Morning of Fire

by Scott Ridley

  As troubling as the unbridled chaos in the countryside was the serious discord that arose within Washington’s cabinet. Jefferson favored siding with Spain and France. Alexander Hamilton opposed this and argued support for Britain. John Adams at first favored joining Spain, then recommended neutrality, as did Secretary of War Henry Knox. Jefferson finally urged delay of a decision. After sifting through the sentiments of his cabinet, Washington concluded that the United States should remain neutral as long as possible and not become entangled in foreign disputes. Jefferson ultimately concurred, stating: “If the war between Britain and Spain takes place, I think France will inevitably be involved in it. In that case, I hope the new world will fatten on the follies of the old. If we can but establish armed neutrality for ourselves, we must become the carriers for all parties as far as we can raise vessels.”

  The immediate goal Jefferson and others hoped to achieve by staying neutral was the opening of the Mississippi for American pioneers. But the fire Kendrick helped light at Nootka had much larger implications. It would figure not only into the long contest for the Mississippi Valley and the West, but also into the future balance of power in the Americas and Europe’s shifting alliances. The Nootka crisis later became recognized as the first important diplomatic challenge to face the new government. Washington and Jefferson’s policy of neutrality ultimately benefited the United States by allowing a long-term pathtoward stability and growth while Europe became mired in the Napoleonic Wars.

  WITH THE PRESSURES OF WAR BUILDING, word of the Columbia’s homeward voyage arrived at New York in May aboard the ship Federalist, which was four months out of Canton. Gray and the Columbia were anticipated in Boston in July. Captain Kendrick in the Lady Washington was reported to be returning to the Northwest Coast. Boston’s Columbian Centinel newspaper announced, “In the success of these intrepid navigators every heart delights.” Excited by the long-awaited prospect of the Columbia‘s circumnavigation, Joseph Barrell laid plans for a grand homecoming.

  On the morning of Monday, August 9, 1790, the tall, worn sails of the Columbia appeared in the bay off Boston. As she approached the harbor islands, Gray fired a thirteen-gun salute, which was answered by the fort on Castle Island. The booming attracted attention along the waterfront, where a crowd began to gather. When the ship was recognized, a messenger ran to Joseph Barrell at Dock Square. From the ropewalks and chandlery shops men went down to Long Wharf. As she tied to a mooring nearby, the Columbia saluted them with another thirteen-gun barrage.

  It was nearly three years since the Columbia’s men had departed. Many of them thought at times they would never see this shore again. Though it was a dear sight, the city and the waterfront were changing. Many more ships sat at anchor, the shops were bustling, and half-built hulls were taking shape in the boatyards that pocked the marsh and ran up to the North End. A phenomenal growth in marine trade was under way that would more than triple the carrying capacity of American ships between 1789 and 1792 from 123,430 tons to 411,438 tons.

  Boston was enjoying a building boom. Not only were there new houses and small shops and more people; carts and wagons clogged the narrow, winding lanes and alleys. Part of the reason for all the bustlewas the adoption of Gouverneur Morris’s federal currency system along with the loosening of local credit. The federal government took on state and local war debts, and Congress established new protectionist policies, including a tariff on foreign-built or foreign-owned ships entering American ports, which helped give rise to Boston’s shipbuilding boom. It was the beginning of a pivotal time, and some regarded it as a change as remarkable as the Revolution.

  News of the Columbia’s arrival swept through the streets. The next day, in an event staged by Barrell, banners were hung and crowds gathered, cheering from the docks and along State Street as Robert Gray led the officers and crew in a parade onto Long Wharf and up the hill past the State House. Church bells clanged as the ragged group of men continued on to the governor’s mansion. What caught everyone’s eye was the young Hawaiian chief Atoo, wrapped in his brilliant yellow-and-red-feathered war cape and wearing a feathered helmet, as he walked at the head of the group with Gray.

