Hindsight is not only 20/20 as we see the past with clearer eyes, but if properly analyzed, hindsight can reveal connections we did not notice as they were happening but whose importance is seen only when looking back, often making it clear that seemingly unrelated people, places, and things, if not accidentally stumbled upon may have gone and may continue to go unseen and unknown.
Let me explain.
A few years before moving to New Bedford, I began volunteering as a docent at the Edward Gorey House Museum when I retired for a bit on Cape Cod. The House is known to most, especially tourists, because of Edward Gorey while long time locals know it as having been owned by a sea captain in the area of Route 6A in Yarmouthport known as Captains’ Mile. Way back in time, unlike today, there were few trees between what is now Route 6A and the Port of Yarmouth, so sea captains were able to see the port and their ships from a comfortable distance.
For reasons varying from not liking how the Plymouth Plantation was being run to a possible commission of a crime, the Hawes family, alternatively spelled “Howes”, left the Plantation and moved to what is now Yarmouthport where Ebenezer Hawes would marry Thankful Thatcher, the daughter of the town’s leading landowner, in 1819. Because Ebenezer was a sea captain and would be away for weeks at a time, the Thatchers, whose descendants still live in the ancestral home next to the Yarmouthport Commons on Strawberry Lane, built a small Cape Cod style house for the bride and new mother where they could keep an eye on her and her son William Thatcher Hawes and be there for her when the husband was away.
From 1820 to its purchase by Edward Gorey in 1978, the house had stayed in the family until the 20th Century when it was purchased as a summer home by a family who grew tired of it over time as it had grown from a simple Cape Cod style house to a large sprawling, unheated house with multiple additions and remodels, and was eventually abandoned by the time Gorey purchased it.
Since my mother was a Hawes whose parents came to the United States from Nova scotia, having the same name in the family and my grandfather’s father having been a steam ship captain on the Nova Scotia/Boston run, I found it quite the coincidence that I was a docent at a museum I had known connected to one name, that of its last owner, only to find out after a while that it was built for someone named Hawes. I would add this little trivia to my tours to give the patrons a wider perspective on the building itself along with its Gorey contents.
Because of that Henry VIII business, part of the Hawes family had remained Catholic while part went Church of England, and as the Hawes family is listed on one of the Mayflower’s passenger lists, I assumed the Yarmouth family was from the Protestant side of the family. Considering the relevant dates like 1620 when the Pilgrims arrived and 1635 when the Hawes family moved to the Cape, I felt while there may be a relation through blood, distant though it might be, there was a chasm between branches caused by religion.
When I moved to New Bedford, although I continued to do my once-a-week docent work at the Gorey House, I volunteered at the New Bedford Whaling Museum where I transcribe old historical documents most often Ship log books.
After finishing one ship’s log I had been working on a few years back, not many, I was given a list of logs to chose from, and on the list was the ship Arnolda captained by William Thatcher Hawes, the son of Ebenezer and Thankful, and the raison d’etre for the existence of the Gorey House.
Small world about to get even smaller.
Most old sea captains, although great at what they did ship-wise had little formal education and although they might have followed the standard structure of log entries with the inclusion of dates, weather, longitude and latitude, and what luck they may or may not have been having regarding whales spelling was often phonetic and inconsistent which requires digital transcription for the sake of those who do not have the time to decipher each captain’s unique spellings and sentence structure. For his part, William Thatcher Hawes wrote in such a way that each syllable of every multisyllabic word was treated as an individual word which causes confusion in words such as “a gain” being either one word “again” or two which would change the meaning of the whole entry, and spelled his words according to the old Cape Cod regional accent which I recognized having spoken with people on Cape Cod whose families had been there for generations, if not centuries, and who were content never to cross the Cape Cod Canal onto the mainland. Usually transcribing alone in a room, I got to read the log entries out loud as I typed them and could enjoy hearing the old dialect.
The Yarmouth Hawes family had relatives who had moved to the Old Dartmouth Land Purchase, part of which would eventually become both New Bedford and Fairhaven, and who were also involved with ships.
Jonathan Chapen Hawes of Fairhaven was a whaler whose middle name is a nod to Cape Cod Connections. In the first half of the 1860s cousins William Thatcher Hawes of the Arnolda and Jonathan Capen Hawes of the Milo had been out on years long whaling voyages to the Northern Pacific when on May 28, 1865 their paths crossed which is a good indication that with these two ships among many passing each other in one area when there was such a huge ocean to sail around on, this is where the whales were plentiful so the possibility of a meet-up was actually very likely.
