Genius of Place (6 page)

 

Then the storm lifted as suddenly as it had come on. The
Ronaldson
completed its turn around the Cape of Good Hope and started north through the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.

Traveling through the Sunda Strait, between the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra, Fred was thrilled to spot land. It was literally the first time he had seen land since leaving New York. The
Ronaldson
anchored at Anjer, but Fred and most of the crew were required to stay onboard. It was to be the briefest of port calls, as Captain Fox was in a hurry to reach China.

The sailors pooled some money from their small wages and chose a couple of their number to go ashore on a supply run. One sailor came back with rum. But Fred was more interested in food. For weeks now, the crew had been subsisting on wormy bread and the odd scrap of meat. Fresh vegetables and fruit had run out long ago. In fact, much of the supply of such items had been tossed overboard at the beginning of the voyage to make room for saleable merchandise. When the sailors returned to the
Ronaldson
bearing rice, fowl, coconuts, plantains, and tamarinds, Fred prepared for a feast. The centerpiece was to be two live green turtles.

But Fox seized the best of these items, claiming captain's-table prerogative. He and his top lieutenants ate the coconuts, leaving the husks for the lowly crewmen to pick over. And they ate one of the turtles. The other, they tossed overboard, claiming it was sickly. Fred watched in famished horror as the supposedly ailing turtle swam away at a very healthy clip.

By now, Fred had spent enough time with Captain Fox to form an opinion of the man. In the close confines of the
Ronaldson
, he'd learned to fear and despise him. Not only was the captain cruel, but he was a hypocrite to boot. During their first meeting in New York, Fox had taken pains to convey to Fred that he was deeply involved in the welfare
of his crewmen, even down to their moral health. Clearly, he didn't care a whit.

About the only thing that had remained consistent was Captain Fox's aversion to swearing. Even this practice he tolerated among the seasoned hands. They swore like, well, sailors. Among the younger hands, however, it was wholly unacceptable and drew immediate and severe punishment. Strangely, Captain Fox did not swear himself. He perceived himself as a very pious man, and even aboard a ship in the middle of the sea, he knelt down every Sunday to utter a lengthy prayer. The rest of the week, Fred noted, appeared devoted to lunging at his men, striking them, flogging them, and, in casually sadistic moments, Fox seemed to delight in heaping on the verbal abuse.

Yet through it all, he never uttered a profanity. He was capable of acts of intense brutality while saying nothing saltier than “blast ye,” “old granny,” “oh, you marine,” and “want your petticoats?” His gravest insult was “infernal soger”—
soger
being slang for someone who is shirking duty. “Well, he's a most incomprehensible man, truly,” Fred concluded in a letter to his brother. Letters, by the way, were handed off to ships the
Ronaldson
encountered that were sailing west, headed for America. Such correspondence had to survive a treacherous ocean passage, followed by dispatch over land, to reach their intended recipients.

 

The
Ronaldson
passed through the Sunda Strait and continued on to the South China Sea. The ship had now entered some of the world's most pirate-infested waters, a legendary and terrifying stretch for sailors. Given everything that had happened so far on the voyage, it would have been only fitting if those well-burnished blunderbusses were needed to fend off an attack.

Instead, the crew had to contend with the other thing the South China Sea was known for during the maritime era: some of the world's most treacherous and confounding wind patterns. The
Ronaldson
's voyage had been timed to avoid the worst of the monsoons, but what the crew encountered was challenge enough. The wind would whip one way. Then it would abruptly change course, blowing from the complete opposite direction. Navigating in such conditions—making any kind of
forward progress—required skill and endurance. Fred and the other sailors scampered over the rigging, setting and resetting sails to take advantage of whatever winds prevailed at the moment. Balanced high on a spar, way in the distance, Fred could see waterspouts, deadly seafaring tornadoes. Fortunately, none came too close to the ship.

