One cold winter evening, a pull at the bell, and a woman in distress wished to see me. Her poor son George,—George Somerby,—“you remember him, sir; he was a boy in the Alert; he always talks of you,—he is dying in my poor house.” I went with her, and in a small room, with the most scanty furniture, upon a mattress on the floor,—emaciated, ashy pale, with hollow voice and sunken eyes,—lay the boy George, whom we took out a small, bright boy of fourteen from a Boston public school, who fought himself into a position on board ship (ante, p. 232), and whom we brought home a tall, athletic youth, that might have been the pride and support of his widowed mother. There he lay, not over nineteen years of age, ruined by every vice a sailor’s life absorbs. He took my hand in his wasted feeble fingers, and talked a little with his hollow, death-smitten voice. I was to leave town the next day for a fortnight’s absence, and whom had they to see to them? The mother named her landlord,—she knew no one else able to do much for them. It was the name of a physician of wealth and high social position, well known in the city as the owner of many small tenements, and of whom hard things had been said as to his strictness in collecting what he thought his dues. Be that as it may, my memory associates him only with ready and active beneficence. His name has since been known the civilized world over, from his having been the victim of one of the most painful tragedies in the records of the criminal law.kh I tried the experiment of calling upon him; and, having drawn him away from the cheerful fire, sofa, and curtains of a luxurious parlor, I told him the simple tale of woe, of one of his tenants, unknown to him even by name. He did not hesitate ; and I well remember how, in that biting, eager air, at a late hour, he drew his cloak about his thin and bent form, and walked off with me across the Common, and to the South End, nearly two miles of an exposed walk, to the scene of misery. He gave his full share, and more, of kindness and material aid; and, as George’s mother told me, on my return, had with medical aid and stores, and a clergyman, made the boy’s end as comfortable and hopeful as possible.
The Alert made two more voyages to the coast of California, successful, and without a mishap, as usual, and was sold by Messrs. Bryant and Sturgis, in 1843, to Mr. Thomas W. Williams, a merchant of New London, Connecticut, who employed her in the whale-trade in the Pacific. She was as lucky and prosperous there as in the merchant service. When I was at the Sandwich Islands in 1860, a man was introduced to me as having commanded the Alert on two cruises, and his friends told me that he was as proud of it as if he had commanded a frigate.
I am permitted to publish the following letter from the owner of the Alert, giving her later record and her historic end,—captured and burned by the rebel Alabama:—
NEW LONDON, March 17, 1868.
RICHARD H. DANA, ESQ.:
Dear Sir,—I am happy to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 14th inst., and to answer your inquiries about the good ship Alert. I bought her of Messrs. Bryant and Sturgis, in the year 1843, for my firm of Williams and Haven, for a whaler, in which business she was successful until captured by the rebel steamer Alabama, September, 1862, making a period of more than nineteen years, during which she took and delivered at New London upwards of twenty-five thousand barrels of whale and sperm oil. She sailed last from this port, August 30, 1862, for Hurd’s Island (the newly discovered land south of Kerguelen’s), commanded by Edwin Church, and was captured and burned on the 9th of September following, only ten days out, near or close to the Azores, with thirty barrels of sperm oil on board, and while her boats were off in pursuit of whales.
The Alert was a favorite ship with all owners, officers, and men who had anything to do with her; and I may add almost all who heard her name asked if that was the ship the man went in who wrote the book called “Two Years before the Mast”; and thus we feel, with you, no doubt, a sort of sympathy at her loss, and that, too, in such a manner, and by wicked acts of our own countrymen.
My partner, Mr. Haven, sends me a note from the office this P.M., saying that he had just found the last log-book, and would send up this evening a copy of the last entry on it; and if there should be anything of importance I will enclose it to you, and if you have any further inquiries to put, I will, with great pleasure, endeavor to answer them.
Remaining very respectfully and truly yours,
THOMAS W. WILLIAMS.
