Master Mariner

THE LIFE AND VOYAGES OF

AMASA DELANO

Captain Amasa Delano, 1763-1823



BY
JAMES B. CONNOLLY

1943

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CHAPTER XXII

Looking Astern

AND NOW for how it came about that Amasa Delano, a ship captain at twenty-three, gave up the sea and, being well placed in the shipbuilding line, was content to return to the sea as a second officer at twenty-six.

Amasa Delano was born in Duxbury on February 21, 1763. The Delanos, or Dilanos--the name is spelled both ways in the town records--date back to the 1630s of Duxbury; and if ancestral environment has to do with the making of the man--and many do so think--then a word is in order here of Amasa Delano's place of birth.

From way back the port of Duxbury had a name for the number of its men who went in for seafaring. The port also bore a name as a haven for neighbors who liked peace and quiet. The redoubtable Captain Myles Standish of Plymouth came here to live after he grew weary of Indian fighting and other annoyances. His friend and admirer, John Alden, followed him. Other prominent Plymouth men of the early days moved to Duxbury. And why so? Well, the outlying land was fertile, an important item in pioneer life; and there may have been other inducements. Be that as it may, a chronicler of Amasa Delano's day writes:

"The inhabitants of Duxbury had always been known as an industrious people. A great portion of them are employed on the ocean, some in the cod fishery and some in foreign commerce. It may also be said with truth that the seamen from that place are distinguished for their good moral conduct. This must be owing to the instructions given them by their parents, and to the regular maintenance of town schools. The religious instructions of the place should be taken into account, as aiding to form sober and useful citizens. The town is happily free from sectarianism and from disputes respecting modes of faith and forms of worship. The people have been favored with a succession of learned, prudent and catholic ministers, whose great object had been to imbue the mind with useful and practical truths, and to form the young to habits of industry, sobriety and virtue."

A touch of smugness there perhaps? If so, charge it to the proud historian and not to the townspeople at large. And whether that historian's claim be smug or no, the record of Duxbury up to and in Amasa Delano's day places it as a town where a boy could be born, brought up, and stamped with the mark of a hard-working, God-fearing, and tolerant ancestry.

So for the ancestral environment; and now for the immediate ancestral blood. Samuel Delano, Amasa's father, and Samuel's brother Amasa fought in the French and Indian War of 1754-63. Uncle Amasa was a lieutenant in Rogers' Rangers on that expedition to Canada. Being off on a scouting trip, a guide led Amasa and his party astray.

They found themselves lost in a vast forest. They were starving, and meeting with an Indian child, they killed and cooked her and ate her.

Many a man would be at pains to suppress that episode in the family archives; but our Amasa let it ride. He wasn't proud of it, but there was the record, and so let it stand; and let people think what they would of the family because of it. Incidentally, Amasa's uncle and his party were ambushed by the Indians, and every last one of them killed and scalped.

Our Amasa's father, Samuel Delano, was a sergeant in Captain Gamaliel Bradford's company, which fought at Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Fort William Henry [dramatized in the film, "The Last of the Mohicans"] in that French and Indian War. After the war he worked as a ship carpenter, rose to be a master builder, and made a name for turning out sound, well-built vessels. He was a liberty-loving soul in liberty-loving Duxbury. When the War for Independence broke, and General Washington took command of the Continental Army up Boston way, Samuel Delano gave up his shipbuilding, at which he was doing well, and hurried to enlist. He was at Dorchester Heights (South Boston) when the battery was set up there to command the anchorages of the British fleet in the harbor. Eventually that battery hurried the departure of that fleet from Boston. The anniversary of the day of departure, March 17, is still a holiday--Evacuation Day--in South Boston. That the day is also St. Patrick's Day does the celebration no harm, South Boston citizens being noted for their patriotism in time of war, even as for their pride of Irish ancestry in peace or war.

Plaque at the entrance to Fort Ticonderoga

The winter of 1775-76 was a hard one on Washington's troops. Exposure to the rain and snow with insufficient barracks cover, meager rations, and inadequate clothing were the usual order of the day. Samuel Delano was ordered home to recuperate; and he stayed home until he was able to convince a recruiting officer that he was once more fit for service. At this time privateers were fitting out to run the British blockade and pick off stray enemy merchantmen. Samuel Delano shipped in the privateer brig Independence, Captain Sampson.

Things went well with the little independence until a British fifty-gun frigate sighted her, let her have a few broadsides of her heavy guns, and took her. Some of the crew, Samuel being one, were carried to Halifax and there impressed on board the forty-four-gun frigate Rainbow; and Samuel was aboard the Rainbow when she fought and defeated the American frigate, the Hancock. Our Amasa Delano recorded Uncle Amasa's cannibalism in the French and Indian War, but he is silent as to what his father Samuel was doing during that British frigate's fight with the American. Surely British naval officers weren't impressing able seamen to give them a joy ride. It may be that Samuel Delano refused duty during that fight. In time he was exchanged and given the chance to get back home to his wife and children in Duxbury.

With such a father--and uncle--Amasa Delano wasn't growing up to any static way of life. He was an outdoor boy, who liked to sail a boat and hunt deer and bear. And swim. Oh swim! At six years he could swim and dive like the big fellows. At eleven years of age he saved his six-year-old brother Samuel from drowning, going after him to the bottom of the creek where a strong current ran and hauling him up and hanging on to him until assistance came to take them both to shore.

Having arrived at twelve years of age, a fine age for a growing boy, and his father being then away with General Washington's army, Amasa decided that his father's eldest son--himself--should also go to war. He trudged to Boston and was having a fine time for himself with the Continental soldiers camped in Roxbury until his father heard about him. And his father took him by the ear and said: "Back home for you!"

