Shanghaiing Days: The Thrilling account of 19th Century Hell-Ships, Bucko Mates and Masters, and Dangerous Ports-of-Call from San Francisco to Singapore

by Richard Dillon

  The situation was deteriorating badly by the last day of October. Two thousand strong, the mob marched to the Marine Hospital to view its martyrs. From there it paraded to the Alsop & Company office to demand of Charles Griswold that he surrender Waterman. That gentleman assured the mob that the captain was not there and invited a committee of six to search the building. The searchers, unable to find Waterman, vented their rage on Captain John Land, whom they found at the office. They threatened to hang him on suspicion of having hidden Waterman. This was too much for the city of San Francisco. It had little sympathy for a man of Douglass’ stripe, or even for as controversial a figure as Waterman, but when a mob threatened a peaceful, innocent man like Captain Land for no good reason, things were clearly getting out of hand.

  The peal of the Monumental Fire Engine Company bell quickly sobered some of the scalp hunters. They knew that this meant that the Vigilantes were forming, and they had a good idea why. Six hundred Vigilantes immediately responded to the signal, offering their services this time to the established forces of law and order rather than to the extra-legal law enforcement activity to which they were largely accustomed. The Committee of Vigilance, numbering among its members some of the pillars of the community, was not willing to have a mob of water-front riffraff usurp its role by handing out a brand of justice peculiar to them and to Judge Lynch.

  Vigilante Thomas Gray explained the sentiments of the Committee: “We are informed that a state of feeling exists among a portion of the sailors who came out with Captain Waterman on the Challenge different from that which has generally been supposed to have existed among them unanimously. A gentlemen of this city informs us that nine of the seamen who have just arrived in her have waited upon the consignees of this ship and informed them that they are willing to make a voyage to China in the Challenge with Captain Waterman as master. Five of these gentlemen are Americans and four are foreigners. The same gentlemen states that the passengers are unanimous in justifying the course pursued by the captain on the way out.”

  No non-San Franciscan can realize the moral and psychological strength of the Vigilance Committee. Once it took a stand alongside the municipal government, the police, the Sheriff, the City Marshal and the U.S. Marshal, the mob began to shrink in size. Yellow-livered street orators slunk back to their saloons and cribs. The cagey changed sides pronto and marched through the streets with the Vigilantes, shouting for law and order, when they had trodden the same cobblestones only hours before howling for blood.

  Nobody today remembers Charles J. Brenham, the second and fourth mayor of San Francisco, but he was the man of the hour in 1851. The Kentucky-born Brenham had been, like Waterman, a ship’s master. He commanded a Mississippi River steamboat out of Natchez when he was only twenty and when he arrived in California in 1849 he skippered the steamer McKim on the Sacramento River run. Later, he was master and owner of the steamship Golden Hunter in the Mazatlán trade, before being elected mayor of San Francisco in 1851 on the Whig ticket.

  Brenham was a man of strong character, a godsend to San Francisco in 1851. It was a city of blackened ruins from its sixth great fire, so broken in credit that there were no funds in the City Treasury even to buy stationery for the municipal officers. The Vigilance Committee—Sam Brannan’s “volunteer police,” as distinguished from the regular city force—was in open opposition to City Hall, making Brenham’s position “one of great delicacy and difficulty,” as the Annals of San Francisco put it. But, “he faltered not, although in the strict discharge of his duty he was often compelled to appear in open collision with the people.”

  In June of 1851 the Mayor had stood up to a mob bent on hanging the arsonist, Benjamin Lewis. He talked down some powerful political figures, including Colonel John D. Stevenson and Sam Brannan himself, as well as hundreds of yapping mobsters screaming “Hang the fire-raising wretch! Lynch the villain! Bring him out! No mercy! No law delays! Hang him, hang him!” Brenham stood fast and eventually got the crowd to disperse.

