USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Marion > Lands of Sippican on Buzzards Bay > Part 13
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The days of the Captains! Those far sighted straight see- ing bronzed men!
Their world-their words of the sea!
An old captain sitting on his porch overlooking the har- bor, whose tides would lap the dusty road that winds in front of his home if he hadn't walled it out with great granite bould- ers, gives advice to his nephew who is at home from a voyage. The young sailor stands before him, hat in hand. "You're in the doldrums!" the rough voice rings out. "Throw all that overboard, and get underway! You can't make any headway
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less you do! Give John a wide berth! In the long run you'll do better without him. Take a reef in your sails when its squally, but don't be a figure head and don't be always lookin' for a soft berth. The coast is clear for you, but show your colors!"
Still the young man stands hat in hand, and the mur- muring of the bees comes from over the cranberry blossoms in the bog which the old captain is nourishing nearby.
The old man goes on.
"You know you are the main stay of your ma. She is fagged out.' She can't make both ends meet if you don't help splice it. She is coming to the end of her rope. She'll bring up with a round turn, so overhaul yourself and tide her over. Steer clear of John! I never did like the cut of his jib! He carries too much sail, and he backs and fills!"
The old man grunted and the young sailor shifted uneasily.
"You're on the wrong tack, my boy."
The faded blue eyes squinted and gave a long, long look across the sunny harbor. He was seeing human wrecks along the water fronts of the great ports. "It may be a long, long pull, but don't you lose your bearings just because John is out of his reckoning. He needs ballust. He'll go on the rocks and be left high and dry."
The old man reached for his cane.
"Wall, I got to see that that boy steers the cows home. Now you clear out and tackle your job! The young man says respectfully, "Yes, Sir!" for although it is his favorite uncle who is talking, it is also the Captain of whom he stands in awe.
The young sailor goes down the wide stone steps, putting on his hat, while the harbor lies across the road not fifty feet away, shining under the slanting rays of the afternoon sun.
And not many years after, the boy commands a trim clipper ship in the harbors of the world.
He is living the life of a real Sippican Captain, one night going to the opera in Barcelona, six months later at a plum- pudding party in old Rochester Towne; one night at the Astor House with his Captain friends, the next week "agoing fishing on Bobel."
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CHAPTER X
SUCH AS THESE SAILED THE SEVEN SEAS
"He turns his head, but in his ear
The steady trade-winds run And in his eye, the endless waves Ride on into the sun."
BENYON
The ports may be different; they were wrecked on different reefs; but their vast unknown oceans and the cold, wet worlds of the century ago captains were the same as fifty years later.
Most of them who sailed from New York knew little of the interior of the continents from which, and to which they sailed their ships.
Melbourne, Hong Kong, St. Petersburg, Shanghai, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Calcutta were home.
They entertained, and were wined and dined at these ports, and knew the great merchants and agents of the world's shipping affairs better than they knew their own nephews and nieces in the home village.
At sea sometimes when they were ten years old, captains at twenty, they rolled up the streets of their native villages with the gossip of the world on their tongues, and the sights and sounds of a dozen foreign ports in their memories.
Sharp witted, keen business men with an autocratic hand in all affairs they touched.
From out the forest of slim shining masts and clouds of square white sails steps little Joseph Emerson Hadley of Sippican. He came on the scene just before Hosey the Indian died-Feb. 1817-and he grew up with his brothers, Andrew and Stephen, and the other boys who were climbing over the
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"Persia", when Capt. Elisha was outfitting her those spring days in 1828.
He chopped the wood and milked the cows, hoed the garden and lifted rocks into the long rows that make up the fences of the New England pastures; did the chores just as any boy did in old Rochester.
He went to school when he could, with his mind far out at sea. He tells the story himself.
At sixteen he is off on the Barque Manilla of New Bed- ford to Bremerhaven; from there to St. Urbes for a cargo of salt, and back to New Bedford; and his long sixty years of life at sea begins!
From his own account we find that the fo'c'stle didn't dis- courage him, and he sailed on several other ships getting ac- quainted with the ways of sailors before the mast.
He steadily climbed up; second mate, mate, and at last captain of the brig Cumberland of New York.
He was twenty-five years old when he sailed from New York to Charleston, N. C. and back to New York; on to Havana and Montanzas, took on a cargo of sugar for Trieste, landed it; obtained a cargo there for New York.
