beforethe wind & light on the island

Here are two books to enchant your inner mariner during the dark and rainy months.

BEFORE THE WIND: The Memoir of an American Sea Captain 1808-1833 by Charles Tyng, Penguin Paperback, 256 pages, copyright 1999

Both are memoirs of life on the sea - aboard ships - on a small island - where pirates, storms, violence, sinkings, death and sea romance swirl into “larger than life” stories. We can’t help but sense just how benign most of our own water adventures are when these memoirs reveal two tough and savvy people who survived worlds we’ll never know.

Charles Tyng worked his way up from cabin boy to ship’s captain, a position he achieved at a very young age. Helene Glidden and her twelve brothers and sisters lived a isolated and semi-subsistence life on Patos Island between 1905 and 1913. Her romantic father kept the lighthouse while her practical mother struggled with children, laundry, cooking, sickness, accidents, farming and home schooling. All this, of course, on an island lacking electricity, radio, telephone, and for many years, a motor boat to reach “civilization” (Bellingham).

Many now believe that Light on the Island is a fictionalized memoir. No one seems sure that all the events she so wonderfully describes actually happened. But it hardly matters. Her tale is so interesting, it certainly could have happened. Or “If such a thing could be, it certainly would be!” to quote Dr. Seuss.

Tyng’s story, on the other hand, is a true recollection of his early life written long after the events. His hand-written manuscript remained in the family until Susan Fels and her uncle, Charles Tyng, recently edited it for publication. While it is a general portrait of life at sea during the early 19th century, much more comes across - both about the man, as well as the process of American capitalism some 200 years ago.

So, Tyng’s story for mariners and Glidden’s family epic for wannabe island dwellers:

Tyng’s memoir opens with his recollections of the 1812 war between a then young United States and Britain. As a young boy he witnessed wartime Boston with excitement. “It was war time, and soldiers were almost every day drilling, and the drum was constantly heard. I was much interested in the army which was forming . . . To take Canada. . . They marched up to Canada, and were defeated. . . The country was disgusted. . .”

A rebellious student in a family of siblings bound for Harvard, Tyng was sent to sea by his father at 13 years of age and all of 4’10” tall. That first voyage to China was a nightmare: “I had not been on board one hour when . . . (the mate) took me by the ear and lifted me up from the deck and roared out like a bull, “I tell a boy once to do a thing, beware of the second time,” and dashed me down to the deck. . . If I could have got on shore, I never would have gone to sea, but have studied like a good one, and have gone to college, or anywhere else my father wanted me to, but it was too late. My fate was sealed.”

A fate of huge adventure and eventual prosperity. For Tyng soon resolved that if his life was to be aboard sailing ships, he would be captain and escape the mean and dangerous ordinary seaman’s drill. Enduring sadistic mates, storms, water and food shortages, his first voyage went to China via Chile and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). While lying at anchor for months (a common practice) at Whampoa (near Canton), Tyng spent considerable time at the trading region just outside Whampoa (the city itself was closed to foreigners). Tyng was an astute observer of Chinese life and culture. He learned some Chinese words and made some friends among the Chinese traders, contacts that would prove valuable during later voyages as a Captain/Trader.

Returning from his second voyage to China, Tyng’s ship crosses the wake of a vessel moving even though “. . . there was not a breath of wind to move the craft and she was near enough to see the masts . . . And the smoke pouring out of her, but no blaze. . . We were later informed that it was a steam ship which (was) the first vessel (1817) that ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean with steam. She was ship rigged and used steam only when it was calm or the wind ahead.” (gentlemen, apparently, never sailed to windward!). He later rode aboard the first railroad in Europe “. . .the boiler of the engine burst, killing the engineer and scalding some of the workmen. There fortunately were two engines attached to the train, and after some detention we proceeded” to a hotel where he socialized with Princess Victoria, soon to be England’s queen.

Soon, Tyng was sailing as a junior officer through South China Sea pirates. A steward on his ship went nuts and tried to kill him with “a very large knife.” The incident proved just one of a long string of near death struggles with pirates, crew, robbers and the like. Returning via the south Caribbean, Tyng’s ship is pursued by a mystery vessel, later identified as the “Las Adamantis, which had robbed several vessels, and murdered the crews. . .” When the Las Adamantis was finally captured by a British warship, “All of them were hung at the yard arm of the brig, and the vessel sunk.”

