On the 'Keag

At Keag Village, just across the inlet narrows of the Weskeag River, I opened a store and immediately began investing in ships. The new Shipbuilders’ Bank in Rockland held the money I’d earned in California. Now it was set aside for ventures closer to home and with a good choice in captains—more certain than the diggings.

Richard Hayden, Simon Ulmer, Shepard Small and I were the principal owners of the schooner Charles Richard, a vessel of two hundred and thirteen tons. Hayden was her builder, and Ulmer would command her; Small and I had a hand in raising her timbers, as we had done with other vessels before.[1]

She would be a two-masted and fore-and-aft rigged, built for work rather than show, quick to handle and requiring fewer men than the square-rigged ships. Such vessels were well suited to the coastal trade, where a captain must make his way in and out of narrow harbors, feel the tides, and take advantage of shifting winds without waiting on a large crew. There was good money in such work if a man kept his vessel sound and his voyages steady.

Her frame went up in the yard in the old way—keel laid true, ribs rising one by one, each timber shaped to its place. There is a satisfaction in that labor no gold field ever gave me. A ship grows by degrees, and a man may lay his hand upon her and know what he has done.

Yet even as the Charles Richard took form, there was talk among us of something larger. A schooner serves well along the coast, but she is bound to it. We spoke of building a barque—a merchant ship, square-rigged on the fore and main, with a spanker aft—a vessel fit to stand out to sea and make the long passages, carrying freight to whatever port might offer a good return. Such a ship would not be tied to one shore or another, but could follow the trade wherever it led.

And so we laid plans, while the labor was the schooner before us, her timbers rising clean against the sky, and the smell of fresh-cut pine and oak strong in the yard. If all went well for us, we would have a barque launched before the year was out.

When at last the schooner Charles Richard went down the ways and took the water, there was cheering enough, though much work remained to be done from the docks. Masts were stepped and her rigging set up, while beyond the yard the sailmakers stitched her canvas in lofts, the blacksmiths forged her iron, and the chandlers supplied rope, lamps, and all manner of stores, so that in truth—it took a town to put a ship to sea.

Before the schooner's sails were bent, we had set to laying timbers for the barque—one of deeper frame and broader reach—such as might carry beyond the coast and into the longer trades. Robert Kelloch came on as a lesser partner, with the grander position of being her captain. The keel was spoken of, measured, and at last laid, and though the barque had no name yet, we knew well enough what sort of ship she was meant to be.

While I’d been in Hangtown, a young man named Edwin Furness came from Berwick, Maine, to teach school in Thomaston. My youngest sister Louisa was a teacher by that time and it wasn’t long before the two fell in love. But Edwin had his sights on Illinois. He saved his pay, left for the West where he opened a store and quarry in Batavia, Illinois Then, true to his word, he came back to marry Louisa.[2] They exchanged their vows on November 17, 1853, and soon afterward departed.

Autumn was the season when we settled into ourselves again. Along the coast the shipyards still rang with the sound of mallets and saws, but the days turned clear and sharp with the smell of apples and the last of the hay stacked high in the meadows. Evenings brought neighbors together at apple-paring bees or church sociables, where laughter carried into the frosty air and the women set hot doughnuts, beans, and steaming chowder on long tables.

The young girls liked to peel their apples in one long curling strip, careful not to break it, then toss the peel over a shoulder. When it fell to the floor they would crowd round to see what letter the spiral might resemble, for it was said that the shape revealed the first initial of the man they were destined to marry. Much teasing followed when the peel happened to twist itself into the letter of some boy or yet unmarried man standing nearby, and more than one fellow found himself the subject of good-natured laughter.

The agricultural fair drew nearly everyone from St. George, Rockland, and South Thomaston—farmers with their apples, fattened pigs—women showing quilts and preserves, and the shipwrights eyeing a promising pair of oxen or new timber. All my Maine kin gathered there as regularly as the season itself.

The harvest festival followed close after. Churches filled, kitchens steamed, and families made their visits before winter settled in. Those gatherings brought people into each other’s orbit in a natural rhythm—no urgency, no design, only the natural flow of community life.

