CHAPTER VI
TO CALIFORNIA BEFORE THE GOLD DISCOVERY
IN 1846, while the Mexican War was in progress, it was decided by President Polk, acting upon the advice of Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft, to send a volunteer regiment around Cape Horn to California for the occupation of that country, then a province of Mexico. In pursuance of this scheme a commission as colonel was given to a Mr. Thomas Stevenson, a well-known New York politician and a stanch Democrat, and he was authorized to raise and equip a full regiment of one thousand men, to be known as the First Regiment of California Volunteers.
It was found that three ships would be required to transport the regiment with its commissary stores and ammunition; and the Thomas H. Perkins, of which I was at the time second mate, was one of the three vessels chartered for the purpose. Accordingly we hauled into a berth at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in September, 1846, and commenced taking in a cargo of military stores in the lower hold, while the between decks were fitted up with berths to accommodate three hundred and fifty men.
Having completed this work, we were towed into the East River, and there three full companies, H, I, and K, with a portion of Company F, were sent on board from their camps on Governor’s Island. We were also notified that Colonel Stevenson and his headquarters staff would take up their quarters on board our ship for the voyage out, which gave us the distinction of being the flagship.
The men of the regiment were a tough lot of fellows. “Stevenson’s Lambs,” as they had been nicknamed, were recruited in and about the Five Points and the worst purlieus of the notorious Fourth Ward, and from the very first they gave their officers no end of trouble.
The officers, moreover, were but a shade better; for with the exception of the colonel’s son, Captain Matthew Stevenson, who was a West Pointer, and the staff officers, who were of the better class, the great majority of the company officers were mere ward politicians, elected by their men to their positions, and having little idea of military discipline.
The colonel had to come on board secretly at night to avoid arrest for debt, and one energetic deputy sheriff actually chased us down the harbor in an ineffectual attempt to serve a writ upon this impecunious officer.
We sailed, after many delays, very suddenly at last, under imperative orders from Washington, on the last day of September, in company with the ships Loo Choo and Susan Drew, carrying the remainder of the regiment, and all of us under the convoy of the United States sloop-of-war Preble. As she was a very dull sailer, however, we never saw her after the first day, as we ran her out of sight that night.
We had a pleasant run down to Rio Janeiro, where we put in for water and fresh provisions. Here one of the wild freaks of the Lambs was displayed.
Captain Lippitt, of Company K, was, in contrast to the other officers, quite a disciplinarian. He was not a New Yorker, but came from Vermont, where he had superintended a military school; and neither of these facts commended him to the consideration of his men, with whom he was very unpopular. His company had abused their uniforms shamefully during the voyage, and had been especially careless in losing their dress hats overboard.
These hats were not so comfortable as the fatigue caps, and there was little doubt that, in many instances, the men lost the hats with intent. In preparation for making a suitable appearance in Rio, Captain Lippitt had found a couple of hatters in the regiment, and with infinite labor had managed to have ninety new dress hats made for his company, and they had been served out a few days before we made the land. He took great pride in the success of this effort, and bragged in a mild manner to his brother officers of the fine appearance his men would make.
The day we entered the bay of Rio the entire company appeared on deck in their new headgear, rather to the surprise of the captain, who had not given orders for full dress; but, attributing it to a desire on the part of his men to appear well, he made no comment.
As we passed under the walls of the fort which guards the entrance to the bay, where all ships are hailed as they come in, Company K at a concerted signal sprang into the rigging or upon the rail, and, giving three wild cheers, every man threw his new hat overboard!
The Bay of Rio de Janeiro was alive with nearly one hundred military hats bobbing about in a most absurd manner, while the walls of the fort were at once crowded with Brazilian soldiers attracted by this most astonishing performance.
Captain Lippitt was speechless with rage and amazement, the colonel and the other officers could not restrain their laughter; and as they could not very well punish an entire company for a bit of fun, the matter was allowed to pass with a reprimand and a stoppage of the value of the hats from the men’s pay. But Captain Lippitt was not permitted to hear the last of the “battle of the hats” for the remainder of the voyage.
In Rio the three ships of our fleet met for the first time since we had parted company after leaving New York. One company of the regiment from each ship was given liberty on shore daily, and the Brazilian police probably never had such severe duty before in their lives. Fancy three hundred New York Fourth Ward roughs adrift in a quiet foreign city, entirely unprepared for their proper reception!
It was little wonder that at last a formal protest was entered with the American Minister, Mr. Wise, against the depredations of these reckless fellows, and a request was made that no more shore liberty be granted them. It was doubtless an immense relief to the authorities, who afforded us every facility for expediting our work, when the supplies were all on board and they had seen the last of the “Soldados Norte Americanos.”
