Mutiny on the Ulysses: Part 1-Voyage Around the World and the Trial of the Century
Mutiny on the Ulysses
Historical Trial Series by Eric Fryar
Part 1: Voyage of the Ulysses
In 1800, federal authorities tried five sailors for mutiny in one of the most famous trials of its day. In a virtual replay of the Mutiny on the Bounty, the sailors claimed that they had acted in self-defense against the abuse and murderous threats by the captain. On both sides of this high-profile case were the best lawyers in the county. Would the sailors hang?
United States v. John Salter, et al.
On Friday morning, October 24, 1800, thirty-year-old John Salter sat in a crowded Boston courtroom. He was on trial for his life. Next to him sat John Carnes, Stephen Bruce Jr., John Bullock, and Edward Smith. They were all charged with mutiny. John had been the first mate on the merchant ship Ulysses which had sailed from Boston on August 25, 1798, on a voyage all the way around the world. The voyage had been plagued by the incompetence, cruelty, and drunkenness of the captain of the ship. The captain had almost wrecked the ship, had marooned two members of its crew, and had threatened to abandon others among the natives of the Northwest Coast of America—certain death. Every single sailor aboard the Ulysses had felt that his life was in imminent danger. As first mate, John had had a responsibility for the safety of the ship and the safety of the crew. He had felt that he had no choice but to act decisively. Halfway through the journey, John led the crew to imprison their captain at gunpoint. John took command of the ship. John only did what he thought was right and necessary to protect the ship and its crew, but in the eyes of the law, he had committed mutiny, which was punishable by death.
The courtroom gallery was packed with curious spectators. The case had attracted widespread attention and would be tried by the most famous lawyers of the time. The crowd was anxious to see the legal heavyweights slug it out in this high-profile trial. John’s “Parents, Friends, & Connections” were there to support him, including John’s wife Betsey Rice Salter. She and John had been married on June 24, 1798, just two months and a day before he sailed away on the Ulysses. John’s 63-year-old mother and father were there, as was his younger brother Richard. Families and friends of the other defendants would also have come to watch and lend their support. But without a doubt, one man was there. John could see that man intently staring at him. That man hated John Salter more than anyone else in the world. That man longed to see John swinging from the gallows. That man was Captain David Lamb, the master of the Ulysses.
David Lamb was thirty-nine years old and had been commanding ships for almost two decades. Lamb was the scion of one of Boston’s most successful merchant families. During most of his career, Lamb had primarily been the master of ships owned by his brothers, merchants James Lamb, Jr., and Thomas Lamb. But the Ulysses had truly been David Lamb’s ship. Lamb, with the financial backing of five investors, had purchased the Ulysses, outfitted it, commanded it, and circumnavigated the world in it. It had been a difficult voyage, made all the more so by the short-lived mutiny of his disloyal officers and crew.
John reflected on the events that resulted in his sitting in the prisoners’ dock with his life hanging in the balance. Captain Lamb had alienated his crew from the outset of the voyage with his haughty attitude, his explosive temper, and his constant verbal abuse. John, as the first mate, had had the most direct contact with the crew. It had been his responsibility to execute the captain’s orders. He had tried to be fair with the crew. He had tried offset the constant abuse from the captain. As the voyage progressed, John had lost all confidence in the difficult captain. John believed that the captain was a drunk, and that his drinking affected his judgment and made him a cruel tyrant to his crew. The captain could not navigate. He had almost run the ship aground when rounding Cape Horn. John had warned him of the danger, but John had been ignored. When John brought up the captain’s error, John was stripped of his rank and “turned before the mast”—degraded to an ordinary seaman, losing his status, his cabin, and his wages as an officer. The captain had abandoned the ship’s boy on an island off the coast of Africa and marooned another crew member on the Falkland Islands. Captain Lamb had repeatedly threatened to abandon other crew members on the Northwest Coast among savages known to be hostile and believed to be cannibals. What choice did John have? The captain’s incompetence and drunkenness threatened the safety of the ship. The captain’s cruelty and malevolence threatened the lives of his shipmates. John had done the only rational thing—he had locked the captain in his cabin and assumed command of the Ulysses. John believed he had done nothing wrong. He had ordered the crew to continue the voyage, to conduct the business of the ship, to look after the interests of the owners. No one had been hurt or killed. No property had been stolen or damaged. He had maintained discipline in the crew.
But two other ships, the Eliza and the Despatch, also from Boston, had come upon the Ulysses and insisted that Captain Lamb be reinstated. These ships were armed and were willing to fire on the Ulysses. The frightened crew had voted to reinstate the captain, and John and the other six seamen who had voted in favor of continuing the mutiny found themselves in iron manacles. They had spent the next year as prisoners. When the mutineers arrived back in Boston, federal authorities arrested them, indicted them, and put them on trial. Federal law declared that a mutiny on an American ship was the equivalent of piracy and carried the death penalty.
