Part 2

There is a touching incident connected with the fortunes of two young officers of the navy, that is not generally known. When the Essex frigate was captured in the Pacific, by the Phœbe and Cherub, two of the officers of the former were left in the ship, in order to make certain affidavits that were necessary to the condemnation. The remainder were paroled and returned to America. After a considerable interval, some uneasiness was felt at the protracted absence of those who had been left in the Essex. On inquiry, it was found, that, after accompanying the ship to Rio Janeiro, they had been exchanged, according to agreement, and suffered to go where they pleased. After some delay, they took passage in a Swedish brig bound to Norway, as the only means which offered to get to Europe, whence they intended to return home. About this time, great interest was also felt for the sloop Wasp. She had sailed for the mouth of the British channel, where she fell-in with, and took the Reindeer, carrying her prisoners into France. Shortly after, she had an action with, and took the Avon, but was compelled to abandon her prize by others of the enemies’ cruisers, one of which (the Castillian,) actually came up with her and gave her a broadside. About twenty days after the latter action, she took a merchant brig, near the Western Islands, and sent her into Philadelphia. This was the last that had been heard of her. Months and even years went by, and no farther intelligence was obtained. All this time, too, the gentlemen of the Essex were missing. Government ordered inquiries to be made in Sweden, for the master of the brig in which they had embarked. He was absent on a long voyage, and a weary period elapsed before he could be found. When this did happen he was required to give an account of his passengers. By producing his log book and proper receipts, he proved that he had fallen in with the Wasp, near the line, about a fortnight after she had taken the merchant brig, named, when the young officers in question, availed themselves of the occasion to return to their flag. Since that time, a period of twenty-one years, the Wasp has not been heard of.

We were eighteen days out, when, early one morning, we made an American ship, on our weather quarter. Both vessels had every thing set that would draw, and were going about five knots, close on the wind. The stranger made a signal to speak us, and, on the Hudson’s main-topsail being laid to the mast, he came down under our stern, and ranged up along-side to leeward. He proved to be a ship called the “London Packet,” from Charleston, bound to Havre, and his chronometer having stopped, he wanted to get the longitude.

When we had given him our meridian, a trial of sailing commenced, which continued without intermission for three entire days. During this time, we had the wind from all quarters, and of every degree of force from the lightest air to a double-reefed-topsail breeze. We were never a mile separated, and frequently we were for hours within a cable’s length of each other. One night the two ships nearly got foul, in a very light air. The result showed, that they sailed as nearly alike, one being deep and the other light, as might well happen to two vessels. On the third day, both ships being under reefed topsails, with the wind at east, and in thick weather, after holding her own with us for two watches, the London Packet edged a little off the wind, while the Hudson still hugged it, and we soon lost sight of our consort in the mist.

We were ten days longer struggling with adverse winds. During this time, the ship made all possible traverses, our vigilant master resorting to every expedient of an experienced seaman to get to the eastward. We were driven up as high as fifty-four, where we fell into the track of the St. Lawrence traders. The sea seemed covered with them, and I believe we made more than a hundred, most of which were brigs. All these we passed without difficulty. At length a stiff breeze came from the south-west, and we laid our course for the mouth of the British Channel under studding-sails.

On the 28th, we got the bottom in about sixty fathoms water. The 29th was thick weather, with a very light, but a fair wind; we were now quite sensibly within the influence of the tides. Towards evening the horizon brightened a little, and we made the Bill of Portland, resembling a faint bluish cloud. It was soon obscured, and most of the landsmen were incredulous about its having been seen at all. In the course of the night, however, we got a good view of the Eddystone.

Going on deck early, on the morning of the 30th, a glorious view presented itself. The day was fine, clear, and exhilarating, and the wind was blowing fresh from the westward. Ninety-seven sail, which had come into the channel, like ourselves, during the thick weather, were in plain sight. The majority were English, but we recognised the build of half the maritime nations of Christendom in the brilliant fleet. Every body was busy, and the blue waters were glittering with canvass. A frigate was in the midst of us, walking through the crowd like a giant stepping among pigmies. Our own good vessel left every thing behind her, also, with the exception of two or three other bright-sided ships, which happened to be as fast as herself.

