| Notes |
- Newsletter of the Haskell Family Society
Volume 7, No. 3, September 1998
Benjamin shipped on 25 May 1830 at age 17 in the whaling ship Mentor. It was her first voyage to the Pacific and she returned safely 22 April 1831. He was again in the Mentor when she sailed out of Nantucket on 20 July 1831, heading first for the South Atlantic whaling grounds, and from there onto an ill-fated trip to the Pacific. The name Benjamin Franklin Haskell, "age 19, boatsteerer", appears on the list of twenty-two crew registered in the Bureau of Customs in the U.S. National Archives (RG 36; RBC).
Boatsteerers or harpooners, one to a boat, were roughly analogous to naval petty officers and, after the mates, the most important men on a whaler. It is much to young Benjamin's credit that he had attained this rank by his second voyage. While these experienced and skilled men had the greatest responsibility, they also faced the greatest danger. After striking the harpoon on a whale, the harpooner went aft to man the steering oar while the mate went forward to wield the lance for the death blow. Harpooners lived amidships apart from the rest of the crew, half-way between the crew in the forward foe'sle, known as 'steerage', and the officers aft.
From their inception around the turn of the 19th century Yankee whalers probed every corner of the vast, uncharted Pacific Ocean, discovering island groups and chains by the score and naming some after their whale men discoverers. In 1783 the East India Company packet Antelope had wrecked in the western Pacific Ocean on the Palau Islands, north of New Guinea. An account published in London in 1798 idealised Palauan Island life while overlooking its societies' ritualised warfare. On departing these islands, the Antelope crew left a stock of weapons, and the East India Company delivered more in 1791, only escalating inter tribal warfare.
By 1832 when the Mentor arrived in South Pacific waters, relations between whalemen and South Sea Islanders ranged from friendliness to the most feared reception in case of a ship wreck open, violent hostility. Survivors could expect torture and slavery for years, or more leniently, death. Master of the Mentor, Captain Edward C. Barnard, was aware that the whaler Syren had been savagely attacked in the Palau Islands as recently as 1823, with her crew barely saving themselves from massacre.
Born in 1799, Captain Barnard had witnessed the dramatic growth of New England whaling after the War of 1812. At age 25 he had commanded the whaler Persia and in 1830 took command of the Mentor. Built as a merchantman in 1812, the Mentor had been refitted for whaling but carried only three six-man boats.
Due to bad weather, strong gales and rain Captain Barnard had been unable to obtain his longitude for several days, but believed himself to be about 150 miles NW of Palau when, at midnight, in May 1832, his vessel sailed onto rocks - of the Palau Islands.
The Mentor broached and fell over to port. All hands cleared away the boats on the lee side, then got the port quarter boat clear and filled it with ten or eleven men, including all the officers. The Master and crew, remaining on board, cut away the fore and main masts, trying to stabilise the wrecked vessel. One man was lost overboard in a vain attempt to launch the starboard boat, which broke up in the heavy seas. Finally, at daylight the crew managed to get out the one remaining boat, load it with a few provisions and gear, and row safely onto a sand spit.
Nothing was ever found of the first boat, which may well have overset at once with all hands drowning. One source lists the eleven men "killed in the Mentor shipwreck". They include: Benjamin F. Haskell, "Boatsteerer, aged 19 years"; John T. Bailey, "boy, aged 15"; and James Blackmer, "boy, aged 16" years, also Chief Officer Thomas M. Colesworthy, aged 22, and Second Mate Peter O'Connor, aged 18 years. Perhaps these were the lucky one
Of the survivors, six were murdered or died of starvation on Tobi Island and three were left on the island of Babelthaup as hostages. One escaped, and two were rescued in 1836 by the USS Vincennes, as the US Navy landed in force to secure them. Two hostages who escaped a year earlier to a passing vessel had been forcibly tattooed from head to toe and were near death when found. Possibly their rescuers alerted the Navy about the other hostages.
The Palau Islands are generally considered the westernmost of the Caroline groups. Although far distant from the others. Babelthaup, the largest of the Palaus, is 470 miles east of Mindanao and 240 miles west of Yap. Discovered by the Spanish explorer, Villalobos, in 1543, the Palaus were annexed but never developed by Spain, and when the Spanish Pacific empire broke up in 1899, they were sold to Germany. In 1919 Japan seized the islands as spoils for her entry into World War 1. Later, recognising their strategic location in World War II, Japan built airfields on Peleliu and Babelthaup, installing strong garrisons to protect them. A bloody battle in September 1944 cost 1950 U. S. lives. It was 112 years after the Mentor shipwreck.
After his rescue Captain Barnard went whaling again, then moved to the Great Lakes where he was lost on Lake Erie in a great gale of 1844.
It was 165 years after his death that Benjamin Franklin Haskell's tragic fate came to light in the crew lists and story of the Mentor, and another 'lost' family member was found.
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1813 - 1832 (19 years)
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