249

A.R. Hanks.

Manuscript journal of the USS Purveyor from Florida to Angola.

Various places, 6 July 1868 to 10 April 1869
[37] manuscript diary pages, plus 27 pages of notes on rigging a ship, and [16] pages of other memoranda (including the popular poem "The Mariner's Grave"). 4to, 7½ x 6 inches, original ¼ calf, worn and mostly disbound with boards present; minor wear to contents.

This personal diary was written by Alexander Perry Rogers Hanks (1848-1916), a young officer of Stonington, CT who had joined the navy the previous year. For this voyage he was a mate on the USS Purveyor, an old Civil War stores ship on its last voyage, from Florida to Angola to Liberia and back to New York. Although the journey was not momentous, Hanks was a lively writer, full of sarcasm and generous with interesting details.

The ship's first stop was at the Bahamian island of Bimini on 29 July, where they collected "a few shells, limes, bananas, cocoa nuts, sugar cane, conches, &c." They spent August at the naval base  in Florida: "It is without a single regret I bid adieu to Pensacola & its many beauties" (31 August). Next stop: "Key West is a very pretty place. . . . It is the largest city of Florida. . . . Have very fine cigars here which are sold cheap . . . escaping the heavy duties of Cuban cigars." There the crew took shore leave, which did not go well as they "settled into a good sociable free fight, during which they amused themselves by smashing chairs, plates & bottles &c over each other's heads, gouging, biting, punching &c. Two or three were slightly cut with knives & any man could show at least a black eye" (15 September).

En route to Africa, he describes a night gale on 4 October 1868: "Black as ink, blowing like the devil, with the rain & spray stinging like shot. . . . The old ship groaned & shuddered to her very kelson & the voices from below sounded like the voices of the damned. . . . A big sea caught the ship under the counter & tossed her stern high in the air. The man at the wheel could not manage her, but turned a summersault over the wheel & landed in the binnacle, pretty effectually cleaning out its glass front."

The ship arrives on 20 December at the Portuguese colony of Luanda, Angola: "Found here 28 Kroo boys left by the U.S.S. Canandaigua, are going to use them in loading ship, land them at Monrovia, Liberia on our way home." He notes: "The natives are continually coming in from the interior carrying on their heads palm oil, ivory, coffee, peanuts, fruit, skins, etc. . . . They deal in each other, offered us good solid men & women for $30.00 apiece. . . . There has been four English man o' war here during our stay, on the lookout for slavers." They arrived in Monrovia, Liberia on 10 February 1869, which is discussed in less detail.

A long meditation on shipboard insects fills the 18 March entry: "Our friends the cock roaches, red ants, whevils, &c. Where are they? is a question easily answered, but where they are not would be a staggerer. Drink a glass of water without looking at it, & one is almost choaked with their kicking bodies." The ship came to anchor at Ellis Island, NY on 9 April and was towed to the Navy Yard in Brooklyn the next day, bringing the diary to a close. It was the Purveyor's final voyage as a naval vessel, and it was sold two months later. 

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