The sea lions; or, The lost sealers

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Preface

If anything connected with the hardness of the human heart could surprise us, it surely would be the indifference with which men live on, engrossed by their worldly objects, amid the sublime natural phenomena that so eloquently and unceasingly speak to their imaginations, affections, and judgments. So completely is the existence of the individual concentrated in self, and so regardless does he get to be of all without that contracted circle, that it does not probably happen to one man in ten, that his thoughts are drawn aside from this intense study of his own immediate wants, wishes, and plans, even once in the twenty-four hours, to contemplate the majesty, mercy, truth, and justice of the Divine Being that has set him, as an atom, amid the myriads of the hosts of heaven and earth.

The physical marvels of the universe produce little more reflection than the profoundest moral truths. A million of eyes shall pass over the firmament, on a cloudless night, and not a hundred minds shall be filled with a proper sense of the power of the dread Being that created all that is there — not a hundred hearts glow with the adoration that such an appeal to the senses and understanding ought naturally to. produce. This indifference, in. a great measure, comes of familiarity ; the things that we so constantly have before us, becoming as a part of the air we breathe, and as little regarded.

One of the consequences of this disposition to disregard the Almighty Hand, as it is so plainly visible in all around

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us, is that )f substituting our own powers in its stead. In this period of the world, in enlightened countries, and in the absence of direct idolatry, few men aie so hardy as to deny the existence and might of a Supreme Being ; but, this fact admitted, how few really feel that profound reverence for him that the nature of our relations justly demands ! It is the want of a due sense of humility ; and a sad misconception of what we are, and for what we were created, that misleads us in the due estimate of our own insignificance, as compared with the majesty of God.

Very few men attain enough of human knowledge to be fully aware how much remains to be learned, and of that which they never can hope to acquire. We hear a great deal of god-like minds, and of the far-reaching faculties we possess ; and it may all be worthy of our eulogiums, until we compare ourselves in these, as in other particulars, with Him who produced them. Then, indeed, the utter insignificance of our means becomes too apparent to admit of a cavil. We know that we are born, and that we die ; science has been able to grapple with all the phenomena of these two great physical facts, with the exception of the most material of all — those which should tell us what is life, and what is death. Something that we cannot comprehend lies at the root of every distinct division of natural phenomena. Thus far shalt thou go and no farther, seems to be imprinted on every great fact of creation. There is a point attained in each and all of our acquisitions, where a mystery that no human mind can scan takes the place of demonstration and conjecture. This point may lie more remote with some intellects than with others ; but it exists for all, arrests the inductions of all, conceals all.

We are aware that the more learned among those who disbelieve in the divinity of Christ suppose themselves to be sustained by written authority, contending for errors of translation, mistakes, and misapprehensions in the ancient text. Nevertheless, we are inclined to think that nine

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Vll tenths of those who refuse the old and accept the new opinion, do so for a motive no better than a disinclination to believe that which they cannot comprehend. This pride is one of the most insinuating of our foibles, and is to be watched as a most potent enemy.

How completely and philosophically does the venerable Christian creed embrace and modify all these workings of the heart! We say philosophically, for it were not possible for mind to give a juster analysis of the whole subject than St. Paul’s most comprehensive but brief definition of Faith. It is this Faith which forms the mighty feature of the church on earth. It equalizes capacities, conditions, means, and ends, holding out the same encouragement and hope to the least as to the most gifted of the race ; counting gifts in their ordinary and more secular points of view.

It is when health or the usual means of success abandon us, that we are made to feel how totally we are insufficient for the achievement of even our own purposes, much less to qualify us to reason on the deep mysteries that conceal the beginning and the end. It has often been said that the most successful leaders of their fellow men have had the clearest views of their own insufficiency to attain their own objects. If Napoleon ever said, as has been attributed to him, “ Je propose et je dispose ,” it must have been in one of those fleeting moments in which success blinded him to the fact of his own insufficiency. No man had a deeper reliance on fortune, cast the result of great events on the decrees of fate, or more anxiously watched the rising and setting of what he called his “ star.” This was a faith that could lead to no good ; but it clearly denoted how far the boldest designs, the most ample means, and the most vaulting ambition, fall short of giving that sublime consciousness of power and its fruits that distinguish the reign of Omnipotence.

