(Do read this true story below as related by the intended victim. It is preceded by a history of whaling which is how this man who was almost eaten got to these savage islands and was captured.)
“There she blows!” cried the lookout, sighting the great white whale, Moby Dick.
The classic book, Moby Dick, was written by New England author Herman Melville, published in 1851. In the novel, Captain Ahab, driven by revenge, sailed the seas to capture this great white whale who had bitten off his leg in a previous encounter.
In the 1956 film Moby Dick, actor Gregory Peck played Captain Ahab. Ahab finally caught up with Moby Dick in the Pacific Ocean. As fate would have it, when the harpoon struck Moby Dick, the rope flew out so fast it snagged Ahab, pulling him out of the boat. Entangled in the harpoon ropes on the side of the great whale, the revenge-filled Captain Ahab was pulled underwater several times till finally to his death.
The angered Moby Dick then sinks the Pequod. The only survivor was Ismael, who spoke a line from the Book of Job, “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”
Melville drew inspiration for his novel from the real life fate of a whaling ship from Nantuket, the Essex. In 1820, under the command of Captain George Pollard, Jr., the Essex chased an enormous sperm whale thousands of miles west of South America. The whale destroyed the ship, and killed most of the sailors. The remaining sailors, enduring gruesome starvation, attempted to sail their whaleboat thousands of miles to land. Only eight survived.
The story of the Essex was written down by its first mate, Owen Chase, and the cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson. Nathaniel Philbrick retold the account in his award-winning book, In the Heart of the Sea (Viking Press, 2000), which was turned into a movie in 2015, directed by Ron Howard.
Whales were hunted primarily for their blubber, which was boiled down into whale oil. This was the main source of oil throughout the early 1800s. Whales were being hunted to the verge of extinction.
Fortunately for the whales, in 1859, “Colonel” Edwin Drake drilled “The Drake Oil Well” on his Pennsylvania farm. Soon the petroleum industry in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma developed which extracted oil from the earth, thus “saving the whale” from begin hunted to extinction.
Decades later, Winston Churchill switched the British Navy from burning coal to oil. Britain had limited sources of oil, such as one small oil field located in the Sherwood Forest of Nottinghamshire, and another in the British Crown Colony of Trinidad. Oil was discovered in the Middle East, and in 1908, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was formed, which later changed its name to British Petroleum (BP).
One of the fears of sailing distant seas was being shipwrecked on an island where there was cannibalism. This was first recorded on Columbus’ second voyage, and resulted in the naming of the “Caribbean Sea.” “Caribe is the Spanish word for “piranha,” a razor-toothed carnivorous fish of South America. It was also the name given to a ferocious tribe that migrated from South America, which depopulated one island after another, cannibalizing the peaceful native inhabitants.
Cannibalism occurred mostly in the Pacific Islands. British Captain Cook first landed in Hawaii in 1778. Soon after, whaling and navy ships stopped there. Some of their muskets and small swivel cannons were stolen or were bartered to natives.
With the help of these, King Kamehameha won his battles to conquer and unite all of the Hawaiian Islands. His wife, Queen Ka’ahumanu, ended human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. She changed the kapu-taboo religion and replaced it with Christianity brought to Hawaii by American missionaries.
The story of how missionaries arrived in Hawaii begins in 1807, when the American whaling ship Triumph left Hawaii for New England. Two Hawaiian boys had stowed away aboard the ship, Henry Opukahai’a and Thomas Hopu. Through their movement to New England, they heard the Gospel and converted to Christianity. Their stories inspired Hiram and Sybil Bingham to begin a missionary movement to the Pacific islands in 1820.
In 1822, African-American Betsey Stockton went to Hawaii on the second ship of Christian missionaries, being the first single female missionary sent out from America. Betsey was the teacher at the very first mission school in Hawaii for common people.
In 1840, the whaling ship Acushnet left New England. On board with the crew was the young Herman Melville on his first whaling voyage. Herman Melville, born August 1, 1819, was the grandson of a Boston Tea Party “Indian.” At the age of 12, his father died. His mother raised him, inspiring his imagination with biblical stories.
The Acushnet, after a year and a half at sea, visited the Marquesas Islands in the Southern Pacific. The Marquesas Islands are considered by some as the remotest place in the world. They were first visited by American Maritime Fur Trader Joseph Ingraham in 1791, who named them Washington Islands.
