It may be asked, "Why did not the officers and crew avail themselves of the canoes of the natives, and go off to the ship?" It is true there were several canoes near the shore, but the natives were unwilling they should be touched; from what cause we could not understand. Our acquaintance with them, and theirs with us, had thus far been very slight; and it may be they had serious suspicions in their minds that we designed some evil towards them. They were doubtless governed by some notions, in refusing us the aid of their canoes, in keeping with their half-civilized or barbarous natures.
The captain and others offered to hire the canoes, at the same time presenting to them some little articles they had with them, as a pocket or jack knife, but all to no purpose. They resisted every proposition.
The officers and some of the crew were so anxious to get to the ship that they proposed twice to the captain to take forcible possession of the canoes, and follow the ship; and they would have done it, and risked all the consequences, had the captain approved of it. He, however, opposed this plan, on the ground that though a few might succeed in reaching the ship, yet those who were left behind, being entirely unarmed, would probably be instantly killed, and, therefore, it was bad policy to expose the lives of a majority of the company for the safety of only a few. Or, it may be, in their first efforts to seize the canoes, and before they could even get them into the water, the natives would fall upon us, and massacre the whole company on the spot. And still farther, we were wholly in their power, both for the present and for months to come, and without their kindness and good will we had no sort of chance for life; therefore the least misunderstanding or violent collision between the parties might lay the foundation for causes which would result, if not now, yet in some future time, in the destruction of the whole company. These considerations, suggested by the captain, dissuaded his men from attempting a forcible seizure of the canoes of the natives; and, therefore, for the good of the whole, that means whereby a few possibly might have reached the ship, was given up.
We leave this painful reminiscence of the past by copying from The Polynesian, published at Honolulu, November 19, 1853, the following
Card.
"The undersigned, late master of the whale ship Citizen, of New Bedford, feels it a duty he owes alike to the living and the dead to make known the following circumstances.
"On the 25th of September, 1852, in the Arctic Ocean, in lat. 68° 10´ N., the ship Citizen was wrecked, and five men were lost; himself and the balance of the crew reached the shore, without any thing but the clothes they stood in. It was very cold, and they kept alive by burning casks of oil that had floated ashore from the wreck; that they lived near the wreck until October 3, when the whale ship Citizen, of Nantucket, Captain Bailey, hove in sight; they immediately hoisted a flag upon a pole thirty feet high, and made every signal they could of distress; that the ship at first stood in as though she saw them, then hauled up and shivered in the wind, and afterwards filled away and left them. She was so close at one time that those on shore could see her davits. The feelings with which they saw the vessel leave them are indescribable, as no hope was left them but to endure the rigors of a winter's residence in that cold, bleak, and desolate region, if they should escape the tomahawk of the savage. That their signals were seen by Captain Bailey there can be no doubt, as Captain B. reported seeing his signals last fall. The mate of Captain Bailey's vessel reported to Captain B. that he could see sailors on shore, and requested a boat to go to their relief, which Captain B. refused.
"Through the inhumanity of Captain Bailey, we were compelled to remain nine months in that barren region, destitute of clothing and food, other than the natives could supply us from their scanty stores of blubber and furs. During this time, two of the crew perished from cold, and left their bones to bleach among the snows of the north, as a monument of 'man's inhumanity to man.'
"The natives were humane, kind, and hospitable to us, though wretchedly poor.
Thomas H. Norton."