USA > Massachusetts > Nantucket County > The history of Nantucket County, island, and town : including genealogies of first settlers > Part 60
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In July the Clay returned and got another cargo of beche de mer and then returned to Manilla, Cary taking passage on her. He continued in the employ of the vessel's owners until the follow- ing July and then shipped on the ship Glide, Captain Archer, also of Salem. Before she left the islands Cary received several letters, brought from Manilla by the Clay, letters from his sisters, the first communication he had received from' home for neary six years.
Returning to Manilla, Captain Archer procured passage for Cary on an American ship bound to Canton, but Cary found afterwards that she would stop in Canton two or three months, which he could not afford to do, so he returned to the Glide and made another voyage to the islands. They spoke the ship Zenas Coffin, of Nan- tucket, Captain George Joy and two New Bedford ships. At the Sandwich Islands they saw several Nantucket ships.
In March, 1831, the vessel he was in was wrecked on the is- lands but the crew were unharmed. After various changes Cary shipped on board the ship Tybee, of Salem, Captain Mellet and reached Nantucket the last of October, 1833, after an absence of nine years.
SHIP FRANKLIN
"This ship, George Prince, master, sailed from Nantucket on a whaling voyage in the Pacific Ocean, 6th month 27th, 1831 .* Her cruise, up to the time of her final loss, was an almost un- broken series of misfortunes. Soon after leaving, one of the crew, William L. Bunker, fell from aloft and was laid up two months. Eleventh month, 15th, 1831, another hand, Frederick C. Whippy, fell from the mizzen-top-gallant-head and broke both legs. He was left on board the sloop of war Falmouth at Callao. At the same time a black man was landed, sick with consumption; he died soon afterwards. About the middle of the 2d month succeeding, a boat, fast to a whale, was carried down, and two men, probably en- tangled with the line, were drowned. In 2d month, 1833, a na- tive of the Sandwich Islands fell from aloft and was killed. In the 5th month of the same year, the ship went into Callao, where a man, John Robson, a native of Massachusetts, was shipped; he had the fever-and-ague at the time. He died of the scurvy about four months afterwards. While the Franklin was at Callao, a man was shipped as boatsteerer; on the 12th of 8th month he was car- ried out of the boat by a line and lost. At Hood's Island the mate strained himself while getting terrapins. He never was well af-
*Macy's History, page 251.
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terwards, and finally died 3d of 6th month, 1834, off Cape Horn, on the homeward bound passage. About five days afterwards, the captain and steward died both on the same day. The steward's name was Eben Kelton. About four days after this William .. L. Bunker died, and in a few days from that time, Michael Norman, an Irishman; on the 30th of the 6th month, Charles Thompson, a colored man, also died, all of the scurvy. On the 3d of 7th month the ship came to anchor 'in Maldonado harbor, mouth of the river La Plata. On the same day another of the crew, Christian Wing, died of the scurvy. On coming to anchor the crew that remained were so worn with sickness and fatigue, that they were not able to furl their sails, which was done with the assistance of the crew of a French ship, who also generously assisted to get the ship up to Monte Video. A new mate and some hands were shipped there, and the Franklin sailed thence on the 12th of 8th month. After much bad weather, on the night of the 5th of 10th month, she ran ashore on the reef Diego Roderiquez, on the coast of Brazil, about 45 miles fro mthe harbor of Macceio. All hands and about one third of her cargo were saved. The ship immediately bilged and went to pieces in about ten days."
There were tragedies like that of the Lady Adams that never were told and one is left to speculate as to whether the crews met speedy and merciful deaths, whether they reached some Pacific island and were butchered by merciless savages or whether they wandered over trackless seas and eventually all perished by star- vation. It never will be known. There was the ship Reaper, Captain Timothy R. Coffin, owned by Philip H. Folger which sailed from Nantucket October 12, 1835. She was supposed to have foundered in a gale off New Zealand and all her crew were lost .* A tragedy was narrowly averted when the ship Joseph Starbuck, Captain Charles A. Veeder, was wrecked on Nantucket Bar. The Thule, Captain Charles W. Coffin was lost on Booby Shoal and the mate and boat's crew were drowned. The Young Eagle, Captain Lathrop, and the Niphon, Capt. John Gardner 2d, were sunk at sea, but the crews were saved. The ship Lydia, Captain Edward C. Joy, was burned at sea in 1835, supposed to have been the act of the crew, and the ship Memnon, Captain Haughton, was burned at Payta in 1854. In the early days when Nantucket men sailed from al- most every whaling port there were few such casualties in which Nantucketers were not represented.
Mr. Macy in his History makes the following statement-"The whole number of vessels lost, exclusive of captures, since the set- tlement of the island, is 168. Of these 78 were sloops, 31 schooners, 18 brigs, and 41 ships. Loss of lives four hundred and fourteen."t
From the time when that computation was made until the last whaler sailed bearing the name of Nantucket the number of whaling
*Marine worms in the Pacific Ocean attack a ship's planking where it is below the water line and exposed to them and there are instances where an exposed plank has been completely honeycombed by them.
+Page 253. The statement was made in 1835.
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vessels lost or condemned belonging to the Island, exclusive or those sold, comprised 43 ships, 3 brigs and 2 schooners with a total of 14,676 tons burthen.
The decade from 1840 to 1850 was a particularly diastrous one to Nantucket. The fire of 1838 was a bad one for a small community and particularly hit prominent Islanders engaged in the whaling industry. The increasing shyness and scarcity of whales occasioned longer and more expensive voyages. New Bed- ford already had wrested the whaling supremacy from Nantucket, so far as the number of ships and men employed were concerned, although Nantucket owners were still at the front in the capture of the sperm whales. At New Bedford the ship could outfit* and sail from port all equipped for her work and return with her cargo unbroken and discharge at the wharf, while at Nantucket the bar still proved to be an insurmountable barrier to the free passage of ships that were about to sail on a voyage, or that should return laden with the results of their voyages. In view of the fact that other ports were participating in the business, the competition was keen, and the handicaps that Nantucket experienced were still harder to overcome.
Then came the Great Fire of 1846, wiping out in 24 hours the entire business section of the Town, damaging shipping and de- stroying the many warehouses and manufactories of various kinds connected with the business, with their contents.
Following closely on the heels of that disaster came a blow from an entirely different quarter.
Gold deposits were discovered in California to such an extent that there was a stampede to the Golden State. It affected whale- men. Ships were deserted and young men were diverted from
*Macy in his History of Nantucket, pp. 221-2, gives the detail of the outfit of a whaling ship in his day. In later years the ships were larger, the voyages longer, and the outfitting expense greater. Macy says: "The class of ships built immediately after the last war were about 300 tons burthen; there has, however, been a steady advance, our ships are now larger, better constructed, and built of the best materi- als. The live oak and yellow pine, being found most durable for ma- rine architecture, is brought from the southern states, and no expense is sparred to make the ships what they ought to be, fit for the arduous and protracted voyages they are destined to perform. A fair average price of a ship, ready for the reception of her appropriate stores for a three years' voyage, is about $22,000 and the outfits about $18,000 more. Some have sailed at a much higher price, near $60,000. Many are got to sea, fitted in the same efficient manner for the same period of time, for about $34,000, but they are of a smaller size. The necessary ar- ticles put on board a ship for a sperm whale voyage are too numerous to mention; it will suffice to mention a few of the principal ones. Beef and pork, 100 bbls. each; 11 tons of bread, baked from superfine flour; 80 bbls. of flour packed, for puddings, &c; 1400 gallons of molasses; peas, beans, corn, dried apples, coffee, tea, chocolate, butter in ample . quantities, and of good quality. About 4,000 barrels of new casks are made for each ship, from the best white oak stuff, each cask contain- ing from three to six barrels at the cost of about $1.50 per barrel."
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whaling to mining. Voyages were broken up. Attempts had been made, too, to find some substitute for sperm oil as an illuminant. Right whale oil was much inferior for that purpose, nor was it to be compared with sperm oil as a lubricant. Indeed, for the last named purpose sperm oil is well in the forefront today. To find a substitute as an illuminant was the stimulus to several experi- ments. An oil made from lard and refined was tried, but it had a tendency to thicken up in cold weather. A burning fluid was in- vented composed of spirits of turpentine and alcohol. That was a very fair substitute so far as its illuminating properties were con- cerned but it was a very dangerous compound to handle.
Next came the discovery, in a little sheet iron building on the banks of the Charles River, in Waltham, of a method of refining kerosene, so to make it an acceptable and cheap illuminating oil.
These things combined proved too great a barrier for Nan- tucket to overcome, and the whaling fleet gradually became re- duced in numbers, the vessels as they returned from their voyages being sold to New Bedford and other whaling ports. In 1868, "Ichabod" was written on her walls, so far as the whaling industry was concerned, when the bark R. L. Barstow, the last whaling ship to sail from the Island, port passed over the Bar, outward bound. .
Occasional whaling voyages by small vessels on the Atlantic, called in the Nantucket vernacular "plum-pudding" voyages, were made for several years thereafter, but the pursuit has long ceased to be a recognized business, and whales can disport themselves around the Island with impunity, right under the very noses of the de- scendants of those who once were their implacable foes, and there is none to molest them nor make them afraid .* Of the 34 whale ships beleaguered and abandoned in the Arctic Ocean in the fall of 1871, not one hailed from Nantucket.
Following the loss of the whaling industry, many efforts were made to introduce some line of manufactures which could be fol- lowed successfully on the Island. There existed the handicaps of distance from a market and the necessity of importing all supplies; added to which was the lack of cooperation from the Islanders: It was difficult to lead them into new and strange channels. A people cannot change in a day the habits that have become inbred by two centuries of activity in one direction.
As early as in 1852, an effort was made to establish on the. Island the manufacture of straw goods. The Friends' Meeting- house, on Main Street, was purchased and the "Atlantic Straw Works" found a home there, its principal business being the man- ufacture of straw hats. The employment was light, cleanly, and,
*In the late "fifties" one or more of the small whalers captured whales and brought them into port where they were "cut in" while the vessel was lying at the wharf and the younger generation of the day had a living example of processes that made their ancestors famous.
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as matters then were, fairly remumerative, but the business was abandoned after a brief struggle .*
In 1859, a shoe factory was started, and in 1864 the manu- facture of linen coats, or "dusters" as they were called, was intro . duced to the Island.t The former was short-lived. The latter seemed at one time to have secured a good footing, but it, in turn, followed the other enterprises into the list of things that were.#
In 1872, Mitchell & Hayden purchased from the Town the West Grammar School building and started a second shoe factory. Everything looked rosy for a brief time and success seemed as- sured, and then it followed the previous experiments adown the valley of the once was.
Psychologically considered, the failures may perhaps, as pre- viously pointed out, be explained on the ground that the energies of the Islanders had for so many years been concentrated on look- ing to the products of the sea for a livelihood that they did not take kindly to a business so entirely foreign to what they had been ac- customed to. If the theory is correct, with the passing of the last of the generations of whalemen, new enterprises may successfully be carried on, if the handicaps of distance from the source of sup- plies and from a market, are not insurmountable.
Attention next began to be directed into turning summer travel Nantucket-ward. The attractions of the Island as a health: resort had been for many years the subject of newspaper comment .** To capitalize these attractions needed increased facilities to get to and from the Island. The one man to whom the situation seemed to appeal strongest and who seemed to realize more forcibly than anyone else the necessities of the situation was Mr. Joseph S. Bar- ney; at that time a stockholder in the Steamboat Company and Superintendent of the boats.
One of the improvements which he realized as essential to make it a desirable summer resort was a better steamboat service. Taking as his slogan "Two Boats a Day," he enlisted in his cam- paign · three friends tt and began, largely through the newspaper press, to make clear the necessity, and to bring such pressure to
*The building, which is still in existence has had a varied expe- rience. For several years it was used as an Assembly and dance hall. In 1883 it was moved to Brant Point and became a part of Hotel Nan- tucket, about being built. In 1905, the Hotel no longer doing business the building was again sold, the central portion being purchased by the "Red Men" and moved up onto South Water street where it still exists-the upper part used as a Lodge room and the lower part as an amusement hall.
¡By Charles Lawrence.
¿John W. Hallett succeeded to the business and in 1880 manu- factured 50,000 coats for the 12 months.
