AA Bastian

[Opening Scene--introduces antagonist, setting, tone, foreshadows primary conflict] Elam Luddington’s obituary stated he was the first missionary to China, but it’s not true. Nor as it claimed, did he “perform an important mission to Japan”.[1] Five months after it appeared Levi Savage, his former companion on that journey, belatedly corrected the errors. He wrote to Salt Lake City's Deseret Weekly on August 8th, 1893, and included this seemingly detached detail of their parting, “Some time after[,] I learned that Elder Ludington had left Rangoon for parts unknown to me[2].” Another story in a letter-journal lay on a shelf, in an archive, nearly untouched. Roughly 75 years earlier, in 1817 along the rolling orchard hills and farm plots of Bethlehem, Connecticut, ten-year-old Elam kicked the rocks of a treelined road then bounded past the church. Somehow the Luddingtons kept their names off its register, the town’s most prominent and influential institution. Not just nurturing sleepy home piety, Bethlehem ministers trained recruits. Elam, instead, imagined himself at sea. Then his cord to the town broke. Elam’s mother died. His father remarried but he didn’t get along with her and ran away.[3] He left again as a young man, aiming for the sea, first working for the grain store in Poughkeepsie, New York then to a packet sloop on the Hudson River, cooking meals and stewarding passengers. He finally moved south to hew beams at the shipyards in Manhattan. “I took quite a liking to the sea and clipper ships, brigs, and schooners with all sails set and colors flying,” Elam Luddington wrote. “I think a ship, a field of wheat, and a lovely maiden are the three prettiest things in the world.”[4] In lower Manhattan near Grant, Broome, and Norfolk Streets, streaming with laborers, he woke up for his first job as an ordinary seaman. He likely stepped over four to five others, pulled a ballooning shirt over his head, and clamped suspenders to his work pants. He shared a cold face-wash in a community basin. Grabbing his satchel, a seaman’s kerchief, or a cap, he tramped down the stairs. He didn’t realize yet this would also be his last stint as a seaman.[5] He didn’t write about this uneventful morning in 1825 but we know he rambled south along more open land and freshly constructed churches toward the factories, the hammers and machinery clanking in the shops, past dock storage and shipyards, and out along the gusty docks. He breathed the salty legacy of his father and grandfather before him: his grandparents who dredged oysters, living in a home at the mouth of the Mill and Quinnipiac Rivers in Fair Haven, Connecticut. Their simple life spoiled during the war with England when British General Tryon ordered his men to set their house on fire as a parting gift on their way out of town—the spark that led Luddington’s grandfather to enlist in the rebel army.[6] Luddington’s father’s life at sea was also cut short; his father who started a career on a ship then left during an American embargo against the British.[7] He moved inland to farm. Now it was Elam’s chance to outlast them at sea. Luddington strode past the jib-booms jutting over the paved dock and the masts bobbing and tilting in a forest of smoothed timber off Manhattan’s wet shores. Drawings of New York left out Elam’s sort, their lives not worthy enough to ink a piece of paper. A handful of men in tall hats and waist coats with pocket watches did make it into print. They had recently ventured into trade with China. Luddington was oblivious to those discussions, but he may have heard a few throw-away remarks about Asia in the grog houses or during the rowdy sermons he attended like the one from the firebrand, Lorenzo Dow[8]. No thought to Asia appears in his early writings. His compass for adventure pointed eastward to Europe. This morning he angled toward his ocean-bound vessel for his first assignment, headed, he thought, for Le Havre, France. The only record of Elam Luddington’s appearance comes from a pension application listing him as a stout 5'8" feet (173 cm) with "dark brown" hair and "dark grey" eyes, the color of the sea in a storm.[9] The only other clues come from his descendants, like Sam Bush, who is also stout and with wolfish eyes.