I found the master busy with the glass, and soon as he caught my eye, he made a sign for me to come forward. “Look at that ship directly ahead of us.” The vessel alluded to, led the fleet, being nearly hull down to the eastward. It was the Don Quixote, which had left the port of New York, one month before, about the same distance in our advance. “Now look here, in-shore of us,” added the master. “It is an American, but I cannot make her out.” “Look again: she has a new cloth in her main-top-gallant-sail.” This was true enough, and by that sign, the vessel was our late competitor, the London Packet!

As respects the Don Quixote, we had made a journey of some five thousand miles, and not varied our distance, on arriving, a league. There was probably, some accident in this; for the Don Quixote had the reputation of a fast ship, while the Hudson was merely a pretty fair sailer. We had probably got the best of the winds. But a hard and close trial of three days had shown that neither the Hudson nor the London Packet, in their present trims, could go ahead of the other, in any wind. And yet, here, after a separation of ten days, during which time our ship had tacked and wore fifty times, had calms, foul winds and fair, and had run fully a thousand miles, there was not a league’s difference between the two vessels!

I have related these circumstances, because I think they are connected with causes that have a great influence on the success of American navigation. On passing several of the British ships to-day, I observed that their officers were below, or at least out of sight; and in one instance, a vessel of a very fair mould, and with every appearance of a good sailer, actually lay with some of her light sails aback, long enough to permit us to come up with, and pass her. The Hudson probably went with this wind some fifteen or twenty miles farther than this loiterer, while I much question if she could have gone as far, had the latter been well attended to. The secret is to be found in the fact, that so large a portion of American ship-masters are also ship-owners, as to have erected a standard of activity and vigilance, below which few are permitted to fall. These men work for themselves, and, like all their countrymen, are looking out for something more than a mere support.

About noon we got a Cowes pilot. He brought no news, but told us the English vessel, I have just named, was sixty days from Leghorn, and that she had been once a privateer. We were just thirty from New York.

We had distant glimpses of the land all day, and several of the passengers determined to make their way to the shore, in the pilot boat. These channel craft are sloops of about thirty or forty tons, and are rather picturesque and pretty boats, more especially when under low sail. They are usually fitted to take passengers, frequently earning more in this way than by their pilotage. They have the long sliding bowsprit, a short lower mast, very long cross-trees, with a taunt top-mast, and, though not so “wicked” to the eye, I think them prettier objects at sea, than our own schooners. The party from the Hudson had scarcely got on board their new vessel when it fell calm, and the master and myself paid them a visit. They looked like a set of smugglers waiting for the darkness to run in. On our return we rowed round the ship. One cannot approach a vessel at sea, in this manner, without being struck with the boldness of the experiment, which launched such massive and complicated fabrics on the ocean. The pure water is a medium almost as transparent as the atmosphere, and the very keel is seen, usually, so near the surface, in consequence of refraction, as to give us but a very indifferent opinion of the security of the whole machine. I do not remember ever looking at my own vessel, when at sea, from a boat, without wondering at my own folly in seeking such a home.

In the afternoon, the breeze sprang up again, and we soon lost sight of our friends, who were hauling in for the still distant land. All that afternoon and night, we had a fresh and a favourable wind. The next day, I went on deck, while the people were washing the ship. It was Sunday, and there was a flat calm. The entire scene admirably suited a day of rest. The channel was like a mirror, unruffled by a breath of air, and some twenty or thirty vessels lay scattered about the view, with their sails festooned and drooping, thrown into as many picturesque positions by the eddying waters. Our own ship had got close in with the land; so near, indeed, as to render a horse, or a man, on the shore distinctly visible. We were on the coast of Dorsetshire. A range of low cliffs lay directly abeam of us, and as the land rose to a ridge behind them, we had a distinct view of a fair expanse of nearly houseless fields. We had left America verdant and smiling; but we found England brown and parched, there having been a long continuance of dry easterly winds.

The cliffs terminated suddenly, a little way ahead of the ship, and the land retired inward, with a wide sweep, forming a large, though not a very deep bay, that was bounded by rather low shores. It was under these very cliffs, on which we were looking with so much pleasure and security, and at so short a distance, that the well known and terrible wreck of an Indiaman occurred, when the master, with his two daughters, and hundreds of other lives, were lost. The pilot pointed out the precise spot where that ill-fated vessel went to pieces. But the sea in its anger, and the sea at rest, are very different powers. The place had no terrors for us.

