THE VOYAGES OF CAPTAIN RICHARD CLEVELAND
(1791-1820)
Perhaps the finest type of the Salem shipmaster of the age when her
seamen were the vikings of American commerce, was Captain Richard
Cleveland who wrote as capably as he sailed and fought and whose own
record of his voyages inspired the _London Literary Examiner_ to
comment in 1842:[39]
“Few things in De Foe, Dana, or any other truth teller are more
characteristic than Mr. Cleveland’s account of his voyage from Havre to
the Cape of Good Hope. Surely never before was there such an Indiaman
and with such a cargo and such a crew.”
Captain Cleveland was born in 1773 and he reached manhood and the
height of his career of the most romantic adventure when Salem commerce
was also at the zenith of its prosperity. He was the eldest son of a
father worthy to have such a son, Captain Stephen Cleveland, whose life
at sea began when at the age of sixteen he was kidnapped by a British
press gang in the streets of Boston, in 1756. This redoubtable sire
served for several years on board a British frigate, was promoted to
the rank of midshipman and fought the French fleet off the Channel
ports. He had returned to live in Salem when the Revolution began and
became active in fitting out privateers to harry the British flag which
he hated most heartily for having been compelled to serve under it. He
built the _Pilgrim_ brig which alone captured more than fifty British
prizes and was one of the fastest armed ships sent out of Salem. From
the Continental Congress he received a commission only a month after
the Declaration of Independence to command the brig _Despatch_[40] in
a voyage to Bordeaux after military stores and guns for the patriotic
forces. His was the first government vessel to fly the new American
flag in a harbor of Europe and he returned in safety with a cargo which
greatly helped the struggling cause in his country in the early days of
the war.
His son, Richard, hero of this narrative, followed the sea as a matter
of course, being an ambitious Salem lad as well as the son of his
father. At the age of fourteen he entered the counting house of Elias
Hasket Derby, as told in a previous chapter. He learned the mercantile
side of a seafaring life and with the other lads in the employ of
that famous old house, risked his little savings as “adventures” in
the vessels which were sailing to the Far East. His education, beyond
the counting house, was limited to a few years in the public schools
of Salem before he had much more than passed into his teens. Yet this
Richard Cleveland, mariner, by virtue of his native ability and the
influences of the times that bred him, made himself a man of the most
liberal education, in the finest sense of the phrase, and in addition
to this, he could lay claim to more genuine culture than most college
university graduates of to-day.
He was only eighteen when his father thought him old enough to go
to sea. As captain’s clerk, he sailed his first voyage with Captain
Nathaniel Silsbee, and became second mate before the ship returned to
Salem. This was the East Indiaman whose captain was not twenty years
old; the chief mate, nineteen; and Richard Cleveland, second mate,
at the same age. These rosy-cheeked lads carried the _Herald_ to the
Cape of Good Hope, thence into the Indian Ocean when warring powers
and their privateers menaced every neutral vessel. Well might Richard
Cleveland write of this remarkable beginning of his sea life:
“The voyage, thus happily accomplished, may be regarded, when taken in
all its bearings, as a very remarkable one; first, from the extreme
youth of all to whom its management had been entrusted; secondly, from
the foresight, ingenuity, and adroitness manifested in averting and
escaping dangers; in perceiving advantages and turning them to the best
account; and thirdly from the great success attending this judicious
management, as demonstrated by the fact of returning to the owner four
or five times the amount of the original capital. Mr. Derby used to
call us his boys, and boast of our achievements, and well might he do
so, for it is not probable that the annals of the world can furnish
another example of an enterprise, of such magnitude, requiring the
exercise of so much judgment and skill, being conducted by so young a
man, (Nathaniel Silsbee), aided only by still younger advisers, and
accomplished with the most entire success.”
In 1797, at the age of twenty-three, Richard Cleveland was in command
of the bark _Enterprise_ of Salem, bound for Mocha after a cargo of
coffee. He had to abandon this plan, however, after reaching Havre,
and his ship was ordered home. Her young master had no mind to lose
the profits which he had hoped to reap from this venture, wherefore he
decided to remain abroad, to send the ship home in command of the mate,
and not to go back to Salem until he had played for high stakes with
the fortunes of the sea. Thus began a series of voyages and adventures
which were to take him around the globe through seven long years before
he should see home and friends again. At Havre he bought on two years’
credit, a “cutter-sloop” of only forty-three tons, in size no larger
than the yachts whose owners think it venturesome to take them beyond
the sheltered reaches of Long Island Sound on summer cruises.
His plan was, in short, to fit out and freight the absurd cockle shell
of a merchantman for a voyage from Europe to the Cape of Good Hope
and thence to the Isle of France, in the Indian Ocean, a fertile and
prosperous colony which at that time was a Mecca for Yankee ships.