The next year he had taken his ship to Montevideo, Buenos Ayres, and on his third voyage from New York he remained in South American waters for more than three years. There he learned to trade with the dark eyed agents of the Brazilian and Paraguayan ports. He bought and sold car- goes, and the adventures of those who go to strange shores came to him.
The dictator Rosas, of the Argentine Republic ordered the Parana River closed to all commerce. England and France offered to convey all merchant vessels up the river. The American flag was new on the river, and the Cumberland under Captain Hadley, and four other vessels flying the stars and stripes, under the protection of four English and three French warships, went up the river.
About thirty ships remained at the mouth, the captains not daring to risk the loss of their vessels.
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Capt. Hadley ran past the battery carrying all sail; but one shot struck the main sail, and another carried away the taffrail of the Cumberland.
It took them three long tiresome months before they arrived in Goya in Corrientes. They took on a cargo of jerked beef and it was three months more before they could start down the river.
In the six months, another fort had been built, and the fleet of sixty vessels was subjected to a terrific bombardment. They all ran. safely by the fort, but three that were run ashore and burned.
Captain Hadley had the Cumberland repaired at Monte- video and sailed for Havana with the cargo of jerked beef.
When the Cumberland arrived at Havana the yellow fever was raging and the Captain was taken ill and nearly died.
1846 was the year of the great hurricane and the Sand Key lighthouse was destroyed and Key West was damaged. The Cumberland was struck by the hurricane and damaged so badly that she was condemned and sold.
Up to New York the twenty-nine year old Captain came, settled his affairs, and took command of the barque Patriot, and sailed for Brazil where he was under the Brazilian govern- ment for a time.
He came back to become commander of the ship Am- bassador of New York. He was carrying cotton from Mobile to Genoa in 1849, when the Genoese declared their independ- ence. The Captain was sympathetic with the little Republic; but the Government army captured the city and the bow of the Ambassador was struck in the bombardment.
Cotton from the ship's cargo was used in the fortifications and barricades to protect the Doria Palace.
But this was the year 1849! Gold in California! And the Ambassador was off from New York to San Francisco!
She arrived in the midst of the great excitement. After strenuous work the cargo was discharged, but the crew had vanished!
California! Mud! Tents! and beached deserted vessels made into lodgings!
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Captains and crews into the mountains and along the rivers to find gold! Gold! And Captain Hadley's friends tell him "No use! No use! You can't get a man to go out of the harbor!"
But the mate haunted the crimps and runners, and for days and nights he worked until he got a crew aboard.
He paid $70 a man, dumped, dead or alive he hardly knew; part shipped for Calcutta, and part of them for the Sandwich Islands.
At the Islands most of the crew deserted, but he got others, and by April, 1850 he was sailing for Calcutta, where he loaded a cargo for London and arrived with the first cargo to come into London on an American ship after the repeal of the British Naval laws in 1849.
At London, the first mate, Wm. O. Putnam, who had done such good work in getting crews in San Francisco and the Islands, was rewarded by being put in command of the Am- bassador, which was chartered to carry coal from Cardiff to San Francisco.
Capt. Hadley was to go to Liverpool to take the ship Ivanhoe coming in from New York, but she was wrecked with all on board on the Nantucket shoals, so the Captain sailed for New York on the ship Joseph Walker.
The ship's doctor did not arrive, and Capt. Hoxie said that Captain Hadley must take his place, so "Dr. Hadley" took charge with the knowledge all sea captains must have about medicine and rough surgery; and with his insistence on fresh air and cleanliness he brought all his 575 passengers into New York Harbor, well.
"Where have you practiced, Doctor?"
"Oh! I have been travelling recently", said the "Doctor"!
One day, years afterward, an Irishman stopped him on the street in New York.
"An' how are ye, Doctor?"
The Captain was surprised, and the man went on "An' I came to this country in the ship Joseph Walker with ye. What ship you on now?"
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Captain Joseph Emerson Hadley "The stars were set for guides for such as he And earth was but a cup to hold the sea." Guiterman
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When the Captain said the Marmion, the Irishman ex- claimed "Now I have friends in the ould country soon to come over, and I'll write 'em to come with ye!"
