The Remarkable Voyage of Capt. Benson
By Wilmon Menard
Capt. Nels P Benson, skipper for the shipping firm of Sanders and Kirchman of San Francisco, was known along the west coast of North and South America as "the fishing skipper."
He was also known as a hard taskmaster aboard any sailing ship he commanded. Nevertheless, thanks to his seamanship and navigation, he always cleared ports on schedule and brought home full cargoes; and as for his ability as a sport fisherman, although he had never established any record catches, he, significantly, rarely lost what he hooked.
He had, at all times, several rods and reels racked in his cabin, his favorite being an original design that he had fashioned himself, using an early Meek reel for a model. So, between voyages, or when he had finished with ship's agents and chandlers in different ports, he always made arrangements to enjoy a full measure of saltwater sport fishing.
His Scandinavian heritage called for it. By nature he was a solitary seafarer, brusque in manner and speech, well qualified, indeed, to handle tough sailing crews; and, as he made few friends, his hobby of fishing helped to allay his selfimposed loneliness.
The stocky, 46-year-old skipper in early March of 1913 had just completed arrangements for a week of sport fishing off northern California, when he received an urgent call from his shipping firm. He was to proceed immediately to Astoria, Ore., to take command of the four-masted schooner El Dorado which would load rough fir for discharge in Antofagasta, Chile.
Nels was annoyed at missing his fishing, and worried over his recent purchase of an old cottage in Oakland, Calif., for his "snug harbor." He had
been short of cash and so he had been compelled to take out a heavy mortgage on the dwelling.
And he had heard of the El Dorado, and he knew her reputation for perverse sailing; and a good crew would be difficult to sign on now that the Alaska fisheries season had started. Last, he had received his sailing orders from Saunders and Kirchman on a Friday, and Fridays were always bad-luck days for him.
When the El Dorado finished her loading of lumber at the Astoria mill wharf, Capt. Benson reluctantly gave Mr. Wilson, his first mate, a nervous nod of his head to receive the line from the tugboat to fasten on the bitts, and a halfarrested jerk of his thumb for the second mate, Johansen, to take the wheel. He was strangely loath to clear for the open sea.
He had every reason to be apprehensive. Staggering around on deck was the sorriest lot of eight drink-sodden seamen that he had ever received from a crimp 's combing of the waterfront dives: a squatty, furtive Japanese signed on as a cook, a blank-faced Frenchman; a glowering Dutchman; a battered German with two front teeth knocked out in a bar-room brawl; an American on the brink of delirium tremens; two expressionless Norwegians; and a cursing Swede.
And they had come aboard carrying suitcases instead of proper sea-bags!
The captain of the tug waved and hollered. "Couldn't you find a better day to cast off?"
Nels staggered slightly, as if slugged, and almost swallowed his unlit cheroot.
The El Dorado was sailing for Antofagasta, Friday, March 13, 1913 !
Scarcely clear of the Astoria lightship, the schooner ran into nasty weather. The crew, claiming virtual shanghaiing, were objecting strenuously to the food rations
The story of the voyage of Captain Benson was first printed in National Fisherman in June of 1968 The story was discovered yet again recently during an unrelated research project in our Library. The adventure and humor of the story seemed like a natural fit for our Quarterdeck readers. With the gracious permission from the editorial staff at National Fisherman we have reprinted the story of Captain Benson and his shanghaied crew from Astoria .
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and talking back to First Mate Wilson, who, with threats and his fists, kept some of the crew at the pumps emptying the water in the leaky holds. Fortunately, all plain sail could be hoisted and furled from the deck, but had the El Dorado been a square-rigger, the voyage would have been one of mass suicide for the green, rebellious crew.
Nels groaned and silently cursed his luck. With such a miserable crew the fates were all against him! And the voyage would normally take about two months, each way!
Somehow, miraculously, the schooner progressed southward with the captain and the mates maintaining a strict vigil for any overt acts of mutiny.