In this book the design has been to portray man on a novel field of action, and to exhibit his dependence on the hand that does not suffer a sparrow to fall unheeded. The vm

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recent attempts of science, which employed the seamen of the four greatest maritime states of Christendom, made discoveries that have rendered the polar circles much more familiar to this age, than to any that has preceded it, so far as existing records show. We say “existing records;” for there is much reason for believing that the ancients had a knowledge of our hemisphere, though less for supposing that they ever braved the dangers of the high latitudes. Many are, just at this moment, much disposed to believe that “ Ophir ” was on this continent ; though for a reason no better than the circumstance of the recent discoveries of much gold. Such savans should remember that “ peacocks 99 came from ancient Ophir. If this be in truth that land, the adventurers of Israel caused it to be denuded of that bird of beautiful plumage.

Such names as those of Parry, Sabine, Ross, Franklin, Wilkes, Hudson, Ringgold, etc., etc., with those of divers gallant Frenchmen and Russians, command our most profound respect ; for no battles or victories can redound more to the credit of seamen than the dangers they all encountered, and the conquests they have all achieved. One of those named, a resolute and experienced seaman, it is thought must, at this moment, be locked in the frosts of the arctic circle, after having passed half a life in the endeavor to push his discoveries into those remote and frozen regions. He bears the name of the most distinguished of the philosophers of this country ; and nature has stamped on his features — by one of those secret laws which just as much baffle our means of comprehension, as the greatest of all our mysteries, the incarnation of the Son of God — a resemblance that, of itself, would go to show that they are of the same race. Any one who has ever seen this imprisoned navigator, and who is familiar with the countenances of the men of the same name who are to be found in numbers amongst ourselves, must be struck with a likeness that lies as much beyond the grasp of that reason of which we are so proud, as

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ix the sublimest facts taught by induction, science, or revelation. Parties are, at this moment, out in search of him and his followers ; and it is to be hoped that the Providence which has so singularly attempered the different circles and zones of our globe, placing this under a burning sun, and that beneath enduring frosts, will have included in its divine forethough a sufficient care for these bold wanderers to restore them, unharmed, to their friends and country. In a contrary event, their names must be transmitted to posterity as the victims to a laudable desire to enlarge the circle of human knowledge, and with it, we trust, to increase the glory due to God.

Introduction

BY SUSAN FENIMORE COOPER.

From the day when the little Ariel first sailed into view and dropped her anchor in that gloomy bay of the German Ocean, where, at a later hour, Long Tom Coffin and herself were to close their career together, many a noble ship had been launched and sailed by the same master hand. Who, indeed, shall call over the names of all the vessels bearing his flag ? Never admiral of the ocean sea held so great a fleet under command. Proud men-of-war are here, from the lofty three-decker to the light gun-boat, fighting his battles; merchantmen of every rig — brig, bark, schooner, and yacht — come and go, amid storm and tempest, with swift and skillful manoeuvre, at his will ; the light felucca flies wing-and-wing over the blue Mediterranean ; the bark canoe glides over the lake, steals along the shadowy forest stream, or the reedy shore, doing his bidding. And how many brave and generous hearts, how many gallant spirits, are moving about those ’decks ! What deeds of high adventure are wrought among them ! What an atmosphere of picture and poetry lights up eye and arm, sail, and spar, and flag! Could he have gathered his full fleet together and sailed at their head into port, that would have been, indeed, a gallant nautical gala, filling the proudest harbor in the land. And his ships are all from the best yards, well commanded, skillfully piloted. The poetical light which lingers about them is warm with reality ; their anchors hold as firm a grasp of the bottom as those of the heaviest hulk that can be found in the harbor to-day.

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During thirty long years his ships were coming and going over the high seas, good people ashore still following their movements with more or less of interest. But now we behold the last of that numerous fleet. His nautical pictures began with that craft especially American, the schooner; and in this, the latest of his marine writings, the interest is also gathered about two schooners, each bearing the name of The Sea Lion, and both sailing from home waters on a voyage of daring adventure into far distant seas towardi the southern pole.

In his early married life Mr. Cooper had paid repeated s visits, during the summer and autumn months, to a near rel ative of Mrs. Cooper, living on one of the islands off th* northeastern shore of Long Island. This gentleman led a sort of semi-aquatic life, which had great attraction for a young man who was still a seaman at heart. All communication with the main-land — or rather with Long Island — was necessarily carried on by w~ater, a channel a mile in width dividing the two islands at the nearest point northward, and one of half a mile to the southward. The estate was a large one, originally half the island which bore the pleasant name of Shelter Island, and was six miles long, though very irregular in outline. The Indian name wa& Manhansack, correctly descriptive, as many of their names were, meaning an island sheltered by other islands. There were still a few Indians on the estate, where an old- Indian Queen, as she was called, lived in a wigwam and reigned over a handful of followers. The island lay at the mouth of Great Peconic Bay, and as a matter of course the fishing was excellent. There was a little fleet of fishing smacks, sail-boats, and row-boats, with a trading sloop or two, belonging to the island, which had several wharves of its own. Fishing parties were a constant amusement; blue-fish, blackfish, sheepshead, and others of the choicer kinds were, each in their season, brought in daily ; lobsters, crabs, oysters, clams, both soft and hard, never failed. Shooting, at the right season, was also a great resource, your regular Long

