Returning home one day, I found that I had received a letter. “West Indies Trading Co.” was embossed on the envelope, and I wondered what sort of trouble I was in. But, as it turned out, the letter was an employment proposal. Apparently Captain Martindale had given me high marks in a recommendation to The West Indies Trading Company and they wanted me to be the first mate on a trading vessel that was sailing for Brazil. “First mate?” I said out loud as I read the letter.
So I made a personal visit to the company’s Boston office, and, after discussing this and that, decided to sign on. It was at that moment that a clap of thunder sounded, and a shiver ran through my body. Soldiering on with the conversation, I asked about the cargo the ship would be carrying and what, if anything, I might bring to trade myself. The cargo, I was told, would be cast iron, wheat, and whale oil, which were to be traded for coffee, sugar, tobacco, port wine, and bananas. I did not see many options for me there and, in the end, decided to trade nothing.
Before the departure date, I approached Paul Matthews and asked him if he would do two things for me while I was gone: Look after of my cottage and look after my bank account. And he said that he would.
The ship was a 3-masted schooner named The Sea Serpent. Our destination was the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, and with a crew . . . including myself . . . of twelve men we embarked. The voyage took two weeks. “Rio” was an attractive port city with a mountainous terrain and much greenery, and, without much of a to-do, we docked, unloaded our cargo, traded, loaded, and re-embarked.
We were five days into the return voyage when trouble hit. It was late at night and I was roused from my sleep by the rocking of the ship. Shortly there-after the order of “All hands on deck!” was called out. I quickly got dressed and, by the time I arrived up on deck, we were in the middle of a full-blown hurricane. It was like walking into a nightmare . . . the pitch-black darkness, the shrieking and howling of the wind, the rain coming at us like so many bullets of water. It was madness. The captain ordered us to drop the mainmast sails, and we were all in perfect agreement on the wisdom of that command, but a moment after he issued this order we heard a loud crack . . . the sound of timber breaking . . . and right there before our eyes the mainmast came falling down. It crashed onto the deck and was then dragged by the wind over the side, off the ship, and out to sea. And in an act that would well be described as “facetious” I yelled, “No need to drop the mainmast sails Captain.”
It was at this point that the men fired one of our cannons. Firing a cannon in a storm is an old and honored tradition among seafaring men. It is an urgent message to anyone within, well, cannon shot of the ship. If I were to attempt to translate the message, it would be, I think, “We are about to die!
Please come save us!” And each successive firing of the cannon would, I am sure, place additional exclamation marks at the ends of those two sentences.
Now, it is hard for me to imagine someone . . . upon hearing the cannon shot . . . being eager to venture out into a hurricane to help a ship in danger, but, that is the supposition, and so, we fired one of our cannons.
We fired the cannon two more times and then the captain gave the order to abandon ship. I ran below deck shouting “Abandon ship!” “Abandon ship!” . . . which I secretly enjoyed doing. Before returning topside, I darted into the galley and grabbed two empty buckets. All twelve of us then climbed into the longboat . . . which is a sort of cutter with two sets of oars . . . and we lowered ourselves down into some very angry waves.
I sat in the stern and, while four of the fellows rowed, two of us bailed, and we were doing all right . . . under the circumstances. It was after perhaps forty-five minutes of struggling through the storm when I spotted what I thought looked like land. In that pitch blackness and rain it was hard to see five feet, but a silhouette of some landmass seemed to loom in the distance.
The other men then saw it, and when they did, our oarsmen turned into madmen and began to feverishly work the oars to move the longboat in a direction . . . away from the landmass. You see, as bad as they are out at sea, the waves are only at half strength compared to their power when they break on shore, and so, it would likely mean our deaths if we allowed our boat to be pulled in toward that coast.
We tried and we tried with a tenacity none of us had ever known, but we were fighting a losing battle. And as the waves drew us closer and closer toward the mysterious landmass our efforts became more and more desperate.
If there had been a cannon on board we would have fired it.
Then, without any sort of warning, our boat was unceremoniously flipped forward . . . as if we had been little more than an annoyance to the sea which had now lost its patience with us . . . and I was given a short flight and then plunged down into the ocean. I had no idea how deeply I had been thrown, but, as soon as I stopped going down, I started swimming up . . . frantically. I did not know the fastest swimmer in the world . . . who-ever he was . . . but I was certain that, at that moment, I could have given him a run for his money.
Breaking the surface was a huge relief, though only a temporary one.
Breath out, breath in, thrown down again. But I now had experience at not being drowned, and . . . with arms and legs flailing away . . . I was soon at the surface again. This time I came out into a wave that was cresting and was given a little ride, which I would have enjoyed, had it not been for the prospect of sharp rocks, which I felt certain awaited my arrival on shore.
Thrown down once more, then to swim up again, and this was it. I was about to be cast onto the land. I had come to a moment of truth.
It was sand! I had been thrown onto a beach. The overwhelming sense of relief caused me to smile . . . despite my present difficulties . . . but I made a crucial mistake. I hesitated, and, by the time I had gotten to my feet and had begun to run, the next wave knocked me down and . . . with its strong undertow . . . dragged me back into the ocean. “Oh the unfairness of it!”
But it was not as bad as I had feared, and in another moment I was cast onto the shore again, and this time I took to my heels . . . with alacrity. One last wave managed to knock me down, but did no further damage.
When I was safely beyond the reach of the waves I stopped to catch my breath . . . and thank God for allowing me to make it through that peril.
I then turned toward the ocean . . . the ocean that had been so kind to me before, but was now a raging monster . . . and looked out at the crashing waves I could hear but could not really see . . . and stood there as I came to grips with my situation.
My shipmates came to mind and I turned and started to stagger along the coast . . . dragging myself through the wind and rain. I hadn’t gone far when I saw the futility of the search . . . and gave it up . . . and headed inland to look for some kind of shelter.
After fifteen minutes or so of groping through the darkness I came upon a knot of trees about a hundred feet from shore and squeezed myself into the middle of them where I was protected reasonably well. And as I sat there, waiting for the storm to break, I pulled out my knife . . . which thankfully was still in its sheath . . . and carved the number three on the tree next to me . . . three being for Tuesday. Below that I carved the number four, for April, and below that the number seventeen. The year was eighteen hundred.
I would remember that much.
The storm battered the area for three more hours before letting up. I then lied down among those trees and tried to sleep. “Maybe I will be eaten by a tiger.” was my thought, but I was too tired to care.