It was in such a season—at a husking bee, a sociable, or standing near the ring at the fair where the oxen pulled—that my path began to cross more often with Mercy K. Hathorn. Not in any marked way, only the quiet familiarity that drew us beside each other for conversation or a dance. I found myself visiting Samuel and Melia more often than necessary—mostly to see Mercy K., who had grown into a pretty young woman, but not quite old enough to ask her to be my wife.

No sooner had we seen the Charles Richard set to sea with her hold carrying casks of lime for the southern ports where her holds would be emptied, then filled with cotton bound for New York. and Boston— that our attention turned in earnest to the larger venture upon the ways. The barque, now bearing the name Pathfinder, went down true and took the water cleanly, her hull sliding free as the shores were knocked away, and a cheer rising from those gathered along the yard and the docks.[3] She took the tide lightly at first, as all new vessels do.

I stood with Hayden and Small among the others and watched the Pathfinder come to herself in the water, and felt as much weight in that moment as pride. We were listed among her principal owners, and though she was spoken for in part and insured as was prudent, no man could look upon such a vessel without knowing what he had set at hazard. A schooner might keep the coast and make her way in fair season or foul, but this ship, of four hundred and twenty-one tons, was built to stand out and follow the trade wherever it led. Once she was set to sea, she must answer for herself under the command of Captain Kelloch—and for us—upon whatever seas she found. We heaved on the ropes, positioned her against the dock where the second phase of work would begin.

Many an evening we had the captain’s maps and charts spread between us on the table—creased sheets of coasts and soundings, and the broader sailing charts that showed the set of winds and currents across the ocean. Kelloch kept one hand upon them as he spoke, tracing the run south and then eastward, marking where a vessel might stand off or hold in, while Hayden calculated the cargo and the time to be made or lost. It was there, over those maps and charts, that the voyage was first laid out—not in nautical miles alone, but in judgment, risk, and the long habit of the sea.

The Charles Richard appeared on the horizon early December, having completed a sucessful first voyage, eager to fill her holds again and return to the sea.[4]

With the last month of the year upon us, so too was the work on the Pathfinder.

There was no spar timber to be had close by—not such as would serve for a vessel of her size. That had been the case for some years. The good white pine had been cut off along the coast and sent to sea long before we came to build her. So these came from farther in—upcountry timber, brought down by the river drives and taken in hand at the spar yard. Straight, clean sticks, dear enough when all was reckoned, but there is no saving in a mast that will not stand.

They lay along the wharf when I first saw them there, shaped and near ready, though we had the fitting yet to do. We dressed the heels to their steps, saw to the partners, and made all fast that would take the strain once they were up.

The day we stepped the mainmast was a still one, which was a mercy.

We rigged the shearlegs and brought the mast up slow, the men at the falls taking their time with it. There is no place for haste in such work. She rose clean enough, with only a slight turn in her, and we steadied her off and lowered away until she found the step below. There was a moment when she hung, just above her place, and I remember thinking that a man might lose more than timber if it went ill at that point.

But she went down fair and true.

We set the fore and mizzen after, and then went on with the topmasts and yards, each in their turn. From there it was rigging, and plenty of it.

The standing rigging came first—shrouds and stays, heavy and tarred, set up and hauled taut until the masts stood as firm as we could make them. We went over it more than once, setting it up again where it had given a little, for it will do that in the first days. Better to take the time there than pay for it later.

After that came the running gear—halyards, sheets, braces—led where they must go, belayed and coiled down. The deck was a tangle of it for a time, and a man had to mind his step or find himself fast in a turn he had no business in.

The sails were brought down from the loft toward the end of it.

Good canvas, well cut. We bent them in order—courses first, then topsails and above. I was aboard when they loosed the first of them to make it fast. It took the wind for a moment and snapped like a thing alive before it was gathered in again. That is a sound a man does not mistake.

We had her near complete by then, but there is always more to be done.

We caulked what showed above the waterline, paid the seams where they needed it, and saw to the pumps and fittings below. Ballast went in and eighteen hundred casks of lime that would be sold in New Orleans—not just any lime—it was Thomaston lime.[5] All was laid careful so she would sit as she should and each barrel was profit. We tested the windlass, bent the anchors on at last, cables hauled taut and led fair, then the boats were brought aboard and stowed fast. There was a look to her then that she had not worn before—not a vessel on the stocks, but one ready to answer the sea.

