Union (ship)

Union
History
Name: Union
Owner: Fanning & Coles
Fate: Wrecked at Koro Island, Fiji, about early December, 1804
General characteristics
Tons burthen: 99 tons
Draft: 12 ft
Depth of hold: 14 ft
Propulsion: Sail
Sail plan: Brig
Complement: 24 sailors, 12 sealers
Armament: 2 nine-pound cannon, 2 swivels

Union was constructed at Barnstable, Massachusetts,[1] later purchased by Edmund Fanning, who refitted and registered the vessel in New York under ownership of Fanning & Coles shipping company partnership.

Edmund Fanning was a seal skin and merchant trader who'd read the expedition journal of English navigator George Vancouver. That journal was of particular interest to Fanning on account of Vancouver, who in 1791, landed on the coast of New Holland at a place named King George the Third's Sound. Vancouver wrote about that region being numerously populated with fur seals. On the strength of that information, Fanning made preparations to send Union there on a seal hunting expedition to gather 20,000 skins[2] which would afterwards be traded in Canton for wares to bring back to New York.

Fanning commissioned 24 year old Isaac Pendleton as captain of the expedition and selected 22 year old Daniel Wright as chief officer. In addition, 18 year old Isaiah Townsend was taken on Union as second mate. Union departed New York late September, 1802,[3] for a brief stop in Stonington, Connecticut, before making the hop to Nantucket where a 12-man seal hunting gang, led by Owen Folger-Smith, was embarked. Union departed Nantucket 10 October 1802, with 36 men, then stopped by the island of Sal in the Portuguese out-post of Cape Verde before continuing to South Georgia to commence seal hunting. But the sealer's didn't enjoy much luck while at South Georgia, only obtaining from there around 300 or 400 skins.[4]

Travelling from Sydney to China Union called at Tongatapu in the Friendly Islands searching for sandalwood. The master of the boat, Isaac Pendleton, with seven other men put ashore on 1 October 1804. Unknown to the crew remaining aboard all eight men were killed by natives. The following day, a native canoe approached the ship with a white woman on board. It appeared that her role was to entice another boat load of men to come ashore but she cried out that the other men had been murdered and she leapt out of the canoe and swam to the ship. The crew rescued her and held off the natives whilst the ship raised anchor. The woman turned out to be Elizabeth Morey, the sole survivor from the wreck of Duke of Portland.

The surviving crew sailed the ship back to Sydney, under First Mate Daniel Wright, arriving on 25 October 1804. Union sailed for Fiji on 12 November 1804. Under contract to Simeon Lord, Union was totally wrecked on the island of Koro,[5] The master, Daniel Wright, and the other twenty-one crew drowned or were killed by natives. No exact record of the date of its wrecking was recorded.[6]

One account of a voyage aboard Union was written by Walter Bates[7] in Kingston and the Loyalists of the "Spring Fleet" of A.D. 1783.[8] Another account was written by Edmund Fanning in "Voyages around the World".[9]

References

  1. ↑ "National Maritime Digital Library". www.nmdl.org. Retrieved 2016-01-09.
  2. ↑ Fanning, Edmund (1833). Voyages Round the World: With Selected Sketches of Voyages to the South Seas...Between the Years 1792 and 1832. Collins & Hamay. p. 315.
  3. ↑ Cornell (2004). Journal of Post Captain Nicolas Baudin. p. 488. ISBN 1-876154-41-1.
  4. ↑ Cornell (2004). Journal of Post Captain Nicolas Baudin. p. 488. ISBN 1-876154-41-1.
  5. ↑ Lockerby, William (1925). The journal of William Lockerby, sandalwood trader in the Fijian Islands during the years 1808-1809...Edited by Sir Everard Ferdinand Im Thurn, Leonard Cyril Wharton. Hakluyt Society. p. 189.
  6. ↑ Bateson, Charles (1972). Australian Shipwrecks. 1: 1622-1850. Sydney: AH and AW Reed. p. 38. ISBN 0-589-07112-2.
  7. ↑ "Kingston and the Loyalists of the "Spring Fleet"". Saint Croix Courier (St. Stephen, New Brunswick). 27 April 1893.
  8. ↑ Bates, Walter (1899). Kingston and the Loyalists of the "Spring Fleet" of A.D. 1783. Barnes and Company. p. 11.
  9. ↑ Fanning, Edmund (1833). Voyages around the World. Collins & Hamay.

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