Ahead of us, near twenty miles distant, lay a high hazy bluff, that was just visible. This was the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, and the end of our passage in the Hudson. A sloop of war was pointing her head in towards this bluff, and all the vessels in sight now began to take new forms, varying and increasing the picturesque character of the view. We soon got a light air ourselves, and succeeded in laying the ship’s head off shore, towards which we had been gradually drifting nearer than was desirable. The wind came fresh and fair about ten, when we directed our course towards the distant bluff. Every thing was again in motion. The cliffs behind us gradually sunk, as those before us rose, and lost their indistinctness; the blue of the latter soon became gray, and ere long white as chalk; this being the material of which they are, in truth, composed.

We saw a small whale, (it might have been a large grampus) floundering ahead of us, and acting as an extra pilot, for he appeared to be steering, like ourselves, for the Needles. These Needles, are fragments of the chalk cliffs, that have been pointed and rendered picturesque, by the action of the weather, and our course lay directly past them. They form a line from the extremity of the Isle of Wight, and are awkwardly placed for vessels that come this way in thick weather, or in the dark. The sloop of war got round them first, and we were not far behind her. When fairly within the Needles the ship was embayed, our course now lying between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, through a channel of no great width. The country was not particularly beautiful, and still looked parched, though we got a distant view of one pretty town, Lymington, in Hampshire. This place, in the distance, appeared not unlike a large New England village, though there was less glare to the houses. The cliffs, however, were very fine, without being of any extraordinary elevation. Though much inferior to the shores of the Mediterranean, they as much surpass any thing I remember to have seen on our own coast, between Cape Anne and Cape Florida; which, for its extent, a part of India, perhaps, excepted, is, I take it, just the flattest, and tamest, and least interesting coast in the entire world.

The master pointed out a mass of dark herbage, on a distant height, which resembled a copse of wood that had been studiously clipped into square forms, at its different angles. It was visible only for a few moments, through a vista in the hills. This was Carisbrooke Castle, buried in ivy.

There was another little castle, on a low point of land, which was erected by Henry VIII., as a part of a system of marine defence. It would scarcely serve to scale the guns of a modern twenty-four pounder frigate, judging of its means of resistance and annoyance by the eye. These things are by-gones for England, a country that has little need of marine batteries.

About three, we reached a broad basin, the land retiring on each side of us. The estuary to the northward is called Southampton Water, the town of that name, being seated on its margin. The opening in the Isle of Wight is little more than a very wide mouth to a very diminutive river, or creek, and Cowes, divided into East and West, lines its shores. The anchorage, in the arm of the sea off this little haven, was well filled with vessels, chiefly the yachts of amateur seamen, and the port itself contained little more than pilot boats and crafts of a smaller size. The Hudson brought up among the former. Hauling up the fore-course of a merchant ship, is like lifting the curtain again on the drama of the land. These vessels rarely furl this sail; and they who have not experienced it, cannot imagine what a change it produces on those who have lived a month, or six weeks, beneath its shadow. The sound of the chain running out was very grateful, and I believe, though well satisfied with the ship as such, that every body was glad to get a nearer view of our great mother earth.

It was Sunday, but we were soon visited by boats from the town. Some came to carry us ashore, others to see that we carried nothing off with us. At first, the officer of the customs manifested a desire to make us all go without the smallest article of dress, or any thing belonging to our most ordinary comforts; but he listened to remonstrances, and we were eventually allowed to depart with our night bags. As the Hudson was to sail immediately for London, all our effects were sent within the hour to the custom house. At 3 P. M. July 2nd, 1826, we put foot in Europe, after a passage of thirty-one days from the quarantine ground.

LETTER II. TO MRS. POMEROY, COOPERSTOWN, NEW YORK.

We were no sooner on English ground, than we hurried to one of the two or three small inns of West Cowes, or the principal quarter of the place, and got rooms at the Fountain. Mr. and Mrs. —— had preceded us, and were already in possession of a parlour adjoining our own. On casting an eye out at the street, I found them, one at each window of their own room, already engaged in a lively discussion of the comparative merits of Cowes and Philadelphia! This propensity to exaggerate the value of whatever is our own, and to depreciate that which is our neighbours’, a principle that is connected with the very ground-work of poor human nature, forms a material portion of the travelling equipage of nearly every one who quits the scenes of his own youth, to visit those of other people. A comparison between Cowes and Philadelphia, is even more absurd than a comparison between New York and London, and yet, in this instance, it answered the purpose of raising a lively controversy, between an American wife and a European husband.

