Alaska (73 page)

Adam Foster

testified, one after another, that whereas they had done nothing wrong, 'merely tried to protect our ship, as you gentlemen would do, he conies aboard, abuses us, and trices us up.' They explained in harrowing detail what trice up

meant, and one man showed the court scars that resulted from the seven-minute ordeal when handcuffs had cut into his wrists. The marks were vivid.

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The nails were hammered into Healy's coffin by Mrs. Danforth Weigle, of the W.C.T.U., who had long visualized this trial as the triumph of her organization's fight against alcohol on American ships. A fine-looking woman, with a low, cultured voice and not a crusading harridan at all, she made an impressive witness, for her testimony was brief and to the point: 'American sailors have for too long been victimized by drunken brutes who have tyrannized their men once they sailed from port and left the protection of courts ashore. No case more savage than that of Captain Michael Healy has come to our attention, and we demand that he be sent to jail for his crimes and dropped from the service of the United States.'

She asked that members of her committee who specialized in legal aspects of the problem be allowed to testify, and these ladies completed the devastating case against the black officer. When the prosecution closed, most observers in the stuffy courtroom supposed that Healy's fate was sealed, and stories resembling obituaries appeared in the papers, lamenting this deplorable conclusion to a career which had had its moments of nobility, as when the Bear,

on various rescue missions, saved many sailors whose ships were trapped in ice.

But traditions of the sea run deep, and when the prosecution rested, a parade of the ordinary seamen whose lives Mike Healy had saved from shipwreck came forward to testify in his behalf. Junior officers who had served under him were eager to tell of how his indomitable will had saved the Bear

when crushing in the ice pack seemed inevitable. A representative of the Russian Empire told the court of how, when he was stationed in Petropavlovsk, his officers looked to Mike Healy and the Bear

as their right arm along the Siberian coast, and there was a moment of terrible drama when a survivor of a shipwreck at Point Hope took the stand: 'We lost our ship when the ice come in sudden in October. We was nine men made it ashore. The rest went down.'

'Did you get any ship's supplies ashore with you?*

'Some.'

'How long were you marooned?'

'Till June next year.'

'How did you survive?'

'We built lean-tos against the wind. Driftwood.'

'I mean eat? What did you eat?'

'We shot two caribou. We rationed careful. We ate bacon rind, anything.' Here he paused, looked away from the court, and sought the eyes of his salvation, Mike Healy.

'Then he come with the Bear.'

'Go on. What then?*

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In a very low voice, which did not reach to the back of the room, he said: 'He knew from lookin' that in April and May when there were no caribou, no stores, we'd been forced to eat the bodies of them as died.'

The last words were lost in whisper, and the court asked the sailor to repeat, but a man in the front row of the audience said clearly: 'They were cannibals,' and the room fell into confusion. When order was restored, the sailor said: 'Captain Healy knowed what we'd done . . . been forced to do, that is ... and he took us under his wing like we was his children. No sermons, no lectures. I remember exactly what he said: ”We are all men of the sea. We plow a fearful furrow.”'

The room was silent as the sailor stepped down, and at that juncture it was clear that the five-man court was not at all as certain of Healy's guilt as it had been the day before, but he would still have been found guilty of at least certain charges had there not been a commotion at the rear of the court, with the marshal shouting: 'You can't go in there!' and a gruff voice responding: 'We're goin' in!' and into the proceedings came a six-foot-four mariner with a huge head of snowy white hair and beard, followed by two junior officers and an ordinary seaman.

'Who are you, barging in like this?' the president of the court demanded, and the intruder said: 'Cap'n Emil Schransky, Erebus, out of New Bedford,' and he said that since maritime matters were under judgment here, he demanded a right to testify.

'Would your testimony be pertinent?' the presiding officer asked, and he replied: 'It would.'

He was allowed to come forward, and without even looking at his old enemy, he began in a restrained voice: 'If there is any San Francisco newspaperman present, he'll be able to verify that for better'n ten years me and Mike Healy, the man on trial, fought each other up and down the Bering Sea. He was for the Eskimo, I didn't give a damn. He was against pelagic sealin', it was my gold mine. He fought anyone who brought rum or molasses to the Eskimos, I didn't. Year after year I outwitted him because I always had the best ship. Then he got the Bear

with its steam engine and defeated me. Almost sunk me. Threatened to shoot me if I ever invaded his sea again. I said to myself: Schransky, you had the best ship and did what you pleased. Now he has the best ship and he'll do what he pleases.'

