Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks | Page 51

April 10, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Palea and the Pinnace

Captain Cook spent the month of December beating around the eastern and southern sides of Hawaiʻi, and finally anchored in Kealakekua Bay January 17, 1779 – having returned to make repairs to a broken mast. (Alexander)

Cook’s reception this time presented a striking contrast to his last. An ominous quiet everywhere prevailed. No one greeted them. A boat being sent ashore to inquire the cause, returned with the information that the king was away, and had left the bay under a strict taboo. (Jarves)

During the king’s absence the chiefs Palea and Kanaʻina kept order among the people. After Cook’s ships had anchored, the chiefs came on board and informed Cook that Kalaniopuʻu would be back in a few days.

Another prominent man, Koa, was apparently the highest officiating priest of the place (in the absence of the high-priest who accompanied Kalaiopuʻu.) (Alexander)

“Being led into the cabin, he approached Captain Cook with great veneration, and threw over his shoulders a piece of red cloth, which he had brought along with him. Then stepping a few paces back, he made an offering of a small pig which he held in his hand, while he pronounced a discourse that lasted for a considerable time.”

“This ceremony was frequently repeated during our stay at Owhyhee, and appeared to us, from many circumstances, to be a sort of religious adoration. Their idols we found always arrayed ill red cloth in the same manner as was done to Captain Cook, and a small pig was their usual offering to the Eatooas.” (King; Cook’s Journal)

“That same afternoon Captain Cook landed and was received by Koa, Palea, and a number of priests, who conducted him to the Heiau (Hikiʻau,) just north of the Nāpoʻopoʻo village and at the foot of the Pali. Here the grand ceremony of acknowledging Cook as an incarnation of Lono, to be worshiped as such, and his installation, so to say, in the Hawaiian Pantheon took place.” (Fornander)

The next day (Friday) the damaged masts and sails and the astronomical instruments were landed at the former camp, and the friendly priests tabued the place as before.

On Saturday afternoon, matters rapidly went from bad to worse.

Some of Palea’s retainers stole a pair of tongs and a chisel from the armorer of the ‘Discovery,’ leaped into their canoe, and paddled with all haste to the shore. Several muskets were fired after them in vain, and a boat was sent in chase.

Palea, who was on board, offered to recover the stolen articles, and followed in another canoe. The thieves reached the shore first, beached their canoe, and fled inland.

Mr Edgar, the officer of the boat, undertook to seize this canoe, which belonged to Palea, who refused to give it up, protesting his innocence of the theft. A scuffle ensued between them, in which Edgar was worsted, when a sailor knocked Palea down by a heavy blow on the head with an oar.

Upon this the whole crowd of natives looking on immediately attacked the unarmed seamen with stones, and forced them to swim off to a rock at some distance.

Palea, however, soon recovered from the blow, dispersed the mob, called back the sailors, and restored the missing articles as far as he could.

The following night the large cutter of the ‘Discovery’ was stolen by Palea’s people, taken two miles north, and broken up for the sake of the iron in it. (Alexander)

“This was the same Palea who from the first had been the constant, kind, and obliging friend of Captain Cook and all the foreigners, and who, only the day before Cook’s death, had saved the crew of the pinnace of the ‘Resolution’ from being stoned to death by the natives, exasperated Palea himself.”

“The boat had been at the brutal and insolent manner in which Palea had been treated by an officer of the ‘Discovery.’”

“It was during the night after the above fracas, the night of the 13th February, that the cutter of the ‘Discovery’ was stolen from her mooring, as King himself admits…”

“… ‘by Palea’s people, very probably in revenge for the blow that had been given him,’ and not by Palea himself. The boat had been taken to Onouli, a couple of miles higher up the coast, and there broken to pieces.” (Fornander)

Captain Cook commanded Kalaniopuʻu, the king of the island, to make search for the boat, and restore it. The king could not restore it, for the natives had already broken it in pieces to obtain the nails, which were to them the articles of the greatest value.

Captain Cook came on shore with armed men to take the king on board, and to keep him there as security till the boat should be restored. (Dibble)

On February 14, 1779, Cook was killed. (The image shows a drawing of Palea by William Ellis.)

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William_Ellis_–_Palea,_a_sub-chief_under_Kalaniopuu-1779

March 22, 2016 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Waikiki Beach

In the late-18th century, European and American trade and travel into the North American continent’s interior was largely by water. Merchants used canoes to trade with the tribes for the continent’s most valuable natural resource: furs.