Yet John and his fellow prisoners had reason to feel hopeful that they might escape the gallows. Their attorneys were Theophilus Parsons and Fisher Ames—the best lawyers in the state of Massachusetts, perhaps in the country. Parsons was widely acknowledged as the premier trial lawyer in New England. Ames was a former member of Congress and considered to be the best orator in the nation. The defense lawyers had been candid with their clients. This was a difficult case. The defendants had mutinied. There was no way to deny that. The lawyers had to convince the jury that the mutineers were legally justified in taking over the ship. Here the lawyers felt that the evidence in their favor was persuasive. Perhaps, there was a chance.
The judge banged his gavel and called to order the case of United States v. John Salter, et al., styled simply The Ulysses in the official case reports.
The case was already notorious. The people of Boston believed that a captain’s authority was sacrosanct. Mutiny was a shocking crime. It had been just over a decade since that the most famous mutiny of all time—the mutiny on the H.M.S. Bounty—had occurred. No one could believe that the crew on a Boston ship would mutiny against its captain. The mutiny had attracted nationwide attention, and Boston was scandalized. But as the trial approached, and as the details of the voyage circulated, public interest in the case grew, and public sentiment began to shift. The court reporter would later write, “The case being of a somewhat novel character, and there being an impression that the crew, before confining the captain, had good reason to fear that he intended to leave some of them amongst the savages on the Northwest coast, excited much interest, which was greatly enhanced by the fact that the most eminent counsel of that day were engaged on either side.” In Boston, this would be the trial of the new century.
Inside Boston’s Old Colonial Courthouse, the five defendants sat in the prisoner’s dock, a section of the courtroom separated by a low wooden wall, away from the jurors, the lawyers, and the judges. Seated at tables immediately in front of the dock were the lawyers. At the table on the right were the two defense lawyers, Parsons and Ames. Seated at the other table were the two prosecuting attorneys, John Davis and Harrison Gray Otis. Davis was the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. Otis had been the United States Attorney before Davis. He was now a sitting member of the United States Congress representing Massachusetts in Ames’s former seat. He had volunteered to take the lead on the prosecution of this well-publicized case. As good as Ames and Parsons were, Davis and Otis were every bit as formidable.
Two judges sat at the front of the courtroom facing the lawyers. Judge John Lowell was the sitting judge for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Justice William Cushing was a member of the United States Supreme Court who was responsible for the judicial circuit that included Massachusetts. Cushing, as the senior judge, would preside over the trial, but Lowell would have to concur with all of Cushing’s rulings. On one side of the courtroom was the empty jury box where twelve Boston men would soon be seated to decide the defendants’ fate. In a segregated part of the gallery were thirty-six prospective jurors waiting to be questioned and seated. Next to the judges’ bench, on the opposite side of the room from the empty jury box, was the witness stand where Captain Lamb and John’s shipmates would soon stand to tell the story of the mutiny and his role in it.
John Salter
John Salter had been born on April 13, 1770, in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the oldest son of Richard Salter, Jr., and Jane Carnes. John had two older sisters, Jenny, already dead at the time of the trial, and Rachel. He had one younger brother, Richard Salter III. John grew up in a small building at 14 Union Street in Boston. Union Street was a broad lane in the center of the city lined with small businesses. It was just a stone’s throw from Court Street where John was sitting now. John and his family had lived in rooms above his father’s shop. Richard Salter made toys and ran a small toy shop. John’s family had expected that John would one day take over the family business. But first, John would apprentice with another artisan in the city.
When John was about ten years old, his family would have sent him away to become essentially an indentured servant. He provided his services and his obedience to his “master” for a period of seven years. In return, the master taught John his trade and provided his room and board. John lived as a member of his master’s household. He worked in his master’s shop. He obeyed his master’s instructions. He suffered whatever punishments his master thought appropriate for his shortcomings. John may have chafed under the oppressive rule with his master. Or maybe he developed unrealistic notions about the romance and adventure of a life at sea. Every day he encountered sailors only a little older than himself returning from the sea, with money in their pockets, living a carefree life around Boston Harbor. These sailors did not have to deal with the rigors of an apprenticeship. They were answerable to no one, making their own choices about where and when they would work next. This was a lifestyle that must have appealed to the unhappy apprentice.
When John was about fourteen years old, he ran away and signed onto a voyage aboard one of Boston’s hundreds of merchant ships as a “ship’s boy.” Breaking the indenture was illegal. John’s master had every right to capture John, punish him harshly, and force him to serve out the terms of his contract. It was also illegal to knowingly harbor a runaway apprentice. But John was not caught. He would be on a ship, thousands of miles away, completely safe from the consequences of his rebellion. Maritime historian Samuel Eliot Morison observed that most Yankee sailors, like John Salter, went to sea as “adventure seeking boys.”
Ship’s boys were usually between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, but sometimes as young as eight. The cabin boy was the lowest position on the ship. Cabin boys waited on the needs of the officers and especially ran errands for the captain. They also assisted the cook in the galley and carried buckets of food to the forecastle (pronounced “fo’c’s’l”) where the ordinary seamen slept and ate. Boys would scramble up the rigging with everyone else when it was necessary to trim the sails. They would sometimes stand watch like the other members of the crew. Boys slept in the hold, in the bottom of the vessel, with the cargo, spare sails, coils of rope, and the ship’s stores. It was a great honor when they were permitted to take their places in the forecastle with the rest of the crew.