At the Marquesas Islands, Herman Melville and his friend, Toby, jumped ship from the Acushnet, and deserted. They climbed up high into the island mountains to avoid being arrested and carried back to the ship. His friend, Toby, injured his leg in a fall. They unfortunately fell among the cannibals there, where Melville and his friend were given sumptuous food and were befriended by a beautiful tribal maiden. Tribesmen adamantly forbade them from trying to leave the village. They had “other plans” for them.
(Yes, that is the Herman Melville that later wrote Moby Dick.)
Just before a big native feast, Melville’s friend, Toby, suspiciously disappeared. Melville was not allowed to be at the feast. Afterwards, when Melville inquired about his friend’s whereabouts, the tribesmen quickly changed the subject, leading Melville to suspect he was eaten.
When a small boat piloted by a passing native providentially came close to shore, Melville fought his way into the water and climbed into it, barely escaping with his life. He wrote of the experience in his first book, Typee (1846), concluding: These disclosures will lead to ultimate benefit to the cause of Christianity in the Sandwich Islands.”
When Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian led mutiny on the HMS Bounty, April 28, 1789, Captain William Bligh sailed for two months in a small life boat 3,500 miles from Tahiti past the Fiji Islands to Kupang, Indonesia, writing in his journal that they dared not to stop at any land along the way out of fear of being eaten by cannibals.
In 1853, a native Hawaiian, Samuel Kauwealoha, sailed as a Christian missionary from Hawaii to the Marquesas Islands where he planted churches and started schools.
Another missionary from Hawaii to the Marquesas Islands was James Kekela. In 1864, James Kekela rescued an American seaman from death at the hands of hungry cannibals in the Marquesas Islands. In gratitude, Abraham Lincoln sent James Kekela an inscribed gold watch.
Robert Louis Stevenson related the story in his book, In The South Seas when he visited the Marquesas Islands in 1888-89: “During my stay at Tai-o-hae a whole fleet of whale-boats came from Ua-pu. On board of these was Samuel Kauwealoha, one of the pastors, a fine, rugged old gentleman, of that leonine type so common in Hawaii. He entertained me with a tale of one of his colleagues, James Kekela, a missionary in the great cannibal isle of Hiva-oa.
It appears that shortly after, a kidnapping visit from a Peruvian slaver arrived. The boats of an American whaler put into a bay upon that island, were attacked, and made their escape with difficulty, leaving their mate, a Mr. Jonathan Whalon, in the hands of the natives.
The captive, with his arms bound behind his back, was cast into a house; and the chief announced the capture to James Kekela.”
Robert Louis Stevenson continued relating the story of Mr. Whalon’s rescue from the cannibals: “In return for his act of gallant charity, James Kekela was presented by the American Government with a sum of money, and by President Lincoln personally with a gold watch.
From his letter of thanks, written in his own tongue by James Kekela, I give the following extract. I do not envy the man who can read it without emotion:
‘When I saw one of your countrymen, a citizen of your great nation, ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten, I ran to save him, full of pity and grief at the evil deed of these benighted people. I gave my boat for the stranger’s life. It became the ransom of this countryman of yours, that he might not be eaten by the savages who knew not Jehovah.”
The New York Times published the article “Lincoln and the ‘Cannibals'” by Jeffrey Allen Smith, Feb. 25, 2014: “The American whaling ship Congress from New Bedford, Mass dropped anchor. Sailors lowered two longboats loaded with trade goods, and a small detachment of men led by the first officer, Jonathan Whalon, rowed toward the beach in Puamau Bay.
Foolishly, Whalon went ashore alone with the Marquesans. Once well inside the tree line, the Paumau men seized Whalon, stripped him of his clothes and bound him. Tribal members reportedly pinched him, tweaked his nose, bent his fingers back over his hands, menacingly swung hatchets at him and eventually began building a fire with which to cook him. A Hawaiian missionary improbably named Alexander Kaukau (Kaukau is Hawaiian pidgin for “food” or “to eat”) and Bartholomen Negal, a local German carpenter, tried and failed to dissuade Mato, the Paumau chief, from killing Whalon.
Fate interceded with the arrival of another Hawaiian missionary, James Kekela, the first Hawaiian ordained as a Christian missionary and Kaukau’s senior. He had fortuitously just returned from a neighboring island to reports of a ‘white man is about to be roasted.'”