Eastern and central North America had many navigable rivers. For western traders, finding a great western river became an obsession for fur traders and scientific and government expeditions.

The first non-Indian to encounter and identify the river was Spaniard Bruno de Heceta. In August, 1775, Heceta mapped what he called Cape of Saint Roc and Leafy Cape, respectively. He attempted to cross the bar under full sail, but was unable to do so.

In 1778, the great British navigator Captain Cook sailed by the river in the night. While he did not find Heceta’s river, his expedition traded for otter furs. Cook was killed in Hawai‘i early the next year, but his ships carried the furs to China where they discovered a lucrative trade market with the Chinese.

The reports of a potentially trade between western North America and China would spur traders from all nations to the West Coast.

In 1788, Britain sailor John Meares also failed to find a river; he give Cape Disappointment its name to commemorate his failed search. (This is what Heceta called Leafy Cape.)

In April, 1792, British naval expedition Captain George Vancouver passed by the river mouth and noted muddy water flowing into the sea. Noting the sand island and waves breaking on the bar, he discounted the entrance as the mouth of a small river as it looked like most of the rivers emptying into the Pacific north of San Francisco.

On the morning of May 11, 1792, American merchant Captain Robert Gray sailed across the bar and into the Columbia River estuary, the first documented non-Indian to do so.

That was the river’s discovery via sea; by land, after acquiring the ‘Louisiana Purchase’ in 1803, under the directive of President Thomas Jefferson, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the ‘Corps of Discovery Expedition’ (1804–1806,) was the first transcontinental expedition to the Pacific coast undertaken by the US.

“Ocian in view! O! the joy.” When Captain William Clark wrote these words in his journal on November 7, 1805, he was not standing at the Pacific Ocean but the Columbia River estuary. It would be another couple of weeks before he and Captain Meriwether Lewis would stand at what they had “been so long anxious to see.” (NPS)

Clark and members of the Corps of Discovery explored the headland in their final push to the Pacific Ocean. “I Set out at Day light and proceeded on a Sandy beech … 2 Miles to the inner extremity of Cape Disapointment …”

“… this Cape is an ellivated circlier point covered with thick timber on the iner Side and open grassey exposur next to the Sea and rises with a Steep assent to the hight of about 150 or 160 feet above the leavel of the water … this cape as also the Shore both on the Bay & Sea coast is a dark brown rock.”

“I crossed the neck of Land low and 1/2 of a mile wide to the main Ocian, at the foot of a high open hill projecting into the ocian, and about one mile in Sicumfrance. I assended this hill which is covered with high corse grass. decended to the N of it and camped. I picked up a flounder on the beech this evening. …” (Clark, November 18, 1806)

The Lewis and Clark Expedition would have an immediate effect on American interest in the Northwest. Fur baron John Jacob Astor was excited by the expedition’s success in recording the lands, resources and peoples.

Astor sought to create a global network of land and sea transportation for fur pelts, goods, information and services between China, Russia, Europe, the American east coast and the mouth of the Columbia River.

In June, 1810, Astor and others signed articles of agreement of the ‘Pacific Fur Company.’ They hoped to best the flourishing Northwest Company (who travelled by land,) which was a most powerful concern, by having a great depot at the mouth of the Columbia, in other words, by using the sea.

One of the vessels selected for the pioneer voyage was the ‘Tonquin,’ under the command of Captain Jonathan Thorn. Before getting to the American Northwest, they supplied at Hawai‘i.

They were unable to secure either water or provisions on the Island of Hawaii; on February 21, 1811, Thorn anchored the Tonquin off Waikiki. Here he met Kamehameha I and paid Spanish dollars for hogs, several goats, two sheep, a quantity of poultry and vegetables.

Needing additional manpower, Canadian partners aboard the Tonquin proposed to enlist thirty or forty native Hawaiians, because they had never seen watermen to equal them, not even among the voyageurs of the Northwest.

“Remarkable for their skill in managing light craft and able to swim and dive like waterfowl,” were the words used in describing the Hawaiians. Thorn objected to a large number; twelve were signed for the company and twelve for the ship. The trade-men were to serve three years, were to be fed and clothed and at the end of the term were to receive $100 in merchandise.