  Governor John Hancock, suffering from gout and seated in a wheelchair, held a reception for the owners, officers, and gentlemen of the ship. Lofty speeches were made extolling the first American circumnavigation. These men had crossed that largely unknown Pacific expanse, demonstrating an American reach that had been scarcely imagined before. The fact that Kendrick remained behind only added to the expedition’s mystique. This was the stuff of legend and inspiration. With confidence that Americans could carry trade anywhere on the globe, visions of a new future for Boston’s ships quickly took hold. All the attention may have surpassed even what Robert Gray expected. It certainly made the grim news he was about to deliver much more of a shock.

  Six months earlier, Gray had written to Barrell from Canton, echoing a letter from Kendrick that said the expedition “will not be equal to your expectations.” The results were even worse than anticipated. Gray had hoped to ship six hundred chests of Bohea tea. His modest cargo of only two hundred twenty-one chests was badly stored and partiallyruined by the hull’s leakage on the homeward journey. Of the 21,462 pounds of tea, more than half (12,213 pounds) were damaged. Barrell and the other four owners would receive only a few thousand dollars for the tea. The debt of forty-nine thousand dollars for the expedition was nearly a total loss. To make matters worse, Thomas Randall, who carried out the transaction in China, had shipped three hundred boxes of tea aboard the Columbia to Samuel Parkman, one of Joseph Barrell’s competitors.

  In Barrell’s office at the brick countinghouse at Town Dock, Gray used his newfound celebrity to blame the voyage’s failure on Kendrick. Behind closed doors with the ships’ owners, Gray and Haswell painted John Kendrick as careless, self-interested, and fully responsible for the expedition’s economic disaster. They charged that Kendrick “had it in contemplation to cheat the Owners out of what property he has in his hands; and would have done out of all had they [Gray and Haswell] not rescued it, and brought it of [sic] with the Ship.” In their version of events, they had saved the Columbia and its cargo from Kendrick’s grasp.

  Supported by Haswell’s journal—which was undoubtedly rewritten on the homeward passage—they recited a long list of grievances and failures: Kendrick spent too long at Cape Verde; proposed to remain at the Falklands over the winter; then hazarded the voyage around Cape Horn into storms that nearly destroyed the ships. Because of his leisurely pace, they arrived at Nootka too late in the season to cruise for furs, and in the spring Kendrick did not engage the Columbia in trading but stayed in the sound for ten months. Gray apparently also told of Kendrick’s involvement in the Nootka crisis, revealing that Kendrick had befriended the Spanish commandant Martinez, and worse, it had been the Columbia‘s guns that were trained on the Argonaut when she was seized.

  The one officer who could have supported Kendrick was first mate Joseph Ingraham. Gray tried to discredit Ingraham by reporting that the first mate had tried to smuggle a skin ashore at Macao. Ingrahamwas not there to answer. While at Whampoa, Ingraham had agreed to command a new Northwest Coast voyage for a competitor, Thomas Handsyd Perkins. He was immediately off on his venture with Perkins to secure a ship to take back to the Pacific. Of the other officers and gentlemen, the furrier, Jonathan Treat, had remained with Kendrick, as had second mate John Cordis. Richard Howe, the supercargo, who bore part of the responsibility for the trade at Macao and the failure to ensure safe storage of the homeward cargo of tea, left no record of his views.

  Gray and Haswell’s hostility toward Kendrick was shockingly palpable. John Hoskins, one of Barrell’s young clerks, who greatly admired Kendrick, was stunned, but in no position to defend him. As he tried to reason through the charges, Hoskins made notes of the meeting and concluded: “Thus much must be acknowledged; that Captain Kendrick had two good vessels on the coast (and if his enemies are to be bel
ieved) had it in his power to make both for himself and the Owners a very handsome fortune; but he let those golden opportunities pass; and on his arrival in China was depriv’d of his largest vessel; which was his principal support …” Despite what was claimed, Hoskins refused to accept the whole story, concluding: “no Knavery has at present open’d.”

