American Phoenix, Pt. 5 of 6: Baltic Circle
Excerpts from my book American Phoenix, about John Quincy and Louisa Adams, who forged a relationship with the tsar of Russia to save American independence during the War of 1812.
Today, an airplane can fly from Boston to St. Petersburg, Russia, in 16 hours. Imagine if that same journey took three months instead and depended on fair wind to launch your ship’s sails. Then imagine if your ship became trapped in a circle, blowing east during the day and blowing back west at night.
Below is an excerpt from my book American Phoenix that depicts the final phase of John Quincy and Louisa’s voyage by ship in 1809 to St. Petersburg, Russia, where they were to implement an America-first agenda with Russia’s czar (pictured above).
Discovering their perilous journey can help us to better appreciate their sacrifices for our nation and also remind us of the blessing of modern conveniences.
In case you missed:
Part 1: “I Fear the Emperor or Russia is Half an American”
Part 2: Goodbye Boston Birches
Part 3: Danish Prey and 300 Trapped Americans
Part 4: Patriot Character & All the World’s a Stage
Baltic Circle
To go or not to go? With a twinge of Hamlet-like angst, John Quincy Adams faced a difficult choice in Denmark in the fall of 1809. How he longed to advocate for those three hundred Americans trapped in Kristiansand, a Norwegian town governed by Denmark at the time.
Speaking to Count Bernstorff, a judge, in Elsinore was his best shot for freeing these American sailors from their unjust detention. But the count was away from his house, and his servant did not know when he would return.
With the winds ripe for sailing that day, Adams knew that Captain Beckford was anxious that a fair wind would soon be hard to catch. If Adams waited too long for the judge to return, would he miss the last best sailing wind to reach the Baltic Sea?
If he didn’t reach Russia before winter sealed the ports, would his decision sabotage his mission to convince the czar of Russia to finally officially recognize American independence and establish fair trade between America and Russia? Would his choice significantly delay Louisa from being reunited with their sons in Boston?
His practical side, the Yankee in him, prevailed. He left the count’s estate and returned to his ship with the bitter taste of failure in his mouth. The next morning, October 2, 1809, the Horace resumed its voyage.
“We all embarked again on our dismal course,” Louisa wrote.
Within half an hour after their departure, the wind changed, forcing them to anchor a mere half mile from where they started. What to do? Because they were sandwiched between two nearby opposite shores, they needed not just any wind to take them out, but a very brisk one.
They waited as long as Jonah stayed in the belly of the whale. For three days wind was as absent as summer. Finally, the air currents changed, and they gained enough gusts to get going. With good wind and clear skies, they peacefully journeyed through the straits. Because they were close to both the Danish and the Swedish shores, they enjoyed parallel scenery of spires and steeples.
Suddenly a signal came. Cannon fired at them unexpectedly—another headache-producing explosion. They heard the blast as they passed a battery near a palace, which was built on three sunken ships—an ominous sign.
Though surprised at the cannon fire, Captain Beckford decided it was merely a customary signal. They saluted by striking their top gallant sail.
Then a big gun fired an even louder cannonball, which landed a few feet ahead of the Horace. Because the water was too shallow to come to shore, Beckford ordered his crew to lower their anchors in the middle of the channel.
A Danish boat came out to them. Once again local authorities searched their ship. The incident cost them an hour’s time, a precious sacrifice of fair wind.
Then another boat stopped them, and another. Each examination slowed their progress through the low waters. Just before sunset, a fourth ship inspected them. Because the water was shallow and narrow, they dared not go through the rest of the straits at night. Throwing their iron elephant overboard, they anchored, hoping for a guardian angel.
Weather smiled on them the next day. They effortlessly traveled seventy nautical miles and came within site of Bornholm, a two-hundred-square-mile island.
So far, the Baltic was proving to be a much safer place than the Kattegat, at least from the dangers of man. No one forced them to take a detour. No ship fired at them. No officers searched their crew and cargo. But soon they realized that the Baltic in October offered something more maddening: monotony.
“For three days we have been beating half the day about southeast, and half the day northwest, without advancing a league in our course,” Adams wrote on October 9, 1809, more than a week after leaving Elsinore.
They were traveling in a circle. Mother Nature was teasing them. Just as she gave them hope, she snatched it away. The wind took them in one direction in the morning, and back to where they'd started by evening.
The turbulence at night was so great, they couldn’t sleep. It was enough to drive them mad. Louisa was already on the brink. Would this push her over?
“Thus, we went on day after day—beating about and worn down with fatigue and anxiety,” she recorded.