On February 28, 1811, the Tonquin sailed for the Northwest coast, and March 22, 1811, arrived off the mouth of the Columbia, where they encountered heavy seas. Thorn sent out several boats to find the river channel; two of them capsized and eight men died. One of the men was a Hawaiian.

Local history says that the “the neck of Land low and 1/2 of a mile wide to the main Ocian, at the foot of a high open hill” noted by Clark (five years before) was named Waikiki Beach in honor of this unnamed Hawaiian who was buried on the beach (Washington State Parks.)

In 1811, Astor’s Pacific Fur Company established Astoria, the first non-native trading post and settlement at the mouth of the Columbia River.

The Astor expedition to the Columbia-Pacific region would also be responsible for opening up the key overland route for western settlement in years to come.

In 1812 on a journey from Astoria to New York City, Robert Stuart, a partner in the Pacific Fur Company stationed at Fort Astoria, discovered South Pass, a low pass over the Rocky Mountains. This route could be made by wagon from the Missouri and Mississippi valleys and became known as the Oregon Trail. (Lots of information here is from NPS.)

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Tonquin at entrance of the Columbia

Tonquin-June 1811

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February 16, 2016 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Thomas R Foster

He was born May 19, 1835 at Fisher’s Grant, Pictou, Nova Scotia, Canada; he later went to work with for his brother, Daniel Foster, in his shipbuilding business in Warren, Bristol County, Rhode Island in the 1850s.

In 1857, Thomas R Foster and his brother Daniel decided to move to Hawaiʻi to try the shipbuilding business in the Pacific. It appears that Thomas Foster was the main brother involved in the Shipbuilding business in Hawaiʻi.

Foster met and married Mary Elizabeth Mikahala Robinson, the eldest daughter of James Robinson, the prominent local ship builder in 1861 (they did not have any children.)

With financial help from Mary’s father, the Fosters bought property near the intersection of Nuʻuanu Avenue and School Street. There, they built a modest residence and settled down. (Wallworth)

(Later (1880,) the Fosters purchased the neighboring property owned by Dr William Hillebrand, a German physician and botanist who built his home here and planted trees and a variety of other plants. Upon Mary’s death (December 19, 1930,) the property was bequeathed to the City of Honolulu, to be known as Foster Park (now known as Foster Botanical Garden.))

On March 4, 1866, the German barque Libelle, on voyage from San Francisco to Hong Kong, grounded on the east reef off Wake Island. Several vessels went to Wake Island to salvage the cargo, which included several hundred flasks of quicksilver.

The sloop Hokulele, with a party headed by Foster, left Honolulu May 9, 1867, reached Wake on May 31st, left there June 22, and returned to Honolulu July 29, 1867 with 247 flasks of quicksilver. (Quicksilver is otherwise known as mercury, the only metallic element that is liquid at standard conditions for temperature and pressure.)

Steamship companies played an important role in the Kingdom of Hawai`i, even though steam navigation actually got off to a slow start; the first steamer was the American twin-screw steamer Constitution that arrived at Honolulu on January 24, 1852. (NOAA)

Then, the legislature passed ‘an Act to Promote Inter-Island Steam Communication,’ approved by the king on September 18, 1876. This law authorized the minister of the interior to contract with responsible parties “to maintain a suitable steamer of not less than 500 tons register … in the inner-island service … for a period not to exceed ten years.” (Kuykendall)

Foster began his company in 1878, two years after the signing of the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States by the Kingdom of Hawai‘i. Incorporated as the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company in 1883, Foster’s firm followed that of Samuel Gardner Wilder, Sr., who began the similar Wilder Steamship Company in 1877. (Chinatown)

In response to increased needs, three local steamship companies soon emerged as corporations: Wilder Steamship Company (Wilder,) Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company (Foster) and Pacific Navigation Company (Amos F Cooke.) (Pacific Navigation experienced costly setbacks due to a number of shipwrecks and folded in 1888.) (NOAA)

Inter-Island operated the Kauai and Oʻahu ports plus the Kona, Kaʻū, Kukuihaele, Honokaʻa and Kūkaʻiau ports on Hawaiʻi. Wilder took Molokai, Lānaʻi and Maui plus all ports on Hawaii, including Hilo, not served by Inter-Island.

