Note 45 — PART III JAMES DE WOLF AND THE PRIVATEER YANKEE

The San Jose Indiano was a teak built East Indiaman. How old she was at the time of her capture we do not know, but she was destined to a long life under the American flag. As far as seaworthiness was concerned she might have continued to plow the seas until the time of our Civil War—then to end her days with the other whaleships from New Bedford and elsewhere that were sunk to block the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, S. C. Mr. De Wolf renamed her the General Jackson and used her for a time in the general carrying trade. Later when the whale fishery became popular with the people of the towns on Narragansett Bay she received a whaler’s outfit and sailed for years with the Bristol whaling fleet. The Mexican War having broken out, she was sold, in 1846 or thereabout, to the United States Government, being by her construction specially adapted for work in tropical waters. When a Government survey was made, preliminary to her sale, the carpenters who attempted to cut holes in her sides expended many tools, and much profanity, before they could make any impression upon her planks. Her teak timbers, combined with the cement between their joints, for a time defied all their efforts, both wood and cement having become almost as hard as stone. After she had lain for some months at anchor off Vera Cruz, the Government had no further need for her and therefore sold her to a third American owner. To him she did not prove profitable, and it is said that an attempt to set her on fire in order to secure her insurance was made. The staunch old ship simply refused to burn. Again she was sold for a very small sum. Then, so the story goes, a more scientific and successful attempt to transfer her to the underwriters was made. She was loaded with a cargo of lime, and then holes having been skilfully made in her hull, doubtless with more profanity, she was cleared for a southern port. Somewhere in the waters about the Florida peninsula she was run upon a reef, and the ocean combined with the lime to do the rest.