The Old Merchant Marine: A Chronicle of American Ships and SailorsPaine, Ralph Delahaye
History
The Old Merchant Marine: A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors
Paine, Ralph Delahaye
Merchant marine -- United States -- History
Two years later, the Margaret of Salem made the same sort of a voyage,
and in both instances the supercargoes, one of whom happened to be a
younger brother of Captain Richard Cleveland, wrote journals of the
extraordinary episode. For these mariners alone was the curtain lifted
which concealed the feudal Japan from the eyes of the civilized world.
Alert and curious, these Yankee traders explored the narrow streets of
Nagasaki, visited temples, were handsomely entertained by officers and
merchants, and exchanged their wares in the marketplace. They were as
much at home, no doubt, as when buying piculs of pepper from a rajah of
Qualah Battoo, or dining with an elderly mandarin of Cochin China. It
was not too much to say that "the profuse stores of knowledge brought
by every ship's crew, together with unheard of curiosities from
every savage shore, gave the community of Salem a rare alertness of
intellect."
It was a Salem bark, the Lydia, that first displayed the American
flag to the natives of Guam in 1801. She was chartered by the Spanish
government of Manila to carry to the Marianne Islands, as those dots on
the chart of the Pacific were then called, the new Governor, his family,
his suite, and his luggage. First Mate William Haswell kept a diary in a
most conscientious fashion, and here and there one gleans an item with
a humor of its own. "Now having to pass through dangerous straits," he
observes, "we went to work to make boarding nettings and to get our arms
in the best order, but had we been attacked we should have been taken
with ease. Between Panay and Negros all the passengers were in the
greatest confusion for fear of being taken and put to death in the dark
and not have time to say their prayers."
The decks were in confusion most of the time, what with the Governor,
his lady, three children, two servant girls and twelve men servants,
a friar and his servant, a judge and two servants, not to mention some
small hogs, two sheep, an ox, and a goat to feed the passengers who were
too dainty for sea provender. The friar was an interesting character. A
great pity that the worthy mate of the Lydia should not have been more
explicit! It intrigues the reader of his manuscript diary to be told
that "the Friar was praying night and day but it would not bring a
fair wind. His behavior was so bad that we were forced to send him to
Coventry, or in other words, no one would speak to him."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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