Two Years Before the Mast
years at sea, became a boatman, and kept his neat boat at the end of
Granite Wharf, and was ready to take all, but delighted to take any of
us of the old Alert's crew, to sail down the harbor. One day Captain
Faucon went to the end of the wharf to board a vessel in the stream,
and hailed for John. There was no response, and his boat was not
there. He inquired of a boatman near, where John was. The time had
come that comes to all! There was no loyal voice to respond to the
familiar call, the hatches had closed over him, his boat was sold to
another, and he had left not a trace behind. We could not find out
even where he was buried.
Mr. Richard Brown, of Marblehead, our chief mate in the Alert,
commanded many of our noblest ships in the European trade, a general
favorite. A few years ago, while stepping on board his ship from the
wharf, he fell from the plank into the hold and was killed. If he did
not actually die at sea, at least he died as a sailor,--he died on
board ship.
Our second mate, Evans, no one liked or cared for, and I know nothing
of him, except that I once saw him in court, on trial for some alleged
petty tyranny towards his men,--still a subaltern officer.
The third mate, Mr. Hatch, a nephew of one of the owners, though only a
lad on board the ship, went out chief mate the next voyage, and rose
soon to command some of the finest clippers in the California and India
trade, under the new order of things,--a man of character, good
judgment, and no little cultivation.
Of the other men before the mast in the Alert, I know nothing of
peculiar interest. When visiting, with a party of ladies and
gentlemen, one of our largest line-of-battle ships, we were escorted
about the decks by a midshipman, who was explaining various matters on
board, when one of the party came to me and told me that there was an
old sailor there with a whistle round his neck, who looked at me and
said of the officer, "he can't show him anything aboard a ship." I
found him out, and, looking into his sunburnt face, covered with hair,
and his little eyes drawn up into the smallest passages for
light,--like a man who had peered into hundreds of northeasters,--there
was old "Sails" of the Alert, clothed in all the honors of
boatswain's-mate. We stood aside, out of the cun of the officers, and
had a good talk over old times. I remember the contempt with which he
turned on his heel to conceal his face, when the midshipman (who was a
grown youth) could not tell the ladies the length of a fathom, and said
it depended on circumstances. Notwithstanding his advice and
consolation to "Chips," in the steerage of the Alert, and his story of
his runaway wife and the flag-bottomed chairs (ante, p. 249), he
confessed to me that he had tried marriage again, and had a little
tenement just outside the gate of the yard.
Harry Bennett, the man who had the palsy, and was unfeelingly left on
shore when the Alert sailed, came home in the Pilgrim, and I had the
pleasure of helping to get him into the Massachusetts General Hospital.
When he had been there about a week, I went to see him in his ward, and
asked him how he got along. "Oh! first-rate usage, sir; not a hand's
turn to do, and all your grub brought to you, sir." This is a sailor's
paradise,--not a hand's turn to do, and all your grub brought to you.
But an earthly paradise may pall. Bennett got tired of in-doors and
stillness, and was soon out again, and set up a stall, covered with
canvas, at the end of one of the bridges, where he could see all the
passers-by, and turn a penny by cakes and ale. The stall in time
disappeared, and I could learn nothing of his last end, if it has come.
Of the lads who, beside myself, composed the gig's crew, I know
something of all but one. Our bright-eyed, quick-witted little
cockswain, from the Boston public schools, Harry May, or Harry Bluff,
as he was called, with all his songs and gibes, went the road to ruin
as fast as the usual means could carry him. Nat, the "bucket-maker,"
grave and sober, left the seas, and, I believe, is a hack-driver in his
native town, although I have not had the luck to see him since the
Alert hauled into her berth at the North End.
One cold winter evening, a pull at the bell, and a woman in distress
wished to see me. Her poor son George,--George Somerby,--"you remember
him, sir; he was a boy in the Alert; he always talks of you,--he is
dying in my poor house." I went with her, and in a small room, with
the most scanty furniture, upon a mattress on the floor,--emaciated,
ashy pale, with hollow voice and sunken eyes,--lay the boy George, whom
we took out a small, bright boy of fourteen from a Boston public
school, who fought himself into a position on board ship (ante, p.
231), and whom we brought home a tall, athletic youth, that might have
been the pride and support of his widowed mother. There he lay, not
over nineteen years of age, ruined by every vice a sailor's life
absorbs. He took my hand in his wasted feeble fingers, and talked a
little with his hollow, death-smitten voice. I was to leave town the
next day for a fortnight's absence, and whom had they to see to them?
