by Jane Cook
A recent graduate, Everett had been studying law under John’s tutelage at his Boston law office. Joining them later and traveling separately was John Spear Smith, nephew of secretary of state Robert Smith. Adams also brought with him two servants: Nelson, a free black domestic from Trinidad, and Martha Godfrey, Louisa’s chambermaid.
“Our voyage was very tedious—All but Mr. Adams and Mr. Smith very sick and as usual I having the whole care of the child, who suffered as much as any of us,” Louisa wrote from her nautical prison somewhere across the Atlantic Ocean.
The rolling of the boat as it rocked in the waves and winds was too much. At first the most common smell aboard ship was vomit, whose putrid fumes permeated their cabins as motion sickness got the better of them. No matter the delightful sighting of dolphins or the abundant catch of cod off the coast of Newfoundland—seasickness abounded.
Louisa became seasick the first time she traveled by ship with her husband. Leaving London in 1797 a few months after their wedding, the newlyweds crossed the North Sea toward the mouth of the Elbe River on their journey to Berlin, where Adams was to be a diplomatic minister. Back then she had an added excuse for her nausea; she was pregnant. Many disappointments had come since, but some things remained as constant as the stars. No matter her condition, beginning an ocean voyage still made her seasick; John always had the stomach of a seasoned sailor.
“I scarcely perceive that we are at sea,” John wrote. Such thoughts were a sharp contrast to his wife’s. Their opinions were so opposite, they seemed to be taking different trips. To him, the open ocean was an oasis. He spent his days reading and scouring sermons, the Bible, and books on geography and fish. “There is much time for study and meditation,” he observed. “The rest of mankind seem to be inhabitants of another planet.”
John played cards and daily recorded the temperature, latitude, and longitude as they crossed the Atlantic toward Scotland. He loved his thermometer so much that he called it his “amusement.” But he longed for more. He decided a celestial globe would have been an “agreeable companion” for such a voyage. Dating from ancient Greece, celestial globes depicted stars and constellations as they appear in the sky. These decorative ornaments were also useful for astronomical calculations.
What he really needed was a device to heal his wife’s heart and the foresight to turn around and take his boys with him. In his journal John called the enterprise before him “perhaps the most important of any that I have ever in the course of my life been engaged in.” He again implored the blessings of Providence on his mission, for the benefit of his country and family.
While John vanished into his books, an unwell, headache-prone Louisa poured herself into caring for Charles. Both were sick night and day. How did a two-year-old react to seasickness? Vomiting is unpleasant to anyone, but at least an adult knows what’s going on. Unlike a baby who spits up on occasion, a two-year-old is aware that something awful, uncomfortable, and frightening is happening.
As ill as her son was, Louisa was grateful just to be able to hug him. He was the last child she had. “Broken hearted miserable, alone in every feeling; my boy was my only comfort,” she reflected.
Louisa carried one hope: this venture would be a one-act or two-act play at the most. “I had thought that one year would have been the extent of my stay,” she later wrote. If all went well and Russia’s emperor accepted her husband’s credentials, then she would remove her costume as a diplomat’s wife and return home in year to give a thousand kisses to George and John.
While hope of reunion kept Louisa sane, John focused on the immediate outlook. Though mindful of the difficulties of sea travel, he basked in the distinctive difference from this journey and the ocean voyages he undertook during the height of the American Revolution. Concluding that England had revoked its policies and now recognized American trade rights after recent negotiations, President Madison had recently reopened trade with England. By June 1809 more than six hundred American merchant ships had embarked for Europe.
“The dangers of war . . . do not threaten us now,” John wrote of the policy change.
So he thought.
Wind direction is critical for a sailing ship’s success. Wonderful weather followed the Horace from Boston across the Atlantic, around Scotland, and into the North Sea. Their voyage progressed without interruption until they reached the Norwegian coast on September 17, 1809.
Although the day had started with a picturesque panorama of steep, rugged mountains, Louisa noticed they hadn’t passed a vessel since leaving the previous port. The sea was empty of ships. She soon discovered the reason when a tempest rolled in and stole the scenic show.
With sharklike speed, a storm seized the Horace and shook its sails. Clouds hovered. Heavy winds blew the ship across the water. Louisa described the swell or rising waves as “frightful.” The water seemed to climb as high as Norway’s nearby mountains before suddenly toppling the ship’s sides.
“It was dusk, the wind blowing in squalls like a gale with a very heavy sea,” Louisa recorded. How did she keep Charles calm during the tempest and lightning flashes? This situation wasn’t pretend. These storms were real. While tightly hugging Charles, Louisa thought continually of the boys she had abandoned.
“If it was to do again nothing on earth could induce me to make such a sacrifice and my conviction is that if domestic separation is absolutely necessary, cling as a mother to those innocent and helpless creatures whom God himself has given to your charge.”
In the midst of this turbulence, she heard an explosion—cannon fire from a nearby brig. Captain Beckford responded by ordering his crew to hoist the colors. Within an hour the firing brig was within signaling distance and hailed the Horace. Beckford answered their questions with customary signals. The brig’s commander doubted that they hailed from Boston and were traveling to St. Petersburg on a diplomatic voyage. He twice signaled the Horace to send Beckford to his ship. With no response, he reinforced his order by hurling a musket ball into the Horace’s side.