The weather cleared on May 22, and on the following day a calm set in. Nels, seated on the taffrail, stared moodily out to sea . Perfect weather and conditions, he thought, for bonito to be foraging. A sail could be rigged on the lifeboat to catch any vagrant wind and, with about four men rowing strongly, they might intercept a passing schooner. But, he rancorously decided, with my jinx-crew no such luck!
However, in mid-afternoon, a milelong school of bonito made "dark water" to starboard, and Nels ordered Mr. Wilson to turn out four of the crew to make a lifeboat ready, and then he rushed below to get his special pearl shell lures cut crudely in the shape of a small fish to which a barbless hook was lashed with sennit and tufted with a bit of red-dyed coconut fiber, which he had copied carefully from models he had bought from the bonito fishermen of Tahiti.
The first mate handed him down his selected bamboo poles, and before he gave the order to pull away from the side of the El Dorado, he called up pleasantly: "You can tell the crew that we'll have fresh bonito for supper. I dare say it'll be
a welcome change from that maggoty saltpork." To the sullen, muttering rowers, he shouted : "Now pull together, lads, and we'll soon be on that school of bonito!"
And at last the lifeboat did lunge across the outer line of silvery froth made by the baby squid leaping frantically from the surface. Nels experimented quickly with his lures, which ranged in color from a light-green hue to jet-black. Then, for almost a quarter of an hour, while seamen strained mightily on the oars, the captain cast out and trailed the lure acceptable to the fastidious bonito, and his arms and well-conditioned muscles worked in harmony. Count was soon lost of the bonito he jerked aboard .
When they headed back to the El Dorado, the lifeboat held capacity load, and in a rough sea they would have swamped. The four seamen cursed under their breath as they started the long pull back to the becalmed schooner, where, on deck, Mr. Wilson had the rest of the crew in readiness with bags of salt, casks, knives and tubs of sea-water to receive the bonito for salting down.
At sunset, a strong wind, pushing dark clouds ahead, came over the horizon, and the El Dorado continued its southward course to Chile. And, after supper, the second mate brought the captain a disturbing report.
"The crew refused the evening meal of bonito and dumped it overboard. Most of them have worked the Alaska fisheries, so I suppose they've had all the fish they can stomach."
Nels crashed his fist onto the table, making the crockery jump and rattle. "Those riff raff, rustlin' cowboys! Too good to eat fish, eh? Well, they might rue the day they tossed such lovely fish over the side!"
He couldn't know then how true his prediction was to be!
Three days later squalls overtook the
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El Dorado and clung tenaciously to her course. The seas and wind gained in force, causing the schooner to race as if out of control; heavy waves were shipped washing the full length of the deck, and the old schooner shook from stem to stern under the sea shocks.
In the early morning of June 12 the El Dorado, still far off the coast of Chile,was straining and opening her seams. The steam and hand-pumps had to be worked constantly. Regularly, a huge sea would smash against the schooner and heave her far over on beam ends, and because they were on the port tack, the starboard side of the huge deck-load oflogs started to shift.
Night brought no relief. The mainsail, with a report like cannon fire, tore away and flapped off eerily like a phantom bat into the rushing darkness.
Mr. Wilson shouted through the maelstrom: "Starboard deckload has shifted a foot, sir! And the poop deck is separating from the rail!"
Nels, cursing, swung the schooner around, but this only succeeded in shifting the port deckload.
Friday, June 13, brought no respite to the El Dorado and her exhausted crew. The sea as far as the eye could reach was a violently heaving and churning cauldron, as if a volcano had erupted to windward The El Dorado was being methodically pounded to pieces.
Nels ordered the first mate to see how much water there was in the hold and he came back quickly to report: "It's over my head!"
Nels ran a weary hand over his lined face. "I tell you, Mr. Wilson, I never could beat unlucky Fridays and 13 's. We'll abandon ship "
The captain went below for clothing, blankets and food--and his favorite rod and reel. He emptied the contents of the schooner's medicine-chest and filled it
with his sextant, navigation books, charts and the ship's papers.
The crew, under Mr. Johansen's supervision, had made the only lifeboat left in the spanker throat halyards, and at four p .m. the 22-foot lifeboat pulled away from the sinking El Dorado, This longboat had only a beam of 5 ½ feet and a depth of 3 feet, and loaded with 11 men in a hurricane-lashed ocean the prospects seemed hopeless.