The mother named her landlord,--she knew no one else able to do much
for them. It was the name of a physician of wealth and high social
position, well known in the city as the owner of many small tenements,
and of whom hard things had been said as to his strictness in
collecting what he thought his dues. Be that as it may, my memory
associates him only with ready and active beneficence. His name has
since been known the civilized world over, from his having been the
victim of one of the most painful tragedies in the records of the
criminal law. I tried the experiment of calling upon him; and, having
drawn him away from the cheerful fire, sofa, and curtains of a
luxurious parlor, I told him the simple tale of woe, of one of his
tenants, unknown to him even by name. He did not hesitate; and I well
remember how, in that biting, eager air, at a late hour, he drew his
cloak about his thin and bent form, and walked off with me across the
Common, and to the South End, nearly two miles of an exposed walk, to
the scene of misery. He gave his full share, and more, of kindness and
material aid; and, as George's mother told me, on my return, had with
medical aid and stores, and a clergyman, made the boy's end as
comfortable and hopeful as possible.
The Alert made two more voyages to the coast of California, successful,
and without a mishap, as usual, and was sold by Messrs. Bryant and
Sturgis, in 1843, to Mr. Thomas W. Williams, a merchant of New London,
Connecticut, who employed her in the whale-trade in the Pacific. She
was as lucky and prosperous there as in the merchant service. When I
was at the Sandwich Islands in 1860, a man was introduced to me as
having commanded the Alert on two cruises, and his friends told me that
he was as proud of it as if he had commanded a frigate.
I am permitted to publish the following letter from the owner of the
Alert, giving her later record and her historic end,--captured and
burned by the rebel Alabama:--
New London, March 17, 1868.
Richard H. Dana, Esq.:
Dear Sir,--I am happy to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the
14th inst., and to answer your inquiries about the good ship Alert. I
bought her of Messrs. Bryant and Sturgis in the year 1843, for my firm
of Williams and Haven, for a whaler, in which business she was
successful until captured by the rebel steamer Alabama, September,
1862, making a period of more than nineteen years, during which she
took and delivered at New London upwards of twenty-five thousand
barrels of whale and sperm oil. She sailed last from this port, August
30, 1862, for Hurd's Island (the newly discovered land south of
Kerguelen's), commanded by Edwin Church, and was captured and burned on
the 9th of September following, only ten days out, near or close to the
Azores, with thirty barrels of sperm oil on board, and while her boats
were off in pursuit of whales.
The Alert was a favorite ship with all owners, officers, and men who
had anything to do with her; and I may add almost all who heard her
name asked if that was the ship the man went in who wrote the book
called "Two Years before the Mast"; and thus we feel, with you, no
doubt, a sort of sympathy at her loss, and that, too, in such a manner,
and by wicked acts of our own countrymen.
My partner, Mr. Haven, sends me a note from the office this P. M.,
saying that he had just found the last log-book, and would send up this
evening a copy of the last entry on it; and if there should be anything
of importance I will enclose it to you, and if you have any further
inquiries to put, I will, with great pleasure, endeavor to answer them.
Remaining very respectfully and truly yours,
THOMAS W. WILLIAMS.
P. S.--Since writing the above I have received the extract from the
log-book, and enclose the same.
THE LAST ENTRY IN THE LOG-BOOK OF THE ALERT.
"September 9, 1862.
"Shortly after the ship came to the wind, with the main yard aback, we
went alongside and were hoisted up, when we found we were prisoners of
war, and our ship a prize to the Confederate steamer Alabama. We were
then ordered to give up all nautical instruments and letters
appertaining to any of us. Afterwards we were offered the privilege,
as they called it, of joining the steamer or signing a parole of honor
not to serve in the army or navy of the United States. Thank God no
one accepted the former of these offers. We were all then ordered to
get our things ready in haste, to go on shore,--the ship running off
shore all the time. We were allowed four boats to go on shore in, and
when we had got what things we could take in them, were ordered to get
into the boats and pull for the shore,--the nearest land being about
fourteen miles off,--which we reached in safety, and, shortly after,
saw the ship in flames.
"So end all our bright prospects, blasted by a gang of miscreants, who
certainly can have no regard for humanity so long as they continue to
foster their so-called peculiar institution, which is now destroying
our country."
I love to think that our noble ship, with her long record of good
service and uniform success, attractive and beloved in her life, should
have passed, at her death, into the lofty regions of international
jurisprudence and debate, forming a part of the body of the "Alabama
Claims"; that, like a true ship, committed to her element once for all
at her launching, she perished at sea, and, without an extreme use of
language, we may say, a victim in the cause of her country.
R. H. D., Jr.
BOSTON, May 6, 1869.
[1] Pronounced _Leese_.