P. S.—Since writing the above I have received the extract from the log-book, and enclose the same.
The last Entry in the Log-Book of the Alert.
SEPTEMBER 9, 1862.
Shortly after the ship came to the wind, with the main yard aback, we went alongside and were hoisted up, when we found we were prisoners of war, and our ship a prize to the Confederate steamer Alabama. We were then ordered to give up all nautical instruments and letters appertaining to any of us. Afterwards we were offered the privilege, as they called it, of joining the steamer or signing a parole of honor not to serve in the army or navy of the United States, Thank God no one accepted the former of these offers. We were all then ordered to get our things ready in haste, to go on shore,—the ship running off shore all the time. We were allowed four boats to go on shore in, and when we had got what things we could take in them, were ordered to get into the boats and pull for the shore,—the nearest land being about fourteen miles off,—which we reached in safety, and, shortly after, saw the ship in flames.
So end all our bright prospects, blasted by a gang of miscreants, who certainly can have no regard for humanity so long as they continue to foster their so-called peculiar institution, which is now destroying our country.
I love to think that our noble ship, with her long record of good service and uniform success, attractive and beloved in her life, should have passed, at her death, into the lofty regions of international jurisprudence and debate, forming a part of the body of the “Alabama Claims”; that, like a true ship, committed to her element once for all at her launching, she perished at sea, and, without an extreme use of language, we may say, a victim in the cause of her country.
R. H. D., JR.
BOSTON, May 6, 1869.
Endnotes
1 (p. 7) the brig Pilgrim: Particulars of the Pilgrim’s design and history are included in the 1911 edition of Two Years Before the Mast, prepared by Dana’s son, Richard Henry Dana III. In the Appendix, he gives the vessel’s information, as recorded in the Official Registry, May 5, 1825:The brig Pilgrim “was built in the year 1825 at Medford, Mass., as appears by certificate of Sprague and James, master carpenters; under whose direction she was built”—“has 2 decks and 2 masts”—“her length is 86 feet and 6 inches, her breadth 21 feet 7½ inches, her depth 10 feet 9¾ inches”—“and she measures one hundred and eighty tons and 56/95ths”—“has a figure head and a square stern; and no galleries.”
2 (p. 7) undergraduate at Cambridge: Dana was an undergraduate at Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts; he had completed his sophomore year. He contracted measles at the beginning of his junior year, in 1833. The disease so affected his eyesight that Dana was unable to continue academic study for the entire year. Frustrated and in need of stimulation and a healing environment for his eyes, Dana signed on as a common sailor.
3 (p. 10) larboard: When the copyright for Two Years Before the Mast reverted back to Dana, he put out an author’s edition (1869) with many qualifying footnotes. Of the term “larboard,” Dana wrote, “Of late years, the British and American marine, naval and mercantile, have adopted the word ‘port’ instead of ‘larboard,’ in all cases on board ship, to avoid mistake from similarity of sound [that is, to the term “starboard”]. At the time ‘port’ was used only at the helm.”Jack London reflected on the obsolete term in his essay “A Classic of the Sea,” published in his 1917 book The Human Drift. “Try to imagine,” he wrote, “‘All larboard bowlines on deck!’ being shouted down into the forecastle of a present day ship. Yet that was the call used on the Pilgrim to fetch Dana and the rest of his watch on deck.”
4 (p. 11) eight bells were struck: Eig
ht bells are struck at four, eight, and twelve o’clock. Dana explained how bells mark time at sea in The Seaman’s Friend, his 1841 treatise on practical seamanship.At noon, eight bells are struck, that is, eight strokes are made upon the bell; and from that time it is struck every half-hour throughout the twenty-four, beginning at one stroke and going as high as eight, adding one at each half-hour. For instance, twelve o‘clock, which is eight bells, half past one three bells, and so on until four o’clock, which will be eight bells. The watch is then out, and for half past four you strike one bell again. A watch of four hours therefore runs out the bells.