Pirates were bad, but more immediate was the constant need to dominate obstinate pickup crews. (He changed crews at almost every port - a sailor’s life then was really free!). When a crew wouldn’t come topside in a storm, “I then went forward to the forecastle companion way, and called them my self. Soon the bully of the crew came part way up on deck, using the most insulting language. I asked him if he knew who he was speaking to. He said “Yes” and commenced cursing me, and at once sprung upon me, and with all his force pushed me to the lee rail forward of the fore rigging. The ship was laying over, and the sea breaking over the bow. I had him with my left hand hold of his neck handkerchief, and my right arm around the forward shroud, struggling to prevent him from pushing me into the sea . . . I screamed as loud as I could for the mates to come to my assistance, but they probably did not hear me. Fortunately at this moment the ship fetched a lurch to the windward, and the fellow slipped. I came in upon him with a belaying pin in my hand, and being on top of him, had given him two or three cracks with it on his head, and would soon have mastered him, had not Mr. S. (a mate) come forward and took hold of me . . . It being dark, he thought it was the sailor on top of me. The fellow immediately sprung to his feet, and with his fist knocked Sands over, and then quick as a wink, gave me a blow in my right temple, which sent me headlong in the lee scuppers. For a few moments I lay there insensible. I then picked myself up, and started for my cabin and got my pistols and came on deck, and enquired for the man, but to my surprise the hands were up on the main top sail yard reefing the sails . . . A man fell from the yard to the deck, striking within a foot from where I was standing. . . He proved to be an Italian sailor, and was armed with a long sheath knife, which proved he was in for a mutiny. . .”

The reader soon realizes that an ocean going was very dicey in the 19th century. Tyng’s ships seem almost always in a typhoon, a hurricane, clawing off a reef, escaping pirates, or foiling corrupt port authorities. When he isn’t coping with nature, he’s controlling drunken and violent crews. He was very competent with both man and nature, something that edges this small narrative toward a conceit. But there can be no denying his adventurous life - one that makes our current “survival” shows all the more silly.

Trading goods through the South Pacific, Tyng was constantly “. . . selling all that I had (on board) at an immense profit. . .”, a talent that accumulated worth of over one million dollars by the 1830s (a million in 1830 today would be . . . well, Zillions!) Obtaining his captain status at a very young age, he soon broke with his family shipping business and bought the first of many vessels he either skippered or chartered out. The majority of his later trading occurred in a triangular route between Europe, the Caribbean and the East Coast ports. He has much to say about all the ports he visits, as he usually remained in port for long periods of time waiting out the loading process.

I found the constant parallels between the peoples, the problems and the attitudes of our times with those of some 200 years ago to be rather erie. Venezuela is rife with corruption. England has bad food - Tyng loved French cooking. Pirates roam the South China Sea. Obstructionist port officials are everywhere. He wrangles with cheating repair yard owners. You’ll be amazed.

During one South Pacific voyage he buys a mermaid! Really! “It was a wonderful looking creature, three feet eight inches long, from the waist up a perfect resemblance of an aged female, from the waist downward of a fish, with the scales quite small at the waist, increasing in size downwards until they became quite large. The fins, and the tail, which turned, were quite natural. It had long hair hanging from the head over the shoulders, with the arms perfectly shaped, crossing over the breast, the hands partly open . . . The features were not bad, but like the body were shriveled, looking as if they had been dried or smoked. . . We could discern no line of connection from the body to the fish. It looked perfectly natural. . . The back bone could be seen in regular form, from the ribs in the body, to the body of the fish. . .” A no-nonsense Yankee, Tyng never really states whether he believed the mermaid to be real.

By his mid-thirties, Tyng had become more of a merchant than a sea captain. He chartered vessels rather than skipper them and began to remain in Havana or other ports conducting trade. However, on several voyages, when he tried to be a passenger, he was forced to take command. “He (the captain) was soon out of his mind (cholera). . . I found it blowing a gale . . . I talked with the mate, found he knew nothing of navigation or of the present position of the vessel . . . and as the Florida reef was near, and the night was pitch dark and the vessel flying through the water with lightning speed. I found I should have to take charge of the navigation of the vessel. I began to think my running away from the cholera in Havana was something like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.”

