On December 4, 1812, the merchant brig Isabella weighed anchor from the convict colony of New South Wales, Australia, with a most peculiar complement of
passengers on board. Joanna Ann Durie,
the wife of Captain Robert Durie, a Scottish soldier who was taking his family
back to Edinburgh on furlough, must have looked about the cabin table with a
sense of foreboding and wonder.
One garrulous fellow was Joseph Holt, the so-called “General”
who had surrendered during the 1798 Irish Rebellion, and had taken voluntary
exile to New South Wales to avoid trial and sentencing. He was now going home
to Ireland after a varied set of adventures in the settlement, some pleasant,
others not so -- and a lot that had taken place in his lively imagination. Another Irishman was Sir Henry Hayes, a ne’er-do-well who had
been transported after a notorious abduction of a Quaker heiress, with the idea
of tricking her into a fake marriage. It
was obvious within moments that Sir Henry and “General” Holt were deadly enemies,
Hayes having been behind Holt’s less pleasant experiences, including at least two more arrests, one of which led to banishment to the notorious prison on Norfolk Island.
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| Holt in military uniform |
Also at the table was a sea captain, Richard Brookes,
who seemed civilized enough, but had an unpleasant reputation that he had found
impossible to shake. He was notorious
for having commanded a convict transport on
a voyage that was one of the worst in the history of transportation—the Atlas, which, coincidentally, was the
same ship that had carried Sir Henry Hayes to Sydney. Hayes had enjoyed a comfortable passage, as he
had bribed Brookes handsomely. Not so
the convicts, who died like the proverbial flies, as Brookes had taken so much
speculative cargo on board that there was very little room for his official
freight of felons. Not only were their
crammed quarters filthy, as no one could get in there to clean them, but the
captain had saved money on the rations he was supposed to supply, so the
hapless prisoners were being starved, as well.
When the ship finally arrived at Port Jackson, there were corpses lying
dead and rotting in their shackles, and other convicts, hoisted out, died on
the way to the hospital. Brookes had not been put on trial, and had evidently
learned better ways, as the transports he had commanded since had delivered
their convicts in reasonable health, but still people looked at him askance.
Another Scottish army officer was at the table. This
was twenty-two year old Lieutenant Richard Lundin, who seemed formal and
correct in manners. His behavior was suspect, however, because without any kind
of polite delay he took one of the four female convicts on board as his
mistress. These convicts were returning
to England after working out their sentences—obviously, they had earned the
money for their passage in the currency-poor settlement, but the question was,
how? It looked very much as if they were
ladies of the night, as people termed it then.
And, there was the captain of the Isabella, a man by the name of George Higton. He not only had a
brooding way of muttering to himself, but was evidently overfond of the bottle.
And he, like Lundin, immediately took one of the female ex-convicts, Mrs.
Bindell by name, into his berth. A very suspect lot, indeed. Lurking in the
background was a malignant stowaway, ex-navy man William Mattinson, who was
running away to avoid huge debts, though no one, including Joanna, knew about
his presence, yet. There is the added
fact, too, that Joanna Durie was seven months pregnant. As future events proved, however, she was a
lady who was fully capable of looking after herself.
Joanna had met her current husband, Captain Robert
Durie, back in March, 1809, when his battalion paused at the Isle of Wight, on
the way from Scotland to New South Wales. Joanna, whose maiden name had been
Taylor, was the widow of a Lieutenant-Colonel Malcolm Nugent Ross, of the 71st
Regiment of Foot, who had reportedly died in 1806. What attracted her to Durie is very hard to
tell. The army, like the navy of the time, was a very snobbish service, and her
dead husband had been a lieutenant-colonel, which was a much higher rank than
that of lieutenant, which was all Robert Durie could boast at the time—and a
purchased rank, at that. And New South
Wales was a long way away, and had a very bad reputation, it being widely known
that men were paid in ardent spirits there, rather than in money, so that
drunken sprees were very common. And, while a decent lady like Joanna might
have expected that soldiers were sent there to quell all this, it was commonly
known that not only did the New South Wales corps countenance the trade in
liquor, but they had cornered the market and were making fortunes out of it,
which was why they were known as the Rum Corps.
But, despite all these drawbacks, Joanna Ann Taylor
Ross agreed to wed Robert Durie, and a hurried ceremony was held on April 22,
after what must have been a very swift courtship, unless they were old
acquaintances. That Durie was considered a very weak and ineffectual man, while
Joanna was considered to be as impressive as a tigress, is probably
significant. While it is impossible to tell why she was so keen to sail away
from England, there must have been some compelling reason, for that is exactly
what she did, leaving behind the two children she had had with Lieutenant-Colonel
Ross, presumably with relatives. But now, almost exactly two years after
arriving in Sydney, she was due to return to Britain.
