Before leaving this island Maury had an experience of peculiar interest. It was here that his brother John had spent two years practically cut off from civilization. Just before the War of 1812, he had secured a furlough from the navy and had gone as first officer in a merchantman on a voyage to China. On departing from Nukahiva, the captain of this ship left John Maury and six men on the island to procure sandalwood and other articles of commerce. They were, of course, to be taken off on the return from China; but the war broke out and the ship was blockaded in a Chinese port by the English. Meanwhile the Americans were left to shift for themselves on Nukahiva, and in a war between two tribes, one of which was friendly to them, all the white men were killed except John Maury and another man named Baker. Fortunately, Porter visited the island during the famous cruise of the Essex, and rescued the two survivors. In order that he might learn something about the history of his brother while on the island, Midshipman Maury set about studying the language of the natives, during the three weeks or so of his visit. And shortly before his departure he was able to converse with the old chief who had been his brother’s friend. “The Happas and the Typees”, Maury wrote, “were at war. The latter having just captured three children from the former, we went to the rescue and recovered two, the third had been eaten. When we returned to the Happa Valley from the expedition—it was the valley where dwelt my brother—the men had liberty and the old Happa chief remained on board as a hostage, for his subjects were all a set of savages and the women literally in the fig leaf state. At night when all the men had come off safe and sound, and a few days only before we left, I was sent to take the old fellow ashore. Going ashore, I made myself known to him. He was the firm and fast friend of my brother. Had saved his life. He was then old. He it was that offered me his scepter, his own wife, and the daughter of a neighboring chief if I would remain”.
Needless to say, this flattering offer was rejected, and Maury was on the Vincennes when she sailed away from the island. In leaving the bay, the ship narrowly escaped destruction, for the vessel was at first becalmed and then suddenly carried by the swell toward the breakers. Every face was pale with fear and the silence of the grave hung over the ship, but a timely breath of air filled the topsails and finally slowly carried her out to the open sea. In five days she was seven hundred miles away at Tahiti, one of the Society Islands. Here Maury had the pleasure of joining several shore parties, and was also present at an interesting reception to the Queen of Tahiti on board the Vincennes, when the firing of the salute to the queen greatly alarmed her and caused her to behave in a very humorous and undignified manner.
The ship then set sail, after a month’s visit, for the Sandwich Islands. On the island of Hawaii Maury visited the Cascade of the Rainbow and probably saw also the volcano of Kilauea, about both of which Chaplain Stewart goes into rhapsodies in his account of the voyage. Captain Finch went also to Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, and there presented to King Kamehameha III a pair of gloves and a large map of the United States, and a silver vase to the regent and two silver goblets to the princess. A letter from the Secretary of the Navy was then delivered to the king. This was well received by his majesty, and his reply was in the friendliest possible tone, agreeing to treat American sailors with more consideration and fairness in the future. The purpose of the visit having thus been accomplished, several deserters having been reclaimed, and the settlement of claims for about $50,000 for American citizens having been negotiated, the ship departed for China.
Leaving behind the northern Bashee Islands, which are considered one of the barriers of the Pacific as well as one of the portals to the Celestial Empire, the ship came to anchor on January 3, 1830 in the roads of Macao, a Portuguese city, situated on a small island about seventy miles from Canton. The Vincennes thus gained the distinction of being the second American man-of-war to visit Chinese waters, having been preceded only by the Congress in 1819. After receiving a statement from the American consul and merchants at Canton on the advisability of having American men-of-war make periodic visits to Chinese waters, Captain Finch was off again, this time for the Philippines.
After a brief visit at Manila, the ship turned towards home, and, stopping in the Straits of Sunda and at Cape Town, on the first of May came in sight of the Island of St. Helena. Here ample time was afforded the officers for seeing Longwood House in which Napoleon had lived and also his tomb, from which the body of the great general had not at that time been removed to Paris. After leaving this island, the ship made no other stop until she arrived in New York on the 8th of June, 1830, with her band appropriately playing, “Hail Columbia! Happy Land!”
After almost four years to a day, Maury was home again; but he was no longer the raw lad from the Tennessee backwoods, for the information and experience which he had gained on this cruise of the first American man-of-war to circumnavigate the globe had gone a long way towards taking the place of a college education. Men of the stamp of Commodore Charles Morris, Lieutenant Farragut, Captain Finch, Chaplain Stewart, and dozens of other officers with whom he had come in contact during his first two cruises had contributed, by example at least, in making him into an officer and a gentleman. During all this time he had studied, and read as widely as opportunity afforded, having had the privilege for a portion of the time of using the books of Midshipman William Irving, a nephew to Washington Irving.
That the opportunities for instruction on shipboard were, however, very limited is indicated by the following summary of Maury’s experience with the school system of the navy. “The first ship I sailed in”, he wrote, “had a schoolmaster: a young man from Connecticut. He was well qualified and well disposed to teach navigation, but not having a schoolroom, or authority to assemble the midshipmen, the cruise passed off without the opportunity of organizing his school. From him, therefore, we learned nothing. On my next cruise, the dominie was a Spaniard; and, being bound to South America, there was a perfect mania in the steerage for the Spanish language. In our youthful impetuosity we bought books, and for a week or so pursued the study with great eagerness. But our spirits began to flag, and the difficulties of ser and estar finally laid the copestone for us over the dominie’s vernacular. The study was exceedingly dry. We therefore voted both teacher and grammar a bore, and committing the latter to the deep, with one accord, we declared in favor of the Byronical method—
‘’Tis pleasant to be taught in a strange tongue
By female lips and eyes’;
and continued to defer our studies till we should arrive in the South American vale of paradise, called Valparaiso. After arriving on that station, the commander, who had often expressed his wish that we should learn to speak Spanish, sent down ‘for all the young gentlemen’, as the middies are called, and commenced to ask us one by one—‘Can you speak Spanish?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Then you are no gentleman’. ‘Can you?’ But always receiving the same answer, he sent us out of the cabin as a set of blackguards. As he was as ignorant on this subject as any of us, we included him among the number, and thought it an excellent joke. Thus ended our scholastic duties on that ship. I was afterwards transferred to another vessel in which the schoolmaster was a young lawyer, who knew more about jetsam and flotsam than about lunars and dead reckoning—at least, I presume so, for he never afforded us an opportunity to judge of his knowledge on the latter subjects. He was not on speaking terms with the reefers, ate up all the plums for the duff, and was finally turned out of the ship as a nuisance. When I went to sea again, the teacher was an amiable and accomplished young man, from the ‘land of schoolmasters and leather pumpkin seed’. Poor fellow!—far gone in consumption, had a field of usefulness been open to him, he could not have labored in it. He went to sea for his health, but never returned. There was no schoolmaster in the next ship, and the ‘young gentlemen’ were as expert at lunars, and as au fait in the mysteries of latitude and departure, as any I had seen. In my next ship, the dominie was a young man, troubled like some of your correspondents, Mr. Editor, with cacoethes scribendi. He wrote a book. But I never saw him teaching ‘the young idea’, or instructing the young gentlemen in the art of plain sailing; nor did I think it was his fault, for he had neither schoolroom nor pupil. Such is my experience of the school system in the navy; and I believe that of every officer will tally with it”.[1]