His plan was, in short, to fit out and freight the absurd cockle shell of a merchantman for a voyage from Europe to the Cape of Good Hope and thence to the Isle of France, in the Indian Ocean, a fertile and prosperous colony which at that time was a Mecca for Yankee ships.
His cutter, the Caroline, was driven ashore and wrecked before the coast of France was passed on his outbound voyage. The dauntless skipper got her off, however, worked her back to Havre and made repairs for a second attempt. This experience ought to have convinced any ordinary mariner that his little craft was not fit for a voyage half round the world, but Richard Cleveland, turning loss into profit, was able to note of this disaster:
“My credit, however, has not suffered in the least on this account, for I have not only found enough to repair the damages, but shall put in $1,000 more, so that my cargo, although in a vessel of only forty tons, will amount to $7,000. I now wait only for a wind to put to sea again.”
While at sea during the three months’ voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, Captain Cleveland described in his journal the crew with which he had undertaken to navigate the Caroline to her faraway destination. “It was not until the last hour I was at Havre,” said he, “that I finally shipped my crew. Fortunately they were all so much in debt as not to want any time to spend their advance, but were ready at the instant, and with this motley crew, (who, for aught I knew, were robbers and pirates), I put to sea.
“At the head of my list is my mate, a Nantucket lad, whom I persuaded the captain of a ship to discharge from before the mast, and who knew little or nothing of navigation, but is now capable of conducting the vessel in case of accident to me. The first of my foremast hands is a great, surly, crabbed, raw-boned, ignorant Prussian, who is so timid aloft that the mate has frequently been obliged to do his duty there. I believe him to be more of a soldier than a sailor, though he has often assured me that he has been a boatswain’s mate of a Dutch Indiaman, which I do not believe as he hardly knows how to put two ends of a rope together. He speaks enough English to be tolerably understood.
“The next in point of consequence is my cook, a good-natured negro and a tolerable cook, so unused to a vessel that in the smoothest weather he cannot walk fore and aft without holding onto something with both hands. This fear proceeds from the fact that he is so tall and slim that if he should get a cant it might be fatal to him. I did not think America could furnish such a specimen of the negro race (he is a native of Savannah), nor did I ever see such a perfect simpleton. It is impossible to teach him anything, and notwithstanding the frequency with which we have been obliged to take in and make sail on this long voyage, he can hardly tell the main-halliards from the mainstay. He one day took it into his head to learn the compass, and not being permitted to come on the quarterdeck to learn by the one in the binnacle, he took off the cover of the till of his chest and with his knife cut out something that looked like a cartwheel, and wanted me to let him nail it on the deck to steer by, insisting that he could ‘’teer by him better ’n tudder one.’
“Next is an English boy of seventeen years old, who from having lately had the small-pox is feeble and almost blind, a miserable object, but pity for his misfortunes induces me to make his duty as easy as possible. Finally I have a little ugly French boy, the very image of a baboon, who from having served for some time on different privateers, has all the tricks of a veteran man-of-war’s man, though only thirteen years old, and by having been in an English prison, has learned enough of the language to be a proficient in swearing.
“To hear all these fellows quarrelling, (which from not understanding each other, they are very apt to do) serves to give one a realizing conception of the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. Nobody need envy me my four months’ experience with such a set, though they are now far better than when I first took hold of them.... Absence has not banished home from my thoughts; indeed I should be worse than a savage were I to forget such friends as I have, yet such is now my roving disposition that were it not for meeting them, I doubt if I should ever return.”
In the last lines quoted, Richard Cleveland, with such a crew on such a venture, was able to find contentment with his lot. It is evident from his graphic description that he was the only capable officer or seaman on board his cutter, yet he navigated her without serious accident to the Cape of Good Hope, and would not have touched there except for the urgent need of fresh water. The French Directory had given him official dispatches to carry to the Isles of France and Bourbon, and while this private mission might protect him against capture by French privateers, it laid him open to the grave risk of confiscation by whatever English authorities he chanced to fall athwart of. He successfully concealed these dispatches, but the officials of the Cape viewed him with suspicions for other reasons. They could not but believe that so hazardous a voyage in so small a craft must be somehow in the secret behalf of the French government, and although they could find no evidence after thoroughly overhauling the Caroline and her papers, they decided to make an end of this audacious voyage by purchasing the vessel. Of the excitement caused by his arrival at the Cape, Captain Cleveland relates:
