USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Wiscasset > Wiscasset in Pownalborough; a history of the shire town and the salient historical features of the territory between the Sheepscot and Kennebec rivers > Part 52
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This glass picture was hanging on the wall of the Lennox house, next to the First Parish Church, when that church caught fire, December 21, 1907, and burned to the ground, and the intense heat of the flames caused the glass to crack, which explains the marks across the illustration.
Wreck of the Tam O'Shanter
James E. Ballard began in his youth to follow the sea. He made a voyage to Russia in 1880, as first officer in the ship Richard III, Joseph T. Hubbard, master.
Captain Ballard's first command was the San Joachim, which he started to take out of New York harbor, when a North German Lloyd steamer veered from her course and struck the San Joachim amidships with such force as to cut her completely in half. Fortunately no lives were lost and they beached the hull on Staten Island.
After this Captain Ballard sailed almost entirely in Soule vessels. His next command was the ship Enos Soule, 1,443 tons, which had been built in the ship- yard of Enos C. Soule at Freeport, Maine, and launched in November, 1869. This was the largest vessel thus far turned out by the Soule shipyard since its establishment thirty years previously by Capt. Enos Soule, Sr., and his broth- ers, Clement H. and Henchman S. Soule. Captain Ballard was in this vessel for many years and took her on long voyages to New South Wales, Australia;
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Callao, Peru; Hongkong and Japan. The Enos Soule was sunk in New York harbor in 1894 by the German steamship Aller. She was afterwards raised and sold for a coal barge. 25
The Lucile was the next ship of which he was master, and twice he took this ship to Australia and also made voyages in her to China and Japan.
In 1897 he was given command of another Soule ship, the Tam O' Shanter, built in 1850. He made the voyage from New York to Hongkong leaving this country about Christmas time and returning the following November. On this voyage his wife accompanied him and while in Hongkong harbor, May 14, 1898, his daughter Lucile was born. It was a tradition among sea cap- tains that, when possible, a child born on shipboard should bear the name of the vessel, but not wishing to call his daughter Tam O'Shanter he named her for his former command, Lucile.
Captain Ballard's next voyage took him again from New York across the Line and around the Horn to Yokohama and Hongkong, from which port he returned to Baltimore, thence to New York. His third voyage was to Hong- kong. On his return trip he struck an uncharted coral reef in the Java Sea and while pounding on this treacherous shoal the Tam O' Shanter sprang a leak, filled and sank. The crew, chiefly Japanese, became so excited that it was im- possible to swing the davits and lower the boats. When they were all facing what seemed to be certain death a Dutch Government boat used for lighthouse inspection miraculously came within hailing distance and rescued the entire crew of the doomed Tam O' Shanter. This boat under command of Captain Krone made her rounds but once a year and happened to come at the tragic moment when the ship was going down. The following day the Dutch boat herself struck another submerged coral reef, but succeeded in getting off with slight damage and proceeded to Anjer, where the Americans were safely landed and sent to New York via Batavia.
The Tam O' Shanter was lost in the year 1901 and after that Captain Ballard retired from the sea. He and his family returned to his former home in Wiscasset where he lived until his death, September 13, 1930. His wife sur- vived him and furnished this information.
The picture of the Tam O' Shanter, with a sampan in the foreground, was taken from a painting made of her by a Chinaman as she lay in Hongkong harbor in 1898. It is owned by Miss Alice D. Taylor of Wiscasset.
25. The barge Enos Soule struck on Brigantine Shoals, New Jersey, May 12, 1914, and became a total loss.
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Story of the Fall of the Barrier Forts near Canton, China
Simon Merrill Sewall, the son of Rufus and Phebe (Merrill) Sewall, was born in Edgecomb, Maine, July 14, 1 820. Soon after completing his education at Gorham Academy, he went to sea with his uncle, Capt. Stephen Merrill, one of the skilled ship-masters in the West India trade. Later he embarked in the Wiscasset ship Othello, Captain Theobald.26 In Savannah, Georgia, he was stricken with southern fever which nearly proved fatal. After his recovery he was steadily promoted until he was placed in command of the Flyaway, a clipper of 1,400 tons, built by William H. Webb at New York, and designed for the East India trade.
Capt. Merrill Sewall was at Whampoa waiting for a homeward cargo from Canton for the Flyaway, when in the autumn of 1856 the American flag was fired upon by the Chinese from the Barrier Forts, four miles below Canton, and a battle ensued in which he took a prominent part.
The outbreak occurred in October,27 when difficulty arose between the Eng- lish and Chinese. The British fleet was in command of Admiral Seymour and the American squadron was under Commodore James Armstrong. Command- er A. T. Foote was in charge of the U. S. sloop-of-war Portsmouth. When trouble started, Foote, at the request of the American consul, sent a landing party of one hundred and fifty men from the Portsmouth and the Levant, from Whampoa to Canton, to protect the United States' consulate and the merchants and missionaries outside of the city walls.
Meanwhile Admiral Seymour had marshalled the British cruisers and turned their broadsides into the city itself. A breach was made and stormed, and among the storming detail of bluejackets and British seamen a few Americans appeared under our flag.
The river channel had a barrier of piling to obstruct navigation and there were four Barrier Forts on an island in mid-stream. Commander Foote, in the Portsmouth's launch, approached a gap in the piling intending to pass up to the city in the interest of peace, planning to withdraw the whole force in an effort
26. No record appears in the Impost Book of the Port of Wiscasset from 1828 to 1866 of the Othello being in command of Captain Theobald. In 1837 Charles Theobald was master of the Banner and Thomas Saunders was master of the Othello.
27. A treaty of peace was signed before Nankin, August 29, 1842, between the Imperial Chinese Government and England, by which the ports of Amoy, Fu-chow, Ning-po, Shang-hae and Canton were thrown open to foreign trade. With these five free ports British trade with China assumed gi- gantic proportions; and though the Chinese evaded the treaty whenever practicable, no hostile act occurred until October 8, 1856, when the authorities at Canton seized the crew of the lorcha, Arrow, a vessel registered at Hongkong and entitled to British protection.
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to preserve American neutrality. He was fired upon five times as he passed the four forts. Immediately soundings were taken for a position to be secured for the Porstmouth and Levant in order to bring their broadsides to bear on the forts. In one of the boats engaged in making soundings, a round shot cut off the head of the leadsman.
On the morning of November sixteenth, Armstrong moved the Portsmouth up river from Whampoa close to the nearest fort, which at once opened a rapid fire. The Chinese continued to bombard our naval force with stink-pots, rockets and tom-tom artillery. The Portsmouth was hulled six times in about two hours of heavy firing before the fort was silenced. During the night the Levant went aground, but was refloated on the next tide and moved near the Portsmouth.
The Chinese were appalled by the hurtling of the Yankee shells which they called "lotten-chottens-shot." On November twentieth, the two nearest forts were attacked and one of them taken. Within the next two days the others were assaulted and captured.
In the land attack rice fields had to be crossed and a deep creek waded, the men shouldering their officers in pursuit of the enemy. A large Chinese camp, swarming with soldiers, attempted to stop the progress of the foreigners with their gaudy array of flags, feathers, gongs and tom-toms, without the use of matchlocks and led by a silk petticoated warrior.
Captain Sewall, a volunteer in this battle, had command of the Cum Fa and was in lead of the boat expeditions. His services were honorably reported to the Navy Department in Washington, by Commander Foote of the Ports- mouth, on December 1, 1856, where his record appears.
The Chinese casualties amounted to about two hundred and fifty compared with twenty-nine Americans killed and wounded.
Simon Merrill Sewall died in Dorchester, Massachusetts, October 12, 1895, on his way to his southern home at Beaufort, South Carolina.28
Mutiny on the Jefferson Borden
One of the most thrilling tales of attempted piracy and accomplished murder on the high seas is that of the Jefferson Borden, a tern, or three-masted schooner, which was partly owned and mastered by William M. Patterson, of Edgecomb, and which came frequently to this port for box shooks for Cuba.
28. Account taken from The Sheepscot Echo, October 19, 1895, and records of the Sewall family.
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The Jefferson Borden was built by David Clark, at Kennebunk, Maine, where she was launched October 19, 1867. Her net tonnage was 533.59. The owners were Capt. Lemuel Hall, her first commander, and others. Despite the fact that she was named for a prominent citizen of Fall River, there seems to have been no ownership in that city.
It would appear that some particularly sinister evil spirit presided over her from the beginning, for she encountered so many forms of diablerie that she was assuredly one of the accursed. When scarcely three years old she went ashore near Miami, on Cape Florida. In the marine report of October 26, I 870, we find the following:
"Steamer Mississippi at New Orleans, October 21, from New York, reports having passed from daylight till dark, eleven wrecks on the Florida coast, and also that they saw schooners Jefferson Borden and Ida Fowler ashore on the Florida beach, which was strewn for fifty miles with merchandise and débris of wrecks."
Sometime afterward the hull was sold for fifty dollars to two brothers, Asa and Charles Tift of Florida Keys. They were quick to recondition her, and with the outlay of about eight thousand dollars, she was once more put upon an even keel. The Tifts then sold a half interest to Captain Patterson of Edge- comb; a quarter interest to George E. Towne of Boston; and retained an interest themselves.
Captain Patterson was in command in March, 1875, when she sailed from New Orleans with a cargo of cotton-seed oil cake, bound for London. Beside the captain and his wife (who was Emma J. Smith also of Edgecomb) were his brother, Corydon Trask Patterson, first mate; Charles H. Patterson, his cousin, who was the second mate; Albert Aiken, the steward; Henry Mail- luende, a French lad who acted as ship's boy; George Millar, a Russian Finn; Ephraim W. Clark (alias Willam Smith) of Rockland, Maine; Jacob Lingar, a Swede; and John Glew, an Englishman, from Nottingham.
The vessel, according to the story told by one of her company, besides being overloaded was one man short in the crew, an inauspicious beginning. They ran directly into heavy weather, and the water casks, containing water from the Mississippi, which everyone knows is bad enough of itself, were at times buried in the sea, making the drinking water salty. To make matters worse the vessel sprang a leak so that they were obliged to man the pumps, and, being short- handed, one man had sometimes to remain at his post for thirty-six consecutive hours. Millar, the Russian, and Clark, or as he called himself, Smith, had
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The bark Mary T. Rundlett. Painting owned by Mrs. Nina Rundlett Lennox of Wiscasset.
"Nearly lost." The ship Ida Lilly in a hurricane January 16, 1868. Captain was William M. Patterson. Painting by C. F. Edeler.
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Tam ('Shanter in Hongkong Harbor. Tam O'Shanter was built at Freeport, Maine, in 1850 by Enos C. Soule, lost in the Java Sea in 1901. Captain ceas James Ballard.
Ships and Pirates
made a previous voyage together in the British ship Matuder, and so when things went from bad to worse and Millar was punished for insubordination, they, with John Glew, formed a cabal. With bad provisions and brackish water, these three were ready for anything. Dissension broke on the night of April twentieth. It was midnight and the second mate's watch. Both the captain and the first mate had turned in. Smith cut the fore-sheet for the purpose of draw- ing the second mate forward, and when he approached he was struck in the back with a piece of block tackle. The Russian assisted in throwing him over- board, and so passed Charles H. Patterson.
Smith's story was that the mate struck him first, whereupon Smith in retalia- tion or defense, seized an iron pin from the fife rail and killed him. They killed the first mate with a marline-spike, and his body was also hurled into the sea. The captain awakened after midnight to find both mates gone and the vessel in the hands of assassins. He knew not who was loyal. Millar tried to get him to go forward, but Mrs. Patterson with a women's keen intuition had a premoni- tion of disaster, and she implored him not to go beyond the mainmast. The steward came to his rescue and succeeded in arming the captain with a revolver, himself taking another, and reserving a double-barrelled shot gun as a last re- sort. The two began the attack to which the mutineers replied by throwing bottles of water, pieces of a broken grindstone, bits of iron and anything which came to hand. Finally with anger spent and ammunition exhausted there came a lull, which opportunity was seized by the captain to creep cautiously forward, where he found the men dozing in the forecastle, the door of which he hastily secured with nails. A siege followed. The funnel from the smoke hole was re- moved, and through the orifice hot water from the galley fire was poured by the bucketful upon the men within. The captain ordered them to surrender, but they were sullen and obdurate, so the belligerent captain and steward fired shot after shot through the windows and cracks of the partition, which the mu- tineers tried in vain to stuff with bits of bedding. At last, bleeding from a dozen wounds, Millar staggered to the window and thrust forth his hands for the irons, and he was immediately followed by Smith. Glew could not at first rise, but was told that he must do so before the door would be opened. He had been shot through the body, but, by a supreme effort, managed to get to the window. The boy, bound and gagged, was found in the lazarette. He had been spared by the mutineers "because he was handy at the wheel."
At this time Captain Patterson was twelve hundred miles from port in the open ocean, with only one seaman, the steward, the boy, and his wife on whose
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loyalty he could depend. The nearest point was the Western Islands, two hun- dred and fifty miles away, but the schooner was again put on her course, and soon after a Danish barque was spoken, and from her Captain Patterson re- ceived an extra man to help him run the schooner.
Mrs. Patterson, who, in the eight years preceding this experience, had made sixteen voyages with her husband, proved herself an able seaman by standing her turn at the wheel. With favoring winds the Nore 29 was passed on the sixth of May. Once in England the mutineers were promptly placed in custody and sent to Boston on the steamship Batavia, arriving July tenth.
Two months later (September twenty-first) they were tried before Judges Clifford and Lowell, receiving on October fourteenth, by the United States Court, sentence to be hanged.
Senator Lot M. Morrill of Maine became deeply interested in their case, and he, with Nathan M. Farwell, persuaded President Grant to commute the sentence to that of life imprisonment.
John Glew was acquitted of murder, but was sent to the Charlestown prison, there to serve a term of ten years for mutiny. He was out in 188 5.
According to the records of the Maine State Prison at Thomaston, where they were incarcerated, George Millar and William Smith were sentenced to life for the crime of piracy. They later confessed that it was their intention to keep the schooner on her course until near port, then to scuttle her, and escape in the only remaining boat, leaving the captain's brave wife to go down with the vessel.
George Millar died December 1, 1894. William Smith was pardoned on November 21, 1903. At the time of the Andrew Borden murder in Fall River a futile attempt was made to link these mutineers with that unsolved crime, but their prison records furnished a perfect alibi.
Captain and Mrs. Patterson are not now living, and as far as is known, there is no one left to recount the horrors of that awful voyage.
This, however, was not the last of that ill-starred schooner. After the mu- tiny, the owners being unable to dispose of her, changed her name to that of Arcana, and five years later under command of Capt. Charles Holmes, en- countering a terrific snowstorm just off a lighthouse in the Bay of Fundy she went down with all hands on board. The tracks of a sole survivor were found in the snow. One sailor who reached the shore had walked around in circles to
29. Nore is a sandbank four miles northeast of Sheerness, on which there is a floating light, called Nore Light.
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keep from freezing to death, but even he finally succumbed. As if in grim irony only the anchor chains were found.
The Istria
The bark Istria, under command of Capt. Egbert Thacher Sewall, son of Rufus Sewall, Esq., and a brother of Capt. Merrill Sewall, left New Orleans early in the summer bound for Havre, France. The cargo of the Istria con- sisted of 2,076 bales of cotton; 71 hogsheads of tobacco and 2,460 staves.
On June II, 1868, when off the coast of North Carolina, as she was round- ing Cape Hatteras, the Istria struck on Diamond Shoals, that treacherous reef, where so many vessels have foundered that it is called "the graveyard of the Atlantic." Eleven persons were drowned. While attempting to escape on a raft the cabin boy slipped overboard, and in trying to save him Captain Sewall lost his own life.
Only four of the ship's company were saved, the first and second mates and two Kanakas. Marsden Cunningham of Edgecomb, a brother of the captain's wife, was first officer, and Henry Edwin Sewall, still under twenty years of age, a son of Rufus King Sewall of Wiscasset and a nephew of Captain Sewall, was second officer. They escaped by floating ashore on a hatch.
The Celestial Empire
The ship Celestial Empire 30 was built by Jotham Stetson, in 1852, at South Boston for the account of Charles H. Parsons and Company, of New York, who were the agents. Jotham Parsons was the "company" and the ship was owned in shares by the Parsons family.31
She was built at the time when cargo carriers were being supplanted by clip- per ships and her model was narrow and deep. She was 193 feet in length by 37.7 and 29 feet in depth. She registered 1,630 tons.
The Celestial Empire was undoubtedly built for the China trade, but no rec- ord has been found of a single voyage to China. At long intervals she made be- tween 1852 and 1875 five trips to San Francisco, but most of her career was spent in the transatlantic trade. All of her long voyages around the Horn were
30. The accompanying picture of the Celestial Empire is owned by Miss Annie Smith whose uncle, William Baker, was first mate on that vessel.
31. The account of the Celestial Empire was furnished by the members of the Parsons family.
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slow, the average passage to California being one hundred and sixty-four days and the shortest run was made in one hundred and forty-four days.
For twenty years the Celestial Empire was held under Parsons ownership, but in 1872 she was sold to Snow & Burgess, and they held her until she was lost in the Atlantic Ocean in 1875.
Although it is not known for a certainty, it is believed that Jotham Sewall Parsons was her first master. He was murdered in Manila, Philippine Islands, May 6, 1858, when an attack was made by Moros on the mission where he was visiting, and he may have been in command of the Celestial Empire at that time.
Capt. John Siler Taylor was in charge of this ship for nine years before she passed from the Parsons ownership. On a voyage from the Chincha Islands with guano, he was accompanied by his daughter, Mrs. Sulger. After the firm of Snow & Burgess bought the Celestial Empire Capt. James H. Stewart was in command until she was lost. He survived that catastrophe and bought the ship John Harvey of Newburyport in which he made several transatlantic voyages.
Mutiny on the Olive
Captain Albee, master of the brig Olive, built in 1819 and owned by Jotham Parsons, made a voyage in the spring of 1832 in another brig from this port to New Orleans, where his sailors deserted him and he shipped a colored crew for a voyage to Port au Prince. About five o'clock the morning of the Olive's ar- rival, being in his berth, he heard an unusual noise on deck. He went up im- mediately and discovered that the crew had thrown the mate overboard. Cap- tain Albee immediately ordered them to assist in saving the mate, which they refused to do. He, however, succeeded in throwing a rope and some pieces of plank overboard and saved the mate, for at that time the weather was favor- able and a very light wind was stirring so the vessel made little progress through the water. The crew now ordered the captain and mate below, and they were forced to obey, but shortly afterwards when the boarding boat from shore came alongside the crew released the officers. Captain Albee went ashore and stated the facts to the authorities of Port au Prince, and as a result of his report the crew were arrested, tried for mutiny and the ninth day after their arrival the entire band, seven in number, were executed.32
32. Lincoln Intelligencer, June 22, 1832.
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The Brig Ajax
The brig Ajax, of 227 tons burthen, was built at Wiscasset in 1 82 5. Her prin- cipal owner was Jotham Parsons, and Sewall Albee was her first commander. The following year the Ajax was in charge of Capt. William S. Shaw, an ex- tract of whose letter to Mr. R. P. Owen, one of the owners, may be of interest. It is dated "British Channel, April 3, 1826" and reads as follows:
On the 12th of March, at 4 A.M. (sea account ) between lat. 42° and 44° N. weather thick and cloudy, with squalls of rain and snow, we ran the brig in between two reefs of ice, jammed together apparently in a solid mass: the sea being much smoother than usual, which did not alarm us, as we knew we were far from land or breakers, until we felt the ice along side of us; as soon as we perceived this we hove to until daylight, when we found that we were surrounded by a solid body of ice. Around us were about thirty icebergs about 150 feet high, and nearly the size of Seguin Island. Finding the ice chafed us badly we got out our fenders. As we had run into the ice before the wind it was impossible to get out the same way. At sunrise we discovered a narrow opening to leeward, for which we steered under easy sail and drove her through. We were now in a bay about 11/2 miles wide, the reefs on either side, and large cakes of ice in contact with us. The wind still blowing fresh at N. W. we kept her before it for about three miles but could not discover any opening to the S. & W .; tacked ship and steered N. E. about 12 miles, it being very difficult to avoid the large cakes of ice crowded around us. Upon finding there was no opening in this direction, and that the two reefs extended as far as we could see; that there were numerous large islands North of us, and an almost inumerable collection of small ones ahead, we concluded at 10 o'clock A.M. to crowd her through the ice, and hav- ing prepared fenders of every kind, such as old junk, spars, cord wood, bales of cotton, and a part of one cable, we drifted her into it.
We were now in the midst of the ice in a severe gale, accompanied by a thick snow storm; and, had it not been for our precaution, in preparing fenders, the ice must have soon made a hole through us - At 12 o'clock M. old Sol deigned to show his brazen face, and laugh at our comical situation. This circumstance enabled us to take an observation, by which we found ourselves in lat. 44° 30' N., long. 43° W. As our fenders were nearly destroyed we were compelled to cut up more of our cable, wooden fenders not sinking deep enough for the purpose of defence under water.
You may judge of the difficulty in crowding the brig through by our progress, which was about half a mile an hour, under two reef topsails and foresail, the wind blowing heavy - At I o'clock P.M. we suspended two bales of cotton under our chains, that they might not be carried away by rolling against the cakes of ice which we occasionally met, some of which were 100 feet in circumference and 6 feet thick.
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