It was at this time that Mr. Wilson gave an exclamation and touched Nel's arm. "I meant to remind you, sir--the chronometer!"
The captain stiffened, cursed. In his hurry, and the imminence of the bulkheads giving way under the tons of seawater in the flooded hold, he had forgotten it! Some 2700 miles off the coast of Chile, with no navigational instrument to calculate their position in longitude!
When Nels looked back for the last time at the battered schooner, he saw that her decks were awash to the rails. She had given up the fight and was wallowing, sinking slowly to her grave. A huge wave loomed like a black cliff on her port side, a wide screen of exploded spume smothered her, and then the sea was a whirlpool of floating lumber, doors, skylights and railing, in which dark sections of the schooner's broken ribs bobbed.
And in this instant the captain, seated in the stern-sheets, gave a loud groan of anguish.
"Damnation!" he exclaimed wretchedly. "I've lost my ship--but I'll lose something else more important if I don't get back to San Francisco quick!"
The shivering, white-faced crew looked at him as if he were suddenly bereft of reason.
And their only hope of reaching land was to set a course for Easter Island, the strange isle of the grim stone idols, which
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lay about 700 miles to the northeast by east. But as Nels had no chronometer, it would mean running out the latitude first, in consequence of which the voyage to Easter Island would total at least 900 miles, if they were lucky enough to reach it.
"Step the mast and bend the spreadsail and jib!" he ordered Second Mate Johansen. "We'll try to make Easter Island!"
Heavy swells violently rocked the lifeboat which had only a freeboard of 1O"; and the captain kept the crew bailing and handling sail, while he and his mates stood watches at the tiller.
Riding the crest of a wave and then tobogganing down its precipitous slope were repeated endlessly. The seamen became stupefied and slightly insane. Some called out weakly that they could see palm trees and entrances to harbors, even familiar vessels passing, with sailor friends waving to them.
Once, finding the captain's rod and reel in his way a seaman kicked it impatiently aside. Nels was on him in a second, shaking him by the slack of his jumper. "You'll treat that with respect, you fugitive from Jesse James' gang, it might serve us well before this voyage is over!"
Days merged with nights, and there was always the shrieking of the gale, the hissing of the waves and the scrape of bailers on the lifeboat's planking. Some of the men sang tunelessly, others sobbed hysterically, a few prayed.
Immersed in seawater even before they took to the lifeboat, the hands and the feet of the tossing boatload of men started to swell, their eyes were festering from incessant salt spray, and the skin was cracking, particularly the tender skin under the thighs from the constant chafing caused by the lifeboat's roll Pelvis bone ground on flesh, sinew
and nerve, and every hard rocking of the lifeboat caused moans and curses.
Some tried kneeling, but then these sockets started to grind painfully. One seaman, Tassaman, tried to leap into the sea and end his misery and had to be tied up . Carlson, a Norwegian, wore only a shirt and drawers and he shook constantly as if with fever, grinning idiotically He begged the captain to hit him over the head with an oar and lighten the lifeboat.
On June 18 catastrophe struck. Just before dawn the demented Carlson had hurled most of the food over the side!
Nels, after Carlson had been tied up, made a grim inventory of the remaining rations that had to last them at least a week longer: 3 cans of corned beef, 5 cans of soup, 8 cans of condensed milk, one can of jam, and a can of beef tongue .
The hopeless predicament of 11 men in a 22 foot lifeboat in a stormswept sea was brought to the captain with sickening clarity. What was left of the jettisoned rations would hardly sustain one man a week!
On June 21 the condition of the seamen was serious. Some were no longer able to bail, and now were sprawled, silent as corpses, in the bottom of the lifeboat. Nels estimated the remaining provisions; one can of corned beef, the can ofbeeftongue a can of soup and two cans of condensed milk.
His anguished eyes shifted to his rod and reel, wrapped in its oil-soaked cloth, then lifted to contemplate the sea. It had abated somewhat. Was there a ghost of a chance that he could bring about a miracle? Could deliverance be placed in his hands? He had fished successfully for sport, now what would be his fisherman's luck in this portentious predicament?