How she longed to wash her soiled skirts in fresh water. Then Mother Nature threw in some special effects, as John noted:
“The night was moderate, and the day has been so, with the exception of a constant succession of squalls, with rain, hail, sleet, snow, and sometimes wind.”
Mother Nature was nudging winter from hibernation. How long would she blow snowy kisses before making its presence undeniable? After all that they had faced, now the simple change of seasons threatened to keep them from their destination.
“Dangers accumulated every moment . . . and now we had cold added to our burdens,” Louisa commented.
They had to reach the Gulf of Finland, which is a shallow body of water that freezes more quickly than the Baltic. If they didn’t reach the gulf before it completely iced over, then they wouldn’t make it to St. Petersburg. Their mission to Russia would be delayed for half a year at least, shackling John with enough failure to make his Federalist rival Timothy Pickering smile.
Beckford grimly assessed the situation. Though they were only six hundred miles from St. Petersburg, he told Adams that it would take a miracle to get them to Russia before winter. Their best hope was to turn around and dock at Kiel for the winter. Kiel, in present-day Germany, was more than one thousand miles from St. Petersburg by land. Perhaps they could travel in spring via carriage, the captain suggested.
Adams decided he needed time to think about Beckford’s solution, at least a day. He mulled over the monotony. Had they truly reached a crisis? Yes. The cold, wet taste of snow on their tongues was evidence enough. Were they facing an emergency? Obviously. The sleet on the ship’s bow spoke louder than any of the captain’s words. John knew it was true. All he had to do was skim his recent journal entries.
While crossing the Atlantic, he had read sermons and the classics. Since then, he had scarcely cracked a book. The way he had spent his time was the best testimony of their trials. His diary revealed the truth: weather, wind, the Danish, the English, and the detained Americans—all had kept him from his books and now, reaching his destination in time.
Adams had spent most of his days administering, trying to solve each and every problem. Captain Beckford may have commanded the ship, but John Quincy had been in charge.
After a sleepless night of contemplation, Adams proposed to the captain that they should try to get as close as possible to Kronstadt, the island fortress guarding St. Petersburg.
No. Beckford disagreed. The winds were not cooperating. Winter was too far advanced. It was too late. John described the captain as worrying about endangering the ship:
“The prospect of reaching Kronstadt before the formation of the ice, which will make it impracticable, has now become desperate.”
Adams was more frustrated than at any other time in this fateful voyage to date. He had not come all this way to stop because of some silly snow. He was from Boston, for heaven’s sake! Sleet and snow were as common there as cod was to the Atlantic Ocean.
Weighing on his mind, too, was his mission: to be the first person to establish official ties between the United States and Russia. Strong US relations with the largest nation in Europe could give America the leverage it needed with England and France over trade rights. Before Adams could make another suggestion, the captain refused to come out of his quarters. Was he angry, with John Quincy? No, he was ill. Quite ill.
With his earthly captain unable to lead, John looked to his heavenly captain for direction.
Their success was now “in better hands than mine” he wrote, praying for Providence to send a much-needed angel.
A simple glimpse of Gabriel would do.
Beckford stayed confined to his bed several days. The squalls continued.
Wind and rain hailed upon them. At one time the wind pushed them dangerously close to the island of Bornholm, nearly wrecking them. Having earlier lost an anchor, the Horace was out of options for contending with drift. It was as if Poseidon were blowing them to the brink with his bad breath.
“They were no imaginary dangers that assailed us, and our sufferings were pitiable,” Louisa wrote.
Their problems were as real as the bread they ate. By October 13 they faced another danger: low supplies and the stench of spoiled food.
“Thus we continued with every variety of bad weather and at last provisions began to give out and Mr. Adams began to think that we could land somewhere and go the rest of the way by land but the captain would not agree for fear of the British,” Louisa explained in exasperation.
Because of the interrogations that they had endured and the trapped Americans in Denmark, Beckford worried that Danish or British authorities would impound the Horace and his crew if John Quincy and his delegation left them and took a route by land.
The ship headed for Christiansø, Denmark’s eastern most island, about twelve miles northeast of Bornholm, to buy supplies and make a final decision about what to do.
As they arrived, they hoisted their flag. A guard at the stone fortress raised a flag in return. A representative rowed out to them but failed to bring supplies as their signals suggested. Disappointed, they were not surprised.
The reason was highly familiar. The authorities protecting Christiansø, sometimes called Ertholmene, feared the Horace was an English ship in disguise and with good reason. Nearly a year earlier on October 24, 1808, a battle had taken place between the island’s fortress and an English flotilla of twenty-five ships. The fight had left seven killed and many others wounded.
After reviewing their papers and discovering they were not British, the relieved man agreed to help. Because the weather was fair, smaller boats carrying supplies easily came to them throughout the day. But when the Horace pushed out away from the land, the wind and sea were as rough as could be. They just couldn’t get a break.