His cutter, the _Caroline_, was driven ashore and wrecked before the
coast of France was passed on his outbound voyage. The dauntless
skipper got her off, however, worked her back to Havre and made repairs
for a second attempt. This experience ought to have convinced any
ordinary mariner that his little craft was not fit for a voyage half
round the world, but Richard Cleveland, turning loss into profit, was
able to note of this disaster:
“My credit, however, has not suffered in the least on this account, for
I have not only found enough to repair the damages, but shall put in
$1,000 more, so that my cargo, although in a vessel of only forty tons,
will amount to $7,000. I now wait only for a wind to put to sea again.”
While at sea during the three months’ voyage to the Cape of Good Hope,
Captain Cleveland described in his journal the crew with which he had
undertaken to navigate the _Caroline_ to her faraway destination. “It
was not until the last hour I was at Havre,” said he, “that I finally
shipped my crew. Fortunately they were all so much in debt as not to
want any time to spend their advance, but were ready at the instant,
and with this motley crew, (who, for aught I knew, were robbers and
pirates), I put to sea.
“At the head of my list is my mate, a Nantucket lad, whom I persuaded
the captain of a ship to discharge from before the mast, and who knew
little or nothing of navigation, but is now capable of conducting the
vessel in case of accident to me. The first of my foremast hands is a
great, surly, crabbed, raw-boned, ignorant Prussian, who is so timid
aloft that the mate has frequently been obliged to do his duty there. I
believe him to be more of a soldier than a sailor, though he has often
assured me that he has been a boatswain’s mate of a Dutch Indiaman,
which I do not believe as he hardly knows how to put two ends of a rope
together. He speaks enough English to be tolerably understood.
“The next in point of consequence is my cook, a good-natured negro and
a tolerable cook, so unused to a vessel that in the smoothest weather
he cannot walk fore and aft without holding onto something with both
hands. This fear proceeds from the fact that he is so tall and slim
that if he should get a cant it might be fatal to him. I did not think
America could furnish such a specimen of the negro race (he is a
native of Savannah), nor did I ever see such a perfect simpleton. It
is impossible to teach him anything, and notwithstanding the frequency
with which we have been obliged to take in and make sail on this long
voyage, he can hardly tell the main-halliards from the mainstay. He one
day took it into his head to learn the compass, and not being permitted
to come on the quarterdeck to learn by the one in the binnacle, he
took off the cover of the till of his chest and with his knife cut
out something that looked like a cartwheel, and wanted me to let him
nail it on the deck to steer by, insisting that he could ‘’teer by him
better ’n tudder one.’
“Next is an English boy of seventeen years old, who from having lately
had the small-pox is feeble and almost blind, a miserable object,
but pity for his misfortunes induces me to make his duty as easy as
possible. Finally I have a little ugly French boy, the very image of a
baboon, who from having served for some time on different privateers,
has all the tricks of a veteran man-of-war’s man, though only thirteen
years old, and by having been in an English prison, has learned enough
of the language to be a proficient in swearing.
“To hear all these fellows quarrelling, (which from not understanding
each other, they are very apt to do) serves to give one a realizing
conception of the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. Nobody
need envy me my four months’ experience with such a set, though they
are now far better than when I first took hold of them.... Absence
has not banished home from my thoughts; indeed I should be worse than
a savage were I to forget such friends as I have, yet such is now my
roving disposition that were it not for meeting them, I doubt if I
should ever return.”
In the last lines quoted, Richard Cleveland, with such a crew on such a
venture, was able to find contentment with his lot. It is evident from
his graphic description that he was the only capable officer or seaman
on board his cutter, yet he navigated her without serious accident to
the Cape of Good Hope, and would not have touched there except for the
urgent need of fresh water. The French Directory had given him official
dispatches to carry to the Isles of France and Bourbon, and while this
private mission might protect him against capture by French privateers,
it laid him open to the grave risk of confiscation by whatever
English authorities he chanced to fall athwart of. He successfully
concealed these dispatches, but the officials of the Cape viewed him
with suspicions for other reasons. They could not but believe that so
hazardous a voyage in so small a craft must be somehow in the secret
behalf of the French government, and although they could find no
evidence after thoroughly overhauling the _Caroline_ and her papers,
they decided to make an end of this audacious voyage by purchasing the
vessel. Of the excitement caused by his arrival at the Cape, Captain
Cleveland relates:
[Illustration: Captain Richard Cleveland]
“The arrival of such a vessel from Europe naturally excited the
curiosity of the inhabitants of the Cape; and the next morning being
calm, we had numerous visitors on board, who could not disguise their
astonishment at the size of the vessel, the boyish appearance of
the master and mate, the queer and unique characters of the two men
and boy who composed the crew, and the length of the passage we had
accomplished. Various were the conjectures of the good people of the
Cape as to the real object of our enterprise. While some viewed it in
its true light as a commercial speculation, others believed that under
a mask we were employed by the French government for the conveyance of
their dispatches, and some even went so far as to declare their belief
that we were French spies, and as such deserving immediate arrest
and confinement. Indeed our enterprise formed the principal theme of
conversation at the Cape during the week after our arrival.”