  There was no one to argue that the Columbia, although a sound ship, did not handle well. No one said that in the shakedown cruise to Cape Verde Kendrick saw it would be necessary to break up the hold and repack the ship. Or that to reduce dissent, Kendrick had to remove the celebrity, Simon Woodruff. He had known this sorting out would take time and raise hackles. The delay was not haphazard—he sent word back through a Boston captain that the expedition would be at Praia for three weeks. This gave him time to make his group of men into a crew, and rest and fatten them for the trials ahead, including the likelihood of scurvy. At the Falklands he had anchored in a desolate harbor, and in what seems a typical captain’s ploy, proposed remaining there for the winter to get the right response—an eagerness among hisofficers and crew to press forward into the dangers around the Horn. Once they arrived at Nootka, he undertook care of the sick men and preparations to winter over instead of resorting to the Sandwich Islands. He then began the larger efforts of the expedition: establishing an American outpost to which the Mowachaht brought many furs, getting to know native people and their language, and learning whatever he could of the Northwest Passage. As later captains would recognize, taking a ship the size of the ungainly Columbia into unknown harbors and bays for furs was foolhardy. The fact that Gray nearly lost the Washington repeatedly on shoals, and a rock ledge, underscored the danger of risking the command ship.

  Perhaps what was most telling about Kendrick’s management was the fact that in an arduous voyage of this kind, in which a quarter or more of the crew commonly died, only one of the original Boston men was lost during the voyage—the astronomer John Nutting to an apparent suicide before they rounded the Horn. Although the monetary gain did not match what anyone, including Kendrick, expected, it was not out of line with that of other voyages, and unlike them, Kendrick had his eye set on establishing a base for long-term returns.

  A captain less hostile than Gray might have made these points, but it was clear he had lost all sense of balance in his allegations. Like Hoskins, Barrell recognized that there was much more to the story. The scene playing out had precedents all too familiar in exploration and trade. Throughout history, ambitious captains have sought to displace their expeditions’ commanders: Columbus had been undercut by his captains, Magellan was charged with horrendous crimes, and so on through a litany of voyages.

  Many of these stories of treachery also had a traditional follow-up scene as well—one in which the accusers asked for a command of their own. This time was no different. Gray arrogantly proposed to take command of the Columbia for a second voyage to Nootka. Haswell would be his first mate and captain a schooner they would build after they arrived on the coast. Together, they dangled a description of theriches to be had with little exertion, and according to Hoskins promised “their abilities to produce a golden harvest.”

  The owners were divided. Two of them, John Pintard of New York and John Derby of Salem, dropped out of the venture. Samuel Brown took a new three-fourteenths share, and Crowell Hatch retained his two-fourteenths share. The share held by Charles Bulfinch, the young architect, went to his father, Dr. Thomas Bulfinch. Two Boston merchants, Davenport and McLean, put in with Robert Gray for two-fourteenths of a share in the expedition. Joseph Barrell was still inclined to support Kendrick and did not fully trust Gray, but faced with no other prospect and wanting to resolve this mystery, picked up the remaining five-fourteenths share.

  The estimated cost of the new voyage was twenty-five thousand dollars. Gray, who received a total of 132 British pounds (about five hundred dollars) in pay from his three years and twenty days’ service on the first voyage, somehow came up with a substantial amount of money for his joint-ownership stake (thirty-two hundred dollars for two-fourteenths).

  It was at this point, perhaps in a review of accounts by Hoskins, that questions emerged about the total number of Columbia’s skins sold at Canton. Gray said they had sold seven hundred skins and three hundred pieces, but the inventory from Barrell’s agent at Canton, Thomas Randall, showed that 1,215 skins were taken ashore. A letter Randall wrote to Alexander Hamilton said that the Columbia sold about 1,500 skins through him.

  No direct accusations about Gray were made, but if a crew’s loyalty could be used as a measure of character, it was significant that only two seamen stayed on for the second voyage: Abraham Waters, who was given a mate’s position, and Joseph Barnes, who had joined the ship at Canton. Others, like Ingraham, sought new ships.