  But the finest moment in his entire career was his display of great “presence of mind and firmness in trying circumstances...in the great riot in the case of Captain Waterman,” to cite again the historic Annals of San Francisco. The Mayor was backed up by the bellicose Vigilantes this time. Willing to face the crowd alone, he welcomed their support on certain conditions, saying “I accept the services of the Vigilantes [but] as merely a body of citizens.” Brenham first cleared the crowd of more than a thousand away from Alsop & Company’s property. He then addressed them nearby, urging them, despite their violent and vindictive attitude, to abandon their determination to hang Captain Waterman. When he found his appeal to the mob was utterly disregarded he next called on the law-abiding citizens within hearing of his voice. He felt confident that he would have their assistance should it prove necessary, so, extracting a huge, gold turnip of a watch from his vest pocket, he switched to a stronger vocabulary in addressing the mob:

  “Gentlemen, I have appealed to you as law-abiding men and loyal citizens of this great city, but to no avail. I shall now give you just ten minutes to disperse. If you fail to comply, I shall order every one of you to be incarcerated in the city bastille. In other words, I will put every damn one of you in jail.”

  The crowd cheered the gutty Brenham, “groaned” Waterman and his bloody mate, and broke up within the ten-minute limit imposed by the Mayor. Portions of the mob reassembled on Pacific Street Wharf where they hashed over the idea of burning or scuttling the Challenge. One wharfside demagogue mounted a keg to accuse the vessel’s owners of being at fault in having hired the tyrant, Bully Waterman, in the first place. “They should pay with the destruction of the clipper!” The rabble-rousing orator volunteered to be the first to set fire to the splendid ship but he was shouted down and soon lost his zeal when he saw how the temper of the crowd was changing. He melted away, unnoticed.

  The United States Marshal went aboard the Challenge shortly after the mob broke up and found that violence had been done to her. Vandals had broken in the cabin doors with handspikes and capstan bars. Waterman had given the keys of his cabin to a ship’s boy, E. A. Wheeler, assuring him that there would be no trouble but ordering him nevertheless not to let anyone in. Wheeler therefore locked the captain’s stateroom and hid the key. Aside from breaking down the doors of the clipper and ransacking her in a fruitless search for the vanished captain, the mob did little damage other than senseless cutting of lanyards of the standing rigging.

  The Marshal ordered off all those who were aboard, told the mob to break up and, if they had any complaints against master or mates, to make them formally to him in his offices. This was done by some of the men, and United States authorities officially joined in the hunt for Captain Waterman and Black Douglass at the same time that they took steps to put down the mob action. The U.S. Marshal posted a reward of $500 for Waterman and Douglass.

  The action of the Vigilantes in the Challenge case was unique in that when they were called out for this last time it was to prevent a lynching for the first time. In all their other alarms, the intent had been to hoist some undesirable at the end of a rope. On the other hand, this participation in San Francisco maritime affairs was not new. Captain Edgar (Ned) Wakeman, who used to brag that “I could sail a market basket ‘round the Horn,” had earlier been named commander of the Committee’s informal water police or “citizen’s harbor police.” He had established such tight control over the harbor that he was dubbed “Emperor of the Port.” His patrols along the wharves and in skiffs and Whitehall boats on the bay itself kept storeship pilfering within bounds, and he also turned away Sydney Ducks and other undesirables from landing from vessels like the British bark Chief.

  Then too, on August 9, 1851, a Vigilance Committee boarding party had had to go into action. They clambered over the side of the ship Johnstone to arrest the ship’s doctor, Kennedy, for an assault upon Captain Simmons. The two men had qu
arreled in the cabin and then had taken their argument on deck where the surgeon decided to end the discussion by drawing a knife and using it on the ship’s master in a most unprofessional way—according to the Herald, “ripping him open in a dreadful manner.” These incidents were precedent enough for the Committee to intervene in the Waterman affair. The Alta California loudly applauded the Vigilantes’ reversal of roles and asked rhetorically, “Where now are those who called the Committee a mob?”

  The press began to swing over to a position closer to what might be called “pro-Waterman,” even though the truth was not yet out. The Daily Evening Picayune wrote, “It is very possible that when the matter comes to be fully investigated, it may be found that the account of the captain’s conduct has been exaggerated. We hope that a fair and impartial examination will be undertaken as soon as the captain gives himself up which, we understand, will be in a few days.”

