The ships and sailors of old Salem

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

Captain Cleveland landed and marooned them. For two days the cutter lay off shore while the mutineers tried to patch up a truce. One man weakened and was taken aboard. Of what happened as the final chapter of this grim episode, Captain Cleveland wrote in his journal:

“At nine o’clock (A. M.) we hoisted the colors, fired a 4-pound cannon, and weighed anchor when they all came out from behind a rock, where they had doubtless been watching our motions. I then ordered the boat out, and with my second officer and four hands, well armed, went as near the beach as the surf would permit. I called them all down to the water side and told them I was then going away; that I knew there were several of them desirous of returning to their duty, but were deterred by the others; that if they would come forward I would protect them, and would fire at any one that tried to prevent them.

“They replied that they were all ready and willing to return to their duty, but the ringleaders (whom I had determined not to take on any account) were more ready than the others, and when they were rejected they swore none of the others should go, and presented their knives at the breasts of two of them, and threatened to stab them if they attempted to do so; a third seemed indifferent and a fourth was lying drunk on the beach. Having secured three, and one yesterday, which was four of them, and which, with a little additional precaution, was securing the success of the expedition, I did not think proper to put into execution my threat of firing on them.

“After dinner I sent the second officer with four hands, well armed, to make a last effort, but by this time those whose fate was decided, had persuaded the others to share it with them, and had carried the drunken man out of reach, declaring that we dare not go on the coast of America with so feeble a crew, and we should take them all or none.

“Having now a light breeze from the westward and a favorable current, I concluded to have no further altercation with them, and immediately hoisted in the boat and made sail, leaving on the island of Kemoy, (which is about three hundred and fifty miles northeast of Canton) six of my most able men. This was such a reduction of our numbers as would require unceasing vigilance, and extraordinary caution to counteract, as the risk of being attacked by the Indians was of course increased in proportion to our diminished power of resistance.”

The mariners in Canton had told Captain Cleveland that he could never win his way clear of Formosa and into the Pacific during the winter or monsoon season, but the staunch cutter, after mutiny, stranding, and fighting her way inch by inch for thirty-one days steered out across the open ocean. On her northerly course the weather was so heavy that the seas washed over her day after day, and Captain Cleveland scarcely knew what it was to wear dry clothes, have a meal cooked in the wave-drenched galley, or snatch a whole night’s sleep.

After fifty-odd days of racking hardships the cutter fetched the Northwest coast and anchored in Norfolk Sound. Bulwarks or screens of hides were rigged along the decks in order to hide from the Indians the scanty muster-roll of the ship’s company, lest they take her by boarding. For two months Captain Cleveland cruised among the bays and inlets along this wilderness coast, trading for sea-otter skins, and averting hostile attacks by the ablest vigilance, diplomatic dealings, and a show of armed force when it became necessary.

His hold was nearly filled when his cutter went hard aground on a sunken ledge, and was tilted, nose under, at an angle of forty-five degrees. “This position, combined with a rank heel to starboard, made it impossible to stand on deck,” wrote her skipper. “We therefore put a number of muskets into the boat, and prepared to make such resistance in case of attack as could be made by fifteen men crowded into a sixteen-foot boat. Our situation was now one of the most painful anxiety, no less from the prospect of losing our vessel and the rich cargo we had collected with so much toil, than from the apprehension of being discovered in this defenceless state by any one of the hostile tribes by whom we were surrounded. A canoe of the largest class, with thirty warriors well-armed had left us but half an hour before we struck, and they were now prevented from seeing us only by having passed around a small island. Should the vessel bilge, there existed scarcely any other chance for the preservation of our lives than the precarious one of falling in with some ship before we were discovered by Indians....

“More than ten hours passed in this agonizing state of suspence, watching the horizon to discover if any savages were approaching; the heavens, if there were a cloud that might chance to ruffle the surface of the water; the vessel, whose occasional cracking seemed to warn us of destruction; and when the tide began to flow, impatiently observing its apparently sluggish advance, while I involuntarily consulted my watch, the hands of which seemed to have forgotten to move.”

The cutter was floated during the following night, conveyed to a beach and careened until her crew could repair her damaged copper and planking. Soon after this Captain Cleveland set sail for the return passage to China, via the Sandwich Islands, and “indeed the criminal who receives a pardon under the gallows could hardly feel a greater degree of exultation.” When he arrived at Canton, “several of the gentlemen who had predicted our destruction from attempting the voyage at the season we did, presumed, when they saw the cutter arrive, that we had failed, which indeed they had anticipated from the arrival in Canton several months before of the mutineers whom we had left on the coast of China, and the sad stories they told of hardship, danger and cruel usage.”