Radio Script #445

Little Talks on Common Things

January 31, 1960

Both on this program and in my book “Kennebec Yesterdays” I told the story of Solyman Heath’s journey to California by covered wagon in 1849. Some of you will remember that Solyman was accompanied by his 16 year old son William, who later, when the Civil War broke out, recruited a company in Waterville and went off to the war as its captain. Promoted to the rank of Lt. Col., William Heath was killed at the Battle of Gaines Hill in 1862; and when a post of the GAR was formed in Waterville after the war, it was named the William S. Heath Post.

Soon after the publication of “Kennebec Yesterdays”I had learned that young William Heath was supposed to have separated from his father in California, though Solyman expected the boy to rejoin him for the return journey to Maine. But when Solyman was ready to return, young William did not show up. That adventurous boy had actually shipped out of San Francisco for far-away China. Within the past year there has been found the diary kept by young William Heath during the nearly two years that elapsed between his departure from California and his eventual return to Maine. Francis Heath, an executive of the Sun Oil Company in Dallas, Texas, a Waterville man who is the son of the late Edward and Mary Heath, and brother of Walter and Arthur Heath and of Mrs. Emily Heath Hall, has personally typed that almost undecipherable diary and has kindly allowed me to read the typed copy and use parts of it on this program. So, beginning tonight and for several subsequent Sunday evenings, we shall be following a Waterville boy as he made his way to China and other parts of the Far East a hundred and ten years ago.

Apparently William Heath had intended to rejoin his father in San Francisco, but it was on November 27, 1849, while he was in Sacramento, that William got word that his father was leaving San Francisco on that very day by boat bound for Panama, intending to cross the isthmus and then take another boat to New Orleans and a third boat to New York.

So young William decided he would go to the mines. Let us now have the story in his own words: “When I left Sacramento I had $8 in my pocket, my bedding on my back and rubber boots in my hand. I bought a little hard bread and started off for the mines. Since it was after three o’clock in the afternoon when I left, I made only about twelve miles when I decided to camp for the night. So I slept under a tree in the rain.”

The next day William tramped 22 miles to a little Mormon settlement, but since he knew no one there he camped under another big tree, subsisting meanwhile on the hard bread. The next day he reached the mines near what is now the town of Placerville. Since he had met a lot of men crossing the plains and after his arrival in California, William hoped to find someone he knew. But he was out of luck. Let us pick up the story again in his own words: “For two or three days I wandered among the miners but could find no work because I had no tools. So I decided to go to Webberville where I felt sure I should find acquaintances. But it is thirty miles from the mines by road, and I thought I could save time by taking a short cut across country. My short cut turned out to be the long way around. When night overtook me I was ten miles from Webberville. I stopped at a log cabin and got supper, paying two dollars for nothing but tea and biscuit. There was only one room in the cabin, occupied by the man, his wife and little girl, but they let me sleep on the floor.”

At Webberville William Heath did encounter fellows he had met before on the trip across country. He had been especially friendly with a man named Rogers, who was now running a saloon in Webberville. William at once looked Rogers up, and this is the way he tells it: “When I got to Bill Rogers’ place I found it was the headquarters of the remnants of our once glorious band of pioneers. There was Hamilton, or ‘Get Up John”, as we used to call him. There were Ward Millichops and Jim Bacon dealing monte. George Stafford was tending bar and there at the bar were Case. whom we called ‘Old Vermont” and one of our drivers whose nickname was ‘I Betcha”.

I was surrounded and pressed for news about our wagon train. I had to tell them that our pioneers were dying off very fast. The next morning my old friend Horace Gerth asked me to help him pan gold. He rocked the cradle and I put in the dirt. We worked about half a day and got $16. That was my first and last experience in digging gold. I am no miner.”

Then William found new employment in Webberville. As he tells it: “One day Bill Rogers told me he wanted me to write a letter for him to his wife back East. I was quite willing to comply. He told me his wife was young and he wanted the letter to be very sweet. Thinks I, ‘She’ll get such a letter as Romeo would have written to Juliet’. In about an hour I had composed a masterpiece. Every adjective was a superlative except when I once used the comparative ‘I love you better than my life’. Rogers was pleased, paid me two dollars, and recommended me to all who wished to write love letters.”

Then William decided to try his luck again in Sacramento. He encountered two boys from Thomaston. Maine — William Laughton and John Staples — and the three of them hiked to Sacramento. Now let William tell it: “We started Wednesday morning with bundles on our backs. I sold my rubber boots for $25. They cost me $5. What a walk it was! We made it to within ten miles of Sacramento, a walk of 45 miles. The next day I could hardly stand and had to hire a mule to ride on. I lounged about Sacramento for two weeks.”