He held a whispered conversation with Mr. Wilson.
"It'll mean doing some chumming ," he told him. "I'll have to sacrifice that
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last can of corned beef, and perhaps the tongue, too. But the beef and tongue will never carry us through to Easter Island. If I can catch a good size fish, we have a chance."
The first mate nodded heavily, grunted through salt-cracked, swollen lips "I'll pray that you can do it, sir."
Unobserved by the starving seamen, Nels opened the can of corned beef and, with blank expression, he and the two mates watched the precious red meat trail behind on the surface, and finally disappear from sight into the lacy backwash of the lifeboat. The captain made ready his rod and reel, selected a lure, and cast out astern.
The whir of the reel and the sight of the captain with rod gripped desperately in his hands didn't even interest the huddled or prone seamen.
Fifteen minutes passed, with nothing happening. Nels picked up the can of beef-tongue, methodically opened this, broke the contents up in his hands and dribbled it over the stern.
The motion of the lifeboat, the empty sea, the effects of hunger, created a soporific effect. The captain's eyes became heavy, his chin lowered slowly on his chest. Then a hard nudge!
It was Mr. Johansen, his face distorted, exclaiming hoarsely: "Fish, sir! There's fish out there now!"
Nels bent forward, peering intently. Now he caught sight of something just below the surface, astern, cruising handsomely, illuminating the sea like summer lightning in a storm-cloud. It was tuna, and they were barreling gracefully searching for more chum, and now one nosed up to within a few feet of the stern.
There was a strong following sea to assist a steady wind in the sails, and the lifeboat was moving rapidly, despite its depth in the water. The speed was
sufficient to make a lure effective, but would a tuna, one tuna, strike?
Suddenly the arched line pulled tight, and Nels felt the prodigious weight! A tuna had taken the hook and was now swimming stubbornly deeper. The captain sucked in his breath slowly, calming his nerves, concentrating his waning strength There must be no wrong move, no desperate decision!
What was on the hook spelled the difference between life and death for 11 men! Eighty feet or more of the line unwound with uniform speed.
Now wondered Nels now Now?
He gave the drag a hard twist, watched until the line snapped up tauntly, and then, with his hands gripping the rod high, he gave the tuna his weight. His shouldermuscles strained agonizedly from the sudden shock, and he braced his torso and legs hard, straining backward to equalize the pressure. "Lower the sail!" he gasped to Mr. Johansen.
Suddenly, there was another responsive jolt on his entire body and he gave a startled grunt. The thick rod bent dangerously, the butt gouging his stomach, and he was violently jerked forward. But he heaved up with all his strength, straightening slowly, with the precise action of a strong-man hefting a heavy bar-bell.
Nels inhaled slowly and hit the tuna again. The reel shrieked like a witch's banshee; line evaporated from the spool. Now a sudden slack! He pumped hard, winding. The reel protested. The tuna had started another run, deep-down!
He tried to brake, but the thumb-guard burned him, and he glared with helpless rage at the disappearing line making its cut-water on the surface. Abruptly, the reel slowed its revolutions.
A half hour later, with grim determination, Nels brought the tuna longside. Mr. Wilson and Johansen
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grabbed the leader and worked the fish under the stern .
While the 250 lb. tuna was being lashed to the side of the lifeboat, the seamen lifted their heads and stared stupidly. Now some broke into sobs, others made chewing motions with their mouths, and saliva dripped from the corners.
Nels reached down and pinched the fish expertly, trying to control his emotions. "It'll make fine eating," he said quietly. He moved aside to permit the two mates to cut up the tuna.
"Chew the flesh carefully, which will be sweet and good, and it will mean food and water for you." He nodded and grinned. "Well, I think we're going to make Easter Island after all."
He stood up, braced his legs. "And now I think that it's appropriate that I offer up a short prayer."
