Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival by Peter Stark Page B
Authors: Peter Stark
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Jefferson, understood the global implications of the Pacific Rim and its role in a future world far more clearly than his contemporaries—that one day it would serve a role equal to or greater than the Atlantic’s, and finally knit the globe into one great trading empire. Those passengers arriving at the mouth of the Columbia aboard the Tonquin under Captain Thorn’s command in late March 1811 would be the first emissaries to make that global empire a reality.
O NE WONDERS WHY C APTAIN T HORN simply didn’t wait for the weather to settle a bit before sending Mr. Fox in a small boat into the tumult of wave and squall and current to look for a channel through the Columbia Bar. Trying to fathom the captain’s exact reasoning is as imprecise an exercise as trying to sound the Columbia Bar. Captain Thorn had been undermined and humiliated by the Scottish partners, clerks, and voyageurs throughout the six-month voyage from New York Harbor. He trusted no one aboard his ship. In his eyes, even his first mate, Mr. Fox, had grown far too friendly with the Scottish partners. In Hawaii, Captain Thorn had heard rumors from passing ship captains that diplomatic tensions were rising between the United States and Britain. He prepared himself should the partners who were British citizens attempt mutiny aboard his ship. Deeply isolated—from his passengers, his own officers and crew—and surrounded by the infinite and uncaring Pacific, Thorn’s mind took its own turns. No one, including Thorn himself, could say exactly what those were. Irving and Ross claim that it was simply malice on Thorn’s part. It’s conceivable, however, that in his regimented adherence to mission, configured with his anger and humiliation and paranoia, he believed he was doing his commander in chief, Mr. Astor, a favor by dispatching the whaleboat over the bar in this tumultuous weather, carrying a load of bad apples, and thus weeding out these, the most expendable of the men.
In the shrieking northwest squalls, the Scottish partners could see that this mission amounted to near suicide for the men assigned to the boat. McKay and McDougall approached Captain Thorn on deck and asked that he wait for a break in the weather.
“But he was deaf to entreaties,” reported Ross, “stamped, and swore that a combination was formed to frustrate all his designs. The partners’ interference, therefore, only riveted him the more in his determination, and Mr. Fox was peremptorily ordered to proceed.”
Fox was now visibly upset. He had personal ghosts that haunted the Columbia Bar. He turned to the Scottish partners, Ross wrote, with tears in his eyes.
“ ‘My uncle was drowned here not many years ago, and now I am going to lay my bones with his.’ ”
Fox then shook hands with the partners and others standing near him on deck, and climbed down into the boat. One of the partners handed him a pair of bedsheets, which could serve as a sail.
“Farewell, my friends!” Fox called out. “We will perhaps meet again in the next world.”
The small boat then pushed off from the side of the tossing Tonquin, and all hands aboard lined the rail in silence to watch her row into the chaos.
CHAPTER SIX
W HERE J OHN J ACOB A STOR LED WITH BROAD VISION AND careful planning, and Wilson Price Hunt led with care and consensus, Captain Jonathan Thorn led with force. And in the face of danger, he insisted on raw, head-on bravery. Yet in the power of the Pacific Coast his approach may have met its match.
It was 1:30 P.M . on March, 22, 1811, when Mr. Fox pushed off from the tossing Tonquin with three voyageurs and an aging sailor manning the oars of the small whaleboat. His shipmates watched the whaleboat pull out into the heaving seas from the Tonquin where she sailed on the open ocean a few miles off the Columbia Bar. Looking north and south, they could see the gray-green coastline of the continent’s western edge—the strip of sand, the rocky headlands, the band of forest,
O NE WONDERS WHY C APTAIN T HORN simply didn’t wait for the weather to settle a bit before sending Mr. Fox in a small boat into the tumult of wave and squall and current to look for a channel through the Columbia Bar. Trying to fathom the captain’s exact reasoning is as imprecise an exercise as trying to sound the Columbia Bar. Captain Thorn had been undermined and humiliated by the Scottish partners, clerks, and voyageurs throughout the six-month voyage from New York Harbor. He trusted no one aboard his ship. In his eyes, even his first mate, Mr. Fox, had grown far too friendly with the Scottish partners. In Hawaii, Captain Thorn had heard rumors from passing ship captains that diplomatic tensions were rising between the United States and Britain. He prepared himself should the partners who were British citizens attempt mutiny aboard his ship. Deeply isolated—from his passengers, his own officers and crew—and surrounded by the infinite and uncaring Pacific, Thorn’s mind took its own turns. No one, including Thorn himself, could say exactly what those were. Irving and Ross claim that it was simply malice on Thorn’s part. It’s conceivable, however, that in his regimented adherence to mission, configured with his anger and humiliation and paranoia, he believed he was doing his commander in chief, Mr. Astor, a favor by dispatching the whaleboat over the bar in this tumultuous weather, carrying a load of bad apples, and thus weeding out these, the most expendable of the men.
In the shrieking northwest squalls, the Scottish partners could see that this mission amounted to near suicide for the men assigned to the boat. McKay and McDougall approached Captain Thorn on deck and asked that he wait for a break in the weather.
“But he was deaf to entreaties,” reported Ross, “stamped, and swore that a combination was formed to frustrate all his designs. The partners’ interference, therefore, only riveted him the more in his determination, and Mr. Fox was peremptorily ordered to proceed.”
Fox was now visibly upset. He had personal ghosts that haunted the Columbia Bar. He turned to the Scottish partners, Ross wrote, with tears in his eyes.
“ ‘My uncle was drowned here not many years ago, and now I am going to lay my bones with his.’ ”
Fox then shook hands with the partners and others standing near him on deck, and climbed down into the boat. One of the partners handed him a pair of bedsheets, which could serve as a sail.
“Farewell, my friends!” Fox called out. “We will perhaps meet again in the next world.”
The small boat then pushed off from the side of the tossing Tonquin, and all hands aboard lined the rail in silence to watch her row into the chaos.
CHAPTER SIX
W HERE J OHN J ACOB A STOR LED WITH BROAD VISION AND careful planning, and Wilson Price Hunt led with care and consensus, Captain Jonathan Thorn led with force. And in the face of danger, he insisted on raw, head-on bravery. Yet in the power of the Pacific Coast his approach may have met its match.
It was 1:30 P.M . on March, 22, 1811, when Mr. Fox pushed off from the tossing Tonquin with three voyageurs and an aging sailor manning the oars of the small whaleboat. His shipmates watched the whaleboat pull out into the heaving seas from the Tonquin where she sailed on the open ocean a few miles off the Columbia Bar. Looking north and south, they could see the gray-green coastline of the continent’s western edge—the strip of sand, the rocky headlands, the band of forest,
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