_Report of the Committee on Naval Affairs, to whom was referred
memorials from sundry citizens of Connecticut interested in the whale
fishing, praying that an exploring expedition be fitted out to the
Pacific Ocean and South Seas. March 21, 1836._
That a more accurate, defined, and available knowledge than we at
present possess, of the waters, islands, and continental coasts of the
great Pacific and Southern Oceans, has long been desirable, no
unprejudiced individual conversant with the subject, is likely to
deny. A portion of the community unrivalled in activity, enterprise
and perseverance, and of paramount importance both in a political and
commercial point of view, has long been reaping a rich harvest of
individual wealth and national honor in these vast regions. The
Pacific may be termed the training ground, the gymnasium of our
national navy. The hardihood and daring of that branch of our
commercial marine employed in its trade and fisheries, have almost
become a proverb. It is in this class we meet with the largest
aggregate of that cool self-possession, courage, and enduring
fortitude, which have won for us our enviable position among the great
maritime powers; and it is from this class we may expect to recruit a
considerable proportion of the physical strength and moral
intelligence necessary to maintain and improve it. The documentary
evidence upon which the report before us is based, forms an appendix
to it, and is highly interesting in its character. It awakens our
admiration at the energy and industry which have sustained a body of
daring men, while pursuing a dangerous and arduous occupation, amid
the perils and casualties of an intricate navigation, in seas
imperfectly known. It enlists our sympathies in the hardships and
difficulties they have combatted, places in strong relief the justice
of their claims upon the nation for aid and protection, and shows the
expediency of the measure which has at last resulted from their
representations. The report itself is clear, manly, decided—the
energetic language of men who, having examined the data submitted to
them with the consideration the interests it involved seemed to
require, are anxious to express their sentiments with a force and
earnestness suited to their views of the urgent occasion and of the
course they recommend.
It is a glorious study to contemplate the progress made by human
industry, from stage to stage, when engaged in the prosecution of a
laudable object. Little more than a century ago, only the crews of a
few miserable open boats, too frail to venture far from land, waged a
precarious warfare with the great leviathans of the deep, along the
shores of Cape Cod and Nantucket—then occupied, at distant intervals,
by a few inconsiderable fishing stations. The returns even of these
first efforts were lucrative, and more appropriate vessels for the
service were fitted out. These extended their cruises northward to
Labrador, and southward to the West Indies. At length the adventurers,
in vessels of yet greater capacity, strength and durability, crossed
the Equator and followed their hardy calling along the Eastern Shore
of the Southern Peninsula and on the Western and North Western coast
of Africa. The Revolution of course operated as a temporary check to
their prosperity, but shortly thereafter these dauntless mariners
doubled Cape Horn, and launched their daring keels into the
comparatively unknown waste beyond, in search of their gigantic prey.
Since that fortunate advent, the increase in the shipping, extent, and
profits of the fishery, has been unprecedented, and new sources of
wealth the importance of which it is at present impossible to
estimate, have been opened to us in the same quarter. The trade in
skins of the sea-otter and seal, in the fur of land animals on the
North West coast, &c. has been extensive in extent and avails. The
last mentioned animal, besides the valuable ivory it affords, yields a
coarse oil which, in the event of the whale becoming extinct before
the perpetual warfare of man, would prove a valuable article of
consumption. Of the magnitude of the commercial interest involved in
different ways in the Pacific trade, an idea may be gathered in the
following extract from the main subject of our review. Let it be {588}
borne in mind, that many of the branches of this trade are as yet in
their infancy, that the natural resources to which they refer are
apparently almost inexhaustible; and we shall become aware that all
which is _now_ in operation, is but as a dim shadow to the mighty
results which may be looked for, when this vast field for national
enterprise is better known and appreciated.
“No part of the commerce of this country is more important than that
carried on in the Pacific Ocean. It is large in amount. Not less than
$12,000,000 are invested in and actively employed by one branch of the
whale fishery alone; in the whole trade there is directly and
indirectly involved not less than fifty to seventy millions of
property. In like manner from 170 to 200,000 tons of our shipping, and
from 9 to 12000 of our seamen are employed, amounting to about
one-tenth of the whole navigation of the Union. Its results are
profitable. It is to a great extent not a mere exchange of
commodities, but the creation of wealth by labor from the ocean. The
fisheries alone produce at this time an annual income of from five to
six millions of dollars; and it is not possible to look at Nantucket,
New Bedford, New London, Sag Harbor and a large number of other
districts upon our Northern coasts, without the deep conviction that
it is an employment alike beneficial to the moral, political, and
commercial interests of our fellow-citizens.”
