TALES of the SEVEN SEAS TALES of the SEVEN SEAS The Escapades of CAPTAIN DYNAMITE JOHNNY O’BRIEN DENNIS M. POWERS TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING Lanham • New York • Boulder • Toronto • Plymouth, UK Published by Taylor Trade Publishing An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.rlpgtrade.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Distributed by National Book Network Copyright © 2010 by Dennis M. Powers All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Powers, Dennis M. Tales of the seven seas : the escapades of Captain Dynamite Johnny O’Brien / Dennis M. Powers. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58979-447-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58979-448-1 (electronic) 1. O’Brien, Johnny, 1851–1931. 2. Ship captains—Biography. 3. Seafaring life—History—19th century—Anecdotes. 4. Seafaring life— History—20th century—Anecdotes. I. Title. VK140.O2P69 2010 387.5092—dc22 [B] 2009049759 ™The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS Preface vii Acknowledgments xi 1 Early Sea Days 1 2 Near Death and a Promotion 18 3 Leaving One Homeland for Another 32 4 A Tough First Crew 42 5 “The Sea Wolf” 61 6 Cattle, Bears, and Cats 77 7 Sailing the South Pacific 89 8 On the Atlantic 104 9 Saving the Umatilla 116 10 The Pirates and Emily in the China Seas 131 11 Canadian Voyages 146 12 Clinging to a Mast 156 13 The First Alaskan Runs 168 14 Jack London and the Gold Rush 181 15 Arctic Danger—and Loss 193 16 The Railroad Magnate and Near-Death Experiences 212 17 The Victoria 229 18 The South Seas and Hollywood 244 Selected Bibliography 265 Index 269 About the Author 279 v PREFACE As I reflected on the multitudes of files when writing my last book, Taking the Sea, I became curious about the seaman who single-handedly saved a three- thousand-ton steamship: Captain “Dynamite Johnny” O’Brien. While tracking down what was written about him, I became enamored with the tales of crude and refined men, their endurance, and their abilities to survive very difficult times on the dangerous ocean—some of their making, all of their choosing. Reading about sailing on nineteenth-century full-sail ships and early- twentieth-century steamers engendered feelings of nostalgia and romance. The stories also had an underside, however, of cruelty, toughness, combat, and raw courage. I found myself traveling with Johnny O’Brien from the South Seas to Alaska on his sea ventures, and this book—Tales of the Seven Seas—was born when I came across Pierre Berton’s masterful book The Klondike Fever, which contained this passage: O’Brien, perhaps the most colorful sea captain on the Pacific Coast, had a history so garish that it tended to read like one of the more florid sea novels popular at the time. He had narrowly missed being eaten by cannibals; had fought off Chinese pi- rates with cannon fire; had supped with the Royal Family of Hawaii; had made love to a Tahitian princess; had been offered a partnership by King O’Keefe, the famous white emperor of the island of Yap; and had shipped with the hairy and villainous Robert O’Malley, prototype for Jack London’s Sea Wolf. vii viii TALES OF THE SEVEN SEAS My research made extensive use of old maritime journals, historical society journals, personal interviews with sea historians, and worn newspaper clippings detailing these and other sagas. When I finally tracked down O’Brien’s original letters and journals and reviewed them at length, I had the basis for this book and its stories. Captain O’Brien sailed the seven seas for more than sixty years, starting in the late 1860s in India and ending in the early 1930s on the U.S. West Coast. He sailed every type of ship imaginable, but this book is intended to be more than just the story of this incredible captain. Tales of the Seven Seas is about what sailing over the oceans was really like from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, when danger and adventure coexisted every day. With this book, I hope the reader will smell the salt in the air and hear the ocean’s rush as a ship sails with hardened men, leaking seams, and shrieking winds. Sailing the seas then was not for the faint of heart, whether one was a pas- senger or crewmember, and this was the time before legalities and lawyers began to rule the maritime world. O’Brien was born in Ireland in 1851, and his first command was the American sailing bark Alden Besse. He was twenty-five years old, a very young age to obtain this rank. The nickname Dynamite Johnny came from his actions when he first sailed on the large steamer Umatilla in a storm off the Pacific Northwest. He was able to save the ship by “subduing” a rolling safe that was battering a case of dynamite—hence the nickname. This was during a horrendous gale, when just being inside the hold was an act of courage. Among his more notable accomplishments was a second saving of the Umatilla after she struck a reef near British Columbia that’s now known as Umatilla Reef. With the vessel being crushed from “stem to collision bulkhead,” the captain and crew abandoned ship. Believing the ship was still seaworthy, Chief Mate O’Brien stayed around until the vessel drifted off. He succeeded with others he comman- deered in getting her sails up and safely brought the ship to British Columbia. The ship sank in shallow water, but her proximity to shore allowed the vessel to be raised. He was lauded from coast to coast for this feat. During these times O’Brien was well known in Alaska because he was the one captain who didn’t lose a ship, and he brought thousands of prospectors into the region along the Inside Passage. Along the way he became friends with Jack London when the budding writer was making his way to the Klondike gold fields. O’Brien was a confidant of the builder of the Alaskan and Canadian rail- ways, Michael J. Heney, who willed a monthly stipend to the captain, and of the famous—or infamous—outlaw Soapy Smith. I wrote this book to illustrate the world that O’Brien’s adventures reflect: sometimes violent, always risky, at times lawless, when shipping out was a feat of rugged individualism—before the judgmental filter that today’s world applies. PREFACE ix O’Brien’s time was one that was raw and real in its underbelly—and he lived his way in an age when one could. His shipmates and friends called him “the Nestor of the Pacific,” one who feared God but defied everything and everyone else with hard fists and spirit. O’Brien commanded a ship in 1924 on its gala excursion to the South Seas and Tahiti, where the island princess—the granddaughter of the “slim beauty” that O’Brien had met nearly fifty years before—came onboard to welcome him. Back in San Francisco, a motion-picture studio chartered the vessel for the filming of Buster Keaton’s The Navigator, and Dynamite Johnny regaled the actor and oth- ers with his experiences. When O’Brien died in August 1931 at the age of eighty, he was mourned throughout the West Coast and nationally. I applaud O’Brien and these men of the sea. The stories are about the sea, courage, failures, and overcoming incredible odds—which are so applicable to- day. I truly enjoyed working on this book. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank everyone connected with this project for their generous suggestions, information, and assistance. The writing of Tales of the Seven Seas required a mixture of librarians, researchers, maritime museum curators, and ex- perts to sort through the myriad facts—some in total conflict—to write the stories about Captain “Dynamite Johnny” O’Brien, and others, that spanned from the late 1800s into the twentieth century. Maritime museums and historical societies always receive deserved recog- nition for their assistance in tracking down information about vessels, their captains, and maritime life. The San Francisco Maritime Museum, especially Bill Kooiman of its Porter Shaw Library, provided help again with their old pictures and files on maritime life during these periods. Carole Marnet of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society was especially helpful in checking universities and libraries that could shed further light on O’Brien. Dave Pear- son and Jeff Smith of the widely respected Columbia River Maritime Museum helped in answering my questions on Oregon’s connection. The highly re- garded maritime author Jim Gibbs gave much-needed background on the old sail ships and steamers of the times. Experienced librarians are always a key to successful research. Elizabeth Walsh of the Seattle Public Library provided needed copies of newspaper articles, in- cluding old ones of the Seattle Times, which contributed to this understanding. xi xii TALES OF THE SEVEN SEAS Gladi Kulp, the head of Historical Collections for the Alaska State Library in Juneau, also assisted.