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Islander of that day being almost always a good shot. A gun-rack was found in the hall of most houses of any importance, as a matter of course. Half a century since deer and foxes were still to be found in the wooded parts of the island, and occasionally a regular hunt enlivened the young men. But fowling was the chief sport. Wild geese and ducks hovered over the shores of the island, and in its ponds, in flocks almost as large as those of the wild pigeons with which the visitor from Otsego had been familiar from childhood ; quails abounded, woodcock were common, snipe and all shore birds were numerous. In these fishing and shooting parties Mr. Cooper took his place with great zest.

The boats from Shelter Island were of course in constant communication with Sag Harbor, then perhaps the most important whaling port of the country. Mr. Cooper was much interested in visiting the different ships, making acquaintance with their captains and mates, and hearing the details of their adventures. Whaling came naturally to the Long Islanders ; very early in the settlement of the country the colonists were successful in taking the whale, and turning the oil to good account. Whales seem to have been abundant in the waters surrounding the island, not only in the ocean, eastward, but also in the Sound. There must have been very large numbers of these enormous creatures on the coast of America at the time of the discovery. A whale was actually- stranded as far inland as the island at the mouth of the Mohawk in March, 1647, having come spouting the whole length of the Hudson River to that point. The Long Islanders, as we have remarked, became whalemen very early. Boats adapted to this fishery were kept for the purpose on all the principal shore farms, the good-man wielding the scythe at one season, the harpoon at another. Even the Indians became expert whalers in this sort of coast fishery, and were employed by the colonists for this purpose. The record of an agreement between certain Montauk Indians and a Dutch trader to this effect has been preserved: ‘‘April 2 nd , 1668. Know all men by these

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presents y* wee, being Indians of Montauket, doe engage ourselves in a bond of ten pounds sterling for to goe to sea uppon ye account of killing of wliale3 this next ensuing season, beginning at ye l* 4 day of November next, ending ye first day of Aprill ensuing, and that for ye account of Jacobus Skallinger and his partners of Easthampton ; and engage to attend diligently with all opportunitie for ye killing of whales, or other fish, for ye summe of three shillings a day for every Indian ; ye said Jacobus Skallinger and partners to furnish all necessarie craft and convenient tackling for ye designe.” This boat’s crew would seem to have been sent off without any whites to direct them. A few years later u twelve very stout whales ” were killed in the spring months on the south coast of the island. So important was this fishery considered at the time, that in some of the settlements every able-bodied man on the shore farms was obliged to take his turn in watching for whales, from a public look-out, and on one being seen to summon the good people from their work ashore to the chase.

The Smiths were a numerous and highly respectable clan on Long Island. Two of the more prominent families were known by the local titles of “ Bull Smiths,” and “ Tangier Smiths,” both dating from early colonial days. Bull Smith, whose Christian name was Richard, settled near Stoney Brook, on a tract of land known afterwards as Smitlitown, and which he eventually held by patent, “ upon condition of yielding every year, as quitt-rent, to His Royal Highness” (the Duke of York), “ one fatt lamb.” Long Island tradition says that a portion of this land was originally granted to Richard Smith by the Indians, under peculiar circumstances. He was the happy owner of a large bull, a favorite animal, so docile that his master frequently used him for riding. With this feat the Indians were greatly delighted, and, as Mr. Smith was a favorite with their sachems, they agreed to make him a free gift of as much land as he could ride over, seated on his bull, between sunrise and sunset. The offer was accepted. The colonist

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mounted the bull, and, followed by a numerous escort of Indians, rode to such good effect that he made a circuit containing a large tract of land, and also obtained for himself and his posterity the name of “ Bull Smith.” His descendants, highly respectable people, are still found at Smithtown, and still bear in common parlance the distinctive name of “ Bull Smiths.”

