As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
In reading Richard Henry Dana's epic pulp reality of 2 Years Before the Mast, I found it torture in his "California Hide Trade" saga of the brutality of white slavery on the high seas, and there being too much ship jargon, it was not until the epilogue appeared that I found the book interesting.
The interest was in the melancholy which Dana felt in seeing California a beanerland wilderness of wild cattle in the 1830's and in 1859 AD in the year of our Lord, Dana found thriving cities of hundreds of thousands of people.
For history, San Pedro. San Pedro was the shit hole on the shore. A smaller thing sprung up afterwards a bit inland, which you will know as Los Angeles. Yes things are different and things change. This is the lament for the Ghost of Christmas past as California was gone and yet the present was so strange that it was not home either.
It is in the epilogue that the Dana's record what is of interest in this book. It was the outcome of the people's lives and the ships. As it was put, no animal has a good end, nor does any ship. All the ships were destroyed in one way or another, and for the people, yes there were good people who had successful lives, even the Dana's but they are more sidenote in this than the rule.
Sailors were bottom rung, 15 dollar a month expendables. They were mastered by a Captain who had absolute authority. A slip of anything and you died and that was it. Your sea chest was auctioned off and that was the end of Jack.
Two examples of this are the Captain of the Pilgrim and Alert, a Thompson. Dana's son met his nephew in California at the turn of the century and the nephew related that Thompson was in charge of a family property and tried to swindle the brothers out of it. This may be why he went to sea, but he was no seaman. He was no Captian either, he was a tyrant. He flogged two men with glee and he endeared himself to no one.
This is the prelude to Captain Thompson who was not hired by the company again to sail, and took a ship to the orient for pepper. While there, he loaded a cargo for another ship, got into trouble over that, then the natives of Sumatra complained he was using false weights to weigh the pepper, which they took him hostage to get their money. Thompson would have none of it, they held him 4 days and he then flagged a boat to come and take him.
His end was sealed though as he caught the fever and died while being nursed by a Dana relative who caught the fever too and died in his goodness.
So ended Captain Thompson, a man who refused to get medicine for the men he flogged, left Dana's face swelled to twice it's size from a bad tooth, would not at a sick Hawaiian. He was known by all in America for what he was, and the fever was probably the best measure to end him for the pariah he was.
Thee only reason Dana got home after 2 years on an 18 month promised cruise, which was stated in California would be a 4 year stay, was he has connections in Boston and they would have made trouble for Thompson if Dana had not appeared.
The other is a nameless Jack who Dana knew, and said his name, but he was like all sailors. He sailed, came back to America, took up his penny a day trade in this case a small sailing boat which he ferried people around. It was after this for a few years, that a person who knew him and rode with him, called out his name at the wharf and no answer came. The sailor was dead, the hatch closed over him for the last time as Dana put it, and his boat sold and all was silence.
This epilogue is what life is. We all like thinking about some end that is acceptable, but most of these people suffered, they eeked out a living and then they died and people just forgot about them. It is the way for the majority of people who just make it through life and mercifully life finally ends.
it is better to be an old salt and forgotten though than a man known for being what he was in being selfish and mean like Captain Thompson for an entire generation to loathe and for people afterwards to come across and be reminded of his evil.
I ponder in this melancholy what it must be like in coming before Jesus, with apparently zero things which are Caring. "I was sick", and you left people to suffer and die. "I was employed by you", and you terrorized, cheated and beat me.
Cheating your brothers out of family land. cheating another ship out of pepper, cheating the natives with unjust scales. You can bully your way through and threaten people, but in the end you get what is coming to you and you die and you can not bully Jesus.
As an epitaph in this, Thompson upon gettinng back in his ship after being held hostage, loaded his cannons and gave the bamboo villages a broadside to teach the wogs a lesson. Kind of rough sledding for the next honest American who appears, unaware that someone just blasted these people's homes and killed them, after that someone cheated them.
So I understand the melancholy as the Dana family applied themselves and were moral and good Citizens, in yes the bad people had their ending, but the common sheep had a not very pretty end either due to their situation.
No one can say California is better now than in under Mexican slavery by the Pope in 1840. Civilization came to California and resources and climate made it prosper, but it seemed something was gone to the Danas and it was. Now the predators in human traffick have ruined California to ruin America and the entire infection is completed. The Captain Thompson's push on in the midst of the sheeple who languish in what it is now and die their unknown deaths in the struggle.
It is the human condition. It is the melancholy of the extensions of satan upon the children of men.
Nuff Said
agtG
