Author’s note:  This post was written one year ago today, during the frenzy of the primary campaign for the 4th Barnstable District.  In the middle of composing it, I inadvertently posted it instead of saving it.  When finished, I had something more personal than originally intended, and decided not to publish it then.  But when I was informed that the first part of it was already “live” online, I chose to withdraw that section and save the entirety for another time.

Who’s Voting This Time? 

Long ago, while a freshman at American University, I learned the three factors that determine whether a person will vote.  The third was age.  Second was income.  The first was education. The higher the amount you have, the more likely you are to vote.  Not coincidentally, these three are also fairly good indicators of whether a person writes a letter to the editor.

Having just come off an election, we’re still sifting through the results.  I don’t want to get into who won or lost and why.  I’m more interested in the greater issue of who didn’t vote and how we can get and sustain a greater turnout.

Normally, high voter participation is marked by some great controversy.  The 1896 election pitted Republican McKinley against William Jennings Bryan, the latter championing the cause of pegging the dollar to silver at a high fixed rate.

With the U.S. firmly on the gold standard, this could have effectively devalued the dollar by 50 percent, doing the same to bank accounts for the urban wealthy and debts for the rural poor.

In that election, income played a larger part than age or education.  Everyone in the country had a dog in that fight and turnout reflected it.

What I also learned in that same freshman Intro to American Politics class is that both parties fear greater participation. At the time, Reagan was president and Democrats held both houses on Congress.  There was parity, and enough power to go around. Turnout in 1984 was just over 53 percent of those eligible to vote.

That means that, unless there is a complete blow-out, no one is winning election to office with the approval of a majority of the people.  Meanwhile, the word “mandate” is thrown around loosely these days by anyone managing to squeak out the narrowest of pluralities.  But this should not be unexpected in our winner-take-all system…

(To read the rest of the column, you can click here.)

Sorry, for the delay in updates, but with the whirlwind nature of my trip, I haven’t had too much time to spare for finding internet cafes and writing.

With any luck, Ben Rollins will have downloaded some images I emailed from here via my new Olympus D220-DL. They were a SEVERE pain to upload since no one here (or there, for that matter) has a SMARTCARD reader, so instead, I had to install the driver software. Anyone who has ever loaded software knows that this is neither fun nor fast.

Anyway, hope they worked out.

Now, I had the great fortune, as I mentioned, of catching the bus from Singapore to Melaka (S$11.00) a few minutes before it left. Four and a half hours was fine because I would be lying down and I was dog-tired from schlepping all over Singapore.

At about 7:30 in the evening the bus lurched to a stop, and I practically jumped out of my seat from a dead sleep. Before I even knew what was going on, the Chinese girl across the aisle from me said, “No, it’s okay. Just taking a break.”

Ah. I would have gotten off the bus in the middle of nowhere. As it was, I was at this little open-air palace of food and realized I had no Malaysian ringgit — just Singapore dollars. After wandering around for a few minutes, I finally screwed up enough courage to ask the Chinese girl (eating what I think was something trying to be a burger) if she thought they might take Singapore dollars. She shook her head. Then she offered to buy my Singapore dollars for her Ringgit. So I had enough to at least get a drink. Too hot to eat anyway. A coke was M$1.50. Divide by 3.75 and you have the US dollar price. Not bad.

So, almost all the way to Melaka for the next two hours I spoke with Chong, the Chinese, girl about the U.S. and Malaysia and my trip. When we got to Melaka, she called her father (since a cab was going to be much more expensive at night she said) and found me a hotel in a decent location. M$67 a night for a room with a toilet and shower — I saw at the rest area what the toilets usually look like here and suddenly that became very important to me.

Then Chong took me out, introduced me to her friends and we ended up at a foodstall where I had some pretty decent Malaysia-Chinese food. Ever since, I have been thoroughly escorted about Melaka by either Chong, Grace or Rajan. Tonight I will catch the train from Tampin (16 miles from Melaka) to Kuala Lumpur arriving at 5:30 AM. It might take an hour to get to the airport, then another two before my flight to Bali.

