The ships and sailors of old Salem

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

This official refused to let them send a messenger to the Captain General and asked why in the devil they did not put to sea, and be grateful that they had escaped the dungeons or worse. To which young Richard Cleveland made reply (which the gifted Count turned into fluent and fiery Spanish) that they wanted satisfaction for being locked up without cause, and that Captain Shaler proposed to languish behind the bars until he was informed why he had been put in. A day later, the situation remaining in status quo, the Governor sent for Cleveland, asked if he were not second in command and angrily ordered him to extract his recalcitrant skipper from jail and go to sea on the instant. The Yankee replied that the apology or explanation was still lacking, and that the Lelia Byrd was only waiting for her captain who was a prisoner in the castle.

Meanwhile a letter had arrived from the Captain General ordering Captain Rowan of the Hazard to deliver up the arms which comprised part of his cargo, and make a second declaration respecting their lading. The muskets were sent ashore, and the supercargo sent to the Governor with the customs certificate made out in Amsterdam. Captain Rowan did not understand that he was expected to make this report in person, but the Governor considered himself and his Spanish dignity again insulted by the failure of the captain to appear.

Early in the morning, two hours before Americans were permitted to land, and therefore before Captain Rowan could obey another summons, two hundred Spanish soldiers who were no better than brigands, boarded the Hazard and took her from an unarmed crew of twenty-three men who had no forewarning. In the words of Captain Cleveland:

“This was done by order of the Governor, who stood on shore opposite the vessel and was a witness to the horrid scene of assassination and rapine that followed. Captain Rowan’s life was saved by the humanity of the captain of a Spanish brig, who got into the cabin in advance of the rabble, as he had not time to save himself as the other officer had done, by retreating to the lazaretto. The plunder which ensued for the remainder of the day and the following night was such as to lighten the ship nearly a foot. Nor were the officers of rank backward in taking part in the pillage; and the custom house guards, far from preventing, were as eager as the rest in the work of robbery.”

Captain Cleveland rushed to the Governor’s palace and demanded with forceful Anglo Saxon threats, that he be allowed to send a statement overland to the Captain General, but he was told that if he did not want to share the fate of the Hazard, he had best put to sea. The persistence of this indomitable young Yankee at last wore down the Governor’s resistance, and the message was sent to Santiago by courier.

The answer was to the surprising effect that Captain Cleveland and his comrades should receive the most complete satisfaction for the injuries done them, at which Nathaniel Shaler, still cooling his heels in the castle, consented to emerge with his self-respect untarnished. After days and days of further complications due to red-tape and an invincible hostility toward all other than Spanish vessels trading in those waters, Captain Cleveland and his doughty shipmates were able to bid a glad farewell to the Governor of Valparaiso, His Illustrious Excellency, Don Antonio Francisco Garcia Carrasco.

“The notoriety they had attained by these protracted quarrels with an ignorant, conceited, and pusillanimous official, rendered it injudicious to attempt to enter any other port of Chili or Peru,” wherefore the Lelia Byrd was steered for the coast of Mexico, after gathering these proofs to convince far less astute shipmasters that the markets for American enterprise on the South American coast were not up to expectations. They made their first landing at San Blas, where the subordinate Spanish officials cordially received them. Rousillon went to the interior capital of Tipec to confer with the Governor, and alas, this peppery gentleman flew into a rage because his deputy at San Blas had dared to make a trading agreement with the Yankee brig without consulting him. Thus was brewed a tempest in a teapot, the upshot of which was that His Passionate Excellency at Tipec sent word that the Lelia Byrd must leave port or be attacked by a Spanish gunboat.

The diplomatic Rousillon thereupon undertook to go to the City of Mexico and solicit permission from the Viceroy to sell a part or the whole of the cargo. Captain Cleveland, finding the harbor of San Blas too hot to hold him, sailed for Three Marias Islands, sixty miles to the westward, there to wait until word was received from his emissary to the Viceroy. Three weary months passed in this empty fashion, at the end of which the two captains, Shaler and Cleveland, decided to risk a return to San Blas in the hope of finding some tidings of the mysteriously vanished Rousillon. They stole into the coast by night, and next day saw an Indian in a canoe who paddled out to them and delivered a letter from their absent comrade. He had succeeded in obtaining a concession to sell ten thousand dollars worth of goods at San Blas, and after two weeks of delay this part of the cargo was put ashore.

The sales dragged on with such interminable waste of time, however, that it was deemed best to leave Rousillon in Mexico to finish these transactions. He died before his mission was ended, and his friends and fellow seafarers mourned the loss of one who had become very dear to them and who had stood the test of their arduous life together.

The Lelia Byrd next proceeded to San Diego in search of sea-otter skins.[41] At this port they caught another Spanish Tartar in the person of the Commandant, Don Manuel Rodriguez, who boarded them with a file of dragoons, and left a guard on the ship, the sergeant of which volunteered the discouraging information that the Boston ship Alexander had left port a few days before, after being robbed by the Commandant of several hundred sea-otter skins which her captain had purchased ashore. With this warning Captain Cleveland kept an eye out for squalls. He was able to obtain several valuable lots of furs, and made ready to go to sea without more delay. One more consignment of skins was to be delivered and the night before sailing the first officer and two men were sent ashore for them. They did not return and daylight showed the boat hauled out on the beach and the men from the brig in the hands of a squad of soldiers.