After transcribing the entry for the day when William had “spoke” the Barque Mercury and learned that its captain had died two months before, leaving his wife and kid still on board, I continued on to the next entry where William Thatcher Hawes noted,
“28 day of May spoke the Mercury and the Milo nothing this season the Latter part rain and snow Laying a round the icy the 2 ships in sight. So Ends”.
For his part, in his log Jonathan Capen Hawes of the Milo had entered,
“Saturday, May 28, 1865, begins with strong breeze from NE heading on opposite tacks by the wind under double reefs. 7 sails in sight middle working up to the 7 sails in latter laying aback on opposite tacks gaming ship Arnolda and B Mercury of NB.”
Just two routine log entries recording a conversation by two cousins meeting in the Northern Pacific whaling field after which the two ships parted on their way.
25 days later, June 23, 1865, the Milo was captured by the Confederate ship Shenandoah that had become the scourge of the North Pacific/Arctic whaling field throughout the Civil War, and was bonded for $46,000, and released with the large number of prisoners that had been acquired during the day as the Confederate ship captured whaling vessels and then burned them after having taken the crew on board as prisoners. The Milo sailed into the nearest port, discharged its collection of “prisoners”, and business being business, sailed back out for whales.
Although the Civil War had ended on May 9, 1865, two weeks before the two cousins spoke, and 6 weeks before the Milo’s capture, it was 1865 and word did not travel all that fast.
The Milo thus became, technically, the last Union ship captured by the, at that very moment, defunct Confederacy.
As the log relates,
“Friday June 23 1865, begins with light breeze. Raised a sail heading right for us, spoke us, and ordered all hands on board their vessel which proved to be the privateer Shenandoah confederate cruiser finally boarded the Milo and put on board the crews from the B Euphrate’s, Wm. Thompson, B Swift’s, Sophia Thornton and B Abigail the former burnt in sight of Cape Thaddeus. The latter part employed in sitting out provisions from ship Sophia Thornton, went through, set fire to the ship, and put sail for San Francisco, the pirates staying with us til 7 ½ oclk when she raised sails and started in pursuit of several ships in sight which will probably fall to the Shenandoah.”
On Friday August 12, 1865, William Thatcher Hawes learned what had befallen his cousin after they had spoke in May and noted in his log that the day
“commences with strong winds from the NNE to North heading NW in company with the Mount Wallinston. At 2 am raised 2 Barques standing to the ENE. at 3 wore ship (turned it so it faced the opposite direction) to the ENE ,saw the Mount Walliston. Spoke the Stephany of N Bedford. At 8 am we spoke her. She told us the news of the Shanador [sic] lieving a month before. Latter part fresh gales took in jib and courses. So Ends.”
We were assigned the business letters of a whaling company written by hand around the Civil War years which included such information as the name of ships, the most probable location at any given time, currency exchange rates, the price to demand for bone, baleen, and oil in a fluctuating war-time economy, and anything else that needed to be dealt with when involved in international shipping and whaling.
These letters are in no way directly connected with the Hawes cousins. Neither mastered a Knowles owned ship, but as if it was some Kevin Bacon Degrees of Separation thing, these letters can be added to the series of coincidences going back to when the Gorey House was originally built as a home for the infant William Thatcher Hawes.
The owners of ships had a general idea where their ships should be at different times during different whale seasons, so letters were sent to the anticipated port to be arrived at within a specific time period banking on nothing interrupting the planned itinerary. There was always the chance for unforeseen circumstances such as when the price of a needed product for which a certain sum of money was set aside became more expensive, or a ship sustained damage and would not arrive until late if at all.
Timing was at the mercy of nature, and, as happens in other areas, correspondence crossed in the mail.
World travelers have encountered “mailboxes” containing addressed unmailed letters at certain odd locations like Patagonia where the expectation is that a person take one of the letters and mail it when they get near a post office, or deliver it in person and meet someone, replacing it with one of their own.
Such “mailboxes” existed in many out of the way places where a whale ship might make a stop in an isolated area to forage for provisions to be added to what was already on board. Letters placed there went in both directions and the boxes stood in for post offices like they had in places like Honolulu.
During the Civil War, ship owners in New Bedford were concerned about the war’s effect on their business and would often inquire about the Confederate presence half a world away or to offer caution based on what was known at the time of the letter being written and sent.
On August 8. 1865, Thomas Knowles of the company bearing his name wrote to his ship, the Minerva, mastered by Captain E. Penniman and expected to arrive in Honolulu by a particular date expressing concern and caution.
