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Haswell's Provisioning
Jesse Forman
5/1/07
Rough Draft: Haswell’s Log
Ships during the voyage of the Lady Washington and the Columbia existed far from sources of supply for their crew. They drifted in a watery desert for weeks or months at a time, with nary a drop of potable water to supply them. Haswell’s log of his voyage is especially notable in his treatment of this subject. A ship had need of making a landing for three main reasons: To fill the stores with fresh water, to find food, and to make serious repairs to the vessel. On Haswell’s journey, they made use of numerable small islands in order to affect these necessities. The necessity of making these provisioning rounds gave rise to tension and conflict between captain and crew.
Especially notable in creating conflict between captain and crew was the captain’s preliminary decision to cross the straits of Magellan, rather than wintering before them. This was a case in which the crew’s natural hardheaded prudence resulted in a victory for them.
Haswell mentions having found extremely isolated islands, which had already been populated with livestock from past voyages of Europeans.
The Chinese, though they possessed technology far advanced compared to that of the Europeans, never created inter-continental colonial empires. They did not have the provisioning islands the European states came to possess, but neither did the Europeans before they possessed them. Perhaps their reluctance to colonize other continents came from an isolationist zeal, or perhaps from the already exceptionally large bounds of their own country.