Captain Higton steered for Cape Horn, steering south of Tasmania (Van Diemen’s Land, as it was known then), and almost as far south as the Antarctic convergence, flying east on the breast of the gales of latitude fifty south. A cluster of tiny sub-Antarctic islands lay in his path, notorious as the graveyard of ships, but he pressed on regardless. It was Campbell Island that almost spelled the demise of the Isabella—to everyone’s surprise when they rushed onto deck at one in the morning in response to the panicked shouts of the seamen, it was to find that Richard Brookes had taken over command, because Higton did not seem capable.
With such a grim augury of the future, no one should really have been surprised when the ship ran ashore at Eagle Island in the Falklands, on February 14, 1813. Captain Higton had only just arrived on deck when the lookout shouted Rocks to port! —he having been snoring drunk in the arms of Mrs. Bindell. Another shout, this time of Breakers to starboard! —and then a tremendous crash and such a hard bump that everyone on board fell over.
“General” Joseph Holt’s published memoir describes him sinking to his knees and imploring Providence for a kindly intercession, while his wife Hester exclaimed, “Let us all, linked in each others’ arms, go to our watery graves together!” This, however, has to be taken with a huge spoon of salt. Not only was Holt’s memoir self-serving, with a lot of self-aggrandizing fabrications, but the man who edited it for publication in 1838,Thomas Crofton Croker, was a fairytale reteller who was fond of adapting stories for the edification of the pious and genteel. And he openly admitted that he adapted this one a lot, the writer being "barely literate. The reviewer in the Dublin University Magazine summed it up as a farrago of lies. During his checkered career in the penal settlement of New South Wales, he wrote, "if Holt is to be credited, he had the luck to fall in with more unmerited persecution than any individual since the days of the martyrs." But the reviewer had no intention of noticing it any further. End of story.
So, back in 1813, when these events were actually happening, it is much more likely that Holt was on deck helping sort out the chaos up there, instead of humbly down on his knees. If there (and not cowering on his cabin floor), he would have found that Captain Brookes had taken over the command again, and had ordered the yards to be squared so that the ship could be run up on a beach. The ship’s carpenter was stationed by the main mast backstay with an ax, and the instant the Isabella ground up onto the sand, he hacked it through with three mighty blows. The main mast fell with a groan, the far end settling on a rock, and making a bridge from the ship to the shore.
The Isabella stilled. There was a fraught pause—and the marines and seamen lurched completely out of control, intent on raiding the liquor stores and getting sodden drunk. The only sane note was struck by young Lieutenant Lundin, who set to launching the ship’s boat, with the unexpected assistance of the drunken stowaway, Mattinson. But no sooner was it being held ready for the women and children, than Mattinson and Sir Henry Hayes shoved to the front of the crowd, and with two of the other drunkards they commandeered the boat. Then, when they got to the beach, they abandoned it and headed off into the darkness, leaving all their fellow castaways stranded.
So it was a case of waiting for daylight, and for the
tide to go down. It was now that Joanna Durie must have heartily rued the fact
that she was heavily pregnant, a burden to herself as well as the others. However,
with the aid of a bo’sun’s chair, she was manoeuvered on shore, to be joined by
her little girl, Agnes, and the other women. Being resourceful, she had carried a bottle of rum with her, so that when her husband and Joseph
Holt found her presiding on a hillock where the other females were huddled, she
was able to offer them a bracing tot of liquor. Being also very conscious of
social niceties, Joanna politely apologized for the lack of fresh water to mix
with the rum, a running stream having not been located as yet. But no one
complained, certainly not the men.
After some polite small talk where Mrs. Durie remarked
that the rising sun was revealing country that reminded her much of Scotland,
the men finished their rum and set to making a shelter. This was hastily
contrived by propping some spars from the wreck between two hillocks,
encompassing a hollow, and then draping canvas over them. Something better was needed soon, Joanna being
so near her time, but right now it was a case of rousing the soldiers and
sailors from their drunken spree, and getting the castaway party organized.
Captain Higton was obviously incapable of taking sole charge, so a council was
appointed, composed of Durie, Brookes, Lundin and Holt. To save the face of their erstwhile
shipmaster, Higton was also coopted, though reluctantly, along with his mate,
George Davis.
And so, with the concocting of a set of rules, the camp
fell under military-style rule. The
castaways were divided into messes, each of which did their own cooking. Gangs
were assembled to empty the wreck of everything edible, drinkable and useful,
and the carpenter was set to building up the sides of the ship’s boat, to make
it seaworthy. The soldier who was the
best shot was appointed “sportsman” and put in charge of killing off birds for
the pot, and then the council turned to the thornier problem of storing the
spirits and wine out of the way of the thirsty common men. It was no use
putting it in a tent with a sentry on guard, because the sentry simply helped
himself, and in the end it was buried, so that the casks could only be tapped
with a hand-pump.
Joanna Durie must have watched all this masculine
striding about and organizing each other with a growing sense of impatience. Time
was passing, the baby was imminent, and she was still living under a sheet of
canvas in a hollow between two dunes.
When the sheet of canvas abruptly collapsed during dinner time, weighted
down with water from the pouring rain, she gave vent to furious bout of weeping. The prospect of giving birth on a pitching
ship in the South Atlantic had been bad enough, but now, because of that
incompetent drunken sot, Higton, she was condemned to give birth on a plank in
a muddy tent!
