USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Marion > Lands of Sippican on Buzzards Bay > Part 18
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We have been where we now are a little over a fort- night. I do not know whether we shall move at present or not. Some are putting up log huts as though we were to stay here some time longer but that is uncertain. We are some two or three miles from Fredericksburg. It is on the opposite side of the Rappohannock and is quite a city. I went to work with a part of our regt. the other day on some breastworks close to the river and nearly opposite the city. They are throwing up quite a number and are at work night and day upon them. Our batteries command the city. The pickets are within speak- ing distance of each other on each side of the river. We could see the rebel camp fires in the woods beyond the city and we could see their fortifications. I do not know what we are stay- ing here for without it is to keep the enemy or part of them in check while more active operations are going on in other places. There are reports which I suppose you have seen that a large force has gone up the James river to attack Richmond. I hope that something will be done this winter and that the war may be soon closed. I think General Burnside will push things forward. I should be very much pleased to be permitted to return home again in the spring. I am now in some hopes of doing so if my life is spared. I think the President's message is very good and may do a good deal towards restoring peace. I suppose you have had some skating and cold weather at home. We have had quite pleasant weather lately though it snowed the most of the day yesterday which made it rather uncomfortable. It has not been very cold here yet, but the nights are frosty which makes it rather uncomfortable sleeping in open tents as that is the only kind we have at present.
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Dec. 8th.
I will try to finish my letter today. It has been pretty cold since the snow fell and freezing quite hard at night. We have had a fire in front of our tent and it has smoked so in the tent that I could not see to write or do anything else hardly. But these are inconveniences incident to war and which if I have my health I can get along with very well. I am glad Obed has got a chance to work. I should think he had got a good place. I suppose you miss him very much. I suppose you had a special Thanksgiving day but did you have any molasses candy in the evening? If you did I should have liked to have been there and had some with you. I could hardly get enough to eat that day. I had for dinner what we called soup but there was nothing in it but a little fresh beef thickened with a few crackers or hard bread.
I suppose you will go to school this winter. I hope you will have a good time. Tell Timmy and Eddie that I received their letters and was very glad to get them-they must write some more and I will write them before a great while. Give my love to father and mother, brothers and sisters and give my best respects to all my friends. In closing I will give you a passage of scripture to think of "I love them that love me and those that seek me early shall find me." Think of that every day and you will please your brother.
Benjamin.
To Sister Coly-
Three days later his body lay cold on the field. In his little Bible one reads
"Benjamin Clifton, Co. A
Killed Dec. 11, 1862 in the attempt to establish a pontoon bridge on the Potomac before Fredericksburg. Taken from his pocket by a friend who stood beside him when he fell and brought home to the family."
The winter sunlight lay on the meadows and farm lands of the old Quaker Savery Clifton who had counted his acres by the hundreds, but the boy who might have carried on lay dying in Virginia.
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And an anxious, tired, seamed faced man in muddy sprawling Washington was sorrowfully scanning the lists of "killed, wounded, missing." There was another capital in these United States where a tall Southerner thought of the boys in grey.
And in Sippican the captains sat about and smoked and dreamed of other days, "one night in Geneva", and they elect town officers and talk about schools.
J. Snow Luce, who kept the Bay View House, and Capt. Obed Delano came in as Selectmen, and Capt. Nathan Briggs on the School committee.
The months go slowly.
Ship building was at a standstill every where except the iron clads in New York.
Families move back and experiment in farming, and the young ensigns and soldiers come home to be entertained at tea with "Lottie and Bella, and for cards in the evening Philura Hathaway, Frank Pitcher, Georgie Leonard, Eunice Bassett, Louise, Lottie Delano, and George Allen and Sam Elder. We danced and played Old Maid and enjoyed ourselves very well, it being twelve o'clock before they went home."
"Capt. Obed Delano and daughter have gone to New York. Capt. Luce and Sophia, his wife, have also gone. Aunt Mary's husband (Capt. J. Luce) will be there in about two weeks with his vessel and if Mary wishes any things we can send them by him. Tell Mr. Perine to let me know when he intends to launch as I want to come on at that time."
So the letters went out from Sippican April 25, 1864. In 1864 Capt. Nathan Briggs is worried about the condition of the schools.
The town had stood high, of 340 cities and towns in the state, it had ranked as number 5, and number 1 of 25 towns in Plymouth County, and Captain Nathan was uneasy.
"Serious evil - grammar school - unexpected increase from 56 to 70 - consisting principally of young men, who having never well improved the advantages provided for them remained at home this winter with the ostensible purpose of making up lost time."
