A RELIGIOUS WHALING WIFE WHO DID HER UTTER BEST

 

 

This story is about Lydia Beebe of Nantucket

Lydia Abby Beebe was the daughter of Lemuel and Mehitable (Conant) Jones, born October 12, 1837. Her husband John A. Beebe was born March 19, 1830 in Nantucket, the son of John M. Beebe and Patience (Allen, second wife) Beebe. The couple were married in July 1857, in Nantucket.

On September 9 John sailed off on his first command, the Governor Carver of Westport, and did not return until June 28, 1860. Then, on October 13, he was off again, as captain of the Brewster of Mattapoisett. Lydia did not see him again until June 30, 1863, so it is little wonder that she sailed the next voyage, Brewster, 1863-5: as she penned in the journal she kept on board, ‘I have not felt for a moment since I started on the voyage that I wished I had not come, I believe this is where I ought to be with my husband in the six years of our married life we lived together about six months and I trust now we shall never be separated again till death parts us.’ 

So it seems that the reason Lydia sailed with John is devotion.  Her motive, however, was quite different.  Lydia Beebe was religious to an extreme.  She was a trad wife, even at sea. She sailed determined not only to convert her husband (a tough proposition) but every man on board his ship.

Her journal on the Brewster is complete and remarkable, because it is mostly a recounting of her earnest attempts to convert the officers and crew to Christianity. While the men on board (not excluding her husband, Captain John Beebe) were a rough and untutored bunch, to her optimistic mind they presented a fallow field. ‘I want my husband and all these men to love and fear God,’ she wrote, and painstakingly recorded her efforts and failures to reform these unlikely subjects. 

‘I had quite a talk with John about Salvation and my prayer is that he may feel sincerely the need of a Savior’s love and take his yoke upon him,’ she wrote on December 13, 1863, and then over the next three days recorded on a rueful note that the reformation of her husband was proceeding no further, because he had taken refuge in the hold  —  ‘only seen him at meal time.’

‘I had quite a talk with Mr. Keith on the subject of religion,’ she recorded on February 14, 1864; ‘he thinks it is about impossible for a man to live his religion at sea but I cannot agree with him for nothing is impossible with God.’ It is fortunate that she never had a chance to read young Marshall Keith’s very private journal. A large part was devoted to complaining about the scanty ‘grub’ and ‘the old woman’ who, he said, ‘slept with the key to the pantry under her head.’  (He also described his wet dreams.)

It was an eventful voyage, to say the very least.  Off the coast of New Guinea, the ship fell in with great shoals of whales.  Swiftly, all the oil casks were full to the brim - but John could not resist killing more. oil was fetching  $2.65 a gallon in the New Bedford (because of a war, in this case the Civil War), and so John ordered the provisions thrown overboard, to free up their casks to hold more oil.  All that hard bread and salt pork and beef, gone.  How the men felt about it was undescribed.  They were all too busy to complain.

John wrote about it later, though - with a sense of wonder.  The hard bread, he said, didn't sink.  Instead, it floated, a strange something to behold. 'The biscuits would float on top of one another,' he mused in print, and the contents of each cask would cover nearly an acre in area. It was a novel sight to look upon. The molasses went down to sweeten the home of the squid and the octopus, while the salt beef and pork, flour etc., became food for the sharks.'

Then fresh water went the same way.  Then at last, the whales vanished, and John set course for home.  But that was not easy, either.  First, they had a close encounter with the Confederate raider Shenandoah (this was the Civil War, when the Southern raiders were chasing and burning every whaleship they could find), and then they had an even closer encounter with a coral reef.

The bow was jammed and the stern was free.  At any instant, the ship would have broken in half.  Any other master would have thrown oil overboard, but not John Beebe.  Instead, he had all the casks shifted aft, and the Brewster was levered free with the boats, kedge anchors, and a lot of sweat and swearing. 

Against all odds, they set on their homeward path again. Tragically, though, they called at the port of Surabaja, Java, and a plague of Asiatic cholera invaded the ship.  Four men died, and many - including Lydia - fell gravely ill. Then, on the homeward passage, they were struck by a storm, and the ship began to fall apart. As they rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the men who were fit enough were set at the pumps, both by night and by day.

Lydia had a sort of reward for her ordeal - when they arrived at the island of St Helena, John took her on a jaunt to Napoleon's tomb.  When they got back to the ship they found that a full mutiny was in progress -- a rebellion that John put down with his fists and a pistol.  

The Brewster finally arrived home in November 1865, on the verge of sinking. And, believe it or not, Lydia sailed again.

Lydia’s second diary, kept on the Xantho,  is incomplete, beginning January 1, 1867, six weeks after sailing, and ends June 25, 1869, five months before the end of voyage, no reason given.  John retired from the sea at the end of the voyage, and served Nantucket in various official capacities before retiring to Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1891. He died there 4 May 1907, and she followed him to the grave almost exactly three years later, April 8, 1910.

Nantucket Vital Records; marriage notice, New Bedford Mercury; Beebe’s history, Evening Standard, Nantucket, December 5, 1905, p. 10, article headlined Blubber Hunters; Starbuck, pp. 550-1, 578-9; Lydia’s journals, NHA; Keith journal PPL, PMB 577.