. Even the hearsay information he had of King's Island was scant, but what he did know of it he passed on to Samuel. The Pilgrim went her way, and Amasa went his way, which included a look-in at the south coast before he made King's Island. Amasa arrived before Samuel.

We made the island about eight or ten miles to the north of its south end. We did not try for soundings there, our best information being that we would get no bottom there. We sailed around the sound end, from which extended a most dangerous point of sunken rocks. A cove to the eastward of the point appeared as if it might afford anchorage for a vessel, and off to the southeast was a small hummock or island having the appearance of a haystack. Between this hummock and King's Island was a ledge of rocks, appearing a little above water. Dangerous waters they appeared, surf breaking on three or four of the visible rocks, and surf also breaking over hidden rocks a mile distant.

Amasa met with a score of like difficulties before making a harbor among the islands of this strange coast. While cruising Bass's Straits he was compelled to lay to while a three days' gale blew itself out. The three days afforded him time to look around:

This anchoring place has to the south and westward a beach of the most beautiful white sand imaginable. There is an inlet or lagoon, which runs several miles into the country, and after several miles divides into two branches. This lagoon is one of the pleasant places nature ever formed; and its shores being lined with beds of oysters, and in such quantities that one man may easily load a boat of a ton burthen in two hours. Besides oysters of excellent flavor, its waters abound in many other sorts of fish, and great numbers of waterfowl.

Van Diemen's Land was where England was then shipping her more desperate criminals, the idea being that no criminals, no matter how desperate, would try to escape from there. Suppose they did escape, where could they go to and not perish? Amasa was to learn soon that they could and did escape, and without perishing.

While waiting for the Pilgrim to show up, Amasa coasted Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania now), "a dangerous coast with numerous islands and reefs and shoals strung along the way."

While proceeding with care along the coast, Amasa came on what he thought might be a newly discovered river. It was the Derwent River, already known to the English; and a settlement was being made six leagues up this river under the direction of a Lieutenant Bowen of His British Majesty's Navy, whom Amasa afterwards (March 3, 1804) met in distress at Cape Barren Island. Lieutenant Bowen was bound for the Derwent River settlement in His British Majesty's cutter Integrity when Amasa discovered her. She had lost her rudder and could proceed no further without assistance. The Pilgrim having by this time joined him, Amasa placed the lieutenant's ten passengers, the cargo of the cutter, and her broken rudder on board the Pilgrim and delivered them to their port of destination.

There was more than the delivery of a distressed ship's passengers to that act of Amasa's. The English and the Dutch were working double tides to outdo each other in colonizing the South Sea Islands. Under Governor Philip the English had set up a colony at Botany Bay (New South Wales). Not liking Botany Bay for a residence, Governor Philip moved on to Port Jackson on the Derwent River. He brought a thousand people with him, and they had been spreading along the coast; and there they were on the Derwent River when Amasa delivered his rescued people.

The English at Port Jackson had not as yet had any contact with the natives, who were reputed to be dangerous. Amasa was returning from his visit to Port Jackson when:

On the morning of April 25th, about 20 miles south of Sullivan's Cove, in Stormy Bay Passage, I saw a party of the natives going along the shore on the borders of the wood, which they were endeavoring to set fire to in a number of places. I observed at the same time that they had three or four small rudely constructed and ugly shaped canoes with them, with two outriggers.

These were unquestionably tough, rough savages, and the English settlers were perhaps taking the prudent course in keeping clear of them; but after his three years with the McCluer expedition, any island natives were almost like old friends to Amasa. He sent a boat ashore in command of his first officer with instructions how to go about interviewing the natives; and he was to bring back one of them to the ship. He could leave one of his boat's crew, if need be, as a hostage ashore.

The ship's boat made the beach; and Amasa soon saw one of his men standing alone among the natives on the shore and his own boat returning with a native. The native proved to be their chief. He boarded the Pilgrim without hesitation and without sign of fear. He was sociable enough, but so indifferent to everything he saw that he was a disappointment to Amasa, who thought he would cry out with wonderment at the various ship's objects that must have been strange to him. What did stir his interest when he eventually took notice was that the ship was hollow. After peering down the fore and main hatchways, he stamped on the deck. Again and again he stamped, stamped hard, and listened for the echo.

Amasa showed him into the cabin, "where he accepted clothes and other presents, but refused the victuals offered him. He appeared to be a man of 70 years of age, of the Negro cast, and wore no clothing except a kangaroo skin over his shoulders. I could discover no trait of good sense, activity of mind or much animation in him."

The chief returned ashore with a knife, a pair of scissors, a hatchet, a looking glass, and an earthen dinner plate. The plate was the one thing he asked for, the only thing he did not view with indifference. He was the first island savage that Amasa ever saw who did not leap to the prospect of a knife or a hatchet or a looking glass.

Amasa's boat crew returned aboard with the report that the natives were indifferent to everything about them except the clothes they wore. They signed for one of them to take off his clothes, that they might satisfy themselves as to his sex. The men and women both seemed eager to know about that. They further reported that both men and women went naked and did not seem to have any sense of shame.

Amasa would have liked to know more about these singular natives, but he had to be getting back along to the sealing islands.