And the Marmion brought many from the "ould country." "This splendid vessel of 900 tons burthen, anchored in our Bay on the evening of the 4th bringing 380 emigrants, 96 days from Liverpool and 90 from Cork" one reads in a N. Y. Paper of the time. "We are happy to report that the immigrants whom we have met and conversed with speak in complimentary terms of Captain Hadley and Dr. King, the Surgeon Superin- tendent. The immigrants who are of a very respectable class have nearly all met with engagements, and at a very fair rate of wages."
The Captain made many quiet voyages in the Marmion, but in 1854 when he left Liverpool for New York he struck a gale which became a hurricane.
Two men were washed overboard. He then bore up to go out the North Channel.
It was the 22nd of January and that night was a terrible one. The seas were terrific! Another man was lost from the main topsail yard. At 9 A. M. the bowsprit was carried away at knight heads. The head of the fore mast gave way and land- ed on top of the deck house amidships.
The man on the lee foretopsail yard arm when the mast broke came down with the wreck. He. was uninjured but the wreckage carried away the slings of the foreyard.
The sailors may sing in good weather
"Oh give me a wet sheet, a flowing sea And a wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail And bends the gallant mast!"
But when the mast comes crashing down, it means lifting, tug- ging, sometimes lashed together, clearing away; and in this instance replacing the foreyard, with great seas thundering over the ship.
Day after day the gale swept the ship, which was drifting towards the New Hebrides.
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On the night of Jan. 28, the main topsail sheet went, in- juring three men!
A third of the crew gone!
At 2 P. M. the next day they could see the islands. It was impossible to make the Barra Head, so they risked making a passage between Pabba and Wengola. It was a narrow way; it might not be clear; but it was their one chance in the fight for life.
The Captain tells the story:
"The next morning the wind hauled to the South West and became foggy. Cables and anchors made ready for use, wore ship and stood to the South East and fetched to the lee- ward of Banna Island among reefs not on the general charts; luffed and kept off to clear them as was necessary.
At 4 P. M. of the 30th the wind hauled to North West, the fog cleared, kept wearing ship off and on until 4 P. M. the next day."
They had saved the ship! A pilot came along and took them into Loch Slavin, Isle of Skye, where she anchored at 7 P. M. Jan. 31.
They had been fighting for their lives for nine days.
"The ordeal was a terrible one, but the officers and crew worked very well, except the 3rd mate, a very brave and pro- fane man in fine weather" says the Captain, "but who was found frightened out of his wits in his room, praying."
Loch Slavin was a place of thatched huts, only two real houses. There was no chance to repair the ship there, so Capt. Hadley had to start for Liverpool for help. Through Scotland in midwinter, 80 years ago was not a pleasant trip. He went to Perth, and there took a train to Liverpool. The next day he had chartered a tug, Dreadnaught, and started back for the Islands. They put into Troom for coal, and Capt. Hadley went ashore to wait for a pilot who could take the ship back to Glasgow for repairs.
When the pilot came, and he and the Captain boarded the tug, they found the captain and mate so drunk that the pilot, who was an old sailor, and the captain started out and reached the ship the next afternoon.
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The crew of the tug, sober by that time, towed the ship for about a day and a half to Grenock where the ship was re- paired and sailed again for New York in April. She was an unlucky ship. On the trip to New York, on the 23rd of April, another hurricane struck her which carried away head of main mast, but the Captain sent up a jury topmast and at last ar- rived in port.
Captain Hadley sailed then in the Rock Light, of which he was part owner, and in which he made several successful voyages around Cape Horn. Voyage after voyage - ship after ship are in his life.
Sometimes he remained at home, and improved his prop- erty. He built a large house with barn and carriage house on an estate of many acres in the Old Landing. He set out trees and hedges, made stone walls and driveways; dipped into town politics; then the sea called again.
He made many good voyages on the ship John Bright.
On one return voyage from Antwerp to New York the ship struck a shoal off the coast of Brazil owing to an error in the chart. The ship was wrecked. "All hands were saved" said the Captain, volumes in the four words!
In June 1876, Capt. Hadley took passage from New York to Liverpool to take charge of the ship Jeremiah Thompson of New York, 1900 tons register, formerly a Black Star Liverpool packet. He went with her to San Francisco with a load of coal, arrived after a passage of 109 days. From San Francisco was chartered to go to Callao and then to Huanillas to load guano for Queenstown for orders.