Captain Cleveland’s private letters, log, and all other documents
found on board were taken ashore to the English admiral by whom
he was treated very politely, “but the extreme importance of the
blustering lieutenants was in the highest degree disgusting.” After
much parleying, the young skipper was given permission to export ten
thousand dollars worth of cargo in another venture. He had realized
a profit on his vessel without going to the Isle of France and was
inclined to think himself well out of an awkward situation when fresh
trouble arose because the merchant to whom he sold his cargo fell afoul
of the Custom House regulations, which entanglement resulted in the
seizure both of the cutter and the goods on board.
Facing ruin through no fault of his own, Captain Cleveland determined
to appeal directly to Lord McCartney, governor of the Cape, explaining
that the loss must fall on him as the luckless merchant could not
make good the losses. “But how to write a suitable letter (to Lord
McCartney) embarrassed me,” said he. “I had no friends with whom to
advise. I was entirely ignorant of the proper manner of addressing a
nobleman, and at the same time was aware of the necessity of conforming
to customary rules. In this dilemma I remembered to have seen, in an
old magazine aboard my vessel, some letters addressed to noblemen.
These I sought as models and they were a useful guide to me. After
completing my letter in my best hand I enclosed it in a neat envelope
and showed it to the admiral’s secretary who appeared to be friendly to
me. He approved of it and advised my taking it myself to his lordship
immediately. As the schoolboy approached his master after having played
truant, so did I approach Lord McCartney on this occasion.”
The frank and straightforward appeal of the boyish American ship master
moved the autocratic governor to interfere and the matter was decided
in favor of the petitioner with trifling loss. “The success of my
letter was the theme of public conversation in the town,” he commented,
“and was the means of procuring me the acquaintance of several
individuals of the first respectability.”
Four months passed before he was able to get passage on a merchant
vessel bound for Batavia, where he intended looking about for another
venture upon which to stake his capital. Finding nothing to his liking
in the Dutch East Indies, Captain Cleveland proceeded to Canton. At
this port he made up his mind to attempt a voyage to the northwest
coast of America to buy furs from the Indians. As soon as this daring
project was fairly under way he wrote home in a much more optimistic
vein than the circumstances warranted:
“We have every possible advantage, a vessel well calculated for inland
navigation, the best articles of trade that can be carried, a linguist
who speaks the Indian language as well as his own, and officers
experienced in the business. Should we fail of success with all these
advantages, it will be very extraordinary ill-fortune, and such as I
don’t choose to expect.”
As a matter of fact, his vessel was a small cutter no larger than the
_Caroline_, and his crew as worthless a set of beachcombing ruffians
as ever disgraced a forecastle. The captain was twenty-five years old
when he set sail from Canton in the winter of 1799, with a cargo of
merchandise worth almost $20,000, representing all his cash and credit.
His only chart for beating up the Chinese coast was a map drawn by a
navigator whom he chanced to meet in port. Until he could weather the
northern end of Formosa his course lay directly in the teeth of the
northwest monsoon, with imminent danger of being stranded or battered
to pieces by the wind. He paid his crew this handsome compliment:
“Having all hands on board twenty-one persons, consisting—except two
Americans—of English, Irish, Swedes and French, but principally the
first, who were runaways from the men-of-war and Indiamen, and two from
a Botany Bay ship who had made their escape, for we were obliged to
take such as we could get, served to complete a list of as accomplished
villains as ever disgraced any country.”
For a month on end the cutter fought her way up the Chinese coast, her
company weary, drenched, and wretched, until the sailors had enough of
such an infernal enterprise, and broke out in a full-fledged mutiny.
With a handful who remained loyal, including the ungainly black cook
previously described, Captain Cleveland locked up the provisions,
mounted two four-pounders on the quarterdeck, crammed them with
grape-shot, and armed his squad with flint-lock muskets and pistols.
A man with a lighted match was stationed beside each cannon, and the
skipper told the mutineers that if they attempted to get provisions or
to come above the hatches, he would blow them overboard. For one whole
day the hostile companies were at a dead-lock, until hunger gnawing,
the mutineers asked that they be put ashore believing that once out of
the vessel they could dictate their own terms.
Captain Cleveland landed and marooned them. For two days the cutter
lay off shore while the mutineers tried to patch up a truce. One man
weakened and was taken aboard. Of what happened as the final chapter of
this grim episode, Captain Cleveland wrote in his journal:
“At nine o’clock (A. M.) we hoisted the colors, fired a 4-pound cannon,
and weighed anchor when they all came out from behind a rock, where
they had doubtless been watching our motions. I then ordered the boat
out, and with my second officer and four hands, well armed, went as
near the beach as the surf would permit. I called them all down to the
water side and told them I was then going away; that I knew there were
several of them desirous of returning to their duty, but were deterred
by the others; that if they would come forward I would protect them,
and would fire at any one that tried to prevent them.
