The Crowninshield Story by David L. Ferguson COPYRIGHT@ 1976 BY DAVID L, FERGUSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL MEANS IN­ CLUDING INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES IN A REVIEW. FIRST EDITION T09/76 For permission to reprint previously unpublished materials, the author is grateful to: Harold Ober Associates, Inc., for the F. Scott Fitzgerald letter on p. 210. The Houghton Library, Conrad W. Oberdorfer and G. d'Andelot Belin, Trustees under the Will of Amy Lowell, for excerpts from Amy Lowell letters on pp. 212-213. The Houghton Library and Nancy T. Andrews, for the E. E. Cummings letter on pp. 214---215. The excerpts from Mrs. De Peyster's Parties and Other Lively Studies from The New Yorker by Geoffrey Hellman are reprinted by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. Copyright 1948, © 1963, renewed @ 1976 by Geoffrey Hellman. This material originally appeared in The New Yorker. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Ferguson, David L Cleopatra's barge. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Crowninshield family. 2. Cleopatra's Barge (Yacht) 3. United States-Genealogy. I. Title. CS71.C9563 1976 929'.2'0973 76-16491 ISBN 0-316-27895-5 Designed by Janis Capone Published simultaneously in Canada by Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ~ I CLEOPATRA)S - . I~ ~~ 13AR<gE - 1• I ;;t ~,- \ ). :.~ I[ _: ••-' '<'"-'~-'-\'l ·~ =-..:: -====~=- r~~, (~~~~~ ~ jacob <george 'E(i~eth 1732-177~ 1734-1815 1735-1799 M.t]-{annali Car{tm M. r:lvfa1J. 'Der0J M. 'E{iasHasket tXing'1 Ve-:!) I r ! f 1 I r r l Sarah ~eorgeJr: Jacob John 7vfa12f rBe~amin 'WiC(iams R£chari ~iwari r'Sai(orBen"'' 1766-1817 1770-1808 1774-1842 1772-1851 1774-1844- 1775- .M. sacr:1 qaniner M. '.7'vf.aria.- M. '7via1) :Boardma.n,. M. ? 1793 1758-1836 Crcnvninshie,[c{ fat. '7v!ar Lamberi:--' Clara Jrancis1Boariman rEiwaniAugustus Ric arc£ Jr. (rDick'; '( Phi(os'::!Jher 'Berv n 1810-1907 1809-1877 1817-1859 1804-1830 1782-1864- M. ,Couis Thies M. Sarah q-ool M. Caro Cine 'We{cfi :Putnam l I cCara Couis 'Berjami1'ivVi((ia11is :frederic 1837-1892 1845-1918 1844-1905 1845-1870 M. Xatherine M" 'Bradlee M. J-Ce[en Su~e 'j'airbanks M. A1t1ust ro-n Ek.ensteen r Francis Boardman caxeno 1V ..August-' Fralk (ilCrownieJJ) 1869-1950 1-872 -1947 f ~ 1874-1903 M. Louise E. iu::Pont-- SamU{._tf}r ant-"~ CLEOPATRA'S BARGE Title Page: The Crowninshield - or "India" - Wharf. Paint­ ing by George Ropes. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Salem GLEOPATRA'S BARGE LITTLE, BROWN AND C01\1PANY BOSTON • TORONTO I will tell you. The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of fiutes kept stroke and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggar'd all description: she did lie In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue, O'er-picturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature: on each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, And what they undid did. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra Act n, Scene ii Contents Prologue 3 1 The King's Broad Arrow and a Chinaman's Map 7 George Crowninshield (1734-1815) 2 A Voyage of Pleasure 75 George Crowninshield, Jr. (1766-1817) 3 Dick and the Godlike One 119 Richard Crowninshield (1804-1830) 4 The "Dutiful Ward" 159 Clara Crowninshield (1810-1907) 5 "Crownie" and the Emperor of Japan 193 Frank Crowninshield (1872-1947) 6 "Keno," His Queen, and a Minotaur 231 Francis Boardman Crowninshield ( 1869-1950) and Louise Evelina du Pont Crowninshield (1877-1958) L'Envoi 278 References 281 Index 285 CLEOPATRA'S BARGE Prologue The Caribbean is the last anchorage this side of oblivion for great American pleasure craft. To this sea they come finally, after yet another name by yet another owner - both, as some have it, of pro­ gressive vulgarity. Be this as it may, some bounty has in one way or another been blighted, most usually ( and most acceptably) by the gatherer of taxes in life and in death. Here, off the Windwards and the Grenadines, these seagoing splendors, having been banished for­ ever from Bar Harbor, Newport, and Marblehead by anxious trustees and unsmiling executors, sail for the last time. Reprieve, customarily under a Panamanian flag, is conditional; in exile, as never before, the ocean queens must earn their keep. Among these yachts, one could probably choose no better than Janeen, whose home port is