The China Trade
John went to sea in the mid-1780s. At that time, American shipping was still suffering from a depression that had started with the British blockades during the Revolution. British policy after the war was to strangle the new United States by choking off its commerce. The British hoped that America’s experiment with democracy would fail and the former colonies would return to the Empire. Britain banned American ships from its colonies in the Caribbean. Britain imposed high tariffs in its home ports, and France, Spain, and Holland followed suit. Attacks on American shipping by Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean closed off access to Southern Europe. Hundreds of American merchant ships lay idle, rotting away at their moorings. The entire American shipping industry was nearly wiped out. Virtually the only American merchant shipping was along the coast of the United States from one American port to another. This was where John first began sailoring.
Yet the Yankee entrepreneurial spirit would not permit the total loss of America’s foreign commerce. During the 1780s, American merchants aggressively sought out new markets and were able to establish trade with China and the East Indies. The opening of the China market to American merchant ships largely saved shipping as an industry in New England. These new shipping routes provided jobs to sailors like John. But China presented its own unique challenges. Greedy and corrupt government-licensed monopolies rigidly controlled the trade. Chinese merchants had no use for the cotton, tobacco, timber, and foodstuffs that America produced in abundance. The Chinese preferred silver and gold in exchange for their products, something that cash-starved American merchants did not have. Yet, the Americans discovered that there was a good market in China for American ginseng, which grew wild in America’s eastern forests, and for sea otter pelts, which could be obtained by trade with Native Americans along the northern Pacific coast.
During the 1790s, the years that John was becoming a seasoned sailor, American shipping recovered. Boston merchants like Thomas Handasyd Perkins and James and Thomas Lamb were getting rich after years of stagnation. For Boston captains like David Lamb and sailors like John Salter, opportunities to sail were exploding. Seamen were in demand and were paid better. Voyages in the new maritime fur trade--from Boston to the Northwest Coast to China and back to Boston--took one to three years and could reap incredible profits. Shipowners often rewarded their sailors with bonuses from the profits of successful voyages. These could be several times the amount of the sailor’s pay. Officers did much better, and many ships’ captains during this era became shipowners in their own right.
One of John’s shipmates would later write of him that he was a “man of mild temper and conciliatory manners.” Everybody liked John. Older seamen had taken him under their wings to teach him the ropes. They showed him how to do the work necessary to maintain and operate the ship. They also showed him the other things he needed to know in order to survive and prosper in a life at sea, such as how to sew his own clothes and how to make rock-hard sea biscuits and dry salted meat palatable. He had also won the favor of officers who taught him how to navigate the ship and use navigational instruments. In the opinion of his shipmates, he became “a most excellent seaman.” His one flaw was that he had an extremely thin skin. He took his honor very seriously and did not suffer slights to his honor lightly. This likely resulted in many conflicts with other crew members during his years as an ordinary seaman and would later, as an officer on the Ulysses, get him into serious trouble.
Voyage of the Ulysses
John had spent a decade and a half at sea before he joined the crew of the Ulysses and had seen “almost all parts of the world.” In particular, he had made several trips to China and was “for many years in the East India trade.” By the late 1790s, John was one of the most experienced and oldest hands of any ship on which he served. He was inevitably given more and more responsibility and was finally promoted to the rank of third mate and then second mate and then first mate. John was determined to advance to the rank of ship’s captain—as sailor’s put it, “to come up through the hawsehole.” In 1798, John was in his home port of Boston. He had done well on his officer’s shares of profits from his voyages to the Far East. He decided that it was time to put down roots. In June 1798, he rented a home and married Betsey. They were both twenty-eight, which was a bit old to start a family in that day and age, but Betsey would have been waiting for many years, and John was on the brink of realizing his ambitions. On June 27, 1798, the Columbia Centinel, a Boston newspaper, reported John’s marriage to Betsey. John gave his name as “Captain John Salter.” This was wishful thinking. He wasn’t there yet, but he was close.
After the Ulysses filled its hold with sea otter skins, the ship would cross the Pacific Ocean, by way of Hawaii, to Canton in southern China. There the Ulysses would sell the furs to Chinese buyers and purchase Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain. Then the Ulysses would sail through the Indian Ocean, around Cape of Good Hope in Africa, up the Atlantic, and back to Boston. In Boston, the Chinese goods would bring incredible profits. It was one of the longest, most difficult, and most hazardous voyages a merchant ship of that day could undertake. John had made the trip before, more than once. Captain Lamb was also a veteran of the Boston/Northwest Coast/Canton trade, having made one of the first commercial voyages aboard the Margaret in 1792. Because of John Salter’s experience and skills as a navigator, Captain Lamb hired him to be first mate. As the first officer, John would be well-paid and would receive a percentage of the profits generated by the voyage. He had been given his own stateroom aboard ship. He expected to do very well for himself and his new bride. John also expected that this successful voyage around the world would be the final steppingstone to command of his own ship. Never in his wildest dreams could John have imagined that he would return to Boston two years later in chains.
Read Part 2: The Ulysses Mutineers Prepare for Trial
Read Part 3: Trial of the Ulysses Mutiny
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