Both companies stopped at Lahaina plus Maalaea Bay and Makena on Maui’s leeward coast once. Inter-Island’s service to Lahaina started in 1886. Both fleets were enlarged over time. (Hawaiian Stamps)

In 1905, the two companies, under the leadership of John Ena (1843-1906), a former clerk of Chinese-Hawaiian parentage, merged under the Inter-Island name. (Chinatown)

When airplanes came to the Hawaiian Islands, the Inter-Island Navigation Company founded a subsidiary, Inter-Island Airways. Hawaiʻi’s first interisland passenger service was launched on November 11, 1929.

In the late-1940s, Inter-Island Steam Navigation Co became the target of a federal anti-trust suit. The government won its case and broke the company into four companies: Inter-Island Steam, Overseas Terminals, Hawaiian Airlines and Inter-Island Resorts. (GardenIsland)

Foster died in 1889; the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company built their headquarters on Merchant Street in 1891 and inscribed their building with Foster’s name in his memory.

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Thomas R Foster-C&CHnl

SS Waialeale-(HallBrothers)

Menu-SS_Hualalai-(gdm-hi)-Jan_6,_1949

Routes of the Steamship companies Wilder’s_routes-(green lines) and Inter-Island-(blue lines) -1890

Inter-Island Airways planes on the runway at John Rodgers Field, Honolulu, c1936-1939

TR Foster Building-corner of Nuuanu and Marin-(NPS)

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February 11, 2016 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Chinatown

Captain Cook’s voyage of exploration and ‘contact’ with the Islands in 1778 opened Hawai‘i to the world – it also showed the world the possibilities of the fur trade via the North American Northwest Coast. (Quimby)

The maritime fur trade focused on acquiring furs of sea otters, seals and other animals from the Pacific Northwest Coast and Alaska. The furs were mostly sold in China in exchange for tea, silks, porcelain and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and the US.

American and British trading ships began plying between the American Northwest and South China, stopping at various ports in the Hawaiian Islands to replenish their supplies of food and water.

“In the month of January 1788, in conjunction with several British merchants resident in India, I purchased and fitted out two vessels, named the Felice and the Iphigenia … (each) built with sufficient strength to resist the tempestuous weather so much to be apprehended in the Northern Pacific Ocean, during the winter season.”

“The crews of these ships consisted of Europeans and China-men, with a larger proportion of the former. The Chinese were, on this occasion, shipped as an experiment: – they have been generally esteemed an hardy, and industrious, as well as ingenious race of people …”

“… they live on fish and rice, and, requiring but low wages, it was a matter also of economical consideration to employ them; and during the whole of the voyage there was every reason to be satisfied with their services.-If hereafter trading posts should be established on the American coast, a colony of these men would be a very important acquisition.” (Mears, 1790)

Shortly thereafter, in 1790, the American schooner Eleanora, with Simon Metcalf as master, reached Maui from Macao using a crew of 10-Americans and 45-Chinese. (Nordyke & Lee)

Crewmen from China were employed as cooks, carpenters and artisans, and Chinese businessmen sailed as passengers to America. Some of these men disembarked in Hawai‘i and remained as new settlers.

Sandalwood was first recognized as a commercial product in Hawai‘i in 1791 by Captain Kendrick (mainland merchants brought cotton, cloth and other goods for trade with the Hawaiians for their sandalwood – who would then trade the sandalwood in China.) Additional Chinese may have left their ships during the sandalwood trading.

Near the mouth of Nuʻuanu Stream, makai of King Street, is called Kapuʻukolo, a place “where white men and such dwelt.” At a nearby coral point was “where the first custom house stood.”

“In the vicinity of the custom house at the beach was a house for the first Chinese ever seen here. There were two or three of them, and they prepared food for the captains of the ship which took sandalwood to China.” (‘I‘i, Barrere & Rockwood)

“Because the faces of these people were unusual and their speech – which is not commonly heard – strange, a great number of persons went to look at them.” (I‘i; Kai)

Robert C Wyllie noted that by 1844 some Chinese had opened shops near the waterfront: “There are three stores kept by Chinamen, viz: Samping & Co, Ahung & Co and Tyhune.” (Wyllie, The Friend August 1, 1844)

In the mid-1840s, following defeat by Britain in the first Opium War, a series of natural catastrophes occurred across China resulting in famine, peasant uprisings and rebellions; many Chinese seized the opportunity to go elsewhere. (PBS) Some came to the Islands.

