by Jane Cook
“The age of my parents awakens, both in them and me, the hopes [not certainty] of our meeting again and I now leave two of my own infant children behind. My father and mother are also deeply affected by my departure,” he confessed in his diary. One letter from his mother was so moving that it “would have melted the heart of a stoic.”
Miles before the Horace passed through Bertie’s blockade, John wrote a special letter to his boys. Although they were only six and eight years of age, he wanted to prepare them for an early departure from childhood. In this letter to his sons, John referred to the most famous passage of William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”
Indeed John was a very minor player on his first ocean voyage with his father; now he held the leading role. He wanted his children to understand his motives and embrace the same philosophy.
“You should each of you consider yourself as placed here to act a part—that is to have some single great end or object to accomplish, towards which all the views and labors of your existence should be directed,” he wrote with emphasis to George and John.
When they entered the threshold of life, they must first supply their own wants. As he did years before when he graduated from Harvard, they must receive training to support themselves through employment. Civil society depended on men pursuing “some mechanical art or laborious profession.” Adams practiced law as a young man. Once they were successful, they could advance to the next stage: marriage.
“As a great portion of the enjoyment of life consists in the society of the sexes, there is an obligation upon you to share your pleasures with a partner.” John believed the stages of a man’s life progressed in this order: providing for oneself, comfortably providing for a wife, nurturing and educating children, and serving the public, life’s paramount stage.
Perhaps John worried that this letter was his last opportunity to impart wisdom to his boys. Death was a real danger to an intercontinental traveler in the early nineteenth century. Ships wrecked. Ships sank. Sickness attacked. Souls passed.
If he or Louisa was unable to return to them in Boston, then at least these words would provide a script for the rest of their lives. He also needed to explain what was so important that he was willing to cast aside normal family life and leave them behind. Some call it ambition. To John, it was public service. Life’s responsibilities didn’t end with intimate family ties. Prosperity multiplied a man’s duties and magnified his obligations. Successful men served society. Man held a responsibility to pursue “justice and fidelity to others.” Self-preservation was not enough. Life was more than individuals and families.
“The relations of man are no longer confined to his own family but extend to his neighbors and fellow citizens,” he explained. Without the poetry, he became Shakespeare to his sons. “There are also the duties of a citizen to his country, which are binding upon all, and more forcibly binding in a republican government than in any other.” Under republican principles, “every individual has a stake, an interest, and a voice in the common stock of society.”
America’s form of government and belief that rights come from God required individuals to promote the common interest. This was to be done “to the utmost of his power, compatibly with the discharge of his more immediate duties of self-preservation and preservation of his kind [family].”
Though he professed to be imparting wisdom to his boys, John revealed the motivation that drove his heart: “Finally, let the uniform principle of your life, the ‘frontlet between your eyes,’ be how to make your talents and your knowledge most beneficial to your country and most useful to mankind.”
As they sailed through the Kattegat, John’s eyes switched to those other boys, the three hundred captive sailors from thirty ships held at Kristiansand. No matter the cost, he must get to Copenhagen and try to do something, anything, for his countrymen. Diplomacy was now his greatest duty.
Another storm brewed as they sailed through the seas. Beckford may have been the ship’s captain, but John was exerting his authority with each towering gale and new danger. They disagreed over their arrangement with Bertie. The question between them was whether or not Bertie’s pass allowed them to stop in Elsinore and go to Copenhagen.
Beckford’s view was simple: no landing. He didn’t think Bertie permitted them to stop at all. John countered. Yes, of course the Horace could land. They just couldn’t sell cargo there. Surely they could stop for customary manners, such as resupplying. As the boat drifted, so did Beckford’s and Adams’s opinions.
They arrived at the narrowest part of the sound between Denmark and Sweden, which was only 2.4 miles wide. This spot marked the place in Denmark known as Helsingør—or Elsinore, the name Shakespeare made famous in Hamlet. Within their view was the magnificent Kronborg castle, a fortress monitoring ships heading for the Baltic Sea. The question for John and the captain was not “to be, or not to be?” but “to dock, or not to dock?”
Their debate abruptly abated. The Danes decided for them. A mile from Kronborg, a Danish boat fired a shot “and immediately after boarded us, and took us into Elsinore Roads.” The local gatekeepers quickly accepted John’s commission.
“Mr. Adams was prevailed upon to go to Copenhagen by the Americans to make some effort in their cause and we continued on shore until their return, anything was better than sea as we could at least sleep without alarm,” Louisa explained.
While her husband traveled to Copenhagen, Louisa showed a sign of accepting her new role as a diplomatic minister’s wife. After tidying their haggard appearance aboard the ship, she and Kitty donned their best and cleanest Jane Austen–style dresses and went shopping.
Worried that their American hats were too small for European society, they bought some larger beaver bonnets, which they hoped would be appropriate for St. Petersburg’s fashionable diplomatic circles. Along the streets of Elsinore, they probably tasted the pleasantries of pastries, treasured luxuries to nautical captives. They also went sightseeing. Louisa noted that the Hamlet gardens “as they were still called [were] ornamented with heavy leaden statues [and] were the great object of curiosity.”