St. Vincent and whose captain is an agree­ able Canadian named Boudreau. The blue-hulled schooner and her master are about the same age - sixty. And together they are every­ thing expected of expensive cruising anywhere. Janeen (she is named after the captain's wife) is large and luxurious, her crew attentive to one's every need, the food and drink excellent, the staterooms spacious, even plush. And she is fast. Sheets started, rail awash, the yacht easily makes a speed as great as that of the America's Cup contenders tacking to and fro in the swirl of Rhode Island Sound, where indeed in years gone by she was a frequent visitor. Moreover, as Captain Boudreau is not slow to confide, his ship is in great demand and so his clients (he prefers to call them guests) can be few, even select. Obviously the captain knows a great deal about sailing ships and 3 PROLOGUE about his own most of all. His Janeen has no specification, no trait and no nuance of which he is not keenly aware. Clearly his knowledge is of the happiest kind, giving pleasure to himself and to others and dis­ turbing no one. But for all the halcyon, sunny West Indian days spent among congenial guests on his much-loved ship, Captain Boudreau does have his troubles. The most worrisome in recent years has been the replacement of the yacht's mainmast. This was a problem requiring considerable thought and effort, and an upward glance tells why: Janeen's mast reaches as high as a thirteen-story building, almost lost in the blue of the Lesser Antilles. A new mast, specially constructed of aluminum, was stepped only after the greatest difficulty ( it was hard to find facilities for the purpose); the job consumed a year of the cap­ tain's time and nearly fifty thousand of his dollars. But now he is cer­ tain that his vessel will sail on for many more years - more years than those left him. As attractive as the yacht is, there are of course other magnificent sailing ships available for charter in the Caribbean. Some of these, surely, although the captain does not like to think so, possess an equal purity of design - staterooms of matched Circassian walnut pains­ takingly crafted by Scotch carpenters, perhaps even a spanking new aluminum mast. But in one respect Captain Boudreau need brook no rival. Of all the yachts in the Caribbean, none is as compellingly evoca­ tive of history as Janeen; Captain Boudreau's charter boat is the last Crowninshield ship afloat. Once scores of Crowninshield vessels were sent to roam the world by a family who for nearly three hundred years lent an extraordinary and varied presence to American life. For much of this time they went upon one sea or another for a livelihood, to gain great riches, to make war, for reasons not easily explained in a few words, and - in the end - for pleasure alone. Like their ships, the Crowninshields are gone now. An exhausted male line is survived only by collaterals in whom the blood is so diffused as to be irrelevant - a few middle names to be found around Boston, New York and Washington, and, inevitably, a fraud or two. 4 PROLOGUE They have never bothered to compile a formal history of the sort endlessly pleasing to old New England families, in which some Samuel amid his stony acres and infrequent gills of rum begets Becky, another Samuel, little Sarah ( she had that trouble with her ears), Ebenezer, and Oliver, and then constructs for himself a cane of hickory, and dies admired by all. Mercifully this kind of thing has been left to genera­ tions of antique Crowninshield females whose tireless pinnings­ together of pinnings-together of amiable and mindless jottings are forever redeemed by never finding their way into print. Yet their story is as deserving of being told as any other. Captain Boudreau, good sailor by day and now in the short, soft twilight a personable host, moves easily among his guests with stories of his own. Alongside in the sea a small saffron plastic bottle gleams and bobs as merrily as a toy. Beyond, in silence and desiccation, lies the island of St. Kitts. Too long leached by the sugar cane, too long echoing to the melancholy wail of the conch shell summoning slave to toil, too long in the very trade winds, St. Kitts's sere and useless grasses seem to plead for final abandonment, to be allowed to brood always, whisper alone forever. Over cocktail glasses in which ice shifts and is shifted, muted pleasantries shift and are shifted.