The
Ronaldson
spent nearly a month crossing the South China Sea. Then it left the ocean and headed up the Pearl River, weighing anchor at a place called Whampoa Reach. Beyond this point, the river was too shallow to accommodate a large seagoing vessel. The
Ronaldson
was now roughly a dozen miles south of the city of Canton (now known as Guangzhou). Captain Fox hired a translator, who in turn helped hire a team of local laborers. The laborers unloaded goods purchased from the ship onto smaller boats, which transported the merchandise up to Canton.

The
Ronaldson
had arrived in China at a time of heightened suspicion toward the West. The first opium war between China and Britain had only just ended in 1842, the year before. The opium wars—another would start in 1856—were clashes with Britain, which was using its colony in India as a base to ship opium into China. This trade continued, despite China's prohibition against the drug. Captain Fox had to hire a comprador to help navigate the maze of bureaucratic and customs issues that confronted a foreign ship in China at this most delicate time.

Fred was itching to go ashore. But he soon discovered that Captain Fox expected a green boy, such as he, to continue working onboard even while the ship was anchored. Fred had been cooped up in the ship for months, had sailed thousands of miles enduring much hardship, and the only possible compensation was the opportunity to visit an exotic land. Now he found himself patching the sails and slushing the masts—that is, coating the wooden poles in goopy pine tar to prevent rot from setting in.

All the while, China was in plain view. Anchored at Whampoa Reach, he could see people working in a rice paddy, tantalizingly close. But all he got of China was mosquitoes, which swarmed onto the ship and ate him alive. “My opportunities of observation & investigation are very similar to those enjoyed by Mr. Pickwick while a resident in his Majesty's Fleet Prison,” he wrote his father.

The reference is to the
Pickwick Papers
, Dickens's first novel. For now, Fred had to content himself with trying to learn something about China from the many natives who came aboard the
Ronaldson
. In a letter to his brother John, he wrote: “I've heard much more than I've seen, to be sure.”

The
Ronaldson
's oversized load of merchandise sold quickly. But there were delays in purchasing the tea that the ship would haul back to America to sell on the other end of the voyage. Still, there was plenty to keep Fred busy. He was put to work going over sales invoices and preparing the ship's books. What a nightmare: It was as if Benkard and Hutton, the Manhattan desk job that Fred had so despised, had pursued him to the other side of the world.

An entire month ticked by before Fred was allowed to set foot in China. Even then, he was able to make only three very brief visits. He made the most of them. He soaked up every sight, sound—and taste. He dined on fresh ham and eggs, tried such novel fare as ginger and loaf sugar. He visited various shops, where he purchased souvenirs to bring home such as a mandarin cap, a sword, and a pair of chopsticks. He even wandered into a schoolroom while class was in session and paused for a long while watching the children as they recited from their textbooks in an impenetrable language.

Most of all, Fred appears to have been intrigued by the people he saw as he wandered around. The letters that he wrote for the benefit of his family are full of descriptions of merchants in their silk robes and blacksatin skullcaps and little boys, their black hair pulled into tight queues, their fingernails surprisingly long. When three Chinese ladies passed him on the street, he noted their footwear: “But I was glad enough to have an opportunity of seeing 'em hobbling (exactly as if with wooden legs) on their tiny peg tops—what would you call 'em—not feet certainly—about three inches long.”

During these visits ashore, Fred proved a keen observer with an insatiable curiosity. He noticed vivid details, which he communicated in exuberant letters that were also characterized by curious syntax and curiouser spellings—the result, no doubt, of his idiosyncratic education. He also showed an unusual sensitivity to the culture of China. At one point, he visited a temple in the company of some of his fellow sailors.

The sailors milled about, talking loudly. Fred stood quietly, even took off his hat. “What are you taking your hat off for in a heathen temple?” sneered one of his shipmates.

Because Fred was behaving so differently from the others, an old man singled him out and, after bowing deeply, walked up to him. The man spoke only a few words of pigeon English, but he beckoned Fred to follow. He led the way into a little room where he opened up various religious texts and invited Fred to look at them. He pointed out the decorative banners on the walls and showed Fred various implements used in the temple's services. Meanwhile, Fred's shipmates wandered about, tugging on lanterns and mindlessly banging on a ceremonial gong.

