A Doubtful Island of the Pacific 



489 



If the Levant was wrecked on a reef 

 within the region here considered (or, 

 indeed, much farther east) and there- 

 after broken to pieces in heavy surf, 

 the prevailing westerly current might 

 have carried her drifting wreckage in a 

 few months' time to the south end of 

 Hawaii, where the spar, identified as 

 her mainmast, was found. This west- 

 erly current is usually very strong, with 

 slight southerly variations. The Ta- 

 coma, lying to during the night, with 

 engines stopped, drifted a mile per hour 

 in a west-southwesterly direction. The 

 drifting spar, if moving with a velocity 

 of half a mile to a mile per hour, would 

 travel from 300 to 700 miles per month. 

 The Levant sailed from Hilo in Sep- 

 tember, i860, and the drifting wreckage 

 was found on the Hawaiian shore in 

 June, 1 86 1, nearly nine months there- 

 after. 



If the Levant, sailing in the night 

 with a smooth sea, struck upon the reef 

 of an ordinary coral island, especially 

 at high tide, her ship's company might 

 possibly have landed without the loss 

 of a single life, in which event there 

 would have been many and still might 

 be some survivors whose chances of liv- 

 ing till now on a fairly habitable and 

 healthful island might, perhaps, have 

 been far more favorable than elsewhere, 

 exposed as they would have been not 



interested parties, in order to preserve recorded 

 evidence of the dimensions and descriptive de- 

 tails of the spar. The sketches were laid aside 

 shortly after and were never brought to light 

 again until my recent visit to Honolulu, more 

 than forty years thereafter, in search of the de- 

 sired information, when Mr Whitney found and 

 placed them at my disposal. 



Recent inquiry shows that the Levant's lower 

 masts were put into the ship at the Boston navy 

 yard, in 1S58; but no record of that work has 

 yet been found there, which affords any infor- 

 mation for comparison of dimensions or details, 

 which might serve to identify the mast found 

 at Hawaii or confirm its supposed relation to 

 the Levant . 



only to the constant risks of life under 

 existing conditions of modern civiliza- 

 tion, but also to the hazards of war, 

 which was their vocation and in which 

 they would have been actively engaged 

 a few months later if they had duly 

 reached their destination at Panama. 



In this connection I may venture to 

 recall the interesting incident that Ed- 

 ward Everett Hale's Philip Nolan, "The 

 Man without a Country," ended his 

 romantic career on the Levant on this 

 her last and fatal voyage, since in the 

 author's imagination he must have been 

 aboard when she last put out to sea 

 from the port of Hilo. There may 

 have been a whole ship's company of 

 men, now without a country, cast away 

 on this mysterious island about forty- 

 four years ago, some of whom may be 

 still watching for a sail. 



This would be, indeed, a marvelous 

 thing, but it is not beyond the range of 

 possibility. The mutineers of the 

 Bounty lived on Pitcairn Island 18 years 

 before they were found there, and the 

 extreme and solitary isolation of this 

 supposed land would fully account for 

 the long undiscovered seclusion of the 

 castaways. If there be an island in this 

 uttermost part of the sea, and if, sooner 

 or later, it should be found with sur- 

 vivors of the Levant, its story might 

 well be thought the strangest sea ro- 

 mance in the history of the world. The 

 venerable author of ' ' The Man without 

 a Country ' ' has manifested a very keen 

 interest in all that pertains to the recent 

 search for the Levant and in the efforts 

 to solve the mystery of her fate. 



On my return to San Francisco after 

 the cruise of the Tacoma I received a 

 note of welcome from Dr Hale, which 

 he had sent to await my coming. He 

 wrote, "If you have found dear Phil 

 Nolan bring him at once to this house ; 

 I will adopt him as my grandfather. ' ' 