While they battled the weather again, John and a recovered captain continued discussing their future course. Louisa knew her husband well. He was an Adams. Perseverance was planted as firmly in him as any tree in the ground of the family’s Peacefield farm.
“I knew that Mr. Adams would never give up and we were obliged to make the best of our miserable condition.”
As they reached the climax of their nautical drama, a messenger rowed out to the Horace and interrupted them with exciting news. Christiansø’s governor was inviting the ladies to a ball.
“We received an invitation to a ball at the governor’s on the island of ‘Burnt Hollum’ as our captain named it, for eight o’clock in the evening while the vessel was rocking rolling and pitching as if she would go to pieces—We were obliged to decline the honor,” Louisa politely quipped.
The invitation seemed as out of place as a waltz at a funeral. They could not taste cake’s sweetness or wine’s fruitiness while making the most crucial decision of their voyage. This was no time to rest or recreate. They must resume.
Finally, John could no longer dance around the issue. He had to make a final choice. He capitulated to the captain, agreeing to change course toward Kiel on one condition: if the weather changed—if a favorable wind came upon them as they sailed for Kiel—then they would turn around and try one last time to catch a fair wind for St. Petersburg.
Though Yankee ingenuity prevailed, the Adams in him scolded him for giving in.
“I cannot but reproach myself for this momentary compliance, as it indicated a flexibility which ought not to belong to me,” he later confessed.
He saw the fatigue, and likely tantrums, of his two-year-old. He watched the tired lines grow wider on his wife’s ashen face. Her brown eyes stopped dancing, and her wavy, light brown hair became limp and lifeless from the sea air.
Though he lacked a physician’s ability to diagnose her troubles and treat her symptoms, he had compassion for her. He, too, felt imprisoned by the ship, captive to their constantly changing hardships. They had endured far more dangers than he expected.
“But I had objects on board more precious to me than my own life, and there was some reason for shrinking from a risk of the ship and cargo, which was not mine and which was the special trust of the captain.”
They headed for Kiel on October 14. The wind bore them away at a good clip, enabling John to return to reading books.
Beckford may have longed for Kiel’s shores, but he bore integrity as often as he donned his captain’s cap. Unwilling to deceive the diplomat under his charge, he alerted John the next day that the weather was about to change.
They would try one more time to sail to St. Petersburg.
The crew protested. They were “desponding under the long succession and continued prospect of adverse winds” and “alarmed at navigating the Baltic so late in the season,” John described the men.
Standing out in the open away from shore for a whole day, the Horace waited for the wind to change. To no avail! The water was as still as a dead man.
Beckford was ready to sail again for Kiel, while John implored him to wait just a little longer. Back and forth they argued. Their battle lacked the violence of pirates standing with swords drawn, but not the passion. Each frankly put forward his reasons.
As an attorney, Adams knew that forensic evidence was on the captain’s side. Freezing rain. Falling temperatures. Rocky reefs. John was armed with principles, namely, that he owed it to his government to reach Russia through the cheapest, most direct way possible.
No matter the succession of miseries that had imprisoned them the past month, he was the only one charged by the president of the United States to establish official ties with Russia. He alone represented the mission’s failure or success to Congress. He was the only one who needed a successful mission to bring him out of his so-called exile.
“Yet, in the pursuit of a public trust, I cannot abandon, upon any motive less than that of absolute necessity, the endeavor to reach the place of my destination by the shortest course possible,” John explained.
While the Horace waited, Adams soon made an interesting observation.
They were not alone. Like a school of fish, four other ships had pulled out from the port. Forty-eight hours after giving up, they received a second wind. Literally. The Horace caught a swift gust and headed toward the Gulf of Finland.
Heaven smiled on them with an angelic gale. Fair breezes carried them for three days.
Then the pilot gave Beckford and John a worrisome verdict. He feared that a recent fog caused him to miss a crucial turning point into the Gulf of Finland, Gotland island, a sizable landmark. Because of the fog, he couldn’t see the end of their bowsprit, much less an island.
Heaven, however, hastened again and sent another angel. When the fog cleared, they saw a ship. They hailed it. She raised her colors. Was it an English flag? No. Whew. Danish? No—thank goodness. The Stars and Stripes topped her sails. Her presence was as helpful as backup troops to a losing general.
Called the Ocean, this New York–based ship was also bound for St. Petersburg. The Ocean’s captain gave them good news. Yes, they had missed the island, but they were headed in the right direction after all.
The captains of both ships agreed to help each other. Staying within yelling distance, they took advantage of each other’s sailing force, and if necessary, the ability to rescue the other in case of a wreck along a rocky Russian reef.
