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Authors: Greg Grandin
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spread out. The ocean which received such thick masses must have been profoundly deep; but again the subterranean forces exerted themselves, and I now beheld the bed of that ocean forming a chain of mountains more than seven thousand feet in height.
Having dived, like Pip, down to the ocean’s bottom, Darwin soars up over the Andes. Gazing east at what millennia ago was a “green and budding” valley but is now the desert pampas, he pronounces that “all is utterly irreclaimable.” 3
Darwin didn’t know it, but the mountain pass where he had this vision was the old slave road connecting Argentina to Chile. The naturalist was moving along exactly the same route that, three decades earlier, Babo, his son Mori, and their other captured West African companions had traveled, past the exact same grove of white stone trees.
PART IV
FURTHER
Sealer, Slaver & Pirate are all of a trade.
—CHARLES DARWIN, BEAGLE DIARY, MARCH 24, 1833
15
A TERRIFIC SOVEREIGNTY
Second mate William Moulton also tried to flee from his captain, George Howe, master of the sealing schooner Onico . Howe had become abusive shortly after the Onico left New London in late 1799. At first Moulton and the rest of the crew thought he was afflicted by drink. Howe “clipped his words” and suffered long “spells of hiccupping.” He slept most of the day on the quarterdeck, “so profoundly” that he didn’t wake when the sea broke “over him with an impetuosity that almost threatened to wash him off.” 1
Moulton began to see a deeper malice behind the captain’s cruelty, which couldn’t be explained by alcohol or by the pressure caused by the falling price of sealskins. Howe, decided Moulton, was intoxicated by unchecked power. Maimed and blind in the right eye, he was impressive. One can’t read Moulton’s 1804 account of his eventful voyage without thinking of Melville’s Captain Ahab. Moulton describes Howe as tall and lean, with a sharp nose, thin lips, and a “sneerful smile.” He was a “genius,” a “monocular master,” who compensated for what he lacked in mathematical and astronomical talent by cursing God and nature: “no Son of Neptune can excel him in execrating the elements and their author, the winds, and him that sent them.”
Where Ahab tapped into wells of dark emotion to bind his men to him, making them think they were joining his mania out of their own free will, Howe ruled only by fear and division. He invented useless chores, like heaving seawater up in a bucket and passing it awkwardly along up a line of men in the rigging, until the bucket was empty and the men soaked. “Discord among his crew was the basis of his strength.” He often ordered one group of hands to give their biscuits to another. Without cause, he lashed men to the deck cannons to be “cobbed,” forcing all hands to participate in the paddling lest they themselves incur “like punishment.” Howe commanded other “victims” of his “vengeance” to “hold their faces fair” to his “strokes.” If they turned away, he would direct his blows to “the more sensitive and vital parts” of their body.
Disfigured, damning God and nature to hell, and exercising a “terrific sovereignty” over his crew, Howe took pleasure, Moulton said, “proportionate to the misery of others.” When the Onico dropped anchor to hunt seals at Staten Land, a craggy, mountainous island off the tip of Tierra del Fuego, where the sea surged “against all sides of it with great violence,” the abuse continued. Howe forbade his men from building their own shelters until they had raised his own commodious fifty-rafter hut and covered it with the thickest sealskins. He withheld medicine and food, kept them “on seals” till they were sick, and refused to let them wear warm clothing. Howe watered down the ship’s rum and taxed the crew’s own liquor supply, whipping all who dared protest until they were bloody. Howe became obsessed with Moulton, who, having
Having dived, like Pip, down to the ocean’s bottom, Darwin soars up over the Andes. Gazing east at what millennia ago was a “green and budding” valley but is now the desert pampas, he pronounces that “all is utterly irreclaimable.” 3
Darwin didn’t know it, but the mountain pass where he had this vision was the old slave road connecting Argentina to Chile. The naturalist was moving along exactly the same route that, three decades earlier, Babo, his son Mori, and their other captured West African companions had traveled, past the exact same grove of white stone trees.
PART IV
FURTHER
Sealer, Slaver & Pirate are all of a trade.
—CHARLES DARWIN, BEAGLE DIARY, MARCH 24, 1833
15
A TERRIFIC SOVEREIGNTY
Second mate William Moulton also tried to flee from his captain, George Howe, master of the sealing schooner Onico . Howe had become abusive shortly after the Onico left New London in late 1799. At first Moulton and the rest of the crew thought he was afflicted by drink. Howe “clipped his words” and suffered long “spells of hiccupping.” He slept most of the day on the quarterdeck, “so profoundly” that he didn’t wake when the sea broke “over him with an impetuosity that almost threatened to wash him off.” 1
Moulton began to see a deeper malice behind the captain’s cruelty, which couldn’t be explained by alcohol or by the pressure caused by the falling price of sealskins. Howe, decided Moulton, was intoxicated by unchecked power. Maimed and blind in the right eye, he was impressive. One can’t read Moulton’s 1804 account of his eventful voyage without thinking of Melville’s Captain Ahab. Moulton describes Howe as tall and lean, with a sharp nose, thin lips, and a “sneerful smile.” He was a “genius,” a “monocular master,” who compensated for what he lacked in mathematical and astronomical talent by cursing God and nature: “no Son of Neptune can excel him in execrating the elements and their author, the winds, and him that sent them.”
Where Ahab tapped into wells of dark emotion to bind his men to him, making them think they were joining his mania out of their own free will, Howe ruled only by fear and division. He invented useless chores, like heaving seawater up in a bucket and passing it awkwardly along up a line of men in the rigging, until the bucket was empty and the men soaked. “Discord among his crew was the basis of his strength.” He often ordered one group of hands to give their biscuits to another. Without cause, he lashed men to the deck cannons to be “cobbed,” forcing all hands to participate in the paddling lest they themselves incur “like punishment.” Howe commanded other “victims” of his “vengeance” to “hold their faces fair” to his “strokes.” If they turned away, he would direct his blows to “the more sensitive and vital parts” of their body.
Disfigured, damning God and nature to hell, and exercising a “terrific sovereignty” over his crew, Howe took pleasure, Moulton said, “proportionate to the misery of others.” When the Onico dropped anchor to hunt seals at Staten Land, a craggy, mountainous island off the tip of Tierra del Fuego, where the sea surged “against all sides of it with great violence,” the abuse continued. Howe forbade his men from building their own shelters until they had raised his own commodious fifty-rafter hut and covered it with the thickest sealskins. He withheld medicine and food, kept them “on seals” till they were sick, and refused to let them wear warm clothing. Howe watered down the ship’s rum and taxed the crew’s own liquor supply, whipping all who dared protest until they were bloody. Howe became obsessed with Moulton, who, having
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