  Bully Waterman personally requested hearings in the United States District Court and the hearings began on November 1, before Judge Ogden Hoffman, Jr. On Thursday and Friday, the 7th and 8th of the month, United States Commissioner H. B. Jones examined the charges of mutiny against a portion of the crew and ordered Second Mate Alexander Coghill to answer that charge before the District Court. The Alta reported on Waterman that “He is ready to stand his trial and to place himself in the hands of the U.S. Marshal so soon as there is a certainty that he will be secure from the people.”

  By the 15th, things had finally quieted down and the Herald in a “Summary of News Since the Sailing of the Last Steamer,” could report that “The excitement which existed in the city a fortnight ago in relation to the cruelties alleged to have been practiced by Captain Waterman of the ship Challenge upon his crew has entirely subsided. The mate, Mr. Douglass, who was perhaps more obnoxious to a portion of the people than the captain himself, eluded his pursuers for some days but was finally captured a few miles from the city making his way to Monterey. He was placed in the hands of the authorities, was afterwards brought before the U.S. Commissioner, but in consequence of the threatening appearance of the crowd around, waived an examination and was remanded to prison to stand his trial before the U.S. District Court on a charge of murder upon the high seas. Captain Waterman has not yet been arrested but it is said that he is at hand and ready to surrender himself as soon as he becomes convinced that he can obtain a fair trial. The second mate, Alexander Coggil [sic], and two seamen of the Challenge have been examined on a charge of mutiny on the high seas and fully committed for trial.”

  Although the press, on the fifteenth, felt “the excitement...has entirely subsided.” Captain Waterman did not feel it safe to come out of hiding until more than two weeks later. The December 1st Picayune revealed that Waterman had surrendered that day and that he invited “an investigation into the charges preferred against him.” The following day, the Herald stated that “Captain Waterman of the ship Challenge, charged with murder and other crimes upon the high seas, has voluntarily surrendered himself into the hands of the U.S. Marshal. The rumors of his flight from the country are therefore unfounded. He has submitted himself to the jurisdiction of the legal tribunal at whose hands he will doubtless receive justice.”

  Who was this Captain Robert H. Waterman whose high-handed actions on the high seas set a howling mob loose in the streets of San Francisco? Was he “the first of sailors,” as his friends called him, “he meilleur capitaine des Etats Unis,” or was he the “vile, bloody murderer” of his enemies’ accusations, the “most inhuman monster of the age”?

  Robert H. Waterman was born in Hudson, New York, on March 4, 1808. When he was only twelve or fourteen years old, the black-haired son of Thaddeus and Eliza Waterman first shipped out. He sailed on the barque Nimrod, commanded by Captain John Sterling, on a voyage to China. He sailed again with Sterling on the packet Splendid to South America as a first-class seaman, almost losing his life in a near-fall from aloft. Waterman quickly worked his way aft from fo’c’sle to poop; from ordinary seaman to A.B., to third, to second, to first mate, and finally to master. He came up “by the hawsepipe,” the hard way. In the Navy he would have been called a “mustang.”

  As a mate on Charles H. Marshall’s Britannia he was the best second mate in the employ of the Black Ball Line and perhaps the youngest in the history of the American merchant marine. Not only did he keep his ship in top condition, he ran a taut ship in terms of discipline. Hard on his crews, a bit high-handed even as a young man, he, nevertheless, saved crewmen several times from death and in 1831, while on the westward run to New York, he dived overboard to rescue one of his men who had been swept off the deck of the Britannia in a gale. The cabin passengers applauded his heroic action by presenting him with a testimonial and a gold snuff box. They were taken aback, however, when Waterman, typically, gave the sailor a tongue lashing for malingering after his dunking. According to another old story, he lost his cook off the Sea Witch near Hawaii in 1847 and was not able to go in after him. The man, Tim Riley, found a derelict spar and eventually made an island. He got back to civilization, but with a case of amnesia from a blow on the head. When he finally “came to” in San Francisco, it was 1862. He walked into the Port Warden’s office where Bully Waterman greeted him with a roar, “Where have you been!”

