For Those In Peril On The Sea

A Life Lost on the Far Side of the World

Life in 19^th Century New England was hard and uncertain, and such “Yankee” characteristics as self-reliance, willingness to venture far from home, and taking risks, were in essence life skills that enabled these people to prosper in a large and unforgiving world.  Those that survived sometimes made great fortunes, but a great many more were lost along the way, leaving only a small stone in some rural cemetery and, perhaps, a packet of letters to tell their story.

Sylvanus Jenks Bliss was born on 22 October 1825 in West Brookfield, Massachusetts.  He was the third son of Jesse Bliss, an attorney and 1809 graduate of Dartmouth College, and Mary Penniman.  In 1837, when Sylvanus was twelve years old, his mother died in childbirth leaving a newborn daughter and six older children ranging in age from five to seventeen.

The Jesse Bliss House in West Brookfield, Massachusetts

As a small-town lawyer, Jesse Bliss appears to have made a living but in no sense a fortune.  Without the prospect of even a modest inheritance, his four sons had to make their own ways in the world.  The oldest and youngest, Henry and Elias, became merchants in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York respectively.  The second son, Edward, died of consumption in 1847 at age 23.  On 19 October 1841 Sylvanus, the third son, then 16, was appointed an apprentice midshipman in the Navy.

Naval education at the time was not a four-year course of study.  Young men spent five or six years at sea and several more on land before attaining the rank of passed midshipman.  A passed midshipman had successfully completed the lieutenant’s exam and was thus eligible for promotion, however, the number of commissioned officers in the Navy was set by Congress and the actual promotion required a vacancy.  It was a largely unregulated educational process that was characterized by harsh discipline and often physical abuse.

On 18 July 1842 apprentice midshipman Bliss sailed aboard the Columbia, a three-masted frigate bound for the Brazil Station where she would protect American commerce during several South American wars and work to suppress the slave trade.  With him was fellow acting midshipman William King Bridge of Augusta, Maine.  On 13 September 1842, while Bliss and Bridge were aboard the Columbia, another training ship, the brig-of-war Somers, narrowly avoided a mutiny planned by acting midshipman Philip Somers, son of the Secretary of War, John Canfield Spencer.  Somers and two fellow conspirators were hanged at the yard arm without the formality of a court-martial.  The incident and ensuing review of naval training methods led to the creation of the Naval School, later the U.S. Naval Academy, in 1845.

Apprentice Midshipman Sylvanus J. Bliss circa 1845

On 18 May 1846 Bliss sailed aboard the storeship USS Southampton from Praia, Cape Verde for Monrovia, Liberia with supplies for the squadron.  In December of that year, he requested a leave of absence from the Navy.  The reason is unclear, but it may have been due to his brother Edward’s deteriorating health.  Bliss was promoted to passed midshipman in 1847 along with William King Bridge and their classmates William Reily and William Van Wyck.  The year 1848 was spent on land at the Naval School in Annapolis, after which he served aboard the storeship USS Supply and in the Gulf of Mexico.

In a letter to his older brother Elias dated 28 July 1852, written while he was off the coast of Virginia, Sylvanus wrote:

I received your short, but expressive letter of the 19^th inst.  I was happy to notice in the tone of your letter a feeling of contentment, which you seem to feel in regard to your own situations in business and prosperity, in what you have undertaken.  I can only hope that you may continue to be prospered, and that the time may soon arrive when you may be allowed to realized [sic] all of your most fond anticipations, in your domestic, social + business relations. There is not anything that will console this discontented spirit of mine so much as to hear of the success of my two brothers in winning the race which we are all striving to run, and for the one object, which you know is so very, very convenient in this selfish world.¹

From January 1853 to January 1854 Bliss served aboard the screw steamer USS John Hancock, commanded by Lieutenant John Rodgers.  Also aboard was his classmate William King Bridge, with whom he had served on the Columbia.  While both had passed midshipman on 10 August 1847, seniority (and thus order of promotion) was determined by the date on which one entered the service.  Bridge had entered on 14 January 1841 and was thus senior to Bliss.  On 3 May 1853, the Hancock left New York for Norfolk, Virginia with orders to join the North Pacific Exploring and Surveying Expedition under Commander Cadwallader Ringgold.  In addition to the Hancock, the expedition would include the sloop of war Vincennes, the brig of war Porpoise, the schooner J. Fenimore Cooper, and store ship John. P. Kennedy.

The impetus for the expedition was to gain knowledge of what were still unfamiliar waters.  While Americans had been trading with China since the 1780s, Commodore Matthew Perry had visited Japan for the first time less than a year previously.  American whalers were increasingly active in the North Pacific and the international powers were engaged in a fierce competition for the rights to locate coaling stations, essential to the steam-powered navy, in these parts of the world.  The expedition would visit and survey the waters of Hong Kong, the North Pacific Ocean, the Bering Strait, and the China Seas.  Aboard the Vincennes was the expedition’s Chief Zoologist, William Stimpson, and, aboard the Hancock, its Chief Botanist, Charles Wright, charged with identifying and collecting animal, plant, and marine life specimens for the Smithsonian Institute and Harvard College.  Aboard the John P. Kennedy and later the Hancock was Acting Lieutenant Alexander Wylly Habersham, an 1848 graduate of the Naval School whose account of the expedition would later be published as My Last Cruise, or Where We Went and What We Saw.