“They replied that they were all ready and willing to return to their
duty, but the ringleaders (whom I had determined not to take on any
account) were more ready than the others, and when they were rejected
they swore none of the others should go, and presented their knives
at the breasts of two of them, and threatened to stab them if they
attempted to do so; a third seemed indifferent and a fourth was lying
drunk on the beach. Having secured three, and one yesterday, which
was four of them, and which, with a little additional precaution, was
securing the success of the expedition, I did not think proper to put
into execution my threat of firing on them.
“After dinner I sent the second officer with four hands, well armed,
to make a last effort, but by this time those whose fate was decided,
had persuaded the others to share it with them, and had carried the
drunken man out of reach, declaring that we dare not go on the coast of
America with so feeble a crew, and we should take them all or none.
“Having now a light breeze from the westward and a favorable current,
I concluded to have no further altercation with them, and immediately
hoisted in the boat and made sail, leaving on the island of Kemoy,
(which is about three hundred and fifty miles northeast of Canton) six
of my most able men. This was such a reduction of our numbers as would
require unceasing vigilance, and extraordinary caution to counteract,
as the risk of being attacked by the Indians was of course increased in
proportion to our diminished power of resistance.”
The mariners in Canton had told Captain Cleveland that he could never
win his way clear of Formosa and into the Pacific during the winter or
monsoon season, but the staunch cutter, after mutiny, stranding, and
fighting her way inch by inch for thirty-one days steered out across
the open ocean. On her northerly course the weather was so heavy that
the seas washed over her day after day, and Captain Cleveland scarcely
knew what it was to wear dry clothes, have a meal cooked in the
wave-drenched galley, or snatch a whole night’s sleep.
After fifty-odd days of racking hardships the cutter fetched the
Northwest coast and anchored in Norfolk Sound. Bulwarks or screens of
hides were rigged along the decks in order to hide from the Indians
the scanty muster-roll of the ship’s company, lest they take her by
boarding. For two months Captain Cleveland cruised among the bays and
inlets along this wilderness coast, trading for sea-otter skins, and
averting hostile attacks by the ablest vigilance, diplomatic dealings,
and a show of armed force when it became necessary.
His hold was nearly filled when his cutter went hard aground on a
sunken ledge, and was tilted, nose under, at an angle of forty-five
degrees. “This position, combined with a rank heel to starboard, made
it impossible to stand on deck,” wrote her skipper. “We therefore
put a number of muskets into the boat, and prepared to make such
resistance in case of attack as could be made by fifteen men crowded
into a sixteen-foot boat. Our situation was now one of the most painful
anxiety, no less from the prospect of losing our vessel and the rich
cargo we had collected with so much toil, than from the apprehension of
being discovered in this defenceless state by any one of the hostile
tribes by whom we were surrounded. A canoe of the largest class,
with thirty warriors well-armed had left us but half an hour before
we struck, and they were now prevented from seeing us only by having
passed around a small island. Should the vessel bilge, there existed
scarcely any other chance for the preservation of our lives than the
precarious one of falling in with some ship before we were discovered
by Indians....
“More than ten hours passed in this agonizing state of suspence,
watching the horizon to discover if any savages were approaching; the
heavens, if there were a cloud that might chance to ruffle the surface
of the water; the vessel, whose occasional cracking seemed to warn us
of destruction; and when the tide began to flow, impatiently observing
its apparently sluggish advance, while I involuntarily consulted my
watch, the hands of which seemed to have forgotten to move.”
The cutter was floated during the following night, conveyed to a
beach and careened until her crew could repair her damaged copper and
planking. Soon after this Captain Cleveland set sail for the return
passage to China, _via_ the Sandwich Islands, and “indeed the criminal
who receives a pardon under the gallows could hardly feel a greater
degree of exultation.” When he arrived at Canton, “several of the
gentlemen who had predicted our destruction from attempting the voyage
at the season we did, presumed, when they saw the cutter arrive, that
we had failed, which indeed they had anticipated from the arrival in
Canton several months before of the mutineers whom we had left on the
coast of China, and the sad stories they told of hardship, danger and
cruel usage.”
Captain Cleveland had secured his sea-otter skins at the rate of one
flint-lock musket for eight prime pelts, and his cargo was worth sixty
thousand dollars in the Canton market. For this return he had risked
eleven thousand dollars, and his share of the profits amounted to
two-thirds of the whole, or forty thousand dollars. He sold the cutter,
and went to Calcutta in her as a passenger, with forty-six thousand
dollars as his capital for another fling at fortune. He had been away
from Salem a little more than two years, and at the age of twenty-five
had wrested from the seas a competence sufficient to have comfortably
supported him ashore. But he had no intention of forsaking the great
game he was playing with such high-hearted assurance.
During the voyage from Canton to Calcutta while the cutter was off
Malacca, “we saw a fleet of eleven Malay proas pass by to the eastward,
from whose view we supposed ourselves to have been screened by the
trees and bushes near which we were lying. On perceiving so great a
number of large proas sailing together, we felt convinced they must
be pirates, and immediately loaded our guns and prepared for defence;
although conscious of the fact that the fearful odds between our crew
of ten men and theirs, which probably exceeded a hundred for each
vessel, left us scarce a ray of hope of successful resistance.
