The Devil in Paradise--Captain Putnam in Hawaii

by James L. Haley

  As soon as the bell rang, a young man emerged from a rear room to greet him. He appeared to be about twenty-five, of a spare build, dark-complected, with dark eyes and rather bushy brows, conveying immense intensity for one so young. “Good morning, sir,” he said. “How may we be of service?”

  “Good morning. I am Captain Putnam. I have come to see either Mr. Carter or Mr. Hendee.”

  The young man’s manner lightened several degrees as he erupted, “Oh, my God, of course you are! I should have recognized you from the engraving in your wife’s book. I am James Carter. Please, may I take your hand?”

  “You are gracious, Mr. Carter.” They shook hands. “Tell me, how on earth did a man of your youth become so established already in such a successful concern?”

  “To tell the truth, I come from a bookish family. My parents are both teachers, and indeed I tried my hand at teaching in the common schools; but a classroom holds so few, I realized that publishing books would reach a larger audience.”

  It was impossible not to compare Carter’s situation with that of Ross, for whom he had just had similar thoughts. Carter had education, which Ross lacked, but also ambition, which apparently Ross also lacked. Advancement in life must require both, failing family money and influence. “Wait. Are you that Carter fellow who tried to start a school for seamen at Cohasset?”

  “I am, sir. I hope that does not make us adversaries. I mean, I realize that if all seamen were well educated, they would likely find other employment.”

  “Ha! Perhaps in the future we will compete for them, but, for now, there are enough slothful ignoramuses in the country to keep the Navy well supplied.”

  “Oh, Captain, I am sorry that I am alone in the shop today. Mr. Hendee will be deeply grieved that he missed you. Have you come for copies of Mrs. Putnam’s book?”

  “No, in fact. Now, Mr. Carter, you may be aware that my wife has departed for the Sandwich Islands with that company of missionaries from the Congregationalist Church?”

  “Yes, sir. We corresponded very recently about what she might write about for her next book, for truly we must follow up such a success with some adventurous topic that will capture the public’s imagination. She wrote us that this was what she had determined upon. There was no time to gainsay her intention, for I myself could not have encouraged her to such a lengthy and . . . well . . .” It was apparent that he was searching for a discreet word.

  “Dangerous,” said Bliven.

  “Well, yes, dangerous enterprise. When I suggested an exotic locale for her next story, I fear that I may have planted the germ of the Sandwich Islands in her mind.”

  “Well, then, set your mind at rest: you did not originate her plan of action. She did not undertake it until after I was compelled to tell her that I and my ship were ordered to the Pacific, possibly for a term of three years. Her decision had more to do with staying nearer to me than wanting to supply you with an exciting adventure tale.”

  Carter’s head fell back slowly as he took a deep breath. “Oh, I see. Oh, my dear captain, what a mix of emotions, not to say contradictory emotions, that must arouse in you.”

  Bliven nodded. “Yes, you have pretty well grasped it. You must yourself be married, Mr. Carter?”

  “No, but I am almost engaged, as I fondly hope.”

  “Is she a strong-minded woman?”

  “She is, very much so.”

  “Ah, then God help you. But I will tell you, what I need of you is a modern geography. My father-in-law left us a large library, but his geography is going on twenty years old. I am sailing into waters and ports that are barely known in this country, and I desire to have some source that can prepare me at least to some little degree for what I am to encounter.”

  Carter nested an elbow in one hand and pulled at his chin with the other, resuming that penetrating demeanor that Bliven first saw. “Yes, I understand.” In a few seconds Carter pointed emphatically into the air. “I believe we can help you. Will you pardon me one moment?” Before Bliven could respond, Carter turned on his heel and withdrew into the second room of books, returning with a leather volume remarkable not for its height or breadth, but for its thickness. “This one is only a few years old, by the celebrated Dr. Jedidiah Morse.”

