Pepper (35 page)

“Another class of commercial interloper, who will require our vigilant attention, is the Americans.” Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S.: & c.
(London: 1830), Lady Raffles, p. 74.

The best sources for the U.S. pepper trade are: James W. Gould's three-part “America's Pepperpot: 1784–1873,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, XCII, 1956, pp. 83–153, 203–251, 295–348; George G. Putman,
Salem Vessels and Their Voyages: A History of the Pepper Trade with the Island of Sumatra
, Salem, Mass., 1924; James Duncan Phillips,
Salem and the Indies: The Story of the Great Commercial Era of the City
(Houghton Mifflin, 1947). For a more recent account of the trade, see Charles Corn's
The Scents of Eden: A History of the Spice Trade
, (Kodansha International, 1999).

 … more than seventeen million silver dollars flowed into Sumatra from the United States in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Gould, Essex Institute Historical Collections, XCII, p. 332.

“… we must express entire disapprobation of the Sale of pepper to neutral vessels as it must of course materially interfere with our Sales of that article for foreign Markets.”
Gould, Essex Institute Historical Collections, XCII, p. 110.

The firm paid duty of more than $37,000, which would be worth roughly $19 million today. The firm's
America
imported more than 800,000 pounds of pepper in 1802. The duty paid was more than $56,000, or about $28 million in today's dollars.
These comparisons are rough estimates and were made using the datasets at
http://www.measuringworth.org/datasets/usgdp/index.php
. The conversion into twenty-first century dollars is based on the nominal value of the gross domestic product per capita [GDP/C] in 1800 and in 2009, which produces a conversion ratio of about 511. Thus, $37,000 multiplied by 511 equals about $19 million. No wonder the duties paid from the pepper trade helped shore up the economy of the United States.

“‘Blank Journals' for the ‘great object of their institution … was the acquiring of nautical knowledge…' Each captain would be furnished with a log, which was to be ‘a regular diary of the winds, weather, remarkable occurrences, during his voyage…'”
The logbook of the
Putnam
, Nov. 1802–Dec. 25, 1803, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, reprinted with permission.

“… long passage in which there is such a sameness & the same tedious recurrence to nautical observations that I am, obliged to rally all my little philosophy to drive off the hypochondriac
…” The logbook of the
William and Henry
, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, reprinted with permission.

“… a cargo of those (unhappy fellow animals) whose happiness is sacrificed to satisfy the ambition of avarice, men who are proud of living under the light of Christianity and more especially of philosophy.…”
Ibid.

“The darken sky how thick it lowers…”
The logbook of the
Grand Turk
, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, reprinted with permission.

“He did not talk but very little for about half of an hour before he died. I was obliged to bury him at sea
…” Logbook of the
Eliza
, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, reprinted with permission.

“rolling heavily and thumping very hard endangering the masts…”
Logbook of the
Sooloo
, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, reprinted with permission.

“Finished taking pepper out of the between decks the water about 1 foot above the between decks. During the night the ship sunk at her anchors carrying one Malay with her.”
Ibid.

“Then we went out on the mountain top to gaze at the view and it was one of the most beautiful scenes that I have ever beheld.”
The story of Gorham P. Low's life at sea is published in
The Sea Made Men: The Story of a Gloucester Lad
, edited by Elizabeth L. Alling (Fleming H. Revell Company, 1937) p. 196.

“… Could an American of the north have been conveyed suddenly from his home and placed where we stood as we stepped from the boat, he would have been in ecstasy, if he had any susceptibility to the beauty of nature.”
Fitch W. Taylor,
A Voyage Round the World … in the United States Frigate
Columbia.… New Haven and New York, 1846, p. 302.

“On arrival at any of these ports you contact with the Dattoo for the pepper and fix the price
…” Logbook of the
Putnam
, from Nov. 1802 to Dec. 1803, kept by Master Nathaniel Bowditch. Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, reprinted with permission. Bowditch's notes on West Sumatra have been widely published.