Sadly, my father died on January 8, 1855 and would not be on the dock to stand by side and watch the Pathfinder sail out of Penobscot Bay.[6] He was buried in the Village Cemetery, and I turned my attention the last matters at hand.

The provisions began to come aboard. Bedding, hammocks and lamp oil. Barrels of pork and beef, salt enough to keep them. Hard bread in boxes, flour, beans, potatoes, rice, coffee, molasses and rum. Water casks rolled in and chocked fast. It is not fine fare, but it will keep men at their work if it is handled right. The cook came aboard about that time—a steady sort, which is what matters more than talk—and set himself to his galley as though he had always been there.

The crew signed on by degrees.

Some I knew—men out of Rockland and Portland, good hands. Others were strangers to me, though not to the sea. The mates kept the lists and saw them berthed. There is always a mix in such a crew, and you take what you can get, provided they know their business aloft or are fit to learn it.

Captain Kelloch was aboard most days by then, though he left the yard work to us unless there was cause. We spoke often enough—of stores, of what she would carry, of the course as far as it could be laid down beforehand. Captain Kalloch is not a man to waste words, which suited me well enough.

As we came into the final days, the work grew smaller but no less necessary.

There is always something—a block to be seized again, a line to be shifted, a question of stowage to be settled twice over. We tarred down what needed it, saw the rigging set up one last time, and had her name painted clean on the stern. Papers were put in order, and the business of the voyage made as straight as such things ever are.

All the while, I was aboard and ashore both, seeing to what lay within my reach, having Sophie lend a hand to my store on the 'Keag.

We set right what I found amiss, though there was less of that as we went on. A coil ill-laid, a fitting not to my liking, a matter of stores to be checked again. A man does not leave such things to chance when he has a hand in the owning of her.

The morning of departure, as soon as the tide served, there was nothing left to be done that would better her.

She lay easy alongside, her lines still fast.

The crew was already about their work. The anchor had been hove short, and at the word they manned the windlass and brought it up. The chain came in wet and black, link by link, until she was ready to cast off.

I stood aft a while with Captain Kelloch, Richard Hayden and Simon Small. There was little to say.

“She’s ready,” Kelloch said.

“Ayuh,” I said. “As we can make her.”

I left the ship, the gang was lifted from the dock and set. Finally, the lines were cast off from the wharf and brought inboard. The last warp held her a moment longer, and then that too was let go.

She did not start at once. No ship does. She eased, and then the tide took her under the bow and she began to move.

Once clear, they loosed sail.

I watched the men as they cast off the gaskets and let the canvas fall. It took the wind and filled, and she answered it as she should. More sail followed, each in its turn, until she had enough on her to stand out.

That was the end of my part in her.

I had thought, once or twice, of seeing her farther, but there was no call for it.

She stood well—masts true, sails drawing clean, her course set as steady as could be asked.

After that I sighed and turned away.

There was other business before me, nearer at hand. But I knew, as sure as I have known anything, the moment she took her wind in earnest and went out from the land—carrying with her all that we had put into her, and all that we stood to gain or lose by her going.

My sister, Sophia, alone on the homestead decided to move west. By that time Louisa and her husband Edwin Furness had moved to Indiana about forty miles east of Chicago and so, Sophia joined them there, becoming the township of Furnessville's first schoolteacher.[7]

When the days-old Maine newspapers reached my store, I turned at once to the shipping lists to check the arrival and departue notices of my ships and it wasn't until March that we got our first word of the barque Pathfinder.

Knowing the barque Pathfinder had taken most of the month of March to unload the lime for market and purchase a full cargo of cotton,[8] I wouldn't expect to see another notice for many weeks. She was crossing the Atlantic, so my attention turned to the matters of the heart. Mercy K. Hathorne had turned eighteen on January 22, and hadn't let me forget it.