'But what did you do?'

'I said: ”Let him run the Bering as he likes. The Pacific is a big place.”I left.'

'Why did you come here today?'

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'Because me and my men read what you were doin' to Mike Healy. What the people from the Adam Foster whined about. The Adam Foster*.

What a pitiful ship. What a ship to bring charges against anybody. My men wouldn't waste time spittin' at the

Adam Foster,' and his three associates nodded.

'And these good women ravin' about his drinkin'. What did he do when he finally captured the Erebus! Dumped all our rum and molasses down the scuppers. Ask the Adam Foster

what he did when he captured them. I'll bet they'll say first thing he did was dump their rum. Healy was fierce against alcohol for Eskimos.'

He concluded his testimony with a surprising statement: 'I fought Healy for a decade, and always I had the best ship. But he fought me like a tiger, because he represents the best traditions of the sea. Even a master ship like the Bear

is no good unless it has a master like Healy. That damned nigger with his parrot drove me from the arctic seas, and no lesser man could've done it. And if we went to sea again, we'd still fight, and the man with the best ship would win.' From the witness stand he saluted his longtime enemy and retired to the back of the room followed by his men.

The judges filed out, returned after the briefest possible consultation, and rendered their verdict: 'The citizens who lodged charges against Captain Michael Healy did not do so frivolously. His actions must have seemed deplorable to them. But the sea is governed by noble traditions accumulated through centuries and from the experience of many nations. Unless they are enforced by captains like Michael Healy, no ship can sail safely. This court finds him Not Guilty on all charges.' The audience, divided sixty percent for conviction, forty for acquittal, groaned and cheered while Emil Schransky rose from his seat, uttered a wild yell, and saluted Healy once more.

When order was restored, the court continued with its verdict: 'But since not even the ablest captain can be allowed free rein for intemperate behavior at sea or for abusive language directed against his subordinates, this court must take into account that on three past occasions Captain Healy has received severe reprimands for drunkenness and misconduct,

1872, 1888, 1890. We recommend that he be deprived of command for a period of two years.'

But his turbulent life continued. In 1900, on his first trip after regaining his command, he escaped a most serious court-martial pertaining to his abuse of a woman passenger only when his protectors had him declared temporarily insane, and in 1903, at the conclusion of his final command, he was again reprimanded for 'unofficerlike and indecent lan—

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guage in the presence of his officers and crew.' Unrepentant, he moved ashore, and died a year later.

IN SITKA THE GOVERNMENT'S CASE AGAINST SHELDON Jackson rehashed old charges against him, but with new and more effective citizens making them. As the population of Alaska grew, the numbers of miners, businessmen and saloonkeepers increased proportionately, and these groups had always been violently anti-Jackson, but since their speakers were now more literate, they painted him in dark and dictatorial colors: 'He wants to tell everyone how to behave, but he himself is an unchristian, ungodly tyrant.'

He had also acquired a new body of enemies, the members of the Russian Orthodox Church, who felt that if the little missionary wanted to declare war against their church and their language, which he obviously did, they would take up arms against him.

Most telling was a voice not heard before, and therefore extra persuasive: 'If Reverend Jackson spends six months a year attending to personal business in Washington, and six months cruising with his drunken crony on the Bear,

how much time per year has he left to mind his duties in Alaska?'

At the conclusion of this round of testimony, things looked gloomy for Jackson, but the investigator was no fool, and before issuing his conclusions he sought a secret meeting with Carl Caldwell, now a fullfledged judge in the Alaskan court, who confided: 'Everything his enemies say about Jackson is true. But his enemies say the same thing about me, and if you set up your office here, they'd lodge the same charges against you. Nobody can be neutral where Jackson is concerned. He often irritates me, and I'm sure he'd irritate you. But you must have deduced from the character of his enemies that he's one of the best forces in Alaska. He represents the future.'