The New York Times article continued: Kekela donned his black preacher’s jacket and, with only his Bible in hand, set off for Mato’s village. The negotiations were tense, and at one point Kekela declared he would trade ‘anything and everything he possessed’ for the sailor’s release. Ultimately Kekela purchased Whalon’s freedom with much less: his black preacher’s jacket and his prized whaleboat.
Kekela returned Whalon to the waiting Congress, which sailed to Honolulu, where tales of ‘cannibals’ capturing an American sailor and Kekela’s heroics prompted the American minister to Hawaii, James McBride, to write a note to Secretary of State William H. Seward. McBride’s letter, dated Feb. 26, 1864, detailed the harrowing events in the Marquesas and requested that Seward ‘show to the world we have tender regard for each one of our number, and that we highly, very highly, appreciate such favors.’
Taking almost a month to make its way across the Pacific, the letter arrived on Seward’s desk by April 18, 1864. Three days later Seward replied that he had submitted McBride’s account of the rescue to Lincoln and that the President had ‘instructions’ for the diplomat. McBride was directed to ‘draw on this department for five hundred dollars in gold’ to purchase presents for Whalon’s rescuers.
On Feb. 14, 1865, McBride sent gifts to the Hawaiian missionary Kaukau, the German carpenter Negal and even the young Marquesan girl who warned the sailors in the two long boats. He gave Kekela two new suits and a gold Cartier pocket watch with the inscription, ‘From the President of the United States to Rev. J. Kekela For His Noble Conduct in Rescuing An American Citizen from Death on the Island of Hiva Oa, January 14, 1864’.
Kekela wrote a seven-page letter of thanks in Hawaiian, retelling of how he saved ‘a citizen of your great nation, ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten’. The heartfelt prose in Kekela’s letter to Lincoln moved many, including Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote in his book In the South Seas: ‘I do not envy the man who can read it without emotion.'”
Robert Louis Stevenson recorded the words of James Kekela: “(The Gospel) was planted in Hawaii, and I brought it to plant in this land and in these dark regions, that they might receive the root of all that is good and true, which is love.”
James Kekela concluded: Great is my debt to Americans, who have taught me all things pertaining to this life and to that which is to come. How shall I repay your great kindness to me? Thus David asked of Jehovah, and thus I ask of you, the President of the United States. This is my only payment—that which I have received of the Lord, love-(aloha).'”
Ron(Do read this true story below as related by the intended victim. It is preceded by a history of whaling which is how this man who was almost eaten got to these savage islands and was captured.)
“There she blows!” cried the lookout, sighting the great white whale, Moby Dick.
The classic book, Moby Dick, was written by New England author Herman Melville, published in 1851. In the novel, Captain Ahab, driven by revenge, sailed the seas to capture this great white whale who had bitten off his leg in a previous encounter.
In the 1956 film Moby Dick, actor Gregory Peck played Captain Ahab. Ahab finally caught up with Moby Dick in the Pacific Ocean. As fate would have it, when the harpoon struck Moby Dick, the rope flew out so fast it snagged Ahab, pulling him out of the boat. Entangled in the harpoon ropes on the side of the great whale, the revenge-filled Captain Ahab was pulled underwater several times till finally to his death.
The angered Moby Dick then sinks the Pequod. The only survivor was Ismael, who spoke a line from the Book of Job, “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”
Melville drew inspiration for his novel from the real life fate of a whaling ship from Nantuket, the Essex. In 1820, under the command of Captain George Pollard, Jr., the Essex chased an enormous sperm whale thousands of miles west of South America. The whale destroyed the ship, and killed most of the sailors. The remaining sailors, enduring gruesome starvation, attempted to sail their whaleboat thousands of miles to land. Only eight survived.
The story of the Essex was written down by its first mate, Owen Chase, and the cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson. Nathaniel Philbrick retold the account in his award-winning book, In the Heart of the Sea (Viking Press, 2000), which was turned into a movie in 2015, directed by Ron Howard.
Whales were hunted primarily for their blubber, which was boiled down into whale oil. This was the main source of oil throughout the early 1800s. Whales were being hunted to the verge of extinction.
Fortunately for the whales, in 1859, “Colonel” Edwin Drake drilled “The Drake Oil Well” on his Pennsylvania farm. Soon the petroleum industry in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma developed which extracted oil from the earth, thus “saving the whale” from begin hunted to extinction.
Decades later, Winston Churchill switched the British Navy from burning coal to oil. Britain had limited sources of oil, such as one small oil field located in the Sherwood Forest of Nottinghamshire, and another in the British Crown Colony of Trinidad. Oil was discovered in the Middle East, and in 1908, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was formed, which later changed its name to British Petroleum (BP).