[10] Luddington checked in at the ship John Adams. Over a few drinks he bonded with his ship mates. In 1825 men drawn to work at sea, Germans, Irish, Africans, and Black Americans, sought the lifestyle or the freedom. What they generally had in common were not their origins or interests but their shorter size, a characteristic that allowed them to slip under and between the ship’s lines. Captains recruited single, unattached men like Luddington because few would mind their absence. Alongside the men Luddington loaded the ship with 500 tons of raw cotton[11]. On schedule, April 1st, 1825, a tug towed the John Adams into the harbor. The captain navigated a course for France 3,662 nautical miles away.[12] The date and the cargo load appear in Luddington’s autobiographical statement of several folios he wrote as an older man. What he included there linked the events that forced him out of a career at sea. In 24 days the John Adams reached the harbor outside of Le Havre. When the captain learned the price of cotton had "taken quite a fall a few days before," he ordered the crew to weigh anchor, and charted a new course to Liverpool, England.[13] Perhaps the dampness or the unwieldy loads unsteadied him. As Luddington hauled cotton bales out of the hold in the port at Liverpool, he fell. "Here, while discharging cargo between daylight and dark I fell down the hold and broke my left arm," he wrote.[14] Some merchant ships provided medical care, but it seems his did not, or he refused it. He mentioned a woman's name, "Mrs. FizHenry,” who put him up for 21 days on Blundell Street, near the docks. That he remembered so many years later—both her name and the very street of her boarding house—she may well have been the warm face attending him. Whoever cared for his arm, though, "It was not properly set, and is lame to this day.”[15] Back at sea, heading to New York, gusts punched at the sails.[16] Wood creaked. Canvas clapped in the wind as the John Adams pitched through the waves. The ocean swelled and spritz pelleted them. Alone on the sea, clouds blurred the touch of earth and sky. With bent knees and fists at their eyes, the seamen braced themselves listening through gale force winds for the boatswain's orders. The deck rose and fell beneath them. ‘Hands about ship! Reef topsails in one!’, went a common order of the day from the mate on the watch and his boatswain, if they had one, coning the shout with his palm. ‘Reef the sails’, men acknowledged back in a roar.[17] The stout ones bent for the rail of the ship, scaling the salty ropes up the shroud for the yardarm, Luddington amongst them, he wrote.[18] They crossed the moist yardarm stretching for the guard lines. Sliding into their posts they hinged themselves at their waists over the arm shimmying above the sail. Timber groaned and yawned. The ship's carpenter gauged it all from below. A gale of wind danced Luddington’s hair. He strained to mind the commands. As he and the others clung to the weathered yardarm and reached for the sail, their suspended legs wriggled. In the wind and waves the wood in his clutch dipped sharply with the tilt then in reflex, pushed back up hard against him. His hands and face turned slimy with sweat and sea. Luddington lunged again for the reefing ties on the bloated sail. His arm still ached from the break at Liverpool. His grip slipped. His face creased. "I cried out to the carpenter to catch me," he wrote[19]. Then fell. The drop from a yardarm might be fifty feet or so if the tilt of the ship angled him over the sea. The drop to the deck was shorter but less forgiving. If he survived he could lose an arm or a leg or become paralyzed. Those watching winced. “…[A]nd I barely saved myself by the sail flapping on the windward yard arm or main top sail."[20] Clinging to the soggy cold canvas he must have realized that muscling through the pain in his arm endangered his life, and the others. When he stepped off the ship in New York he likely already wondered if he might never return to work as a seaman again. [1]. Savage, Levi. “The Mission to China”, Salt Lake City: Deseret Weekly, September 16, 1893, p6. Digitized by J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah: https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s64b3w03 [2]. Savage, Levi. “The Mission to China”, Salt Lake City: Deseret Weekly, September 16, 1893, p6. Digitized by J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah: https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s64b3w03 [3]. Luddington, Elam. “An Autobiographical Statement of Elam Luddington.” Karen Bush Collection. https://homepages.rootsweb.com/~vkbush/elamlud.html [4]. Luddington, Elam. “An Autobiographical Statement of Elam Luddington.” Karen Bush Collection. https://homepages.rootsweb.com/~vkbush/elamlud.html [5]. Luddington, Elam. “An Autobiographical Statement of Elam