Away Off Shore

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  With the advent of “Gold Mania,” the clipper ships began to make San Francisco a regular stop, discharging high-priced cargoes for the miners before continuing on to China and Japan. Sanford quickly established a reputation as a tough and demanding agent in what was a very tough and demanding town. Captain Charles Low would never forget bringing the clipper ship N.B. Palmer into San Francisco on her maiden voyage, completing the passage from New York in 107 days, then a record. When the pilot refused to bring the ship into the wharf, Sanford, whom Captain Low described as “a regular driver, a Nantucket man,” told him that no matter what the pilot said, “the ship must come up to the wharf.” So the captain shrugged and told his crew to set sail, ultimately bringing the gigantic craft into the wharf with “every stitch of canvas on her.” According to Low, “A great crowd on the wharf cheered me most heartily. Mr. Sanford cried out, ‘Well done!’ ”

  But if San Francisco marked the beginning of an era, it also offered stirring testimony to the end of another, as the harbor’s mudflats became the graveyard for hundreds of old ships—many of them whalers—abandoned by their crews for the gold fields. Wrote Sanford, “Within the Golden Gate of San Francisco, I saw in 1852 1,000 ships, few of which ever went to sea again. . . . [T]he ships thus left were converted into stores, piers, and dwellings, some allowed to decay and wash to pieces about the rivers and bays, while a part . . . were broken up for the metal that was in them.” Late in life, he would equate this sad end to some of Nantucket’s “most majestic ships” with the Great Stone Fleet of the Civil War—a group of old whalers purposely sunk in Charleston Harbor by Union forces in a vain attempt to block Confederate shipping.

  But if their ships were no longer needed, the skills of Nantucket’s seamen were still in demand. In 1854, Mr. Low back in New York asked for Sanford’s recommendation regarding a Nantucket whaling captain who might take over as master of his original clipper ship, the Houqua (pronounced “HU-kwa”), named for a leading Chinese merchant. Sanford proposed Captain Henry Coleman, who had already retired to his two farms on Nantucket. In the tradition of island whaling captains, Coleman was an extremely earthy, no-frills fellow, and when he went to New York for the interview, Mr. Low, who happened to walk through the reception area, asked his clerk, “Who is that dirty man out there with trousers tucked in one boot and loose over the other?” Despite this first impression, Coleman got the job.

  Through his connection with Coleman and other clipper ship captains, Sanford procured a stunning collection of Chinese art, including ship portraits and scenes of Houqua’s gardens on Honan Island, now on display in the Nantucket Atheneum. By 1855, the frenetic pace (and profitability) of life in San Francisco had begun to slacken, and Sanford started to make plans for his permanent return to Nantucket. But first the Low company had one more job for him: arranging shipment of the French army’s horses and heavy equipment to the Crimean War via the Great Republic, the largest clipper ship ever built—325 feet long and 3,357 tons displacement. This final deal seems to have capped Sanford’s already considerable fortune, and in 1855 he returned to Nantucket.

  Once again, however, he was forced to resort to his old motto, “Never Despair”; for in June of that year, his only son Herbert, eleven, fell from the mast of a ship at the Nantucket wharf and died. Yet another death, that of an old friend, opened the door to a new life on the island, when he bought a 300-acre farm from the friend’s widow. Sanford would ultimately own three farms—Beechwood, Spotswood, and Norwood, all in the Polpis area of the island. Here he ran a state-of-the-art operation, crossbreeding cattle, experimenting with the use of sea kelp as fertilizer, and constructing a high-tech brick dairy that produced as much as 2,500 pounds of butter in a single year. Wrote one visitor, “It is one of the richest treats to visit a farm like this, whose owner is so full of enthusiasm and so heartily enjoys his occupation.”

  Despite this new life as a gentleman farmer, Sanford never lost his interest in the sea—an omnipresent reality on Nantucket, no matter how moribund its commercial life had become. Even though its harbor was now virtually empty, the island was almost constantly surrounded by ships. Indeed, for us today it is difficult to appreciate the sheer volume of shipping that passed by the island in the nineteenth century. In 1843, for example, the lightship anchored off the Nantucket shoals reported that 151 ships, 1,194 brigs, 8,228 schooners, and 3,525 sloops had passed through Nantucket Sound in a single year. In the 1870s a visitor approaching Nantucket on the steamer Island Home reported, “As far as the eye can discern, the fleet that passes almost without intermission is hurrying up and down the Sound.”

