Of all the adventures of whalemen, none exceeds in daring and danger that of Ronald MacDonald, all the more remarkable because the daring was unnecessary and the danger voluntarily incurred. In 1826 the ship _Lady Adams_ disappeared near the coast of Japan, and it was surmised that she had struck a reef and that her crew, after reaching shore, had been murdered. Another vessel, named the _Lawrence_, was wrecked, and it was afterward learned that the second mate and seven of the crew, after landing, had been cruelly treated, one of the number having been tortured to death. It also appeared that the crew of another vessel, which stranded on the coast, received similar treatment, one of the men killing himself to escape further torment.
While whalemen regarded the Japanese coast with terror, yet one day, when a whaler was cruising near that coast, MacDonald, a seaman, obtained his discharge, taking in lieu of his “lay” a boat equipped for landing and supplied with sundry books and certain utensils, and boldly made for shore. On his arrival he was stripped of everything, but, as it appeared to his captors that his outfit indicated good intentions, they did not torture him; so he began to teach them English.
Some time afterward Commodore Biddle visited Yeddo for the purpose of establishing trade relations with the Japanese. MacDonald and the survivors of the two wrecked whale ships were committed to the Commodore’s charge with the warning never to return. The stories told by these whalemen, and the information gained by Biddle, determined our government to send another expedition under Commodore Perry, with results so well known to the world.
In the dogwatch the _Lady Adams_, the _Lawrence and_ Ronald MacDonald were much talked about. A couple of our men had sailed in vessels that had cruised within a few years off the coast of Japan, but they said they had never known a boat to land on the coast, and so far as they knew a few whalers only had recruited at Hakodate, a port to which vessels might go. There was something mysterious about the quarter of the world we were approaching, and the uncertainty colored our conversation in the dogwatch. Shipwrecks and other disasters at sea were also brought up, and the more terrible the tales, the greater the interest.