Master Mariner

THE LIFE AND VOYAGES OF

AMASA DELANO

Captain Amasa Delano, 1763-1823



BY
JAMES B. CONNOLLY

1943

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CHAPTER XVIII

Convict Stowaways

WHENEVER any of Amasa's crew met Morrill without a battle coming of it, he would give them a sales talk of what a much pleasanter and more profitable future would be theirs if they quit their American captain and joined him. His chief argument was that Captain Delano, nor any American captain who might arrive later, would be allowed to hunt seal on that coast for any length of time. No.

And a year now, wasn't it, since they had left home with Captain Delano? And what had they to show for it? Had their captain advanced them any money for their spending? And if he had, where could they find a port to spend it for a good time on that coast? Nowhere. That is, nowhere for an American crew until they were back home again. And when would that be? A long time away, that was. No crew of English sealers were so long away without a shore liberty in a port where pleasure for a man was waiting. And that port? Why, the new city of Sydney. Men who shipped with him wouldn't have to wait and wait to be allowed liberty there. No sir.

Amasa had more than desertions to contend with. He had put in six months among the islands, and if his cargo to date were sold, even at Canton prices, it would not fetch much more than enough to pay for his overhead. And now the good weather for sealing was going, and in justice to his crew and himself he felt that he should be moving on.

He would have liked to be able to afford a longer stay and fight it out with Morrill and his like. No profit in that, no; but there was a spiritual salvage in defying a persistent enemy. But again, what would the outside shareholders say of the master of an expedition who had it to say what to do, if he did not now leave that trouble-ridden coast for where seals were more plentiful and to be had without having to crack crew men's heads? Disabled men meant less successful seal hunting.

Amasa waved a farewell to New Holland and set sail for offshore waters. He stood to the wheel of his ship until she was clear of the coast islands. He then mustered his crew to set the watch; and lo and behold! --He found himself with seventeen men whom he had never left home with. They were mostly Botany Bay convicts, who had served their time and preferred not to go back to England, or convicts who hadn't served their time and were not for going back to Botany Bay. Three were convicts who had escaped under fire and still bore marks of gunshot wounds from prison guards. Three or four were political exiles-- Irishmen--who had also escaped, put in time with Morrill, and grown weary of his leadership.

Now there was a problem for a man who had always been strong for law and order. Should he put in to Port Jackson or Sydney and turn these lawbreakers over to the authorities; or, say all except a few--the Irish exiles, say, and two or three others who had done no great harm-- one a pickpocket, another a burglar? Mm--possibly. And yet why? He was a sealing captain, and not a foreign government agent. And again: Why should he go out of his way to serve a governor general who hadn't even paid him the common courtesy of a reply to his perfectly respectful letter? Let His Excellency attend to his own police work. For himself, he would attend to his seal hunting; and meantime--a sensible thought--among these escaped criminals and exiles he might find a few capable replacements for the weaklings Morrill had lured from him.

Amasa had a look-in on some of the islands off the Australian coast, but, finding nothing among them to detain him, he headed for New Zealand.

While on the road to New Zealand Amasa tried out his stowaways for replacements. They had all learned something of sealing procedure from Morrill. They could pull an oar in a boat, knock a seal over the head, and a few knew how to skin one; but to stand a trick at the wheel or go aloft to furl sail at sea? They were a total loss for that important part of a sailor's duty. However, he would have time aplenty to drill them to that business in a long sea voyage.

Among the convict gentry were those who went stubborn when Amasa laid out duty for them. There were days on the passage to New Zealand when he felt like mustering his murderers or highwaymen or whatever other class of criminals they were, and marooning eight or ten of them on the next island he sighted. But he was in that part of the world to get a cargo of seals and not to explode his temper on unruly men. Desperate or otherwise, he would have to break them in, discipline them to their duty aboard-ship.

