CAPTAIN LUTHER LITTLE’S OWN STORY
(1771-1799)
Captain Luther Little made no great figure in the history of his
times, but he left in his own words the story of his life at sea which
ancient manuscript contributes a full length portrait of the kind of
men who lived in the coastwise towns of New England in the eighteenth
century. He was not of Salem birth, but he commanded a letter of marque
ship out of Salem during the Revolution, which makes it fitting that
the manuscript of his narrative should have come into the hands of
his grandson, Philip Little, of Salem. This old time seaman’s memoir,
as he dictates it in his old age, reflects and makes alive again the
day’s work of many a stout-hearted ship’s company of forgotten American
heroes.
Born in Marshfield, Massachusetts, in 1756, Luther Little was a sturdy
man grown at the beginning of the Revolution and had already spent
five years at sea. At the age of fifteen he forsook his father’s farm
and shipped on board a coasting sloop plying between Maine and the
South Carolina ports. On one of these voyages he was taken ill with
a fever and was left ashore in a settlement on the Pimlico River,
North Carolina. The planter’s family who cared for the lad through his
long and helpless illness were big-hearted and cheery folk, and his
description of a “reaping bee,” as enjoyed a hundred and forty years
ago, is quaintly diverting.
“When the evening amusements began our host performed on the violin
and the young people commenced dancing. I was brought down stairs by
one of the daughters and placed on a chair in one corner of the room
to witness their sports. They got so merry in the dance that I was
unheeded, and they whirled so hard against me as to knock me from my
chair. One of the young women caught me in her arms, and carried me
to the chamber and laid me on the mat. They held their frolic until
midnight and eight or ten of the girls tarried till morning. My mat
lay in one corner of the garret, and they were to occupy another on
the opposite side. When they came upstairs they commenced performing a
jumping match after making preparations for the same by taking off some
of their clothes. They performed with much agility, when one of the
stranger girls observing me in one corner of the garret exclaimed with
much surprise: ‘Who is that?’ The answer was: ‘It’s only a young man
belonging to the North that is here sick, and won’t live three days.
Never mind him.’”
His sloop having returned, this sixteen-year-old sailor surprised his
kind host by gaining sufficient strength to go on board and soon after
set sail for Martinique in the West Indies. The Revolutionary Committee
of North Carolina had ordered the captain to fetch back a supply of
powder and shot. He took aboard this cargo after driving overboard and
threatening to blow out the brains of an English lieutenant who had it
in mind to make a prize of the sloop while she lay at Martinique.
It was out of the frying pan into the fire, for when the vessel reached
the Carolina coast, “the news of our unexpected arrival had been noised
abroad,” relates Luther Little, “and the King’s tender lay within a
few miles of the bar in wait for us. Twelve pilot boats from Ocrakoke
came off to us and informed us that the tender was coming out to take
us. We loaded the pilot boats with powder, and the balls, which were in
kegs, we hove overboard. By this time the tender made her appearance
and ordered us all on board, made a prize of the sloop and ordered her
for Norfolk where lay the English fleet. When our pilot and his crew
went to take their boat I mingled with them and walked quietly on board
without being observed, and set hard at rowing with one of the oars.
The captain and the rest of the crew were made prisoners.”
The pilot boat landed young Little at Ocrakoke, where he found that the
other pilots who had taken the powder ashore had stolen ten casks of
it, scurvy patriots that they were. So the stout-hearted lad of sixteen
borrowed an old musket and stood guard all night over the powder kegs.
“The next morning,” he tells us, “the pilots finding they could plunder
no more of the powder, agreed to carry it up the Pimlico River to the
several County Committees for whom it was destined.” Luther Little went
with them and saw to it that the powder reached its owners.
One Colonel Simpson offered him a small schooner laden with corn to be
delivered down the Pongo River. She had a crew of slaves which the boy
skipper loftily rejected and took his little schooner single-handed
downstream, making port after a two days’ voyage. While at anchor there
came a hurricane which had a most surprising effect on his fortunes.
