Our repairs and refitting were but preliminary to another (and the last) departure of the Saginaw from her native land. Our captain, Lieutenant-Commander Montgomery Sicard, had received orders to proceed to the Midway Islands, via Honolulu, and to comply with instructions that will appear later in these pages. (I should explain here that the commanding officer of a single vessel is usually addressed as "Captain," whatever his real rank may be, and I shall use that term throughout my narrative.)
U.S. STEAMER SAGINAW—FOURTH-RATE
Built at the Navy Yard, Mare Island, California, in 1859[ToList]
In a northwesterly direction from the Sandwich Islands there stretches for over a thousand miles a succession of coral reefs and shoals, with here and there a sandy islet thrown up by the winds and waves. They are mostly bare of vegetation beyond a stunted growth of bushes. These islets are called "atolls" by geographers, and their foundations are created by the mysterious "polyps" or coral insects.
These atolls abound in the Pacific Ocean, and rising but a few feet above the surface, surrounded by uncertain and uncharted currents, are the dread of navigators.
Near the centre of the North Pacific and near the western end of the chain of atolls above mentioned, are two small sand islands in the usual lagoon, with a coral reef enclosing both. They were discovered by an American captain, N.C. Brooks, of the Hawaiian bark Gambia, and by him reported; were subsequently visited by the United States Steamer Lackawanna and surveyed for charting.
No importance other than the danger to navigation was at that time attached to these mere sandbanks. Now, however, the trans-Pacific railroads, girdling the continent and making valuable so many hitherto insignificant places, have cast their influence three thousand miles across the waters to these obscure islets. The expected increase of commerce between the United States and the Orient has induced the Pacific Mail Steamship Company to look for a halfway station as a coaling-depot, and these, the Midway Islands, are expected to answer the purpose when the proposed improvements are made. To do the work of deepening a now shallow channel through the reef, a contract has been awarded to an experienced submarine engineer and the Saginaw has been brought into service to transport men and material. Our captain is to superintend and to report monthly on the progress made. Thus, with the voyages out and return, coupled with the several trips between the Midways and Honolulu, we have the prospect of a year's deep-water cruising to our credit.
February 22, 1870. Once more separated from home and friends, with the Golden Gate dissolving astern in a California fog (than which none can be more dense). Old Neptune gives us a boisterous welcome to his dominions, and the howling of wind through the rigging, with the rolling and pitching of the ship as we steam out to sea, where we meet the full force of a stiff "southeaster," remind us that we are once more his subjects.
On the fourteenth day out we heard the welcome cry of "Land ho!" at sunrise from the masthead. It proved to be the island of Molokai, and the next day, March 9, we passed into the harbor of Honolulu on the island of Oahu. We found that our arrival was expected, and the ship was soon surrounded by canoes of natives, while crowds of people were on the wharves.