Arrived at the port in March, 1877.
On the 9th there was a severe earthquake and tidal wave; the sea, rising 30 ft. by irregular waves. A British ship lying near the Jeremiah Thompson parted her cables, came down upon the latter, returned to her old position by a receding wave, then was driven into another vessel, and then was driven ashore.
The ship, Geneva, Capt. McLoon, loaded and ready for sea, which lay farther up the coast, parted her cables, struck upon the rocks, came off and sank. Five ships of the fleet be-
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came total wrecks; twenty-one others were damaged, leaving but two or three uninjured.
Captain Hadley's wife was with her husband on that voy- age, and that night was a terrible experience for her.
She was put into one of the ship's boats in charge of the second officer with orders to pull out seaward clear of the fleet. As they got some distance from the ship and into the offing, another ship came down with a crash into her, carrying away one of her boats, and doing much damage. A British ship also collided with her, and was cut down to the water's edge, but as the Captain's ship was larger, she stood the shock better.
A nephew, later at the golden wedding of another Captain and his wife, wrote of Mrs. Hadley:
"She knew the storm's refrain She walked the slippery deck;
In the fierce hurricane She felt the timbers strain; She saw the sinking wreck.
She sailed to many a port Where despot will was law;
Viewed many a frowning fort Heard tyranny's retort And swarthy races saw."
That night was her most terrible experience!
A waste of tumbling waters; black darkness; above them the cliffs reaching 3000 feet up into the sky; great rocks roll- ing down the mountain sides; ships crashing into each other; human cries of distress from both ships and shore; and an Old Landing Captain's wife in a small boat with an officer of the ship, tossing so near the black water, listening, praying that all would be well with her husband.
On the ship Avonmore, Capt. Corfield, whose wife and three children were on board, was entertaining Captain Frick of the barque Arctic. Mrs. Corfield sat at the piano playing "Home, sweet home," when the earthquake and tidal wave struck. A ship snapped her cables and came down on the Avonmore, sinking her. Mrs. Corfield, and two of the child- ren, and Capt. Frick were drowned. Capt. Corfield and one
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of the children were picked up, but the little one died soon after.
It was almost impossible to save the people in the dark- ness amidst the drifting wreckage.
All the Government buildings and wharf, in fact the town except a few huts, was destroyed.
Mrs. Hadley was not harmed. She went aboard a friend's ship after a few hours - a ship that was at anchor outside of the fleet.
Capt. Hadley's ship was so much damaged that she was taken to Callao for repairs, but Mrs. Hadley left for Panama, and so home.
Capt. Hadley remained, and made several more voyages to Queenstown and Liverpool, but on returning to New York, the Captain found that Mrs. Hadley was very ill, and he gave up his command and came home. He had sailed as a master 36 years, and it was time to anchor.
Another boy who began as Capt. Emerson did, was Nathan Briggs. One of his ancestors had marched gaily to Sandwich to keep the court from setting in the old days of Red Coats, and shillings, and pence.
At fourteen years of age Nathan was at sea; at fifteen he was cook; at twenty-one captain of a schooner; and at twenty- four he had crossed the Atlantic as master. By 1834 he was captain of the ship Cato, and was in Calcutta. He became a part of the world of the clipper ships. Those ships of shining masts and spars, and beautiful figureheads, and fittings of brass and mahogany, that were clustered like great birds in the harbors of the world.
At thirty-three he owned farm and woodland on the road that is now Pleasant Street, and had built himself a house standing back from the road with a driveway lined with fir trees, and had planted so many roses about the house that he called it "Rose Cottage". He was ready to retire.
He had this estate, and $15,000, and he came home to work his farm hands, and live at home with his growing family.
But like many others, his ships at sea didn't pay; some were wrecked; and he lost so much that off he sailed again.
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Capt. Briggs was what was called "a gilt edged captain". When he walked the deck for exercise he was dressed just as he would be on Broadway, spotless linen, shining boots and beaver hat when the weather was fine. The sailors looked at the "Old Man" with pride and awe.
Dr. Oliver Cobb, his nephew, who as a young boy went to sea with Capt. Briggs, says:
"No matter how intimate on shore, my uncle would never speak to me on board ship unless the etiquette of the sea de- manded it. I went as deck hand and was never recognized by my two uncles, Captain and mate, altho I had lived in the fam- ily for months."
