The Wreck of the Mentor

In the early 1830s, American whaling was booming. New Bedford, Massachusetts, had eclipsed Nantucket as the nation's leading whaling port, and merchant William Rotch Rodman dispatched the whaleship Mentor under Captain Edward C. Barnard, a 31-year-old Nantucketer. The crew of 22 included eight green hands, sailors on their first voyage. Among them was Horace Holden, a 21-year-old from New Hampshire who turned to whaling after his father's death left his family in financial hardship. The Mentor departed New Bedford on July 21, 1831, hunted whales with moderate success in the Azores and off Africa, then rounded the Cape of Good Hope and headed into the Pacific.

On May 21, 1832, after three days of severe storms, the Mentor struck a reef just before midnight, throwing the ship onto its side against jagged coral. First mate Thomas N. Colesworthy lowered a boat without consulting Barnard, and 10 men, including Colesworthy, departed into the storm. They were never seen again. When Barnard attempted to launch another boat, a wave smashed it, drowning one man and dragging Barnard over a hundred yards before the crew hauled him back. Eleven men clung to the wreck through the night. At dawn, they rowed to a nearby cay, where Barnard determined they were in Palau, an archipelago of roughly 340 islands in the western Pacific.

Historian Eric Jay Dolin pauses the narrative to describe Palau, a chain of volcanic and coral islands inhabited for thousands of years by a people with a complex matrilineal society, ritualized tattooing, and competing confederations of villages. Dolin recounts the most significant prior Western contact: the wreck of the British East India Company's barque Antelope in 1783. Captain Henry Wilson and his crew were received by the Ibedul, the supreme chief of Koror, one of Palau's major islands. In exchange for permission to build a new ship, Wilson fought alongside the Ibedul's warriors and provided muskets and gunpowder. The Ibedul sent his son Lee Boo to England; Lee Boo became a celebrity but died of smallpox within months. George Keate's 1788 account romanticized the Palauans as "benevolent children of nature" (70), though Dolin notes this portrayal ignored how Palauan hospitality was partly motivated by the desire for weapons.

On the cay, Barnard shared the optimistic Antelope story with his men. When armed Palauans arrived, however, the reception was far from warm. The natives plundered the whalemen's belongings, taking a musket, Barnard's sextant and quadrant, and clothing. When the whalemen later reached the wreck, they saw natives parading with five more muskets found aboard. During an attempt to tow the whaleboat, the Palauans attacked the whalemen with clubs. Green hand Benjamin Nute cut the towline, and the men escaped by rowing into the wind.

After hours of rowing, the whalemen reached Babeldaob, Palau's largest island, and made contact with the village of Ngarchelong at its northern tip. The chiefs asked whether the men were English, a critical question because the English had helped their rival, Koror, gain military dominance. When Barnard established they were Americans, a priestess declared the whalemen should be welcomed as honored guests.

A key figure in their reception was Charles Washington, an elderly British beachcomber—a sailor who had abandoned ship and assimilated into an Indigenous society—whom the whalemen called "Old Charley." Old Charley had lived in Palau for over 30 years and served as interpreter. Through his mediation, the Ngarchelongese agreed to help build a vessel in exchange for 200 muskets, gunpowder, and other items. The rivalry between Ngarchelong and Koror intensified as Koror threatened to capture the Americans. When attempts to build a Western-style boat failed, the Ngarchelongese constructed a large ocean-going canoe. The chiefs demanded three Americans remain as hostages: able seamen Horatio Davis and Calvin Alden, and James Meader, Barnard's brother-in-law. Three Ngarchelongese, including a chief named Kobac, accompanied the departing group.

On November 23, 1832, the whalemen departed in the canoe and a repaired whaleboat, aiming for the Dutch port of Ternate. The voyage was disastrous. Six days out, a gust capsized the canoe, forcing all survivors into the leaking whaleboat. For seven more days they drifted on dwindling rations, some men drinking seawater and falling into delirium. On December 6, they spotted an island and rowed toward it, only to be met by natives who attacked them, smashed the whaleboat, and beat the whalemen. They had landed on Tobi, a tiny coral island about 400 miles southwest of the main Palauan islands.

On Tobi, the captives were divided among individual overseers who treated them as property. The island was far more impoverished than Ngarchelong, with food perpetually scarce, and the whalemen wasted away. On February 3, 1833, the Spanish merchant Sabina appeared. Barnard and a seaman named Rollins fought their way into native canoes and reached the ship, but its captain refused to rescue the remaining men. Barnard eventually reached the United States and urged officials to send a rescue mission.

The departure of Barnard and Rollins without adequate compensation enraged the Tobians, who declared the remaining captives slaves for life. A typhoon destroyed taro patches and coconut trees, and the natives blamed the captives for angering their deity, Yarris. The whalemen were forced into grueling labor and subjected to forcible tattooing on their chests and arms. One by one, the captives died. Seaman William Seddon was placed alive in a canoe and set adrift, consistent with how Tobians treated their own infirm during famine. Steward Peter Andrews, a Black man, was beaten to death. One Ngarchelongese chief died of starvation, and the commoner Omry was caught stealing and set adrift. Seamen Milton Hewlett and Charles Bowkett also perished. By late 1834, only Holden, Nute, and the Ngarchelongese chief Kobac remained alive.

On November 27, 1834, the British barque Brittania appeared. Holden's overseer placed him in a canoe and raced toward the ship. After warning cannon fire, Holden dove into the water and was pulled aboard just as a shark closed in beneath him. Nute was also retrieved, but Kobac was left behind. The two Americans reached Canton, China, and sailed home, arriving in New York on May 5, 1835.

Holden published a book about his ordeal in early 1836, hoping to earn money and pressure the government into rescuing the remaining captives. Unknown to Holden, Barnard's advocacy had already prompted action. The USS Vincennes, a sloop of war, arrived at Koror in late November 1835 under Captain John H. Aulick. After retrieving Kobac from Tobi, Aulick organized a joint expedition of 120 armed sailors and marines alongside 700 Koror warriors to negotiate for the two Americans still held in Ngarchelong. Tense negotiations, complicated by the scheming of Koror's prime minister Arcusbonga and Old Charley's own duplicity, produced a deal: Meader and Davis were released in exchange for iron tools. The Vincennes departed Palau in December 1835 and arrived in Virginia on June 5, 1836.

Of the 22 men who sailed on the Mentor, only seven survived. Barnard resumed whaling but drowned in 1844 when his schooner sank in a gale on Lake Erie. Meader returned to New Bedford to find his wife had remarried; he never married again and died in 1852. Holden married, moved to Hawaii and then Oregon, and lived to the age of 94, never publicly revealing his tattoos. Dolin traces Palau's subsequent history through Spanish, German, and Japanese colonial rule, the devastating Battle of Peleliu in 1944, and the islands' independence as a republic in 1994.