Master Mariner

THE LIFE AND VOYAGES OF

AMASA DELANO

Captain Amasa Delano, 1763-1823



BY
JAMES B. CONNOLLY

1943

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CHAPTER XXV

War of 1812

AMASA WAS FREE to go to sea again, but where was he to go? He could not hope to put in to a West India part without the St. Bartholomew authorities getting the word, and it would be a heavier armed ship than a schooner they would send after him this time.

No, no West India voyage for him now. Then what? Another South Sea sealing voyage? He could try the New Holland shore again, and follow with a hunt off that South American coast where he had made so many Spanish friends; and then, with his cargo below decks, he could stop over at the Galapagos and the Sandwiches on his way to the Canton market. He could check up on his Galapagos observations. And those big, able turtles would be something for a man to be seeing again. And the King of the Sandwiches. And in Canton there would be pleasant days with his Dutch and English factory friends.

But a sealing voyage would mean another three, four years, maybe, away from home. And supposing the war that now looked to be brooding should hatch out meantime and he on the other side of the globe? What would happen to his ship and her cargo and her crew then? He'd never see home--not while the war lasted.

No West Indies, and no South Sea sealing. And no prison ship either. Then what? Mm--a voyage to Europe? That needn't be long. No. And he could avoid English and French ports. There was always a market for salt cod in Bilbao, in Spain, or Lisbon, in Portugal. Or in any of half a dozen Mediterranean ports. And he had never been in the Mediterranean. Interesting ports to put in to there-- so he'd always heard. Barcelona and Genoa and Marseilles. And he could take a run across to Algiers--where those pirates used to sail out from and capture American ships before Decatur and Preble taught them to lay off. That would be it, a Mediterranean voyage, then home again with a load of salt for the Gloucester or Marblehead market, if the market was dull in Boston. And this time, no coming home in a miserable Jane that let herself be smothered in a winter gale. No sir. It would be his own good ship Perseverance. Let all the winter gales from Hatteras to Greenland bear down on her, his true and tried Perseverance would bring him safe home. That will be it, a voyage to Europe.

The voyage to Europe never came off. The continued seizure of American seamen and American ships had the people at large clamoring for action of some kind. In June of 1812, Congress declared war against Great Britain.

The Bombardment of Fort McHenry

The attack started on September 12th, 1814, and continued for the next two days. Skinner, Beane and Key watched much of the bombardment from the deck and, through the nights of the 12th and 13th they caught glimpses of the star-shaped fort with its huge flag - 42ft long, with 8 red stripes, 7 white stripes and 15 white stars, it had been specially commissioned to be big enough that the British could not possibly fail to see it from a distance.

In the dark of the night of the 13th, the shelling suddenly stopped - through the darkness they couldn't tell whether the British forces had been defeated, or the fort had fallen.

As the sun began to rise, Key peered through the lifting darkness anxious to see if the flag they had seen the night before was still flying. And so it was that he scribbled on the back of an envelope the first lines of a poem he called "Defense of Fort M'Henry":

"O, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming
As the mist started to clear he was aware that there was a flag flying -
but was it the British flag? It was difficult to tell:

What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
But finally the sun rose, and with intense relief and pride he saw that
the fort had withstood the onslaught...

'Tis the star-spangled banner - O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."

And now what for Amasa? The West Indies out, sealing out, a European voyage out, now what?

It was stay home for Amasa, and join other merchant captains in fighting the war from shipping offices on the Boston water front. They sat in wide chairs facing easterly and gazed down the harbor from which so many fine merchant ships, their own among them, had put out for the far ports in the days of peace. Now it was men-o'-war and privateers only that were putting out to sea.

Amasa was asked if he thought of going a privateering cruise. No, he hadn't thought of it, and he wasn't for it. No? No. Then would he consider chartering his ship for a privateering cruise? She was well fitted for it, being faster than most, soundly built, and well conditioned--would he charter her? No? And why not?

