The ships and sailors of old Salem

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

“‘You, who are so wealthy and so prosperous, I have thought, that, if acquainted with these distressing circumstances, you would not turn a deaf ear to my present condition.

“‘I address myself to you, because through my agency many of your ships have obtained cargoes, but I respectfully beg that you will have the kindness to state my case to the rich pepper merchants of Salem and Boston, firmly believing that from their generosity, and your own, I shall not have reason to regret the warm and sincere friendship ever displayed towards your Captains, and all other Americans, trading on this Coast....

“‘Wishing you, Sir, and your old companions in the Sumatra trade, and their Captains, health and prosperity, and trusting that, before many moons I shall, through your assistance, be released from my present wretched condition, believe me very respectfully,

“‘Your faithful servant,
“(Signed) ‘Po Adam’ (in Arabic characters).”

CHAPTER XX
EARLY SOUTH SEA VOYAGES
(1832)

Fifty years ago two English missionaries in the Fijis wrote a book in which they said that the traffic in sandalwood, tortoise-shell and beche-de-mer among those islands “has been, and still is chiefly in the hands of Americans from the port of Salem.” No corner of the Seven Seas seems to have been too hostile or remote to be overlooked by the shipmasters of old Salem in their quest for trade. The first vessels of the East India Company to touch at the Fijis made a beginning of that commerce a little more than a hundred years ago. No more than four years after their pioneer voyage, however, Captain William Richardson in the Salem bark Active was trading with the natives and continuing his voyage to Canton in 1811. During the next half century the untutored people of the Fijis pictured the map of America as consisting mostly of a place called Salem whose ships and sailors were seldom absent from their palm-fringed beaches.

When Commodore Wilkes sailed on his exploring expedition of the South Seas in 1840, his pilot and interpreter was Captain Benjamin Vandeford of Salem. He died on the way home from this famous cruise and Commodore Wilkes wrote of him: “He had formerly been in command of various vessels sailing from Salem, and had made many voyages to the Fiji Islands. During our stay there he was particularly useful in superintending all trade carried on to supply the ship.” It was another Salem skipper of renown, Captain John H. Eagleston, who carried one of Commodore Wilkes’ vessels safely into port in 1840 among the Fijis by reason of his intimate knowledge of those waters.

South Sea trading in that era was a romance of commerce, crowded with perilous adventure. The brig Charles Doggett of Salem, commanded by Captain George Batchelder was lying off Kandora in the Fijis in 1833, when her crew was attacked by natives. Five of the seamen and the mate were killed and most of the others wounded. On her way to Manila in the same voyage the brig touched at the Pelew Islands and was again attacked, in which affray a cabin boy was killed. The Charles Doggett had previously played a part in one of the most romantic chapters of ocean history, the mutiny of the Bounty. In 1831, Captain William Driver took the brig to Tahiti whither, a short time before, the Bounty colony had been transported by the British Government from its first home on Pitcairn Island. There were eighty-seven of these descendants of the original mutineers, and they had been taken to Tahiti at their own request to seek a more fertile and habitable island. They were an Utopian colony, virtuous, and intensely pious, and soon disgusted with the voluptuous immoralities of the Tahitians, they became homesick for the isolated peace of Pitcairn Island, and begged to be carried back. When Captain Driver found them they besought him to take them away from Tahiti, and he embarked them for Pitcairn Island, fourteen hundred miles away. They had been gone only nine months and they rejoiced with touching eagerness and affection at seeing their old home again. Captain Driver went on his way in the Charles Doggett, with the satisfaction of having done a kindly deed for one of the most singularly attractive and picturesque communities known in modern history.[44]

Another kind of sea-story was woven in the loss of the Salem ship Glide which was wrecked at Tacanova in 1832, after her company had been set upon by natives with the loss of two seamen. The South Sea Islands were very primitive in those days, and the narrative of the Glide as told by one of her crew portrays customs, conditions and adventures which have long since vanished. The Glide was owned by the famous Salem shipping merchant Joseph Peabody, and commanded by Captain Henry Archer. She sailed for the South Pacific in 1829, with a crew of young men hailing from her home port. While at New Zealand a journal kept on board records that “the presence of several English whale ships helped to relieve the most timid of us from any feeling of insecurity because of the treachery of the natives. Among the visitors on board was a chief supposed to have been concerned in the massacre of the ship Boyd’s crew in the Bay of Islands. Some of the particulars of this tragedy were related to us by foreigners resident at New Zealand. The chief was a man of very powerful frame, and of an exceedingly repulsive appearance. The cook said: ‘There, that fellow looks as though he could devour any of us without salt.’”