Sailing east from Norfolk, Virginia, the expedition reached Simon’s Town, South Africa on 20 September 1853, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived in Batavia on the island of Java (now Jakarta, Indonesia) on 25 December 1853.  In March of 1854 they reached Singapore, and, on 24 May 1854, Hong Kong.  The expedition remained in Hong King for almost four months, their inactivity attributed to increasingly erratic behavior on the part of the commander, Captain Cadwalader Ringgold.  Eventually, the lack of activity required the intervention of Commodore Matthew Perry, who ordered Ringgold to the United States and turned command of the expedition over to Lieutenant John Rodgers, previously the Master of the Porpoise.  Command of the Porpoise was given to Acting Lieutenant William King Bridge.  Bliss, William Van Wyck, and William Reily, all classmates at the Naval School, were transferred to the Porpoise.  Both the Kennedy and the Porpoise appear to have been in a much-deteriorated state and morale was at a low point.  Habersham would later write:

An indescribable state of uncertainty and confusion existed for weeks:  no one knew which vessel to prefer, or where to stop when he had his orders.  Every day some officer was getting tired of his ship and applying to be ordered to another; or sickness or a detachment from the squadron would force Commander Rodgers to order someone temporarily to fill the vacancy. We knew not where to keep our clothes, where to pay our mess-bill, hardly where to eat: it was nothing but change-change-change; and what made it worse, it was nearly all necessary change.²

USS Porpoise (U.S. Naval Historical Center Image)

On 17 August 1854 Bliss borrowed $100 from George H. Ritchie, purser of the Hancock, and purchased from De Silver & Company, ship chandlers, one box of cigars, four dozen cases of beer, one dozen bottles of brandy, and an advance of $80.00 in cash.  On 12 September 1854, he sailed with the Porpoise to survey the Bonin Islands (south of Japan and east of Okinawa) and Loo Choo (Ryukyu Islands).  In a letter to Sylvanus’ brother Henry dated 7 March 1855 Lieutenant Francis Asbury Roe, aboard the Vincennes, observed:

The evening before we sailed from this port, your brother was with me until late at night.  He was full of emotion that he could not get clear of the Brig, which vessel was on many accounts in bad repute.  I gave him some books, some other trifles, and what I believed to be friendly advice.  He left me on the night of September 11^th with more reluctance and more emotion than I ever witnessed in any man before.  Apparently possessing some presentiment of evil, he could not speak except to utter regrets + aversion to the Porpoise.³

Bliss’ objections to his new post are puzzling. The brig’s officers were almost entirely recent graduates of the Naval School, shipmates on the Hancock and well-known to him. There is no hint of animosity in the surviving correspondence. Was the ship in such disrepair as to be unseaworthy, or did he simply have a premonition of impending disaster? In the same letter, Roe describes the last known sighting of the Porpoise:

On the morning of the 21^st I was in charge of the deck of this ship and at daylight, the Brig was near to us within one half a mile or less.  We were then in Latitude 23 North and Longitude 119 East.  This position may vary a mile or so from the true.  The weather was at the time rough, and we had been lying to all night . At the time it was not dangerous or in any way such as to cause the slightest apprehension.  About 6:20 A.M. I thought I could distinguish your Brother as officer of the deck on board the Brig.  The wind was a modest gale, but blowing fair, and Capt. Rodgers ordered the Vincennes to fall away expecting the Brig to follow.  As soon as I had gotten the V. before the wind, and upon her course I turned to look at the Brig.  She had set her foresail – her main topsail braced full – and as I supposed was following us.  At the moment a slight squall of mist + rain passed over her, she was shut out of our sight – and we have never seen or heard from her since!⁴

Last Sighting of the Porpoise 21 September 1854

The National Era - 28 June 1855

Roe appears to have taken a darker view of the ship’s fate than many of his colleagues, stating:

The probabilities of her fate are reduced to mere conjecture.  I was in the Brig as her 1^st Lieut. from the U.S. to China.  My own impressions are two.  It is possible, and I may add the most general conclusion, that she perished in a Typhoon.  To me, there is also the possibility, and not a very remote one, that she may have been the victim of mutiny.  My reasons for entertaining this idea are exclusively my own, and frightful and dreadful as it is, I can not shut it out from my belief!  Should a future opportunity occur, I will give those reasons in full, + to whom soever may require them.⁵

Sylvanus’ Brother and Executor, Henry P. Bliss circa 1845

The Navy moved immediately to protect the honor of the service and dispel any thoughts of a possible mutiny.  In a letter to Henry Bliss dated 2 June 1855 Commodore Horatio Bridge, uncle of William King Bridge, wrote:

A letter from you to Mr. Hale of Geneva [New York] has been forwarded to me for inspection by my sister [in-law], Mrs. Bridge, the mother of Mr. W. K. Bridge. In it you speak of a letter from an officer of the Vincennes which gives the painful surmise that mutiny had something to do with the loss of the “Porpoise”.  The Department has heard nothing to justify the slightest suspicion of the kind.  Officers lately returned say that there was some dissatisfaction on board the vessels of the Japan Expeditionary squadron at being kept so long in the East Indies instead of being sent on their legitimate cruise but the sailing of the vessels must have put an end to any feelings of that kind, and, if not, the character of the officers, especially of Capt. Bridge and your brother was such as to make such an occurrence very improbable.  If you have no objection to forward the letter written by Mr. Roe, I should like to show it to the Secretary of the Navy, who has assured me that he will give orders to the Commandant of the E. India Squadron to institute a search for the Porpoise.⁶

Roe’s speculations about mutiny may have incurred the displeasure of his superiors, but they do not appear to have damaged his career. He served with distinction throughout the Civil War and retired from the Navy as a Rear Admiral in 1885.

The North Pacific Exploring Expedition went on to explore and chart the waters of Japan, the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Bering Strait, and the coast of California, ultimately entering San Francisco on 19 October 1855.  On arrival, the John P. Kennedy and the J. Fenimore Cooper were turned over to the Mare Island Navy Yard and the crews discharged.  The Vincennes made its way back in the direction the expedition had come, reaching New York in the summer of 1856.

Lieutenant Alexander Wyllys Habersham chronicled the full scope of the North Pacific Exploring Expedition in his book My Last Cruise; or Where We Went and What We Saw: Being an Account of Visits to the Malay and Loo-Choo Islands, the Coasts of China, Formosa, Japan, Kamtschatka, Siberia, and the Mouth of the Amoor River, published by J. B. Lippincott of Philadelphia in 1857.  He dedicated the book to his brother officers lost on the Porpoise.

Henry’s efforts to settle his brother’s estate, including back pay, were greatly frustrated by naval bureaucracy.  A letter from Assistant Secretary of the Navy Charles W. Welch dated 11 July 1855 advised:

Accounts of officers and seamen of the Navy are settled by the 4^th Auditor of the Treasury; but, in the case of the Porpoise, there being no positive information as to the fact or date of the loss of the vessel, the accounts cannot be settled until Congress has passed an act fixing the amounts to be allowed.  ⁷

On 25 August 1856, having submitted affidavits testifying to the relationship between Acting Lieutenant S. J. Bliss, late of the Brig Porpoise, and the five siblings who were the beneficiaries of his estate, the Fourth Auditor’s Office of the Treasury Department a certificate for $1,519.73 representing pay due through 29 June 1855.  In addition, his siblings received a gratuity of twelve months’ pay ($1,500) for the loss of his life while on active duty.

The wreck of the Porpoise was never found, and its fate remains a mystery.  The name of Sylvanus J. Bliss, along with William King Bridge, William Reily, and William Van Wyck, is engraved on the walls of the Naval Academy’s Memorial Hall, and his name also appears on a marble stone standing with the graves of Bliss family members in West Brookfield’s Pine Grove Cemetery. The Jesse Bliss House can still be found at 14 North Main Street in West Brookfield.

Memorial Stone in Pine Grove Cemetery, West Brookfield, Massachusetts

Perhaps the legacy of Sylvanus Bliss and his shipmates on the Porpoise is most meaningfully measured in terms of the contributions to nautical cartography and scientific discoveries made by the North Pacific Exploring Expedition as a whole. The expedition brought back nearly 5,000 varieties of previously unknown animal and marine life, and an equally extensive collection of plants and seaweeds that, along with the findings of other expeditions, would form the core of the U.S. National Herbarium. 

Stilbe vestita P. J. Bergius Collected by the North Pacific Exploring Expedition Collection of the National Museum of Natural History

---

1. Sylvanus J. Bliss (off the coast of Virginia) to Elias Bliss, letter, 28 July 1852, privately held by Elisha Lee, Dover, Massachusetts, 2023.

2. Alexander Wyllys Habersham, My Last Cruise; or Where We Went and What We Saw: Being an Account of Visits to the Malay and Loo-Choo Islands, the Coasts of China, Formosa, Japan, Kamtschatka, Siberia, and the Mouth of the Amoor River (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1857) 116.

3. Francis A. Roe (USS Vincennes) to Henry P. Bliss, letter, 7 March 1855, privately held by Elisha Lee, Dover, Massachusetts, 2023.

4. Francis A. Roe to Henry P. Bliss, 7 March 1855.

5. Francis A. Roe to Henry P. Bliss, 7 March 1855.

6. Horatio Bridge to Henry Penniman Bliss, letter, 2 June 1855, privately held by Elisha Lee, Dover, Massachusetts, 2023.

7. Charles W. Welch (Washington, D.C.) to Henry Penniman Bliss, letter, 11 July 1855, privately held by Elisha Lee, Dover, Massachusetts, 2023.