William Heath’s next move was to San Francisco. There he stayed for three months, living by whatever odd jobs he could pick up. He managed to scrape together about $150 and decided to go to Honolulu. He booked passage on the boat Clyde for $50, sailed on her out of San Francisco on April 9, 1850. and arrived at Honolulu on April 20. Let us see what he has to say about the Hawaiian port as it was 110 years ago: “As we sailed up the channel, we observed wrecks of three vessels on the reef. It is a bad entrance in rough weather. The dress of the natives consists of only a shirt for the men and a loose calico dress thrown over the shoulders for the women. Neither sex wears shoes or stockings. This is city dress. Out in the country both men and women wear only a loin cloth, and I have been in huts where the whole family, consisting of twenty persons of both sexes and all ages, have only the covering with which nature provided them.”

William had intended to stop at Honolulu. Let us now see why he decided to go on to China. Captain Kempton on the Clyde was bound for the China coast and for him Honolulu was only a stop on the way. He had been glad to make an extra $50 by taking William Heath to that port. But, wrote William in the diary, “When we arrived at Honolulu the captain learned that he would lose money by landing me. The port authorities required that every vessel that landed passengers — even a single passenger — must pay a fee of $80. Captain Kempton couldn’t see giving me a free ride and free meals out here from San Francisco and lose $30 besides. So he offered to take me to China for $25 more, which I paid him. China or Honolulu, it was all one to me. I don’t know what I shall do in China. but I am now really on my way to the Celestial Empire.”

Before William had left California he had written a long letter home, telling his mother and brothers that he was going to the Hawaiian Islands. As his ship left Honolulu, bound for Hong Kong, he began to think about that letter and about home. This is what he wrote in the diary: “I wonder what the folks at home thought of my letter. It was written in a great hurry and I was almost crazy at the time. They have received it long before this. I was terribly disappointed to get no letter from them at Honolulu. They must have known that I was alone in California, even before I wrote my long letter before I left there. But I got no letter from home later than December 6th. Father must have reached home before January. Probably all the folks were so glad to see Father that they forgot all about me. Out of sight, out of mind.”

Out on the vast Pacific, between Honolulu and China, William Heath had a chance to do a lot of thinking, and he thought about home with more yearning than he had experienced during his busy days in the gold fields of California. He wrote in his diary, when his ship was some 500 miles west of Honolulu, “How I would like to see the folks. I wonder if they are well. I am now six thousand miles from them. How I should like to stand again on a carpeted floor and lie down on a feather bed. I have done neither for more than a year. What a pleasure it would be to eat a good biscuit and drink a good cup of coffee at home. I am now 16 years and two months old. If I had started for home instead of for the Sandwich Islands, I should be in Maine now.”

On May 17, 1850 Heath’s ship crossed the international date line. The experience puzzled him as it has puzzled many a person since. Nearly a hundred years after William Heath’s voyage, I had the same confusion about that date line without going anywhere near it. Just a week before Pearl Harbor in 1941, I had an overseas telephone conversation with a person in Manila. When it was over, I got out that reliable annual volume, the World Almanac, to figure out the time difference. I discovered that I had heard that person in the Philippines speak to me over the telephone thirteen hours before he uttered the words.

My end of the conversation was carried on at 8 A.M. Waterville time on a Friday. The other end was carried on at 9 P.M. the same day. But Manila is far, far west of Waterville. Why wasn’t it Thursday evening, instead of Friday, in Manila? The answer is the international date line. Ships crossing that line from east to west drop a day from the calendar; in the other direction they count the same day twice.

On that May 17th William Heath wrote: “Though yesterday was Tuesday, today is Thursday. That is not the worst. I am all mixed up about the days of the month. I make it May 17. The captain tells me it is the 19th.”

At times on the long voyage William was more than homesick; he was downright moody. Once he had a conversation with the mate about the best way to commit suicide. The mate told him the best way was to bleed to death. William notes that the idea didn’t appeal to him. One day he wrote: “I suppose I must count myself lucky to be alive. It is a wonder a coroner’s inquest was not held long ago over my body and ordered it dropped into a nameless grave in California. But contrary to my expectations, here I am on the way to Hong Kong. Perhaps Fate has something in store for me yet. Pooh! I have seen all the happiness I shall ever enjoy. My dreams have all vanished. I have sometimes dreamed that a Utopia lay ahead, but I always woke up to stern realities. There can be little brightness on the canvas of my future.”

William Heath, like many a young man of his times, liked.to try his hand at poetry. He tells us that he composed many verses on that voyage across the Pacific, but he entrusted only a few of them to the pages of his diary. Most of them have a gloomy sound, like these four lines:

“The dismal clouds are darkening fast;

I hear the tempest’s sullen blast;

I see the wild waves flashing bright

Shine through the darkness of the night.”

William thought often of the possibility of shipwreck:

“Thrown when the war of winds is 0′ er,

A lonely wreck upon the shore;

Mid sullen calm and silent bay

Unseen to drop by dull decay.

Better to sink beneath the shock

Than moulder piecemeal on the rock.”

Year: 1960