The region now known as Chinatown was established during the 1840s and 1850s, in an area along Honolulu Harbor southwest of Nuʻuanu Stream. (NPS) It is reportedly the oldest Chinese quarter in the US. (SunSentinel)

Starting in the 1850s, when the Hawaiian Legislature passed “An Act for the Governance of Masters and Servants,” a section of which provided the legal basis for contract-labor system, labor shortages at Island sugar plantations were eased by bringing in contract workers from Asia, Europe and North America. The first to arrive were the Chinese (1852.)

The sugar industry grew, so did the Chinese population in Hawaiʻi. (Between 1852 and 1884, the population of Chinese in Hawai‘i increased from 364 to 18,254, to become almost a quarter of the population of the Kingdom (almost 30% of them were living in Honolulu.)) (Young – Nordyke & Lee)

By the early-1860s extensive tracts of irrigated taro land were being turned over to the cultivation of rice, and at various outlying locations, large sugar plantations were emerging on the island scene. As a result, programs of Chinese immigration for the workforce were implemented.

In 1862, the first rice mill in the Hawaiian Islands was constructed in Honolulu (prior to that it was sent unhulled and uncleaned to be milled in San Francisco.) (By 1887, over 13-million pounds of rice were exported. In 1899, Hawaiʻi’s rice production had expanded so that it placed third in production of rice behind Louisiana and South Carolina.)

By 1884 the area in the vicinity of Honolulu’s Mauna Kea, Nuʻuanu, King and Beretania Streets was heavily devoted to Chinese businesses and residences. The 1886 fire burned most of “Chinatown” to the ground. The Chinese residents quickly rebuilt, but by the early-1890s, sanitary conditions and a “slum-like” environment brought about renewed fears of cholera and other diseases.

In December 1899, the first case of bubonic plague was confirmed in Chinatown, and events following identification of the case, and subsequent deaths, led to relocating hundreds of people from Chinatown to Kaka‘ako on January 5, 1900.

Schools were closed, and Chinatown, with its 7,000 inhabitants, was placed under quarantine. In hopes of containing the plague only within Honolulu, the Board of Health closed the port of Honolulu to both incoming and outgoing vessels.

On January 6, 1900, “controlled fires” began to be set at buildings where victims had resided, and additional quarantine facilities capable of housing 2,000 people were being set up in Kalihi.

As cases of the plague continued to increase, “controlled burns,” were used in larger areas in an effort to remove the threat. On January 20, 1900, the fire between Beretania, Kukui, River and Nuʻuanu Streets went wild, and the entire area, including Kaumakapili Church, was destroyed.

From there, the flames spread, and a day later, on January 21, 1900 nearly all the buildings between Kukui, Queen, River and Nuʻuanu Streets were burned to the ground. (Kepa Maly)

Because the fire displaced the residential population of Chinatown, as the area was rebuilt, the Chinese only rebuilt their businesses in the neighborhood – not their homes.

Chinatown reached its peak in the 1930s. In the days before air travel, visitors arrived in the Islands by cruise ship; it was just a block up the street was the pier where they disembarked – and they often headed straight for the shops and restaurants of Chinatown, which visitors considered an exotic treat.

Today, Chinatown Historic District is the largest area in the city that still recalls a historic sense of time and place. (NPS) (SunSentinel)

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Chinatown

Chinese_Family_in_Hawaii-(WC)-1893

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Looking Ewa on King Street at the Fort Street intersection 1930s

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Honolulu looking into lower Nuuanu and Pahoa valleys. Sept 29 1928

Downtown Honolulu 1938

Honolulu_wharf_in_1890,_showing_the_Chinese_fish_market_on_Kekaulike_street-(WC)

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Chinatown-after the 1900 fire-(R)-PP-38-8-010

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December 12, 2015 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

John Kendrick

Sea Captain John Kendrick fought in the French and Indian Wars in 1762, threw tea overboard in the Boston Tea Party in 1773, and was in charge of the Fanny, one of the United States’ first ships, during the Revolutionary War.

He survived all that, and was later killed on December 12, 1794 in a 13-canon saluting round in Fair Haven (now known as Honolulu Harbor.) (Lytle)

Let’s look back …

Kendrick was born in 1740 on a small hilly farm in East Harwich, Cape Cod, the third of seven children of Solomon Kendrick and Elizabeth Atkins.