Beckford was hot. The brig had yet to show her colors. Such arrogance! He rightly feared his rowboat wouldn’t survive the storm’s swell. Ordering him to row to the brig was akin to expecting a modern skydiver to jump out of a plane in low visibility with twenty-mile-an-hour or stronger winds. Both are death wishes.
Not wanting a fight, Beckford and four sailors boarded the small boat and began rowing toward the brig. Within ten minutes they realized they couldn’t reach it and doubted they could safely return to the Horace. The rowboat was half full of water.
Suddenly a large wave crashed over the rowboat’s side. Louisa trembled as she heard them cry out that they “could not live.”
7
Danish Prey
THE STORM CONTINUED, THROWING WAVES OVER THE ROWBOAT. Captain Beckford’s clarity of thinking prevailed. Abandoning the ridiculous scheme of trying to reach the brig, he reversed course and safely returned the rowboat to the Horace.
“All this time the boat and people were in the most imminent danger but got on board at last,” Louisa wrote with relief.
From the Horace’s helm, a thoroughly soaked captain hailed the brig again. No answer. Within a few minutes, the anonymous boat gave up. Beckford waited until the ship was as far away as the moon before resuming the Horace’s route.
Mystery lurked behind the masts in Norway, which was then ruled by Denmark. Because this brig never hoisted its colors, they were left to question its identity. Was it Danish or English? English, John decided, because no other armed ships would dare monitor that particular coast. He knew British nautical ways all too well. In fact, it was an English ship that had exiled him from the US Senate, at least indirectly.
Two years earlier, the HMS Leopard had caused a major international incident when it bombarded the USS Chesapeake, an American naval vessel, off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia. Three Americans were killed, eighteen wounded. “The Chesapeake-Leopard incident was the most important naval confrontation be
tween the United States and Britain” since the American Revolution. Though on a different scale of destruction, the emotional impact on the nation was similar to the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
The British seized four sailors from the Chesapeake on June 22, 1807. Claiming a right to do so, the Leopard’s captain said he was merely recovering British navy deserters. Americans viewed his actions very differently, believing his real aim was to impress or take Americans from the Chesapeake and force them to serve in the British navy—potentially against their homeland.
How dare the British spit on American sovereignty! President Thomas Jefferson secretly retaliated by asking Congress to pass an embargo preventing US merchant ships from trading with Great Britain and other European nations. New England merchants traded with English merchants more than any other foreign entity. Already suffering from the war between commercial Britain and agricultural France, those Americans dependent on the shipping trade for income would lose their livelihoods from an embargo.
In addition Jefferson learned that the British government released a proclamation to continue its policy of impressment. This allowed British captains and generals to seize English subjects or anyone that they thought was English and force them to serve in the British military. Thus they could ignore a sailor’s citizenship papers from America.
John was a US senator from Massachusetts at the time and a member of the committee that recommended the embargo to the full Senate. When he read the committee’s intelligence reports, he knew what he must do. Impressment must stop. He concluded that an embargo on foreign trade—all of it—would save the lives of hundreds of merchant sailors. Supporting Jefferson’s embargo was the most agonizing decision of his public career.
Many people in Massachusetts were so angry about the embargo that they threatened to secede from the Union. Federalists couldn’t understand why John—one of their most favorite native sons—supported Jefferson’s embargo. After all, Jefferson defeated his father for the presidency in 1800.
Adams wrote his mother, saying these trials “have been severe beyond any that I ever was before called to meet.” He was more concerned about keeping the American people safe than angering Boston merchants or aligning himself with his father’s political rival.
“I was sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, and I thought it was my duty to support the existing administration in every measure that my impartial judgment could approve.” John later told a friend that he needed to take a stand against the English bullies and their kidnapping ways. He put the greater needs of the Union ahead of the economic needs of his commonwealth. The Chesapeake-Leopard affair turned a topsy-turvy trade situation into a trajectory for future battles. If successful, the embargo might prevent war.
John’s decision cost him. Back then citizens did not vote directly for their US senators; instead, members of state legislatures made the choice. When the Massachusetts legislature decided not to support his reelection in June 1808 and chose someone else, John immediately resigned his Senate seat rather than wait out his term.
As he explained in his resignation letter, he supported the embargo “to preserve from seizure and depredation the persons and property of our citizens.” He also wanted to “vindicate the rights essential to the independence of our country, against the unjust pretensions and aggressions of all foreign powers.”
Revenge for his father did not play a role.
“I have been obliged to act upon principles exclusively my own,” he confessed to Abigail, “and without having any aid from the party in power have made myself the very mark of the most envenomed shafts from their opponents.”
He could not sacrifice the peace of the nation or “the personal liberties of our seamen or the neutral rights of our commerce” for the sake of party politics. “I discharged my duty to my country, but I committed the unpardonable sin against party.” Union and independence, not allegiance to party, guided his choice.
“It was not without a painful sacrifice of feeling that I withdrew from the public service at a moment of difficulty and danger,” he wrote. They abandoned him, “discarded me for the future, and required me to aid them in promoting measures tending to dissolve the Union.”