As Holt (through his editor) phrased it in his
published memoir, “The poor lady was now near her time of lying-in, and had
nothing but the cold and wet turf for the floor of her apartment. I endeavoured
to comfort her, and told her that God had already been gracious, and saved all
our lives, and was able, and would provide for her in her necessity.” How Joanna received this pious platitude can
only be guessed, but Holt, much more practically, then promised to build her a
decent hut. “With His help, madam,” he said, “I will have a house raised for
you by this time on Tuesday next.”
As this was Sunday, February 14, 1813, and Tuesday was
only two days away, it’s little wonder that Joanna simply stared, “as did her
husband and Captain Brookes.” However,
Holt was as good as his word. Going out right away, he found a site with plenty
of solid turf, which he (with probably a lot more help than he claimed he had)
cut into sods—four-inch thick blocks of thickly rooted turf, each one measuring
about one foot by two. The cleared area was raked and levelled, and then walled
in with the sod bricks, which were stacked in staggered rows, each one with the
grass side down. “At night I had the walls up of a cabin twenty feet long, ten
wide, and seven high,” he remembered. The sergeant of marines was requisitioned
to go out to the wreck and fetch some spars and deck boards, and with these
Holt framed the walls, and put up a ridge-pole, to which he nailed rafters. The timber was waterproofed with pitch, and
then three good sails, also purloined from the wreck, were spread over the
rafters to make a roof, “which, pegged strongly down, was secured from being
blown off by the wind.”
The cabin, now closed in except for a doorway, was
floored with more deck planks, “and, having removed the stove from the ship,
and cut a hole for the funnel, I brought coals out of the wreck, and one of the
cabin tables, with a few chairs. By three o’clock,” he went on lyrically, “the
table-cloth was spread in the new habitation, and we sat down happily to
dinner, and many a grateful bumper was drank, with thanks to me for what I had
done.”
Holt’s timing was perfect—it was Tuesday. “Mrs. Durie,
I am sure, would speak of me to this hour with gratitude,” he smugly concluded.
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| Providence castaway camp |
That Joseph Holt was exaggerating is evidenced by the fact that other huts were going up at the same time, each mess having their own shelter, resulting in a small village called Providence, complete with a provision store that was built over the liquor dump. While Holt could well have been the project manager, it is likely that he was just one of a large building party. And, naturally, his own house was a particularly fine one, with two bedrooms as well as an outdoor kitchen, which last he shared with the Duries.
Whatever the circumstances, Joanna’s cabin was finished
in good time, as she had five days to settle in before the first contractions
started. Naturally, Holt had a great deal to say about the lying in, meditating
that “my wife and myself felt very deeply for a lady in Mrs. Durie’s
uncomfortable state, and our feelings of pity and regret were much increased by
the recollection, that a lady who had been reared with every tender care, and
who had been accustomed to every attention, should be confined under a bank in
a turf bog, without the comforts of house and home, and with no assistance but
from God and Mrs. Holt.”
Then, having braced himself with a glass of wine, Holt
invited Captain Brookes out for a walk. Joanna Durie, being a lady with three
confinements behind her, just got along with the job, with the result that Holt
and Brookes were able to return just ninety minutes later to find her safely
delivered of a girl. This was yet another occasion for a hearty bumper, as the
two men “enjoyed ourselves proclaiming the young lady queen of the island, as
the first-born there, and declaring her name to be Ann Providence Durie.” The baby certainly was the first to be born
on the uninhabited island, and her second name was indeed Providence, but her
name was in fact Eliza.
Meantime, the carpenter and his mates had finished
building up the sides of the longboat, and giving her a deck, so Holt and
Brookes walked out that very same day to enjoy another round of hearty toasts. “All
hands went down to where the boat lay, and we launched her off the stocks;
after all her stores were on board I brought down a bottle of rum to christen
her, and you may be assured I filled my glass, and drank prosperity to FAITH AND HOPE.” The stores consisted of three months’ worth
of provisions, and she was commanded by Captain Brookes, who had a crew of
five—George Davis, who had been the mate of the Isabella, Lieutenant Lundin, a marine by the name of Joseph
Woolley, “Anthony the Irishman, as he could speak different languages,” and an
unnamed American.
“She hoisted her sails, and went to sea. We prayed for
her success, as she was all the hope we had to get our lives safe off from
these islands,” wrote Holt. That success was perceived as being crucial. So dependent were they all on the outcome of
the Faith and Hope venture that the
mood about the village became more and more glum as the weeks went by and the
longboat never returned. But then, on
April 4, a vessel hove into sight. She
was not the Faith and Hope, however,
for she was bigger, sturdier, and was flying the American flag.