  Gray got what he wanted. In the days that followed their arrival, he paraded the young Hawaiian, Atoo, in the streets of Boston in his flowing yellow-and-red-feather cape. People would stop and gape, eager to meet this exotic “Indian” from the Sandwich Islands and the first American captain to have circumnavigated the globe. Gray and Haswell, probably with Atoo in tow, were hosted in drawing rooms throughout the city, where they continued to disparage Kendrick. Word spread in the city’s social circles of the commander’s nefarious character. Young John Quincy Adams, who opened his first law practice in Boston on the day the Columbia arrived, caught wind of it. He wrote to his mother two days later that Boston was abuzz with “the arrival of the Columbia from an expedition which has carried her around the world. The adventurers after having their expectation raised to the highest pitch, were utterly disappointed, and instead of the immense profits upon which they had calculated, will scarcely have their outsets refunded to them. The failure has given universal astonishment and is wholly attributed to the Captain, whose reputation now remains suspended between the qualifications of egregious knavery and of unpardonable stupidity.” He added that Joseph Barrell, who had once been the Adams’s neighbor in Boston, “is not discouraged and intends to make the experiment once more.”

  Word of the voyage’s financial calamity spread quickly down the coast. An extract of a Boston letter appearing in New York’s Gazette of the United States trumpeted Gray’s attack on Kendrick: “The owners of the Columbia wish she had sunk in Nootka Sound;—great complaints of cheatery are made; time will explain whether there has been any roguery in the business or not;—intolerable disappointment is the result of high-raised expectations I assure you.”

  The prospect of war made Kendrick look even worse. Boston’s Columbian Centinal reported: “Capt. Mears, in his representation to the British Court, respecting the seizure of the British ships in Nootka Sound, insinuated that Capt. Kendrick, and the other officers of the American vessels then on the coast, advised Don Martinez to the measure.” Kendrick was suspected to be the culprit responsible for the war now looming.

  AT THE VILLAGE OF WAREHAM, fifty miles south of Boston, Huldah Kendrick must have been deeply anguished over the allegations of her husband’s failure as commander of the expedition. All their family’s sacrifice had amounted only to disaster. The fact that he was not there to answer the charges against him doubled her pain. Whatever word young Solomon brought home when he arrived aboard the Columbia was of no solace. And whatever she might have written to Kendrick at Macao, urging him to return, languished for nearly a year before he received it.

  In their house at the Narrows, and in the store across the road, life became even harder to bear. For a time she had Solomon to help, but he was restless like his father, and soon returned to sea. He took ship with Josiah Roberts on the Jefferson for the Northwest, undoubtedly carrying a plea for his father to return and clear his name.

  Amplified by a backdrop of impending global war, the charges against Kendrick made it seem to many that he avoided coming home to take responsibility for the failure of the expedition. But for others, the fact that Kendrick remained in the Pacific sparked excitement and eagerness to pre
pare ships for a voyage around the Horn to the Northwest. The American gateway into the Pacific was open, and a race to make the next season of trading was on. Joseph Ingraham found a small seventy-two-ton sloop, the Hope, and manned her with a crew of sixteen, including Opye, a young servant he had brought from Kauai. Acknowledging the “ill sweets” of the Columbia’s voyage, Ingraham launched on September 17, five weeks after he had arrived on the Columbia.

  With Joseph Barrell’s grudging support, Gray soon followed, after refitting the Columbia. Out of a desire to preserve his own reputation and get to the bottom of the mystery about Kendrick, Barrell placed John Hoskins in charge of the Columbia as supercargo. On September 25, he delivered instructions to Gray that stated: “In all matters oftraffic on the northwest coast of America, China, or elsewhere, you will consult with Mr. John Hoskins … we therefore expect the most perfect harmony to subsist between you, your officers, and him.”

  Barrell was perhaps troubled by questions about where Gray had gotten the funds for his share and rumors about officers and crew smuggling furs and selling on their own accounts, and he warned: “You will constantly bear in mind the absolute prohibition against every sort of traffic, or receiving any presents on this voyage; for be assured the owners will treat every breach of the contract in this particular with the utmost severity … You have seen and heard the pointed manner in which every one condemns the conduct of the last; and if you have a spirit proper for this enterprise, or any regard for your own honor and rising reputation, or have respect to the sea-letters with which the President of United States has honored and indulged you, we trust you will doubly exert yourself to prevent such reflections in future.” Barrell had played on his personal relationship with Washington to expedite a new sea-letter for the Columbia.