When an American captain was outbid for pepper by a rival in 1839, the losing captain sent a letter to the local chief in the village of Bakungan threatening to sink his prahus if he gave any pepper to his rival.
Gould, Essex Institute Historical Collections, XCII, p. 299.

George Nicols, a Salem seaman and merchant who sailed to the Far East, Sumatra, and Europe, was the master and supercargo of the Active, which set out from Salem to Sumatra in December 1801.
Nicols was eighty years old when he dictated his autobiography. See George G. Putman,
Salem Vessels and Their Voyages
, pp. 17–19.

The Strait of Malacca was, and still is, notoriously dangerous.
Piracy in the Strait has a long history. In 2000 more than seventy-five armed robberies occurred in the Malacca and Singapore Straits. See “Can U.S. Efforts Reduce Piracy in the Malacca and Singapore Straits,” by Jeffrey L. Scudder, http:
handle.detc.il/100.2/ADA463868

“They carry on a considerable trade and are generally provided with … pepper…”
Constable Pierrepont papers. Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

Malaysian pirates captured the American ship, stole twenty thousand silver dollars, and sunk her. Twelve officers and crew escaped by boat. The Asiatic Journal
, London, February 01, 1819, p. 217; Issue 38, Empire, from 19th Century UK Periodicals, Gale, Cengage Learning, Gale Document Number CC1903193170.

“Americans carry ‘
complete sets of false weights
thus often times getting
five Piculs of pepper by paying but for one
…'”
Cruise of the U.S. Frigate
Potomac,
commanded by Captain John Downes from Sandy Hook [New Jersey] to Sumatra, by Levi Lincoln, Jr. The son of Gov. Levi Lincoln of Massachusetts, Levi Lincoln was born on August 22, 1810, and he died on September 1, 1845. Levi went to West Point briefly, dropped out, and became a midshipman at seventeen. He resigned nine years later. He provides a rare eyewitness account of the attack on Qualah-Battoo that is sympathetic to the Malays. Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

“Who brought to the coast 56 lb. weights with a screw in the bottom which opened for the insertion of from ten to fifteen pounds of lead, after their correctness had been tried by the native in comparison with his own weights?…”
Gould, Essex Institute Historical Collections, XCII, p. 231.

“exulting and hooting … ‘Who great man now, Malay or American?' ‘How many man American dead?' ‘How many man Malay dead.'”
George G. Putman,
Salem Vessels and Their Voyages
, pp. 71–89. Quote is from Captain Charles Moses Endicott's lecture to the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts, on January 28, 1858.

“The curiosity of some visitors was so great that they would not be satisfied until they knew…”
“The Narrative of Piracy and Plunder of the Ship
Friendship
, of Salem, On the West Coast of Sumatra in February, 1831; and the massacre of part of her crew; also recapture out of the hands of the Malay Pirates,” by Charles M. Endicott, Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, 1859.

“every necessary preparation be made … to demand immediate redress for the outrage committed.”
Gould, Essex Institute Historical Collections, XCII, 1956, p. 233.

John Downes, the commander of the Potomac, was an experienced hand who had served in the War of 1812 …
For a summary of Downes's career, see David F. Long's article “Martial Thunder: The First Official American Armed Intervention in Asia,”
The Pacific Historical Review
, Vol. 42. No. 2 (May, 1973), pp. 143–162, Published by University of California Press, URL:
http://www.jstor/org/stable/3638464
.

If he didn't get a response, he was authorized to seize the murderers and send them back to the United States for trial or take harsher measures.
Ibid. p. 150.

“… seemed to leave no doubt, that neither the character of the people on the coast of Sumatra, particularly at Quallah-Battoo, nor the government under which they nominally lived,…”
Jeremiah N. Reynolds,
Voyage of the United State Frigate
Potomac 
… in 1831, 1832, 1833, and 1834
(New York, 1835), p. 98, and available on Google books at
http://books.google.com/books
.

