![]()
PART I
The Journey Outward
![]()
CHAPTER ONE
Out of a Time of Great Peril
Boston
FEBRUARY–OCTOBER 1787
After the victorious Revolution and euphoria of the Peace Treaty of 1783, an economic depression had settled over villages and farms. Port cities and their harbors were left reeling from the war. Inflation was rampant. There was no common currency, state governments were weak, and representatives to the Congress of the Confederation bickered over fundamental issues, threatening to secede. Heavy debts owed to Britain for damages in the war were due, and the prospects for international trade and revenue were bleak. In a punishing move, the king had closed all British ports from Canada and the British Isles to the Caribbean to the remaining American ships. France and Spain, likewise, offered no viable trade agreements for their harbors or colonies. Each of those kingdoms wanted the United States as a dependent client nation hemmed in between the Appalachians and the Atlantic.
Securing independence was far from certain, and Barrell, a prominent merchant who had been a member of the clandestine Sons of Liberty, feared along with many others that the blood and suffering of the long revolution might come to nothing. Frustration in the countryside had grown to the point that a popular uprising had broken out. As he trudged along the street, hired militia were hunting through heavy snows in the hills of western Massachusetts, searching for farmers and shopkeepers who had taken arms against what they saw as a corrupt state government. The unrest had been spreading for a year and a half in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire over high taxes, controversial court procedures, and the taking of farms and homesteads for nonpayment of bills. Courts had been blocked from holding session in order to stop the seizures. And in a violent confrontation on January 25, three rebel regiments totaling fifteen hundred men attempted to capture the Springfield Armory. They were led by Captain Daniel Shays, a veteran who was once honored by the Marquis de Lafayette for his bravery. Some believed a new revolution was brewing.
At Mount Vernon, where he had retired after the war, the usually reserved George Washington became apoplectic when he was told there were as many as fifteen thousand disaffected yeomen in New England ready to take up arms. To his friend Henry Lee, Washington wrote, “I am mortified beyond expression when I view the clouds that have spread over the brightest morn that ever dawned in any country.… What a triumph for the advocates of despotism, to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves …”
A push was on for a new federal government. But without trade, without customs revenue, without taxes, it would be impossible to support a new central government and succeed in securing independence. Shipping was the soul of early commerce, and breaking the Old World stranglehold on American vessels was essential to the survival of the fledgling nation. Barrell’s plan held a way to travel beyond the Atlantic ports closed to American ships, open an American gateway to the Pacific, and establish a base for the new nation on the far side of the continent. It was an audacious leap to send two ships and a relatively small crew of fifty men into the largely unknown reaches of the globe.
When he arrived at the home of Thomas Bulfinch on Bowdoin Square, Barrell was brought into the parlor before a warm fire. Among a circle of trusted friends he laid out his plans. Next to Barrell’s packet of papers, Bulfinch opened a leather-bound copy of James Cook’s journal from his third voyage, which described the exotic and unknown expanse of the Pacific and served as the inspiration for Barrell’s expedition. In 1776, Britain’s King George III had dispatched Cook to the Pacific with two ships in search of the Northwest Passage, rumored for centuries to be a link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. While Cook didn’t find the prized passage, he “discovered” the Hawaiian Islands and a treasure of rich furs on the northern Pacific coast of America. In China, furs that Cook’s men had purchased from the American natives in return for trinkets sold for as much as one hundred and twenty Spanish dollars for a single sea otter pelt. This was more than double a full seaman’s wages for a year. The prospect of gathering fortunes sent the crews of Cook’s two ships into near mutiny to return to the American coast. Two seamen “seduced by the prevailing notion of making a fortune” stole a fixed-oar cutter and disappeared, never to be seen again. Duty and the lash drove the rest of the crew homeward. The fortune in furs was still waiting for those daring to venture out.