5 (p. 20) “Wherein the cub-drawn bear ... their furs dry”: The Shakespearean lines are from King Lear (act 3, scene 1). Dana studied Lear with the Reverend Leonard Woods during the period he spent away from Harvard at the end of his freshmen year. Contemplating his sea life and the eventual storms, Dana recalled Lear’s “contending with the fretful element.”
6 (p. 20) The “Philadelphia Catechism”: The title is a localism; sometimes the verse ends with the line “and polish the cable.” A holystone is a soft sandstone used for cleaning or whitening a ship’s deck. Sailors referred to large stone blocks as “bibles” and called smaller blocks “prayer books.” Dana explains how sailors used the stones on page 179.
7 (p. 25) “you’re worse than a Mahon soger!”: Sailors had a number of adjectives to add insult to the term soger (“soldier”; see also note 25 below). On page 331, a fight breaks out in the forecastle when a crew member is called a “black soger.” Here “Mahon” is used as a derogatory reference to Spanish soldiers at Port Mahon on Minorca; they had reputations as thieves and opportunists.
8 (p. 26) his chronometer or his sextant: The chronometer is defined in the 1914 Admiralty Manual of Navigation as “an enlarged clock”; this time-keeping navigational instrument to determine longitude was designed for accuracy and an ability to adjust to the demands of temperature change and range of vessel motion. The sextant, developed in 1787, is a navigational instrument with a graduated arc; capable of measuring altitudinal angles of up to 120°, it was used to determine latitude and longitude. In The Human Drift, Jack London gives a historical context for the Pilgrim’s faulty chronometer: “The Pilgrim sailed in a day when the chronometer was just coming into general use.” London reflected on the challenge of sailing without a working chronometer.
A navigator of the present would be aghast if asked to voyage for two years, from Boston, around the Horn to California, and back again, without a chronometer. In those days such a proceeding was a matter of course, for those were the days when dead reckoning was indeed something to reckon on, when running down the latitude was a common way of finding a place, and when lunar observations were direly necessary. It may be fairly asserted that very few merchant officers of to-day ever make a lunar observation, and that a large percentage are unable to do it.
9 (p. 26) we kept off on our way to Cape Horn: The Pilgrim sailed toward Cape Horn, part of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago at the southernmost tip of South America. Rounding the Horn involves sailing from 50° south latitude on the eastern tip of the continent around to 50° south latitude on the western tip. Charles Darwin and his HMS Beagle expedition sailed in the “region of the horn,” passing through the Strait of Magellan early in April 1834, seven months before Dana’s passage.
10 (p. 27) I obeyed the order to lay: This word “lay,” which is in such general use on board ship, being used in giving orders instead of “go;” as, “Lay forward!” “Lay aft!” “Lay aloft!” etc., I do not understand to be the neuter verb lie, mispronounced, but to be the active verb lay, with the objective case understood; as, “Lay yourselves forward!” “Lay yourselves aft!” etc. [Dana’s note]
11 (p. 31) a glass of grog: In 1740 Admiral Vernon of the Royal Navy ordered the dilution of sailors’ daily rum rations. A quart of water was added to the men’s one-pint ration of neat rum. The men called the Admiral “Old Grogham” or “Old Grog” because of the fabric of his grogram coat. The nickname passed on to the Admiral’s weakened rum. Anyone who had imbibed too much grog became “groggy.”
12 (p. 37) bound for Juan Fernandez: The ship is bound for a group of three South Pacific islands where Alexander Selkirk—the supposed prototype of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe—was marooned in 1704.
13 (p. 39) with all those things round his neck, he probably sank immediately: The image of Ballmer’s fall from the ship’s rigging follows directly after the albatross sighting. In so arranging the events from his voyage notebook, Dana creates a foreshadowing of the disaster and makes an allusion to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1797-1798), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The sailor’s fall, with ropes and the marline-spike about his neck, mirrors the albatross’s descent from its perch high above after being shot with a crossbow. This close connection of images conjures up Coleridge’s lines “Instead of the cross, the Albatross / About my neck was hung.”