Amasa told them why not. He had sailed in a privateer as a boy in his teens; and what he had to say of privateers was like a series of Chinese firecrackers exploding in their ears.

Now and again, when a strong wind favored a run to sea, a merchant vessel would try slipping through the enemy blockade and down the coast. Hauling goods over the roads to and from the middle and southern Atlantic states to New England markets was slow and expensive, and so a vessel managing to evade the blockade was in for great profits. Amasa thought of venturing the blockade with his schooner Pilgrim. Being schooner-rigged, she could sail closer to the wind than a square-rigged ship, which English warships were. But it was a no again when he thought it over. England was at war with France too, and she couldn't stay forever at war with America. She would be making peace before a great while.

The privateers were doing well for themselves, bringing in prizes aplenty and dividing big shares of money, especially for the owners and officers. And it was all good reports of their little navy. Great reports. Yes sir.

The war ended, with the privateersmen much pleased and the Navy wrapped seven times around in glory. And that was fine. Yes. But what of their little country's merchant marine? A sad report it was of them. England's thousand ships of war had swept almost the last one of them off the face of the great waters.

For Amasa it was a bleak outlook for a livelihood. He still had his ship and his schooner, yes; but waiting cargoes were scarce, and would be for some time. And as for shipbuilding, if he chose to go to it again, no ships were being built. For some time at least the shipping hauled up for the war's ending would be sufficient to take care of what commerce was left from the war. It would be years before foreign commerce would get under good way again and a profit in it for owner or captain.

The having to stay ashore and idle the war days hadn't been good medicine for Amasa. He was in his fifty-third year, and the long years of toil and hardship and exposure, of strain and worry, had been taking their toll. No longer would he go to sea again, nor so come rolling out of his bunk with cheerful words of greeting for the cabin steward and the officer of the watch when he made the deck.

He did not go to sea again. He wasn't beaten. No. Young men were coming along who were qualifying for the merchant service despite the dull times; and other lads there were wishing to qualify for officers' billets in the Navy. Amasa fitted himself to their plans. His reputation as a navigator wasn't confined to the China coast; he was known for it at home too. He was kept part busy now coaching midshipmen and ambitious before-the-mast hands in mathematics, astronomy, and navigation.

He was now a resident of Boston and dwelling on the easterly slope of Beacon Hill. Mornings when no pupils turned up to be coached, he would look in on the water front, keeping abreast of the shipping news; and afternoons, when free, he would sit by a westerly home window overlooking the Common. A great spot, Boston Common, to set a man thinking of his country's history.

He would sit there and smoke his pipe, sometimes a long cigar, and watch the sun roll his declining course across the Common. A declining sun, yes; and he was in his decline too. But he had played his part in life, and no bad part. As a fourteen-year-old boy he had been a soldier, at seventeen he had gone a privateering, and at eighteen years he was before the mast and running the blockade of enemy warships. He was the young captain next, in the West India trade and then in European commerce. The chosen navigator, next, for Major Shaw's great ship for her far eastern voyage. And he was the Yankee navigator chosen above all the English officers on the China coast for that Royal Navy expedition among the South Sea Islands. Interesting doings there. That joining the Sooloo king in a war now. And taking charge of the wood- and water-boat landings, with those wild-looking savages threatening death. Cannibals some of them, yes. Lively doings, now he looked back at them, at some of those islands. That time, now, he fought the ship's stern gun on the New Guinea coast, and held that gun in action with an arrow in his breast--a poisoned arrow, maybe--and let the arrow stay there till he could spare time from his gun to draw the arrow out. He must have sunk four or five canoe loads of those New Guineans.

