Working with history is always a learning process. I think it is pretty safe to say that when it comes to history, you only know as much as the last thing you read. It is one of the reasons the pursuit of history can be testing, wonderful and never exactly boring.
The insights and fallout from spending weeks reading and re-reading through surviving copies of the Florida Keys’ first newspaper, The Key West Register and Commerical Advertiser, continue. The print is small and clustered, making for strained reading through already strained and bespectacled eyes. Still, it is intriguing and must feel like gold panning — you spend time sifting through the regular dirt, hoping to uncover some really cool nugget.
The shiniest nugget for me, as a lover of all things relating to Indian Key, my favorite island in the chain, was discovering a juicy story involving Jacob Housman. Not only does it indirectly involve Indian Key and tell a great Housman story, but it also alleges a little act of wrecker-on-wrecker crime.
While there are many Housman stories to tell, one has always stood out for me, and probably because, as I had heard it, read about it, and learned it from others, something about it never quite added up. The story printed in the paper’s April 30, 1829 edition was actually an official action from the United States of America, Southern Judicial District of Florida, directed to the district’s marshal.
The story involved the salvage of the brigantine Vigilant, $30,000 in silver specie (coins), and a windfall for the notorious wrecker Jacob Housman. As I have always told the story, Housman and the French captain of the Vigilant entered into a deal after the vessel had grounded and its captain feared navigating the local shallows, shoals and reefs and was paid a 75% salvage award for duties performed as a wrecker.
According to Captain Daniel C. Mellon and the complaint he relayed to Judge Webb in Key West, there was a little more to the story. According to Mellon, on or about July 1, 1828, while accompanied by a single gentleman sailing in a smack, he discovered a two-masted ship wrecked in bad weather near Rachels Key. To lend aid, Mellon attempted to approach the stranded vessel, but foul weather prevented a safe approach, and he was forced to seek refuge at the Sister Keys.
There, Mellon discovered the captain and crew of the wrecked ship. He also discovered that neither the captain nor the crew spoke English. To remedy the situation, and knowing that a Frenchman on Rachels Key could act as a translator, Mellon sailed the ship’s captain to the island where their communication could be clarified.
According to Mellon’s testimony, the following was communicated at Rachels Key.
The brig was named Vigilant. Her captain requested Mellon’s assistance, engaging him to take charge of the brig and its cargo of silver specie, “Dye wood, Fustic, and Sassaparilla (sic).”
Reading through the account, I recognized that specie referred to coins, and $30,000 is a large number today, but it represented a significantly greater number in 1828. While I am not a huge fan of sarsaparilla, my favorite of the colas is sarsaparilla’s cousin, root beer, so I understood the specie and sarsaparilla. Having no idea what fustic was, I did a little research. The “Dye wood” could have been Chlorophora tinctoria, a tree from the mulberry family. It is from the wood of this kind of tree that fustic, a yellowish dye, is created.
What is also attested to in Mellon’s account was that, having been engaged as the wreck master of the Vigilant, Mellon and his partner diligently worked “together with the crew of the Brig, with great difficulty and danger, saved the said vessel and cargo from total loss.” What was also said was that Mellon intended to sail the brig to Key West “to receive the amount for which he was entitled for the great service he rendered.”
And then, at some point, the wrecking schooner Sarah Isabella, manned by Captain Housman and his crew of seven, entered the scene. According to Mellon and the court action, Housman’s actions were of a criminal nature. and that an action had been ordered by Judge Webb on April 6, 1829, “to take the body of Jacob Housman, & require of him to give bail in the full sum of ten thousand dollars, to insure his personal appearance at the Court House in Key West on the first Monday in May next.”
Next week, the story will continue, and we will discover the nature of the wrecker-on-wrecker crime Captain Housman was alleged to have committed.