Joseph Barrell by John Singleton Copley. Joseph Barrell was a member of a large Boston merchant family with relatives posted at offices in the Caribbean, London, and India. An ardent federalist, he supported the vision of an expanding nation and later became a prominent land speculator in Ohio, Kentucky, and Georgia.
Barrell had already been involved with the first two American ships sent to China on the established track eastward around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. The Harriet had gone out from Massachusetts on an aborted voyage in 1783. And the Empress of China, which carried thirty tons of Barrell’s New England ginseng, left New York in 1784. Although the Empress made a moderate profit, Barrell found that the market for ginseng was limited and Chinese merchants wanted silver and gold coins, which were scarce in the new republic. Reading Cook’s journal, he seized upon the idea of using the highly prized furs as a substitute for money. Following the pattern described in Cook’s journal, Barrell outlined a triangular trade of New England goods and trinkets for sea otter furs from Pacific Northwest tribes; an exchange of furs for tea, silk, and other goods at Macao; and a homeward voyage laden with rich Chinese cargo. There were two chances at profits, and Barrell worked out costs and contingencies in detail. He concluded that in a short time a rich trade with the East could prove “superior to any the country enjoys at present.” To firmly secure this trade, the Pacific expedition would also seek to purchase lands on the Northwest Coast. Barrell wanted to establish an American outpost “at least equal to what Hudson’s-bay is to Great Britain,” and extend the new nation by claims of possession. And even more dramatic, Barrell proposed that the expedition search for the legendary Northwest Passage. If it could be found, the waterway would unlock the vast interior of the continent and open a new trade route to the East for Americans.
The brazen plan reflected Barrell’s personal ambition and his broader desperation for the new nation to succeed. He calculated that the expedition’s ships, supplies, men, and trade goods would need an investment of forty-nine thousand dollars, a small fortune at the time. But despite the cost and wild reach of Barrell’s plan, his reasoning was convincing and the prospect for trade was attractive. Fourteen shares were soon divided among his circle of friends as a joint venture. Barrell took four shares, and two shares each went to his new partners: young Charles Bulfinch, who would become America’s premier architect; Crowell Hatch, a Boston captain; Samuel Brown, a Boston merchant and shipowner; John Derby, a Salem merchant whose family owned and provisioned ships; and John M. Pintard, a financier based in New York.
They knew that carrying out the voyage was fraught with difficulty. Spain would resist any encroachment in the Pacific, and the route westward around South America’s Cape Horn was greatly feared. The two ships would have to withstand immense punishment, and there were few vessels available. Boston, like other port cities, had been devastated by the British during the first two years of the war. Shipyards were wrecked, and hundreds of ships up and down the coast had been seized and taken to auction at Liverpool or burned to the waterline where they lay anchored. New ships were hard to come by. The shipyards that survived were shorthanded, and the few ships being framed were going to foreign owners who could pay in cash. Adding to the expense, the hulls of the expedition’s ships would need to be sheathed in copper to ward off wood-boring teredo worms, barnacles, and rot.
The voyage would also be extraordinarily long—more than two years—and require a large amount of provisions, as well as a mountain of trade goods and ship stores to maintain the vessels. There was also a question of whether seasoned men would sign on. Although there was an exotic allure to the Pacific, colored by tales of island paradises and unrestrained sex with beautiful women, the ships were headed for dangerous, uncharted waters, and it was well-known that long voyages like this commonly lost a quarter or more of the crew to scurvy and other diseases.
The key to attracting good men and ensuring success for the expedition rested on finding the right commander. New England was full of blue water captains, but this one would have to be both a seasoned warrior and a diplomat who could negotiate dangers at sea and along unknown coasts. It would take someone experienced in the care of a crew on such a long journey, someone who could hold the hearts of his men and fire their determination through soul-wrenching events. Moreover, he would have to be a master navigator who appreciated the dream of an American outpost on the Pacific and was willing to risk his life in this venture. Whatever candidates they considered, the choice came down to one broad-shouldered captain who literally stood above the others.