Mercy had been born at Waldoboro in 1837 into a house already full: four half-siblings, nine step-siblings and the hard sea habits of a father who’d been long under sail. Capt. James Hathorn and his brother Capt. Alexander partnered and commanded ships for their brother-in-law, Thomas Halsey Healey of Thomaston. Her father's sister Mercy had married Healey years before, binding the families in the way coastal people often did—by ship, marriage, and tide.[9]

Mercy K. Hathorn had been named for her aunt and why everyone called her Mercy K. Her early years were marked by loss. A half-brother, William Henry Libby, drowned in the mill pond when Mercy was a baby. By the time she was eight, only a few of her step-siblings were still alive. When she was thirteen, her brother Alexander drowned. That same year on Christmas Eve her father came home late and drunk. Rosanna Kalloch Hathorn's patience was gone, she locked the door against him. He lived through the snow that night but the marriage did not. Mercy's sister Penelope went to live with the Torreys and Mercy went to Samuel and Melia Dean after her brother's death and their parent's separation.

Mercy’s mother married Ebenezer Crie, one of the heirs of Matinicus Island, a widower with a whole household of children, not all of them yet grown and by that time, Mercy was well-settled with Samuel and Melia Dean in South Thomaston. Captain James Hathorne died in 1852.

I had made by mind up early that year, though little was said aloud. What lay ahead for me was no longer only the shipyard and the store, but a home I meant to keep, and wife who knew it as well as I. Mercy agreed to marry me and we decided upon an autumn wedding at her mother's home in Waldoboro.

The Pathfinder began to show herself in the newspaper again, and while I knew she would be steady in the sea, one can never be sure of it unless one sees it in print, or her bow sailing into Penobscot Bay.

Ah yes, the Pathfinder had made Elsinore on the 18th—Captain Kelloch bringing her up from New Orleans and standing on for Königsberg. That was as it should be. A vessel outward bound for the Baltic commonly made for the Sound, passing between Denmark and Sweden, where all ships must come under the eye of the Danish authorities before proceeding on. Elsinore was such a port. There she will take her bearings, settle the necessary dues, and the cotton she'd taken on in New Orleans bound for the Prussian markets, where such cargo brought a fair return if the passage held. It is a long reach from the Gulf to the Baltic, and no small satisfaction to know her safely so far advanced upon it.

Pillau—the doorway into Königsberg, nor a more particular one. The had Pathfinder came safe through the Sound and across the Baltic, and was now at the very threshold of her destination. Pillau lay at the mouth of the Frische Haff, a narrow, guarded port where every vessel must come to before passing up the channel to Königsberg itself. It was a place of pilots, customs men, and careful reckonings—no ship went farther without inspection and proper clearance. There she would lighten her concerns, take on a local pilot, and await her turn of tide and channel, for the passage inward was shoal and not to be trusted to a stranger’s hand. Once entered, her cargo—cotton from New Orleans—would find its market inland, and the long voyage from the Gulf to Prussia would be counted a success.

From that Prussian coast, she would take on grain most likely—wheat or rye from the hinterlands—brought down to Königsberg and lightered out to Pillau for loading. At times there was also flax, hemp, or linseed, all of use and value in our trade, though grain was the surer freight. With such a cargo trimmed in her hold, she would be well set.

Aye—Belfast would not be the end of her business, but the turning of it. When I saw her entered there from Memel, I took it she had come down from the Baltic with grain aboard for the Irish market, where there was always demand. But she would not leave Belfast empty, nor near it. That Irish port was known for its manufactures as well as its trade—linen above all, spun from flax, and strong sailcloth fit for the sea, with cordage and rope made from hemp brought in for the purpose. Such goods traveled well, paid steady, and a vessel like the Pathfinder would be well employed taking them on for the homeward run or for another outward market. So the voyage went round—lime from our quarry, cotton from New Orleans to Prussia, grain to Ireland and manufactured goods in return—each leg answering for the last.

We had ships on the ways and being fitted out from the docks. The summer was going merrily along until trouble none of us expected hit the coast. The Ship Builders’ Bank of Rockland—where many men in our trade kept their savings and where credit for timber and wages ran its course—was found to be unsound. The president, Samuel Belcher, and the cashier, A. W. Kennedy, had been trusted with far too much, and the Commissioners’ report made plain enough that Kennedy had managed the affairs of the bank “shamefully,” leaving the directors to face ruin and explanation afterward.[10]

When the bank went down, it carried with it the hopes of more than one family along the central coast of Maine. My own ability to keep investing in shipbuilding came to an end, and the notes in my cash register were suddenly worthless.