In a letter from Commodore Downes to the Honorable John Reed, which
forms part of the supplement to the report, that experienced officer
observes—
“During the circumnavigation of the globe, in which I crossed the
equator six times, and varied my course from 40 deg. North to 57 deg.
South latitude, I have never found myself beyond the limits of our
commercial marine. The accounts given of the dangers and losses to
which our ships are exposed by the extension of our trade into seas
but little known, so far, in my opinion from being exaggerated, would
admit of being placed in bolder relief, and the protection of
government employed in stronger terms. I speak from practical
knowledge, having myself seen the dangers and painfully felt the want
of the very kind of information which our commercial interests so much
need, and which, I suppose, would be the object of such an expedition
as is now under consideration before the committee of Congress to
give.
* * * * *
“The commerce of our country has extended itself to remote parts of
the world, is carried on around islands and reefs not laid down in the
charts, among even groups of islands from ten to sixty in number,
abounding in objects valuable in commerce, but of which nothing is
known accurately; no not even the sketch of a harbor has been made,
while of such as are inhabited our knowledge is still more imperfect.”
In reading this evidence (derived from the personal observation of a
judicious and experienced commander) of the vast range of our commerce
in the regions alluded to, and of the imminent risks and perils to
which those engaged in it are subjected, it cannot but create a
feeling of surprise, that a matter of such vital importance as the
adoption of means for their relief, should so long have been held in
abeyance. A tabular view of the discoveries of our whaling captains in
the Pacific and Southern seas, which forms part of another document,
seems still further to prove the inaccuracy and almost utter
worthlessness of the charts of these waters, now in use.
Enlightened liberality is the truest economy. It would not be
difficult to show, that even as a matter of pecuniary policy the
efficient measures at length in progress to remedy the evils
complained of by this portion of our civil marine, are wise and
expedient. But let us take higher ground. They were called
for—_Firstly_: as a matter of public justice. Mr. Reynolds, in his
comprehensive and able letter to the chairman of the committee on
Naval Affairs, dated 1828, which, with many other conclusive arguments
and facts furnished by that gentleman, forms the main evidence on
which the late committee founded their report—observes, with reference
to the Pacific;
“To look after our merchant there—to offer him every possible
facility—to open new channels for his enterprise, and to keep up a
respectable naval force to protect him—is only paying a debt we owe to
the commerce of the country: for millions have flowed into the
treasury from this source, before one cent was expended for its
protection.”
So far, then, we have done little as a nation to facilitate, or
increase, the operations of our commerce in the quarter indicated; we
have left the adventurous merchant and the hardy fisherman, to fight
their way among reefs of dangerous rocks, and through the channels of
undescribed Archipelagos, almost without any other guides than their
own prudence and sagacity; but we have not hesitated to partake of the
fruits of their unassisted toils, to appropriate to ourselves the
credit, respect and consideration their enterprise has commanded, and
to look to their class as the strongest support of that main prop of
our national power,—a hardy, effective, and well disciplined national
navy.
_Secondly_. Our pride as a vigorous commercial empire, should
stimulate us to become our own pioneers in that vast island-studded
ocean, destined, it may be, to become, not only the chief theatre of
our traffic, but the arena of our future naval conflicts. Who can say,
viewing the present rapid growth of our population, that the Rocky
Mountains shall forever constitute the western boundary of our
republic, or that it shall not stretch its dominion from sea to sea.
This may not be desirable, but signs of the times render it an event
by no means without the pale of possibility.
The intercourse carried on between the Pacific islands and the coast
of China, is highly profitable, the immense returns of the whale
fishery in the ocean which surrounds those islands, and along the
continental coasts, have been already shown. Our whalers have
traversed the wide expanse from Peru and Chili on the west, to the
isles of Japan on the east, gathering national reverence, as well as
individual emolument, in their course; and yet until the late
appropriation, Congress has never yielded them any pecuniary
assistance, leaving their very security to the scientific labors of
countries far more distant, and infinitely less interested, than our
own.
_Thirdly_. It is our _duty_, holding as we do a high rank in the scale
of nations, to contribute a large share to that aggregate of useful
knowledge, which is the common property of all. We have astronomers,
mathematicians, geologists, botanists, eminent professors in every
branch of physical science—we are unincumbered by the oppression of a
national debt, and are free from many other drawbacks which fetter and
control the measures of the trans-Atlantic governments. We possess, as
a people, the mental elasticity which liberal institutions inspire,
and a treasury which can afford to remunerate scientific research.