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From the coasters and whalers, too young to fight. Shade of Jane Marshall! "Generally insubordinate, idle, did much injury."
They needed the mate's sharp voice, and the captain's eye.
"The very good fishing" on Bobel had become known outside the lands of Sippican and on March 26, 1864 Joe Snow Luce had raised the Hiller farm house another story. The "Bay View House" was becoming popular.
Roy and Robert the gay young mates are ensigns on the Cumberland, the Ticonderoga, ships of war, stationed in New York harbor, and wistful dark faces on board with their life stories taken down in neat penmanship for the government.
"Goodbye, Mass Jeff, Good Bye, Mrs. Stephens S'cuse dis chile for taken his leavins
Ole Mass got scared And so did his lady
Dis chile breaks for Ole Uncle Aby."
Name of owner and plantation from which they have come. And Roy says "Oh, I don't know Mother. They are so fright- ened and homesick and so many want to go back. They call them Contrabands, Mother!"
"Thursday, Oct. 13, 1864.
Schooner Admiral Blake arrived last night with 160 sperm, 15 blackfish, 1 bbl. cotton, 1 bbl. lard, 1 naphtha, and Oliver Cromwell in."
Boys go marching, marching and come home to parties, and in the background smoke and dirt, sweat and horror, and the drums steady beat.
"Tuesday, Nov. 8, 1864. Presidential Elections. Very quiet in this town. Our vote stood 123 Union to 23 Democrats." "Wednesday, Nov. 9 - Abraham Lincoln is again elected for another term."
"Nov. 10 - Lincoln has carried every state except New Jersey, Delaware and Kentucky."
Capt. George Luce "entertains a large company. Capt. J. K. Hathaway and others", and whalers are burned, and boys are shot, and stranded whalemen borrow money in distant Islands to get home.
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The Boys in Blue - "On Memorial Days they march again"
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At last "Tuesday, Feb. 21, 1865" in the little diary Capt. George writes, "Mild and pleasant. Good news today of the Capture of Charleston, God be Praised."
And on "Saturday, Mar. 4, 1865 Abraham Lincoln again takes his seat. May he lead us to peace."
The girls picked lint, and wrote flowery letters to soldiers, known and unknown and on "Thursday, Mar. 30, the young ladies of the upper part of the Town gave a Dramatic exhibition in the Town Hall got up for the benefit of the Sanitary Com- mission." .
Tuesday Apr. 4 "Great rejoicing!" ."News of the fall of Richmond reached us last evening and caused great rejoicing."
Sunday the 9th the Revenue Cutter Agassiz arrived in the harbor, and Monday the 10th "the great news of Lee's sur- render of his whole army to General Grant yesterday reached us this morning. Great rejoicing. Bells ringing, guns firing and flag flying. God be praised!"
The great red figure vanishes below the horizon and in blessed relief they go fishing on Bobel, and catch the first tautog of the season. Capt. Luce and Capt. Bill Hathaway caught 100 and then go after "oysters up at the tide mill and then they go to New Bedford, and hear J. B. Gough lecture "and are much pleased."
Everybody can live again and not grow sick at heart at the sound of a slow footstep on the sill, for the Prince of Peace has put out the "watch fires of a hundred circling camps."
And then! Whitman cries for the people.
"O Captain! My Captain! Rise up and hear the bells; Rise up-for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning."
1865, Saturday the 15 "Mild and pleasant" the Captain writes. All day the people go about dazed for their great, good, Abraham Lincoln is gone.
"The sad news of President Lincoln's assassination reached us this morning. He was shot in Ford's Theatre, last night at 10 P. M. by J. Wilkes Booth (who made his escape) and died
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this morning at 7.22. Millions will mourn the great, good, and honest Abraham Lincoln."
"Tuesday the 18th the Conference (Old Colony) met here today but owing to the President's funeral closed with the evening service. There were about 14 ministers present."
"Wednesday 19, Fair and pleasant. Funeral 'services in the church today and a full house in attendance .. Never did the nation mourn as it does this day."
"With procession long and winding and flambeaus of the night, ---
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads."
President Lincoln was dead.
History pages for the little boys and girls growing up in Sippican.
But the old Captain leans on his cane and dreams of his ships, their ashes drifting to the far distant shores.
And in the South country, his cotton planter friend, tried and true, sits on a slashed tree trunk, his head on his hands, beside him a twisted magnolia writhing yet from the recent flames that scorched the pillars that stand like black monu- ments to the great god war.
