“In 1870 the foreign entries were: from the British provinces 117, Cayenne 3, Newcastle 2, and one each from Zanzibar, Rio Grande, Cape Verde Islands, and Sunderland.
“In 1878 the foreign entries were: from the British Provinces 53, and none from any other ports.”
Although in these latter days the romances of shipping had somewhat departed, yet now and then a Salem square-rigger brought home a tale to remind the old salts of the thrilling days of yore. There was the Sumatra, for example, Captain Peter Silver, which came from Batavia in 1842. While at sea she fell in with a bark which flew signals of distress yet appeared to be in good order below and aloft. There was no crew on deck, however, no living soul to be seen except a woman who implored help with frantic gestures. Running down close, Captain Silver made out the vessel to be the Kilmars of Glasgow, and he sent a boat aboard to pick off the lone woman. She proved to be a girl, only eighteen years old, wife of the master of the bark, almost out of her wits with hysteria and exhaustion. She said that the Kilmars had sailed from Batavia two months previously with a cargo of sugar for Europe. The crew, shipped in the Dutch East Indies, were a desperate and unruly lot of beachcombers, several of them released convicts.
A few days before the Sumatra came in sight, the captain of the Scotch bark had discovered that his crew was planning mutiny and were about to make their attack and gain possession of the vessel after ridding themselves of the officers. This captain was a man of the right mettle, for he promptly picked out the ringleader, charged him with the conspiracy, and after a brisk encounter shot him with a pistol, and removed him from the scene for the time. The mates were suspected of disaffection and the captain succeeded in locking them in the after cabin, after which he sailed into his crew, drove all hands below and fastened the hatches over them. The decks being cleared in this most gallant fashion, the captain, with the help of two boys undertook to navigate the bark back to Batavia.
This proved to be a bigger undertaking than he could handle, and while passing in sight of land, the captain decided to go ashore in a boat with the two boys and find help, the weather being calm and the mutineers securely bottled up below. He expected to be gone no more than a few hours, but the day passed, night came down, and his boat was missing. The young wife was alone, distraught and helpless, and she took her stand by the rail, determined to throw herself overboard if the mutineers should regain the deck. Next morning she sighted the Sumatra and was saved. But while the crew of the Sumatra was making sail to resume the voyage, no more than a few minutes after the boat had fetched the girl on board, the ruffians confined on the bark broke out from their prison, swarmed on deck, and took possession of their bark.
Captain Peter Silver of the Sumatra was not disposed to give them a battle, and they got the Kilmars under way and steered off on a course of their own. Upon reaching Batavia Captain Silver landed the young wife and gave her in charge of the Dutch officials who took care of her with sympathetic hospitality and sent her home to her kinfolk in Scotland. Sometime later the Kilmars entered the port of Angier where the mutineers were promptly captured and tried, and the bark was returned to her owners.
The captain of the Kilmars and the two boys were picked up adrift in the Straits of Sunda, and it was discovered that he had become insane from overwork and anxiety which explained why he had abandoned his wife and set off to find help on a strange coast. He was later restored to health and it is presumed that this plucky shipmaster, his girl wife and his bark were safely reunited after being parted from one another under these very extraordinary circumstances.
From the oil painting by Edgar Parker
Captain John Bertram