By the early summer, Barrell sent word for John Kendrick to meet him at his counting house at Boston’s Town Dock. Kendrick had been a whaling captain for twenty years, and was well-known for his command of privateers during the Revolution. Upstairs from the cavernous storeroom, they sat in Barrell’s office overlooking the waterfront. Dressed in his velvet jacket and ruffled shirt, Barrell appeared very much the wealthy patrician. Kendrick, a rough-hewn counterpart, was tanned and wrinkled and worn by years at sea. He was tough, but possessed a charm and confidence that easily won others over. The two men were nearly the same age: Barrell forty-eight years old and Kendrick forty-seven. They had come to manhood during the turbulence and protests in Boston before the Revolution, and both had risked their lives and fortunes in the war. Barrell knew that Kendrick would see the expedition as more than just a trading mission. Like many of the founding fathers, they shared the naive belief that the Revolution could be carried out into the world through open ports and free trade. Markets opened by American ships, as much as the concept of liberty, would undermine secret pacts between Old World in nations and topple corrupt monarchies. This new trade with China was a stroke in that direction. If they were successful, they would gain the money they were desperate for and contend with the ancient empires that sought to contain the new republic. Barrell rolled out a map, and Kendrick watched his keen eyes and fine hands as the merchant traced out the voyage.
The two ships would carve an American trade route around Cape Horn to the Far East, Barrell told him. They would sail the whole coast of the Americas and barter for furs in the north, then cross the Pacific and stop at the Sandwich Islands on the way to Macao, China. The trip homeward would cross the Indian Ocean and round Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. It would be the first circumnavigation by American ships, and more than just a historic trading voyage, Barrell explained he wanted to establish an American presence in the Pacific. He said the captain would have to evade Spanish warships and ports, and build ties with native people in order to purchase lands from them for an outpost on the Pacific. If land could be purchased, Barrell assured Kendrick, he could get Congress to approve it. Added to this was the tantalizing prospect of finding the legendary Northwest Passage before Britain, Spain, or Russia, to secure a permanent advantage.
The plan offered a grand vision, undoubtedly considered madness by some captains. Beyond the formidable dangers of the voyage, the expedition put the ragtag former colonies in the position of challenging the Old World empires. Compared to the wealth and power of Spain, Britain, and Russia, the new American republic was an impoverished backwater. Boston had a population of only eighteen thousand, Philadelphia, twenty-eight thousand, and New York was the largest city with about thirty-three thousand people. Aside from state militias, there was only a token remnant of the Continental army and no navy; the two ships would be on their own on the other side of the world. They would be sailing into unknown waters peopled by tribes rumored to be cannibals, remote Asian coasts infested with pirates, and a region that would be jealously guarded by Spain.
Kendrick surely recognized what they were up against, and the odds might have been part of what appealed to him. Listening to Barrell, he saw this as the voyage of a lifetime. The prospect of adventure and glory made a stark contrast to the monthly packet run he was currently mastering up and down the coast between Boston and Charleston, South Carolina. This venture could help set a new course for the nation. It was an opportunity to make his mark in trade and carry the seed for an “empire of liberty” envisioned by Thomas Jefferson and others to the Pacific coast. He knew a chance like this would not come again, and soon after their discussion, Kendrick agreed to command the expedition.
The Lady Washington was a coastal sloop of sixty feet and ninety tons, built low and tough in the shipyards north of Boston as early as 1750, probably with two-inch oak planking on her hull. Her single, gaffrigged mast was stepped at an angle and she had a certain romance to her. Commissioned as a privateer in 1776, she took at least one prize ship near Boston and once escaped four British war barges sent to sink her. Kendrick undoubtedly noted her similarity to his brigantine the Fanny, with which he had captured his first prizes in the Revolution. To the eye of any sailor, the Washington was much more the dove, and Columbia akin to the Ark.
As a steady stream of chandlers, riggers, and carters provisioned the ships, the sea letter arrived—it was a ribboned docum...