** It was no new thing to allude to Nantucket as a health resort. Its advantages in that direction were pointed out as early as 1835, and every succeeding year has brought new testimony to its value. The entire Atlantic coast does not offer a summer resort so replete with health and pleasure.
ttRev. Dr. Ferdinand C. Ewer, William Breed Drake and A. Star- buck. Mr. Barney's foresight and good work in this and other ways never received the recognition they merited.
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bear on the Directors of the Steamboat Company as would compel htem to consider the demand. The effort was successful and Nan- tucket has become of late years as well-known throughout the country as a health resort as in the long ago it was recognized as the most important whaling port in the country .*
With the World's War came another opportunity for Nantuck- et to prove that her loyalty to the Union was equal to every test made upon it. Every call for money. was promptly answered. The response on the first Liberty Loan was $411,000; on the second $589,000; on the third $130,000; on the fourth $306,000; on the fifth $229,500; a total of $1,665,500, a per capita of about $555, making the little municipality the banner town in the country. The demands of the Red Cross were met equally promptly and de- cisively. A total of 192 from the Island were in the service-74 in the Army; 61 in the Navy; 39 in the Coast Guard; 7 in Avia- tion service; 4 in radio; 6 in the merchant marine; and one was a Nurse at the front. ; During the War a battalion of the Naval Re- serve Corps stationed on the Island with headquarters at the for- mer Springfield House on North Water Street and the use of a ship yard on the South Beach for the repair of submarine chasers, with occasional visits from aeroplanes gave the Town quite a warlike appearance while the nearest Nantucket came to actual conflict 1 was the torpedoing of allied vessels by German submarines near the South Shoal Lightship 80 or 90 miles away.
*A permanent and pure water supply was a necessary adjunct to a successful summer resort. Mr. Moses Joy was quick to see the neces- sity and to provide for it. It was through his exertions mainly that the Wannacomet Water Co. was formed and the water works constructed. Little encouragement was given to Mr. Joy and the few who saw the need but the end has justified their faith. The water was let on to the town pipes in 1879.
"The Town for several years has kept the roster of those who served on the opening pages of the Town report.
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CHAPTER XII THE CHURCHES OF NANTUCKET
THE FRIENDS' MEETINGS
The early religious history of the people of Nantucket pre- sents an interesting study. The popular idea regarding some of the First Purchasers, especially in the case of Thomas Macy and family, is that they were Friends or Quakers and fled to Nantucket to escape impending punishment from the Massachusetts Bay au- thorities, but, as already shown, that is entirely contrary to facts. Indeed if we may except the reputed visit of Jane Stokes to the Island in 1664,* it is doubtful whether Macy, who died April 19, 1682, ever saw a Quaker as such in Nantucket. It seems a little singular that despite the fact that Mr. Macy became involved in trouble in the Massachusetts Bay for preaching without a permit from the authorities in 1658 and that Edward Starbuck was sup- posed to have been suitably punished in 1648 for being an Ana- baptist, it was years after they died before an English church of any kind that we have any knowledge of was established on the Island.
Quakerism existed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was harshly dealt with. The reason for the harshness does not appear to be difficult to understand .. That the Puritans came to America to enjoy religious freedom is true only to a limited extent; that they came to be free to worship God in their own way is a more accurate way to state their purpose. t It was not a part of their design to have rivals in theology and they viewed the Quakers as unwarranted interlopers. It would have been the same with any
*A memorandum of Mr. Peleg Mitchell gives the tradition that Jane Stokes visited Nantucket at that time.
Mr. Worth in his "Lands and Landowners" p. 64 states that John Gardner was accused in 1780 of preventing some Quakers speaking in public. He says-"Until 1716 the matter of religion appears only twice in the records. In 1680, Capt. John Gardner was accused of forbidding some Quakers holding a meeting on the island. In 1678 some men were fined for going out in company on the Lord's Day." ¿John Fiske in "The Beginnings of New England," page 159, says:
"This is a point concerning which there has been a great deal of popular misapprehension, and there has been no end of nonsense talked about it. It has been customary first to assume that the Puritan mi- grating was undertaken in the interests of religious liberty, and then to upbraid the Puritans for forgetting all about religious liberty as soon as people came among them who disagreed with their opinions. But this view of the case is not supported by history. It is quite true that the Puritans were chargeable with gross in tolerance; but it is not true that in this they were guilty of inconsistency. The notion that they came to New England for the purpose of establishing re- ligious liberty, in any sense in which we should understand such a phrase, is entirely incorrect. It is neither more nor less than a bit of popular legend."