“I shut myself down in the cabin,” said he, “and in the course of the
night found the vessel adrift. Not daring to go on deck I waited the
result and soon felt the vessel strike. After thumping a while she
keeled to one side and remained still. At daylight next morning I
ventured on deck and found myself safe on terra firma, in the woods,
one half mile from the water, the tide having left me safe among the
trees.”
Making his way on foot to the home of the consignee, he reported his
arrival, explained the situation and wrote his employer that he had
delivered his cargo safe, and that he would find his schooner half a
mile in the woods anchored safely among the trees.
The marooned seaman had not to wait long for another berth. On the same
day of his escape he saw a sloop beating out of the river and hailed
her skipper. A foremast hand was wanted and Little shipped aboard for
the West Indies. During the passage they were chased by an English
frigate, and ran in under the guns of the Dutch fort at St. Eustatia.
Cargo and vessel were sold, and Luther Little transferred himself to
another sloop bound for Rhode Island.
“Arriving safe after a passage of eleven days,” he writes, “I took
my pack and travelled to Little Compton where I had an uncle. Here I
stayed one week, and then marched home on foot, the distance of seventy
miles, without one cent in my pocket. I had been absent eleven months.”
A few months later Luther Little shipped on board a letter of marque
brig bound to Cadiz. Off Cape Finnesterre a storm piled the vessel on
the rocks where she went to pieces. Little was washed over the bows,
but caught a trailing rope and hauled himself aboard with a broken leg.
While he was in this plight the brig broke in two, and somehow, with
the help of his fellow seamen, he was conveyed ashore to a Spanish
coast fortification. Thence they were taken by boat to Bellisle. The
infant Uncle Sam was not wholly neglectful of his subjects, even though
he was in the death-grip of a Revolution, for to the inn at Bellisle
there came “a coach with four white horses and Mr. John Baptiste, an
officer in the employ of the United States government, to enquire if
there were any from off that wreck who needed assistance and wished to
go to the hospital.”
Luther Little lay in a hospital at Lisbon from autumn into spring
where, he relates: “I was treated with great kindness and attention and
although in my midnight dreams the spirits of a kind mother and beloved
sisters would often hover around my pillow, still on waking, the
thought that I had escaped an early death was ever present to the mind,
and I felt that although far from home and friends, I had every reason
to be thankful.”
The canny youngster had a shoe with a hollow heel, which hiding place
he had prepared before leaving home, and in which he had tucked eight
gold dollars with this sagacious reflection:
“Previous to this I had been left among strangers perfectly destitute
without money either to assist myself, or to remunerate them for
kindness received. I was now leaving home again, the future was covered
with a veil which a wise Providence had never permitted human knowledge
to rend. I knew not with what this voyage might be fraught—evil or
good. I therefore resolved if possible to have something laid up as the
old adage expresses, ‘for a wet day.’”
When Luther was discharged from the Spanish hospital eleven other
luckless American seamen who had been cast on their beam ends were
set adrift with him. The shoe with the hollow heel held the only cash
in the party who undertook an overland journey of three hundred miles
to the nearest seaport whence they might expect to find passage home.
While spending the night at a port called St. Ubes there came ashore
the captain and lieutenant of an English privateer. These were very
courteous foemen, for the captain told how he had been made prisoner
by a Yankee crew, carried into Salem, and treated so exceedingly well
that he was very grateful. Thereupon he ordered his lieutenant to go
off to the privateer and fetch a dozen of pickled neats’ tongues which
he gave the stranded pilgrims to put in their packs. He also turned
over to them a Portuguese pilot to escort them through the desolate and
hostile country in which their journey lay. With the Portuguese, the
neats’ tongues, and wine in leather bottles, paid for from the hollow
heel, the American tars trudged along, sleeping on the ground and in
shepherds’ sheds until they reached the boundary between Spain and
Portugal.
