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The CHARLES W. MORGAN Under
Sail in Distant Seas
The
Charles W. Morgan, sole survivor of
the whaleships that coursed the oceans in the 1800s, has been a lucky ship
– lucky to survive to tell an important chapter in seafaring, lucky in
Mystic Seaport’s dedicated restoration of her aged hull – and not
least, lucky in her biographer, the late John Levitt, a grand sailerman
from whose vivid, raw account of her life these adventures are reprinted. The Charles
W. Morgan’s sixth voyage began on 4 October 1859, under the command
of 32-year-old Captain James A. Hamilton.
On 30 November the first whales were sighted. The waist boat was the first to “strike,” but the line
fouled and Francis Laycock, a foremast hand, was dragged out of the boat
and drowned. To recover him
the crew cut the line, and the whale got away.
The other boats, however, struck a second whale and killed it. The Morgan made
her way past Cape Horn late in January and anchored in Talcahuano, Chile,
on 21 February to give the crew time ashore and to replenish supplies.
Nine of the crew decided they had had enough and deserted.
The ship then cruised slowly northward, the impatient young master
cursing the calm weather and looking forward to his arrival at Lahaina,
where he would receive mail from his beloved Augusta, the wife whom he had
married just a few months before departing.
His journal is filled with references to her, and it is easy to see
that he was looking forward to a full ship and the return to New Bedford.
After a brief stopover at Lahaina and Honolulu, he drove the ship
for the Sea of Okhotsk, and by July 1860 he was far north among the ice
floes. And he was getting
whales. In August the Morgan
was in Shantar Bay with some 16 other American whalers.
Here she ran into difficulty when her anchor caught under something
on the bottom. Even with the
assistance of Captain Manchester and extra hands from the ship Harvest,
the crew was unable to heave short and broke the windlass in the effort. At last they were forced to cut the cable.
Several whales were killed in the bay, but by 30 August they were
bound offshore again. In his
journal, Captain Hamilton admitted his homesickness and his longing to see
his wife, but it did not deter him from driving his ship, his men, and
himself. He stood for no
laxity and “broke” or disrated two boatsteerers who were unfortunate
enough to miss when they darted their irons.
In June of 1861 a bomb lance gun burst and badly mangled the
mate’s hand, requiring the amputation of a finger.
With the versatility forced on him by necessity, Captain Hamilton
performed the operation and in a very short time the hand was reported to
be healing nicely…. In January 1862, the ship was whaling in the
vicinity of Scammon’s Lagoon on the coast of Baja, California. There, the ships remained at anchor, sending out the boats to
run down the female gray whales and their calves in the shallow water of
the lagoons. In defense of
their young, the whales were “wild,” often attacking the whaleboats. During one encounter, two boats were stove and one man had
his thigh broken. Two months
later, just before the Morgan
headed back to Hawaii, a boat’s crew (six men) deserted the ship. In October, after another season in the Sea of Okhotsk.
Hamilton had another medical emergency when boatsteerer Ansel Braley fell
overboard from aloft during a gale. Hamilton managed to get a boat
overboard and rescued him. The
captain… (as entered into the whaling log)
found the man’s jaw to be broken in two places.
Set it and bandaged it to the best of my ability.
Also bruised about the breast and one leg and side of his head.
Bad case. See out of
neither eye. Bathed them with
proper remidies. Whilst
lowering the boat mate got his arm and breast hurt some.
Tried to bleed him. Got
no blood. Bathed the parts with sa[l]ve and sugar of lead &c …
squalls dark and bad looking weather.
So ends this day of casualties. Both men recovered, more due to their
strong constitutions than to the primitive medical practices of the day. Thereafter, it was a slow passage home,
catching whales en route, and the Morgan
arrived in New Bedford on 12 May 1863, three years and seven months
after Hamilton left his bride to take command.
The homesick captain was in for a pleasant surprise, however, for
he had brought his vessel safely home in the midst of the Civil War, when
prices were inflated and quantities of oil and bone landed were far below
normal. At an average price
of $1.53 per pound, whalebone was nearly twice as valuable as when the Morgan
left in 1859, and the value of right whale oil was nearly double as well.
When her accounts were settled on her return, the gross value of
the cargo was set at $165,407.35, which was by far the most valuable
(though not the largest) cargo ever landed by the Charles
W. Morgan. *
* * Captain Gibbons was stricken by illness
while at Durban [in 1909] and apparently wired the owners for a
replacement. In the meantime,
records indicate that the Morgan sailed
in charge of Joseph Roderick, the first mate, who was a good whaleman but
no navigator. To act in that
capacity, a William Haggie was signed on.
Captain Gibbons’ health did not improve, and Captain Charles S.
Church, formerly master of the bark Andrew
Hicks, took command. He
was accompanied by his wife, who was signed on as assistant navigator.
Mrs. Church, the former Charlotte Ott,
was the daughter of a San Francisco harbor pilot and had made the voyage
around Cape Horn with her husband when he brought the Andrew
Hicks back to New Bedford from the West Coast. She did assist her husband in navigation and also kept the
log when in the Morgan. Her
entries were very meticulous, noting latitude, longitude, course,
distance, variation, barometer, thermometer, wind force, sea, and weather. She also made a regular practice of setting bottles adrift
with notes in them giving the name of the vessel, position, and weather
condition at the time. Flashes of humor enlightened the
routine recording, and Mrs. Church showed an interest in other than strict
ship routine. One of the
first entries she made in the Morgan’s
log was to record the death of Major, a pet cat who had apparently
outlived his time. Later, the
steerage cat gave birth to a solitary kitten, which she described as “an
addition to the ship’s crew.” On
25 June 1910 she wrote, “killed fourteen scrawny chickens tonight.
The whole lot won’t make a good dinner.”