14 (p. 41 ) Sailors have an unwillingness to wear a dead man’s clothes during the same voyage: Sailors considered it bad luck to wear clothes belonging to a deceased crew member, at least on the same voyage. In the small notebook (now in the Massachusetts Historical Society) in which Dana wrote during the voyage is the list of clothing he purchased at the auction of George Ballmer’s effects. Dana bought one blue jacket and two pairs of white duck trousers. On p. 39, he referred to his shipmate as “George Ballmer, the young English sailor.” In the 1911 edition of the book, Dana’s son included the crew list from the Pilgrim that identifies the sailor as George Bellamer from Boston.
15 (p. 42) Fins are wizards: The folk lore concerning Finns being wizards was first recorded in a 1658 text by Olaus Magnus. British anthropologist Edward B. Tylor noted the supposed power of Finns in his 1871 book Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom. He wrote of “the sorcerers’ art, practiced especially by Finnish wizards, of whose uncanny power over the weather our sailors have not to this day forgotten their old terror.”
16 (p. 53) to “haze” the crew: Haze is a word of frequent use on board ship, and never, I believe, used elsewhere. It is very expressive to a sailor, and means to punish by hard work. Let an officer once say, “I’ll haze you,” and your fate is fixed. You will be “worked up,” if you are not a better man than he is. [Dana’s note]According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this is the first record of the term “haze” used in a nautical sense. Because Dana wrote about previously unreported domains, at sea and in California, Two Years Before the Mast contains several other early usages of terms and phrases, such as “knock off,” and “toe the mark.”
17 (p. 57) called after him by the English: Dana is incorrect in his San Francisco Bay history. The bay was discovered by Gaspar de Portolá during his 1769 expedition. Dana did not make this correction in his 1869 revised text, but he did change the information regarding the bay’s naming to read “so named, I supposed, by Franciscan missionaries. ”
18 (p. 77) Mexican revenue laws: Dana originally detailed the tactics the crew used to avoid paying the large duty charges imposed by Mexican inspectors. This section from Dana’s original manuscript (housed at the Massachusetts Historical Society) was edited out before publication.The first part of the day the examination went on pretty well, but they evidently did not know much about their business. One London or Liverpool dockyard man would have been worth a dozen of them. We rolled things forward and aft, and passed them up one hatchway and down another, so that they lost all account of them. Then they opened nothing and many things went under the name of stores; and a cask of bullets marked “nails” was more than the men could lift. They got through the main hold by sundown, but the fore peak and run they probably knew nothing about. The after hold, where the more valuable goods were stowed, was kept till after supper. While they were at supper, two of us were sent into the after hold and coiled away an hawser over a large chest of “slops” belonging to the captain; a
nd the officers, by the time they had got through supper, did not know a chest from a hawser, so all was right. They came down with a man to carry a light, and planted themselves upon the first bale or barrel head they could find. There were four of us down there, but some of them who had been well primed through the day, looked as they thought the hold was alive with duck trousers and red shirts, and after looking about a little, felt as though they should like the fresh air, and passing up on deck, signed the certificate, and went ashore.
19 (p. 77) the Indians being slaves: Dana was witness to secularization’s chaotic repercussions for the Indians who had lived at the missions under what the Franciscans had designed as a sort of beneficial tutelage in preparation for greater personal freedom. Dana did not grasp the complexities of this process, its long history, and the tragic upheaval for the Indians. In his author’s edition of 1869, he revised the wording to read “the Indians being practically serfs.”
20 (p. 79) Bryant, Sturgis & Co.: Bryant, Sturgis and Company was one of five Boston firms engaged in the hide trade. Founded by John Bryant and William Sturgis in 1811, the company sent the first of many vessels and established a permanent California agent in the early 1820s. It became a leader in the profitable hide and tallow business, collecting hides along the Pacific coast for the New England market until 1840. Bryant, Sturgis and Company closed its Boston operation in 1863.
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