“The Spanish and English were at war,” relates Luther Little, “and
the stable in which we slept was surrounded by Spaniards who swore we
were English and they would take us prisoners. In vain the landlord of
the nearby tavern expostulated with them, saying we were Americans in
distress traveling to Faro. They still persisted in forcing the door.
The pilot told them that we were desperate men armed to the teeth and
at length they disappeared.”
They were among a set of accomplished thieves, for next day they bought
some mackerel and stowed it in their packs from which it was artfully
stolen by the very lad who had sold it to them. The pilot cheered them
with tales of highway robbery and murder as they fared on, indicating
with eloquent gestures sundry stones which marked the burial places
of slain travelers. They were once attacked by a gang of brigands who
stole their mule and slender store of baggage, but the seamen rallied
with such headlong energy that the robbers took to the bushes.
Reaching the port of Faro, they found a good-hearted mate of a
Portuguese brig who gave them a ham, four dozen biscuit and a part of
a cheese. The French Consul also befriended them, and supplied a boat
to take them to a port called Iammont. Although the ingenuous Luther
Little explains their next adventure as pacific, it is not unfair to
presume that his company committed a mild-mannered kind of piracy.
However, he tells the tale in this fashion:
“We reached the mouth of the Iammont River next morning. Here we met a
Spanish shallop coming out, bound to Cadiz, loaded with small fish and
manned with six men. The Captain was very old. We shifted on board this
shallop and sailed toward Cadiz with a fair wind. When night approached
the Spanish captain having no compass, steered by a star; at ten the
clouds came over and the stars were shut in, the wind blowing fresh.
The Spaniards fell on their knees, imploring the aid of their saints.
Directly the captain concluded to go on shore, and took his cask of
oil to break the surf, and bore away toward the shore. We being the
strongest party (eleven to six), hauled the shallop onto her course and
obliged the old Spaniard to take the helm, it still continuing very
thick. At one that morning we struck on the Porpoise Rocks at the mouth
of Cadiz Bay; we shipped two seas which filled the boat. With our hats
we bailed out water, fish and all, directly made Cadiz light, and ran
in near the wall of the city. The sentry from the wall told us to come
no nearer, whereupon the old captain hauled down sails and let go his
anchor. At daylight I paid one Spanish dollar apiece passage money and
we left the boat.
“We went to the gate of the city and sat down on some ship timber.
One of our men was then two days sick with a fever. When the gate was
opened we marched in, two of us carrying the sick man. A little way
inside we met a Spaniard who spoke English. He invited us to his house,
and gave us a breakfast of coffee and fish, and told us we were welcome
to remain there until we could find a passage home.”
Next day Luther Little as spokesman waited upon John Jay, United States
Minister to the Court of Madrid, who had come to Cadiz with his wife in
the _Confederacy_ frigate. Minister Jay put the sick man in a hospital
while the others sought chances to work their way home. They found in
the harbor an English brig which had captured an American ship and
was then in her turn retaken by the Yankee crew who had risen upon
the prize crew. According to Luther Little this Yankee mate, Morgan
by name, was a first-class fighting man, for he had sailed the brig
into Cadiz, flying the Stars and Stripes, with only a boy or two to
help him. She carried twelve guns and needed a heavy crew to risk the
passage home to Cape Ann.
Reinforced by the captain and crew of another American vessel which had
been taken by an English frigate, Luther Little’s party sought Minister
Jay and explained the situation. They could work their passage in the
brig, but they had no provisions. Would he help them? Mr. Jay made this
singular compact, that he would give them provisions if they would sign
a document promising to pay for the stores at the Navy Yard in Boston,
or to serve aboard a Continental ship until the debt was worked out.
All hands signed this paper by which they put themselves in pawn to
serve their country’s flag, and the brig sailed from Cadiz.