Regiments of New England militia were being raised to campaign in Rhode Island, then held by the British. Duxbury mustered fifty men for the campaign. Samuel Delano being then home recuperating from war service, Amasa pleaded with him to be allowed to join the Duxbury Company.

His father gave in, and Amasa made quite a name for himself in Rhode Island. His training in stalking deer and bear was of use in reconnoitering inside the British lines. His Duxbury commander, Elijah Baker, said of him that he would have gone every night inside the British lines if he had been allowed. Baker had no wish to report his capture or death to his father, and so held him in leash.

The Rhode Island campaign was a flop. The Duxbury volunteers were back home in the autumn. The following summer Amasa, being then fifteen years of age--a big boy and growing bigger every minute--was off again to the wars. He joined the militia who were being recruited to campaign in New York State; but he never got to New York, being assigned to a detail to guard British soldiers in a prison camp near Boston.

After that duty Amasa turned to at shipbuilding and studying at home to make up for the laxity of his earlier years at school.

In the fall of 1780, in company with several other young men of Duxbury, Amasa went to Boston to ship aboard a man-o'-war. No navy ship being ready to sail, they looked to see what else. A privateersman, the Mars, was fitting out, and her officers were keeping a lookout for likely hands. Amasa was now seventeen, a great big boy, stronger than most men. The privateer officers liked his looks and signed him up for the Mars.

The Mars put in the winter in North Atlantic waters. It was the severest winter for many years. The Mars, among her other mishaps, ran into a hurricane. It was a real hurricane; one that scattered wrecked vessels from the Caribbean Sea to the Maine shore, and across the Atlantic to the Azores. It was a breeze of wind that gave the old-timers many data for comparison with previous notable breezes of wind.

The Mars had a rough time of it, losing her mizzenmast, and springing her fore- and mainmasts. All her waist guns, and four anchors from her bow, had to be hove overboard so that she might have her chance to live when she was run before the hurricane. Besides her loss of guns, spars, sails, and rigging, men were killed by the falling spars; other men were swept overboard and lost.

The Mars lived through it, her crew made such repairs as a crew could at sea, and she resumed her cruise for enemy merchant ships. She got a single prize only, an English snow. In the spring she put into Boston to refit.

That cruise cured Amasa of privateering. The danger of the ship's foundering, or of men being killed by falling spars or washed overboard and lost, was not his worry. It was in his blood to take danger at sea as a matter of course. If he were lost, so be it--men of Duxbury aplenty had been lost at sea before him; but brutal officers treating good men of the crew as if they were scum, malingerers--that and the meager grub and fo'c'sle quarters alive with vermin were things that Amasa had not been brought up to take as any matter of course. He quit the privateer in Boston and resumed his shipbuilding in his father's yard.

But he came of seafaring forebears on both sides, and after a year in his father's shipyard the congenital urge got him again. A Salem merchant ship, the Russell, was fitting out for a voyage to the West Indies. Amasa shipped in her. The Russell arrived off Cape Francois as the French fleet under command of Count De Grasse was making ready to sail for the Virginia capes, there to stand guard for Washington's army against any interfering English fleet. The Russell's crew assisted in towing the French men-o'-war out to sea. Husky Amasa, of course, handled a boat oar.

The Russell anchored in the harbor of St. Croix. An epidemic of yellow fever was on there, and the medicos were warning all visiting seamen against tropical fruit, explaining that to eat fruit was to invite yellow fever. Amasa was always one for thinking things out for himself. He ate plentifully of the native fruits; not defiantly, but because he liked the taste of them, and they agreed with him. They were a welcome variant to boiled potatoes; and in trying out the fruit for himself he was learning something. A great thing--first-hand knowledge.

Then and later, Amasa never hesitated to indulge himself in whatever food, fruit, or heavier stuff was set before him, if so be he felt an urge toward it; and his health and vigor never failed him because of such indulgence. Another habit of his was to go without an overcoat in cold weather. That everybody else aboardship was wearing an overcoat around deck in winter weather was no reason to Amasa for doing likewise, and neither did that habit impair his constitution. Physically he was what the lads of today would call a tough guy.

He returned from that first West India voyage in the fall of 1781. That winter he shipped in a schooner owned by Deacon Williams for another West Indian voyage. He sailed with several other vessels under convoy of two privateersmen, the Flora and the Caesar. Rough weather dispersed the convoy, and Amasa's schooner was picked up by the Chatham, a British frigate of fifty guns. Amasa thought he was on his way to an English prison ship, but his wily skipper had prepared for just such a contingency. He hoisted English colors and met the boarding party with a set of English papers. The English officers turned the schooner loose.

On his return from that voyage Amasa put in further time in his father's yard, but not for long now. He worked on the brig Peacock until she was ready for sea, then he shipped in her.

The Peacock lay to anchor in Boston Harbor and was waiting only for the light of morning to put to sea. A high wind had been making all that day, and by night such a gale was blowing that the topmasts and yards were taken down. The vessel being thus snugged down, the captain and all the crew except Amasa and one other hand went ashore for the night. They were seizing their last chance to see their home folks or hold wassail before sailing for a voyage of several months.

During the night a sloop anchored near by dragged her anchor and drifted down onto the Peacock. In trying to fend her off Amasa fell overboard. He was wearing heavy sea boots and thick clothing, and a strong tide was racing past. He had a hard fight to stay afloat; he was lucky to make the main chains of the brig. He hung on there until his strength returned and he could haul himself aboard. He made a note of it in his later years that the three times in his life he held his life in danger were not three times in open water. Off Newfoundland, Juan Fernández Island and in Boston Harbor--always it was inshore waters that brought him real danger.