Busy day.

So, you say you want to know about the Lady Washington?

From previous research and current investigating here at the Melaka Maritime Museum, I have pretty much concluded that the story Amasa Delano told to Congress in 1818 was, at the least, misleading. Not that he meant it, to be sure.

Sailors 200 years ago had nothing but stories to teach other on those long voyages, and so word spread about just about everything.  The storm in the Malacca Straits that would have taken down the Lady Washington would have had to be a once-in-lifetime- storm, since the ways of the wind here do not favor anything like the grand nor’easters of New England.

On the other hand, perhaps Reverend John Howel, in command as well as possession of Lady Washington on this voyage, was less a sailor than most captains. To be sure, upon his arriving in China in February of 1795, after Captain John Kendrick was killed in Oahu, Howel used hired captains for the vessel he claimed for his own — owing to certain “debts” incurred by Captain Kendrick. The Owners in Boston of L.W. would have to wait another 3 years for any accounting from Howel, and even then they figures were questionable.

Here in Melaka, the shorefront development, like the rest of the West Coast of peninsular Malaysia, is taking off. Large landfill projects are reclaiming thousands of acres for waterfront condos — although all you are likely to see are the ship traffic through the Malacca Straits and the trash they leave.

This reclamation is significant since some historians and archaeologists believe that countless shipwrecks will be lost before work crews fill in these area. So, if L.W. was here, she’ll be under the pavement of a parking lot for shorefront condos owned by tourists from Singapore.

But, as I said, Howel hired out his purloined vessel, and in the mean time, he acted as agent (a go-between) for English and American captains, wishing to sell their good at Canton and Macau. One man who did quite well by Howel was young John Boit, Jr. of Boston, age 19 and command the sloop Union.

Boit had served as Fifth Mate of the Columbia on its second voyage (under Robert Gray). Through his brother-in-law, Crowell Hatch, he was given command of the tiny vessel, Union, in late 1794. His was a most profitable and speedy voyage, and it seems to have made him as a man and a captain.

On the other hand, another man, Charles Bishop, English captain of the brig Ruby, was not so lucky with his dealings with Reverend Howel — although the parallels with Boit were. In December of 1794, both Bishop and Boit stopped in the Falklands on their way around Cape Horn. Both traded at the Columbia River in the summer of 1795. And both stopped in the Hawaiian Islands on their way to Canton in the fall of the same year.

Here the similarities end. Bishop was lucky to get out of the Columbia River with the Ruby still afloat. The hand pumps had to be worked day and night all the way across the Pacific. In Macau, another captain told him not to take the vessel out of port.

Worse, Howel was not forthcoming in the least with payment from the Chinese Hong merchants for the cargo of the Ruby. The price of fur had fallen, and Bishop was going to be losing money. Finally, he agreed to sell the Ruby to a Dutch man called Pavin, who, it later turned out, was part owner of Lady Washington.

It seems Howel was in debt, himself, to a few Dutch merchants. And in 1794 the French had taken Amsterdam. In 1795, the British scooped up the Dutch trading posts of Melaka, Cape Town and the capital of the spice islands, Ambon.

Now, this is significant. Howel told Captain Bishop that money for the Ruby was to be brought to Bishop, at the earliest, in the fall of 1796. So he went to Ambon.

In the mean time, the Lady Washington saw service again on the northwest coast, then to provide ferry service for the Dutch Ambassador’s staff for evacuation to Batavia (Jakarta).

But no voyage through the Malacca Straits.

HOWEVER, there is one interesting note in all of this:

If Bishop was to be paid in Ambon, then perhaps the money was to be brought in the Lady Washington. If so, then perhaps we are not looking at “Malacca” at all as a site for the wreck.

You see, as I said, Ambon is the capital of the Spice Islands…

… better known as the Moluccas.

To Ambon, then.