We parted company with our consorts with the understanding that we should rendezvous at Valparaiso. Off the Rio de la Plata we had a very heavy blow, but after that enjoyed unusually pleasant weather until we got into the latitude of Cape Horn, where, although it was December, which is summer at the antipodes, we encountered a succession of severe gales from the northwest, right in our teeth, which drove us far to the southward, and against which we could make no headway.
On Christmas Day we were in latitude 60° 05′ S. The cold was intense, it was blowing heavily, and we were plunging into a headbeat sea, close on the wind, under double reefs, when the thrilling cry, “Man overboard!” was heard. The ship was at once hove to, every one rushed on deck, and there, on the weather quarter, the figure of a man was seen rising and falling on the crest of the dark green waves. Fortunately as he passed astern some one had thrown an empty chicken coop overboard, which, drifting near him, he had managed to get hold of, and to this he was clinging for dear life.
Captain Arthur at once called for volunteers for the whaleboat, which swung on the port quarter, and a good crew was speedily selected. I was put in charge, and, watching a favorable opportunity, she was partially lowered, with us seated in her, and then the falls were let go by the run, so that as she struck the water they unreeved, for it would have been impossible in such a seaway to unhook the blocks.
We drifted clear of the quarter overhang, which was the great danger, and then, directed by signals from the ship, pulled in the direction of the unfortunate man, who more than half the time was out of sight to us in the boat, as he went down in the hollow of the great waves.
It was severe work forcing the boat through the rough water in the very teeth of the gale, for the ship had drifted well to leeward of the man before we got the boat lowered; but my men gave way with a hearty good will, and we at last had the satisfaction of reaching the man, who was almost exhausted, as well as frozen, and dragging him in, he fell prone in the bottom of the boat.
It was not so difficult to return to the ship, as we had the wind astern; but it was an exceedingly delicate and dangerous operation to hook on and hoist the boat in, and we were nearly swamped in doing it.
Loud cheers greeted us from more than three hundred throats as we came alongside, and the boat falls were stretched out and manned by all the men that could get hold of the ropes. The surgeon of the regiment was at hand, and poured nearly a gill of raw brandy down the man’s throat, and he was taken below, wrapped in a blanket, and thoroughly rubbed until the suspended circulation was once more restored. The next day he was up and about the decks again, very thankful for his escape from a great peril.
Within twenty-four hours the wind veered around to the southward, and we soon passed the Horn and ran up into the South Pacific, exchanging the Antarctic ice for the blue skies and summer weather of the tropics. In a couple of weeks we reached Valparaiso, where we remained until, a few days later, we were joined by our consorts, when profiting by our experience in Rio Janeiro, but a small number of men were permitted to go on shore each day.
We left Valparaiso January 15, 1847, and, after an uneventful run up the coast, sighted the Farallones, off the Bay of San Francisco, on the 5th of March.
Then all was excitement; for we had heard nothing of the condition of affairs in California since leaving New York six months before, and we did not know what reception we might encounter.
We stood in past the heads, since known as the Golden Gates, and ran up the lower bay, when suddenly we saw displayed, from a staff, on the Presidio, the American flag, and we then knew that we were among friends. A few minutes later we sighted the fleet at anchor, with our country’s flag flying from the peaks of the ships, and we ran up and anchored off the little hamlet of Yerba Buena, as what is San Francisco was then called, after a voyage of one hundred and fifty-five days.
Commodore Stockton, in the frigate Congress, was then in command of the naval forces, and the sloop-of-war Portsmouth, Captain Montgomery, was also in the harbor. A few weeks later Commodore McKean came over from China in the Razee Independence; and as our two consorts arrived a week after us, and General Kearney reached Monterey with a force of dragoons, overland, it will be seen that the United States was in overpowering force in California.
We discharged our government stores, carrying them ashore in our boats and landing them on the beach near Clark’s Point, in the manner described by Dana in his “Two Years Before the Mast;” for everything was very primitive at Yerba Buena in those days, and it would have required a very vivid imagination to conceive that the bay would within a lifetime be lined with wharves, and that a superb city of several hundred thousand inhabitants was to replace the cluster of half a dozen adobe houses we saw before us.
Our cargo out, we took in a sufficient quantity of sand ballast, and in June sailed for Manila. Within a week after getting off the coast of California, we struck the southeast trades, and had a most delightful run across the Pacific Ocean, the wind scarcely varying a couple of points for six weeks, when we sighted Guam, one of the Ladrone Islands. As scurvy had made its appearance among our crew, Captain Arthur decided to anchor and lay in a supply of fruit and vegetables. The natives soon came off to us with quantities of limes, yams, and cocoanuts, which they gladly exchanged for any articles of hardware we could spare.
