The New England Mariner Tradition by Robert A. Geake

Author:Robert A. Geake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2013-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

Hazard, like other historians before her, told of the “transformation” of Rowland Robinson at the sight. He proclaimed it a sin and a shame, and “his tears drowned the oaths that he swore.” Robinson brought his share of twenty-eight slaves to his farm and nursed them back to health, even giving many their freedom. Rowland Robinson’s story has been told and retold as an early example by local historians of how New Englanders “reformed” from their tolerance and even active participation in slavery during the colonial period, though it is difficult to reconcile the treatment of the slaves on his ship during the long journey with the remorse that Robinson showed once home.

For the experienced seaman, there would also be his personal log of “remarkable occurrences,” those events on the water that he had experienced himself, or that he had heard secondhand in the interchange of stories and news from around the Atlantic world. Perhaps one of the most remarkable of these was the story of the vanished crew of the Anna Verona, a merchant ship out of Boston that was found drifting off the coast of Venezuela on August 23, 1821.

One of the large lifeboats was gone, but any supplies the crew might have taken remained on board. The ship’s log was found to contain a shakily written entry from Captain Bennet Robinson dated August 17, when the crew encountered an unknown sea creature:

Ill omens continued to follow our crew. As night gave way to daybreak, Mr. O’Reilly shouted from the crow’s nest that he had espied a mermaid with a comb and a mirror in her hand.

The skies rolled red this morning, never auguring good, and it was half past the seventh bell that first we saw it—in the distance—rearing its head from the choppy waters, as a hungry dog would raise it over a tabletop, upon scenting a particularly aromatic leg of mutton. Its scales were greener than emeralds, its eyes an old and evil yellow, as of parchment left to cook in the sun. Its claws shone bright, as if cut from diamonds, and its tale [sic] thrashed as if possessed upon its own.

How we were able to drive the monster back, I could not tell you. Many is the hour we fired the cannons, barely denting the beast’s skin. We can only pray that we shall not again see its like afore we return to shore.

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