A nephew who was a sailor was looked over and through, and was never recognized by the captain who walked in pleasant weather in his high silk hat!
A real aristocrat, this captain!
We catch glimpses of him now here now there on the ship Saxon. In 1851 he is master of the new ship Winchester which when loaded on her first voyage at New Orleans for Liverpool, had the largest cargo ever loaded at that port. In fact too large for the depth of water in the Southwest Pass, and she grounded and was delayed ninety days.
As his boys, little Oliver and Benjamin, grew, they sailed with him on different voyages.
In 1847, Oliver, ten years old, is on board the ship Hamp- den, and is climbing the Liverpool docks, and watching the unloading of cotton bales. When out at sea there are the daily lessons and the Captain writes in his diary of "Polishing up his French".
If Oliver could have seen down the coming years, and caught the picture of the great, black, stormy Bay of Biscay, his own white face and clinging, clinging hands, and the great waves washing the picture out; and if Benjamin could have seen a ship drifting, drifting, with only a phantom crew, the mystery ship of the century, the Mary Celeste, which sails on and on in the wonder of the world! But Benjamin, and Oliver, and Zenus, played and studied without fear of the great sea,
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and when they were left at home the captain on the grey waves wrote advice to his boys in a little memorandum book.
"If you would command learn to obey.".
: "He who is good at apology is good for nothing else, always govern your conduct so as to need no apology."
Of wealth he writes: "As care accumulates with it in equal proportion, and as it is so apt to swell one's self-importance and make us ambitious of that which is as much beyond us and as unattainable as when we had less, so great wealth is scarcely to be wished."
He writes poetry to his wife in those lonely days of long voyages, and she answers in rhymes. He has the masculine viewpoint of Governor Winslow so many years before, " I have a word to say on personal independence. · Females can be in- dependent only by dependence on virtuous men."
And then he jots down for his boys:
"We should never despise or treat with contumely, either the rich or the poor. God has placed them in their peculiar circumstances, and where he has given much he will require much."
"Have some time everyday for converse with your maker."
"Children need recreation but they never need idleness, nor do they ever want it till it has been forced upon them by habit."
He writes, as the ship plunges along through the darkness of the great oceans, of a vivid dream he has of flying and letting himself down by a parachute.
Mrs. Briggs sailed with her captain husband, as did the other wives.
She is with him on the ship Hope from New York to San Francisco, there to Callao, and the Chincha Islands, then home again. Capt. Briggs retired when he was forty-seven years old, and took up the duties of life ashore, becoming a member of the school board; and in company with other captains retired, lived and planned for the home village.
Little sons leave home as sailors, and come back captains!
Captain Elisha Luce's son George L. exchanges his study at Groton for the hard schooling of the sea.
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On Tuesday, Nov. 16. 1847 he is writing in his diary - on board the John R. Skiddy: "At 2 P. M. got under way with 2 steamers and proceeded down stream - discharges Pilot - (those New York pilots in their beaver hats). - and steamers and made all sail."
"Commences with fresh W. S. W."
We feel the wind blowing, see the fast ship with all sails set as she flies before the "brisk winds", not like the whalers drifting all night, but constantly all day and all night long changing sail to suit the wind to make a quick passage and money for the captain and owners.
"Nov. 22 at 5 P. M. wind shifted suddenly to the Nd. and blew a perfect gale, let go all the hailyards and double reefed the Topsail, reefed the Foresail, reefed the main sail and furled it."
"A. M. shook out reefs and set everything. Distance run 206 miles."
Constantly changing, setting sails, reefing, one day mak- ing 260 miles. So day after day she flies and at last he writes on Monday 29 Nov. "commences with heavy gale from NNW. with hail squall", but by 7-30 A. M. they "outreefs, and made all Sail" and "made the land to the northward. Set Larboard studding sail" and at 12 there is Kinsdale!'
A good run of 13 days and 15 hours!
By midnight, Tuesday the 30th, they have passed Turk's . Head with a fresh N. N. W. wind, and at 10 have "passed Holyhead, having made the passage from Sandy Hook to Holy- head in 14 days, 13 hours," writes the exultant young sailor from Sippican.
A record trip on the ship John R. Skiddy from New York to Liverpool! By the first of the year off again to New York, the Captain driving the ship to beat all records!
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