Behind him no shining hall way open to the sun lighted garden beyond, with a glowing polished reach of broad steps curving up to gay voices and laughter, but a ghost doorway, a litter of blackened debris and a charred ladder up to the open. sky and silence.
"Battle of Fredericksburg". "December 11 march across the river". "Active service".
They do not give the picture, in the histories, of a boy in blue on the waving bridge of boats, life flowing away, and a little sister crying, crying!
They had vanished, brother, father, sweet heart, as the years slowly moved. Boys, boys, who never came home again. Mrs. Vose cried every day when she set the food on the dinner table. It clutched at her heart. Her boy who was hungry, and died in Libby Prison.
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And a shivering little girl listening to her father's foot- steps as he slowly came in from unharnessing the horse that had just brought him up from Sippican.
Father's step sounded slow-so like that other sad, sad day. Her heart fluttered!
"Lincoln - Abraham Lincoln is dead! Shot!"
Ah! they do not tell the truth in the histories about war!"
CHAPTER XIV
SEA TRAGEDIES OF OLD ROCHESTER THE GREATEST OF THEM ALL, THE MARY CELESTE
"Whither, O splendid ship thy white sail crowding Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,
That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,
Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?"
BRIDGES.
Wars came only once in a generation, perhaps; but always there was mourning in the Old Rochester villages be- cause of the relentless sweep of the oceans.
Two centuries of the toll of the sea may be read on the Rochester Records! Allens; Bates; Briggs; Dexters; Cliftons; Delanoes; Nyes; Hammonds! So young in years! So old in experience!
"Moses Briggs, 15 years."
"Peleg Blankenship, 18 years."
"Harper Hammond, 16 years."
Young boys as sailors and soldiers going to their death on the sea.
"Lieut. Nathan Haskell fell in an engagement in Latitude 47 by 18 on the coast of France 1780, in the 20 year of his . age." From the day when the three Sherman boys shipped on the Thetis of Rochester, and were lost with all on board, the sea tragedies of the Lands of Sippican are tales of youth taken by the ocean.
The messages that came so slowly, filtering from ship to ship, and on to the home villages read "Bark foundered". "All lost!" To be followed sometimes by letters and papers "All saved."
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A little nervous mother runs over to a neighbor's back door. "May I see your paper from San Francisco? Charles is with Capt. Briggs!" With staring eyes she reads what has happened to her youngest.
"Capt. Briggs of the Bark Montezuma before reported foundered, reports leaving N. Y. on the 27th of Aug., exper- ienced fine weather up Lat. 13 being then in Lat. 29-50 ex- perienced a hurricane commencing at N.E. varying N. and end- ing N. W. lasting three days during which the ship was hove to on her beam ends; mast heads under water; was obliged to cut away spars, when the vessel righted, with four feet of water in the hold; pumping all the time, water gaining; on the six- . teenth weather calm, barometer fell rapidly to 29 when it commenced to blow to N. W. increasing to a hurricane; vessel in trough of sea and unmanageable, sea making complete break over her; all hands to the pumps and unable to keep the vessel free; broke and lost rudder; boats crushed by falling spars; water tanks emptied and casks washed overboard forward house and galley stove, forward cabin doors stove in, filled cabin and destroyed everything therein; on the gale abating four feet of water in the hold; all hands exhausted from pumping five days and nights consecutively and unable to cook any food; weather continued fine until Sept. 30 when we were fallen in with Sch. Island Queen, Lemaistre, from Demerara, for Gaspe, who kindly rescued us from our perilous position, and doubtless from a watery grave, and showed us every attention and kindness in his power, for which, in behalf of my officers and my crew, as well as myself desire to express my heart- felt and grateful thanks."
The paper grows black, and the neighbor gets a drink of water for the mother of a sailor.
News! Sometimes there is no news! Neighbor Ham- mond's boy - his fate lost in the silence of the years. Ten! Twenty! On cold winter nights the old grizzled father, as he plodded to and fro from the barn to the house, with his gnarled knuckles blue in his homespun mittens, would look up at the stars and hope dumbly that the boy was all right, and the mother, in the farmhouse, listened to the wind whistling about the kitchen door, and prayed that her blue eyed boy
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wasn't cold. And after a long time the mother stopped ask- ing for news from the boys returning home from voyages and the neighbors were silent. Their pity had no voice.
Some ships were unlucky according to the sailors. The Annawan, which Capt. Charles Hammond. left before her disaster; the Arctic whose shadow crept over Sippican.
