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A collection of 11 long letters written by a young paymaster s clerk and officer in the U.S. Navy, in which he gives detailed accounts of voyages to Central America, China, and South Africa in 1867-68. Also included is a gripping account of a terrific storm while crossing the Atlantic, and of a dramatic rescue of sailors cast off their capsized ship off the coast of France. All 11 letters are densely written in Merrill s neat, small hand, and are addressed to his parents at Bangor, Maine. One letter has three or four small tears with partial loss to three or four words, else near fine overall. Also included are six of the original mailing envelopes and four cabinet card portraits of Merrill: one of Merrill in uniform taken by "Pun-Lun" at Hong Kong, and three duplicate portraits taken at Bangor, Maine. Here is an excerpt from Merrill s first seven-page letter, written on board the storeship Brig *Executive* in January, 1867, in which he describes his first voyage from Bangor to Cette, France: "… Wednesday night a gale commenced and it was a screamer … day and night did every soul labor for dear life … we felt that our doom by sinking was sure … Buzzell, and Chase, and I worked with the rest and by our aid the exhausted men were enabled to get a little sleep until the forecastle was flooded and the galley stove in … we lived on raw meat for three days … Such mountainous waves! … they were as high as the upper-topsail yard and often higher still and when they would board us and sweep over the decks we all clinging to the main rigging … it seemed to us … that we should drown before it all passed over us … so long were we in the wave … During the whole gale … we sped onward in our course …" They ran into another terrific storm off the coast of France near Montpelier, where they encountered several ships in peril, and participated, along with soldiers on the shore, in a dramatic rescue of two sailors and a pilot from their capsized boat (one of whom later died). They went on to Paris and London, where Merrill wrote his next two letters, and returned home from Liverpool at the end of January. Merrill next writes at length about his voyage on board two Steamships (*Henry Chauncey* and *Sacramento*) and the storeship USS *Supply*. Setting off in November, he sailed first to Aspinwall (Colón) on the Atlantic coast of Panama, went across the isthmus by rail road to the City of Panama, and then on to Acapulco and San Francisco. In two letters from November, he gives descriptive accounts of Aspinwall, including several disparaging remarks about the crowds of "natives and negroes along the plaza … the street was thronged with dusky vendors of fruit, claret, cakes, &c., jabbering the virtues of their merchandise in the most conglomerate mixture of English, Spanish and Samboish …" He also describes the structure of the "many isolated [negro] huts" along the 48-mile railroad trip to Panama City, where they transfer their baggage, etc., onto the *Sacramento*: "The sea has been as smooth as a pan of milk ever since we left Panama … Among the more noted of our passengers is Gen. Beuham of So. Carolina, late of C.S. Army … Bishop Williams of the Episcopal Mission in China … and other missionaries of China … Spanish gentlemen and their families, merchants of China & Japan … This morning early a poor fellow died, in the Steerage, of Panama fever. Another one is sick and will not live till evening … [The sharks] have followed our ship all the time from Panama … the surgeon said privately that there are other cases also …" In a letter from December Merrill gives a long description of Acapulco: its harbor, streets and street vendors, the military fort and evidence of the French bombardment, etc. In San Francisco his time in the city itself, which he loves, is curtailed by preparations on board *Supply* for the voyage to Japan and China. In a long, six-page letter from February, 1868, he describes various excursions in Canton and Ho.
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