Kendrick’s grandfather, Edward Kendrick, had arrived in Harwich around 1700 and married Elizabeth Snow, the granddaughter of Nicholas Snow, a holder of extensive lands and one of the ‘old-comers’ from Plymouth who first settled the Cape.

Kendrick’s father, Solomon, born sometime during the winter of 1705, was master of a whaling vessel who was famous in local lore. He followed his father and went to sea by the time he was fourteen. By his late-teens, he was crewing on local sailing vessels.

“John Kendrick came of age in the defiant atmosphere of the coffeehouses and taverns of Boston. Here, he was in the midst of the firestorm of opposition to the Parliament’s Stamp Act of 1765 and the hated Townshend Acts, which usurped local authority and levied an array of onerous taxes.”

“As strife increased on the waterfront, he may have been involved in the widespread boycott of British goods and the burning of Boston’s customs house, or riots over seizure and impressment of American sailors for British ships.”

“(O)n the rainy night of December 16, 1773, John Kendrick was part of the legendary band that boarded two East India Company ships at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor. Thumbing his nose at the British shortly after, he is said to have been master of the brig Undutied Tea.”

He fought in the American Revolutionary War and at its outbreak, he smuggled powder and arms from the Caribbean with the sloop Fanny, whose owners were under contract with a secret committee of the Continental Congress and later captured a couple ships, which helped to precipitate the entry of France into the war.

“Shortly before the British surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, Kendrick came ashore. In his sporadic visits home he had managed to father six children, and now he buckled down to making his way in the new nation.”

“After the victorious Revolution and the euphoria of the Peace Treaty of 1783, an economic depression had settled over villages and farms. Port cities and their harbors were left reeling from the war. Inflation was rampant.”

“There was no common currency, state governments were weak, and representatives to the Congress of the Confederation bickered over fundamental issues, threatening to secede.”

“Heavy debts owed to Britain for damages in the war were due, and the prospects for international trade and revenue were bleak. In a punching move, the king had closed all British ports from Canada and the British Isles to the Caribbean to the remaining American ships.”

Without trade, without customs revenue, without taxes, it would be impossible to support a new central government and succeed in securing independence.

Shipping was the soul of early commerce; the Pacific voyages of James Cook revealed the high prices sea otter furs from the Northwest Coast would bring in China.

That took Kendrick and his crew to the Pacific, where they traded with the local population and explored the northwest of the American continent. They eventually (January 1790) went to China to trade the Northwest furs and eventually made it to Japan, arriving on May 6, 1791, probably becoming the first official Americans to meet the Japanese.

On December 3, 1794, Kendrick arrived in Fair Haven (Honolulu) Hawaiʻi aboard the Lady Washington; a war was waging between Kalanikupule and his half-brother Kaʻeokulani (Kaʻeo.)

Also in Honolulu were Captain William Brown (the first credited with entering Honolulu Harbor) in general command of the Jackall and the Prince Lee Boo, Captain Gordon.

At the death of Kahekili in 1793, Kaʻeo became ruling chief of Maui, Molokai and Lānaʻi. Kalanikupule was ruler of Oʻahu. Homesick for his friends, Kaʻeo set out to return to Kauai by way of Waialua and then to Waimea. He learned of a conspiracy to kill him. (Kamakau)

Captain Brown of the Jackall helped Kalanikupule. While Kaʻeo was successful after some initial skirmishes. A great battle was fought in the area between Kalauao and ‘Aiea in ‘Ewa. Kalanikupule’s forces surrounded Kaʻeo. (Cultural Surveys) The ship’s men successfully aided in the defense and Kaʻeo was defeated.

To celebrate the victory, on December 12, 1794, Kendrick’s brig fired a thirteen-gun salute in celebration the British ship of Captain Brown.

The tradition of rendering a salute by cannon originated in the 14th century as firearms and cannons came into use. Since these early devices contained only one projectile, discharging them rendered them harmless.

Initially, the tradition began as a custom among ships, whose captains had volleys fired upon entering a friendly port to release its arsenal, which demonstrated their peaceful intentions (by placing their weapons in a position that rendered them ineffective.)

Following Kendrick’s salute, Brown answered with a round of fire.

Unfortunately, through an oversight, one of the saluting guns on the Jackall was loaded with round and grape shot, and this shot passed through the side of the Lady Washington, killing Captain Kendrick and several of his crew. (Kuykendall) (Lots of information here is from Ridley; Daughters of the American Revolution)

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Captain John Kendrick