President John Tyler and Secretary of State Daniel Webster Sign a Ship’s Passport for a Famous New Bedford Whaler

The Ship Hercules was one of the famous ships of old Salem, Mass., and had a very interesting career. She was built in Haverhill in the year 1805 and was about 96 feet in 26 feet beam and was approximately 13 feet deep and of only 290 tons. She was built for Nathaniel West and on her first voyage Captain James Fairfield commanded her and continued to do so until 1808, when Captain Edward West took the vessel and sailed in her until 1811. Then Captain James King Jr who was an able shipmaster of his time took the ship. He made eleven voyages going during this time to Batavia, three times to Canton, China, four voyages to St Petersburg, Russia, once to Rio de Janeiro and once to Buenos Aires. An interesting point in her career was that in 1809 she was seized at Naples and had the good fortune to obtain her release in order to transfer Lucien Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, and family to the United States. This saved the ship from confiscation. This incident appears in the memoirs of Lucien Bonaparte: “August 5 1810, left Civita Vecchia in the three master Hercules for the United States.” Owing to sickness of his family he attempted to land at Cagliaria but was refused and warned that he would be seized. He was at length allowed to stay a week, then started again and in a few hours was captured by two English cruisers. He was taken on board and arrived August 24, 1810, at Malta, and placed in the fortress Caselli. The husband of his sister Caroline placed the ship Hercules at his disposal. The Hercules was sold to D.R. Green & Co of New Bedford in 1829 and rebuilt as a whaler. Her good luck followed her and she made eight successful voyages to the whaling grounds in all parts of the world. The end of her service came in 1847 for on July 27th of that year she was lost off Navigator’s Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Document signed, being an engraved ship’s passport showing a ship, harbor, and lighthouse, Washington, ordering any who might see the passport to “Suffer the Ship Hercules of New Bedford, Henry H. Ricketson, Master”, with no guns and navigated by 27 men, “to pass with her company and passengers” on a whaling voyage. The ship sailed from New Bedford on April 21, 1842, the date filled in by a port official. The History of New Bedford relates that on this very voyage, in 1843, this ship took the first bowhead whales taken in the Northern Pacific, finding abundance off the coast of Kamchatka. The document is countersigned by Daniel Webster as Secretary of State, and the seal of the United States is still present.

Documents signed by both Tyler and Webster are uncommon, and to find one for a noted whaling ship that had also undertaken to transport Napoleon’s brother to the United States is remarkable.