The visitor was a shallop, a small, sturdy vessel with a shallow draft and a single mast that was fore-and-aft rigged. As Holt soon learned, she was the tender of the sealing brig Nanina, which had sailed from New York in April 1812, with no less than five captains on the quarterdeck. These were Captain Valentine Barnard (the official commander of the Nanina) and his son, Captain Charles Barnard, both originally from Nantucket; Captain Edmund Fanning of Massachusetts (nephew of the famous Edmund Fanning of Stonington, Connecticut), Captain Andrew Hunter of Rhode Island, and Captain Barzillai Pease. originally from Martha’s Vineyard.
They were embarked on a commercial venture, to
assess the potential of the seal rookeries of the south Atlantic. There had
been quarrels on board, which was only to be expected with five captains all
trying to exert their individual wills, but since arriving in the Falklands in
September 1812, and building the shallop from pre-cut pieces in the hold, they
had been doing pretty well. The prospects were so good, in fact, that the news
of the outbreak of war between the United States and Britian had failed to
deter them from carrying on.
While three captains were on board of the shallop, the
one currently in command of the tender was Charles Barnard. As he recorded in
his narrative later, the shallop was exploring the coast of Eagle Island, when
the lookout drew attention to what looked like a flagstaff on a hillock in the
middle. “We immediately repaired on deck,” he wrote; “and in a few moments
eight or ten persons were observed on the beach, and as many more were rapidly
coming from the direction of the flag-staff towards the same place: among the
latter party, to our great surprise, we noticed a female.”
Reassuringly, in view of the fact that the Americans
were worried about blundering into enemy Spaniards, Charles also saw some
British uniforms— “I began to devise the most effectual means of aiding these
unfortunates,” he wrote, “whom I now onjectured to have belonged to some
British man-of-war, which had been cast away on this desolate island.” Their country and his might be at war, but as
far as Charles Barnard was concerned, that made no difference—”as I felt
assured that by rendering them this assistance I would bind them to me, by the
strongest ties of gratitude.”
This, at first, was accepted in the spirit in which it
was intended. As Charles Barnard recorded, “Gen. Holt, (formerly of the Irish
patriots) and Capt. Durie of the 73d regiment” came on board and spun a long
tale “of their deplorable situation: that as winter was approaching, in that
inhospitable climate, their only shelter was temporary huts, formed of pieces
of wreck and sails; that they found no other means of subsistence, but what few
provisions they had saved from the ship”—which, in view of the fact that the
village sportsman had been steadily wiping out the island’s bird life, and that
sea elephants had been killed in great numbers for their edible tongues, was
varnishing the truth with a vengeance.
Joseph Holt invited the three captains who were on
board the shallop— Fanning, Hunter and Charles Barnard—to his house “at Newtown
Providence, as I had called the little settlement.” Then he ran to Joanna Durie
to warn her to get ready for visitors. As usual, Joanna was up to the
challenge, producing a well cooked meal, which she served out daintily, with
decanters of wine and spirits to wash the feast down, all of which must have
surprised the Americans, after the tale of privation that they had heard. She
also chatted most entertainingly, regaling the captains with uncharitable
anecdotes about her fellow castaways—”These outlines were generally given by
Mrs. Durie with great spirit and humour,” wrote Charles Barnard, who declined
to quote her exact words, her comments being “too deeply shaded to rely on the
honour of those described.”
After spending the night in one of Holt’s bedrooms,
Charles explored the village. “The huts were erected on a high bluff, about a
cable’s length from the wreck; there were twelve or fourteen of these miserable
shelters placed in the form of a square; the building, or larger hut, called by
them the store-house, containing what provisions, wine, etc. they had saved
from the ship, was placed in the centre. The sides of these tenements were
constructed of dry tussock or bogs; the rafters of small spars or pieces of the
wreck, and covered with sails or the skins of seals.” Out of politeness, Barnard visited Captain
Higton in his hut, where he found he approved of his “chere amie,” Mrs. Bindell. But then, after a short conversation in
which Higton contributed only the words yes and no, the captain of the Isabella wreck pointedly reminded the
American that breakfast should be awaiting him at Mrs. Durie’s house. So,
Charles, feeling undeservedly snubbed, took his leave.
Having eaten, Charles Barnard and the other Americans
declared their intention to board the shallop, earnestly promising that the
instant they got back to the Nanina
they would let their shipmates know
about the castaways and the wreck—at which point their hostess burst into
tears. Joanna wanted to go too—”as she
would prefer all the dangers and hardships she might encounter in our small
vessel, to remaining on the island.” With old Nantucket gallantry, Charles Barnard “offered
to take her, with her family and all her efects, immediately on board the
shallop, and though it was not my calculation to return so soon, yet we would
bend our course of sealing towards the brig, in which she could remain until
our departure, when we would convey them to the United States.”
Holt wanted the same arrangement, but there simply was
not enough room for his family and his servants. To soothe the Irishman’s
outrage, Charles Barnard said he would do his best to make up for it. Indeed, in
view of the castaways’ perilous situation, with winter coming on, perhaps the
sealing voyage could be abandoned, and the Nanina
come from the distant island where she was anchored to collect them
all—despite the fact that their countries were at war. All he asked in
recompense was salvage rights to the wreck of the Isabella—barring any private goods, of course.