After thirty days they were on George’s Bank where they lay becalmed
while an English privateer swept down toward them with sweeps out. A
commander was chosen by vote, decks cleared for action, and two guns
shifted over to the side toward the privateer. “The captain ordered
his crew to quarters. When the privateer came up to us we gave her a
broadside; she fired upon us, then dropped astern and came up on the
larboard side,” so Little describes it. “As soon as the guns would bear
upon her we gave her another broadside. They returned the same. The
privateer schooner giving up the contest, dropped astern and made off,
we giving her three cheers.”
Without mishap the brig arrived off Cape Ann, and continued on to
Boston. There Luther Little obtained money from friends and paid off
his share of the debt to the Navy Board. He was the only one of the
eleven of his party who redeemed themselves, however, the others going
aboard Continental cruisers as stipulated by the shrewd Minister Jay
who, in this fashion, secured almost a dozen lusty seamen for the navy.
“Once more I reached home entirely destitute,” comments Luther Little,
who tarried on his father’s farm a few weeks, and then once more
“bade home and those dear to me, adieu.” This was in the year 1780.
He entered on board the United States ship _Protector_, of twenty-six
guns and 230 men, as midshipman and prizemaster. Her commander was John
Foster Williams, and her first lieutenant, George Little, was a brother
of our hero. Their names deserve remembrance, for the _Protector_
fought one of the most heroic and desperate engagements of the
Revolution of which Midshipman Little shall tell you in his own words:
“We lay off in Nantasket Roads making ready for a six months’ cruise,
and put to sea early in April of 1780. Our course was directed
eastward, keeping along the coast till we got off Mount Desert, most
of the time in a dense fog, without encountering friend or foe. On the
morning of June ninth, the fog began to clear away, and the man at the
masthead gave notice that he discovered a ship to the windward of us.
We perceived her to be a large ship under English colors, standing down
before the wind for us. We were on the leeward side.
“As she came down upon us she appeared to be as large as a
seventy-four. The captain and lieutenant were looking at her through
their glasses, and after consulting decided that she was not an English
frigate but a large king’s packet ship, and the sooner we got alongside
of her the better. The boatswain was ordered to pipe all hands to
quarters, and clear the ship for action. Hammocks were brought up and
stuffed into the nettings, decks wet and sanded, matches lighted and
burning, bulkheads hooked up.
“We were not deceived respecting her size. It afterwards proved she was
of eleven hundred tons burden, a Company ship which had cruised in the
West Indies for some time and then took a cargo of sugar and tobacco at
St. Kitts bound to London. She carried thirty-six twelve-pounders upon
the gun deck, and was furnished with two hundred and fifty men, and
was called the _Admiral Duff_, Richard Strange, master. We were to the
leeward of her and standing to the northward under cruising sail. She
came down near us, and aimed to pass us and go ahead. After passing by
to the leeward she hove to under fighting colors. We were all this time
under English colors and observed her preparing for action. Very soon I
heard the sailing master call for his trumpet:
“‘Let fall the foresail, sheet home the main topgallant sail.’
“We steered down across her stern, and hauled up under her lee quarter.
At the same time we were breeching our guns aft to bring her to bear.
Our first lieutenant possessed a very powerful voice; he hailed the
ship from the gang-board and enquired:
“‘What ship is that?’
“He was answered ‘The _Admiral Duff_.’
“‘Where are you from and where bound?’
“‘From a cruise bound to London,’ they answered, and then enquired:
‘What ship is that?’
“We gave no answer. The captain ordered a broadside given, and colors
changed at the first flash of a gun, and as the thirteen stripes took
the place of the English ensign they gave us three cheers and fired a
broadside. They partly shot over us, their ship being so much higher
than ours, cutting away some of our rigging. The action commenced
within pistol shot and now began a regular battle, broadside to
broadside.
“After we had engaged one half hour there came in a cannon ball through
the side and killed Mr. Scollay, one of our midshipmen. He commanded
the fourth twelve-pounder from the stern, I commanded the third.
