The captain's best mate: the journal of Mary Chipman Lawrence on the whaler Addison, 1856-1860

624 Pages·1986·2.78 MB·English

by  Mary Chipman Lawrence

The Captain's Best Mate : The Journal of
title: Mary Chipman Lawrence On the Whaler
Addison, 1856-1860
author: Lawrence, Mary Chipman.; Garner, Stanton.
publisher: University Press of New England
isbn10 | asin: 0874513669
print isbn13: 9780874513660
ebook isbn13: 9780585236599
language: English
Lawrence, Samuel, Whalers (Persons)--
Massachusetts--Biography, Lawrence, Mary
subject
Chipman,--1827---Diaries, Whalers'
spouses--Massachusetts--Diaries.
publication date: 1986
lcc: SH20.L38L38 1986eb
ddc: 639/.28/0922
Lawrence, Samuel, Whalers (Persons)--
Massachusetts--Biography, Lawrence, Mary
subject:
Chipman,--1827---Diaries, Whalers'
spouses--Massachusetts--Diaries.
Page i
The Captain's Best Mate
Page ii
Page iii
The Captain's Best Mate
The Journal of Mary Chipman Lawrence On The Whaler
:
Addision 18561860
Edited by Stanton Garner
University Press of New England
Hanover and London
publishes books under its own imprint and is the
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF NEW ENGLAND
publisher for Brandeis University Press, Dartmouth College, Middlebury
College Press, University of New Hampshire, Tufts University, and Wesleyan
University Press.
University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755
1966 by Brown University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5
Maps in this book were drawn by Sam H. Bryant, Marblehead, Massachusetts.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Lawrence, Mary Chipman, 1827-
The captain's best mate.
Includes index.
1. Lawrence, Samuel. 2. Whalers (Persons)
MassachusettsBiography. 3. Lawrence, Mary Chipman,
1827 . 4. Whalers' wivesMassachusetts Biography. I. Garner, Stanton. II. Title.
SH20.L38L38 1986 639'.28'0922 [B] 83-40018
ISBN 0-87451-366-9
Page v
This edition is dedicated to
FRANCIS FREEMAN JONES
whose dignity, integrity, and
irrepressible good humor keep alive
the spirit of Mary Lawrence's
New England
Page vii
Preface
Mary Chipman Lawrence wrote her journal during a three and one-
half year whaling voyage, and it is in her narrative that this book's
interest lies. However, in the Introduction, Epilogue, Appendixes, and
Notes I have attempted to add as much circumstantial information
about her experience as is practicable and relevant, for the purpose of
placing this single whaling voyage in the larger context of the busy
Pacific Ocean of the 1850's. For this information I am indebted to a
number of sources besides such standard works as Alexander
Starbuck's History of the American Whale Fishery.
The most remarkable and unexpected source is a rare tract by Mrs.
Helen E. Brown, A Good Catch; or, Mrs. Emerson's Whaling-Cruise,
published in Philadelphia in 1884 by the Presbyterian Board of
Publication. This Christian tale was inspired by letters and a visit to
Mrs. Lawrence from one of the Addison's crew many years after the
Civil War, when the voyage itself was a dimming memory. The
crewman was Edward Leighton, a runaway English boy from London,
who had given his address in the Addison's shipping articles as St.
Johnsbury, Vermont. Leighton credited the Lawrences with
reconciling him with his family, claiming that the presence of the
mother and daughter on the ship had set him once again to thinking of
his loved ones at home. As a result, he had returned to England and
made peace with his parents, and by the time of his visit to the
Lawrences' Brooklyn home he had become a respected merchant ship
officer. Mrs. Brown, a minor but prolific author of inspirational tracts
with whom Mrs. Lawrence had become acquainted, was so captivated
by the adventurous voyage and its evangelical outcome that, with
some advice and guidance from Mrs. Lawrence, she constructed the
plot of A Good Catch on the framework of the journal and the
Leighton incident. It was perhaps inevitable that in the process the
genuine, dependable Leighton, who had on more than one occasion
during the voyage rendered indispensable
Page viii
services to Captain Lawrence, was transmuted into a ne'er-dowell lad
named Aleck Fielding who, prior to his reclamation, was perpetually
in trouble aboard ship and ashore. Many of the passages of the book
are direct quotations from the journal; others seem to be based on
Mary Lawrence's own recollections and are included in the Notes and
Appendixes. A Good Catch was discovered almost by accident in the
valuable Morse Whaling Collection of the Brown University Library.
A journal kept by George L. Bowman during the last cruise of the
voyage has also been used to amplify Mrs. Lawrence's journal.
Bowman, a native of Falmouth, had by coincidence sailed from
Fairhaven as a boatsteerer aboard the Sharon on the day of the
Addison's departure from New Bedford, across the Acushnet River.
Captain Lawrence shipped him for a cruise and home during the
Addison's last stop at the Sandwich Islands, promoting him to third
mate in the process (apparently as a favor, since he could then sign on
his next whaler as an officer). His journal (and another journal he kept
aboard the Sharon) is now in the Nicholson Whaling Collection of the
Providence (Rhode Island) Public Library.
Mrs. Lawrence's journal was written on the tall blue pages (8 by 13
5/16 inches) of two otherwise blank books of the sturdy type used for
whaling logs. Writing in a neat but compact hand, with the elaborate
capital letters of her era, she filled 160 pages of the first volume and
60 pages of the second. She was an educated, naturally gifted stylist.
It has therefore seemed appropriate to normalize her few departures
from modern usage in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation (but
not in grammar) and to correct silently her rare slips of the pen. These
principles have also been followed in transcribing all other manuscript
materials which appear in the Appendixes and Notes. However,
modern equivalents have not been substituted for archaic geographical
terms. (See the Glossary of Obscure Geographical Terms, Appendix
F.)