  When the weather turned bad, the shoals around Nantucket inevitably claimed more than their share of wrecks, and it was Sanford who spearheaded efforts to save as many lives as possible. Through his affiliation with both the Humane Society and Coast Guard, he supervised the construction and maintenance of lifesaving stations and “humane houses” for the benefit of shipwrecked seamen. In a fierce gale in April, 1880, no less than thirty-eight vessels were sighted from the tower of the First Congregational Church, many of them foundering on the shoals surrounding the island.

  One of the island’s most dramatic shipwrecks was that of the British Queen in 1851, when 226 Irish emigrants were saved through the courageous efforts of island residents. From this group came the man who supervised Sanford’s farming operations, Robert Mooney, whose descendants still live on the island today. Yet another wreck survivor who would one day owe a debt of gratitude to Sanford was Robert Ratliff. After being wrecked on the island in 1820, Ratliff shipped out on several whaling voyages, eventually earning the right to marry a local girl and settle down permanently on the island as a prominent rigger. Unfortunately, Ratliff, a veteran of the British Navy who had been among the crew that delivered Napoleon to St. Helena, lost everything in the Great Fire and ultimately ended up in the town’s poorhouse. Sanford wrote several articles for Nantucket and Boston papers concerning Ratliff’s situation, ultimately securing a government pension for the veteran that enabled him to live out his life in dignity.

  Through articles about not only Ratliff but a wide assortment of Nantucket whaling captains and ships, as well as a regular stream of obituaries whenever yet another “Sea King” was buried on Prospect Hill, Sanford left a rich and detailed account of the old whaling days on Nantucket. Within the snug comfort of his study, surrounded by his books and paintings, Sanford also read voluminously, scribbling his comments in the margins of his books. As Irene Jaynes Smith, a former librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, wrote, “Many of these notes show him to be a man of strong convictions with little patience for the misguided, and none at all for the misinformed. An error in statement which concerned Nantucket’s history, or the whaling industry, caused him to dip his pen in vitriol.”

  As to be expected, Sanford was not about to take Crèvecoeur’s claim about Nantucket wives and opium sitting down, terming it “A lie. Without a shadow of foundation.” However, when it came to adding to the glory of his native isle, Sanford was perfectly willing to be a little loose with the facts. In the pages of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pilot, he declared that one of the novel’s heroes, the Nantucketer Long Tom Coffin, was based on Reuben Chase (1754–1824): “I remember him well, just such a man as Mr. Cooper describes, over six feet tall, boney and angular, very powerful. He fought on the Bonhomme Richard in September, 1779, with the Heroic Paul Jones in North Sea, and it is here Cooper was made acquainted with him.” Unfortunately, Cooper did not enter the Navy until 1808, and Chase, although he did serve as midshipman with Jones, had been transferred to another ship by the time of the historic sea battle.

  When it came to his beloved China trade, Sanford was willing to believe almost anything if it fit his conception of Nantucket as the maritime leader of the western world. In 1884 he signed an affidavit testifying to the authenticity of a letter dated September 20, 1735, telling the story of what became known as “The Nantucket Tea Party.” This charming t
ale describes how Nathaniel Starbuck, Jr. (son of the “Great Woman”), returned from a voyage to China with the first box of tea “ever landed upon the island.” At that time, however, tea was no novelty in the colonies, having been sold in Boston as early as 1690. Certainly, a voyage to China in 1735 would have placed Starbuck at the very vanguard of the trade in America, but at that time he was a sixty-seven-year-old blacksmith, sheepherder, and store owner. Despite these and other inconsistencies, Sanford remained convinced of the letter’s veracity. In any event, “The Nantucket Tea Party” was reprinted many times in local and national newspapers and magazines, providing just the kind of exposure that Sanford felt was Nantucket’s due.