He faced his fate. “I was no representative for them. These were the immediate causes of my retirement from public life.”
Indeed his father’s views on a man’s conscience fit his son’s situation. “Upon common theaters, indeed, the applause of the audience is of more importance to the actors than their own approbation,” the senior John Adams wrote to a friend years earlier. “But upon the stage of life, while conscience claps, let the world hiss! On the contrary if conscience disapproves, the loudest applauses of the world are of little value.”
A significant change, however, took place between John Quincy’s resignation in June 1808 and his Russian appointment in June 1809. Just before Jefferson left office, he altered his embargo policy. Congress overturned the Embargo Act and replaced it with the Non-Intercourse Act, which allowed American merchant ships to trade with any nation except Britain and France. Jefferson and the newly elected Madison hoped to keep American trade neutral between those two competing powers while opening the United States to other trading partners such as Portugal, Prussia, and Russia.
Nature does not care about the supremacy of nations or conflicts over trade. She freely throws waves on ships no matter their country of origin.
Thus, the Horace sailed along Norway in weather duress. Its captive passengers endured a storm for more than twenty-four hours, an eternity for a heartbroken woman caring for a two-year-old child. The ship rolled and pitched so much that Louisa rightfully feared the Horace would overturn.
The next day gave them the weather break they needed. From a narrow nook, they relaxed and enjoyed the reflection of the morning dew on the pink-and-gray granite rock of the sea mountains towering over them. Norway features hundreds of these fjords, U-shaped valleys cut into the land by enormous glaciers eons earlier. The glaciers polished the rocks, licking them clean of soil. As the glaciers receded, the ocean filled the void, leaving fjords. The deepest fjord in Norway plunges more than four thousand feet. By noon they settled snugly on top of one of these deep sleeves.
At this time they were traveling east between the coasts of Norway and Jutland, Denmark’s mainland peninsula. Norway was to their north; Jutland south. The North Sea, where they had just passed, was west. To their immediate east was the Kattegat Sea, the narrow water separating Denmark from Sweden.
Captain Beckford’s plan was to swoop southeast through the Kattegat and the straits of Denmark, which connected to the Baltic Sea. From there they would travel hundreds of miles northeast through the Baltic and into the Gulf of Finland. St. Petersburg rested at the far eastern corner of the Gulf of Finland. They had a long way to go but had made good time so far. For now they were safely tucked in a narrow Norwegian nook.
“We had a quiet night,” Louisa wrote with relief. She soon discovered why she saw so few ships the day before: “We were awakened this morning with the news that an English Cruiser was near us.”
No matter the beauty of Norway, a nuisance now appeared from nowhere. An eighteen-gun brig suddenly lay alongside the Horace. Unlike the previous ship, this new character’s identity was quite clear. She boldly displayed English colors and soon sent a rowboat to the Horace. Four men boarded with so much confidence that they marched around the wooden barrels and riggings as if they were the owners, not guests. After examining Beckford’s papers, an officer said, “I suppose you may proceed.”
Such a statement proved to be truly generous.
“He said it was fortunate that he had not seen us last night, as he should have fired into us supposing it [the Horace] was [a Danish ship],” Louisa noted.
The officer boasted that his English brig chased not one, but two, Danish men-of-war the previous day.
/>
John’s prediction that war did not threaten their voyage was mistaken. Although the United States was not at war, the English and the Danish obviously were. The reason stemmed from a significant event two years earlier, when the British navy captured more than forty large Danish-Norwegian ships and bombarded Copenhagen. Instead of turning the Danes into forced allies as the English hoped, the outcome turned Denmark into an enemy of England and a friend of France. The British navy responded by blockading the water route connecting Denmark and Norway.
Jefferson’s and Madison’s policies of neutrality didn’t matter in these waters. With the US flag topping her rigging, the Horace ventured around Norway with little assurance. Two great white sharks were chasing a red, white, and bluefin tuna.
Sailing with uneasiness, the captain couldn’t dismiss the British officer’s confession that he had nearly fired on the Horace after mistaking her for a Danish ship. To fire without knowing a ship’s colors was as cheeky as it was reckless. Then again, what else could he expect from the likes of the British?
Captain Benjamin Beckford of Beverly, Massachusetts, would never forget the first time he witnessed English arrogance. He was a mere lad, not quite seventeen, when his company, along with William Gray, rushed to Lexington to keep British soldiers from seizing the town’s military supplies. He would always remember the sulfurous smell of gunpowder clouding the rising sun that day, April 19, 1775. Ask anyone from Beverly. It was the redcoats who’d fired those first shots at Lexington and Concord launching the Revolutionary War. As a Massachusetts newspaper recorded, “The troops of His Britannic Majesty commenced hostilities upon the people of this province.”
Two years later Beckford married. In between nearly a dozen voyages to St. Petersburg, he sired eight children. William Gray often paid captains like Beckford a monthly wage of twenty-five dollars with a commission from the sale of cargo. As experienced as the captain was at age fifty-one, he had never carried such valuable cargo as the son of a former US president.
