February 12, 1805 — November 29, 1806
My name is William Mariner. My father, Magnus Mariner, was owner and commander of an armed merchant ship under Lord Cornwallis in the rebellion of our American Colonies. Early in these voyages to the New World he achieved some measure of financial success; but toward the end of that war, he suffered such losses that he abandoned seafaring in favor of marriage and a comfortable life in London where I was born in September, 1791.
It was as a lad of thirteen years that I first went to sea in the capacity of captain’s clerk on board the privateer, the Port au Prince. My education at Mr. Mitchel’s Academy at Ware in Hertfordshire well suited me for that position. In the few years I attended there (cut short by the schoolmaster’s untimely demise) gave me knowledge of history, geography, the French language, a little Latin, and good facility in reading, writing, and calculating.
Mr. Duck, Captain of a privateer, the Port au Prince, formerly served his naval apprenticeship under my father and their robust conversations in our home putting forward their visions of the great success of the forthcoming voyage led me to plead with them to go along, although mother was much against it. I had, in the preceding six months, been apprenticed to a lawyer; but going to sea, as my father had once done, seemed much to be preferred over clerking in a law office. My eagerness was heeded. Captain Duck took me under his protection and created for me the position of his clerk. I was thusly apprenticed to my father’s former apprentice. In due course I stationed myself on board the Port au Prince in the harbor at Gravesend.
The Port au Prince was originally a French ship: she was taken as a war prize by English forces near the Caribbean port of the island of Hispaniola whose name she now bore. Her listing can be found in Lloyd’s Register of Shipping for the year 1805. At the time I went on board she was fifteen years old. Her draft was eighteen feet and she was sheathed in copper as protection against worms and other marine growth. The letter of marque from the King was dated January 23, 1805. The King’s license was to take ships and possessions of the Spanish. England was now at war with France. Spain, under coercion from Napoleon, was an ally of France and thus became subject to hostile action by British privateers. The system of privateering gave the King of England an addition to his naval forces at no expense to the Crown. One-third of our crew had to be landsmen to reduce the drain on English sea-going manpower.
Map 1. Chart of the voyage of the Port au Prince. Credit: Author’s collection.
The Port au Prince was fitted out with heavy guns and other armaments for attack upon the Spanish, and she also carried all the necessary equipment for whaling. It is uncommon for a privateer, a piratical sort of ship, licensed by our King to raid South American coastal villages and the shipping of his Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain, to go whaling; but the Captain of the Port au Prince, thought there could be as much profit in whaling as in privateering. For a privateer to be fitted out for whaling, as was our ship, was indeed unusual.
We sailed from Gravesend on the morning of February 12, 1805. What with equatorial calms and then gales in the southern hemisphere the ship did not reach the Atlantic coast of South America until early May. By the 17th of June Cape Hoorne was viewed ahead, that last small bit of land at the south end of the American continent; but it was not until the 26th of June that we doubled that Cape. Unfortunately it was now mid-winter in these latitudes, we were much bothered by snow above decks and troublesome leaks of ice water through the hull below.
Our first action against the Spanish occurred near the end of July when we reached the port of Concepcion [Chile] and attempted to cut out two English whalers detained by the Spanish; but their cannon fire forced us to withdraw. We continued northward along the coast and had some success in less defended places and against less armed vessels, losing only a few of the ship’s company to hostile gunfire. We took on board many Spanish dollars and much silver plate. For the next twelve months we were thus engaged and then moved off the coast to the equatorial whaling grounds.
Our dear Captain died of an illness in August, 1806 while on the whaling grounds near the island of Cedros which lies off the coast of Baja California and he was buried on that island. Our leaking ship now required us to pump seventeen feet of bilge water every day. Our new commander, Mr. Brown, resolved that we should make for the Hawai’i Islands to refit, repair, and provision.
We spent a month from the 28th of September to the 26th of October in the Hawai’i Islands at the harbor of Honolulu repairing our rotting ship and loading a plentiful stock of hogs, fowls, plantains (bananas), sweet potatoes, taro, and other food stuffs.
While our ship lay at anchor, many of the Hawaiian chiefs visited us on board as well as some of the Europeans and Americans who now resided here, numbering ninety-four persons. I recall a conversation in the captain’s cabin when the King, a man called Kamehameha, when questioned about religion in his islands, he replied saying, “I should be afraid to adopt so dangerous an expedient as Christianity; for I think no Christian king can govern in the absolute manner in which I do, and yet be loved by his subjects as I am by mine. Such a religion might perhaps answer very well in the course of a few generations; but what chief would sanction it in the beginning, with the risk of its subverting his own power, and involving the islands in war? I have made a fixed determination not to suffer it.”
We were well treated by the natives of these islands and eight of their number agreed to sail with us as we were by this time in need of additional crew. Also, a Scotsman, a Botany Bay convict, now residing on Oahu, entrusted his half-Hawaiian, two-year old son to the care of our sail maker that he might be taken to relatives in Scotland and there be educated.
Captain Brown set upon heading for Tahiti but the winds and currents drove us too far west to lay those islands so our course was changed to Tonga, those islands much visited by the late Captain James Cook and named by him the “Friendly Islands.” Here, in these hospitable islands, so well spoken of by that famous explorer who resided three months among the Tonga Islands in 1777, Mr. Brown hoped to again make repairs sufficient for us to reach the British colony in Australia; for our ship had begun once more to take on water so badly we needed to pump one-half hour of every two.
On the 27th of November, 1806 we saw the islands of Ha’apai 12 miles to the west.