  Bliven took it, and cracked it open to the title page, which read A Compendious and Complete System of Modern Geography, with subtitles that went on for line after line.

  “If you will permit me to show you”—Carter left the book in Bliven’s hand but peeled a few pages further on—“you will see that it opens with an alphabetical index of all the place names discussed, so you don’t have to waste time searching and searching for a location of particular interest.”

  “Well, then, I shall test it.” They huddled together while Bliven searched through this index and found entries, with their corresponding page numbers, for Canton and Malacca and Malaya and the Sandwich Islands. There was no entry for Singapore, which was no demerit, because it had only existed for a year or so. “Oh, yes, I believe this will just do.”

  “You will see it is not an atlas per se, but there are maps of the various regions on the pages that fold out.”

  “Yes. I’ll take it.”

  Carter backed away a step. “There is one other thing. If I remember correctly from your wife’s book, although I do not know if it is factual or if she invented it for purposes of the story—one can never be certain when reading historical fiction—I believe you were a midshipman on the schooner Enterprise.”

  “Indeed I was. It was my first time at sea.”

  “And you served under a lieutenant named Porter?”

  “Oh, he was and is a very real officer, and a very fine one.”

  “Yes, one moment.” He went to a nearby shelf and returned with two matching volumes. “Do you own a copy of his book?”

  “His book?” He took them, opening the one whose spine was stamped Volume I, and Bliven’s mouth fell open by degrees as he read: Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean, by Captain David Porter, in the United States Frigate Essex. “Why, Mr. Carter, I am amazed. I knew of course that Porter had taken the Essex to the Pacific during the war, but of this book I had no cognizance whatever. I have never seen nor heard of it. How is that even possible?”

  “Well, sir, you are yourself at sea for long months at a time, and then so soon as you return you are on the first coach for your home in Connecticut. Perhaps it is not so surprising. Also, as I think on it, it was published in New York, and so was not seen so prevalently hereabouts.”

  “Well, I must have it. Its value to me could be inestimable.”

  “Then it is yours, sir, along with Jedidiah Morse.”

  “How much do I owe you?”

  “Not so much as a half dime, Captain Putnam. You must have them with our compliments.”

  “Oh, you need not—”

  “Yes, sir, we do need. Listen to me now: your wife’s effort is thrusting us into the front rank of Boston publishers. This is the least we can do to express our gratitude and warm regard.”

  “Then, sir, I thank you.” Bliven extended his hand and Carter took it.

  “I am sorry you will be away for so long. You would be welcome here often.”

  “And I am sorry I cannot take you with me.” He looked once more around the chamber. “You and your books.”

  Carter laughed. “It is probably a bit premature to think of opening a bookshop in the Sandwich Islands. Besides”—he grew more thoughtful—“I have not so adventurous a nature. I fear that some of us are fated to be but mental travelers. But God speed you, Captain Putnam, and bring you and your lady safe home.”

  Bliven departed the bookshop light of foot, and marveling how a man of only five-and-twenty could have come to such a facility with books or such elegant manners. It was impossible not to compare him to the rootless or uprooted vagabonds who so
often volunteered for service in the Navy—over a veritable parade of whom he would soon have to pass judgment on whether to allow them to serve on his Rappahannock. Young Carter gave him hope for the coming generation.

  Back aboard the Rappahannock, he leafed through Morse’s nearly seven hundred pages of geography, but he was consumed by curiosity for Porter’s journal, especially on the point of Porter’s governing his crew when they were among the Pacific Islands, with their legendary enticements of native women. He remembered Porter as a strict disciplinarian but fair, insofar as the Navy understood “fair,” and one who tried to obviate trouble with his crew by anticipating their desires and, to the extent compatible with good order, accommodating them.

