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January 25, 2014 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Mutiny on the Globe

Hawai‘i’s whaling era began in 1819 when two New England ships became the first whaling ships to arrive in the Hawaiian Islands.   At that time, whale products were in high demand; whale oil was used for heating, lamps and in industrial machinery; whale bone was used in corsets, skirt hoops, umbrellas and buggy whips.

Formerly whales were principally taken in the North Seas, the largest were generally found around Greenland, some of them measuring ninety feet in length.  (Lay & Hussey, 1824)

However, rich whaling waters were discovered near Japan and soon hundreds of ships headed for the area.  The central location of the Hawaiian Islands between America and Japan brought many whaling ships to the Islands.  Whalers needed food and the islands supplied this need from its fertile fields.

So plentiful were the whales, and taken with such facility, that the ships employed were not sufficient to carry home the oil and bone, and other ships were often sent to bring home the surplus quantity.  (Lay & Hussey, 1824)

Among the early whalers it was customary to have six boats to a ship and six men to a boat, besides the harpooner. What at that time was considered an improved method in killing whales consisted in hurling the harpoon.  (Lay & Hussey, 1824)

The ropes attached to the harpoon used to be about 1,200 feet long and in some cases all the lines for the six boats were fastened together and ran out by one whale, the animal descending in nearly a perpendicular line from the surface.  (Lay & Hussey, 1824)

Initially, it was customary to bring only the blubber, and instead of boiling the oil out and putting it into casks on board, the fat of the whale was cut up into suitable pieces, pressed hard in tubs carried out for the purpose, and in this situation was the return cargo received at home.  (Lay & Hussey, 1824)

One such whaler, the ship “Globe” of Nantucket, sailed out of Edgartown, Massachusetts, on December 20, 1822, on a whaling voyage around Cape Horn.

With a complement of 21 men under the command of Captain Thomas Worth, she set sail on a whaling expedition to the Pacific. After finding success in the “off Japan” whaling grounds the Globe arrived in Honolulu for provisioning.

There, “six men ran away in the Sandwich Islands, and one was discharged.”  Captain Worth took on seven new crew, four of whom were Silas Payne, John Oliver, William Humphries and Joseph Thomas.

After two years out on that whaling voyage, on the night of January 25, 1824, four of the crew, mutinied near Fanning Island, 900 miles south of the Hawaiian Islands.

Samuel B Comstock, a 22-year-old harpooner, was the instigator of the mutiny.  Sometime prior to the mutiny, he had major quarrels with Captain Worth.

After murdering the captain and first mate, who were both asleep at the time of the assault, the mutineers proceeded to attack the second and third mates, who were in the cabin.  Then they took the ship into Badu Island (Mulgrave Island, north of Queensland, Australia.)

On February 14, the mutineers took the Globe to Mili Atoll in the Marshall Islands. A few of the mutineers started to suspect Comstock intended to destroy the Globe and kill the rest of crew.

Within days of settling on Mili Atoll, Comstock was murdered by his fellow mutineers.

In an atmosphere of distrust existing between the mutineers, Payne and Oliver made an error in judgment of sending Gilbert Smith to secure the Globe.

Smith and 5 other crew (not part of the mutiny) seized the Globe and escaped (included in this group was George Comstock, Sam’s younger brother,) eventually arriving at Valparaiso, Chile, where they were brought into custody by the American consul. The Globe was fitted out and returned to Nantucket, arriving in November 1824.

Back on the Atoll, repeated injuries to the natives on the part of Silas Payne (the second in command of the mutineers at the time of the outbreak, and the murderer of his associate conspirator, Comstock,) so incensed them that one after another of the crew were slain (one of the mutineers, William Humphries, was hung by the others.)

Out of ten castaways on Mili Atoll, only Cyrus M Hussey and William Lay survived.  Half-prisoners and half-adoptees of the natives these two survived for twenty-two months; they were rescued on November 21, 1825 by US schooner Dolphin, commanded by Lieutenant John Percival.

(You may recall that besides bringing the mutineers to justice, Percival (aka “Mad Jack” Percival) had been sent to the Pacific to enforce the settlement of debts owed by Hawaiʻi’s ruling chiefs to American sandalwood dealers.  He caused an incident after his arrival there on January 16, 1826, the chiefs had not only forbidden the women to swim out to the ships, but had restricted the sale of alcohol – it became known as the Battle of Honolulu.)

