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Subject: The Sea Kings of Nantucket, Mass. - Whaling - Part 4.
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 10:14:51 EDT
The Sea Kings of Nantucket, Mass.
In Olde Massachusetts by Charles Burr Todd 1907
Grafton Press Publishers, N.Y.
Chapter XVIII
The Sea Kings of Nantucket, Mass.
Part 4.
p.135
Capt. Wm. Mooers - ship Maria.
Capt. William Mooers of the ship Maria was Mr. Rotch's favorite captain. I
heard a story
once illustrating his spirit and decision of character. He was making a
voyage to France
in command of the Maria, Mr. Rotch being a passenger. We were at war with
England at
the time and Captain Mooers had begged to be permitted to arm his ship ere
setting out,
but the merchant Quaker, Mr. Rotch, horrified at the sound of strife,
rushed on deck and
ordered Capt. Mooers to strike his flag. "Mr. Rotch, said Capt. Mooers - go
below - I have
the deck" and he held his course. At the same moment the breeze freshened
and the
Maria's wide spread of canvas enabled her to take herself out of harm's way.
It is not on
record that Mr. Rotch ever disciplined his captain for this cavalier
disregard for orders.
Capt. Edmund Gardner, descended from John Swain Jr.
Ship Union.
It is something, is it not, to have talked with a man who has been in the
whale's mouth?
That man was Capt. Edmund Gardner, a descendant of John Swain Jr. the first
white male
child born on Nantucket. He began his sea life in 1801 in the ship, Union,
Grafton Gardner
p.136
commander, and succeeded to the Captaincy in 1807, at the same time sailing
to the
Pacific on a whaling voyage. Twenty days out, a huge sperm whale struck the
ship and
she immediately sank, Captain and crew escaping in their three whale-boats
in which,
after many adventures, they safely reached the Azores. There Capt. Gardner
found another
ship and in her, made a noble sperm-whale voyage. In 1816, while on another
voyage, on
the Peruvian coast, in an encounter with a sperm whale, his boat was knocked
into splinters
and he was precipitated into the monster's mouth. The horrible jaws closed
on him, then
opened and cast him out. The mate's boat took him up for dead. One hand was
gone and
there was an indentation in his head deep enough to hold an egg. The made
made all
sail for the port of Paita in Peru, where they soon arrived. It being the
hot season there,
the doctor said the wounded man must be taken up into the mountains where
the cool
breezes would serve to restore him. This was actually accomplished. He
regained his
ship, completed his voyage, and arrived home in New Bedford in 1817, to the
great joy
of the owners, the Rotches and Rodmans.
See the Journal of Capt. Edmund Gardner of Nantucket & New Bedford at
webpages:
_http://www.du.edu/~ttyler/ploughboy/bullard.htm_
(http://www.du.edu/~ttyler/ploughboy/bullard.htm)
To be continued, Part 5 - Reuben R. Pinkham - 3rd Lieutenant - Ship U.S.
Frigate Potomac.
Transcribed by Janice Farnsworth
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