Paralleling the court-martial in San Francisco, the government man in Sitka began by conceding that the charges against Jackson had been brought in good faith, and he said so; there were many reasons why men of serious mind could dislike this obstreperous little man, but like Mike Healy, he was necessary for the well-being of his society.

So the verdict had to be: 'All charges dropped with prejudice,”which meant, as Caldwell explained: 'They can't be revived again.'

But of course that applied only to Alaska, because when Jackson returned to Washington, members of his own church conspired against him, bringing charges of misapplication of funds, disobedience to orders and arrogance in the conduct 448

of his missionary efforts. But his defenders pointed out that while others sat in offices pondering the niceties of formal administration, he had been on the firing line, sleeves rolled up and winning souls to God. His loyal women, seeking to remind the public of his astonishing accomplishments, published a small pamphlet summarizing his work:

In unflagging dedication to God's work from Colorado to Arizona to Montana to Alaska, with yearly returns to Washington to instruct Congress, he traveled more than a million miles using every known form of transportation, including his own feet. He organized from scratch more than seventy congregations, for whom he personally built more than forty church buildings. He often gave four or five speeches in one day for a total that ran into many thousands, and church organizations launched by him collected for missionary and other religious work a proved total of $20,364,475, for in the work of the Lord he was tireless. We shall not soon again see his like.

But perhaps the most revealing portrait of this contentious little man, who continued all his days to make friends and enemies in equal proportion, can be found in his battle with the Post Office Department, of which he was a paid official. It was his belief that since the Great Land was now American, its villages should carry respectable American names, and since he had the right to choose the names, he saw no reason why they should not honor the Presbyterians who had helped civilize the new territory.

Accordingly, he dumped fine old Eskimo and Tlingit names and replaced them with ones like Young, Hill, Rankin, Gould, Willard and especially Norcross and Voorhees, good Presbyterians all, the last two being relatives of his whom he wished to honor. One of his most interesting switches was getting rid of Chilkoot, attached to a beautiful village west of Skagway; for it he substituted Haines,

the name of the chairwoman of the Presbyterian Women's Committee, who had never seen Alaska but who had contributed generously to Jackson's support. His principal change, however, was to drop the historic old Tlingit name of Howkan in favor of his own, Jackson.

This caused a furor, for the residents did not want to lose their historic designation.

Jackson, however, was adamant, and pestered Washington to ignore local complaints and retain the new name, which honored him. But when the Democrats assumed national leadership under Grover Cleveland,

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the Post Office Department restored the name but spelled it Howcan, at which Jackson, with a burst of spleen which proved he had no shame or sense of the ridiculous, deluged Washington with requests that Howcan be changed back to its proper name, Jackson.

He accomplished nothing, but when the Republicans rewon the presidency, he sent a sharp letter to John Wanamaker, the new and Presbyterian postmaster general: With the Republicans again in power we expect to receive just consideration. . .

. During Cleveland's administration the Democrats had it changed back to Howkan, out of opposition to myself. With our Republican victory, it became Jackson again.

Now I hear there is a local movement to make it Howkan once more. Please notify the clerk in charge of these proposals that you wish it left Jackson, and greatly oblige.

But his foes prevailed, and changed the name back to a misspelled Howcan.

THE TWO AMERICAN GIANTS IN ALASKA, MICHAEL Healy and Sheldon Jackson, were in some ways reminiscent of the two earlier giants Vitus Bering and Aleksandr Baranov. In each instance the first of the pair was an imposing sea captain who exerted his will and his command over the northern oceans, while the second member was insignificant or even comic in appearance but gargantuan in determination to forge ahead despite opposition. Each of the pairs left an indelible imprint on Alaska, especially the second and less imposing members, but the greater similarity seems to be that each of these four explorers and dreamers was a badly flawed man. They were not resplendent conquerors like Alexander the Great or continent builders like Charlemagne. They were ordinary men who drank too much or were foolishly vain or who started things they did not finish or who were objects of ridicule to their colleagues. All four were subjected to official harassment or legal investigations or the censure of court-martial, and each ended his life in a kind of disgrace.