Click HERE for a link to the Battle of Honolulu story. 

The image shows the title page of a book, based on the journals of Lay and Hussey (information here is from their accounts, as well as from the Congressional Serial Set, 1876 and Heffernan’s Mutiny on the Globe: The Fatal Voyage of Samuel Comstock.)

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© 2014 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks Tagged With: Hawaii, Whaling, Globe, Percival, Battle of Honolulu, Sam Comstock

April 26, 2013 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Shipwrecks at Holoikauaua (the Pearl and the Hermes)

Holoikauaua (literally, Hawaiian monk seal that swims in the rough) is an atoll now known as Pearl and Hermes.  Its modern name reflects the twin wrecks of British whalers, the ‘Pearl’ and the ‘Hermes,’ lost in 1822.

Holoikauaua is a large oval coral reef with several internal reefs and seven sandbar/islets above sea level along the southern half of the atoll. The land area is just under 100-acres (surrounded by more that 300,000-acres of coral reef) and is 20-miles across and 12-miles wide.

The highest point above sea level is about 10-feet. The islets are periodically washed over when winter storms pass through.  Its estimated age is 26.8-million years.

As American and British whalers first made passage from Hawai‘i to the seas near Japan, they encountered the low and uncharted atolls of the NWHI. There are 52 known shipwreck sites throughout the NWHI, the earliest dating back to 1822 – the Pearl and the Hermes.

During the night of April 26, 1822, these British whaling ships ran aground almost simultaneously.  The 327-ton Pearl (with Capt. E. Clark) grounded into a sandy coral groove, pressing its wooden keel into the sediment, while the smaller 258-ton Hermes (with Capt. J. Taylor) hit the hard sea bed.

The British whaler ‘Pearl’ was originally built as an American ship in Philadelphia at least as early as 1805. At some time after that, the ship may have been captured by the French during the aftermath of the Quasi-war and renamed La Perla.

She was subsequently taken by the British privateer Mayflower and from there put into service in the British South Seas whaling industry out of London.

The two ships had been making a passage from Honolulu to the newly discovered Japan Grounds, a track which took them through the uncharted Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

The Pearl and the Hermes (wrecked to the west of the Pearl) are the only known British South Sea whaling wreck sites in the world.

The Hermes was not cradled by the reef, but disintegrated as she pounded across the sharp reef. The Pearl, sailing close by and striking the reef only a few minutes later, was more fortunate. She seems to have lodged firmly in place in a deeper groove with her stern seaward, and then she broke up more gradually over time.

Ship’s carpenter James Robinson commented in a letter to his mother, “When the vessel (Hermes) struck she was thrown on her beam end and being endangered by the masts falling – but God ordained it otherwise.”

The combined crews (totaling 57) made it safely to one of the small islands and were castaway for months with what meager provisions they could salvage.

Using salvaged timbers and other parts of the lost ships, one of the carpenters on board the Hermes, James Robinson, supervised the building of a small 30-ton schooner named ‘Deliverance’ on the beach.

Before launching the beach-built rescue vessel, the castaways were rescued by a passing ship.

Though most of the crew elected to board the rescue ship, Robinson and 11 others were able to recoup some of the financial losses from the wrecks by sailing the nearly finished Deliverance back to Honolulu, and eventually selling her there for $2,000.

From there, Robinson went on to found the highly successful James Robinson and Company shipyard in 1827 (the first shipyard at Honolulu) and became an influential member of the island community (his descendants became a well-known island family and his fortune founded the Robinson Estate.)  (This family is different than the Robinson’s associated with Niʻihau.)

In 2004, NOAA divers in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands came across the two whaling vessel wreck sites at Pearl and Hermes Atoll.

The wreck of the Pearl lies seaward of the reef crest, but in the proximity of the surf zone, the Hermes site was to the west of the Pearl.

Artifacts were found at the sites, however they are quite deteriorated.  Large iron try pots (for rendering the whale blubber into oil,) blubber hooks, anchors, brick and iron ballast pieces and fasteners were found around each site.

Cannons (four from the Hermes and two from the Pearl) and numerous cannon balls indicate the nature of hazards faced during early 19th century whaling voyages to the Pacific.

The image shows a diver investigating an anchor at the Hermes shipwreck site (NOAA-Casserley.)  (Lots of good info here from NOAA.)  In addition, I have included other images in a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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© 2013 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks Tagged With: Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, Pearl, James Robinson, Hawaii, Hermes

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