He made up his mind before Christmas, encouraged by a chance encounter with a childhood friend, James Goodwin. Goodwin lived in New York, but he had grown up in Hartford and was visiting. Goodwin had already been to sea, and he suggested that they look for a berth together. The pair had no luck in Hartford, and at the end of March, they traveled to New York. They turned up nothing the first week. As he would so often later in life, Olmsted enlisted the help of friends and acquaintances. He turned to George and Sam Howard, whom he had met while boarding in their mother’s house in Brooklyn Heights. They introduced him to Peter Morton, a wealthy Manhattan businessman who also lived in Brooklyn. Morton, in turn, suggested that Olmsted talk to George Talbot, a partner in the tea-importing firm of Gordon & Talbot. At first Talbot was concerned that the young man might be a miscreant whose family simply wanted to get rid of him. Olmsted assured Talbot that this was not the case—although he later privately admitted that “it might almost be true in one sense”—and he provided solid references. Gordon & Talbot did have a China-bound vessel that might be willing to take a green hand. He went on board the ship, which was refitting in a dry dock on the East River. The Ronaldson was a square-rigged bark, similar to the ship that Dana had sailed on. At 320 tons she was relatively small and carried a crew of less than twenty. Olmsted thought she had “pretty good form, but nothing clipper.” He met the captain, an affable man named Warren Fox. The following day, Captain Fox informed him that he was accepted. Regular seamen were paid about twelve dollars a month; as a green hand, Olmsted would receive considerably less. But it was adventure, not money, he was after. He would be embarking for Canton in two weeks.
The Ronaldson left New York harbor on April 23, 1843. Olmsted’s father and brother had come to New York to see Frederick off. As the ship put out and the two figures standing on the Pike Street wharf grew smaller in the distance, I imagine that the affectionate Olmsted felt sad. But he must have been excited, too. After the months of inactivity, he was finally on his way. Also, he was among friends. Goodwin had been taken on as a regular hand. Jacob Braisted, a young sailor whom Olmsted had met two weeks before by chance on the Hartford ferry, was also on board. Braisted and Olmsted had taken to each other, quickly becoming “thick as pickpockets.” This was Braisted’s second China voyage with Captain Fox.
Olmsted wrote home regularly, entrusting the letters to westward-bound American or English ships that the Ronaldson encountered on its way. In a letter to his parents sent from his first landfall, Sumatra, he wrote: “It grieves me very much to tell you [the voyage] has likewise been in many respects a disagreeable & unpleasant one.”
That was putting it mildly. He had experience sailing on the Connecticut River, and he had taken steamboats down Long Island Sound to New York, but he had never been on the open sea. Like many novices, Olmsted was seasick. At first he tried to work, but eventually he was unable to leave his bunk. The four “green boys” were housed in a foul-smelling small space in steerage, deep belowdecks. He managed to get moved to the forecastle, where most of the crew lived, and shared a bunk with Goodwin, who took care of him. (Later, when Goodwin came down with dysentery, Olmsted was able to return the good deed.) It was weeks before he could eat solid food, and a full month before he recovered. But he was so weakened that he could not do his regular duties and was put to cleaning the rust from the cutlasses and pistols in the armory. This light work did not last long. Olmsted was an apprentice sailor, not a cabin boy. He was expected to perform the same tasks as the other men. These included the morning washing of the decks, as well as regular rounds of scrubbing, scraping, and painting. Bilgewater had to be pumped out daily. The rigging had to be regularly tarred. He took his turn at watch and learned to go aloft to set sails. He was soon scrambling up the ratlines, as much as a hundred feet above the deck. Here, where the swaying motion of the ship was exaggerated manyfold, he would join his mates in gingerly edging out on the yards to furl or unfurl the huge flapping canvas sails. The exhausting work made for blistered hands, cracked knuckles, and aching joints.