Meanwhile John traveled twenty-eight miles by stagecoach in about five hours. He tried to visit appropriate authorities in Copenhagen. After several failures and an overnight stay at a hotel, he met with Mr. Saabye, a Dane who had represented the Americans before the Danish government.
Adams put forward his finest legal arguments. Assuring him that he had done his best, Saabye suggested that Adams talk with Count Bernstorff, a top government official who would be at his home until three in the afternoon that day. The count’s house was not far off the route back to Elsinore. Time was now the enemy. Adams boarded a stagecoach and headed for the count’s home. He arrived at 2:00 p.m., but Bernstorff wasn’t there. John learned that the count would not return until later that evening.
This American diplomat now faced a dilemma. This constantly observant, weather-obsessed Bostonian knew the winds were favorable that day. The longer he stayed, the more time the Horace lost for grabbing a good wind for sailing into the Baltic. Time was ticking. Winter could come early. What should he do? Wait? Or take advantage of the good winds and sail immediately?
He considered his dilemma. Had he presented his best arguments on behalf of the American sailors to Mr. Saabye? Yes. Had he made it clear that a language barrier was the problem and they needed a translator? Yes. Had Mr. Saabye seen his passion? Yes. Would waiting for the count make a significant difference? Yes, very possibly, but there was no guarantee.
Which was his greatest obligation, getting to St. Petersburg or waiting on the count to help the stranded Americans? Suddenly Adams faced the greatest internal dilemma of his voyage. He debated in agony. Not even Shakespeare could have crafted this quandary.
11
Baltic Circle
TO GO OR N
OT TO GO? THAT WAS THE QUESTION. ADAMS CONTEMPLATED his circumstances in Denmark with Hamlet-like angst. How he longed to advocate for those trapped Americans. If only he could speak to Count Bernstorff, he might be able to secure a fairer trial. However, if he waited for the count to return, would he miss the best sailing wind for the Baltic? If he didn’t reach Russia before winter, his mission to establish free trade with the largest country in Europe would be delayed by months, and Louisa’s return to their boys would be extended even longer.
His practical side, the Yankee in him, prevailed. He left the count’s home and returned to his ship with the bitter taste of failure in his mouth. The next morning, October 2, 1809, the Horace resumed its voyage.
“We all embarked again on our dismal course,” Louisa wrote.
Though the weather was bearable, her heart was as depressed as ever. Shopping did not lift her spirits for long. Within half an hour after their departure, the wind changed, forcing them to anchor a mere half mile from where they started. What to do? Because they were sandwiched between two opposite shores, they needed not just any wind to take them out, but a very brisk one.
They waited as long as Jonah stayed in the belly of the whale. For three days wind was as absent as summer. Finally the air currents changed, and they gained enough gusts to get going. With good wind and clear skies, they peacefully journeyed through the straits. Because they were close to both the Danish and the Swedish shores, they enjoyed parallel scenery of spires and steeples.
Suddenly a signal came. Cannon fired at them unexpectedly—another headache-producing explosion. They heard the blast as they passed a battery near a palace, which was built on three sunken ships—a bad sign.
Though surprised, Beckford decided it was merely a customary signal. They saluted by striking their top gallant sail. Then a big gun fired an even larger cannonball, which landed a few feet ahead of the Horace. Because the water was too shallow to come to shore, Beckford ordered his crew to lower their anchors in the middle of the channel. A Danish boat came out to them. Once again local authorities searched their ship. The incident cost them an hour’s time, a precious sacrifice of fair wind.
Then another boat stopped them, and another. Each examination slowed their progress through the low waters. Just before sunset, a fourth ship inspected them. Because the water was shallow and narrow, they dared not go through the rest of the grounds at night. Throwing their iron elephant overboard, they anchored, hoping for a guardian angel.
Weather smiled on them the next day. They effortlessly traveled seventy nautical miles and came within site of Bornholm, a two-hundred-square-mile island. The Baltic proved a much safer place than the Kattegat, at least from the dangers of man. No one forced them to take a detour. No one fired at them. No officers searched their crew and cargo. But soon they realized that the Baltic offered something more maddening: monotony.
“For three days we have been beating half the day about southeast, and half the day northwest, without advancing a league in our course,” Adams wrote on October 9, more than a week after leaving Elsinore.
They were traveling in a circle. Mother Nature was flirting with them. Just as she gave them hope, she snatched it away. The wind took them in one direction in the morning, and back to where they'd started by evening. The turbulence at night was so great, they couldn’t sleep. It was enough to drive them mad. Louisa was already on the brink. Would this push her over?
“Thus we went on day after day—beating about and worn down with fatigue and anxiety,” she recorded. How she longed to wash her soiled skirts in fresh water.
Then Mother Nature threw in some special effects, as John noted: “The night was moderate, and the day has been so, with the exception of a constant succession of squalls, with rain, hail, sleet, snow, and sometimes wind.”
Winter was emerging from hibernation. How long would it blow snowy kisses before making its presence fully known? After all that they had faced, now the simple change of seasons threatened to keep them from their destination.