That, the castaways all agreed, was very fair
indeed—but were the United States and Britian really at war? Surely not! Charles assured them that it was indeed the
case, and even made a formal announcement of the fact after the disbelieving
population of the village had been lined up in ranks to listen. “The disclosure
did not appear to make any alteration in the minds of the crew and passengers”—with
the distinct exception of Sir Henry Hayes, who immediately proposed the seizure
of the shallop as a prize, and then forcing the Americans to carry them to
England. This was received by all the
rest with utter contempt, as Charles Barnard noticed, and so he dismissed it
from his mind.
Joanna Durie still insisted on sailing with the
shallop, so Charles, as gallant as ever, instructed his crew to stockpile their
seal skins on shore, to make room for the Durie luggage. Then he gave his cabin
a quick tidy up, and handed it over to the Durie family. He even took on board one of the convict
women, Lundin’s mistress Mary Ann Spencer, to act as Joanna’s servant, plus Mrs. Hughes,
the marine drummer’s wife, to help with the children. Then, after recruiting a
few of the Isabella’s sailors to help
with the Nanina, which needed
re-rigging, he sailed, leaving Captains Fanning and Hunter on the island with a
gang, to get on with salvaging what they could from the wreck.
Disastrously, on the way to the Nanina they picked up a small boat.
It was the Isabella’s jolly
boat, which had been recklessly taken to sea just days earlier, by the
stowaway, Thomas Mattinson, with two boys and a marine. What would have
happened to them if the shallop had not come by? When Mattinson was asked, he merely looked
stupied, saying, “God only knows, but who are you, and what am I aboard of?”
before going below and getting beastly drunk on the wine Charles Barnard had
stowed for the Durie family. As Joanna Durie promptly told the American, when
she came onto deck and found him, he had made a terrible mistake.
Mattinson’s behavior confirmed the “debased and brutal
mind” that Joanna had described. Somehow,
he contrived to be constantly intoxicated, to such an extent that Durie
suggested putting him and his companions down in the jolly boat again. Barnard,
who had overheard Mattinson wondering aloud how American prize money would
drink, was inclined the same way, but Mattinson’s three companions begged so
hard not to be forced to sail with him again that Charles Barnard relented.
Barnard had more pressing things on his mind, as well. The wind and vicious weather were constantly against him, so that it was impossible to beat to the inlet where the Nanina was anchored. Finally, in desperation, he dropped anchor at Arch Island Harbor, on the opposite side of the island to where the brig Nanina lay at her anchors, and proposed that most of the complement should walk across the intervening land, leaving the shallop in the care of the Durie complement and one foremast hand.
After spending the night on the brig Nanina to explain the complicated
situation to his father, Valentine Barnard, Charles trekked back to the
shallop, with just one seaman as his companion.
Then, with just two seamen—the one he had left behind with the Duries,
and the man he had brought with him—and Durie and the drummer to help, Charles
Barnard sailed the shallop about the island to the inlet where the Nanina was being hastily re-rigged. By all accounts it was a very pleasant
excursion, with a walk on the beach and a demonstration in seal killing (though
the ladies were squeamish about watching the skinning), and a couple of days
shooting geese and wild pigs on Swan Island, enjoyed by all, Charles Barnard in
particular, but it set a very unfortunate precedent for the future.
By mid-May, the brig was nearly ready, so the Barnards
and Barzillai Pease had a meeting and decided to send the shallop to Eagle
Island, with men to help with the salvage of the Isabella wreck. Because the American seamen knew the terrain, which
the Englishmen did not, all the sealers save one went on the tender, leaving
the Nanina with just five Americans
on board, three of them captains, and one very old. To finish the work, twelve Isabella men remained behind, meaning
that the Americans were badly outnumbered. And, disastrously, one of the
Englishmen who remained behind was the brutish stowaway.
Not unexpectedly, it was Mattinson who first made
trouble. Marching up to Barnard on the
quarterdeck after Charles had spent three days trying to work the Nanina out of the inlet, he boasted that
he could sail the brig himself, an act of mutiny that warranted summoning
Captain Durie and having Mattinson put under arrest. Once the mutinous Englishman was confined in
irons below, Charles finally managed to beat out to open sea—to meet even worse
weather. The brig was blown back and forth, from one nerve-wracking bay or
island to the next. Joanna Durie was
violently seasick, and Barnard felt so sorry for her that he dropped anchor at
New Island, and went ashore to dig potatoes from an old sealer’s garden that he
had seen there, for which she was properly grateful.
Once there, though, they were trapped. The weather
remained awful, and so they had to remain at anchor, a long way from their
objective. The three American captains and Captain Durie held a meeting, in
which they “deemed it proper to remain on the island a few weeks, rather than
encounter the risk of proceeding to sea in this tempestuous season.” Accordingly, three anchors were dropped, the
brig was snugged down, and everyone set their minds to the long wait for good
weather. Then Charles Barnard decided to put the time to good use by taking a
hunting party to Beaver Island, a few miles south, to collect provisions for
the long voyage after all the castaways had been taken on board.