Capt. George Luce is writing in his diary on Sat. March 23, 1851-"Disappointed at not hearing from the Steamship Arctic, she being fourteen days from home port-To Castle Garden to hear the celebrated Jenny Lind, but I was not fas- cinated by her singing". He is worried about the ship. On Oct. 9, 1854 he writes "Steamer Arctic overdue a week." He sails out of New York harbor. On Oct. 12 a Pilot comes on board with the news he has feared - "the heartrending news of the loss of the Steamship Arctic, Capt. Luce with whom I sailed seven years had charge of her and is supposed to be lost."
The captain of the Arctic, Capt. James Luce, was born in Sippican. He was the oldest sea captain, in service, in New York.
He had sailed from Liverpool, Sept. 20, 1854 to New York. Out of the fog came the French Steamer Vesta, carrying sup- plies to the fishermen on the Grand Banks. She struck the Arctic on the bow, and sank her before the boats could take off all the passengers. As the Arctic went down, the Captain, holding his little son in his arms, sank with the ship. As they came to the surface the child was killed by a blow from the paddle-wheel, that afterwards saved the lives of eleven people. They clung for twenty-four hours of cold and exhaustion. When the Bark Cambria, bound from Glasgow to Montreal, came there were only three clinging to the wheel.
On Oct. 14 Capt. George is writing - "Today received the glad tidings of the safety of Capt Luce - I immediately telegraphed the news to his mother of his safety."
The loss of the Arctic was the greatest tragedy of the sea up to that time. She had about 250 passengers, and 150 attached to the ship.
The marble spires rise in the graveyard to commemorate the sea 'tragedies of Old Rochester! Stories recorded in one
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line on the Records! Stories, stark and terrible behind the pages of names and dates. Stories whose heroes were daring souls of the years whose meeting of the great Pilot in the surge of the seas was told as on Capt. Joseph Allen's monument in Sippican graveyard.
"John W. Allen Drowned in New York Harbor, Oct. 10, 1854.
Peleg B. Allen Lost on a reef near Atwood Island off the Bahama Group, Nov. 1861, aged 33 years.
Theophilus Allen, lost at sea about the 29 April, 1860."
One of the favorite stories of the day was "The Young Sailor, or The Sea Life of Tom Bowline." A dog eared copy has in careful penmanship on the flyleaf "Presented to a de- serving pupil by his teacher, Josie Briggs." Notwithstanding the horrors of the story, Tom coming home from gory en- counters with sharks and savage Islanders, looking "like an old man", and "now remains at home with his parents and ad- . monishes all his young friends not to seek for ease or happiness on the uncertain ocean so long as they have a comfortable home with all its endearments open to them", it did not keep the boys from haunting strange wharves, to ship for strange lands and strange adventures.
On June 11, 1867, a restless farm boy writes a typical letter. It is directed to "Ship Contest, Capt. Coon, Pacific Ocean."
"I am hard at it - weeding onions. D. sailed for the Sandwich Islands in the Ship Celon about a month ago. Bob Delano sailed with him. They are to be gone a year. Johnnie Delano sailed about six weeks ago in the Schooner J. W. D. Dodge. Will Dexter sailed a week ago to-day in the Bark Thomas Winslow. Tom Caswell sailed last summer in the Osceola. I saw you reported last week with 600 barrels of oil, and I don't see WHY YOU DON'T WRITE."
The boy scribe soon left his onion bed, and sailed away, and silence closed over him. News drifted back about the death in a foreign harbor of a boy whose description was somewhat like "Timmie's" - a red haired boy drowned in a far away sea.
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When the Schooner Graduate cleared for a whaling voy- age from the wharf at the foot of the main road of the village, it was to meet death in the great hurricane that tore over the Atlantic, Sept. 8, 1869.
Off they sailed, May 15, hoping for a "greasy" voyage. The schooner was owned by Capt. Henry Allen; Capt. Rufus Savery was Master; W. H. H. Ryder, Mate; George Brown, Roland Luce, Edmund Cardy, Lorenzo Cannon, Frederick Allen, boys from the village made up the crew.
When the terrible wind roared over the Atlantic, and the rushing tide washed up the Old Landing Road, there were frightened hearts for the little whalers so far out at sea.
The home folks watched and waited for news from the fleet.
The news came! One whaler lost! It was the William Wilson, but to the joy of the village, the Wilson came in.