Ought we not, therefore, to be foremost in the race of philanthropic
discovery, in every {589} department embraced by this comprehensive
term? Our national honor and glory which, be it remembered, are to be
“transmitted as well as enjoyed,” are involved. In building up the
fabric of our commercial prosperity, let us not filch the corner
stone. Let it not be said of us, in future ages, that we ingloriously
availed ourselves of a stock of scientific knowledge, to which we had
not contributed our quota—that we shunned as a people to put our
shoulder to the wheel—that we reaped where we had never sown. It is
not to be controverted that such has been hitherto the case. We have
followed in the rear of discovery, when a sense of our moral and
political responsibility should have impelled us in its van. Mr.
Reynolds, in a letter to which we have already referred, deprecates
this servile dependence upon foreign research in the following nervous
and emphatic language.
The commercial nations of the earth have done much, and much remains
to be accomplished. We stand a solitary instance among those who are
considered commercial, as never having put forth a particle of
strength or expended a dollar of our money, to add to the accumulated
stock of commercial and geographical knowledge, except in partially
exploring our own territory.
When our naval commanders and hardy tars have achieved a victory on
the deep, they have to seek our harbors, and conduct their prizes into
port by tables and charts furnished perhaps by the very people whom
they have vanquished.
Is it honorable in the United States to use, forever, the knowledge
furnished by others, to teach us how to shun a rock, escape a shoal,
or find a harbor; and add nothing to the great mass of information
that previous ages and other nations have brought to our hands.
* * * * *
The exports, and, more emphatically, the imports of the United States,
her receipts and expenditures, are written on every pillar erected by
commerce on every sea and in every clime; but the amount of her
subscription stock to erect those pillars and for the advancement of
knowledge is no where to be found.
* * * * *
Have we not then reached a degree of mental strength, which will
enable us to find our way about the globe without leading-strings? Are
we forever to take the highway others have laid out for us, and fixed
with mile-stones and guide boards? No: a time of enterprise and
adventure must be at hand, it is already here; and its march is
onward, as certain as a star approaches its zenith.
It is delightful to find that such independent statements and opinions
as the above, have been approved, and acted upon by Congress, and that
our President with a wisdom and promptitude which do him honor, is
superintending and facilitating the execution of legislative design.
We extract the following announcement from the Washington Globe.
_Surveying and Exploring Expedition to the Pacific Ocean and South
Seas._—We learn that the President has given orders to have the
exploring vessels fitted out, with the least possible delay. The
appropriation made by Congress was ample to ensure all the great
objects contemplated by the expedition, and the Executive is
determined that nothing shall be wanting to render the expedition in
every respect worthy the character and great commercial resources of
the country.
The frigate Macedonian, now undergoing thorough repairs at Norfolk,
two brigs of two hundred tons each, one or more tenders, and a store
ship of competent dimensions, is, we understand, the force agreed
upon, and to be put in a state of immediate preparation.
Captain Thomas A. C. Jones, an officer possessing many high qualities
for such a service, has been appointed to the command; and officers
for the other vessels will be immediately selected.
The Macedonian has been chosen instead of a sloop of war, on account
of the increased accommodations she will afford the scientific corps,
a department the President has determined shall be complete in its
organization, including the ablest men that can be procured, so that
nothing within the whole range of every department of natural history
and philosophy shall be omitted. Not only on this account has the
frigate been selected, but also for the purpose of a more extended
protection of our whalemen and traders; and to impress on the minds of
the natives a just conception of our character, power, and policy. The
frequent disturbances and massacres committed on our seamen by the
natives inhabiting the islands in those distant seas, make this
measure the dictate of humanity.
We understand also, that to J. N. Reynolds, Esq. the President has
given the appointment of Corresponding Secretary to the expedition.
Between this gentleman and Captain Jones there is the most friendly
feeling and harmony of action. The cordiality they entertain for each
other, we trust will be felt by all, whether citizen or officer, who
shall be so fortunate as to be connected with the expedition.
Thus it will be seen, steps are being taken to remove the reproach of
our country alluded to by Mr. Reynolds, and that that gentleman has
been appointed to the highest civil situation in the expedition; a
station which we know him to be exceedingly well qualified to fill.
The liberality of the appropriation for the enterprise, the strong
interest taken by our energetic chief magistrate in its organization,
the experience and intelligence of the distinguished commander at its
head, all promise well for its successful termination. Our most
cordial good wishes will accompany the adventure, and we trust that it
will prove the germ of a spirit of scientific ambition, which,
fostered by legislative patronage and protection, shall build up for
us a name in nautical discovery commensurate with our moral,
political, and commercial position among the nations of the earth.