Olmsted was starting to settle down to the routine when they reached the Cape of Good Hope. The southern tip of Africa is always dangerous to shipping, and this time was no exception. The Ronaldson encountered terrible seas, rains, finally a snowstorm. A squall blew away the main topsail. Going aloft and handling the wet, icy lines became more dangerous than ever. He suffered a bad fall, although not as bad as Braisted, who survived a drop from the fore-topgallant yard, a distance of fifty feet or more. At one point the wind was so strong that the captain was obliged to furl all sails and drift for two days. Since the ship was overloaded with cargo, she lumbered awkwardly in the heavy sea. Everything—and everyone—was wet. One morning Olmsted awoke to find that he couldn’t move his right arm. He had another month of light duties until the paralysis wore off and he regained his strength. He was discovering the truth of Dana’s observation that “a sailor’s life is at best but a mixture of a little good with much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain.”
Sickness, accidents, debilitating work, and bad weather were coupled with cramped and uncomfortable living conditions. The food was monotonous: salt beef and biscuits daily, interrupted on Sundays by duff, a clammy pudding of boiled flour and molasses. As a special treat the cook would make lobscouse, a stew of crushed biscuits, potatoes, and codfish or more of the salt beef. Dana had described all this in Two Years Before the Mast, but it still must have come as a shock.
Twenty weeks after leaving New York, the Ronaldson finally anchored in Whampoa Reach, the port of Canton. Olmsted expected that once they got to their destination he would have a more interesting time. He had been looking forward to visiting China, an exotic foreign land, but it didn’t turn out as he’d planned. Seamen worked a six-day week, and shore liberty was a rare privilege. Earlier, the captain had discovered that Olmsted could draw, and he had him copying sea charts. After that, capitalizing on the youth’s commercial experience, he appointed him clerk and put him to work preparing invoices and writing circulars to promote the sale of trade goods. Much of the Ronaldson’s cargo was sold retail, and the ship was, in effect, turned into a floating dry-goods store. (This could hardly have thrilled Olmsted.) The trading goods were soon disposed of, but the shipment of tea that was to be loaded was delayed, and the months dragged on. The Whampoa anchorage was particularly unhealthy, and like many of the crew, Olmsted contracted typhoid. Malaria, too, was rampant.
It was more than a month before he set foot on land. He did see the city of Canton—on an abbreviated visit. He had with him a letter of introduction from the Reverend Mr. Gallaudet to Dr. Parker, an American missionary, but was able to make only a brief call. Olmsted had promised his friends at the Natural History Society to bring back information and specimens of Chinese flora and fauna, but there was no time for outings into the countryside. It was a great disappointment.
He made only three visits ashore. The second time he accompanied one of the passengers, Dr. John Green, who had befriended Olmsted when he was seasick. They stopped at Boston Jack’s—a local ship’s chandler who sold provisions to the Ronaldson. Olmsted was still recuperating from his bout with typhoid.
After resting myself some time I took a short walk with the Doctor & Chinese attendants, in the streets of Whampoa, occasionally entering the shops & stores, & seeing the Chinese in their every day life. Old gentlemen of fortune with rich dresses & robes reaching to their feet, their long tails richly interwove with silk cord, little black satin skull caps with bright turk’s heads or topknots on the unshaved part of the crowns. These “old knobs” we often saluted, which they gravely returned, each repeating “chin chin,” which like a great many of their phrases means many things.
He soon got tired again. Looking for a place to sit down and rest, he heard the sound of classroom recitation through an open door. He stepped inside.
It was a long room, not very light. The pupils generally were standing up, though there were a few desk
s, with books on them. I suspect they study at home mostly, as I met some boys afterwards in different places with books, who I think were going to recite. The boys all stared and generally laughed as I came in, and some young rascals [said] in a low tone “Fanqui!” [foreign devil] I suppose the master half rose & bowed to me, but coming in from the open street, I did not perceive him at first.
At any rate, the little fellow before him never once looked up or altered his tone as he followed the letters on his book (with his young nails some half inch long). He read with a kind of singsong—first high & then low—about two pages; closed his hornbook; about face, & was trotting off without taking the least notice of me, when I took the liberty of stopping him by catching hold of his tail (about eighteen inches long). He whipped round and laughed in my face! However, I gave him a bit of Mandarin cake (which I had bought for Jack [Braisted] on board) (composed, they say, of rice flour, sugar & dry lard—very delicate & nice they are, too) for saying his lesson so perfectly. He chin chin’d me & went about his business.
