Horror in Paradise Read online

  After apportioning the ham bone, the captain cut the canvas cover that had been around the ham into fifteen equal pieces, and each man took his portion. This was the last division of food the captain made. The men broke up the small oaken butter tub and divided the staves among themselves, and gnawed them up. The shell of the little green turtle, heretofore mentioned, was scraped with knives and eaten to the last shaving. The third mate chewed pieces of boots and spit them out, but ate nothing except the soft straps of two pairs of boots—ate three on the thirty-ninth day and saved one for the fortieth.

  The men seem to have thought in their own minds of the shipwrecked mariner’s last dreadful resort—cannibalism; but they do not appear to have conversed about it. They only thought of the casting lots and killing one of their number as a possibility; but even when they were eating rags, and bones, and boots, and shell, and hard oak wood, they seem to have still had a notion that it was remote. They felt that someone of the company must die soon—which one they well knew; and during the last three or four days of their terrible voyage they were patiently but hungrily waiting for him. I wonder if the subject of these anticipations knew what they were thinking of? He must have known it—he must have felt it. They had even calculated how long he would last; they said to themselves, but not to each other, I think they said, “He will die Saturday—and then!”

  There was one exception to the spirit of delicacy I have mentioned—a Frenchman, who kept an eye of strong personal interest upon the sinking man and noted his failing strength with untiring care and some degree of cheerfulness. He frequently said to Thomas: “I think he will go off pretty soon, now, sir. And then we’ll eat him!” This is very sad.

  Thomas and also several of the men state that the sick Portyghee, during the five days that they were entirely out of provisions, actually ate two silk handkerchiefs and a couple of cotton shirts, besides his share of the boots, and bones, and lumber.

  Captain Mitchell was fifty-six years old on the 12th of June—the fortieth day after the burning of the ship and the third day before the boat’s crew reached land. He said it looked somewhat as if it might be the last one he was going to enjoy. He had no birthday feast except some bits of ham canvas—no luxury but this, and no substantials save the leather and oaken bucket staves.

  Speaking of the leather diet, one of the men told me he was obliged to eat a pair of boots which were so old and rotten that they were full of holes; and then he smiled gently and said he didn’t know, though, but what the holes tasted about as good as the balance of the boot. This man was still very feeble, and after saying this he went to bed.

  At eleven o’clock on the 15th of June, after suffering all that men may suffer and live for forty-three days, in an open boat, on a scorching tropical sea, one of the men feebly shouted the glad tidings, “Land ho!” The “watch below” were lying in the bottom of the boat. What do you suppose they did? They said they had been cruelly disappointed over and over again, and they dreaded to risk another experience of the kind—they could not bear it—they lay still where they were. They said they would not trust to an appearance that might not be land after all. They would wait.

  Shortly it was proved beyond question that they were almost to land. Then there was joy in the party. One man is said to have swooned away. Another said the sight of the green hills was better to him than a day’s rations, a strange figure for a man to use who had been fasting for forty days and forty nights.

  The land was the island of Hawaii, and they were off Laupahoehoe and could see nothing inshore but breakers. I was there a week or two ago, and it is a very dangerous place. When they got pretty close to shore they saw cabins, but no human beings. They thought they would lower the sail and try to work in with the oars. They cut the ropes and the sail came down, and then they found they were not strong enough to ship the oars. They drifted helplessly toward the breakers, but looked listlessly on and cared not a straw for the violent death which seemed about to overtake them after all their manful struggles, their privations, and their terrible sufferings. They said, “It was good to see the green fields again.” It was all they cared for. The “green fields” were a haven of rest for the weary wayfarers; it was sufficient; they were satisfied; it was nothing to them that Death stood in their pathway; they had long been familiar to him; he had no terrors for them.

  Two of Captain Spencer’s natives saw the boat, knew by the appearance of things that it was in trouble, and dashed through the surf and swam out to it. When they climbed aboard there were only five yards of space between the poor sufferers and a sudden and violent death. Fifteen minutes afterward the boat was beached upon the shore and a crowd of natives (who are the very incarnation of generosity, unselfishness, and hospitality) were around the strangers, dumping bananas, melons, taro, poi—any thing and everything they could scrape together that could be eaten—on the ground by the cartload; and if Mr. Jones, of the station, had not hurried down with his steward, they would soon have killed the starving men with kindness. As it was, the sick Portyghee really ate six bananas before Jones could get hold of him and stop him. This is a fact. And so are the stories of his previous exploits. Jones and the kanaka girls and men took the mariners in their arms like so many children and carried them up to the house, where they received kind and judicious attention until Sunday evening, when two whaleboats came from Hilo, Jones furnished a third, and they were taken in these to the town just named, arriving there at two o’clock Monday morning.

  Each of the young Fergusons kept a journal from the day the ship sailed from New York until they got on land once more at Hawaii. The captain also kept a log every day he was adrift. These logs, by the captain’s direction, were to be kept up faithfully as long as any of the crew were alive, and the last survivor was to put them in a bottle, when he succumbed, and lash the bottle to the inside of the boat. The captain gave a bottle to each officer of the other boats, with orders to follow his example. The old gentleman was always thoughtful.