It must be the Admiral Blake. The people mourned. The Methodist minister preached on the "Last Day"; the children shivered and whimpered; the elder members of the meeting house wept in excitement and sorrow.
And then the Admiral Blake came lumbering in.
At last there was but one little ship not accounted for. The Graduate! When the men folks went up to "Happy Alley" to tell the news to the Captain's wife, she wiped her hands on her apron, showed them chairs, and said "Well!" And after all, it was "well" for Capt. Savery, who was bring- ing up a large family on the Rochester Road wasn't to go to his death in a whaler. He had lived to tell of being patted on the head by Daniel Webster in the wonderful old days of Rochester-Towne, and he was to live to tell of being lashed to a wreck in the middle of the Atlantic.
The Mate W. H. H. Ryder came home too to tell the tale to friends and neighbors, as he vowed never to go to sea again. , "It was Wednesday, Sept. 8, 1869, at 6 A. M. in Lat. 36-55 N. Long. 73-20 W." said the Mate. "It commenced blowing heavy gales from the Southeast. Hove to under two reefed foresail, battened down the hatches, at 6.15 took in foresail.
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At about 6.30 the schooner was knocked down and the lee boat filled. Immediately cut the boat clear and the schooner righted. Immediately bent a cable on the weather anchor as a drug, and payed out thirty fathoms chain, closed up the gangways and called all hands aft and stood by to cut way the foremast.
At about 7 A. M. was struck by a hurricane, and before a blow was struck the schooner was laid on her beam ends, all hands clinging to the rigging, davits, bearers, etc., for safety. The next gust carried away the remaining boat, and nine men, the boat breaking in two.
Two of the men got back by the aid of ropes, three got on the wreck of the boat, the remaining four being injured or un- able to swim went down before our eyes.
There were now nine of us remaining on the wreck. We soon lashed ourselves securely, and remained in this position until about 12 M., when the masts broke off and she righted . full of water and the hatches gone. Nothing above water but the top of the house. About this time the wind moderated some, and we succeeded in lashing ourselves to the top of the house.
About 3 P. M. the wind and sea had gone down some. We now began searching for something to satisfy hunger and thirst. By diving we were able to get 5 cans of preserved meat in a locker near the companionway. We put ourselves on an allowance of 4 teaspoonsfuls per man per day, got up a signal of distress, and committed ourselves to the care of Divine Prov- idence.
We remained in this position on a space 12 feet square, eighty hours, every man patiently bearing his sufferings.
Meanwhile we drifted to the boat and two of the men were yet alive, but nearly exhausted.
We were suffering with hunger and thirst, the sea break- ing on us most of the time.
At 2 o'clock P. M., Saturday, Sept. 12, we were taken off by Capt. J. S. Crosby, of Schr. Ralph Souder, of Eastport, Me. bound to Barbadoes, who treated us with every possible kindness which one fellow being could bestow on a suffering brother. May God's richest blessing be given him!"
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So ends the Mate's account of the wreck of the Graduate.
The most horrible of the old sea stories of Rochester was that of Capt. Isaac Cole. Across the dim stretch of one hundred years comes the horror of that tale.
On a whaling voyage to Archangel, excited boys from Rochester disobeyed the Captain's orders. A mother whale was swimming near the ship, protecting her calf at her side: The calf was killed, and the mother wild with rage battered the ship to kindling wood. She swam from a scene of con- fusion, with.a crew afloat in an icy sea.
The sun rose and set, until there was no more time. Only a waste of ocean with crazed sailors, drawing lots to see who shall be sacrificed that the others may live. It was the Mate's . fate, but the Captain said "No. No! I-I am played out! I can do no more!" And out on that frozen sea Capt. Isaac Cole gave his life, a sacrifice to his crew.
The salt washings of heavy seas, the glistening downward sun touching the parched lips and crazed eyes of dying sail- ors, the growing shadow of night, cries in the dark from dear boys of Buzzards Bay rocked back and forth by crashing waves of far away reefs,-the tragic scenes of great oceans sweep across the timid souls of the women folk of the villages, > mounting, mounting, until they become calm in the plane above mere feeling in the heart of the little mother of Capt. Ben- jamin and Capt. Oliver Briggs of Sippican.
Capt. Benjamin was the Master of that most mysterious of the ships of the world, the silent, sailing Mary Celeste.
On the. Vice Admiralty Court Record, Gibraltar, Spain, Wednesday the 18 day of December, 1872, is written the last chapter of the voyage of the Mary Celeste, Captain Ben- jamin Briggs, Master.
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