Amasa was no bully captain, he was for peaceful methods always; but if the behavior of these toughies called for stiff discipline he would measure out that sort of discipline. Refuse duty, would they? Well, by all the maritime laws of that day, laws handed down from England and laws well known to these Botany Bay desperadoes, it was for a ship captain to say what punishment should be dealt refractory crew men. He had full power over them, even to life or death, while at sea. If it came to mutiny, then by all maritime law he could shoot them down. Shoot them dead. For weeks after leaving Australia Amasa never showed himself on deck without his pistols in his belt. When he wasn't on deck himself he saw to it that his deck officers were armed.

A pair of Naval flintlock pistols, ca. 1790-1810

Amasa did not have to shoot anybody. When his stowaway toughies tried going too ructious on him, he stood them up with arms over their heads, lashed their wrists to the rigging, and had the bosun lay on to their bare backs with twelve, some, or twenty strokes, some, of the cat-o'nine-tails. After a dozen or so were flogged they took to behaving themselves, whereat Amasa went peaceful, treated them kindly, even generously. After a stormy watch he would serve them an extra tot of rum. Again, in the middle of the week, say, they would find themselves sitting in to a Sunday plum duff.

An early 1800's cat-o' nine-tails and punishment book

No, Amasa was no bullying captain, but, you scalawags, you total losses, you low-down cutthroats--you might as well get it into your heads first as last that I'm the master of this ship, and I intend to stay master of her.

Amasa found no sealing off the New Zealand coast to hold him; so, without wasting much time there or waiting for the slower sailing Pilgrim to catch up with him, he put for Santa Maria, a good harbor he knew of from his previous sealing voyage to the coast of Chile. He left word behind him for the Pilgrim to pick him up along the south coast of Chile. In due time he made Santa Maria.

"To sail into the bay of St. Maria it is best to fall into the south of the island. When weather is clear, the main land will be seen in the eastward before raising the island, as it is much lower than the main. In drawing in with the land, a little rocky head will be observed, but not very high, in latitude 37° 6' south. Bring that head to bear north before you run for the anchoring place on account of some sunken ledges which lie to the south and west of it; and in drawing near, keep to the eastward of it and not come nearer than one mile."

Santa Maria was a rendezvous for American sealing captains on the South American west coast. When Amasa arrived there he found the ship Mars, of Nantucket, Captain Jonathan Barney, already there.

Amasa had a gam with Captain Barney, and then he sent a boat ashore for the usual wood and water. Three of the boat's crew, three ex-convicts, did not return to the ship with the boat. Next day Captain Barney told Amasa that others of his convicts were waiting a chance to run away with Amasa's whaleboat and make for the mainland. Captain Barney had the word of it from men of his own boat's crew who had been on a water hunt with Amasa's boat crew the day before.

"If so they will have it," said Amasa to that, "I'll give them further company." He selected five sullen ones of his convicts and set them ashore, saying: "There now, you too are free. Get along." Among the other nine of his stowaways were several he knew by now he could trust.

The Perseverance had two boats. One of the two, a whaleboat, was a Duxbury-built cedar boat, and faster under oars or sail than the other. Amasa held this whaleboat under his eye aboardship, never allowing her to be put in the water unless he himself was to go in her.

The other boat had been built by Amasa while on the Australian coast. It was a strongly built boat, bigger and broader of beam than the whaleboat, and proportionately slower moving under either oars or sails, being designed to hold a good load of sealskins for return to the ship. If his remaining convicts should try to get clear of the ship in the big boat, unless they had too long a start Amasa reckoned on overhauling them in his fast whaleboat.

The Mars put out to sea. Her departure left the Perseverance alone in Santa Maria Harbor. She was still the lone ship there when strange sail showed up at the harbor entrance. She was plainly not an American ship, she didn't look to be a sealer, and she was behaving curiously. It was just at daybreak, and she was slipping in from sea like a ship that did not want to be noticed.

Amasa had turned in late the night before with the usual instructions to call him if any vessel came in from sea. He was awakened with the word that a ship was rounding the head of the island. Amasa went on deck, and his navigator's interest came wide-awake when he noticed that the stranger was sailing too near a reef that lay off the head of the island. Amasa spoke of that to the officer of the watch, and he in his turn called Amasa's attention to the fact that she was showing no colors. A ship entering a port should be showing her colors always.