“We watched their progress therefore, with that intense interest which
men may naturally be supposed to feel whose fortunes, liberty and lives
were dependent on the mere chance of their passing by without seeing
us. To our great joy they did so, and when the sails of the last of
the fleet were no longer visible from our deck, and we realized the
certainty of our escape, our feelings of relief were in proportion
to the danger that had threatened us. On arriving at Malacca, the
curiosity of the people was greatly excited to know how we had escaped
the fleet of pirates which had been seen from the town.”
Arriving at Calcutta Captain Cleveland was disappointed in his
expectations of sending home a cargo of goods upon terms which should
swell his profits, so he began to plan a voyage in which the rewards
might be in fairer proportion to the risks he was ready to undertake.
The East India Company forbade communication between Bengal and the
Isle of France, but Captain Cleveland foresaw an opportunity to pick
up at a bargain the rich prizes and cargoes that French privateers
were carrying into the latter port. Therefore, he bought a mite of
a twenty-five ton pilot boat, had her sent to the Danish settlement
of Serampore, put her under the Danish flag, and stole away into the
Indian Ocean. For forty-five days he held on his course blistering
under a tropic sun, and as he ingenuously explained to account for his
foolhardiness: “Pleasing myself with the idea that all will turn out
for the best, time passes as lightly with me as with most people, and
I am persuaded that few people enjoy a greater share of happiness than
myself, if you can conceive of there being any happiness in building
airy castles and pursuing them nearly around the globe till they
vanish, and then engaging in a fresh pursuit.”
The youthful merchant navigator fared safely in his cock-boat to
the Isle of France and was again disappointed in his commercial
air-castles. The privateers had sold their prizes and were winging it
out to sea in search of more British plunder. For ten months he waited
in the hope of a reopening of trade between America and the French
colonies. At length he loaded seven thousand bags of coffee on board a
Danish ship bound for Copenhagen, and sailed as a passenger. With him
went Nathaniel Shaler of Connecticut, a sterling American merchant
whom he had met in the Isle of France and who was a partner in this
coffee adventure to Copenhagen.
They sold their cargo for a large profit, and then began to look
about for a vessel suitable to undertake a voyage to the west coast
of South America, a project which the twain had worked out during
their companionship at sea. They found at Hamburg a fast and roomy
Virginia-built brig, the _Lelia Byrd_, which they bought. Shaler was
made captain by the toss of a coin, Captain Cleveland signing the
ship’s papers as supercargo. While in Hamburg they had formed a warm
friendship with a youthful Polish nobleman, Count de Rousillon, who had
been an aide-de-camp to Kosciusko. His personality was most engaging,
his love of adventure ardent, and his means slender, wherefore he
embraced with enthusiasm the invitation to join the two young Americans
in their voyage to South America. Alas, the glamor of such romance
as was their fortune to enjoy has long since vanished from commerce,
afloat and ashore. They were three seafaring “Musketeers” all under
thirty years of age, setting forth to beard the viceroys of Spain.
Richard Cleveland had now been a cheerful exile from Salem for four
years, following the star of his destiny in almost every ocean,
escaping dangers uncounted with the skin of his teeth and by his
sagacity, resolution and shrewdness finding himself richer for every
audacious voyage. For two and a half years longer, he was to sail in
the _Lelia Byrd_ among the Spanish peoples of the South American coast
before his wanderings should lead him home to Salem.
From Hamburg the brig went to Rio Janeiro where they were not allowed
to trade, and thence doubled Cape Horn and reached Valparaiso in
February in 1802. They were startled and alarmed to find four American
vessels under detention by the Spanish government. After spirited
correspondence with the Captain General at Santiago the _Lelia Byrd_
was permitted to buy supplies sufficient for resuming her voyage and
to sell so much of the cargo as would pay for the same. While at anchor
in the bay, Captain Cleveland and his friends witnessed a tragedy which
convinced them that the sooner they could get to sea the better. The
American ship _Hazard_ of Providence, Captain Rowan, which had touched
for provisions, had on board several hundred muskets shipped in Holland
and consigned to the Northwest Coast. The Governor ordered Captain
Rowan to deliver up these arms as violating treaty stipulations. The
American skipper saw no good reason why he should obey and refused to
let a file of Spanish soldiers on board his ship.
The Governor flew into a violent passion, ordered every American
merchant ashore to be locked up in the castle, and commanded an
eighteen-gun Spanish merchant ship to bring her broadside to bear on
the _Hazard_ and demand Captain Rowan’s surrender under pain of being
sunk at his moorings. The skipper replied that they might fire if they
pleased, and nailed his stars and stripes to his masthead.