“Dangers accumulated every moment . . . and now we had cold added to our burdens,” Louisa commented.
The Gulf of Finland is a shallow body of water and freezes more quickly than the Baltic, sealing St. Petersburg from ship travel. If they didn’t reach the gulf before it iced over, then they wouldn’t make it to St. Petersburg. Their mission to Russia would be delayed for half a year at least, shackling John with enough failure to make Federalist rival Timothy Pickering smile.
Beckford grimly assessed the situation. Though they were only six hundred miles away, he told Adams it would take a miracle to get them to Russia before winter. Their best hope was to turn around and dock at Kiel for the winter. Kiel, in present-day Germany, was more than one thousand miles from St. Petersburg by land. Perhaps they could travel in spring via carriage.
Adams decided he needed time to think about Beckford’s solution, at least a day. He mulled over the monotony. Had they truly reached a crisis? Yes. The cold, wet taste of snow on their tongues was evidence enough. Were they facing an emergency? Obviously. The sleet on the ship’s bow spoke louder than any of the captain’s words. John knew it was true. All he had to do was skim his recent journal entries.
While crossing the Atlantic, he read sermons and the classics. Since then he had scarcely cracked a book. The way he spent his time was the best testimony of their trials. His diary revealed the truth: weather, wind, the Danish, the English, and the detained Americans—all kept him from his books and now, possibly reaching his destination in time. He had spent most of his days administering, trying to solve each and every problem. Captain Beckford may have commanded the ship, but John had been in charge of their course.
After a sleepless night of contemplation, he proposed to the captain that they should try to get as close as possible to Kronstadt, the island fortress guarding St. Petersburg.
No. Beckford disagreed. The winds were not cooperating. Winter was coming. It was too late. John described the captain as worrying about endangering the ship: “The prospect of reaching Kronstadt before the formation of the ice, which will make it impracticable, has now become desperate.”
Adams was more frustrated than at any other time in this fateful voyage to date. He had not come all this way to stop because of some silly snow. He was from Boston, for heaven’s sake! Sleet and snow were as common there as cod was to the Atlantic Ocean.
Weighing on his mind, too, was his mission: to be the first person to establish official ties between the United States and Russia. Strong US relations with the largest nation in Europe could give America the leverage it needed with England and France over trade rights. Before Adams could make another suggestion, the captain refused to come out of his quarters. He was not angry, but ill. Quite ill.
With his earthly captain unable to lead, John looked to his heavenly captain for hope. Their success was now “in better hands than mine” he wrote, praying for Providence to send a much-needed angel. A simple glimpse of Gabriel would do.
Beckford stayed confined to his bed several days. The squalls continued. Wind and rain hailed upon them. At one time the wind pushed them dangerously close to the island of Bornholm, nearly wrecking them. Having earlier lost an anchor, the Horace was out of options for contending with drift. It was as if Poseidon were blowing them to the brink with his bad breath.
“They were no imaginary dangers that assailed us, and our sufferings were pitiable,” Louisa wrote.
Their problems were as real as the bread they ate. By October 13 they faced another danger: low supplies and the stench of spoiled food.
“Thus we continued with every variety of bad weather and at last provisions began to give out and Mr. Adams began to think that we could land somewhere and go the rest of the way by land but the captain would not agree for fear of the British,” Louisa explained in exasperation.
Because of the searches and interrogations they had endured, Beckford feared the British would impound the Horace and his crew if J
ohn Quincy and his delegation left them and took a route by land.
They headed for Christiansø, Denmark’s eastern most island, about twelve miles northeast of Bornholm, to buy supplies and make a final decision about what to do.
As they arrived, they hoisted their flag. A guard at the stone fortress raised a flag in return. A representative rowed out to them but failed to bring supplies as their signals suggested. Disappointed, they were not surprised. The reason was highly familiar. The authorities protecting Christiansø, sometimes called Ertholmene, feared the Horace was an English ship in disguise and with good reason. Nearly a year earlier on October 24, 1808, a battle took place between the island’s fortress and an English flotilla of twenty-five ships. The fight left seven killed and many others wounded.
After reviewing their papers, the relieved man agreed to help. Because the weather was fair, smaller boats carrying supplies easily came to them throughout the day. But when the Horace pushed out away from the land, the wind and sea were as rough as could be. They just couldn’t get a break.
While they battled the weather again, John and a recovered captain continued discussing their future course. Louisa knew her husband well. He was an Adams. Perseverance was planted as firmly in him as any tree in the ground of the family’s Peacefield farm. “I knew that Mr. Adams would never give up and we were obliged to make the best of our miserable condition.”
As they reached the climax of their nautical drama, a messenger rowed out to the Horace and interrupted them with exciting news. Christiansø’s governor was inviting the ladies to a ball.
“We received an invitation to a ball at the governor’s on the island of ‘Burnt Hollum’ as our captain named it, for eight o’clock in the evening while the vessel was rocking rolling and pitching as if she would go to pieces—We were obliged to decline the honor,” Louisa politely quipped.