“… such was the desperation with which these fellows resisted us, that [in the northernmost fort]…”
Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

“spirit of a desperado,”
according to Francis Warriner, the
Potomac's
chaplain. William Meacham Murrell,
Cruise of the U.S. Frigate Potomac Round the World, 1831–1834
(New York and Boston, 1835) p. 89.

The number of native men, women, and children killed ranged from about sixty, according to an account by the people of Qualah Battoo, to at least 150, according to Shubrick's estimate.
See David F. Long's article “Martial Thunder: The First Official American Armed Intervention in Asia,”
The Pacific Historical Review
, Vol. 42. No. 2 (May, 1973), p. 152.

“All around us in ambush…”
Poem published in Putnam's
Salem Vessels
, p. 92.

“The marines entered the second fort at bayonet charge…”
Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

“If some of the Malays are pirates, we must be allowed to say…”
Ibid.

The
Salem Gazette
opined that “Neither the President of the United States nor the Captain of a Frigate has power to make or proclaim war.”
See Long, p. 157.

“The President regrets that you were not able [,] before attacking the Malays at Qualah Battoo, to obtain…”
Ibid. p. 158.

“In execution of your order to me for the entire destruction of the town of Muckie, I this day landed on the beach at the head of the harbor,…”
Fitch W. Taylor,
A Voyage Round the World … in the United States Frigate
Columbia.… New Haven and New York, p. 296.

“The town now exhibited one scene of extended and extending ruins…”
Ibid., p. 295.

“The establishment of American business houses there eliminated the previous advantages of the private contacts and knowledge which had sustained so much of the old trades.…”
For the decline of the pepper trade to Sumatra, see Gould, pp. 295–348.

Eight: An Infinite Number of Seals

“On the third of August the general went in his pinnace, and other boats with him, to kill whales, for all the bay is full of them.” The Voyage of Sir Henry Middleton to the Moluccas, 1604–1606,
Sir William Foster, ed., (The Hakluyt Society, 1943) p. 11.

… birds “similar in size to swans,” were found …
Quote published in Errol Fuller's
Dodo: From Extinction to Icon
(HarperCollins, 2002) p. 59.

… described killing a hundred birds “with sticks and hands.”
Mundy,
The Travels of Peter Mundy,
Vol II., p. 328.

“It (Ascension) is uninhabited, and perfectly sterile, being almost nothing but a bear rock,”
J. S. Stavorinus,
Voyages to the East Indies
, translated by S. H. Wilcocke, 1798, Vol. III, p. 191.

“The beach abounds in turtles, who lay their eggs in the sand, in order to be hatched by the heat of the sun…”
Ibid, p. 191.

“are easily taken, not being able to flye nor runne, only bite a little to noe purpose…”
Mundy,
The Travels of Peter Mundy,
Vol II., p. 328.

“swarme of lame and weake, diseased cripples,” and beholding this “lamentable sight…” The Voyage of Sir Henry Middleton to the Moluccas,
1604–1606, (The Hakluyt Society, 1943) p. 10. The quotes from Middleton's voyage in this chapter are from an anonymous account called “The Last East-Indian Voyage,” which was printed for Walter Burre in 1606. It is the only account of an English East India voyage in the early seventeenth century that was published separately from the Hakluyt-Purchas narratives. Walter Burre may have been Middleton's son-in-law.

“where wee found such infinite number of seals that was admirable to behold.…”
Ibid., p. 10.

“kill whales; for all the bay is full of them.”
Ibid., p. 11.

“we began to see many flying fish
[Exocoetus volitans]
and we frequently made a good breakfast, upon such as had fallen upon the ship, during the night, as they frequently do…”
J. S. Stavorinus,
Voyages to the East Indie
s, translated by S. H. Wilcocke, 1798, Vol. I, p. 13.