The ball took him in the head. His brains flew upon my gun and into
my face. The man at my gun who rammed down the charge was a stout
Irishman. Immediately on the death of Mr. Scollay he stripped himself
of his shirt and exclaimed:
“‘An’ faith, if they kill me they shall tuck no rags into my insides.’
“The action continued about an hour when all the topmen on board
the enemy’s ship were killed by our marines, who were seventy in
number, all Americans. Our marines also killed the man at the wheel,
caused the ship to come down upon us, and her cat-head stove in our
quarter-gallery.
“We lashed their jib-boom to our main-shrouds, and our marines from the
quarterdeck firing into their port holes kept them from charging. We
were ordered from our quarters to board, but before we were able the
lashings broke. We were ordered back to quarters to charge our guns
when the other ship shooting alongside of us, the yards nearly locked.
We gave her a broadside which cut away her mizzen mast and made great
havoc among them. We perceived her sinking, at the same time saw that
her main topgallant sail was on fire, which ran down the rigging and
caught a hogshead of cartridges under the quarterdeck and blew it up.
“At this time from one of their forward guns there came into the port
where I commanded a charge of grape shot. With three of them I was
wounded, one between my neck bone and windpipe, one through my jaw
lodging in the roof of my mouth, and taking off a piece of my tongue,
the third through the upper lip, taking away part of the lip and all of
my upper teeth. I was immediately taken to the cockpit, to the surgeon.
My gun was fired only once afterward; I had fired nineteen times. I
lay unattended to, being considered mortally wounded and was past by
that the wounds of those more likely to live might be dressed. I was
perfectly sensible and heard the surgeon’s remark:
“‘Let Little lay. Attend to the others first. He will die.’
[Illustration: Captain Luther Little
(The scars and disfigurement left by wounds received in the action with
the _Admiral Duff_ have been faithfully reproduced by the painter)]
“Perceiving me motion to him he came to me and began to wash off
the blood, and dress my wound. After dressing the lip and jaw he
was turning from me. I put my hand to my neck, and he returned and
examined my neck, pronouncing it the deepest wound of the three. I bled
profusely, the surgeon said two gallons.
“By this time the enemy’s ship was sunk and nothing was to be seen of
her. She went down on fire with colours flying. Our boats were injured
by the shots and our carpenters were repairing them in order to pull
out and pick up the men of the English that were afloat. They succeeded
in getting fifty-five, one half wounded and scalded.
“The first lieutenant told me that such was their pride when on the
brink of a watery grave, that they fought like demons, preferring death
with the rest of their comrades rather than captivity, and that it was
with much difficulty that many of them were forced into the boats. Our
surgeon amputated limbs from five of the prisoners, and attended them
as if they had been of our own crew. One of the fifty-five was then
sick with the West Indies fever and had floated out of his hammock
between decks. The weather was excessively warm and in less than ten
days sixty of our men had taken the epidemic.
“The _Admiral Duff_ had two American captains, with their crews, on
board as prisoners. These (the captains) were among the fifty-five
saved by our boats. One of them told Captain Williams that he was with
Captain Strange when our vessel hove in sight, that he asked him what
he thought of her, and told him he thought her one of the Continental
frigates. Captain Strange thought not, but he wished she might be; at
any rate were she only a Salem privateer she would be a clever little
prize to take home with him. During the battle while Captain Williams
was walking the quarterdeck a shot from the enemy took his speaking
trumpet from his hand, but he picked it up and with great calmness
continued his orders.[11]
“We sailed for the coast of Nova Scotia near to Halifax. After cruising
there about a week we discovered a large ship steering for us, and
soon discovered her to be an English frigate. We hove about and ran
from her, our men being sick, we did not dare to engage her. This was
at four o’clock in the afternoon. The frigate gained on us fast. When
she came up near us we fired four stern chasers, and kept firing. When
she got near our stern she luffed and gave us a broadside which did no
other damage save lodging one shot in the mainmast and cutting away
some rigging. We made a running fight until dark, the enemy choosing
not to come alongside. In the evening she left us and hauled her wind
to the southward and we for the north.”