Amasa thought it curious too. It indicated confusion of some kind. Her people were doubtless under stress of some kind--in from sea, after many days out probably, and short of provisions. Or water. That was it, or she would not be putting in to a port strange to her.

"And if they don't watch out sharp aboard her they'll have her on that coral reef," said Amasa. A moment later he ordered the whaleboat overboard and got into her himself, calling to the boat crew to put their backs to their oars and so reach the stranger in time to warn her away from the reef.

Arriving alongside the stranger, Amasa saw that her deck was crowded with Negroes. They were slaves by their looks, and when he went aboard a dozen or more of them immediately surrounded him. Two white men appeared, one introducing himself as the captain, the other as the mate. They said this to Amasa in Spanish, which he understood from his previous stay on that coast. Before the white men could say anything further, the black men, of whom several also spoke Spanish, began shouting that they were short of provisions and perishing for lack of water.

Amasa was moved to pity, and he ordered the whaleboat with the bosun in charge to hurry back to the ship and pass the word to the first officer to take the Number Two boat and a set of casks to their watering place, fill them, and hurry them to the stranger. The whaleboat was to return with what soft bread was baked, a good helping of pumpkins, sugar, and bottled cider, and hurry back. He would stay aboard the stranger until the boats returned.

The whaleboat was soon back with the provisions; and by and by the Number Two boat was alongside with the casks of water. Amasa served out the water himself--this to hold the black men from drinking themselves to death in the first rush. He gave them one gill each at once, an hour later a half-pint, and after the third hour a full pint. Later he allowed them to drink their fill. They expressed their gratefulness to Amasa. And his impressions then and later?

"As I was deceived in them at the time, I did them every possible kindness. Had it been otherwise there is no doubt I should have fallen victim to their power. It was to my great advantage, that, on this occasion, the temperament of my mind was unusually pleasant. The apparent sufferings of those about me had softened my feelings into sympathy; or, doubtless my interference with some of their transactions would have cost me my life."

Amasa took notice early that the Spanish captain, Bonito Severo by name, was exercising no authority over the slaves. He acted, indeed, as if he feared to anger them. Amasa, taking notice of a knife wound in the back of the cabin boy, a white boy, asked Severo how the boy received his injury.

"An accident, merely the sport of the boys, who had fallen out," was the reply. Amasa retorted that it appeared to him to be rather serious sport that from such a wound the boy must have lost much blood. He would call it an unruly bit of conduct on the part of the playboy with the knife. In Amasa's code such conduct demanded immediate punishment. He spoke so to Severo, who merely shrugged his shoulders.

Master of the ship and talking and acting like that--the man was a puzzle to Amasa. Ultimately he decided that the man's spirit had broken under a weight of fatigue and long suffering; and then, meaning to get the story of what brought him to that pass, he took the captain aside for a private talk.

But there was no managing the private talk. Wherever they moved around deck, one particular black man moved with them. It excited Amasa's wonder that Captain Severo would allow this extraordinary liberty. By and by Amasa led the way to the cabin. The Negro followed them into the cabin.

Amasa now spoke up, requesting Severo to send the Negro on deck or elsewhere out of hearing. Amasa spoke in Spanish, which the Negro understood. He made no move to leave, and Severo then told Amasa that the ship was a slave ship, and, having lost many of his officers and men, he had made this Negro the captain of the slaves, and as such he had kept the slaves in order. "The man has my confidence," said Severo.

The slave ship meantime had drifted with the current to within three leagues of the Perseverance. It had been calm, but now came a breeze that had the slave ship leaving the Perseverance to leeward. Amasa then suggested to Severo that his ship--her name was the Tyral--should be run down to the Perseverance, or as near as could be without danger of swinging afoul of each other. That was done, and Amasa then invited Severo to go aboard the Perseverance for a cup of coffee. Severo's answer was so short, and his manner so different from what it had been, that Amasa was puzzled anew. And peeved. He had succored this man's people in distress; he had been friendly, as he knew how--and now? A curious sort of man!

