Louis Becke - Concerning Bully Hayes

"BULLY" HAYES! Oh, halcyon days of the sixties and seventies, when the Pacific was not, as now, patrolled by men-of-war from lonely Pylstaart, in the Friendlies, to the low-lying far-away Marshalls and the coral lagoons of the north-west; when the Queensland schooners ran full "nigger" cargoes to Bundaberg, Maryborough, and Port Mackay; when the Government agents, drunk nine days out of ten, did as much recruiting as the recruiters themselves, and drew—even as they may draw to-day—thumping bonuses from the planters sub rosa! In those days the nigger-catching fleet from the Hawaiian Islands cruised right away south to palm-clad Arorai, in the Line Islands, and ran the Queensland ships close in the business. They came down from Honolulu in ballast-trim, save for the liquor and firearms, and went back full of a sweating mass of black-haired, copper-coloured Line Islanders, driven below at dark to take their chance of being smothered if it came on to blow. Better for them had it so happened, as befel the Tahiti a few years ago when four hundred of these poor people went to the bottom on their way to slavery in San José de Guatemala.

Merry times, indeed, had those who ran the labour vessels then in the trade, when Queensland rivalled the Hawaiian Islands in the exciting business of "black-birding," and when Captain William Henry Hayes, of Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.—vulgarly called "Bully" Hayes—came twice a year to fair Samoa with full cargoes of oil, copra, and brown-skinned kanakas, all obtained on the stalwart captain's peculiar time-payment system.

One hardly ever hears the name of the redoubtable Bully mentioned nowadays, yet it is scarcely thirty years ago since his name was a power all over the wide Pacific, from Manila to Valparaiso. In those days did a German trading-vessel in the Islands sight a white-painted brig with yacht-like lines and carrying Cunningham's patent topsails, the Teutonic skipper cracked on all his ship could stagger under, and thanked heaven when he saw the stranger hull-down; for Bully, with his fidus achates , the almost equally notorious Captain Ben Peese, had a penchant for boarding Dutchmen and asking for a look at their chronometers, and in his absent-minded way, taking these latter away with him.

And in Sydney, and Melbourne especially, people will remember the gay, dashing, black-whiskered Yankee captain who, in the sixties, came to these ports in a flash clipper ship, where he spent his money royally, flirting—alas! if he had but stopped at that—with every accessible woman of high or low degree—provided she was fair to look upon—and playing the devil generally in every known and unknown manner, and who then sailed gaily away to China, neglecting to attend to many little financial matters in connection with the refitting of his ship, and leaving the affections of a number of disconsolate beauties in a very bad state of repair.

The writer happened to know the gentleman well, and although it is now sixteen years since his body was thrown to the sharks among the lagoons of the Marshall Group, it is not too late to rescue his memory from much undeserved obloquy. Many a fancifully embroidered tale has been told and printed of the terrible "massacres" he perpetrated among the inhabitants of the South Seas. These massacres were purely apocryphal and only worthy of appearing—as they did in the first place—in an unreliable daily paper in San Francisco.

A man's true character is generally revealed by sudden misfortune. The writer sailed with Hayes for nearly two years, and was with him when, perhaps, the heaviest stroke of ill-luck he ever experienced befell him. In March of 1874 his brig Leonora ground herself to death on the jagged coral of Strong's Island, in the Caroline Group, and "Bully" seemed for the nonce a broken man. But few people knew that beneath that gay, laughing, devil-may-care exterior there lay a whole world of dauntless courage and iron resolution; that six months after the brig was destroyed he would, by unwearying toil and the wonderful fascination he exercised over his fierce and ruffianly crew, find himself a wealthier man than when he trod his brig's deck with a full cargo of oil beneath his feet and ten thousand dollars in his cabin.

Let me first of all, though, before relating all that befell us during our sojourn on Strong's Island, where I, at least, spent many long, happy months, speak of the Leonora , once the Waterlily , and alias the Luna , the Leonie , and the Racinga . As the Waterlily she was first known, and under that name sailed her maiden voyage in the opium-trade, and beat the record. At this time Hayes made his appearance at one of the Treaty Ports in a ship named the Old Dominion . On the way out from New York his crew had mutinied, headed by the steward, a Greek. In the fight that ensued Hayes killed the Greek outright by a blow of his fist, and threw another with such violence against a deck-house that he died in a few hours. An inquiry was held, and Hayes, so it was stated, came out of it well. The Old Dominion was sold, and Hayes entered the Imperial Chinese service as commander of a gunboat. Another gunboat was commanded by one Ben Peese. Of this period of his life Hayes never cared to speak, but the story of Peese and himself was given as follows:—

The two became friends, and in conjunction with some mandarins of high rank, levied a system of blackmail upon the Chinese coasting junks that brought them— not the junks—in money very rapidly, and Hayes's daring attack on and capture of a nest of other and real pirates procured for him a good standing with the Chinese authorities. Peese soon got into trouble, however, and when a number of merchants who had been despoiled had succeeded in proving that his gunboat was a worse terror to them than the pirates whom he worried, he disappeared for a time. The Waterlily , which was then on the point of sailing for Calcutta, was, at this time, chartered at a big figure by some rich merchants to take a cargo of provisions to Rangoon. Shortly after her departure Hayes resigned and went to Macao. Here he was joined by his colleague, in command of the Waterlily . How Peese had got possession of her was not known. Hayes told people that his friend had bought her, but those intimate with Peese knew a great deal better. Anyhow, some months later, the merchants who chartered her said that Peese, who had been given command after his forced resignation from the Imperial service, had landed them somewhere in the Straits, taken all their dollars, sold the cargo to the Dutch military authorities, and cleared out.

And then with a new ship, a new crew—many of whom were Hayes's and Peese's former Chinese naval service pirates—the partners sailed for the Bonin Islands, where Peese was well known, and had lived before. Two days ere making the Bonins a ship was sighted ashore on a reef. It was a gunboat from Macao with an official on board, bound to the Bonin Islands to investigate the murder of a Portuguese captain and mate. A boat was lowered from the Waterlily , and Peese, who spoke Spanish well, learned from the captain that the gunboat, which was then hard and fast, had run ashore in the night and bumped a big hole in herself just amidships. For a thousand dollars Peese agreed to stand by them and save all he could, including her four guns. The guns were rafted to the Waterlily , then the small arms and stores followed in the boats belonging to the gunboat. At dusk Hayes went aboard the wrecked ship and took the brig's Chinese carpenter with him. On examination he said the ship could be got off again if she could be canted over and a sail "fothered" over the hole temporarily. This the gunboat captain agreed to try, and signalled for his boats to return from the Waterlily . After working all night the thing was done, and the captain and officers were profuse in their expression of admiration at Hayes's skill. As the tide fell the carpenters got to work, and the gunboat was made watertight. Under Hayes's direction, at flood-tide, she was then kedged over the reef into the lagoon, and anchored in smooth water. Peese and Hayes then arranged to bring in the Waterlily at next tide, lay her alongside the gunboat, and put the guns and stores aboard again, agreeing to take the captain's order on Macao for 700 dollars and 800 dollars in cash. But next morning the brig was nowhere to be seen, and although the captain had his ship he was minus his big guns, many small arms, and stores to the value of 2,000 or 8,000 dollars. In attempting to get under way he again ran ashore, and remained hard and fast for a week.