FOOTNOTES:
[29] Master Hacker was a Salem schoolmaster of that time.
CHAPTER XIII
THE FIRST AMERICAN VOYAGERS TO JAPAN
(1799-1801)
It is commonly assumed that until the memorable visit of Commodore Perry’s squadron in 1853 shattered the ancient isolation of Japan, no American ship had ever been permitted to trade or tarry in a port of that nation. More than half a century, however, before the tenacious diplomacy of Matthew C. Perry had wrested a treaty “of friendship and commerce,” at least three Yankee vessels had carried cargoes to and from Nagasaki.
It was in 1799 that the ship Franklin, owned in Boston and commanded by Captain James Devereux of Salem, won the historical distinction of being the first American vessel to find a friendly greeting in a harbor of Japan. In 1800, the Boston ship Massachusetts sailed to Nagasaki on a like errand, and her captain’s clerk, William Cleveland of Salem, kept a detailed journal of this unusual voyage, which records, to a considerable extent, duplicate the following very interesting narratives of the adventures of the Franklin, and of the Salem ship Margaret which went from Batavia to Nagasaki in 1801. Aboard the Margaret, Captain S. G. Derby, was a crew of Salem men, among them George Cleveland, captain’s clerk, brother of William Cleveland, who filled a similar berth in the Massachusetts and also kept a journal.
In the logs and journals of these three voyages, as written by three seafarers of Salem more than a century ago, has been preserved a wealth of adventure, incident and description which to-day sound as archaic as a chapter of the history of the Middle Ages in Europe. Excepting a handful of Dutch traders, these three ships visited a land as strange and unknown to the outside world as was the heart of Thibet a dozen years ago. They sailed to the Orient as pioneers of American commerce, and while at Batavia seeking cargo were chartered by the Dutch East India Company for the annual voyage to Japan.
When the ship Franklin set sail from Batavia for Nagasaki, in 1799, only the Dutch were permitted to hold foreign intercourse with the land of the Shoguns and the Samurai. They had maintained their singular commercial monopoly for two centuries at a price which was measured in the deepest degradation of national and individual dignity and self-respect. The few Dutch merchants suffered to reside in Japan were little better off than prisoners, restricted to a small island in Nagasaki harbor, leaving it only once in four years when the Resident, or chief agent, journeyed to Yeddo to offer gifts and obeisance to the Shogun. At this audience, which took place in the “Hall of a Hundred Mats,” the Dutch Resident “crept forward on his hands and feet, and falling on his knees bowed his head to the ground and retired again in absolute silence, crawling exactly like a crab.” To add insult to injury, the Shogun usually sat hidden behind a curtain.
After this exhibition the envoys were led further into the palace and ordered to amuse the Court. “Now we had to rise and walk to and fro, now to exchange compliments with each other,” wrote one of them, “then to dance, jump, represent a drunken man, speak broken Japanese, paint, read Dutch, German, sing, put on our cloaks and throw them off again, etc., I, for my part, singing a German love ditty.”
Of their life on the islet of Dezima, where the little colony of Dutch traders was guarded and confined, this same chronicler, Kaempfer, remarks:
“In this service we have to put up with many insulting regulations at the hands of these proud heathens. We may not keep Sundays or fast days, or allow our spiritual hymns or prayers to be heard; never mention the name of Christ, nor carry with us any representation of the Cross or any external sign of Christianity. Besides these things we have to submit to many other insulting imputations which are always painful to a noble heart. The reason which impels the Dutch to bear all these sufferings so patiently is simply the love of gain.”