The captain of the _Protector_ needed wood and water and so set sail
for the Maine coast where he landed his invalids, converting a farmer’s
barn into a temporary hospital with the surgeon’s mate in charge.
While the cruiser lay in harbor Luther Little’s sense of humor would
not permit this incident to go unforgotten:
“Among our crew was a fellow half Indian and half negro who coveted
a fatted calf belonging to a farmer on the shore. His evil genius
persuaded him to pilfer the same, but he could find only one man
willing to assist him. Cramps, which was the negro’s name, took a boat
one evening and went on shore to commit the depredation. He secured the
victim and returned to the ship without discovery. He arrived under
the ship’s bows and called for his partner in crime to lower the rope
to hoist the booty on board, but his fellow conspirator had dodged
below and it so happened that the first lieutenant was on deck. Cramps,
thinking it was his co-worker in iniquity, hailed him in a low voice,
asking him to do as he had agreed and that damned quick.
“The lieutenant, thinking that something out of the way was going on,
obeyed the summons. Cramps fixed the noose around the calf’s neck, and
cried:
“‘Pull away, blast your eyes. My back is almost broke carrying the
crittur so far on the land. Give us your strength on the water.’
“The lieutenant obeyed, and Cramps, boosting in the rear, the victim
was soon brought on deck. Cramps jumped on board and found both himself
and the calf in possession of the lieutenant. Next morning the thief
was ordered to shoulder the calf and march to the farmer and ask
forgiveness, and take the reward of his sins which was fifty lashes.”
So seriously had Midshipman Little been raked with the three grape shot
that he was sent home to recover his strength, and he did not rejoin
the _Protector_ until her second cruise five months later. After taking
several prizes between the New England coast and the West Indies,
she sailed for Charleston. One afternoon a sail was sighted to the
leeward. “We wore around,” says the narrative, “and made sail in chase,
found we gained fast upon her and at sunset we could see her hull. When
night shut in we lost sight of her. There came over us a heavy cloud
with squalls of thunder and lightning and by the flashes we discovered
the ship which had altered her course. We hauled our wind in chase and
were soon alongside. The next flash of lightning convinced us she was
of English colours. We hailed her. She answered ‘from Charleston bound
to Jamaica,’ and inquired where we were from. The first lieutenant
shouted back:
“‘The _Alliance_, United States frigate.’
“Our men were all at quarters and lanterns burning at every port. Our
captain told him to haul down his colours, and heave to. There was no
answer. We fired three twelve pounders. He called out and said he had
struck. Captain Williams asked why he did not shorten sail and heave
to. He replied that his men had gone below and would not come up. Our
barge was lowered, a prize crew and master put on board and we took
possession of the ship. She proved to be of eight hundred tons burden,
with three decks fore and aft carrying twenty-four nine-pounders and
manned with eighty men. We ordered her for Boston where she arrived
safe.”
This handsome capture was achieved by an audacious “bluff,” but this
cruise of the _Protector_ was fated to have a less fortunate ending. A
few days later another prize was taken and, lucky for Luther Little,
he was put aboard as prizemaster. While he was waiting in company with
the _Protector_ for his orders to proceed, the cruiser sighted another
sail and made off in chase. Prizemaster Little tried to follow her
until night shut down, and then as she showed no lights he gave up the
pursuit and shaped his course for Nantucket. At daylight next morning,
the mate who was standing his watch on deck, went below to inform
Skipper Little that two large ships were to the leeward. The latter
climbed aloft with his glass and made them out to be British frigates
in chase of the _Protector_. They took no notice of the prize a mile
to windward of them but pelted hard after the Yankee war ship and when
last seen she was in the gravest danger of capture.