On May 11, he set out with four volunteers—one American
seaman, and three sailors from the Isabella. And, as soon as their boat was out of sight,
Thomas Mattinson led a party of armed marines to the quarterdeck, where he
marched up to Valentine Barnard and demanded that the Nanina should be taken to sea, leaving Charles and his four men
marooned. Valentine appealed to Captain
Durie for law and order, but the British officer—who was supposed to be in
charge of the marines—declined to put down this blatant mutiny, and so
Mattinson and Durie’s marines set to work with a will, briskly setting up the
topmasts and the sails. On June 13 the weather moderated, and the anchors were
weighed, much to the agitation of Captains Pease and Barnard—Valentine Barnard
in particular, because his son and the four men with him had not made a
reappearance. Finally, however, he
agreed to pilot the brig to Eagle Island, but only on the condition that they
called at Beaver Island for his son and his men.
Robert Durie’s word was worthless. When they got
abreast of the island, Mattinson simply ordered the crew to sail on, and when
Valentine Barnard violently and desperately protested, Captain Durie and Joanna
looked at each other, shrugged, and spread their hands. The Nanina kept on for Eagle Island, while
Captains Barnard and Pease, with the one American seaman, tried to plot ways to
retake the brig once they arrived there. Their relief when they saw their shallop
beating out toward them must have been great—but no sooner had the brig’s
tender arrived alongside than it proved to be full of British navy sailors, who
stormed the decks of the Nanina,
bringing a British navy officer who formally claimed the brig as a prize of
war.
And so Charles Barnard’s fate was sealed. He and his four men were marooned on Beaver Island with few provisions, no wreck to ransack for building materials, and the icy southern winter coming on—the first of two grim winters, for he was not rescued from the ordeal until the day two English whaleships arrived, in November 1814.
For the background for this second act of treachery,
the story has to go back to February 21, 1813, the day that Joanna Durie’s baby
was born, and also the day that the built-up longboat, Faith and Hope, tacked away from the island.
According to the narrative of the open boat voyage that
was written by Lieutenant Lundin, they first of all tacked about both West and
East Falkland, hoping in vain to find a settlement. Finally giving that up as a
bad job, they made up their minds to steer for the River Plate, which they
successfully fetched on 26 March. At first the locals on the beach treated them
badly, shoving them around and pilfering their few possessions, but then Lundin
had the brainwave of donning his bright red uniform jacket, and the men who had
been hassling them cringed away.
One of them ran off to fetch some soldiers, who arrived
with an English-speaking officer. He explained that the castaways had blundered
into the middle of a local war, and that he and his men were fighting the
Royalist forces in Montevideo. Taken to the revolutionary camp, Lundin was
introduced to the man in charge, General Rondiou, who not only offered to send
the castaways into Montevideo under a flag of truce, but also imparted the
interesting tidbit that there was a British frigate stationed in Buenos Aires.
This was a lot better prospect than being bandied about
warring forces in a conflict the Englishmen knew nothing about, so it was back
to the boat, and the passage to Buenos Aires. There, they met the lively
assistance of Lieutenant William D’Aranda, who, despite his Spanish-sounding
name, was the commander of His Majesty’s gun-brig Nancy, which arrived the day after they got there. The brig had
limped into port in a dismasted condition, having weathered a very nasty storm,
but the British Navy lived up to its reputation for efficiency, and she was
speedily repaired, manned and provisioned, and then sent out with Lieutenant
Lundin as the pilot.
Joseph Holt, who had been living “very merrily” with
Captains Fanning and Hunter, was out walking with Andrew Hunter on the
afternoon that the Nancy materialized
in the bay. At first they both thought it was the Nanina, “but Captain Hunter, when he looked at her through his
spy-glass, saw that she was an armed vessel.” Matters deteriorated even further
after Lieutenant D’Aranda stepped on
shore, marched up to Hunter, and told him to consider himself a prisoner of
war.
This took Holt considerably aback. As he said, “Here
was an upside-down turn in the ministry, which put us all in a quandary, for
much as I wished for a deliverance from Eagle Island, I regretted that any
thing unfortunate should happen to those who had so well treated us, and who
had acted in every respect like men and Christians.” He was inclined to think
badly of Lieutenant Lundin, who had not just piloted the gun-brig to the
island, but had given him the details of these Americans who had done their best
to save the castaways. “I could not help thinking this a hard case, considering
their conduct to distressed British subjects.”
Captain Hunter responded to his arrest with remarkable
aplomb. “Very well,” he said with a shrug. “Many a good man has been a
prisoner.” Joseph Holt recovered well
too, inviting Laudin and D’Aranda to his house, where Hester Holt had a tea
ready, and a decanter of wine was produced. Next day, Holt went on board the Nancy, to be puffed up with pride when
he saw the crew all aloft, overhauling the rigging after the rough passage, a sight he mistook to be the manning of the
yards that was the usual compliment to an admiral or a general. After that, feeling
much more at home with the strange social situation, he was unmoved when the
shallop returned, and the Americans who had been sent here to help with the
salvage were arrested.
