Rough Justice Maritime Historian Joan Druett)s Inquiry into a 160-Year-Old Murder at Sea by Joan Druett A new book by Joan Druett (author of She Was a Sister Sailor and Hen Frigates) plunges the reader into the lives of crew members of the Massachusetts whaleship Sharon, whose captain was brutally killed in 1842 by three of his own men. As she reveals, this was more than a case of mutiny and murder. belong to a country that is known as "the Polynesian capital of the wo rld," where every Maori tribe can trace irs origins to one of rhe seven huge canoes that colonized the uninhabited islands of New Zealand. As a ch ild, I inherited Polynesian legends and superstitions; like my school mares, I readily believed in kehua, 'atuaancestor ghosts-and knew about tapu and sacred ground . I was raised in the ambience of O ceania. That's why, when I first began research on the grisly fate of Captain H owes Norris of the whaleship Sharon, who was hacked to death on his own quarterdeck by three Pacific Islanders in 1842, I knew that most of the story had not been told. According to the first newspaper that published the acco unt, Captain No rris had been massacred while almost all the ship's crewmen were off in the whaleboats chasing their prey. Norris had been left alone on board with a Portuguese boy and three Pacific Island natives, savages, who, while the boats were more than a mile away, grabbed the chance to slaughter the captain and run away with the ship . Stranded seven hundred miles fro m the nea rest habitable land, the whalemen in the boats faced a protracted and ghas tly death . Nevertheless, both crew and ship we re saved by the gall ant third mate, who swam on boa rd afte r dark had fallen and singlehandedly defeated the three mutin eers. Two were killed. All by himself, the third mate recaptured the Sharon . It was a gripping story, thrilling enough to be reprinted many times in the years that fo llowed . In my mind, however, questions were clamoring-why did rhe three kill Norris? W hat was their motive? For 160 years it has been ass umed that the "savages," bei ng "savage," were perfectly capable of mindless violence. But, havi ng been raised in the Pacific myself, I co uld not accept, as generations of writers and readers had, that savages do not need a
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SEA HISTORY 105, AUTUMN 2003
reaso n to commit murder. No r only did I feel certain that they had some motive for the crime, but I also felt that it was an overwhelmingly compelling one. Because the ship was so far out of sight ofl and, the murder must have been unpremeditated and sudden. So mething major must h ave sparked the fa tal confli ct- bur what? The morning after the murder and rhe recapture of th e ship , rhe surviving native was discovered hiding in the hold. Shackled and questioned , the only excuse he gave was "that the captai n was cross"-an enigmatic statement that none of the reporters bothered to inves tigate. I wo ndered , as I read those first newspaper acco unts, could
this be the key to the forces that had driven this viol ent drama? Did the answer lie with the victim himself? Captain Howes Norris was an experienced and successful whaling master, something that counted for a great deal in his home island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. From humble origins, he climbed to the top of the social ladder through his efforts on distant whaling grounds. H andsome, well-dressed, and suave, Captain No rris was respected as one of rhe elite whose voyaging in far-off seas brought wealth to the island. At home, he was a lovi ng husband and caring parent. At sea, he was a consummate mariner and a coura-
geo us and lucky whaleman. He might rule his crew with an iron hand, but that was part of the popular image of a whaling captain-a man with a fist like a rock but a heart of gold, who disciplined his men as necessary, bur regarded them with the affection of a father. Was it possible that this paragon had don e something to trigger his own ghas tly fate? I found the answer in three journals and a long letter written on board the ship . The first was a journal that had been written by Captain Howes Norris himself. Though formal and uncommunicative, it provided valuable hints about the frustrations he had been enduring prior to the murder. The second was the journal kept by the ship's cooper, Andrew White. M y heart hammered as I read his misspelled descriptions of some of the most violent events on board. His grim revelations were too horrifying to believe at first, but opened up awful possibilities. Then, through the generosity of the third mate's descendants, I read the private journal kept by the hero of the singlehanded recapture himself-and uncovered the details of the tragedy of the Sharon. Captain Norris was not the man he showed himself to be on land. As the journals vividly testified, he had tortured and killed one of his own sailors-someone those natives had know n well, a man who had been a shipmate, and had shared the decks and the forecas tle with them. Like the res t of the crew, they had watched in horror as that sailor was slowly beaten to death. Now, I understood the frightful background to the native's statement "that the captain was cross, " and realized that Norris's murder was nothing more or less than rough justice, a horrific but full y deserved vengeance, delivered by terrified men. As Melville said, "There is ve ry little that separates the enlightened man from the savage," and when the man who is supposed to be civilized commits horrible cruelties, the retribution of the so-called "savages" becomes inevitable. ,.!.
In the Wake of Madness, by Joan Druett (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC, 2 003, 292pp, appen, notes, index, ISBN 1-56512-347-6; $24.95 he)
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