  Bliven quickly discovered that Porter’s journal was fronted with a summary of contents by chapter, and upon seeing that the first volume ended with his visit to the Galápagos Islands, realized that the information salient to him must open the second volume. But first he allowed himself to smile that Porter, like grizzled seamen before him who had taken pen in hand, felt compelled to deprecate the quality of his literary effort, and aver that he had written his book—his massive book of five hundred pages in two volumes—only at the insistence of friends, and for the education of his son, who he hoped would grow up to become himself a creditable naval officer.

  After the Galápagos Islands, Porter made straight as an arrow for the Marquesas Islands and hove to at Nuku Hiva, the largest of that group. A quick reference to the Morse geography made Bliven believe that he was on the right trail for what he wanted to learn, for that was an island of some one hundred thirty square miles—it would take six or seven of them to equal his own Litchfield County—but crowded with as many as one hundred thousand natives, and thus might stand in as a substitute for one of the Sandwich Islands, thickly populated with islanders of a similar race and customs.

  After establishing a shore base from which to repair the Essex’s accumulated damage from her passage around the Horn and extensive action, Porter indulged his crew by allowing a quarter of them to spend the night ashore, each quarter in turn. “All was helter skelter,” Porter wrote, “and promiscuous intercourse. Every girl the wife of every man in the mess, and frequently of every man in the ship.” This open-ended idyll, however, did not come without cost. No larger an island than Nuku Hiva was, it was divided between two chiefs who were bitter and deadly rivals, with lesser chiefs being forced to choose between them. By luck, the women who Porter’s seamen enjoyed came from the dominant tribe, and after a few weeks of serial abandon, their chief made it clear that he expected these powerful new white men to assist him in subjugating his enemy. To this Porter acquiesced, but then, when it was time for the Essex to be on her way, Porter found his men reluctant to leave. This was an experience well known to British ships, whose captains did not hesitate to resort to brute discipline to extract obedience. This tactic had provoked a famous mutiny in the spring of 1789 on HMS Bounty, formerly a small merchant vessel that the Royal Navy purchased to attempt the transplanting of breadfruit trees to the West Indies.

  Porter’s account was consonant with everything Bliven had read about the Sandwich Islands. So far as anyone knew, venereal diseases had once been unknown among the Hawaiians, and Captain Cook’s determination to keep his chancred seamen away from the native women was founded not in cruelty to his men but in his desire not to infect these healthy if lusty people with the burden of English licentiousness. After his initial discovery of the islands, and just before continuing north to the polar regions, Cook had sent a watering party ashore on the tiny island of Niihau, at the northern end of the chain, to return immediately upon filling their casks. Opposing winds and rearing, booming surf forced them to stay on land for two days, and Cook knew what the result would be. When he returned after a year, the Endeavour’s surgeon inspected the eager women as they boarded her, and discovered that genital sores had become as sure a mark of imperial claim as planting their flag. Cook was dismayed, but on this second visit, with both his men and the local women equally afflicted, threw up his hands and allowed all to have their pleasure.

  With the Sandwich Islands’ active trade with the West, Bliven’s hands would be tied in the local quarrels between chiefs, but medicine, at least, had advanced to a point where the diseases of love could be treated—albeit painfully and over a long period.

  BOSTON

  30TH OCTOBER, 1819

  My Dear Dr. Berend,

  I have conferred with Commodore Hull, on the subject of the Rappahannock’s coming dispatch to the Pacific, to establish an American naval presence in the Sandwich Islands, and Canton, and to make contact with the new British establishment and enclave which is to be called Singapore. Part of our assignment is to face down and if needs be fight the pirates who have long infested the Strait of Malacca, and who have recently committed depredation upon our country’s shipping.

  You have perhaps received Mr. Hull’s letter to you requesting your return to duty, with the advisory also that the voyage might be of as much as three years’ duration. I hope you will not object to my adding, I do not wish to undertake such an arduous duty with anyone other than yourself as the surgeon on board my ship. We must operate in a portion of the globe largely unknown to our country, with, we may expect, local diseases and afflictions equally unknown to us.