Olmsted described this incident in a letter to his aunt Maria. Here is a new Olmsted: a budding journalist. He was a natural—inquisitive, sociable, observant, and skeptical. He provided his correspondents with thumbnail sketches of people, dress, architecture, and local customs that are detailed, vivid, and insightful. He was also sympathetic to his surroundings. One day, he followed a group of sailors into a temple. Instinctively, he took off his hat, for which he was jeered by his rough companions. While they fooled around, he met an elderly attendant and got a guided tour of the place.
On his last visit ashore, less than a week before the ship was to weigh anchor, he did some shopping, bringing back the usual souvenirs: a mandarin cap, a sword, a pair of chopsticks. It was a modest reminder of what had turned out to be a pitifully brief encounter with the Orient. But by now he was looking forward to seeing his family again. “Home! home! The thought of seeing you once more—Oh my, I can’t sit still, to think of it,” he wrote to his father as the ship was preparing to leave.
The voyage home was, if anything, more harrowing. The provisions were as bad as ever. Many of the men had contracted dysentery; others, including Olmsted, came down with scurvy. While he was lying ill in his bunk, he overheard some sailors laying odds on how many days it would be before they threw him overboard. The captain worked his shorthanded crew harder than ever. Carrying a full load of tea, he was in a hurry to return—tea fetched a higher price the earlier it went on the market. Ninety days was considered respectable for a fast clipper ship to sail from Canton to New York. The Ronaldson made it in only 104 days and docked in New York harbor on April 16, 1844, just a week short of one year since her departure. John Olmsted was waiting on the dock. He was shocked by his son’s appearance. The jaunty youth with the brand-new sailor clothes—checked flannel shirt and bell-bottom duck trousers—had been replaced by a wretched, emaciated figure: scrawny, gaunt, and ill-nourished.
• • • •
Though Olmsted did not see much of China and discovered that he was not cut out for seafaring, his time aboard the Ronaldson was instructive. Like Dana, Olmsted had led a sheltered existence. In Hartford, and even during his sojourn in New York, he had been chiefly among people of his own social class. On board the Ronaldson he came in close contact with ordinary workingmen. His initial impression of his less advantaged fellow citizens was not propitious. He was sorely disappointed by the behavior of the crew, chagrined at their malingering, and scandalized by their coarse language, their drinking, and their crude behavior. “A more discontented, grumbling, growling set of mortals than our men are, you can not imagine,” he wrote his parents.
His natural inclination was to side with the captain and the officers. These were men with whom he shared a common background. Moreover, Captain Fox, who had welcomed him so warmly, treated the “boys”—one of whom was his own son—decently. (Fox’s solicitous treatment of Olmsted was undoubtedly colored by his awareness of the young man’s personal acquaintance with the ship’s owners.) As the voyage continued, however, Olmsted started to have doubts. The custom in most merchant ships was “four hours on and four hours off,” which meant a twelve-hour working day. However, to take advantage of a two-week stretch of good weather, the impatient Fox required his men to work seventeen-hour days. He believed that his crew should practice what was known as the Philadelphia Catechism: “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able, And on the seventh—holystone the decks and scrape the cable.” To carry more cargo, the captain reduced provisions, and only a month out of New York, potatoes and fruit ran out. To save time, he refused to put in and take on fresh water, with the result that drinking water had to be rationed. To save money, he carried rotted food left over from his earlier voyage. The bread was wormy and the cornmeal was sour.
At Whampoa, Olmsted had seen how other ships were run. He concluded that the men of the Ronaldson had “much more cause for complaint than the crews of other vessels here . . . we are worked much longer, if not harder, & have many less privileges than are customarily allowed.” “It’s perfectly ridiculous how mistaken I was in my estimation of the character of my shipmates,” he wrote to his brother, John.