With his face lifted to the grey sky, the captain gave an impromptu prayer. He made no quotes from the Bible, but spoke simply and forcefully, giving thanks for having been blessed by deciding to bring the rod and reel into the lifeboat, and his ability and final strength to land the tuna.
Mr. Wilson, busily stripping succulent fillets from the giant tuna, lifted his baritone voice in a hymn, and the seamen joined in weakly. It must have been a strange scene with the small lifeboat once again under sail, moving in a turbulent sea, and the cracked voices of the shipwrecked seamen riding the now increasing gale.
The next morning, Sunday, June 22nd, Nels staggered forward to try and rig a canvas cover for an auxiliary sail. He stopped short, staring! Was it land, or was it a mirage?
"What do you see?" he gasped to Johansen.
"It's land alright!"
Two points off the port bow loomed the grim silhouette of Easter Island!
On June 24 an excited Easter Islander burst in upon Percy Edmunds, English manager for Marlet Livestock Co., at the ranch house at Mataveri, in Hanga Piko to announce that two ragged, wild-eyed, bearded white men had stumbled into the village settlement, shouting incoherently and gesturing toward the East Cape.
Edmunds sent natives and horses to bring in the castaways. And when the strange procession of ragged seamen rode into his front yard, he stepped down from the porch to announce importantly, "Welcome to Easter Island. You 're the first shipwrecked seamen who have ever landed here. Congratulations!"
The Captain, hunched miserably over the pommel of the lead horse, lifted redrimmed eyes, absently dug salt-crust out of his left ear, and then managed a weak grin.
"Thank you, I'm Capt. Nels Benson of the American schooner El Dorado of San Francisco, which sank on unlucky Friday, June 13 in a bad storm."
He gingerly dismounted, and when his bloated feet touched the lava rubble he let out a bellowing curse that aroused seabirds in rookeries a mile away. "And these buckos are my hard-ridin' rootin'-tootin' Texas Rangers!"
Nels and his two mates were quartered in the ranch house at Hanga-Piko, while the crew was sheltered in the deserted Mission House in the native village of Hanga Roa, or Cook's Bay. Hot food and a change of clothes worked wonders with the exhausted men, and some set up housekeeping in the abandoned ancient stone huts, above which, on the slopes, stood the huge stone gods of Easter Island. Others started planting gardens; and all turned to in assisting Edmunds with his shearing, sheep-dipping, rounding up cattle and lassoing wild horses .
"Well, they're finally getting to follow
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their rightful trade," was the captain's wry observation.
To occupy his time, Capt. Benson tried some sport fishing off Cook's Bay, but without a single nibble or strike . To the British manager of Easter Island, he remarked sourly: "I think these rummy statues of yours here have scared off all the game fish in these waters."
Nels at the end of 105 days was acting like a deranged bull sea lion. He paced eternally the high cliffs, peering for the sight of a sail or a smudge of a steamer's smoke. But few vessels came by Easter Island.
Abruptly one mornin g , at breakfast, he announced to Edmunds: "I'm leaving for Tahiti tomorrow!"
"Tahiti's 2500 miles away!" exclaimed Edmunds . "You're crazy if you try it!"
"I'll be crazier if I'm stuck here any longer!" snapped Nels "Look, Matey, I'm buying a home in California on the installment plan, and ifl don't get back they'll foreclose on the mortgage." He drew forth his cheap nickel-plated Pocket Ben watch. "If I had remembered to wind this I could have used it for a chronometer. Well, on the trip to Tahiti, I'll use it alright, and I'll bet the watch company will pay me a pretty penny when I endorse their watch in one of their ads ."
He grinned broadly. "And I'll bet, too, that any reel-maker would give me plenty of cash to endorse one of their products . After all, my rod and reel saved our lives."
The captain had already scraped and recaulked the El Dorado's lifeboat, and the next morning he was ready to cast off Water kegs were put aboard, wood for fuel under the little half-deck forward; a steer was killed and the meat jerked to preserve it, and sweet potatoes, eggs, bacon and taro-root were stored in
abundance . And a 10 gal. steel drum was fashioned into a crude stove.