Luddington.” Karen Bush Collection. https://homepages.rootsweb.com/~vkbush/elamlud.html [6]. Luddington House. The Whitney Library, New Haven Museum [7]. Luddington, Elam. “An Autobiographical Statement of Elam Luddington.” Karen Bush Collection. https://homepages.rootsweb.com/~vkbush/elamlud.html [8]. We don’t know what he might have been exposed to but talk about Asia was likely to be racist in nature. Luddington, Elam. “An Autobiographical Statement of Elam Luddington.” Karen Bush Collection. https://homepages.rootsweb.com/~vkbush/elamlud.html [9]. Record of Service of Connecticut Men in the I-War of the Revolution, II-War of 1812, III-Mexican War; Connecticut Militia, 1776-1783; Lieut-Colonel Baldwins Regiment, p 560. Enlisted June 5, 1780-Jan 1, 1781. Ancestry.com [10]. The author met with Sam Bush and his family in Salt Lake City. [11]. Worth roughly $800,000 today. [12]. This scene comes from Luddington’s autobiographical statement reconstructed with influence from a sailing instructor, sea captains who still sail these types of ships, and the following resources to help bring this 19th century episode to a modern audience unfamiliar with seamen’s terminology. Luddington, Elam. “An Autobiographical Statement of Elam Luddington.” Karen Bush Collection. https://homepages.rootsweb.com/~vkbush/elamlud.html, Landstrom, Bjorn. The Ship: An Illustrated History, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1961. Harland, John. Illustrated by Mark Myers, RSMA, F/ASMA. Seamanship in the Age of Sail. London: Naval Institute Press and Conway Maritime Press, London: 1984, pps137-154. [13]. Luddington, Elam. “An Autobiographical Statement of Elam Luddington.” Karen Bush Collection. https://homepages.rootsweb.com/~vkbush/elamlud.html [14]. Luddington, Elam. “An Autobiographical Statement of Elam Luddington.” Karen Bush Collection. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~vkbush/elamlud.html [15]. Luddington, Elam. “An Autobiographical Statement of Elam Luddington.” Karen Bush Collection. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~vkbush/elamlud.html [16]. Informal interviews with a sailing captain and a sailing instructor, Jonathan Vega, expanded on what would have to be happening under the conditions Luddington wrote. [17]. Harland, John. Illustrated by Mark Myers, RSMA, F/ASMA. Seamanship in the Age of Sail. London: Naval Institute Press and Conway Maritime Press, London: 1984, p 153. [18]. Luddington, Elam. “An Autobiographical Statement of Elam Luddington.” Karen Bush Collection. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~vkbush/elamlud.html [19]. Luddington, Elam. “An Autobiographical Statement of Elam Luddington.” Karen Bush Collection. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~vkbush/elamlud.html [20]. Luddington, Elam. “An Autobiographical Statement of Elam Luddington.” Karen Bush Collection. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~vkbush/elamlud.html

The Act of Story Statement (Assignment 1) An out-of-work seaman becomes a Mormon missionary who must survive a dangerous journey in the 1850s across Asia without money, on a mission he did not choose, and record it. The Antagonist Plots the Point (Assignment 2) Levi Savage, a farmer from Ohio with enough pluck to repeat his version of events in several variations is the most important person on the mission, or so he tells everyone. He overcomes any secondary status he and Luddington have as alternates on the mission, by promoting himself. In the process no one notices his wagon mate, the quieter Luddington, who has heard every whim of Savage's ramblings on the long journey over months, and can only just bear it. Savage writes Luddington into near oblivion--into his side show for subsequent generations. Luddington, mid-journey, gets rid of Savage's influence only to meet new antagonism. He barely survives the new strangers he is now dependent on. Conjuring Your Breakout Title (Assignment 3) Asia Unsigned: The Uncolonized Letters The Unsigned Uncolonized Letters Letters Uncolonized: The 1850s Journals Misrepresented: The Secret 1850s Asia Journal The Secret 1850s Asia Journal The Writing Seaman Deciding Your Genre and Approaching Comparables (Assignment 4) Narrative Nonfiction/History American Zion by Benjamin Park meets The Anarchy by William Dalrymple American Zion: A New History of Mormonism by Benjamin Park is a social exploration of the history of the Mormon faith and how it shaped the United States. Park critiques the faith while humanizing it in the context of evolving American socio-political