The Perseverance Courtesy, Skinner, Inc. |
Log of schooner Pilgrim, 1803-1805 Courtesy, Drew Archives |
“South America, Drawn from the Best Authorities: Regulated by Astron,” by Thomas Kitchin. Observat. [1790?] |
As Delano recorded, the morning of Thursday,
May 2, 1805, “began with fresh gales and squalls of Rain.” At 8:00 a.m., the Pilgrim’s watch caught sight of a ship in their wake, following
closely behind:
up with us and prov’d to be a
Spanish ship of 20 guns. She boarded us and
sent word for me to come aboard with
my Papers which was complied with.
This was a
Chilean coast guard vessel. In a
Kafkaesque exercise, the Spanish ordered Delano into the coaster’s great cabin,
where they interrogated him for several hours, culminating in a demand that he
sign a statement that their translator had produced, despite his plea that he
could not read Spanish. As Delano tells
the story, he replied,
But if it was what I had said and no
different, I would sign it. They said it was
the same. I then signed it. I then
asked for a certificate to blank any other Spanish
vessel I might meet that I had been
examined by a king’s ship.
At this point,
his captors informed him that he must proceed to Valparaiso. Delano protested
that the Pilgrim had left men on St.
Phelps, and sought to “use every means to convince them there was a danger 10
men’s perishing on and blank for water,” but he was denied. Over the next two weeks, the Pilgrim sailed
“in company with” the Spanish coaster.
During that time, the commandant, “as they termed him,” repeatedly sent
for the schooner’s logbook and charts. Meanwhile,
Spanish sailors boarded the Pilgrim, rifling
through the cargo and even the sea chests of the schooner’s crew. As recorded in the Pilgrim’s log for 10 May 1805:
In Custody of the Spaniards this day
they overhauled everything in all parts
of the vessel, Ripped up [?],
unheaded Casks of Flour and Bread in the hold
and Bundled things About as mutch as
they chose and filled every part of
the vessels with Spaniards to search
as they saw for contraband goods. But
more Provable to me for other
purposes our people still on board the Coster
. . . say they have much suffered
from since they had been prisoners.
The schooner and
her coaster guard reached Valpariso by May 24, where they were reunited with
Amasa and William aboard the Perseverence.
Fortunately, Amasa had sailed in these
waters previously and has accrued some influence with Chilean authorities. He
was able to arrange for the release of the schooner. However, his efforts to reclaim “articles
that the Spanish Sailors had stolen” from the Pilgrim and her crew—clothes,
small goods, and cash—were unsuccessful—“all they got was a shrug of the
shoulders.” Samuel Delano recorded a
further act of overreach in the ship’s log: The Commodore “sign’d the Back of
my Clearance from Boston, [but] forbidding the Pilgrim to Navigate the Pacific
Ocean.”
As I note in True Yankees, Americans considered such incidents, all too common
in the new republic’s early years, as insults to the national honor. The last word goes to Samuel Delano in the Pilgrim’s log:
I may never Die until I have had
Just Recompence for Insults and Injuries
Receiv’d from Spaniards men.
Special thanks
to Carolyn Ravencroft, Research Librarian, Drew Archives, Duxbury,
Massachusetts For more, www.drewarchives.org
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