In August there is a dryly humorous note:
“We have two live pigs, one rooster, four cats and almost twenty
canarybird – no fear of starving for a while.”
She herself suffered from asthma and was very conscious of those
members of the crew who were ill, several having been forced to lay up
from time to time. *
* * For a time [from 1913-16] it appeared
that the Charles W. Morgan’s
whaling days were over. Lying
neglected and forlorn at a Fairhaven wharf, she seemed to have come to the
end of her 75-year career at last… Fortunately, Captain Benjamin
Cleveland, looking for a vessel in which to make a voyage after sperm and
sea elephant oil to Desolation Island in the far southern Indian Ocean,
knew vessels well enough to realize that the old bark was not yet beyond
redemption. After going over
her carefully, he approached the Wing company with a view toward buying
her. With backing from several other investors, he arranged to
purchase all but 4/64, which were held by the estate of William R. Wing.
The price paid was only about $6,000, and Captain Cleveland
retained 24/64, enough to assure him of control.
Fitting-out expenses were heavy, however, even though nothing was
done that was not absolutely necessary.
A few rotted spots in hood ends and butts of the hull planking were
filled with troweling cement, and many of the seals and much of the gear
were leftovers from her former voyages or purchased secondhand. A small windfall in the form of a
semi-charter by a motion picture company paid some of the bills. The company was making a film called Miss Petticoats, starring Alice Brady, one of the foremost
luminaries of the silent film era, and since some of the scenes were set
aboard a whaling ship, they were as delighted to find the Charles
W. Morgan available as Captain Cleveland was to welcome them aboard.
No alternations were made to the hull except to nail a new name –
Harpoon – over the old one,
and since the company also assumed some of the fitting-out expense as well
as paying a leasing or chartering fee, the old skipper was more than
pleased. The film was completed during the
summer, and after a final session on the railway to check the bottom,
refasten the copper where necessary, and thoroughly clean it, the Morgan was ready to sail. This
she did in September 1916. The
crew included a set of adventurous young men from Boston, but most of the
hands were experienced Portuguese-American whalemen. They sighted the first whale of the
voyage on 20 September, but although they lowered three boats none was
able to get close enough to dart an iron, and they had to return to the
ship with nothing to show for their pains.
Two days later they sighted a school, or pod, of whales and again
the three boats were lowered. This
time the bow boat killed their whale, but the waist boat was stove and
lost their whale, while the larboard boat struck but the iron drew and
they also lost theirs. Twice more they struck and killed
whales before they sighted the island of St. Vincent in the Cape Verdes on
9 November. “The ship
started leaking after the first storm by the time we reached here she was
leaking like a basket,” wrote one of the Boston hands, who refused to
sail and appealed to the American consul for a survey of the vessel’s
seaworthiness. After lying
over for a couple of days, they sailed across to Brava and lay there for
two more days making some minor repairs.
Believing that the ship had not been properly repaired, eight men
deserted and hid in the hills until the Morgan
departed. Working southward and rounding the Cape
of Good Hope, the Morgan finally
came within sight of Desolation Island on 11 February 1917, but spent some
ten days beating up to it against headwinds.
There they anchored and began their hunt for elephant seals…. Hunting went on in routine fashion
until 19 April, when a simply entry in the log told a tragic story.
In Captain Cleveland’s very original spelling, it reads: About 10 o’clock a.m. very moderat
whether but the see was very bad Boats went on shoor to bring of eliphant
bluber and the surf riased up and turned one boat over and lost 4 men
Ther names Ricahrds Moor Aguste Lemas Albert Rubeiro and Daniel
O’connor The rest of the crew on duty at Desolation Island.
Signed:
Benjamin D. Cleveland, master
John D. Lopes cheffe mate
Charles Johnson boatsteerer
Leaving Desolation Island on 12 May,
the Morgan worked northward into
the South Atlantic and on 8 August raised the island of St. Helena, where
she anchored next day. There
she lay for eight days while fresh water was taken aboard, some repairs
were made, and the crew was given a chance to stretch their legs ashore, a
watch at a time. Sailing
again on 16 August, the vessel followed a course to the West Indies, and
on 23 September she anchored at the island of Dominica, the next day
sailing for Statia (St. Eustatius). Apparently
Captain Cleveland learned that the US had entered the First World War five
months earlier, and he decided to avoid German raiders by making his way
northward "island hopping.” They
sighted several sailing vessels and steamers as they worked their way
toward home, but nothing eventful occurred.
(Captain Cleveland is elsewhere reported to have told people in New
Bedford that they narrowly missed colliding with a mine outside of
Dominica, but nowhere in the log is there mention of any such incident.) The bark called at St. Barthelemy, but
shortly thereafter the log ends abruptly, and no details of the passage up
the American coast are recorded. With
a cargo valued at $21,000, the Morgan
arrived home on 23 October 1917. Three
voyages later, in 1921, the Charles W. Morgan ceased whaling after 80 years. From
The Charles W. Morgan, second
edition, by John F. Leavitt (Mystic, CT., 1998), pp. 33-35, 73 and 79-82.
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