THE CAPE HORN ROAD, PART XVI
Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean! How the Young American Republic, Freed ofBritish Rule, Soared Ahead in the Burgeoning Ocean Traffics ofBoth the Atlantic and Pacific Worlds by Peter Stanford
P
lymouth Sound was alive with whitecaps as three great ships-of-the-lin e sroo d in close-h auled from the choppy wa ters of the English C hann el. They we re an impressive sight, with spray bursting from under th eir o rn ate beak.head bows, as they heeled over to the strong breeze whistling in from the west. Blocked from further progress down the C hannel by th is headwind, the big ships were followed by an imm ense stragglin g Aeet of 62 transports, wh ich anchored close by their mighty protecro rs. Red-coated H ess ian soldiers crowded the ships' decks, no doubt happy to smell the sweet meadows of Devonshire afte r the harsh saltwater of the C hannel. It was July 1776, and the soldi ers had been hi red by Kin g Geo rge III to put down the growing revo lt of the Am erican colonists. T here had been sharp fighting between British regulars and the ill-arm ed Continental troops, and Washington's ragtag army had actually forced the British ga rriso n in Boston to pull up stakes and sail back to Hali fax, Nova Scotia. No o ne in E ngland yet knew the D eclaration ofl ndependence had been signed-b ut word was on its way. In the harbor, a Royal Navy captain, co nsumed with the las t-minute shortages and the endless minutiae of firrin g out a ship for th e long sea voyage, took rime to note the co nvoy's visit in his journal, regretting "the unhappy necessity of employing HM ships" against th e American colonies. A few days later, on 12 July 1776, Captain Jam es Cook, RN, set sail in HMS Resolution o n his third great voyage of discovery. In the ship's company were two Am ericans: the boatswain, William Ewin of Pennsylvania, who had sailed with Cook before, and John Ledyard, who signed on as a corporal of the marine guard. Ledyard was a restless so ul, born in Groto n , Conn ecticut, in 175 1. Son of a sea captain , he received a good educatio n and became a minister preaching ro Indians in th e wes tern fronti er lands. Wearying of this, he came home in 1773 to ship o ut of New London for a voyage to Africa and th e West Indies, then sailed to London . There he signed on for the Kin g's service as a corpo ral of marines, to go on th e famo us
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Captain Cook's coming voyage to the Pacific. He kept a fascinating journ al of the expenence. "Generous Feelings" They traversed the Nort h and Sou th Atlantic and , after wa iting at th e Cape of Good Hope for Resolution's conso rt Discovery to catch up, crossed the empty reaches of the Indian Ocean, skirted Australi a, and came at las t into the islands of the Pacific. Ledyard fell easily into the quest for kn owledge, whi ch Cook's voyaging was about. H e rapidl y maste red th e basic Polynesian language spoken in all the islands they visited, and was interested to hear the Maoris in New Zealand talk of how their ancesto rs in remote times had come from "a fa r distant island called Hawj ee"-today's H awaii , which was to co me into Western ken in this voyage. That Ledyard and his fe ll ows looked at the natives as fellow human beings, not as mere objects fo r swdy, was dramatically illustrated when an "engaging Brunett" about fo urteen years old, named Gowannahee, fell in love with one of th e yo ung sailors. The young man was equally stricken and had himself tattooed to be more acceptable ro Gowan nahee and her people. They ended up runnin g away into the hills to begin a new Iife together. "Love like this is not to be found in those countries where the boasted refi nements of se ntim ent too often circumscribe the puri ty of affectio n and narrow it away to mere conjugal fidelity, " Ledyard noted rhapsodically in his journal. Cook, for reaso ns of ship's disciplineand also, perhaps, to avo id abandoning the crewman to a dream that might become a nightmare with no exit- had the man hunted down and brought back aboard. Observing that the sail or had suffered enough in his unhapp in ess at being parted from the girl , Cook had him returned to du ty withou t punishment. T his at least partly redeemed Cook in Ledyard's eyes. There was another sadness in leaving off the Tahitian Omai in his native island, who had been picked up during Cook's previous voyage. H e had li ved for a year as a great social lion in London. Omai, who
had asked to go home, was dejected at los ing touch with the new life opened to him, and Ledyard notes that the ship's people were afraid that his compatr iots migh t kill him after the Engl ish left. They fired the ship's cannon to impress upon the Tahi tians thei r ability to ave nge him if necessary. Resolution and Discovery steered northward, where they stumbled upon the H awa ii an Islands in January 1778. They paused here on ly b riefly before sailing on to the coast of North America, which they were to com b to the northward, seeki ng the back entrance to the fab led Northwest Passage joining the Atlantic and the Pacific, for more direct European access to the Far East. In North America Ledyard, pursuin g his studies of nati ve peoples, was surprised to find the I ndians spoke the sa me basic language as the Indians he had known on the far side of the co ntinent. He volun teered to lead a so li tary reconnaissance, which led to a Russian settlement. T here he found the small sloop in wh ich , he was told, Vitus Bering crossed the Bering Strait between Asia and America, in 1728. "I was determined to go on board of her," he writes, "a nd indu lge the ge nero us feelings the occasion req uired." So his Russian guide got a canoe and took him out to the sloop. T he sloop was alm ost certainly not Bering's origin al ship , but we may honor an early acolyte at the shrine ofh ist0ric preservation. T he voyage rs pushed on northward th ro ugh the Berin g Strait to the wall of solid ice that blocked furthe r progress just short of Latitude 71 ° North, and then , with the seaso n drawing on and the ships needin g repairs alow and aloft, they ran back to the H awa iian Islands. Ledyard reco rds their extraordinary recept ion by an es timated l 5,000 men, women and childre n in at least 2,500 canoes, and many more as hore. He noted: the shouts of joy, and admiration proceeding ftom the sonorous voices ofthe men confused with the shriller exclamations of the women dancing and clapping their hands, the oversetting ofcanoes, cries ofthe children . ... And he added, in a moving peroration: God ofcreation these are thy doings, these are
SEA HISTORY 86 AUTUMN 1998