“Tangier Smith” derived his name from the office he had held. Colonel William Smith of the British army had been governor of Tangier in Africa, when that town was ceded to England by the King of Portugal, as a part of the marriage portion of the Infanta Catherine, when she married Charles II. Colonel Smith afterwards came to America and purchased, partly from the colonists, and partly from the Indians, a large tract of land for which he obtained a patent under the name of St. George’s Manor. The Long Island colonists, to their* credit be it said, very generally made a payment of some kind to the Indians before taking possession of their lands. It is true their payments usually consisted of a few kettles, and knives, and coats, and sometimes needles , and were much below the real value of the lands purchased, but they were satisfactory to the red man. Colonel Smith, however, paid the Indian sachems for his lands on the Mastic thirty-five pounds, coin of the realm. There are descendants of Tangier Smith still living at St. George’s Manor to-day. In the last century many were the whales caught by the boats of both Bull Smith and Tangier Smith. After the death of Colonel Smith, his widow “ Madame Martha Smith,” who was a woman of energy, amid many other cares, still looked after the whales. This good lady, a great-great-grandmother of the author’s wife, was in the habit of keeping a memorandum book, still in good preservation, and which the writer of these notes has seen ; among other records occur the following : —

“Jan. ye 16, 1707, my company killed a yearling whale made 27 barrels. Feb. ye 4 Indian Harry with his boat, struck a stunt whale and could not kill it — called for my

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boat to help him. I had but a third, which was 4 barrels. Feb. 22, my two boats, and my son’s, and Floyd’s boats, killed a yearling whale, of which I had half — made 36, my share 18 barrels. Feb. 24, my company killed a school whale, which made 35 barrels. March 13, my company killed a small yearling, made 30 barrels. March 17, my company killed two yearlings in one day ; one made 27, the other 14 barrels.”

How abundant the whales must have been on the American coast at that period ! Madame Martha Smith, sitting comfortably in her house at St. George’s Manor, could see them spouting and tumbling about in the Sound, and, as she sat at her spinning-wheel or' tambour-frame, received reports from her boats.

There was a duty paid to the provincial government by this fishery, as appears from a receipt to the Lady of St. George’s Manor : —

“ New-York, this 5 th June, 1707, received of Nathan Simpson, ye summe of fifteen pounds, fifteen shillings, per acc* 1 of Mad 0 Martha Smith it being ye 20 th part of her eyle , by virtue of a warrant from My L d Cornbury, dated March 25 th , last past, 1707.

“ Per me, Elias Boudinot.”

A considerable sum this, £315, from one whaling farm , in the course of three months. Seven whales were captured in that time.

The whale-boat differed from the ordinary boats of merchant vessels. It was sharp at both ends, in order that it might “ back off,” as well as “ pull on ” ; it steered with an oar, instead of a rudder, in order that the bows might be thrown round to avoid danger, when not in motion ; it was buoyant, and made to withstand the shock of waves at both ends ; and it was light and shallow, though strong, that it might be pulled with facility.

The whale-boats of the Sound rendered active guerilla service in the war of the Revolution. They were a sort of privateersmen, on a small scale, and with all the daring of

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XVII that class had also their loose ideas of property. Many were their bold feats; their skill with the oar, the excellence of the boats, and the small size of their craft gliding stealthily along the shores, gave them many advantages for a sudden descent upon any given point. They were greatly dreaded by the Tories, and actually forced many of the English officers to withdraw from different outlying stations on Long Island, to Brooklyn or New York. They, came singly at times, but occasionally in little fleets of eight or ten boats, and repeatedly captured sloops and schooners of some size.

It was in the closing years of the last century, after the war of the Revolution, that the first whaling vessels were sent, as an experiment, to far southern latitudes, and the results were so successful that the Long Islanders entered largely into this adventurous pursuit. From whaling in boats on the shores of the island, they sailed in large ships on long voyages. Indians were still found among their crews. The fishery for sperm whales in the Pacific and Indian oceans was not developed until after the war of 1812. In the course of years the whaling-fleet from Sag Harbor alone amounted to nearly fifty ships, valued with their outfit at nearly a million of dollars, and employing more than a thousand seamen. The whole number of whaling craft, when the fishery was at its height, numbered about six hundred vessels from different ports of the country. This fishery has very greatly diminished of late years. The whales have been all but exterminated in many of their former haunts.

During his visits to Shelter Island the young man from Otsego, still a sailor at heart, and not dreaming of ever becoming a writer, was much interested in hearing the details of those whaling voyages, and much amused with the whaling spirit pervading the whole community at Sag Harbor. Some few ye$rs later, after he had written “ The Spy,” he purchased a whaling ship, the Union, in connection with a kinsman, Mr. Charles Dering, and sent her from Sag Hark

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bor around Cape Horn. She made several voyages, and the results were satisfactory. But as he became more occupied with his pen, and was looking forward to visiting Europe, he sold his share in the whaler. His connection with Long Island always brought pleasant recollections with it; and it was not only at Shelter Island that he had been welcomed, but also at Fort Neck, where he was on intimate terms with other relatives. And now in his old age, in 1849, while sitting in the library of his paternal home on Lake Otsego, he planned and wrote another sea tale, — the last of a long series, — the scenes of which, so far at least as they are connected with the land, are laid in sight of Shelter Island. It is a thoroughly Suffolk County narrative.