Shaler, Rousillon, and Cleveland, happening to be ashore, were
swept up by the Governor’s drag-net order and sent to the castle as
prisoners. Next day they were offered liberty without explanation, but
the indignant trio from the _Lelia Byrd_ refused to be set free until
a proper apology had been made them. It was finally agreed that as
Captain Shaler was nominal master of the brig, he should stay in prison
while his comrades made matters hot for the offending Governor.
This official refused to let them send a messenger to the Captain
General and asked why in the devil they did not put to sea, and be
grateful that they had escaped the dungeons or worse. To which young
Richard Cleveland made reply (which the gifted Count turned into
fluent and fiery Spanish) that they wanted satisfaction for being
locked up without cause, and that Captain Shaler proposed to languish
behind the bars until he was informed why he had been put in. A day
later, the situation remaining in _status quo_, the Governor sent for
Cleveland, asked if he were not second in command and angrily ordered
him to extract his recalcitrant skipper from jail and go to sea on the
instant. The Yankee replied that the apology or explanation was still
lacking, and that the _Lelia Byrd_ was only waiting for her captain who
was a prisoner in the castle.
Meanwhile a letter had arrived from the Captain General ordering
Captain Rowan of the _Hazard_ to deliver up the arms which comprised
part of his cargo, and make a second declaration respecting their
lading. The muskets were sent ashore, and the supercargo sent to the
Governor with the customs certificate made out in Amsterdam. Captain
Rowan did not understand that he was expected to make this report in
person, but the Governor considered himself and his Spanish dignity
again insulted by the failure of the captain to appear.
Early in the morning, two hours before Americans were permitted to
land, and therefore before Captain Rowan could obey another summons,
two hundred Spanish soldiers who were no better than brigands, boarded
the _Hazard_ and took her from an unarmed crew of twenty-three men who
had no forewarning. In the words of Captain Cleveland:
“This was done by order of the Governor, who stood on shore opposite
the vessel and was a witness to the horrid scene of assassination and
rapine that followed. Captain Rowan’s life was saved by the humanity
of the captain of a Spanish brig, who got into the cabin in advance of
the rabble, as he had not time to save himself as the other officer had
done, by retreating to the lazaretto. The plunder which ensued for the
remainder of the day and the following night was such as to lighten the
ship nearly a foot. Nor were the officers of rank backward in taking
part in the pillage; and the custom house guards, far from preventing,
were as eager as the rest in the work of robbery.”
Captain Cleveland rushed to the Governor’s palace and demanded with
forceful Anglo Saxon threats, that he be allowed to send a statement
overland to the Captain General, but he was told that if he did not
want to share the fate of the _Hazard_, he had best put to sea. The
persistence of this indomitable young Yankee at last wore down the
Governor’s resistance, and the message was sent to Santiago by courier.
The answer was to the surprising effect that Captain Cleveland and
his comrades should receive the most complete satisfaction for the
injuries done them, at which Nathaniel Shaler, still cooling his heels
in the castle, consented to emerge with his self-respect untarnished.
After days and days of further complications due to red-tape and an
invincible hostility toward all other than Spanish vessels trading in
those waters, Captain Cleveland and his doughty shipmates were able
to bid a glad farewell to the Governor of Valparaiso, His Illustrious
Excellency, Don Antonio Francisco Garcia Carrasco.
“The notoriety they had attained by these protracted quarrels with
an ignorant, conceited, and pusillanimous official, rendered it
injudicious to attempt to enter any other port of Chili or Peru,”
wherefore the _Lelia Byrd_ was steered for the coast of Mexico, after
gathering these proofs to convince far less astute shipmasters that the
markets for American enterprise on the South American coast were not
up to expectations. They made their first landing at San Blas, where
the subordinate Spanish officials cordially received them. Rousillon
went to the interior capital of Tipec to confer with the Governor, and
alas, this peppery gentleman flew into a rage because his deputy at San
Blas had dared to make a trading agreement with the Yankee brig without
consulting him. Thus was brewed a tempest in a teapot, the upshot of
which was that His Passionate Excellency at Tipec sent word that the
_Lelia Byrd_ must leave port or be attacked by a Spanish gunboat.
The diplomatic Rousillon thereupon undertook to go to the City of
Mexico and solicit permission from the Viceroy to sell a part or the
whole of the cargo. Captain Cleveland, finding the harbor of San Blas
too hot to hold him, sailed for Three Marias Islands, sixty miles to
the westward, there to wait until word was received from his emissary
to the Viceroy. Three weary months passed in this empty fashion, at
the end of which the two captains, Shaler and Cleveland, decided to
risk a return to San Blas in the hope of finding some tidings of the
mysteriously vanished Rousillon. They stole into the coast by night,
and next day saw an Indian in a canoe who paddled out to them and
delivered a letter from their absent comrade. He had succeeded in
obtaining a concession to sell ten thousand dollars worth of goods at
San Blas, and after two weeks of delay this part of the cargo was put
ashore.
