The Embarkation (1812)
C H A P T E R X I V
The Embarkation
[ 1812 ]
EANWHILE, money was flooding in. The American Board’s
treasury had contained twelve hundred dollars the morning of the ordination. The collection taken there had added two hundred and twenty. But this was only the beginning. Everywhere ministers and laymen were soliciting gifts. At Andover, nearly the whole student body, as well as the professors, asked money at every door for miles around. The appeal was irresistible. Even people who disbelieved in missions gave. One night when Nancy and Adoniram were seated with the Emersons around the fire in the parsonage in Beverly, the front door was opened, a heavy object thrown in, and the door closed with a bang. Mr. Emerson peered outside, but could see no sign of the intruder. In the living room, the occupants picked up the object and examined it. It was a purse. The tag attached read, “For Mr. Judson’s private use.” Inside was fifty dollars in coin.
Before the Caravan and Harmony actually sailed, more than six thousand dollars had been collected. And besides money, there were other gifts—clothing, and even food, including so much New England gingerbread that the missionaries were still eating it three months later.
But the thrill of sympathetic enthusiasm that ran through the countryside was not felt by everyone. One “prominent citizen of Haverhill” expressed the minority point of View in a letter which he wrote the twelfth of February to a friend in Lisbon, Portugal:
I can think of nothing intereSting to add. I will just observe that religious enthusiasm still continues to prevail here. Believe me, unaccountable as it may appear to you, that what I am about to repeat to you is true. A daughter of the late Moses
Atwood, deceased, by name of Harriet, and a young Miss Hazeltine, of the Hazeltine family of Bradford, young (about seventeen or eighteen years old), and totally ineXperienced in the school of human nature, are about to embark with their companions (to whom they have but yesterday allied themselves by marriage) -—-yes, I say that these four foolish and inexperienced young people are about to embark, and will actually sail to the far-distant shores of Hindoostan, and marvellous to tell, to teach that numerous and ancient people the right way to heaven!
But if there were carpers, Nancy and Adoniram at Beverly, and Harriet and Samuel staying with Isaac Newell in Salem, did not mind. They were too busy, too excited, and too happy—the Judsons with their usual buoyancy, the Newells in their own “more sober and contemplative way.”
It proved impossible to load the Caravan in time to sail on the tenth. She lay at the end of Crowninshield’s Wharf —— closest to the sea of all Salem’s wharves——until the thirteenth. But even after she had been taken out into the middle of the harbor, she rode idly at anchor while more cargo was put aboard. As the last Salem ship, in all probability, to sail for the Orient until after the expected war, her owner and master were determined to cram her with everything her ninety-foot length and two-hundred-and-sixty-seven-ton burden could contain.
Meanwhile, Adoniram, Newell, Nancy and Harriet became acquainted with her captain, Augustine Heard, as they paid constant visits aboard with their friends to inSpect their cabins and supervise the stowing of what Heard called “tangible evidence of the good will of their friends in the shape of boxes of all sizes... containing almost everything that is conducive to comfort on a voyage.”
Heard, a native of Ipswich, was only twenty-seven—not much older than the missionaries—and this voyage was to be his first command, an unusually important one in View of the circumstances and the cargo. But Pickering Dodge, the Caravarz’s owner, had full confidence in the young captain. Even-tempered, courteous, competent, he had a cool daring which was to become a legend in Essex County.
His ship carried valuable freight—goods amounting in value to some forty thousand dollars, and another forty thousand in specie and bills of exchange. In addition he had accepted, with his usual amiability, a host of personal commissions. He carried two thousand silver dollars for his father and the same amount in paper. Numerous female relatives and retired sea captains from Ipswich had given him sums from twenty to a hundred dollars each. Three of the Francis children had presented him with a dollar apiece, for him to invest for them in Calcutta.