One of the fears of sailing distant seas was being shipwrecked on an island where there was cannibalism. This was first recorded on Columbus’ second voyage, and resulted in the naming of the “Caribbean Sea.” “Caribe is the Spanish word for “piranha,” a razor-toothed carnivorous fish of South America. It was also the name given to a ferocious tribe that migrated from South America, which depopulated one island after another, cannibalizing the peaceful native inhabitants.
Cannibalism occurred mostly in the Pacific Islands. British Captain Cook first landed in Hawaii in 1778. Soon after, whaling and navy ships stopped there. Some of their muskets and small swivel cannons were stolen or were bartered to natives.
With the help of these, King Kamehameha won his battles to conquer and unite all of the Hawaiian Islands. His wife, Queen Ka’ahumanu, ended human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. She changed the kapu-taboo religion and replaced it with Christianity brought to Hawaii by American missionaries.
The story of how missionaries arrived in Hawaii begins in 1807, when the American whaling ship Triumph left Hawaii for New England. Two Hawaiian boys had stowed away aboard the ship, Henry Opukahai’a and Thomas Hopu. Through their movement to New England, they heard the Gospel and converted to Christianity. Their stories inspired Hiram and Sybil Bingham to begin a missionary movement to the Pacific islands in 1820.
In 1822, African-American Betsey Stockton went to Hawaii on the second ship of Christian missionaries, being the first single female missionary sent out from America. Betsey was the teacher at the very first mission school in Hawaii for common people.
In 1840, the whaling ship Acushnet left New England. On board with the crew was the young Herman Melville on his first whaling voyage. Herman Melville, born August 1, 1819, was the grandson of a Boston Tea Party “Indian.” At the age of 12, his father died. His mother raised him, inspiring his imagination with biblical stories.
The Acushnet, after a year and a half at sea, visited the Marquesas Islands in the Southern Pacific. The Marquesas Islands are considered by some as the remotest place in the world. They were first visited by American Maritime Fur Trader Joseph Ingraham in 1791, who named them Washington Islands.
At the Marquesas Islands, Herman Melville and his friend, Toby, jumped ship from the Acushnet, and deserted. They climbed up high into the island mountains to avoid being arrested and carried back to the ship. His friend, Toby, injured his leg in a fall. They unfortunately fell among the cannibals there, where Melville and his friend were given sumptuous food and were befriended by a beautiful tribal maiden. Tribesmen adamantly forbade them from trying to leave the village. They had “other plans” for them.
(Yes, that is the Herman Melville that later wrote Moby Dick.)
Just before a big native feast, Melville’s friend, Toby, suspiciously disappeared. Melville was not allowed to be at the feast. Afterwards, when Melville inquired about his friend’s whereabouts, the tribesmen quickly changed the subject, leading Melville to suspect he was eaten.
When a small boat piloted by a passing native providentially came close to shore, Melville fought his way into the water and climbed into it, barely escaping with his life. He wrote of the experience in his first book, Typee (1846), concluding: These disclosures will lead to ultimate benefit to the cause of Christianity in the Sandwich Islands.”
When Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian led mutiny on the HMS Bounty, April 28, 1789, Captain William Bligh sailed for two months in a small life boat 3,500 miles from Tahiti past the Fiji Islands to Kupang, Indonesia, writing in his journal that they dared not to stop at any land along the way out of fear of being eaten by cannibals.
In 1853, a native Hawaiian, Samuel Kauwealoha, sailed as a Christian missionary from Hawaii to the Marquesas Islands where he planted churches and started schools.
Another missionary from Hawaii to the Marquesas Islands was James Kekela. In 1864, James Kekela rescued an American seaman from death at the hands of hungry cannibals in the Marquesas Islands. In gratitude, Abraham Lincoln sent James Kekela an inscribed gold watch.
Robert Louis Stevenson related the story in his book, In The South Seas when he visited the Marquesas Islands in 1888-89: “During my stay at Tai-o-hae a whole fleet of whale-boats came from Ua-pu. On board of these was Samuel Kauwealoha, one of the pastors, a fine, rugged old gentleman, of that leonine type so common in Hawaii. He entertained me with a tale of one of his colleagues, James Kekela, a missionary in the great cannibal isle of Hiva-oa.