Long Island, as the reader will remember, is divided into three counties, Kings, Queens, and Suffolk. These were all legally named in 1683. Kings was an act of homage to that very witty but worthless sovereign Charles II., who “ never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one.” Queens was a compliment to the gentle, harmless Catherine of Braganza, the very opposite of her husband, in most particulars. The origin of the name of Suffolk is a puzzle not easy to unravel. There was no prominent individual in England at that date bearing the title of Suffolk — no courtier, no politician, not even an illegitimate son of the King, as in the case of Richmond County. Probably the name is due to the influence of some prominent man born in Suffolk County, in the mother country.

Is the reader aware, by the by, that Nassau may be considered the legal name of Long Island to-day? Oddly enough it was the Dutch who, from the first discoveries, always called it Long Island, and the English who gave it the name of Nassau. The change was made with all due legal forms in 1693, out of compliment, of course, to King William ; but strange to say, though William and Mary were popular sovereigns, their loving subjects on the island never aeem to have paid the least attention to this act of the government, which is believed to have been never repealed, and has merely become obsolete by disuse.

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Suffolk County covers a much larger portion of the island than the other two counties. Until recently the eastern extremity had a strongly marked and peculiar character of its own, a sequestered, rustic region, with a pleasant atmosphere of homely simplicity lingering about it. And it is here, at Oyster Ponds, that the narrative of “ TJie Sea Lions” opens. “ We write,” observes the author, “of a remote period in the galloping history of the State ” — the year 1819, when the whaling commerce was at its height, and successful whalers were coming and going by the score through the waters of Peconic Bay, and when even the name of a railroad was all but unknown to the good people on its shores. Since that day great changes have been made throughout Suffolk County, by the railway which now has its eastern terminus on the very ground described in “ The Sea Lions ” — and Oyster Ponds has been metamorphosed into Orient. Two rival schooners sail on a mysterious voyage to the Antarctic Ocean. One belongs to Oyster Ponds, the other to Martha’s Vineyard. Both bear the name of The Sea Lion. A newly discovered sealing ground of great value has become accidentally known to a certain close-fisted old deacon, whose farm lies at Oyster Ponds, a dying sailor having revealed the fact to him. But this dying sailor has near relatives at Martha’s Vineyard, who have received some vague hints of the existence of these Antarctic islands and have reason to believe that the old deacon holds the key to the secret. When the deacon’s Sea Lion sails from Oyster Ponds, the Sea Lion pf Martha’s Vineyard goes to sea also. There is an amusing contrast, by the by, between the names of these two small ports ; between the blunt homeliness of Oyster Ponds and the rather romantic sound of Martha’s Vineyard. Vineyard, on the rocky and somewhat barren island, there is none, nor ever has been ; the only Marthas connected with the ground are those living in its rustic homes. There was once upon a time an old Dutchman, a companion of Skipper Block, whose name was Martin Wyngaardt, and Block gave his name to the

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island which he discovered. Ere long the English con* verted the Dutch name into Vineyard, and the substantial old Dutchman himself into a mythical Martha. The adventures of the two schooners, from the “ Ponds ” and the “Vineyard,” make up the incidents of the narrative. The craft, their captains, and crews, are rivals in fair weather, but staunch comrades in the grave perils which befall them.

There is a strong religious under-current in this book. Mr. Cooper had always been a sincere believer in the Holy Christian Faith. He believed in the necessity of a revelation from the Supreme Being to a race whose intellect is grievously clouded by error and sinful passion. He had always yielded a full and honest assent to the great doctrines of Christianity. He considered them entirely consistent with reason. The mere negations of skepticism could never have satisfied his healthful, vigorous mind. He took no pleasure in mere subtleties. Clear, strong truths were what he craved. He not unfrequently spoke on sacred subjects, and always with reverence. In the later years of his life his religious convictions had been steadily increasing in force and in clearness. Experience gave them additional power. He had made the Holy Scriptures a daily, prayerful study for several years. In the holy services of the church to which he belonged he found a form of worship most sublime in reverence, most noble in its freedom from superstition, and those services he followed regularly from the heart. There were several points connected with the Christian faith on which he frequently spoke in the family circle with the clearest conviction.