In 1831, cholera finally did catch up with Tyng, yet true to his life-long grit, he survived and lived another 46 years, a period not covered by his narrative.

Survival was the name of Tyng’s game for some 30 momentous years, a performance that had him twisting, turning, improvising and escaping through adventures not far different than those of Indiana Jones! And yet he was also a student of his fellow men whose profiles he paints clearly and without judgement (except for scoundrels!). From the American revolution to the disruptions leading to the Civil War, from Imperial China to Spanish Havana, Tyng’s life placed him central to the major events of the early 19th century. His narrative is a great read which I hardily recommend.

Helene Glidden’s Patos’ island adventures on the other hand, are nearly the opposite of Tyng’s worldly travels. Hers was an isolated life on a small island. But still, she had an adventurous life that included smugglers and hermits, an impulsive and frustrated father and a strong mother who tried to minimize the dangers her large brood constantly found.

“The storm hit when we were a few miles out of Bellingham (they rowed the 25 miles to and fro). Our boat was tossed about like a matchbox. Momma held the rudder stick while Papa struggled with the oars. . . Get down in the bottom of the boat! . . . Can she ride it out? Asked Mamma. Her face was white. . . We’ll have to unload, shouted Papa. . . We hastened to obey. Boxes of crackers, oatmeal, sugar, and flour were swallowed up by the dark green monstrous waves . . . Night suddenly swooped down, enveloping us in her black wings.” Luckily they wash ashore on Lummi Island and are cared for by some camping Indians.

While the father seeks clues to the whereabouts of opium smuggler “Spanish John,” hoping to gain a reward and thereby retire from the lighthouse service, the children listen to the stories of Mr. Blanchard, a hermit who lived on the east end of Patos for some 60 years. He fills their heads with images of smugglers and Chinese bodies thrown overboard to escape revenue cutters, bodies he buried on Patos. He also leads them to Indian graves which they happily dig up for the tomahawks and stone tools. Unfortunately, they also dig up smallpox bacteria resulting in the death of the three youngest children.

As children will, they develop many “forts”, “hideouts” and secret trees. They collect shells and wild bird eggs. They tend to their farm animals and skirmish with their billy goat and fearsome bull. They watch square rigged ships being towed to the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Their dog saves a drifting sister. They swim, gather kelp for fertilizer on their extensive garden, hunt all sorts of game and of course, fish at a time when 60 pound salmon were commonplace! Helene drifts away in a rowboat only to be rescued days later by the Coast Guard. They have seals for household pets. Frozen yellow canaries blanket the lighthouse. Helene nearly gets taken under by a storm beached octopus. Their adventures match those of Harry Potter!

Their escapades don’t always turn out well however. Helene and her siblings have to learn the hard lessons of death. Pets die, wild animals die, and most important, Helene’s brothers and sisters die. What we might imagine to be a quiet, boring lightkeeper’s life on Patos was hardly that! For Helene and her siblings, life could not have been much more full.

The children know that a secret bearded man hides among the Patos woods. Helene believes him to be God and often prays to him for help, which he mysteriously provides time and again. Most important, when a smuggler gun battle ends up on the island, Helene and her family capture 7 gun toting bad guys - but only with God’s help!

But more good than bad guys visit the island. There are suitors to Helene’s older sisters and even the president of the United States! As a young man, Helene’s father had been friends with Theodore Roosevelt. When President Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet around the world in 1907 as a demonstration of American sea power, he made sure the 16 battleships pass Patos Island in review. Later, the former president visited the family on their island home; fishing, talking and telling the boys about sportsmanship, virtue, honest hard work and other bully things.

In 1913 Helene’s mother packed the family off to the mainland for proper schooling and a more normal family life. The Patos Island adventure was over. Helene mourns the loss of paradise. The father became the tender of the Semiahmoo Lighthouse off of Blaine, working there until his 1919 death. Helene lived out her life in Washington and Oregon writing and publishing everything from cook books to novels, never, it seems living very far from water. Fittingly, she moved to Hawaii for her final years, living out the island life that had formed her.

The Light on the Island is a good book, one best read while anchored at Patos or Sucia islands. Then the magic Helene Glidden so artful creates will best present itself. Who knows, maybe you’ll even see Spanish John’s ghost flitting through the woods, for a lot of strange things happened on Patos and this little book pulls you right into them.