The following day we got under weigh and stood to the westward for the Straits of St. Bernardino. At midnight breakers were seen close on the weather bow. We wore ship instantly to the eastward and hauled close on the wind for an hour and a quarter, the wind not permitting us to lay better than east half south. At 1.45 A. M. we tacked to the southward, and hoped to weather this reef, which we had not found set down on our chart; but at 3.15 breakers were again seen on the weather bow too near to allow us to tack. We accordingly wore, and when before the wind the ship struck under the forefoot and remained stationary. The wind was S. S. E., and fortunately the water was as smooth as a mill-pond.
We furled all sails, and I was sent by Captain Arthur in the cutter to sound around the ship. I found the eastern edge of the reef on which we lay to be very steep, with shelves projecting beyond each other as it deepened. These edges were of very sharp and ragged coral, descending so rapidly as scarcely to allow room to lay an anchor on.
The reef was about one mile and a quarter in length from north to south, and perhaps one hundred and fifty yards in breadth from east to west, and in the form of a crescent. Its concave side to the eastward was that on which we lay, nearly in the centre, with our bow pointing directly over the reef. Under our jib-boom there was but five feet of water; under the stern eleven feet; under the fore chains fifteen feet on the port side and thirty feet on the starboard side, and under the main chains four fathoms on one side and eight fathoms on the other.
Returning and reporting these facts, Captain Arthur had all our boats hoisted out and a kedge anchor laid under the port quarter in deep water, and a hawser attached to it and taken to the capstan and hove taut. The stream anchor was next laid on the starboard bow and its cable hove taut. All three boats were manned and attached to a tow-line from the bowsprit end. The jib, spanker, and staysails were loosed ready for hoisting.
By eleven o’clock the wind veered to the southwest and became squally, the tide began to flow and the swell to heave. At 11.30 the ship began to move, but just then the hawser parted. Captain Arthur immediately ordered the boats to pull away about forty-five degrees abaft the starboard beam; the breeze freshened and gave a greater impulse to the strain of the stream cable, and, to our delight, the ship launched off and got sternway, which, the boats assisting, swung her around on her heel with her head to the northward.
“Cut away the stream cable, Mr. Kelson!” shouted the captain, half wild with excitement.
The ship swung so as to bring the wind on the starboard quarter.
“Hoist away on the spanker, put the helm down!” She came to on the starboard tack. “Hoist away jib, main and main-topgallant staysails! Be lively, sir!”
Every one bent to the work with a hearty good-will; the good ship gathered headway; the boats came alongside.
“Aloft, men, and loose topsails and courses!” called out the captain.
The topsails were mastheaded, and the courses set as rapidly as possible, and we just shaved the reef, not more than five feet from its knife-like edge. Had we struck broadside on, it would have been the last of the ship, and, for the matter of that, of us also.
Thank God! we were clear of the reef, losing in the effort our stream and kedge anchors and a couple of hawsers, which we gladly relinquished in our joy at this narrow escape from wreck.
We steered N. N. W. between two other long reefs, which broke white as we passed them, and at last emerged to clear water, and again shaped our course for the straits. A week later, we anchored at the mouth of the Pasig in the beautiful Bay of Manila.
The city of Manila, on the island of Luzon, is the capital of the Philippine Islands, one of the most highly cherished of the Spanish possessions. It is the residence of the viceroy, who, at this great distance from home, is in everything but name a reigning monarch, and, indeed, supports almost as much state as his royal master in Madrid.
The bay is superb, almost as fine as that of Rio de Janeiro, and the city itself is much more curious and interesting to the traveler than Rio. The River Pasig divides the city, one portion, which is walled, being devoted almost exclusively to the palaces of the viceroy and the archbishop, the Hall of Audience, the military barracks, and innumerable churches and convents. Outside of the walls, along the shore of the bay, is the beautiful drive, the Calzada, where all the fashionable world drive in the cool of the evening, while the bands play choice selections of operatic music.
On the other side of the river is the residential quarter and the shops. The population was then about one hundred and fifty thousand, of which more than three quarters were natives, the ruling class and the aristocracy being of Spanish birth.
One of the many sights in Manila was the enormous government cheroot factory, where nearly twenty thousand people, mostly women, are employed.
We loaded here with hemp and sugar, which we carried home to Boston by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, having an uneventful passage of one hundred and sixty-five days to Boston Light.