Amasa by now had been four hours on the Tyral. He decided to return to his own ship. His whaleboat was waiting alongside. As he was about to get into her, Severo reached for his hand and gave it a hearty squeeze. There, thought Amasa, he is regretting his cool treatment. He warmed toward Severo again and did not withdraw his hand, nor did Severo let go his grip until Amasa loosed it to lower himself over the ship's rail.

Amasa had taken the tiller of his whaleboat and given the order to shove off, and his boat's crew had pushed clear of the ship and set their oars in the tholepins and were bending to the stroke, when Severo leaped from the rail of his ship into the whaleboat.

"To the rigging those who can," shouted Severo, whereat two white men started aloft, and four other white men dived over the ship's rail and started swimming after Amasa's boat.

Severo was in a heap in the bow of the boat. "Rest easy. Sit here by me," said Amasa, still puzzling over what it all meant.

The Spaniard took his seat as bid, and he began telling Amasa the story of the Tyral.

A month or so before this the Tyral left Valparaiso with her between decks filled with slaves for Callao, the port of entry to Lima in Peru. The black men were chained to the deck after the usual fashion of slave ships. The Tyral wasn't a regular slave ship, nor was Severo a slave captain; and because he wasn't such, and so not hardened to the sufferings of the slaves sweltering in the crowded between decks, he knocked the chains off several after a few days at sea. After another few days he allowed them on deck for freer air and to stretch their cramped arms and legs. The favored slaves showed such pleasure and gratitude that Severo released a few more.

The weather came hot and the air between decks so terrible for human beings to have to endure that Severo knocked the chains off every last one, gave them the run of the ship.

It was on an especially hot day that the captain took the irons off the last of the slaves between decks. That night the slaves armed themselves with belaying pins and capstan bars, an easy matter on a dark night, rushed the officer and men on watch, beat them to death, then attended to the sleeping officers and men in their bunks below.

The slaves killed eighteen men of the crew that night. At various times later they threw overboard seven more, killing some and not killing others before throwing them overboard. They spared the Spanish captain and a few others of the crew because of their need for a navigator and men to handle the ship.

Some of the slaves were almost straight from the African jungle. Others had been living in Argentina or Chile for several years. It was these latter who spoke Spanish. The leader of these last ones was the Negro who had stayed close to Severo on deck and followed him and Amasa into the cabin. After the killings he ordered Captain Severo to take the ship to the Senegal River on the African West Coast. The ship at the time was off the coast of Peru and of course headed north. The Negro leader knew nothing of navigation, but he did know that the shortest way to West Africa was to sail south and around South America. He ordered Captain Severo to head the ship south.

The Spanish captain headed her southerly, hoping that while along the road some passing ship would see something strange and suspicious in all the Negroes on her deck and look into the matter.

Now the Tyral had water and provisions sufficient for a run from Valparaiso to Callao, but not for a much longer passage, and Severo was seeing to it that the ship's sails were not trimmed to get the best speed out of her. Someday, and before too long, they would have to put in to some coast island for fresh water and in to some harbor for provisions; and then--Severo's hope--something good might come of it. The shortage of water came on them, and when they could stand it no longer the Negro leader said to put in somewhere, but it must be some place where no Spanish ships would be. The Spanish captain put in to Santa Maria, which he knew as a rendezvous for American sealers.

During all this time the Spaniards left alive had to exercise great care in their talk and behavior. One of the cabin boys, a young Spaniard, was thoughtless enough to say aloud to another cabin boy that they would yet escape from the slaves. A slave who overheard him and understood leaped on the boy and drove a knife into his back. That was the wounded boy Amasa had taken notice of.

There was the Tyral's story as her captain told it to Amasa. By the time Amasa got it all his whaleboat was alongside the Perseverance. The whaleboat had slowed down on the way and taken in the four men who had leaped overboard from the slave ship.