  Sanford was generally recognized as the island’s leading public personage. When President Grant visited the island in 1874, he rode in Sanford’s carriage; at one point the horses bolted and might have carried the President over the edge of Steamboat Wharf if Sanford had not coolly steered them into a tree on Broad Street. In 1882, President Arthur also visited Nantucket and addressed the public from the steps of Sanford’s house on Federal Street. If some called Sanford the “King of Nantucket,” he seems to have conducted himself with all the swagger and grace of true nobility. One islander recalled, “He used to wear a silk hat, drive a fast horse, and walk about with one hand in a coat-tail pocket.” Certainly Tristram Coffin, our country squire of old, could not have played the part any better.

  And, indeed, with F. C. Sanford, the process that Coffin had originally set in motion with the purchase of the island back in 1659 had finally come full circle. But whereas Coffin had started something new, Sanford presided over a community whose best days were behind it. To insure that those days might never be forgotten became his life’s work.

  But if Sanford’s message lives on, the memory of the messenger has been almost altogether lost. Although his Chinese paintings and portrait (by Eastman Johnson) can still be seen in the Nantucket Atheneum, his magnificent home is now gone. In 1966, it was tragically bulldozed to make room for the brick Town Building. He also owned a cottage in Siasconset known, appropriately enough, as the Frederick C. Sanford House, but it, too, has disappeared. Even his family plot in the Prospect Hill cemetery has no marker to show where he or any other member of his family is buried. Just like the Native Americans, first settlers, and Quakers before him, F. C. Sanford has vanished, almost without a trace.

  Epilogue

  ON JULY 8, 1891, the brand-new, 203-foot steamer the Gay Head chugged into Nantucket Harbor for the first time. Before the docklines could be secured on Steamboat Wharf, an eager crowd of islanders began to leap onto the Gay Head’s decks, curious to see the latest in the New Bedford, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamboat Company’s new line of elegant and speedy vessels. Inside, the gawking Nantucketers found an immaculate Neapolitan-style interior, featuring gold trim and cherry-wood seats with maroon velvet upholstery. Besides a fifty-foot social hall finished in black walnut and maple, the Gay Head boasted ten private staterooms, where passengers could relax amid a luxurious ensemble of specially crafted willow furniture.

  The new ship was not an acknowledgment of Nantucket’s central place in the world of commerce; quite the opposite, in fact. As the nation’s economy surged ahead in the decades after the Civil War, Nantucket’s viability as a commercial community had, as we have seen, declined with equal rapidity. But as we have also seen, it was not long before a new trend began to bring at least a hint of vitality to the island’s economy. The invigorating summertime climate and picturesque seaside haunts of Old Nantucket now made her, in a most New England way, a mecca for the wealthy and powerful in their quest for high-class R and R. The Grey Lady began to exchange her Quaker bonnet for a bathing costume; her chowders were no longer just the staple food of simple fishermen but a revitalizing nectar for the white-collared gods of American business as well as a handful of painters and writers.

  But these tycoons, middle managers, and artists were not the first to recognize Nantucket’s potential as a harbor of refuge. If the truth be told, Nantucket’s whaling captains were its original tourists. In between voyages, they inevitably spent as much time as possible in a recreational mode, getting to know their wives and children on “squantums” (the Nantucket equivalent of a picnic) or heading out to Siasconset with a few of their pals to fish, drink, and generally have a good time.

  In fact, the ramshackle collection of fishing shacks at Siasconset has been called America’s “first summer resort.” As we have seen, by the bank scandal of the 1790s it was already a well-established haven from the cares of the world, where a “plain simplicity” prevailed and where the unencumbered view of the ocean offered a balm to the soul. Prior to the Revolution, the islanders also entertained themselves in another outlying village—Polpis, where what Crèvecoeur described as a “house of entertainment” gave them the opportunity to “throw the bar” (the eighteenth-century equivalent of tossing horseshoes) and indulge in an “exhilarating bowl” of their favorite beverage before heading back to town. The island’s many ponds provided Nantucketers with yet another diversion. According to one account, many a whaling captain “had transferred his affections from the cable and harpoon to the hair-line and hook, . . . pursuing perch in a pond half a mile in circumference.”