And the interesting visits to the Dutch islands--Amboyna, Timor, Java. And the high living of those Dutch governors and commissioners. What feasts! And then back again as master of a ship--a market basket of a ship, this one, for the passage from Canton to the Île de France. The Eliza was her name. Some owners were all for naming ships after women, yes. But not for him. The Perseverance and the Pilgrim, now, were names that stood for something. That other wretched woman-named one--the Jane--that failed him off Cape Cod in that thick o' snow and that northeasterly gale! And the Eliza and the weary crew standing to the pumps--fourteen hundred strokes an hour it was through the thousands of miles in the South Pacific to keep her from sinking under their feet.

And those insane revolutionists and the grafting government officials in that same Île de France. A man needed all his wits to work to weather of them. And the Hector! A proper name, that, for the big, able ship she was. And lucky for him and the seventy souls aboard that he had the able Hector under his feet, and not the falling-apart Eliza, when he met that typhoon coming away from the Île de France. And the passage to Bombay and then to Calcutta! India! Hard luck to be born a woman there and have to lay yourself beside your dead husband in the funeral flames. But no hard luck for the English East India Company and government officials in India. A great life for them, yes. They could teach even those Dutch governors and commissioners in the big islands what high living was like.

And after his years in the East, and through no fault of his own, coming home without a penny except for one foreign gold coin that he couldn't buy himself a meal with in Boston until a money-changer had tested it and weighed it and computed the value of it in dollars and cents. It was then he learned who his true friends were. A man needed to be down on his luck to learn that. Yes. And then his slow working up again, and the South Sea sealing voyages in his own ship. And the battles off the New Holland coast, and the Botany Bay convicts stowing away aboard his ship and then refusing duty. He showed them their duty with a cat-o'-nine-tails. And the retaking of that Spanish slave ship in that South American port. And the viceroy's court in Lima. The great viceroy himself, yes. And the gold medal and the letter to go with it from His Spanish Majesty, and both framed and hanging on his parlor wall right now. And the Galapagos Islands, and the Sandwich Islands king and his son and all, and that rascal of a whaling captain serving him baked dog for baked pig. And Canton again after the Sandwiches.

What a port, Canton, for a man to put in to! The friendly Dutch and English supercargoes; and the great mandarins with their yellow and blue and other colored jackets and hat buttons; and the great Hong merchants and their palaces and gardens that were like something out of a fairy tale. And the tea planters in from the hill country with their own cargo boats--pleasure boats some, with singsong girls and comic actors. And the tens of thousands of sampans along the riverfront, whole families of them living on what would starve a house cat in America. Trying to live, the poor souls.

Home again, and the West Indies again, and the running of the batteries in St. Bartholomew, and the good friends standing by. And the especially good friend who went to jail on his account, and he himself in no way to help him when he got the word of it.

And of course the South Sea typhoons and the West India hurricanes, and the North Atlantic winter gales! There was no altogether forgetting them, but nothing in them to hold a man's memory overlong; no especially smart seamanship in leaving them to board--with a good ship's deck under a man, of course. But navigation, now, was something for a man to remember. And maybe he was entitled to a word in his own favor here. It was something to be depended on always to make a safe harbor among those thousands of South Sea Islands. Ships and men's lives were in his hands. And the wrecks of ships he had seen that hadn't made a safe harbor. Wrecks aplenty. Coral reefs and shoal water no end there to trip up a careless navigator. Or a hard-pressed one having to find a harbor in a typhoon.

So Amasa would sit and ponder his days at sea, sometimes with a retired captain like himself, but more often alone, at his window overlooking the Common. And when late afternoon came on he would look out on the sun till he saw it go down beyond the Charles River. No blinding sunsets here like what a man could see in the South Seas any time, or--to speak of nearer home--what a man would see sailing past the high Brazilian coast. Or when he found the high hills of some Caribbean island on his westerly hand. It was high land and warm weather, yes, for the making of great sunsets. Yet here at home at times the sun would be setting in a pretty mixture of colors beyond the river. The Charles River! Named for an English king. Or was he only a prince then? It was about the time the first people of his own name settled in the port of Duxbury.

A little port, Duxbury, but good people there always. A good place to be born and brought up in.