“Dear sir;
We have not received a line from you since you left, but have heard of your being at Cape De’ Verds, also Feby 10thas being off the Chatham Islands. As we have heard of the “Confederate” “Shenandoah” destroying whalemen in the Arctic we were anxious for the safety of the Minerva, although we are mostly covered by war risk. But if taken, the Premiums for the Insurance, the Interest and loss of prospect of a voyage would make a loss Equal to one half of the investment; Therefore, we are now in hopes that you concluded to stop on N. Zealand this year. The war has been over for three months, yet the Pirate at the North from the East Indies had not been officially informed of it when burning in June, and we fear he may destroy many more of the ships and break up the Season for the rest. In any case, oil and bone, which have advanced largely since the news, will be much higher in consequence for a long time to come; therefore we wish you to impress every opportunity of shipping oil & bone home for the first 20 mos. Should you obtain them, at fair freight, & advising us of the same.
The Shenandoah burnt our Bk. Edward off Tristan d’Achunah, Decr 4t.Thinking you might meet her we got $10.000 more war Insurance in consequence. The Minerva’s repairs & outfits were $39.000. We hope you may be fortunate in obtaining oil as it will bring high prices and may Enable us to make something more than a saving on so high cost a ship. Most articles are lower now, but those ship out & getting oil will get high prices if it arrives home within 12 mos. We have 500 Bbls new casks sent out for Bk Tamerlane last year, in hands of CL Richards&Co Honolulu. If you have room and they are notsold or taken by the Isabella when you receive this we wish you to take them onboard and use or sell them. They cost us 10 cts pr Gall. landed there & suppose they are at an expense of storage. Worth here $2.25 per Bbl.
Tho. Knowles&Co for T.H.K”
That letter was written over a month after the events in the Milo log.
I became a docent at the Edward Gorey Museum in Yarmouthport because I was living on Cape Cod year-round and welcomed something to do during the down time of the off-season winter months especially as I like Gorey’s work and his having been one of my influences as I grew up and improved my cartoon skills. There was no necessity to be a docent, just a whim, especially when because the art space I had been volunteering at changed its focus and closed as an art gallery to become something I could never quite figure out, I looked for something else to help my entrance as a cartoonist into the local arts community and away from being “a retired teacher” when all I really wanted in life was to be a well known cartoonist.
Had that space not closed, all the above could have remained unknown forever.
Had I not gone to Gorey, the chain of Hawes connections from the Protestant part of the family’s arriving at Plymouth and my grandfather’s Catholic branch having arrived in Nova Scotia that were joined at the house on Strawberry Lane through me and from which point seemingly unrelated events and people were found to have been somehow connected, a fact that might have gone totally missed if there had not been a totally coincidental connection between my grandfather and dusty documents in the Whaling Museum Library that would have gone unconnected because the key was not seen.
Making this connection even more fascinating is that the sources of information and the things that connect it all, have absolutely no relation with each other as far as reason for being and purpose.
My Hawes history is not that of the Yarmouthport or Fairhaven Haweses.
Both Hawes branches had a connection to the sea : the whaling Hawses as ship masters and my great grandfather as the captain of a new England coastal steamship.
Neither sea captain planned it, but with the logs of the Milo and the Arnolda we have a real time acccount of the before, during, and after of the Milo’s capture by the Shenandoah.
Although neither Jonathan Capen Hawes nor William Thatcher Hawes were employed by Knowles & co. of New Bedford and so were not directly addressed in correspondence, the circumstances against which Mr. Knowles was cautioning his ships involved the Hawes Cousins in different ways, the connections of all of this coming about because an unrelated Hawes descendant just by coincidence happened to be the one person tasked with dealing with a set of unrelated documents all having an unknown connection to the Gorey House.
That is why, as boring as it might sound if it is reduced to just typing out old handwriting, wading through old documents as a volunteer with the freedom to investigate something that piques their interest to see where it goes opens history and makes intergenerational connections between the past and present that some in the future can now see.
In this case, a bit of minor information passed on by the Director of the Gorey House in answering a tourist’s asking if the original structure of the Gorey House was owned by a sea captain as so many houses in the area had been,
“Captain Ebenezer Hawes who died at sea and married the daughter of the family that still lves in the big house on the corner,”
hit the first domino.
Transcribing old documents is like archeology. Sometimes you find what you were hoping to find, and sometimes, instead of that, you find something else that could be even better.
That is why I will one day explain the connection between Irish Independence, a baseball game, and a quasi-Drag Ball.
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