The ships and sailors of old Salem

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

Frederick T. Ward.[signature]

In 1851, at the age of twenty, the family records show that Ward was sailing as first mate of a bark from San Francisco to Shanghai where he left the ship and took a berth for a short time, on board one of the vessels moored in the river to prevent opium smuggling. In the following year he appears in the American merchant service once more as first mate of the ship Gold Hunter from Shanghai to Tehuantepec.

Upon reaching Nicaragua his restless temperament must have impelled him to leave the quarterdeck, for somewhat later than this he joined a filibustering expedition of William Walker. The tragic history of this attempt to found an empire in Central America need not be told in detail. If Walker had succeeded he would have been called a man of military genius and a farsighted maker of destinies. He was shot by order of a drum-head court martial at daybreak on September 3, 1860, and the shattered remnants of his force were brought home to New York in the United States ship Wabash.

Frederick Townsend Ward could not have remained long with Walker, however, for from Central America he made his way into Mexico and is said to have been offered a command in the Mexican army. His plans seem to have gone all wrong, for he set out penniless and alone to cross the country to lower California. Back in San Francisco once more he took a berth as first officer of the clipper ship Westward Ho of New York. It is claimed that between 1854 and 1856 Ward was on the Crimea as lieutenant in the French army, fighting against the Russians. His sister has related that she was at boarding school during that period and that Frederick called on her there to take his leave, as he told her, “on his way to the Crimean War,” but the dates are conflicting.

This page of his life, like those immediately preceding it, is more or less vague so far as details are concerned. It is certain, however, that Frederick Townsend Ward was picking up here and there as a soldier of fortune a knowledge of men and of military matters which were to stand him in service when the grand chance offered. He landed at Shanghai in the autumn of 1859, probably as first mate of an American sailing ship. He was without money, without influence and without prospects, but he was determined to carve a place for himself among the Chinese people. The Tai-ping Rebellion had begun in 1851 and had raged for eight years when Ward landed at Shanghai. This tremendous upheaval which was to continue six more years, and to cost the lives of twenty millions of Chinese, was threatening Shanghai and repeated attempts had been made to invest and capture this great port of foreign commerce and shipping.

The Imperial Government had been unable to make effective headway against the vast hordes of rebels who had flocked to the standards of the Rebel leader, who called himself the “Heavenly King of the Great Dynasty of the Heavenly Kingdom.” By 1860 the Tai-pings had swept across the populous and fertile regions of two of the three watercourses of China and their chief end now was to regain the mastery of the Yang-tsze Kiang. The destruction of property and population within the three months since their sally from the captured metropolis of Nanking, revived the stories told of the devastation caused by Attilla and Tamerlane. In August of this year Shanghai was threatened by a force of somewhat less than twenty thousand rebels and would have been captured if it had not been protected by British and French troops landed to protect the foreign interests of the port.

Ward was twenty-seven years old at this time and found his first employment as an officer on one of the river steamers which plied up and down the Yang-tsze. He showed his mettle while engaged in this traffic, for a merchant of Shanghai who took passage on Ward’s steamer, relates that she grounded and was in danger of capture by Chinese pirates. The captain believed that destruction was so certain that he talked of suicide. Ward took his place, put heart into the crew, stood the pirates off and got the steamer afloat.

Meanwhile the foreign merchants and bankers of Shanghai were working hand in hand with the natives to strengthen the defense of the city. Large amounts of money were raised to equip gunboats and artillery and a foreign contingent was drilling as a volunteer infantry force. Ward obtained a commission as first officer of the American-built gunboat Confucius, which was one of a flotilla organized to fight the rebels on the water. His commander, Captain Gough, made young Ward acquainted with an influential Chinese banker, Taki, who co-operated in behalf of the Chinese Imperial Government with the foreign residents of Shanghai who were furnishing arms and gunboats and money to attack the rebels. Ward made a brilliant record as a fighting officer in this gunboat service and won the admiration and confidence of this Taki, who was the confidential adviser of Li Hung Chang, then fast coming into prominence as the strong man of the demoralized Manchu Government at Peking.

Douglas, the British biographer of Li Hung Chang, has placed it to the credit of the great Viceroy that he should have been astute enough to recognize the ability of this young American wanderer who appeared upon the scene from nowhere in particular. This writer states that Ward was given employment as a military officer by the Association of Patriotic Merchants of Shanghai “at Li’s instigation.” It is certain that Ward did not let the grass grow under his feet. The Imperialists were in desperate straits and were seeking foreign aid. Wasting no words, Ward submitted a proposition to the Government through Taki, that he would, for a large cash price, undertake the capture of Sung Kiang, the capital city of the Shanghai district, and a great rebel stronghold, a few miles up the Yang-tzse. Once in possession of Sung Kiang he would make it his headquarters for operations by land and water, as a diversion to draw the Tai-pings away from Shanghai.

This audacious proposition was accepted and funds were granted to make a beginning. A company of one hundred foreigners was enlisted by Ward, his recruits being picked from among the deserters and discharged seamen and other desperate riffraff of the naval and merchant fleets. With this handful of men hammered into some kind of discipline and well armed, Ward led the way to the walls of Sung Kiang beyond which the rebels were mustered in thousands. A desperate assault was made, but Ward had no artillery and could not batter a breach in the great walls. His men tried to take the place by a straight assault, but were beaten back, the motley legion badly cut up, and compelled to straggle back to Shanghai.