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other active and aggressive sect or act. It manifested its spirit when Edward Starbuck was fined for Anabaptism and when Thomas Macy assumed to preach without having been duly qualified.
Our conception of the Quaker is as we have found him in our time and not as he appeared to our Island ancestors. So far as Nan- tucket has known the sect, from the days of Mary Starbuck to the
HEADQUARTERS NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
The rear building is of fireproof construction and houses one. of the finest historical collections in the country. . The front building is of wood built in 1838 for a Friends' School and subsequently used as a Meeting House. The Historical Association bought it in 1904 for its headquarters.
present day, its members, with rare exceptions, have been the em- bodiment of the Christian virtues. In the early days of their presence in New England, however, there were among them men and women whose aggressiveness and peculiar manifestations might naturally arouse counter aggressions from those who were unwilling to brook the presence of any form of religion other than their own .*
*"When we remember how the Quakers, in their scorn of; earthly magistrates and princes, would hoot at the Governor as he walked up the street; how they used to rush into church on Sundays and inter- rupt the sermon with untimely remarks; how Thomas Newhouse once came into the old First, Meeting-House with a glass bottle in each hand, and, holding them up before the astonished congregation, knocked them together and smashed them, with the remark, 'Thus will the Lord break you all in pieces'; how Lydia Wardwell and De- borah Wilson ran about the streets in the primitive costume of Eve before the fall, and called their conduct 'testifying before the Lord'; we can hardly wonder that people should have been reminded of the wretched scenes enacted at Munster by the Anabaptists of the preced- ing century."
"Beginnings of New England," Fiske, p. 207
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Time softened many of these asperities. The Quakers, with- out sacrificing any of the principles for which they stood, aban- doned the unseemly methods of propagating them while the Puri- tans were compelled on their part to abandon their unreasonable persecutions.
The earliest visit of Friends (or Quakers) to Nantucket of which we have any detailed record, was that of Thomas Chalkley, whose first visit was made to the Island in the Spring of 1698. He went from Providence to Boston and Salem, then to Hampton and "Cushnet," thence to Nantucket. "We sailed over to the said Is- land," he says, "in about ten hours, where we tarried several days and had five meetings.' *
"The people did generally acknowledge to the truth, and many of them were tender-hearted. Some of the people said 'That it was never known that so many people were together on the Island at once.' After the first meeting was over, one asked the minister, (so called) . Whether we might have a meeting at his house? He said, with a good will, 'We might.' This minister had some dis- course with me, and asked, 'What induced me to come hither, be- ing such a young man?' I told him that I had no other view in coming there, than the good of souls, and wo would be to me, if I did not preach the gospel.' 'Then,' said he, 'I wish you would preach at my house in GOD'S name,' So next day we had a meeting at his house; and, on the first-day, we had the largest meeting that we ever had on the Island. It was tho't there were above two hundred people. The Lord in his power did make his truth known to the praise of his name. Oh! how was my soul con- cerned for that people! The Lord Jesus did open my heart to them and theirs to him: they were also loving and kind to us. The chief magistrate of the island, ; desir'd that I would have a meeting at his house there being no settled meeting of Friends before I came; and after meeting he disputed about religion with me. I tho't we were both but poor disputants; and I cannot remember all that pass'd between us, but that in the close of our dispute, he said, 'I disputed with your friends in Barbadoes, and they told me, That we must eat the spiritual flesh, and drink the spiritual blood of Christ; And," said the governor, 'Did ever any one hear of such flesh and blood; for is it not a contradiction in nature, that fleshi and blood should be spiritual?' 'O surely, said I, the governor has forgot himself; for what flesh and blood was that which Christ said, Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood ye have no life in You?' 'Why, said he, 'I don't think they were to gnaw it from his arms and shoulders.' Then I told him, he answer'd himself. Thus our dispute ended. (And from that time forward they have con- tinued a meeting, and there is now a meetinghouse, and a yearly meeting for worship ;¿ it is a growing meeting to this day, and several public friends raised up amongst them, who preach the gospel of Christ freely.')
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