The Nanina was
spied coming into the harbor in the early morning of June 15, to be met by the
shallop and overrun by a British party. The British marines were greatly surprised to find that the brig was already in British hands, but Lieutenant D’Aranda
did not seem to think that Mattinson’s act of piracy was reprehensible in the
slightest—though there was some argument when Mattinson reckoned that he, not D’Aranda, was entitled to the prize money.
Valentine Barnard and Barzillai Pease were duly arrested as prisoners of war,
and then brought on shore to be housed with their fellow captains in Holt’s
house.
Despite the overcrowding, “I felt for them, with all my
heart,” said Holt; “and tried to make them as comfortable as I could, in their
misfortune.” He felt particularly sorry
for Valentine Barnard, who lost his son
as well as his ship—”I think that leaving these men on the island, was a
disgrace to the British flag, and much worse in every respect than the seizure
of the Nanina, considering the humane
service on which she was employed,” he wrote, but at the time he kept his mouth
shut, it not being politic to express an opinion.
Joseph Holt and
his family were assigned to the Nancy for
the voyage to England, but he made sure of an opportunity to visit Joanna Durie
on the Nanina. Their benefactors had
been treated dismally, he found—”plundered of their feather-beds, which were
ripped open, and the feathers let fly away with the wind, and boat sails made
of the ticken.” While it might have been a revelation to Holt that American
sealers slept in such luxury, it was evident that they had put the feathers of
the birds they had shot and eaten to good use—and, to an Irishman, who came
from a country where a featherbed was considered an acceptable marriage dowry,
this was a scandal. Worse still, the
Americans had had their grog stopped, and their other rations halved, even
though they were forced to work—”which I always thought was contrary to the
treatment of prisoners of war, but the longer a man lives the more he learns.”
What Joanna Durie did not tell him is that, as
opportunistic and resourceful as ever, she had joined in the looting as soon as
she had realized where the power in the camp now stood. As the American captains reported later, she
rifled Charles Barnard’s chest in the confusion, after D’Aranda declared a prize
of war, and then graciously presented the instruments to the British commander,
in an endeavor to curry favor. Not
knowing this, Holt then applied to D’Aranda to sail on the Nanina instead of the Nancy,
and the English captain agreed, though very reluctantly. If Holt had done this
because he thought the entertaining Mrs. Durie would be good company at the
cabin table, he was gravely mistaken, and the Duries sailed on the Nancy, and Holt’s companions were
Lieutenant Lundin and Lundin’s mistress, Mary Ann Spencer, who had already been
on the brig a rather long time, as Joanna’s servant. The American captains were
on board as well, but they were forced to live in the hold.
The Nanina
sailed on July 27, straight into a gale of wind—and it was then that Holt found
that the brig was without nautical instruments, not even being equipped with a
compass, because of Joanna’s thievery. If
it had not been for the pilotage of “that fine old fellow,” Valentine Barnard,
and the exertions of the American seamen, the brig would have been lost. As it was, it was a close-run thing. When the
prize-master, Midshipman John Marsh, tried to enter the River Plate, as
instructed by D’Aranda, the sealing brig was blown far out to sea,
instead. When the storm subsided the
brig was nearer Rio de Janeiro, so he steered for that port instead.
Rio was finally fetched on August 23, and once at
anchor, the American captains came on deck. “I shook hands with them, and
thanked them for all the service they had done me,” said Holt, and then offered
to carry letters on shore. This was
gratefully accepted by the three captains, a development that proved to be very
bad luck for D’Aranda, who was meantime steering the Nancy, with the Duries on board, to Montevideo. Letters were written to General Thomas
Sumpter, the United States Minister of Plenipotentiary, and after Holt had
given them to him, he consulted with the British Commander-in-Chief, Admiral
Dixon. They both agreed that it was a very bad show, and Dixon vowed to do
something about it. Accordingly, Admiral Dixon marched on board and released
the sealing captains, who went on shore and sought out the American commercial
agent, who witnessed their swearing of a formal protest that went all the way
to the Department of State.
On the gun brig Nancy
the Duries were having a very rough passage, but at least the brig made it
to Montevideo, though with half the crew down with scurvy. There, Joanna and
Robert and their two daughters took passage to Scotland, where they took up
residence in Edinburgh. The little girl
who had been born on Eagle Island was christened Eliza Providence Durie the
following year, in February 1814, when she was just one year old. Months later,
so tardily that there must be some unknown reason for it, Joanna and Robert
Durie wrote a letter to the Admiralty, commending Lieutenant D’Aranda, “this
meritorious officer to whose determined perseverance in surmounting every
obstacle towards effecting our relief we are so much indebted.”
By great coincidence, the Secretary of the Admiralty at
the time was the same Mr. Croker who edited Joseph Holt’s semi-literate memoir
some years later. He already knew a
great deal about the Isabella affair
when the Duries’ letter arrived, probably not just because he had read so many
affidavits, but also because he had heard the story verbally from Holt himself,
the “General” being one of his neighbors in Ireland. Curtly noting on the letter that “their Lordships have already been
informed of Lieutenant D’Aranda’s conduct,” he set it aside.