 

Fred spent Thanksgiving on the
Ronaldson
, still anchored at Whampoa Reach. He was ill once again, this time suffering from fever, chills, and exhaustion. Whatever the ailment was, Jim Goodwin had it even worse. Fred was able to return a favor, caring for the friend who had looked out for him during his earlier bout with seasickness.

Fred wrote a plaintive letter, describing the Thanksgiving dinner he pictured in progress, 8,000 miles away in Hartford. “It's just about the right time of day, & I am imagining you just about well to work on the turkeys & cranberry,” he scrawled. “I suppose Mother has the ‘boiled & oyster,' as usual, while Father performs on the roast & criticizes the dressing.” Then he added, “Take care, Bertha,” a nod to his half-sister. “That's a big drum stick, but I guess you'll manage it with one hand.”

Fred had been away for nearly seven months now. He was ready to head home. On Thanksgiving Day, his father wrote the following brief entry in his diary: “Fred's company much wanted.”

 

On December 30, 1843, the
Ronaldson
finally set sail for America, preposterously laden with a huge load of Chinese tea.

Among sailors, convention holds that return voyages are easier: Spirits are buoyed by the promise of familiar shores; discipline grows laxer. Certainly, that's what Fred expected.

It didn't happen. Thanks to market forces—the fresher the tea, the higher the price it would command—Captain Fox was hell-bent on making
incredible time. Ordinarily, passage from China to the United States took about 120 days. He was aiming for 100 days. If anything, the crew would suffer greater privations during the trip home.

Food was scarce, as always. That was a given on a Captain Fox-piloted ship. But the lack of fresh water became the bigger issue. The captain grew concerned that he didn't have a sufficient supply onboard to last the entire voyage. At the same time, he didn't want to lose so much as a minute by stopping at a port to take on fresh water. So Captain Fox simply cut the sailors' ration of water severely, leaving them with minuscule amounts for drinking, making coffee, washing their clothes, and other needs.

By midjourney, the
Ronaldson
's crew was hungry, thirsty, tired, and enraged. An episode occurred that brought them to the brink of mutiny.

Captain Fox ordered one of the young hands punished for that offense of offenses—cursing. The captain held the sailor while the first mate flogged him repeatedly. Fred looked on in horror, and one of his shipmates counted aloud: “Twenty-three, twenty-four . . . ”

Another crewman yelled: “We are no men if we stand it longer!”

Suddenly, all around him, sailors took up handspikes and knives. Fred fully expected the crew to kill Captain Fox and the first mate.

Likely they would have, had one of the ship's most experienced hands not begun yelling: “Avast! Avast! . . . what do you want to run your head into a halter for? Can't you wait till we get home and let the law serve them out?”

His argument was simple: Engaging in mutiny was a foolish and selfdestructive act that would surely result in the crew members being hung. Better to wait until the ship reached port and exact revenge on Captain Fox in a court of law. With his plea, the man managed to stop the uprising, and order was restored.

 

On April 20, 1844, the
Ronaldson
arrived in New York. The voyage had taken 104 days.

The crewman who had urged legal recourse over violence immediately set off for the Sailor's Home. There, he requested a voluntary lockdown to prevent himself from going on one of the alcoholic benders that
usually accompanied his shore leaves. He wanted to maintain a clear head so that he could testify at the trial of Captain Fox.

The trial would happen surprisingly quickly. Fox would be convicted of using excessive force and ordered to pay $1,000 to the sailor that he had flogged.

As for Fred, he arrived home just shy of his twenty-second birthday, looking yellow and skeletal, racked by scurvy. His head was shaved. At first, his father didn't even recognize him.

“Well, how do you like the sea?” Fred had asked rhetorically in one of his letters. Now, he had an answer: not very bloody much.

He'd endured seasickness, illness, and a fall from a spar; he'd battled wind and water and snow; he'd been hungry, thirsty, and weary beyond imagining. Unlike some other notable Olmsteds, sailor was not a vocation for Fred. The sea didn't call to him, and he'd never again consider a life aboard a ship.