Besides all this, he was laden with lists of things to buy for friends and relations —— Salem’s equivalent of asking a neighbor to pick up a small item while passing the corner grocery. For Henry Pickering, he was to buy a Sanskrit Bible. For others he was to buy cashmere and camel’s-hair shawls, two large “palompons” for the covering of a large bed, a netting covering for a bed, some lengths of “Mull Mull” or cobweb muslin, straw carpets, red carnelian necklaces, pots of preserved ginger and articles of all sorts too numerous to mention.
The deck of the Caravan presented a peculiar appearance. It was covered with coops and pens full of cackling chickens and squealing pigs—fresh meat for the long voyage. Concerning this seagoing barnyard and other matters, Pickering Dodge kept up a barrage of advice in the form of letters: “... the yellow corn is for the fowls, the old white corn for the hogs.” The missionaries were to dine in the cabin. “I hope you will find them pleasant companions, give a fresh dish once a week or oftener, if practicable, and puddings, rice, etc.: be as careful as possible of the water, as your ship’s company is large and considerable live stock to subsist, but hope you will be fortunate enough to catch some near the line, avoid Speaking to any Vessel on your outward or homeward voyage.”
The general confusion of loading, of animals and fowls, of missionaries and their friends coming on board and leaving, of Pickering Dodge’s old seafaring acquaintances and of last-minute changes in rigging was compounded by almost hourly changes in weather and wind, both of which had to be suitable for clearing the harbor.
By the thirteenth, when the Caravan was moved out into the harbor, Adoniram and Nancy had moved from Joseph Emerson’s parsonage in Beverly to the Salem home of the drygoods merchant Eliphalet Kimball, whose daughter Lydia had been Nancy’s close friend and schoolmate in Bradford, in order to be closer at hand when it should finally be time to embark. But still the Caravan was delayed. The fourteenth and fifteenth were wet and stormy. The sixteenth, a Sunday, continued wet and stormy, and Adoniram and Nancy went back to the Emersons’ in Beverly. On the seventeenth a tremendous snowstorm fell, “almost burying the town in snow.”
Early in the morning of the eighteenth—a bleak, cold day—they returned to the Kimball house in Salem. By now, excellent arrangements to see that the missionaries got on board at the proper time had been made by two young men in Salem. The two had taken particular interest in the missionaries, had done a good deal to collect money, and ever since the ordination had neglected their own work to form a sort of volunteer executive staff. One of them was Israel W. Putnam, who had spent two years with Newell at Harvard before transferring to Dartmouth to graduate with the class of 1809. At this time he was studying law with Judge Samuel Putnam in Salem, but very shortly was to enter Andover Theological Seminary, graduate in 1814, and enjoy a distinguished career as a minister and a trustee of Dartmouth. The other was S. B. lngersoll, who had been a sea captain, had been converted and left the sea, and was eventually to become a minister at Shrewsbury.
Putnam had made the Newells his particular responsibility, Ingersoll the Judsons.
Adoniram and Nancy had been at the Kimball house only a few hours when word came suddenly from Captain Heard that they should go aboard the Caravan as soon as possible. A fair wind had sprung up from the west and he wanted to sail out on the full tide that very afternoon.
Adoniram and Nancy had been in high spirits all along, but this news threw them into a fever of exhilaration. Adoniram immediately repacked their just—unpacked personal luggage, flinging all sorts of articles into the nearest handy containers, and carried them in a sleigh to Crowninshield’s Wharf.
When he returned he found the Kimball house filled with friends, chattering and laughing in excitement, shedding farewell tears, and bemoaning the fact that Mr. Kimball, not expecting the sailing to be so soon, had gone to Boston that morning on business. In fact, no one had expected it to be this day. Dr. Worcester, that tower of strength, was out of town on American Board business. Even Joseph Emerson was away soliciting money and there was no way of reaching him.
From Adoniram’s point of View, with his aversion to formal partings, this was all to the good. Without a word to anyone, he slipped quietly out of the house, walked alone down the snowy street to the wharf, found a boat, and went on board the Caravan. Here he waited for Nancy.