Luther Little cracked on sail for Boston with his prize and upon
arriving called upon Governor John Hancock and told him in what a
perilous situation he had left the _Protector_. Ten days later the news
came that the cruiser had been taken by the _Roebuck_ and _Mayday_
frigates and carried into New York.
Luther Little, having escaped with the skin of his teeth, forsook
the service of the United States and like many another stout seaman
decided to try his fortune privateering. Captain William Orme, a Salem
merchant, offered him the berth of lieutenant aboard the letter of
marque brig _Jupiter_. She was a formidable vessel, carrying twenty
guns and a hundred and fifty men. From Salem, that wasp’s nest of
Revolutionary privateersmen, the _Jupiter_ sailed for the West Indies.
Captain Orme went in his ship, but while he was a successful shipping
merchant, he was not quite a dashing enough comrade for so seasoned a
sea-dog as this young Luther Little. To the windward of Turk’s Island
they sighted a large schooner which showed no colors.
“Our boatswain and gunner had been prisoners a short time before in
Jamaica,” says Lieutenant Little, “and they told Captain Orme that she
was the _Lyon_ schooner, bearing eighteen guns. Our boatswain piped
all hands to quarters and we prepared for action. Captain Orme, not
being acquainted with a warlike ship, told me I must take the command,
advising me to run from her. I told him in thus doing we should surely
be taken. I ordered the men in the tops to take in the studding-sails.
We then ran down close to her, luffed, and gave her a broadside,
which shot away both of her topmasts. She then bore away and made sail
and ran from us, we in chase. We continued thus for three hours, then
came alongside. I hailed and told them to shorten sail or I’d sink
them on the spot. Our barge was lowered and I boarded her; all this
time she had no colours set. I hailed our ship and told Captain Orme I
thought her a clear prize, and bade the men prepare to board her. But
the captain hailed for the boat to return. I obeyed and told him she
had a good many men and several guns. The captain said he would have
nothing to do with her, as he feared they might rise upon us. Much to
my reluctance we left her.”
After having thirty men of the crew violently ill at one time in the
fever-stricken harbor of Port au Prince, the letter of marque _Jupiter_
was freighted with sugar and coffee and set out for Salem. Dodging two
English frigates cruising for prizes in the Crooked Island passage, she
passed a small island upon which some kind of signal appeared to be
hoisted.
“I was in my hammock quite unwell,” relates Lieutenant Little of the
_Jupiter_. “The captain sent for me on deck and asked me if I thought
a vessel had been cast away on the island. After spying attentively
with my glasses, I told him it was no doubt a wreck, and that I could
discover men on the island, that probably they were in distress. I
advised him to send a boat and take them off. He said the boat should
not go unless I went in her. I told him I was too sick, to send Mr.
Leach, our mate. He would not listen to me. I went. We landed at the
leeward of the island, and walked toward the wreck, when ten men came
towards us. They were the captain and crew of the unfortunate vessel.
They were much moved at seeing us, said they were driven ashore on
the island and had been there ten days without a drop of water. By
this time Captain Orme had hove a signal for our return, there being a
frigate in chase. Going to the ship the wrecked captain, who was an
old man named Peter Trott, asked me where our vessel was from. I told
him we were bound to Salem, and he was quite relieved, fearing we were
an English man-of-war. We came alongside and the boat was hoisted up
and every sail set, the frigate in chase. She gained upon us and at
dark was about a league astern. The clouds were thick and I told the
captain we were nearly in their power, our only chance being to square
away and run to the leeward across the Passage, it being so thick that
they could not discover us with their night glasses. We lay to until we
thought the frigate had passed, made sail toward morning, and fetched
through the Passage.”