As they entered the Gulf of Finland, the water felt smooth. They glided with ease as if going over ice, though the water was not yet frozen. Fair winds blew strong. They quickly passed lighthouse after lighthouse, each keeping them on course with the precision of following the stars.
More incredible was the brilliance of an October moon, which enabled them to travel continuously at night. On the morning of October 22, 1809, the Horace and Ocean arrived in Kronstadt’s shallow waters.
“At last we reached our destination though some distance from the land,” Louisa wrote with relief.
Before them was Kronstadt, an island fortress twenty miles from St. Petersburg by water and at the head of the gulf. When Peter the Great began building St. Petersburg in 1703, he ordered stone fortifications, or moles, to dissect Kronstadt’s low waters. No boat could get to St. Petersburg without going through Kronstadt’s stone canals or the Russian navy’s Baltic fleet.
After surveying the area, Beckford ordered the Horace to anchor near one of the guard ships, about two miles away from the mole. A Russian officer rowed out to them and inspected their paperwork.
At 1:00 p.m. they signaled for a pilot to take them into the mole. They waited. And they waited. An hour passed. Then two. Three. Finally, a Russian pilot came out to them, but it was so late in the day that Beckford and John came to the same conclusion. Both rightfully feared they would damage the Horace by taking it into the mole in the dark.
“My objective was merely to land and get a lodging for the night at an inn,” John determined practically.
A guard boat officer offered a solution. The Horace could stay where she was until daylight, when a pilot could better guide her through Kronstadt’s channels to St. Petersburg. In the meantime, the lieutenant would take the passengers to Kronstadt island in a Russian government boat. Because the imperial government required all foreigners to pass an examination by the admiral, he would escort them to the admiral’s house. John agreed. His primary goal was to get his wife and child onto land.
The government boat, however, was barely big enough for their large party: John, Louisa, Kitty, Charles, their two domestic servants, and three attachés.
Seeing the dilemma, Mr. Smith offered to stay with the Horace. Everyone, however, would have to leave clothing and trunks behind. Because it was for one night only, the plan seemed plausible.
“We dressed ourselves and accompanying him [the officer] left everything in the vessel,” Louisa wrote, explaining that they took what she thought would be appropriate attire for a Russian admiral’s house. “[We] landed perfect beggars though supposing that our trunks would follow us immediately.”
The small boat took them to the mole. From there they walked a mile to the main mansion.
They were “ushered into an immense saloon at the admiral’s house full of elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen staring aghast at the figures just introduced.”
Appalled. Horrified. These Russians stared at them as if they were wearing buckskin fig leaves.
“My sister and myself wore hats which had been chosen at Copenhagen that we might appear fashionable—and we could scarcely look at one another for laughing: immense brown beaver of the most vulgar imaginable as much too large as our American bonnets were too small.”
Shakespeare could not have written a better farce. Not even new beaver hats could conceal the fact that they had just disembarked after a long journey.
Their American simplicity shocked this society of sophistication. The Russian women’s dresses were of silk, trimmed around the edges with intricate, expensive embroidery. Louisa’s plain white linen wrapper and her equally plain skirt could not have contrasted more with the Russian ladies’ embroidered dresses. The Adamses’ attire stood out as plain brown boulders against a coral reef ’s pretty delicate lace of red, pink, and orange hues.
“It [the admiral’s house] was exquisite beyond all description and too ridiculous in the first moments to be mortifying as we naturally supposed it would only be momentary,” a highly embarrassed Louisa noted.
When the Russian admiral realized that the dirty, plainly dressed, wigless man standing before him was the new designated US minister to Russia, he was shocked. He quickly arranged for Mr. Sparrow, an English gentleman, to escort these stragglers to an inn, which turned out to be full.
“Not a place could be found to put our heads in (bonnets not excepted),” Louisa wrote, finding some humor in their Mary and Joseph–like dilemma.
Although the admiral offered his home, John and Louisa could not accept. These Americans were much too embarrassed of their plight. Mr. Sparrow took them to his house for the night.
Worse than being underdressed was having no clothes at all. Louisa took comfort in knowing the rest of their belongings would soon arrive. She fully expected the Horace to “warp into the mole” the next morning. However, there would be no warping for the Horace at Kronstadt. The reason was simple. By morning there was no Horace. The ship was gone.
Eighty days after saying good-bye to the birches of Boston, the Adams party arrived in St. Petersburg on October 23, 1809, with only the clothes on their backs. Facing a new challenge, they were trading a Shakespearean farce for a Danish fable. This diplomat and his wife needed new clothes. After all, they couldn’t very well meet the emperor wearing nothing at all.