People were to be informed of Robert Durie’s conduct,
too. It was November 1814, and Charles
Barnard, one of the most famous castaways in history, was about to be rescued
from the sub-Antarctic—free to publish his opinion of “the baseness, the
treachery and barbarity of a Higton, a Durie, and his sentimental lady, who, to
obtain her desires, was equally willing to call to her aid a tear, or a bayonet.” Barnard was convinced that Robert Durie—whom
he called “Sir Jerry”—was behind Mattinson’s seizure of the brig, and the
abandonment of the four men who were hunting on Beaver Island. He, Barnard claimed, was the ringleader—”Fourteen
armed Royal marines had been placed under his command,” but did he lift a
finger to prevent the treachery? No, he did not.
Behind Durie was the malign influence of his wife—”This
contemptible Sir Jerry had surrendered all his manliness to his lady wife, for
safekeeping, for the sake of being occasionally warm at a dinner party or
review,” Charles wrote. “He had emasculated himself in feeling, and was a mere
puppet that moved as she pulled the strings, so it was she that actually held
the balance ... Madam Durie governed the automaton Durie, he the marines, and
they the sailors and passengers.”
Perhaps, he went on bitterly, the British Government would applaud their
action in countenancing both the seizure of the Nanina and the abandoning of the five men, and maybe even put up a
monument in Westminster Abbey—”But I am perfectly willing that the infamy of
their conduct shall be divided between the chicken-hearted Durie and his
lion-hearted wife.”
The future was
to prove that Joanna Durie remained as opportunistic as ever. When, she was widowed for the second time, in
1825, she had no hesitation in calling on the aid Prince Frederick, Duke of
York, the Commander in Chief of the Army, by reminding him of her great ordeal
on Eagle Island.
“On 10 February, 1813, our ship was wrecked on one of
the uninhabited Falkland Islands in the Pacific and on 20th I was
delivered of my eldest daughter which circumstances connected with our forlorn
situation rendered my case the more extraordinary to compassion,” she fluently
wrote. And now, as she frankly admitted,
she needed money—”Your Memorialist concludes in the hope that your Royal
Highness will take her memorial into consideration and grant her with her four
children such pension as your Royal Highness may think proper.”
Whether she got her pension or not is lost to history, but that she was still willing “to call to her aid a tear” is yet another demonstration that Joanna Durie was as dogged a survivor as Charles Barnard himself.
Sources: Wreck of the Isabella by David Miller (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1995) is a well-researched and thoroughly entertaining account of the wreck and its aftermath, and provides excellent background to the setting, the ships, and the major characters. I also used Joseph Holt’s Memoirs of Joseph Holt, edited by Thomas Crofton Croker, and published in London in 1838, which is readily available on the internet. Caution had to be taken, as the memoir was not just semi-literate, but also very self-serving, Holt being a very vain, touchy character who insisted on portraying himself as the great hero. Additionally, the editor took great liberties with the manuscript, to make Holt seemed better educated and more genteel (and perhaps a lot more pious) than he actually was. There is a more accurate version of Holt’s memoir, A Rum Story, edited by Peter O’Shaughnessy (Australia: Kangaroo Press, 1988), but unfortunately it covers only his thirteen years in New South Wales. Also see the entry in Australian Dictionary of Biography. Charles H. Barnard published an account of the wreck and his ordeal after marooning in 1836, as A Narrative of the Sufferings and Adventures…. This has been edited and published with a commentary by Bertha S. Dodge, as Marooned, being a Narrative of the Sufferings and Adventures …(New York: Syracuse University Press, 1986). I used the original version.
Wreck
of the Isabella by David Miller (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute
Press, 1995) is a well-researched and thoroughly entertaining account of the
wreck and its aftermath, and provides excellent background to the setting, the
ships, and the major characters. I also
used Joseph Holt’s Memoirs of Joseph
Holt, edited by Thomas Crofton Croker, and published in London in 1838, which
is readily available on the internet.
Caution had to be taken, as the memoir was not just semi-literate, but
also very self-serving, Holt being a very vain, touchy character who insisted
on portraying himself as the great hero. Additionally, the editor took great
liberties with the manuscript, to make Holt seemed better educated and more
genteel (and perhaps a lot more pious) than he actually was. There is a more
accurate version of Holt’s memoir, A Rum
Story, edited by Peter O’Shaughnessy (Australia: Kangaroo Press, 1988), but
unfortunately it covers only his thirteen years in New South Wales. Also see
the entry in Australian Dictionary of
Biography. Charles H. Barnard published an account of the wreck and his
ordeal after marooning in 1836, as A
Narrative of the Sufferings and Adventures…. This has been edited and published with a
commentary by Bertha S. Dodge, as Marooned,
being a Narrative of the Sufferings and Adventures …(New York: Syracuse
University Press, 1986). I used the original version.
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