The third mate, James Byers Hatch, whom Captain Faucon in a letter to us called ``one of the best of men,'' continued to command large sailing vessels on deep sea voyages with some mishaps and narrow escapes. While in California on one of these voyages he found James Hall on board another ship at the same wharf, and in a letter to Captain Faucon written June, 1893, says, ``I persuaded him to take the first officer's berth, and what an officer he was!! Everything went on like clockwork. I do not think I ever found the least fault with him during the whole time he was with me.'' Captain Hatch lost his only son, a lad of seven, on a voyage to Calcutta. ``The boy,'' said he, ``fell from the top of the house on the poop deck and died in about a week.'' His wife and married daughter both died in 1881. He himself settled in Springfield, Mass., his birthplace, and lost almost all he had saved in some unsuccessful business venture in that city, and lived a rather lonely and sad life. In the above letter he said, ``I am now ready and anxious to leave this earth and take my chance in the next.'' He died at Springfield soon after 1894.
Benjamin Godfrey Stimson, the young sailor about my father's age, was born in Dedham, Mass., March 19, 1816. It came naturally to him to go to sea, for his great-uncle Benjamin Stimson commanded the colonial despatch vessel under Pepperell, in the siege of Louisburg. After settling in Detroit in 1837, he married a Canadian lady (Miss Ives), owned many lake vessels, including the H. P. Baldwin, the largest bark of her day on the great lakes, and was Controller of that city from 1868 to 1870, during which time the city hall was built by him at less than estimated cost. He died December 13, 1871, leaving a widow and two sons, Edward I. and Arthur K. Stimson. The agent Alfred Robinson died in 1895.
Jack Stewart I met in San Diego on my visit there in 1881, as I have stated in the Introduction. He was quite a character in the ``old'' town and made a good deal of his being one of the crew of the Alert. He died January 2, 1892, leaving children and grandchildren. Henry Mellus, who went out before the mast and left the Pilgrim to be agent's clerk ashore, and whom my father met at Los Angeles in 1859, was made mayor of that city the very next year.
Last, but not least, from the point of view of friendship, was my father's ``dear Kanaka'' (Hope), whose life my father saved (by getting ship's medicines from the mate, after Captain Thompson had refused to give them), and for whom he had so much real affection. The last mention we have of Hope is found in my father's journal under date of May 24, 1842.
``Horatio E. Hale called. Been away four years as Philologist to the Exploring Expedition. Was in San Francisco three months ago and saw the Alert there collecting hides. Also saw `Hope' the Kanaka mentioned in my `Two Years.' Hope desired his Aikane to me— Remembered me well. Hale said his face lighted up as soon as my name was mentioned to him.''
As to all the rest of the officers and crews, they have doubtless all handed in their last account and taken passage across the Unknown Sea to the other world.
Of the ``fascinating'' Doña Angustias dela Guerra, whose graceful dancing with Don Juan Bandini in Santa Barbara during the ceremonies attending the marriage of her sister, Doña Anita with Mr. Robinson, the Agent, in January, 1836, my father describes (pages 300-305), something more is to be said.
On my visit to Santa Barbara in 1880, I had the privilege of seeing her. I was much impressed with her graceful carriage, her face still handsome, though she was then sixty-five years of age, with her dignity, calm self-possession, and above all with her true gentility of manner and evidently high character and purpose, together with a delightful humor, which shone in her eyes. General Sherman, in a letter as late as 1888, says of her, she ``was the finest woman it has been my good fortune to know,'' and Bayard Taylor in El Dorado (Putnam's edition of 1884, page 141) writes, ``she is a woman whose nobility of character, native vigor and activity of intellect, and above all, whose instinctive refinement,'' etc.
In 1847, when our officers took possession of California, she, a Mexican, of the first Mexican family of California, took care of the first United States officer who died in Monterey, Lieutenant Colville J. Minor, an enemy to her country, for which service she received a letter of thanks from the First Military Governor, dated August 21, 1848.
She died January 21, 1890, at the age of seventy-five. The name of her first husband was Don Manuel Jimeno and of her second Dr. Ord. Caroline Jimeno was the daughter ``as beautiful as her mother'' that Mr. Dana met in 1859, then a young lady of seventeen. Her daughter by the second marriage, Rebecca R. Ord, an ``infant in arms'' when my father saw her in 1859, married Lieutenant John H. H. Peshine of the United States Army, who in 1893 was made First Military Attaché to the Court of Madrid.