I was incredibly lucky last night, having just arrived 5 minutes before the Melaka Express left from the Singapore bus station.

The big issues yesterday were:

1)  Go to the Chinese Embassy and get a visa.

2)  Stop at a drug store and buy Lariam, an anti-malarial which can be purchased without a prescription here, at 1/3 rd the price of that in the US.

3)  Get to Melaka.

I got the Lariam. I caught the last bus out at five. A Chinese visa takes three days to a week. My only chance will be in Manila then. Otherwise, I am sunk when my plane arrives into Guangzhou.

Not too much to say except fortune smiled upon me, I have a hotel for 67 ringgit a night and am out this AM to explore the Straits of Melaka. Or at least the streets of Melaka.

Monday

Having arrived 45 minutes late into Singapore, at 1:40 AM, I had the good luck of knowing that my hotel was just this side of Singapore Customs. The transit hotel rents for S$56.63 a hotel room with a shower for a whole six hours. Not bad, but then I remembered I was supposed to make a reservation.

This is pretty important, since many flights arrive into Singapore from the other side of the globe at such ungodly hours – and the hotel was looking to be filled up. They were already telling one gentleman he had to wait for 1/2 an hour or so because he had no reservation, when I arrived. So, when I spoke to the desk clerk, I simply claimed that my reservation had been faxed while I was in transit. She couldn’t find it, of course, but for some reason, she put me ahead of the first guy waiting when there was a cancellation. I heard that the place was sold out for the night.

NOW, for the history.

In December of 1794, Captain John Kendrick of Wareham had arrived at Honolulu Harbor, Oahu, in his brigantine, Lady Washington. Seven years before, he had left Boston in command of Columbia expedition, with Lady Washington, then a single masted sloop of 60 feet) as tender to his flagship Columbia.

Two years later off Clayoquot Sound, Vancouver Island, BC, he would trade vessels with his subcommander, Captain Robert Gray of Tiverton, RI, with the remaining to gather a full cargo of sea otter furs while the larger vessel under Gray’s command, would make haste to the Chinese merchants in Guangzhou (Canton). In short, Kendrick arrived in China in January of 1790, but Gray, having completed his business, simply sailed on by his Commander, in direct disobedience of orders.

Gray continued back to Boston, received a hero’s welcome for guiding the first American vessel around the world, but with the vessel not even being able to turn a profit for its long trek and cargo of inferior green tea. Gray blamed Kendrick’s lack of initiative, and said, if only he had command of another expedition, things would be different. The Owners, led by Boston merchant Joseph Barrell, agreed, and Gray had Columbia out of the shipyards in a month. One has to wonder if he was worried about old Captain K showing up and clouding the issue with facts.

Unable to safely return to Boston, Kendrick remained in China, in the Portuguese enclave of Macau, harassed by the Portuguese governor for byzantine events on the Northwest Coast the year before — suffice it to say, the governor had lost a lot of money and since Kendrick was present during said event and hadn’t been ruined too, he blamed the old Yankee.

So, after years of plying back and forth between China and the NW Coast, and converting LW into a brigantine (another mast added), Captain Kendrick had gotten an iron grip on the sea otter market through a sophisticated trading system with the suppliers — the natives of the NW Coast. The English, who had almost gone to war with Spain over trading rights on the Coast, were none-too-happy with the upstart Americans’ success.

On 12 December 1794, Captain Kendrick was eating breakfast at his table on the quarterdeck of the Lady Washington when a round of grape and shot fired from the rival English trader, Jackal, blew through his window and killed him and two members of the crew.

In December of 1794, Thomas Pitt joined the HMS Resistance at Malacca. In common was a man they had both met at Hawaii year before. Reverend John Howel. The English Clergyman would bury Captain John Kendrick under Christian rites, the first such ceremony in the Hawaiian Isles. And then he would take possession of Lady Washington and sail out of Hawaii a week before the Jackal was taken by the Oahu natives.

This afternoon, I will head north, up the coast, to Melaka.