The French seaman, Alex Simoneau, and the Dutchman, Steve Drinkwater, whose name must have been a sardonic reminder on the perilous voyage of shipwreck, decided to accompany him. It was the month of September, the approach of summer below the equator, and there would be fair weather, steady winds and calm seas.
Once out beyond the line of dangerous surf, Nels bawled back at his staring seamen on the beach: "Yah, and as for you, you mangy cattle rustlers, scared to go with me, eh? Well, stick to your bulldoggin', you misbegotten recruits for Boot Hill! By the time you're picked up by a ship, you'll be able to use your beards for lassos!"(* A British steamer came by Easter Island six months later, to pick up wool and hides, and took the crew to Sydney, Australia, where they were able to get transportation to Puget Sound, Washington.)
Capt. Benson set a course for Magna Reva in the Gambler Group, 1600 miles distant. On Oct. 23rd the lifeboat was floating in a calm sea off Riki tea Village of this island, completing the voyage in 16 days, thus averaging 100 miles a day.
Curious natives paddled out in outrigger-canoes with an invitation from the Catholic priest of Riki tea to come ashore and rest and eat, but Nels brusquely refused, sending back a hastily scribbled note which read: "Thanks. Sorry, but I can't. I'm running a race against time. Those human sharks in America will gobble up my home if I don't get a move on!"
And a real man-eating shark followed the lifeboat on its course from Manga Reva to Tahiti, 900 miles away. Finally, outraged at this lurking symbol of misfortune, Nels lashed a sharpened marlin-pike to the end of the oar, and
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when the brute slid up astern again, he rammed it hard into the unblinking gruesome eye. There was a mighty splash, and the shark was seen no more.
On November 5 Nels steered the lifeboat through the Taunoa reef passage into Papeete's lagoon harbor, completing, from the scene of the original shipwreck, an amazing open-boat voyage of more than 3500 miles!
He rushed to the American Consul. "I'm taking off tonight in my lifeboat for San Francisco!" he shouted. "I'll need some money and provisions!"
"The steamer Moana is due in three weeks," the Consul advised him. "I suggest that you wait for this vessel."
For the next three weeks, while awaiting the arrival of the Moana, Nels was out in the channel between Tahiti and Moorea in a native sailing canoe, manned by stalwart Tahitians, maintaining his reputation as "The Fishing Skipper." He landed a number of tiger sharks, a marlin and a broadbill, none of then record catches, but of great personal satisfaction to himself.
"Fishing keeps my nerves in shape while waiting for that damned Moana," he informed the Consul, when the latter suggested he get all the rest he could after his harrowing ordeal.
When the M oana did anchor in Papeete's lagoon, Nels had the lifeboat lifted aboard.
"If this old hooker sinks, I'll still have my own boat to sail on to California!" he shouted hoarsely.
Then he galloped up the gangway, followed by Simoneau and Drinkwater, waving and bellowing to the astonished mailboat's skipper. "Push this old cheese box for all she can stand! I've got to get to San Francisco in record time! The building-and-loan vultures are roosting on the eaves of my house!"
He waved the wrapped rod and reel.
"But this is my ace-in-the-hole and this too!" He held up the Pocket Ben watch Landing in San Francisco, Capt. Benson's first dutiful visit was to Sanders and Kichman the shipping company of the El Dorado, to make an official report of its sinking .
But they had already collected insurance on her, and they had another vessel awaiting his command . And for a bonus they let him keep as a souvenir the lost schooner's lifeboat. He, also, was given a few weeks leave for some sport fishing .
Did Nels arrive back in America in time to save his home?
The building-and-loan company hadn't even sent him a notice of delinquent payments!
Did Nels sell his "rod and reel and watch rights" to the companies for advertising purposes?
Unfortunately, no. With the typical hard-headedness of a seafarer, he demanded too exorbitant a price, and eventually they lost interest.
Nevertheless, we must admit that Capt. Benson's unreasonable distrust of mortgage companies had compelled him to make one of the most remarkable voyages in the history of shipwrecked seamen, aided and abetted by a Meek-type rod and reel and a cheap, nickel-plated Pocket Ben watch.
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Regards, Je,~lller, Director