  The hardest berth in that boat, I think, must have been that of provision keeper. This office was performed by the captain and the third mate; of course they were always hungry. They always had access to the food, and yet must not gratify their craving appetites.

  The young Fergusons are very highly spoken of by all the boat’s crew, as patient, enduring, manly and kindhearted gentlemen. The captain gave them a watch to themselves—it was the duty of each to bail the water out of the boat three hours a day. Their home is in Stamford, Connecticut, but their father’s place of business is New York.

  In the chief mate’s boat was a passenger—a gentlemanly young fellow of twenty years named William Lang, son of a stockbroker in New York.

  The chief mate, Samuel Hardy, lived at Chatham, Massachusetts; second mate belonged in Shields, England; the cook, George Washington (Negro), was in the chief mate’s boat, and also the steward (Negro); the carpenter was in the second mate’s boat.

  Captain Mitchell. To this man’s good sense, cool judgment, perfect discipline, close attention to the smallest particulars which could conduce to the welfare of his crew or render their ultimate rescue more probable, that boat’s crew owe their lives. He has shown brain and ability that make him worthy to command the finest frigate in the United States, and a genuine unassuming heroism that entitles him to a Congressional medal. I suppose some of the citizens of San

  Francisco who know how to appreciate this kind of a man will not let him go on hungry forever after he gets there. In the above remarks I am only echoing the expressed opinions of numbers of persons here who have never seen Captain Mitchell, but who judge him by his works—among others the Hon. Anson Burlingame and our Minister to Japan, both of whom have called at the hospital several times and held long conversations with the men. Burlingame speaks in terms of the most unqualified praise of Captain Mitchell’s high and distinguished abilities as evinced at every point throughout his wonderful voyage.

  Captain Mitchell, one sailor, and the two Ferg
usons are still at Hilo. The two first mentioned are pretty feeble, from what I can learn. The captain’s sense of responsibility kept him strong and awake all through the voyage; but as soon as he landed and that fearful strain upon his faculties was removed, he was prostrated—became the feeblest of the boat’s company.

  The seamen here are doing remarkably well, considering all things. They already walk about the hospital a little, and very stiff-legged, because of the long inaction their muscles have experienced.

  When they came ashore at Hawaii, no man in the party had had any movement of his bowels for eighteen days, several not for twenty-five or thirty, one not for thirty-seven, and one not for forty-four days. As soon as any of these men can travel, they will be sent to San Francisco.

  I have written this lengthy letter in a great hurry in order to get it off by the bark Milton Badger, if the thing be possible, and I may have made a good many mistakes, but I hardly think so. All the statistical information in it comes from Thomas, and he may have made mistakes, because he tells his story entirely from memory, and although he has naturally a most excellent one, it might well be pardoned for inaccuracies concerning events which transpired during a series of weeks that never saw his mind strongly fixed upon any thought save the weary longing for food and water. But the logbooks of the captain and the two passengers will tell the terrible romance from the first day to the last in faithful detail, and these I shall forward by the next mail if I am permitted to copy them.

  James Cowan

  The Slave Ships

  of Callao

  James Cowan (1870-1943), journalist and Maori scholar, was born at Pakuranga, Auckland, of an Irish father who had seen service in the Maori Wars in the Waikato region. Even in childhood, young Cowan absorbed Maori lore. When after an apprenticeship in journalism he took a publicity post with the Tourist Department in Wellington, he was able to travel throughout the islands and study their past. His principal work was a history of the New Zealand wars and the pioneering period, but he also wrote books on other Polynesian islands, such as Suwarrow Gold (1936), from which “The Slave Ships of Callao” is taken.

  This is a brief account of a horrifying period in South Sea history, when ships from South America raided the islands of the South Pacific for native laborers condemned to die in the guano mines of Peru.

  PEACEFUL lay the broad lagoon, peaceful the little thatched-hut villages beneath the palms that swished their fronds in the trade wind. On the outer reef beyond the sheltered glimmerglass, the surf beat with a slow percussive rhythm, softened to a kind of lullaby by distance. Most of the brown folk of the atoll were at their siesta; when the blazing sun westered more they would be making ready for their evening’s flying-fish catching by torchlight. Now it was blistering on the beaches; the sunshine was thrown back as from a glittering plate of steel from the surface of the water, a dazzle painful to the eye. The expanse of the lagoon stretched away for some five miles in front of the largest village. To right and left it extended in a crescent; the white heads of the rollers breaking on the coral wall appeared and subsided at regular intervals. Palm-grove isles darkened the long reef line; and in the lagoon there were islets, each bearing its tall leaning coconuts, their heads waving gently in the breeze.

  A boy wandering out of one of the quiet dwellings gazed out seaward, shading his eyes from the dazzle. He raised a shrill cry, “He kaipuke, he kaipuke!” (“A ship, a ship!”). Out poured the suddenly aroused folk—men, women, and children—just as they jumped up from their mats. They came running to the beach.

  There she was, her sails shining pearly white against the blue, a brig, painted black, making for the reef entrance opposite the principal village. Sailing swiftly, and taking in her royals as she opened up the channel, she came in with yards trimmed to the good leading wind. Once well into the lagoon she rounded to and anchored.

