A Whole Fuckton of Seamen
Finding the men that went down.
Nearly two hundred years ago, a ship called Persia broke apart in a violent snowstorm, leaving crew and cargo strewn along a half mile of rocky shore.
The wreck forms the backdrop to one of my favorite cases, Wonson v. Sayward. Wonson stands for the proposition that taking the boots off a shipwrecked corpse is a felony, and therefore, the accusation that someone has done so is defamation per se.
Because the methods are roughly the same as one might use tracking down witnesses, or information about any event, it seemed like it might be a neat trick to find a little more about that shipwrecked corpse, and if I could, the whole crew of the Persia. Who were they? Where were they buried?
All I had was the text of the decision, to begin with:
Hayes testified, that on March 4, 1831, he and the defendant were on the Eastern Point in Gloucester, and that the defendant said to him, “there is Samuel Wonson; he pulled off his boots, threw them away, and put on the cook’s boots.”
The witness told the defendant he was very much surprised, for he had never heard that character of Wonson before.
To which the defendant replied, “he is the man.”
This was at the time when a vessel belonging to Pingree and Osgood, and having goods on board for them, was cast away on the Eastern Point. Some of the articles were missing. Pingree was in sight during the conversation. The defendant, in what he said, referred to the cook of the Persia, a vessel which was cast away on the point some years before and all her crew drowned.1
Evocative. But, as to the ship, little more than a name, “Persia,” and an approximate location.
Shipwrecks — being a thing like horses, battles, and tanks, in that they seem interesting in a History-channel, commemorative coffee-table book kind of way — are notable. Perhaps there might be a list, somewhere, maintained by some obsessive hobbyist.
Perhaps by state. Or year.
Alas, not big enough to be a “Maritime Disaster.2” The Persia doesn’t appear on the “list of shipwrecks,” although that list seems to be restricted to those that are still, somehow, intact, down there3.
But. Gloucester, the place where the men and goods washed ashore, maintains a list of those drowned or lost at sea.4 That’s where I find my first hard information concerning the ship called Persia. Gloucester has an entry for the “Persia,” a brig, wrecked on March 5, 1829.
The details matched the case:
Wrecked on EasternPt, from Medit'nean. to Salem, in snowstorm, cargo of rag bales; bodies buried Univers.cem.
The men lost are listed as “7-8+” “unknowns.” The informant – the source – from which the information was drawn, is listed as the “Cape Ann Daily Advertiser,” in an article dated 1876.
One record often means there’s more, so I scratched around a bit, to see what I could see. Gloucester’s records from this era were kept longhand, and a bit whimsically.
There was a record of the Persia:
No names, really, except for “Capt. Thistle.” And another I couldn’t quite read. And the number of bodies here is different than appears in the record.
This decade is missing from death and burial records for Gloucester. There were fires. Floods. Scanning disasters. Unclear what, why, or how, but I’d gone as far as I could within Gloucester’s remaining, easily accessible, public records.
Still. I knew more than when I started, including (1) The type of ship; (2) Cargo; (3) Destination; (4) Date; (5) Number of deaths (7-8+ or 11); (5) Perhaps, the name of its captain.
Justin would call these pieces of information “selectors” wouldn’t he? A search, with new and better information, yielded the following account from the Salem Register, March 9, 1829.
Distressing Shipwreck.
On Saturday the painful intelligence was received from Gloucester that a vessel had been wrecked during the storm of Thursday night at the Eastern Point of Cape Ann, that the stern had come ashore, on which was painted “Persia of Salem,” and that every person on board had undoubtedly perished. Several gentlemen went to Gloucester yesterday to ascertain the facts, and returned last evening. From them, we have learned the following particulars:
The vessel wrecked is the brig Persia, Captain Thistle, from Trieste, November 25, for Salem, with a cargo of rags, sumac, etc. She went to pieces near Brace’s Cove, about a mile and a half below Eastern Point, on a rocky, iron-bound shore.
Small fragments of the wreck, with broken bales of rags, are scattered about in all directions on the shore for half a mile. It is not known with certainty who composed the crew of the Persia, as several who went from Salem had left her in foreign ports. A son of LA Lauriat of Boston is supposed to have been lost in her; also one young man and the cook (black) both belonging in Salem. The steward belonged in Baltimore. The vessel’s company is supposed to have consisted of fourteen persons.
Where there is one account, there will be others. As I read through newspaper articles, I found more and more about the ship, and the wreck. The ship was “three anchors down” when it broke apart, but the longboat was intact. The crew might have attempted to escape the wreck, drowning when the longboat overturned, rather than going down with the ship.
Nine bodies were recovered at first. Two washed up later on.
Of the eleven, four bodies were identified. Only two names were ever listed in news articles: The captain, John Thistle, and his first officer, Nathaniel Seward, both of Beverly. The cook and steward were taken to Salem for burial.
The “unknowns” were given a funeral in Gloucester. Sailors and fishermen — Gloucestermen — served as pallbearers. Gloucester has a special connection with those lost at sea.5
Newspapers published descriptions of the other bodies, in the hopes that they might be identified by kin.
Unknown No. 1: A man, approximately twenty-five years old, with the letter “I” tattooed on the inside of his arm.
Unknown No. 2: Well-dressed, with doubloons in his pocket. Dark complexion. 5’4. “L” embroidered on his stockings. Scar on his cheek. Approximately thirty years old.
Unknowns No. 3 and 4: Nearly identical; assumed to be brothers.
Unknown 5: A tattoo of “figures of a man and a woman,” with the letters “O.E.” and “K.B,” beneath.
Unknown 6: Approximately fifty years old. Washed up later. A tattoo with figures of a man and a woman, and the letters “GB” and “LA.”
Death records were a haphazard thing in the 19th century. Town clerks handled the issue as they cared to. Some towns simply accepted parish record-books for birth, death, and burial records. Others recorded them neatly in columns by date, or street, or precinct. Some recorded all deaths of town residents, no matter where they died -- some recorded only the deaths that occurred in town. For the names of the “cook” and “steward,” I tried Salem.
There were two deaths that fit the bill, a Mr. Harvey, and a Mr. Brooks, both of Beckett Street, Salem. However, the cause of death was listed simply, as “drowning.”
Neat. A little too neat.
A single record appearing to match exactly the data sought isn’t a solution. Salem separately kept a list, annually, with frustratingly varying levels of detail, of residents “lost at sea.” Neither Mr. Brooks nor Mr. Harvey were included on that list for 1829.
And although these two gentlemen were the right race and buried in the correct town and their deaths occurred at approximately the right time, of the correct-ish cause, there was no direct connection between Mr. Brooks, Mr. Harvey, and the Persia.
I needed another connection.
If I couldn’t find more about the men, perhaps, I could find more about the ship. Thinking sideways, I took a little detour. Who regulated nineteenth century merchant ships? What records were they required to keep? Where were they kept? Does anyone have them now?
From Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, comes this information:
The Act of 28 February 1803 contained the first legal mention and requirements for keeping a Crew List as part of the ship’s papers. Before a vessel could depart on a foreign voyage, the master had to deliver a list of the crew, verified by his oath, to the customs collector at that port. The collector then supplied the master with a certified copy of the list, copied in a uniform hand, along with a Clearance Certificate, at which time the master entered into a four-hundred-dollar bond to exhibit the Crew List to the first boarding officer he encountered upon his return to a U.S. port.
There he was required to produce the persons named and described in the Crew List to give account for any crew members who were not present. Notes certifying sickness, discharge or desertion, usually signed by a consular official, were often included with the original list in order to prove that individuals not present were legally accounted for.
Crew lists. They were, in fact, required to keep crew lists. On departure. And those for Salem, Massachusetts, during the very period at issue, were, in fact, digitized. And made searchable. By the fine people at Mystic Seaport, in Connecticut.
Mystic had digital records of five crew lists from the Brig Persia, for August of 1822, September of 1824, December of 1826, April of 1828, and May of 1828.
And that last list. That last list had some familiar names. Thistle. Seaward. Lauriat.
Brooks. Harvey. Very nice, right? But there were a few problems with the list. First, a gentleman named Charles Haskell was listed as first officer. Not Mr. Seward. Was this the right list? Could it be the Persia’s last crew?
Per death records, Mr. Haskell died in Havana. In June or July of 1828, while serving as the first officer of the Persia. That explains Mr. Seward’s promotion. And the fact that some newspaper articles list the Persia as having, potentially, a crew of thirteen, rather than fourteen.
None of the gentleman on the Persia’s last crew list appear on any other list from the Port of Salem, ever again.
Of the last crew of fourteen, we can account for six:
John Thissell, or Thistle, washed up on March 5, 1829. Taken by sleigh to Beverly, Massachusetts, for burial.
Charles Haskell, of Beverly, who died in Havana in June of 1828.
Nathaniel Seward, of Beverly, washed up on March 5, 1829. Taken to Beverly, Massachusetts, for burial.
Joseph Harvey, of Salem. Experienced sailor; per the records, at twenty-one, he’d made more voyages than even the Captain. This was his first voyage on the Persia. Buried at “New Ground” cemetery, in Salem.
Walt Brooks, of Salem. Third voyage on the Persia. Identified in Gloucester, buried in Salem. Mr. Brooks was likely the “Cook of the Persia.”
Charles Lauriat, son of L.A. Lauriat, has no death or burial records, and is described as having been lost with the ship.
….
Washington Earnest, of Baltimore, has no physical description listed. Based on his name, he’d be under thirty years old.
He might be the “steward” listed in certain articles, which indicate that the “steward” “belonged in Baltimore.” There are no indications that a body was sent to Baltimore, or that any bodies — apart from the four initially dispatched to Salem and Beverly — were ever positively identified.
…
William Spear, twenty-two years old, of Boston, might be the “young man of Boston,” believed to have gone down with the ship.
…
Hans Peter, Jacob Tucage, James Quin, Samuel Webster, Ebenezer Hayes, and Randall Howe. Each of these men could be among the seven unknowns buried with ceremony and without a marker in Gloucester’s Universalist Cemetery one hundred and ninety-four years ago.
Although Gloucester will, apparently, charge for the coffin.