The consul at Cowes had been an old acquaintance at school, some five-and-twenty years before, and an inquiry was set on foot for his residence. He was absent in France, but his deputy soon presented himself with an offer of services. We wished for our trunks, and it was soon arranged that there should be an immediate examination. Within an hour, we were summoned to the store-house, where an officer attended on behalf of the customs. Every thing was done in a very expeditious and civil manner, not only for us, but for a few steerage passengers, and this, too, without the least necessity for a _douceur_, the usual _passe partout_ of England. America sends no manufactures to Europe; and, a little smuggling in tobacco excepted, there is probably less of the contraband in our commercial connexion with England, than ever before occurred between two nations that have so large a trade. This, however, is only in reference to what goes eastward, for immense amounts of the smaller manufactured articles of all Europe, find their way, duty free, into the United States. There is also a regular system of smuggling through the Canadas, I have been told.

While the ladies were enjoying the negative luxury of being liberated from a ship, at the Fountain Inn, I strolled about the place. You know that I had twice visited England, professionally, before I was eighteen; and, on one occasion, the ship I was in, anchored off this very island, though not at this precise spot. I now thought the people altered. There had certainly been so many important changes in myself, during the same period, that it becomes me to speak with hesitation on this point; but even the common class seemed less peculiar, less English, _less provincial_, if one might use such an expression, as applied to so great a nation; in short, more like the rest of the world, than formerly. Twenty years before, England was engaged in a war, by which she was, in a degree, isolated from most of Christendom. This insulated condition, sustained by a consciousness of wealth, knowledge, and power, had served to produce a decided peculiarity of manners, and even of appearance. In the article of dress, I could not be mistaken. In 1806, I had seen all the lower classes of the English, clad in something like _costumes_. The channel waterman wore the short dowlas petticoat; the Thames’ waterman, a jacket and breeches of velveteen, and a badge; the gentleman and gentlewoman, attire such as was certainly to be seen in no other part of the Christian world, the English colonies excepted. Something of this still remained, but it existed rather as the exception, than as the rule. I then felt, at every turn, that I was in a foreign country; whereas, now, the idea did not obtrude itself, unless I was brought in immediate contact with the people.

America, in my time, at least, has always had an active and swift communication with the rest of the world. As a people, we are, beyond a question, decidedly provincial, but our provincialism is not exactly one of external appearance. The men are negligent of dress, for they are much occupied, have few servants, and clothes are expensive, but the women dress remarkably near the Parisian _modes_. We have not sufficient confidence in ourselves to set fashions. All our departures from the usages of the rest of mankind, are the results of circumstances, and not of calculation, unless, indeed, it be one that is pecuniary. Those, whose interest it is to produce changes, cause fashions to travel fast, and there is not so much difficulty, or more cost, in transporting any thing from Havre to New York, than there is in transporting the same thing from Calais to London; and far less difficulty in causing a new _mode_ to be introduced, since, as a young people, we are essentially imitative. An example or two, will better illustrate what I mean.

When I visited London, with a part of my family, in 1828, after passing near two years on the continent of Europe, Mrs. —— was compelled to change her dress—at all times simple, but then, as a matter of course, Parisian—in order not to be the subject of unpleasant observation. She might have gone in a carriage attired as a French woman, for they who ride in England, are not much like those who walk. But to walk in the streets, and look at objects, it was far pleasanter to seem English than to seem French. Five years later, we took London on our way to America, and even then, something of the same necessity was felt. On reaching home, with dresses fresh from Paris, the same party was only in the _mode_; with _toilettes_ a little, and but very little, better arranged, it is true, but in surprising conformity with those of all around them. On visiting our own little retired mountain-village, these Parisian-made dresses were scarcely the subject of remark to any but to your _connoisseurs_. My family struck me as being much less peculiar, in the streets of C——, than they had been, a few months before, in the streets of London. All this must be explained by the activity of the intercourse between France and America, and by the greater facility of the Americans, in submitting to the despotism of foreign fashions.