The sales dragged on with such interminable waste of time, however,
that it was deemed best to leave Rousillon in Mexico to finish these
transactions. He died before his mission was ended, and his friends and
fellow seafarers mourned the loss of one who had become very dear to
them and who had stood the test of their arduous life together.
The _Lelia Byrd_ next proceeded to San Diego in search of sea-otter
skins.[41] At this port they caught another Spanish Tartar in the
person of the Commandant, Don Manuel Rodriguez, who boarded them with
a file of dragoons, and left a guard on the ship, the sergeant of
which volunteered the discouraging information that the Boston ship
_Alexander_ had left port a few days before, after being robbed by
the Commandant of several hundred sea-otter skins which her captain
had purchased ashore. With this warning Captain Cleveland kept an eye
out for squalls. He was able to obtain several valuable lots of furs,
and made ready to go to sea without more delay. One more consignment
of skins was to be delivered and the night before sailing the first
officer and two men were sent ashore for them. They did not return and
daylight showed the boat hauled out on the beach and the men from the
brig in the hands of a squad of soldiers.
Captain Cleveland manned a boat with his armed sailors, pulled for the
beach and promptly took his men away from their captors. As soon as the
crew was on board, the Commandant’s guard was unceremoniously disarmed,
and with a fair wind the _Lelia Byrd_ moved out to sea. “Before we got
within gunshot of the fort,” wrote Captain Cleveland in his journal,
“they fired a shot ahead of us. We had previously loaded all our guns,
and brought them all on the starboard side. As the tide was running
in strong, we were not abreast the fort—which we passed within musket
shot—till half an hour after receiving the first shot, all of which
time they were playing away upon us; but as soon as we were abreast the
fort we opened upon them, and in ten minutes silenced their battery and
drove everybody out of it. They fired only two guns after we began, and
only six of their shot counted, one of which went through between wind
and water; the others cut the rigging and sails. As soon as we were
clear we landed the guard, who had been in great tribulation lest we
should carry them off.”
Thirty years later Richard Henry Dana, author of Two Years Before
the Mast, found the story of this exploit still current in San Diego
and the neighboring ports and missions. Shortly after the transfer
of California to the United States, Commodore Biddle referred to the
“Battle of San Diego” as giving Captain Cleveland a fair claim to the
governorship of the territory which claim he had won in the _Lelia
Byrd_ long before Fremont’s invasion.[42]
After some further adventures in search of trade along the Mexican
coast the adventurers laid their course for the Sandwich Islands. They
had purchased a horse on the coast and landed the beast on the island
of Owyhee. There were only two European inhabitants on the Sandwich
Islands at that time, John Young and Isaac Davis. Young came on board
the brig and wanted to buy the mare as a present for King Tamaahmaah,
but when his _blasé_ Majesty saw the animal cantering up and down the
beach he expressed little curiosity or interest, although this was the
first animal larger than a pig ever seen by the natives of the Sandwich
Islands. The king’s subjects were wildly excited, however, and when one
of the sailors mounted the mare and tore up and down the beach, the
spectators were much concerned for the rider’s safety, “and rent the
air with shouts of admiration.”
From the Sandwich Islands the _Lelia Byrd_ was carried to China,
arriving off Canton on the 29th of August, 1803. Here the cargo of
sea-otter skins was sold, and the two captains, Shaler and Cleveland,
parted company for the time. Shaler loaded the brig for a return voyage
to the California coast and Richard Cleveland took passage around the
Cape of Good Hope, homeward for Boston.
At the age of thirty years this Salem mariner returned to his kinfolk
and friends after an absence of seven and a half years at sea. He had
left home a lad of twenty-three with two thousand dollars as his total
capital. He had been twice around the world, had accomplished three
most extraordinary voyages in tiny craft, from Europe to the Cape of
Good Hope, from India to the Isle of France and from China to the
Northwest coast of America. He had fought and beaten mutineers and
Spanish gunners by force of arms, his invincible pluck and tenacity
had won him victories over Governors and Viceroys from Africa to the
Mexican coast, he had succeeded in a dozen hazardous undertakings where
a hundred men had failed, and at thirty years of age he had lived
a score of ordinary lives. He had increased his slender capital to
seventy thousand dollars by the cleanest and most admirable exertions,
and as fortunes were counted a hundred years ago, he was a rich man.
The achievements of modern so-called “Captains of Industry,” who amass
millions in wresting, by methods of legalized piracy, the riches that
other men have earned, raise a prodigious clamor of comment, admiring
and otherwise. But, somehow, such an American as Richard Cleveland
seems to be a far more worthy type for admiration, and his deeds loom
in pleasing contrast with those of a railroad wrecker or stock juggler,
even though a fortune of seventy thousand dollars is a bagatelle in the
eyes of the twentieth century.
