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Updated: June 3, 2025
On July 5, I was detailed to help Gushue repair the more or less damaged whale-boats. The heavy and solidly packed snow of the winter had stove them in. On July 6, the anniversary of our departure from New York a year before, the greater part of the day was spent in pumping water from the top of a heavy floeberg into the ship's boilers.
The cutter and two whale-boats were sent, under the command of the first lieutenant, Mr Lewis D.T. Prevost, with the master, Mr J.T. Crout, and the boatswain, Mr Pasco, some marines and seamen, amounting to about thirty altogether, to make a more intimate acquaintance with the stranger.
A heap of boat-rollers, commissariat-boxes, sugar-bags, and flour- and small-arm-ammunition-cases showed where one of the whale-boats had been compelled to unload hastily; and a regimental carpenter was swearing aloud as he tried, on a wholly insufficient allowance of white lead, to plaster up the sun-parched gaping seams of the boat herself.
When the wind was high, when the whale-boats, anchored off the Point, nodded their slender masts at each other, and the dories pitched and tossed in the surf, when Nahant Beach was thundering three miles off, and the spray broke a hundred feet in air, round the distant base of Egg Rock, when the brimful and boisterous sea threatened to tumble over the street of our village, then I made a holiday on shore.
They at once put to sea in their several whale-boats, but when some three hundred miles away from the island, on their way to Ponapé the North Pacific Cave of Adullam they were sighted and picked up by the two whalers, the St George and the Europa, the captains of which, not caring for their company all the way to Ponapé, landed them at Strong's Island.
The engines had scarcely begun to move when the whaler was seen to heave to; and when the Flying Fish ranged up alongside her, some ten minutes afterwards, three whale-boats were in the water and pulling lustily toward a school of some forty whales which were lazily sporting, apparently quite unconscious of danger, about two miles away.
The Commander-in-Chief found, when he arrived, little to criticize and much to commend in what Putnam had done, for he had already stopped the Tories from furnishing supplies to the British fleet, had commenced to fortify Governor's Island and Red Hook, increased the efficiency of the works on Brooklyn Heights, barricaded the streets of New York with mahogany logs from the West Indies, and organized a "navy" of schooners and whale-boats, to cruise in the North and East rivers.
At 11 A.M. mustered the crew for the first time, and caused to be read the Articles of War, to which they listened with great attention. At 3.30 P.M., having approached sufficiently near the town of Lagens, on the south side of the island, we sent all the prisoners on shore, having first paroled them in the three whale-boats belonging to the prize, Ocmulgee.
The latter, in accordance with the customary rig of whale-boats, was worked with a sprit and sheet. It could be furled or set in an instant. The bags of bread we stowed away in the covered space about the loggerhead, a useless appurtenance now, and therefore removed. At night, Jarl used it for a pillow; saying, that when the boat rolled it gave easy play to his head.
There is always plenty of life and movement at the station, as there are usually a few of the vessels lying at anchor, and natives coming in from all sides in their whale-boats to buy or sell something. From Malekula one can often see them tacking about all day, or, if there is a calm, drifting slowly along, as they are too lazy to row.
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