After this voyage Luther Little became captain of a large brig which
had a roundhouse and was steered by a wheel which was uncommon for
merchantmen in those days. He had one terrific winter passage home from
the West Indies, fetched up off the Massachusetts coast with every man
of his crew but one helplessly frozen, and his vessel half full of
water. With his one lone seaman he was blown off to sea, and at length
ran his waterlogged craft ashore on the Maine coast. Nothing daunted,
he worked her down to Boston, after being frozen up and adrift in ice,
and sending ashore for men to help him pump out his hold.
“Here at this era of my life, the wheel of fortune turned,” he makes
comment. “The last seventeen years had been spent mostly on the wide
waters. I had passed through scenes at which the heart shrinks as
memory recalls them; but now the scene changed. Ill luck was ended.”
Thereafter Captain Luther Little continued in the West India trade
until he had made twenty-four successful voyages, “always bringing back
every man, even to cook and boy.” After this he shifted to the commerce
with Russia, making six yearly voyages to St. Petersburg at a time when
the American flag was almost unknown in that port.
“During one of these voyages,” he recounts, “when off Norway in a cold
snow storm lying to, a man on the main yard handling the mainsail
fell overboard, went under the vessel, and came up on the lee side. I
was then on the quarterdeck, caught a hen coop, and threw it into the
ocean. He succeeded in getting hold of it. I then ordered topsails hove
aback, and to cut away the lashings of the yawl. The man not being in
sight I ordered the boat to pull to windward. They succeeded in taking
him and brought him on board. He was alive though unable to speak
or stand. I had him taken into the cabin, and by rubbing and giving
him something hot, he was soon restored to duty. I asked him what he
thought his fate would be when overboard. He said that he tried the hen
coop lying to and found that would not answer. Then he thought he would
try it scudding, and ‘sir,’ he answered, ‘if you had not sent your boat
just as you did, I should have borne away for the coast of Norway.’”
When his sea life ended at the age of forty-one, Captain Luther Little
could say with a very worthy pride:
“In all my West India and Russian voyaging I never lost a man, never
carried away a spar, nor lost a boat or anchor.”
In 1799, before the opening of the nineteenth century, this sturdy
Yankee seaman, Luther Little, was ready to retire to his ancestral
farm in Marshfield where his great-grandfather had hewn a home in the
wilderness. In the prime of his vigor and capacity, having lived a
dozen lives afloat, he was content to spend forty-odd years more as a
New England farmer. And in his eighty-fifth year this old-fashioned
American sailor and patriot still sunny and resolute, was able to sit
down and describe the hazards through which he had passed just as they
are here told.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] In the log book of the _Protector_ Captain Williams described the
engagement as follows: “_June 9th, 1780._ At 7 A. M. saw a ship to the
Westward, we stood for her under English colours, the ship standing
athaught us, under English colours, appeared to be a large ship. At 11
came alongside of her, hailed her, she answered from Jamaica. I shifted
my colours and gave her a broadside; she soon returned us another.
The action was very heavy for near three Glasses, when she took fire
and blew up. Got out the Boats to save the men, took 55 of them, the
greatest part of them wounded with our shot and burnt when the ship
blew up. She was called the _Admiral Duff_ of 32 guns, Comman’d by
Richard Strang from St. Kitts and Eustatia, ladened with Sugar and
Tobacco, bound to London. We lost in the action one man, Mr. Benja.
Scollay and 5 wounded. Rec’d several shot in our Hull and several of
our shrouds and stays shot away.”
Ebenezer Fox who was a seaman aboard the _Protector_ related: “We
ascertained that the loss of the enemy was prodigious, compared with
ours. This disparity, however, will not appear so remarkable when it is
considered that, although their ship was larger than ours, it was not
so well supplied with men; having no marines to use the musket, they
fought with their guns alone, and as their ship lay much higher out
of the water than ours, the greater part of their shot went over us,
cutting our rigging and sails without injuring our men. We had about
seventy marines who did great execution with their muskets, picking off
the officers and men with a sure and deliberate aim.”