  When Captain Marshall became the owner of the Black Ball Line, Waterman was promoted to the captaincy of the Black Bailer South America. After four years in her, he left the transatlantic packet service for a stint in the New Orleans packet trade. The newspapers gave him some space in 1837 when he took the full-pooped, flat-floored Natchez to Valparaiso in jig time. The Natchez was one of ten sister ships built in U.S. Navy yards during the period 1825-1830 and designed by Samuel Humphries, Chief Constructor for the U.S. Government. They were built by Isaac Webb for the New York-to-New Orleans run. In 1840 he made an excellent Coquimbo-New York passage and, four years later, after taking the Natchez around Cape Stiff to Canton via Valparaiso and Mazatlán, he brought her home in only ninety-two days with a cargo of copper and hides from Chile. And Webbs Natchez was a slow sailer! Waterman always used more canvas than any other skipper. He drove his crews harder. The result was record passages. He had circled the globe in nine months and twenty-six days. There were those who thought he drove the Natchez so hard on this trip just to prove how wrong were the theorists who said a flat-floored ship was no good in any kind of bad weather.

  The man some began to call “the strutting dude of sail,” wasted no time in port except to see his New York lady friend, Cynthia Jones. According to Waterman’s biographer, David A. Weir, the captain kept company with this comely daughter of Judge Samuel Jones, after whom New York’s Great Jones Street was named. He took the Natchez to Valparaiso again in 1844 and then rushed on to Hong Kong. On January 15, 1845, he sailed from Canton. A little over a month later he was off the Cape of Good Hope and he blasted her home to New York on April 3, only seventy-eight days from China. The Natchez had logged 13, 995 miles between Portugal’s Chinese colony of Macao and the Barnegat pilot boat. A popular hero in New York, Waterman was saluted by the New York Herald for “a magnificent record for a relentless commander.”

  Men who knew ships found it hard to believe that the five-foot-eight-inch captain with the high forehead and the cold, glittering eyes of blue-gray could have driven the slow old Natchez into a passage of only sixteen days from the Line to the Battery. Naturally, rumors sprang up that he had found a new and secret short cut home from the Orient. When he made another fine round trip to China in 1845-46 in the Natchez, the delighted owners, Howland and Aspin-wall, commissioned John Griffiths to build him a ship at last worthy of him. This was the clipper Sea Witch.

  While the clipper was being built, Waterman married Cordelia Sterling of Bridgeport, sister of his old skipper on the Nimrod. After his honeymoon at Quebec and Montreal, Waterman skippered the Rainbow until the Sea Witch was ready. The Rainbow was no scow, eithe
r. A January 1845 New York paper called the launching of the Rainbow “a turning point in the annals of the American Merchant Marine—the beginning of the era of the clipper ship, for today from the yards of Smith & Dimon was launched a new ship, the Rainbow, the first extreme clipper to sail the seas.”

  Even more exciting was the Rainbow’s sister ship, the Sea Witch, however. She was faster, being built and rigged under Bob Waterman’s personal supervision. The New York Herald wrote on December 8, 1846: “This is the most regal vessel we have ever seen—and no less striking is Captain Bob Waterman’s fresh young bride, the former Miss Cordelia Sterling, who had been accorded the honor of sponsoring the ship. The name Sea Witch, finally agreed upon by the owners, Howland and Aspin-wall, came about in this fashion. Several weeks ago when Captain Waterman was enthusing over the forthcoming launching—and his approaching wedding as well—Miss Cordelia pouted, ‘Oh, yes, to you she may be a very wonderful, wonderful ship, but to me she is just a witch of the sea, come to carry you away from me’ The captain sprang up in jubilation and exclaimed, ‘Hooray! Cordelia, that’s it. That will be her name—the Sea Witch: “

  The launching of the beautiful, nine-hundred-ton Sea Witch, with her red and white stripe above the copper sheathing, and her dragon figurehead, was scheduled for December 7, 1846, at Smith and Dimon’s South Street shipyard. But the launching had to be put off until Waterman and his bride could reach New York from Bridgeport, Connecticut. On the 8th, Cordelia Waterman swung the bottle of champagne against the low-lying black hull and christened the “handsomest ship sailing out of New York.” With her black hull and her sharply raked masts, she looked more like a privateer or a corsair than a merchant vessel.