forces. The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple is a history of the political chaos wrought by the British East India Company’s wars and blunders during the 19th century in India. Dalrymple captures the humanity, sometimes comedy, but also the misjudgments of both the British and South Asians as they struggle for the continent. Core Wound and the Primary Conflict (Assignment 5) After a former seaman's chosen career comes to a halt he seeks purpose by joining the Mormons, who in turn send him on a dangerous mission to Asia during the height of British colonial ventures, telling him not to take money, to record it, and then forget about him. Other Matters of Conflict: Two More Levels (Assignment 6) Inner Conflict Elam Luddington fights the stigma of being chosen as an alternate on a mission and lacks religious zeal. Luddington finds the social and political disconnects of British relations with Asians more compelling than his original missionary purpose, which further relegates him in the eyes the others. He must find something to report to redeem his himself. He finds a mid-ranking British sergeant with secrets that give meaning and purpose to his writings. No one else understands the import of his new found interest in recording or why he’s veered from his missionary topic. The result is an unparalleled, and hitherto unknown, account deconstructing the foundation of what we know about colonial Asia and East-West relations. Secondary Conflict Luddington struggles to survive the storms at sea, lack of funds, and disdain for Mormons. Luddington determines his missionary work has been fruitless and charity doesn’t sustain him. He wants to return home but the journey is still far. He has already begged his way through the last days in Siam. Merchants and other Christian missionaries see his repeated rough sea voyages as an ill omen and punishment for his conversion to Mormonism. They refuse to support him on his final leg home. Not only he but his rare record is in jeopardy of not making it back home. He is conflicted by his role as a missionary and the rougher crowd of opium dealers and sex workers willing to sustain him. His status among the British in Hong Kong keeps him from getting a passage aboard a ship back to California. The Incredible Importance of Setting (Assignment 7) In 1854 as Elam Luddington walks off the boat in Bangkok with thick foliage and glinting pagodas along the shore it is not a given yet that Thailand would remain uncolonized or that Anna Leonowens would become a household name. Yet, with our modern conversations on colonialism, all these stories need a rethinking. Through the eyes of a Mormon, not loyal to the British empire, having been kicked out as a Mormon out of the East coast, and mainstream America, he’s got a one of a kind view. Siam of the 19th century is in the throes of these critical choices. Where most histories divorce Asian countries from their neighbors, this one travels through multiple, and their dilemmas, all watching each others’ moves to model a response to the British. Official colonial histories told the condescending story that Siam’s king preserved his country from colonization because he alone among his neighbors understood the power sway of the British empire. Now we know that it’s not true. Due to unsigned letters, in which we reveal the author for the first time through Luddington’s writings we discover that Siam’s king has very different motives for taking the unprecedented turn. Monsoon winds and ferocious storms at sea nearly drown Elam Luddington and alter his route several times throughout the journey. His lack of funds and the difficulty of the journey leads him to engage with a society, which he might not have had he been more welcome. From the ships’ crews to British governors, to American diplomats about to sign the treaties that will become infamous, Luddington writes from an angle not found in any other first person account of this tenuous time. Non-Mormons and Mormons alike dismiss him and his lack of missionary success, relegating his writings to an archive shelf, preventing them from critiquing this colonial history. Ironically it was Mormon leaders who requires him to write the detailed, one of a kind reports that men of his class of seamen did not. What could only have been imagined through fiction now has the authenticity of a primary source. With the color and drive the stormy seas bring against the colorful backdrop of Asian countries from India to Hong Kong, Luddington’s letters come alive in this narrative history.