It is doubtful that Captain Fox was unusually cruel. Jacob Braisted had sailed with Fox before and would have warned Olmsted if that had been the case. But the captain was single-minded in his handling of the ship. Early-nineteenth-century merchant captains were under intense pressure to shorten sailing times. The Ronaldson was no clipper, and making good time meant driving the men hard. The constant threat of mutiny also had to be considered. Harsh, preemptive discipline was customary. Olmsted, like Dana, witnessed at least one brutal flogging. The victim was a young boy whose offense was swearing. He was given more than twenty lashes. As Olmsted later described it, the incident drove the crew to the edge of mutiny.1
His year before the mast had been no lark. He had had a rough time. He had worked hard. He had been exposed to real dangers and real travails. Like Dana, he found out that going to sea was anything but good for your health. The poor diet, the overcrowded conditions, and the tropical diseases had taken their toll. This had left him with no great desire to pursue a maritime career, but he had nothing to be ashamed of. He had proven himself a competent seaman and made a valuable discovery. He had inner resources that matched his unpredictable ambitions.
* * *
1. Flogging was common—in the U. S. Navy it was not abolished until 1850. Captain Fox went too far, however. The father of the boy he flogged so excessively sued. Some of the crew, including Olmsted, testified at the trial, and the court ordered Fox to pay damages of no less than one thousand dollars.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Friends
IT TOOK OLMSTED most of the following summer to recuperate from his seafaring. Nothing came of his idea of writing a book about his maritime experiences. Once he recovered his health, he resumed his leisurely country life. He attended parties and other social events—many of them. He liked the company of women and thought of marriage, but there were no imminent prospects—or rather, there were too many. Maria Monds, the beautiful daughter of one of the members of the Natural History Society, had also been on a sea voyage, and she and Olmsted “had a few yarns to spin,” as he put it. Nothing further came of it. He liked Abby Clark, a student at the Hartford Female Seminary, but addressed her decorously as “Miss Abby.” He became close to Emma Brace, Charles’s sister, but theirs was a friendship rather than a romantic attachment. He did fall in love with Frances Condit, the pretty, youngest daughter of a Hartford neighbor. He’d fantasized about her while he was at sea: “She’s an angel.” But she paid him no mind. “I wonder if I really shall be an old bach,” he wrote in a letter to Charles Brace. He quickly added, “What a shivering idea—oh my! I tell you it’s haunted me like a nightmare since this last scrape [with Frances Condit]. No! No! Sooner would I take up with one of those country girls—six of whom kissed me—oh—before I went to sea.”
That was Olmsted being melodramatic. In fact, young men did not usually marry until they were in their mid to late twenties, and he was twenty-two.
His father continued to be indulgent, due not only to his patience and kindness but also to his son’s temperament. It was difficult to get angry with Frederick Olmsted. He did not mope around the house, getting underfoot; he was helpful, invariably good-natured and cheerful. In short, he had become a pleasure to have around. He was also carefree. He headed one of his letters to Brace: Hartford. “I keep no note of time.” He appeared completely unworried by the apparent lack of a settled future.
And now, I feel myself becoming impatient with Olmsted. Why can’t he just get on with it? We expect the lives of people—especially people who achieve great things—to neatly follow a grand design. I think of Michelangelo or Mozart or Cézanne. Their lives resemble a game of building blocks. The blocks at the bottom are arranged first and not haphazardly, since they will support the upper levels. As the construction progresses, and more blocks are added, the structure gets taller and taller. It is carefully assembled so as not to topple. Following Olmsted’s life is more like putting together a picture puzzle. All sorts of odd-shaped pieces are lying on the table. Two or three form a bit of sky, others a fragment of foliage. Here is something that might—or might not—be water. It’s not yet clear how these fragments come together. Some pieces don’t seem to fit anywhere. Yet all the pieces of the jigsaw are necessary. Only when the last piece is in place—when the puzzle is complete—does the design make itself evident.
I should be able to sympathize with Olmsted’s situation. When I was his age—twenty-two—I had just graduated from college with a degree in architecture. Some of my friends were planning to go to graduate school, some were getting married, most were intent on starting their careers. After working briefly in an architect’s office, I went to Europe. I didn’t seek out a famous architect or visit celebrated buildings or settle down in one of the two centers of great architecture, Paris or Rome. Instead, I spent an entire spring on one of the Spanish Balearic Islands, where I sketched, wrote poems, fell in and out of love, and taught myself sculpture. I remember it as a short, happy chapter of my life.
A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Cent Page 5