It appears that shortly after, a kidnapping visit from a Peruvian slaver arrived. The boats of an American whaler put into a bay upon that island, were attacked, and made their escape with difficulty, leaving their mate, a Mr. Jonathan Whalon, in the hands of the natives.
The captive, with his arms bound behind his back, was cast into a house; and the chief announced the capture to James Kekela.”
Robert Louis Stevenson continued relating the story of Mr. Whalon’s rescue from the cannibals: “In return for his act of gallant charity, James Kekela was presented by the American Government with a sum of money, and by President Lincoln personally with a gold watch.
From his letter of thanks, written in his own tongue by James Kekela, I give the following extract. I do not envy the man who can read it without emotion:
‘When I saw one of your countrymen, a citizen of your great nation, ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten, I ran to save him, full of pity and grief at the evil deed of these benighted people. I gave my boat for the stranger’s life. It became the ransom of this countryman of yours, that he might not be eaten by the savages who knew not Jehovah.”
The New York Times published the article “Lincoln and the ‘Cannibals'” by Jeffrey Allen Smith, Feb. 25, 2014: “The American whaling ship Congress from New Bedford, Mass dropped anchor. Sailors lowered two longboats loaded with trade goods, and a small detachment of men led by the first officer, Jonathan Whalon, rowed toward the beach in Puamau Bay.
Foolishly, Whalon went ashore alone with the Marquesans. Once well inside the tree line, the Paumau men seized Whalon, stripped him of his clothes and bound him. Tribal members reportedly pinched him, tweaked his nose, bent his fingers back over his hands, menacingly swung hatchets at him and eventually began building a fire with which to cook him. A Hawaiian missionary improbably named Alexander Kaukau (Kaukau is Hawaiian pidgin for “food” or “to eat”) and Bartholomen Negal, a local German carpenter, tried and failed to dissuade Mato, the Paumau chief, from killing Whalon.
Fate interceded with the arrival of another Hawaiian missionary, James Kekela, the first Hawaiian ordained as a Christian missionary and Kaukau’s senior. He had fortuitously just returned from a neighboring island to reports of a ‘white man is about to be roasted.'”
The New York Times article continued: Kekela donned his black preacher’s jacket and, with only his Bible in hand, set off for Mato’s village. The negotiations were tense, and at one point Kekela declared he would trade ‘anything and everything he possessed’ for the sailor’s release. Ultimately Kekela purchased Whalon’s freedom with much less: his black preacher’s jacket and his prized whaleboat.
Kekela returned Whalon to the waiting Congress, which sailed to Honolulu, where tales of ‘cannibals’ capturing an American sailor and Kekela’s heroics prompted the American minister to Hawaii, James McBride, to write a note to Secretary of State William H. Seward. McBride’s letter, dated Feb. 26, 1864, detailed the harrowing events in the Marquesas and requested that Seward ‘show to the world we have tender regard for each one of our number, and that we highly, very highly, appreciate such favors.’
Taking almost a month to make its way across the Pacific, the letter arrived on Seward’s desk by April 18, 1864. Three days later Seward replied that he had submitted McBride’s account of the rescue to Lincoln and that the President had ‘instructions’ for the diplomat. McBride was directed to ‘draw on this department for five hundred dollars in gold’ to purchase presents for Whalon’s rescuers.
On Feb. 14, 1865, McBride sent gifts to the Hawaiian missionary Kaukau, the German carpenter Negal and even the young Marquesan girl who warned the sailors in the two long boats. He gave Kekela two new suits and a gold Cartier pocket watch with the inscription, ‘From the President of the United States to Rev. J. Kekela For His Noble Conduct in Rescuing An American Citizen from Death on the Island of Hiva Oa, January 14, 1864’.
Kekela wrote a seven-page letter of thanks in Hawaiian, retelling of how he saved ‘a citizen of your great nation, ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten’. The heartfelt prose in Kekela’s letter to Lincoln moved many, including Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote in his book In the South Seas: ‘I do not envy the man who can read it without emotion.'”
Robert Louis Stevenson recorded the words of James Kekela: “(The Gospel) was planted in Hawaii, and I brought it to plant in this land and in these dark regions, that they might receive the root of all that is good and true, which is love.”
James Kekela concluded: Great is my debt to Americans, who have taught me all things pertaining to this life and to that which is to come. How shall I repay your great kindness to me? Thus David asked of Jehovah, and thus I ask of you, the President of the United States. This is my only payment—that which I have received of the Lord, love-(aloha).'”
Ron
True Texan Tales 