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The deck officer ordered the sails shifted, forcing the ship into a heading somewhat to the portside of an imaginary dead-reckoning line pointing toward their destined North American port of New York City. After a calculated period of time, in order to maintain the correct general bearing, the officer again commanded the sails to be rotated, setting the Harmonia on the properly-defined compensatory course to the starboard of New York. They sailed to the left, then they sailed to the right, then to the left, then to the right, then the left, then the right, then left, then right, the left, the right, left, right, L, R, etc. And that's exactly how it went for almost 3000 miles, so just use your imagination for the rest of it. It was the summer of 1850. Aboard ship on their way to America were JOHN TAYLOR, his new bride MARY (WISHART), and his brother Magnus Francis Taylor. A full moon shone down upon the travelers and illuminated the ocean vessel during the final night of their lengthy voyage. After seven long weeks floating the high seas, the Harmonia glided past the helpful beacon lights of ships stationed next to Sandy Hook, NJ, the travelers' first closeup sight of America, and onward north by northwest through the Lower Bay alongside the beaches of Coney Island. When the boat sailed up toward the Narrows, the western edge of Long Island came into closer view to the starboard, and the east shore of Staten Island appeared on the portside. With Flatbush off to the right, the ship proceeded into the broad waters of the Upper Bay which revealed more buoys and small islands, along with the proliferation of piers visible below the edifice-accented skyline. Straight ahead lay America's major metropolis compressed upon the immediate end of Manhattan Island. 371,102 people were living there when a census was taken five years earlier; not another U. S. city came close to equalling its large population. Jersey City and the adjacent community of Hoboken reposed in New Jersey just across the Hudson River to the west. On the opposite side to the right, the East River separated Brooklyn from the lower end of Manhattan. In the Upper Bay just across Buttermilk Channel from Brooklyn, Castle William stood there on Governors Island with a wide view of all the docks surrounding the confluence of two rivers bracketing Manhattan. The newcomer MARY usually referred to Magnus Francis Taylor by his middle name, presumably never addressing her brother-in-law by his initials. But asking her to identify a small island in the waters just to the west of Governors Island may have conceivably evoked the response: "Ellis, M. F. T." The trio of young Orcadians stepped upon firm earth once more at New York harbor on Friday, August 23, no longer having to endure the bothersome pitch and roll of shipboard life. If the little traveling group had found enough time, they may have stopped over at the American Museum, a New York attraction located a couple blocks up from the Battery which occupied the southern tip of Manhattan Island. The very popular entertainment spot originated by a man named Scudder was now operated by 40-year-old Phineas Taylor Barnum at 216 Broadway, right next to Wallace & Reeves' Billiard Rooms, the Knox Hat Co., and a building at the intersection of Fulton Street where J. A. Brown sold jewelry and Dr. Townsend dispensed sarsaparilla. The museum housed in its own five-story building near Park Avenue was the showplace for a 3' 4" midget born at Bridgeport, Conn., 22-year-old Charles Sherwood Stratton, otherwise known as General Tom Thumb. During this very same year of 1850, P. T. Barnum brought a celebrated 29-year-old singer named Jenny Lind across the waters and paid the "Swedish Nightingale" $1000 for each of her 150 vocal performances at his establishment, a place which included a theater and displayed unusual people, wild animals, and other attention-getting exhibits such as "a woolly horse, a white negress, and a Japanese mermaid." The last mentioned was neither Japanese nor a mermaid, but merely monkey and fish segments sewn together. Barnum netted $350,000 from all the Jenny Lind concerts, but very likely none of the yield came from the pockets of these young folks from Kirkwall. Had the TAYLORS wondered what had transpired during their many weeks at sea, they may have purchased the latest edition fresh from the press of the New York Herald, the most influential U. S. newspaper of the times. James Gordon Bennett had started the 15-year-old New York City publication as a one-man operation, peddling the initial four-page edition of the Herald for just one cent per copy, in May of 1835. Driven by Bennett's diligence, the newspaper had grown to become a tremendous commercial success, winning enduring acclaim for its innovative founder and editor. Back in the spring of 1819, at age 23, Bennett was inspired to emigrate westward across the Atlantic after reading Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. Like the young MARY (WISHART) TAYLOR, James Gordon Bennett was also a native of the county of Banffshire, Scotland; he was born on Tuesday, September 1, 1795, at New Mill near Keith, only 26 miles southwest of MARY's own Gamrie birthplace. |
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