  The strange craft had an unusually large crew for her size, for while a dozen men were aloft stowing sails, she lowered two whaleboats, each with an officer and five men. By this time the lagoon was alive with outrigger canoes all making for the brig. While some of the clamorous crews were climbing on deck, the two boats had reached the beach.

  What could she be, this strongly manned black ship? Vociferous questions went unanswered. But one thing was quickly made clear, she was not a British trader. The officers and sailors who had landed spoke a language strange to the Polynesians. They were dark-avised, their quick black eyes darted here and there; some of them wore cutlasses by their sides; others had holstered revolvers at their belts. But they professed friendship; they had a native of some half-caste breed with them who spoke a dialect understandable by the islanders; and they carried some small presents, tobacco, knives, and beads, which they gave to the headman in the big house for distribution among the people.

  When night came down, the strangers returned to the brig. They had arranged that parties of the islanders should visit the ship next morning.

  There was little sleep for the people of the palm-grove villages that night. Some of them sat on the beach till late, gazing out at the black shadowy form of the strange ship; the few lights she showed cast long wavering lines of brightness on the face of the lagoon. In the great thatched meetinghouse, most of the excited natives gathered for talk and song and dance. There were improvised chants about the new-come ship. The wooden drums were going with a clatter and a throb that carried far across the waters. The men in the brig could have heard that regular quick rattle of the pahu, the sounds that carry their onomatopoeic words to the Iblynesian—“Tingiri, ringiri, ranga-ra, ranga-ra, tikirangi-ti.”

  Daylight had scarcely appeared before the canoes were in the water again. Nearly every man and boy was there, paddling for the brig. A side ladder was down, and men stood in the gangway admitting the natives, one canoe crew at a time. The visitors, tremendously happy and excited, were escorted down below by a ladder in the main hatchway. They were told that there was a feast of biscuit and meat awaiting them.

  There were nearly a hundred brown men there, most of the adult male population of the atoll. Crew after crew went below, unsuspecting evil of these strangers almost as dark as themselves.

  Suddenly the hatchway was closed, shutting up the islanders in darkness. Their amazed and terrified shouts were faintly heard by the few still left in the canoes. The boats were in the water and the armed crews quickly rounded up the astonished canoe paddlers and forced them up the brig’s ladder. Then they made for the shore and compelled the women to load the boats with coconuts, fruit, and yams. Some of the prettiest girls were seized by the officers and thrust into the boats, and off the raiders rowed to the brig. Sails were loosed, the capstan was manned; up came the anchor to the sound of a Spanish chant; the canvas was sheeted home, and under topsails and topgallantsails the black brig stood out through the channel, and into the heaving blue of the Pacific, leaving behind her a ravished land. The coral isle of peace and beauty was a land of mourning, bereft of most of its able-bodied men and its most handsome women, stolen away by whom they knew not, bound they knew not where, victims to the wicked greed of men in high places in a far-off land.

  That drama of deceit and tragedy was witnessed in many a South Sea island seventy years ago. At a later date there were somewhat similar episodes in the Black Islands of the Western Pacific, but these raids of which I write were all carried out in the Fblynesian islands in the eastern sector of the great South Sea, among a harmless, unsuspecting people, the most pleasing and friendly of all the inhabitants of the Pacific. The piratical marauders were Spanish-American slavers; the vessels were under the Peruvian flag; their raids were carried out systematically over a great area of Polynesia for the purpose of getting free labor for the mines and plantations and guano workings of Peru.

  At least a dozen of the coral lands which now fly New Zealand’s flag were among the objectives of these forced-labor-getting cruises, and many hundreds of hapless island folk were stolen away for slavery. The tragic recolle
ction of these “thief-ships,” as the natives called them, lingers to this day all over the South Pacific.

  The records of the raiders and their brutal deeds are scattered and fragmentary. I searched the files of the ‘sixties in an attempt to piece together a connected story of the ruffianly business, the lineal successor of the old African negro slave traffic to the United States and Spanish America. Notes on the subject, too, I gathered many years ago from old island traders and sailors.

  This cheap labor enterprise began, as nearly as it can be fixed, in the year 1860. The Peruvian government and large private interests found it difficult and expensive to obtain labor for their works in a legitimate way. The mines, the guano islands, the plantations, and other scenes of industry must have men who would work for next to nothing, and if for nothing at all, so much the better. Africa was out of the question, since British warships patroled the slave coast so vigilantly. So Peru turned to the so-far untouched South Sea islands as a likely source of labor which would cost little but the expense of fitting up ships to go and steal it.

  The raids by a fleet of Peruvian barks, brigs, and schooners were carried out in the period 1861-63. During that time many vessels were chartered for Callao, to “recruit” labor for the mines. It was said that an engagement was entered into by a Callao house to supply some ten thousand natives. In the year 1863 at least two thousand were actually secured and haled off to lifelong slavery—probably endured only a few years. The trickery and violence, and the murders, the crime and sorrow, make as sorry a tale of sin and suffering as anything in the shocking history of the African slave trade.