  Certainly, there are many who would decline such a duty, and all would admit that a man of your years has earned the right to some leisurely posting. But frankly, sir, it is precisely to your years—that is to say, your broad experience—to which I appeal. Into such a far corner of the world I am loath to lead my men without feeling certain that they shall have the best medical care that can be given. And after the retirement from sea duty of our esteemed Cutbush, I consider that to be yourself. Therefore if you are in good health, and you have still no family connection to keep you land-bound, I do most keenly hope that you will come. Miller sails with me, and we shall have many fine dinners in the tropical climes!

  And touching upon the point of medical care, Doctor, I need not tell you that the Pacific Islands are a very popular port of call for all sailors from the Western world, in no small part owing to the extreme amorous nature of the native women. This has been well known since the earliest discoveries. In the Sandwich Islands, particularly, from all accounts, the sexual aggressiveness of the women has in the past extended so far as to actually chase down white sailors and verily pull them into their huts to have carnal relations with them. To such a course, naturally, most seamen have not the least objection, but as a consequence the various species of the Diseases of Venus are rampant, and we must prepare accordingly. I doubt that such a moral place as Boston has enough of the proper medicines in the whole city, as may answer our need. Without implying that Virginia is any less moral a place, may I advise you? Round up all you can of the mercurous chloride, or any new formulations of mercury as have been found effective, before you come, and then see what you can find here.

  Finally, allow me to forward a message from the bosun, Mr. Yeakel, that the efficacy of your treatment of the sail room must have been devastating to the pests therein, for when he opened the compartment some days later to inspect it, and restock the canvas, he says that the remainder of the fumes nearly put his eyes out. He begs me to say further, that if any vermin survived this onslaught, it is not because your effort was at all deficient, but that they must be immortal beings.

  In closing, let me urge you to haste, if you can come, for like the great Dr. Cutbush, I know that you would prefer to inspect and examine those who volunteer and aspire to our crew, and winnow out those who are weak of limb or constitution.

  This letter, Doctor, comes with the great respect and friendship of Bliven Putnam, Capt. USN

  DR. CRAIGHEAD BEREND, USN

  NAVY YARD, GOSPORT

  There were other letters to write, and in the absence of a purser, Ross procured a stack of stationery f
rom the ship’s stores, noting the withdrawal meticulously in the records so that the new purser, when they acquired one, could account for the discrepancy. Bliven wrote to Commodore Hull—he could easier have just told him, but he desired the record in writing—directing his share of the Mobile prize money, when it came, to his wife’s business manager; and he wrote to that manager, instructing him to convert the Navy’s draught to gold and silver. He was not to deposit it in any bank, nor entail it in any investment. He was to keep it secure, keeping himself informed of his parents’ needs as well as those of Mrs. Marsh, whose longtime advisor he was, and use the money to supply their wants. He wrote to Sam Bandy that he expected to be in Charleston within a couple of months and hoped that they could stage a reunion. And he wrote to young James Carter, thanking him again for the gift of the books, and instructing that the royalties from Clarity’s novel should also be kept paid current to her manager.

  Every day that passed of the next two weeks seemed to crawl by, and made Bliven the more anxious for the open sea. Closing up the Rappahannock’s hull slowed as he won Hull’s approval to have Edwards’s crew wall off a safe powder handling room lined with copper and lit by lanterns through thick glass, after it became likely that the powder he took on in Charleston would be bulk, in casks, and not premeasured in silk bags, as was now standard. And he wanted a bigger gun room for small arms, because he requested and was granted an amplified contingent of marines, given that pirates Eastern or Western relied on boarding ships for hand-to-hand combat, since they stood no chance in a duel of heavy cannon. James Carter took it upon himself to acquire a few further books with information on Malaya, mostly in memoirs of the minor English nobility recounting their adventures in foreign service. Bliven was reading one so dutifully in the late morning that he started when he heard Ross’s three raps on the cabin door.