Two years later, the Margaret of Salem made the same sort of a voyage, and in both instances the supercargoes, one of whom happened to be a younger brother of Captain Richard Cleveland, wrote journals of the extraordinary episode.For these mariners alone was the curtain lifted which concealed the feudal Japan from the eyes of the civilized world.Alert and curious, these Yankee traders explored the narrow streets of Nagasaki, visited temples, were handsomely entertained by officers and merchants, and exchanged their wares in the marketplace.They were as much at home, no doubt, as when buying piculs of pepper from a rajah of Qualah Battoo, or dining with an elderly mandarin of Cochin China.It was not too much to say that "the profuse stores of knowledge brought by every ship's crew, together with unheard of curiosities from every savage shore, gave the community of Salem a rare alertness of intellect."It was a Salem bark, the Lydia, that first displayed the American flag to the natives of Guam in 1801.She was chartered by the Spanish government of Manila to carry to the Marianne Islands, as those dots on the chart of the Pacific were then called, the new Governor, his family, his suite, and his luggage.First Mate William Haswell kept a diary in a most conscientious fashion, and here and there one gleans an item with a humor of its own."Now having to pass through dangerous straits," he observes, "we went to work to make boarding nettings and to get our arms in the best order, but had we been attacked we should have been taken with ease.Between Panay and Negros all the passengers were in the greatest confusion for fear of being taken and put to death in the dark and not have time to say their prayers."The decks were in confusion most of the time, what with the Governor, his lady, three children, two servant girls and twelve men servants, a friar and his servant, a judge and two servants, not to mention some small hogs, two sheep, an ox, and a goat to feed the passengers who were too dainty for sea provender.The friar was an interesting character.A great pity that the worthy mate of the Lydia should not have been more explicit! It intrigues the reader of his manuscript diary to be told that "the Friar was praying night and day but it would not bring a fair wind.His behavior was so bad that we were forced to send him to Coventry, or in other words, no one would speak to him."The Spanish governors of Guam had in operation an economic system which compelled the admiration of this thrifty Yankee mate.The natives wore very few clothes, he concluded, because the Governor was the only shopkeeper and he insisted on a profit of at least eight hundred per cent.There was a native militia regiment of a thousand men who were paid ten dollars a year.With this cash they bought Bengal goods, cottons, Chinese pans, pots, knives, and hoes at the Governor's store, so that "all this money never left the Governor's hands.It was fetched to him by the galleons in passing, and when he was relieved he carried it with him to Manila, often to the amount of eighty or ninety thousand dollars." A glimpse of high finance without a flaw!
There is pathos, simple and moving, in the stories of shipwreck and stranding on hostile or desert coasts.These disasters were far more frequent then than now, because navigation was partly guesswork and ships were very small.Among these tragedies was that of the Commerce, bound from Boston to Bombay in 1793.The captain lost his bearings and thought he was off Malabar when the ship piled up on the beach in the night.The nearest port was Muscat and the crew took to the boats in the hope of reaching it.
Stormy weather drove them ashore where armed Arabs on camels stripped them of clothes and stores and left them to die among the sand dunes.