  Even Nantucket’s last practicing Native American, Abram Quary, was part of this recreational trend, earning a reputation as the “Prince of Nantucket caterers.” In his later years, Abram would fly a flag whenever he had a pot of chowder on the stove. Easily seen from town, this signal inevitably brought a group of picnickers, who either walked, drove, sailed, or rowed to Abram’s house in Shimmo, where his table was always set with an immaculate white cloth. By the time his guests arrived, Abram would be gone, although it was expected that “a good sum of money” would be left on the table for his return.

  Seasonal celebrations such as today’s Daffodil Weekend and Christmas Stroll were anticipated by the sheep shearing held every year around June 20th. As early as 1801 a visitor to the island gave this report: “Not only great numbers come from the continent as shearers, but multitudes of hucksters and traders flock to the island at this time to buy wool and vend their wares; so that shearing-time, on Nantucket, is a sort of fair, resembling in everything but splendor and literature a Cambridge Commencement.” Rather than being the victims of the tourist industry, it might be argued that the Nantucketers were the ones who invented the concept.

  Since the island’s past is such an important part of its present-day appeal to summer people, pressures have inevitably come to bear on how that past is perceived. With F. C. Sanford leading the way, Nantucket’s history has been cast, for the most part, as a nostalgic roll call of heroic whalemen. And, as we have seen, since the Nantucketers of old did everything in their power to suppress all that might “dishonor” the island, this is just the way they would have wanted it.

  This impulse is by no means limited to Nantucket. As John Steinbeck, who summered on the island in the 1950s, once remarked, “There is a tendency among many American towns to make museums of themselves and to celebrate an illustrious past they never had.” Certainly the realities of Old Nantucket bore little to no resemblance to what we experience today: a whaling Williamsburg of boutiques and ice cream shops. We have already seen that the chaste, gray-shingle-and-white-clapboard look is not precisely as it was in the beginning for Nantucket’s townspeople. Indeed, there is more than a small bit of Disney in the diligent—some would say fanatical—efforts of “historical preservationists” to standardize modern Nantucket’s look and feel.

  If we seek to experience Nantucket at her most timeless, we must look not among the Federalist houses along Main Street or the artifacts in a museum; instead, we must venture to that most elemental yet ephemeral of common grounds: a Nantucket beach.

  Crèvecoeur stood on a beach at Siasconset, and as he watched the waves crash against the sand, he felt an almost overpowering sense of his own frailty: “How diminutive d
oes a man appear to himself when . . . standing as I did on the verge of the ocean!” Seventy-five years later, Ralph Waldo Emerson saw a similar spectacle but had a very different response: “On the seashore at Nantucket I saw the play of the Atlantic with the coast. . . . Ah what freedom & grace & beauty with all this might. The wind blew back the foam from the top of each billow as it rolled in, like the hair of a woman in the wind. . . . We should not have dared to believe that this existed. . . .”

  Well, it does exist (and probably will for at least another 400 years) much as it did when Bartholomew Gosnold first ventured in the island’s direction. Whether it overwhelms or inspires us, Nantucket is still a nation to itself, “away off shore.”

  Notes

  Specific references are given in order of appearance in the chapter.

  Abbreviations

  HN—Proceedings of the Nantucket Historical Association and Historic Nantucket

  MR—“Miscellaneous Records, 1659–1823” at the Registry of Deeds Office in the Nantucket Town and County Building

  NA—Nantucket Atheneum

  NHA—Nantucket Historical Association

  NI—Nantucket Inquirer and Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror

  NP—Nantucket in Print, ed. Everett U. Crosby (Nantucket, 1946)

  Preface

  The epigraph referring to the island as being “away off shore” appears in the “Nantucket” chapter (14) of Moby-Dick. Burke’s comments appear in his speech “Conciliation with the Colonies,” delivered in the House of Commons a few days after Burke talked with Benjamin Franklin, who knew more than most (being a “cousin” of the Folgers of Nantucket) about the island. Emerson recorded his remarks in his Journals , ed. Merton M. Sealts, Jr. (Cambridge, 1973), during a week-long stay on the island in 1847 when he delivered a series of lectures in the newly rebuilt Atheneum.