After Swansea, I had no expectation she would turn her head for home, least we had not planned for that. In Swansea they would take on coal, for ballast and profit and set their course for the Pacific, and I didn't expect to hear of her passage unless she ran afoul, or met a port that reported ships comings and goings. After the bank failure, I had to pin more hope in that ship than I had at her sailing. If she proved worthy, the farm steady and the store turning a profit, I'd do well enough. By now she was heading down the Atlantic, toward the Cape of the Horn.

My brother Nathaniel, worn down by another spell of melancholy, took his own life on September 12, 1855. It made the newspaper at once, the kind of headline that travels throughout the towns before breakfast. The bank failure, the loss of father, mother and his twin brother proved too much for him to bear. There was no guarding a family from that sort of news, no shelter from the questions and the kindness that follow in equal measure. We bore his death and the manner of it as best we could.

 George and I decided to honor all three of our lost brothers and placed a single stone at Nathaniel's grave.

In memory of our twin brothers


JOSIAH GRAVES

Who died at Mazatlan Harbor

June 1, 1851

aged 25 years & 2 months

His remains rest in the

Presbyterian Cemetery on Creston Island


NATHANIEL GRAVES

Who died at St George

Sept 12, 1855 aged 29 years & 5 months

His remains rest here.

Lovely and affectionate in life,

in death ye were not long divided.


DENNIS GRAVES

Who died at sea Sept 5, 1843 aged 25 years


The sea the blue lone sea hath one,

He sleeps where pearls lie buried deep.

He was the loved of all,

Yet none o'er his low bed may weep.

We meet again

In the difficult weeks that followed Nathaniel's tragic death, I came to understand more clearly the strength in Mercy K.’s nature. She was steady in her way, meeting sorrow without flinching. With loss still close around us, we chose to keep to our plans, believing that life—however fragile—ought to be carried forward with the people given to us. As planned, we traveled to Waldoboro and were married by the Reverend Joseph Kalloch on October 7, 1855.[11]

NOTES

1 History of Thomaston, Rockland, and South Thomaston, Maine, from their first exploration, A. D. 1605; with family genealogies by Cyrus Eaton, p. 105

2 Rockland Courier Gazette, August 7, 1894;, Margaret Graves Butler Obituary; History of Aurora Lodge; p. 1.

3  History of Thomaston, Rockland, and South Thomaston, Maine, from their first exploration, A. D. 1605; with family genealogies by Cyrus Eaton p. 106; Edward Small Graves' obituary, Rockland Courier-Gazette, April 19, 1904.

4 Charleston Daily Courier - Charleston, South Carolina · Wednesday, November 01, 1854 PENSACOLA Oct 14th, Arr. schr. Charles Richard, Ulmer, New York.

The Charles Richard, having likely discharged her cargo of Thomaston lime at a Gulf port—then taking on cotton, most probably in New Orleans to sell in New York city—was reported at Pensacola in October 1854, where she appears to have been completing or adjusting her return cargo before sailing north. If she was filling out her hold there, it would most likely have been with naval stores—rosin or turpentine—from the pine country, or possibly a quantity of lumber, both common articles of that trade in Pensacola.

5 New-Orleans Commercial Bulletin (New Orleans, LA) February 22, 1855 Under Headine - IMPORTS - South Thomaston per barque Pathfinder-1800 casks of lime.

6 Portland Press Herald, Feb 12, 1855 ·Page 2

7 Sophia Emery Graves Realf to Sarah Realf Whapham, March 26, 1879 letter, Richard J. Hinton Papers, Kansas State Library, Topeka; The History of Porter County, Indiana, p. 163. See: https://www.kankakeevalleyhistoricalsociety.org/Kankakee%20River%20History/Books%20and%20papers/Counties%20of%20Porter%20and%20Lake,%20Indiana.pdf

8 New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, March 21, 1855, EXPORTS—COWES and a market—per barque Pathfinder—905 bales of cotton.

9 These family connections are documented in the Hathorn Family Genealogies and in Eaton’s History, vol. II (1865), p. 260

10 Report of the Maine Bank Commissioners, 1855 (President: Samuel Belcher; Cashier: A. W. Kennedy); Commissioners’ findings that the directors “trusted its affairs too much to the management of the Cashier, and he most shamefully…”; Sound Currency, Vol. 8, Issue 4 (1901), 226.

11 Maine State Marriage Records 1713-1922,