In the Kimball house, the discovery that Adoniram had stolen away caused a good deal of disappointed surprise. Nancy was distressed, but she muSt have remembered that his stealthy leaving was only a repetition of what she had witnessed in Bradford the morning of the ordination. At any rate, there was no lack of conveyance. Ingersoll, by previous understanding with Adoniram, had procured a sleigh as soon as he learned of the sailing, and driven at once to the Kimball house. Here be bundled the last of the luggage, Nancy, and four of the ladies into the sleigh and hurried them down to the wharf, where they met the Newells, who had been conveyed by Putnam.
It was a blustering day—no time for lengthy farewells, with that icy west wind knifing down the length of the harbor. The customhouse boat was waiting. There were a few brief words of love and blessing while the luggage was hurriedly stowed in the boat. Nancy, Harriet and Newell were helped down into it. Putnam and Ingersoll followed, with such others as could crowd in.
The men at the oars shoved the heavily laden boat out from the wharf and began to row toward the Caravan. The watchers on the wharf — their numbers growing as more people heard of the sailing and hastened to the harbor—saw it rise and fall, shrinking smaller and smaller as it passed over the steely water until it reached the side of the brig. Some turned away now, but a group of the hardiest remained on the cold exposed end of the wharf, stamping their feet and blowing on their freezing fingers.
Darkness came, and still the Caravan did not sail. The few still remaining on the wharf began to think of their warm dinners and the roaring fires in their living rooms. By twos and threes they turned away and made their way to their homes, perhaps pausing now and then to look back at the lights gleaming across the black water from the Caravan’s portholes.
On board the Caravan, meanwhile, there had been a change of plan. For in spite of Captain Heard’s determination to sail that afternoon, the wind had died and he had been forced to give up the attempt. He decided to try again with the next tide, early in the morning.
At dark, the visitors who had been lingering on board with the missionaries returned to their homes ashore, but Ingersoll and Putnam offered to spend the night on the ship and make company for the Judsons and Newells, who were “much pleased.” After a while even Captain Heard went on shore, and the four missionaries and the two visitors had the brig nearly to themselves.
They made a gay time of it. As Putnam wrote: “The evening was spent in pleasant conversation, and singing from one of the old singing books; and although everything external wore a dismal aspect”——and it certainly must have, on a cold February night in the middle of the harbor with the waves slapping the sides of the hull—“yet in the cabin, where we were with the missionaries, singing and praying, there was a perfect contrast. All was cheerfulness and even joy.”
But some of the joy may have been a little forced. Nancy confided to her journal later that night that she “had so long anticipated the trying scene of parting, that I have found it more tolerable than I had feared.”
Still my heart bleeds. 0 America, my native land, must I leave thee? Must I leave thee, Bradford, my dear native town, where I spent the pleasant years of childhood; where I learned to lisp the name of my mother;... where I learnt the endearments of friendship, and tasted all the happiness this world can afford; where I learnt also to value a Saviour’s blood, and to count all things but loss, in comparison with the knowledge of him?... Farewell, happy, happy scenes,—but never no, never to be forgotten.
Captain Heard returned to the Caravan before dawn. The tide was full and a we5t wind had sprung up, fair enough to give a reasonable chance of clearing the northern end of Cape Cod. The weather remained clear and cold. A little after sunrise the brig left the harbor. Six or eight miles out, clear of the Miseries and Baker’s Island, Ingersoll and Putnam went over the side with the pilot and dropped into the little pilot boat. Adoniram, Nancy, Samuel Newell and Harriet leaned over the rail waving as the pilot boat swung aside and began to drOp astern.
The four watched longingly as the sails of the pilot boat filled and she came about to return to the harbor. In a little while she vanished, and there was nothing to see but the dark coastline streaked with the white of snow. Soon that, too, melted out of sight, and the Caravan was rising and falling in the swells of the open sea. Shivering in the piercing wind, the missionaries turned away from the rail and went below.
The next landfall would be India.