Captain Cleveland believed that his affairs were so prosperously shaped
that he could retire from the sea. He built him a home in Lancaster,
Mass., where with his wife and brother, his well-stored mind and simple
tastes enjoyed the tranquil life of a New England village. But much
of his fortune was afloat or invested in foreign shipping markets,
and misfortune overtook his ventures one after the other. Three years
after his homecoming he was obliged to go to sea again to win a new
treasure in partnership with his old friend, Nathaniel Shaler. For
almost fifteen years longer he voyaged from one quarter of the globe
to the other, winning large profits only to risk them in more alluring
undertakings, always turning a resolute and undaunted front to whatever
odds overtook him. In his elder years, after a series of cruel maritime
reverses, he wrote as a summary:
“On making an estimate of my losses for the twenty years between 1800
and 1820, I find their aggregate amount to exceed $200,000, though
I never possessed at any one time a sum to exceed $80,000. Under
such losses I have been supported by the consoling reflection that
they had been exclusively my own, and that it is not in the power of
any individual to say, with truth, that I have ever injured him to
the amount of a dollar. With a small annual sum from the Neapolitan
indemnity I have been able to support myself till this was on the point
of ceasing by the cancelling of that debt, when I was so fortunate as
to obtain an office in the Boston Custom House, the duties of which I
hope to perform faithfully and in peace during the few remaining years
or months or days which may be allotted to me on earth.”
From an obituary notice in the _Boston Courier_ of December 8, 1860,
this tribute to the memory of Richard Cleveland is quoted, because it
was written by one who knew him:
“While in the planning of commercial enterprises he showed rare
inventive qualities, and in the execution of them wonderful energy and
perseverance, he was somewhat deficient in those humbler qualities
which enable men to keep and manage what they have earned.... But
this reverse of fortune served to bring out more and more the beauty
of Captain Cleveland’s character, and to give him new claims to
the affection and esteem of his friends. It was gently, patiently,
heroically borne; never a word of complaint was heard from his lips,
never a bitter arraignment of the ways of Providence, never an envious
fling at the prosperity of others. And the wise, kind, cheerful old man
was happy to the end.”
Thus lived and died an American sailor of the olden-time, a brave and
knightly man of an heroic age in his country’s history.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] Captain Cleveland’s “Narrative of Voyages and Commercial
Enterprises” was published in 1842 at Cambridge, Mass. In 1886 appeared
a small volume, “Voyages of a Merchant Navigator,” compiled from his
letters and journals by his son, H. W. S. Cleveland.
[40] See Appendix C.
[41] “Several American trading craft made their appearance on the
California coast this year, creating not a little excitement in some
instances by attempts at smuggling in the success of which the people
were hardly less interested than the Yankee captains. The _Lelia Byrd_
was fitted out at Hamburg by Capt. Richard J. Cleveland, of Salem,
Massachusetts, who had just made a fortune by a four years’ voyage
or series of commercial adventures in the Pacific, during which he
had touched the northern coast of America, but not of California, in
partnership with William Shaler, and sailed in November, 1801.
“An amusing feature of this and other similar narratives is the cool
frankness with which the Americans and English present the evasion of
all Spanish commercial and revenue regulations as an action altogether
praiseworthy, and the efforts of the officials to enforce those
regulations as correspondingly reprehensible.” (From The History of
California, by Herbert Howe Bancroft. Vol II. Page 10.)
[42] “Another version is that of Rodriguez in his report to the
Governor dated April 10th. About the fight the two narratives do not
exactly agree. Rodriguez says that suspicious of contraband trade
he made a round in the evening, surprised the Americans of one boat
trading with Carlos Rosa at La Barranca, arrested them and went on to
the Battery where he seized some goods left in payment for forty otter
skins. Next morning when Cleveland came ashore to see what had become
of the men one of the guards, Antonio Guillean—he was the husband of
the famous old lady of San Gabriel, Eulalia Perez, who died in 1878
at a fabulous old age—came also, escaped, and hastened to warn the
corporal in command of the battery that the Americans were going to
sail without landing the guard. The corporal made ready his guns, and
when the _Lelia Byrd_ started, raised his flag, fired a blank cartridge
and then a shot across her bows as Cleveland says. Then another shot
was fired which struck the hull but did no damage. This may have been
the effective shot.
“Thereupon Sergt. Arce shouted not to fire as they would be put ashore
and the firing ceased. But when the vessel came opposite the fort on
her way out she reopened the fire. The battery followed suit and did
some damage, but stopped firing as soon as the vessel did, no harm
being done to the fort or its defenders. It is, of course, impossible
to reconcile these discrepancies. Rodriguez, an able and honorable
man engaged in the performance of his duty, and making a clear
straightforward report is prima facie entitled to credence against a
disappointed and baffled smuggler.
“Cleveland ridiculed Rodriguez for his exceeding vanity, his absurd
display of a little brief authority, and the characteristic pomp with
which this arrant coxcomb performed his duties. I cannot deny that Don
Manuel may have been somewhat pompous in manner, but the head and front
of his offending in the eye of the Yankees was his interference with
their schemes of contraband trade.” (From The History of California, by
Herbert Howe Bancroft. Vol II, page 11.)