Adoniram and Ann and Luther Rice tried to do the same aboard the Créole. However, the East India Company got wind of their plan and sent word after the ship, ordering the pilot to drop anchor in the Hooghly River and wait for the police to come and search the vessel. The missionaries were forced to flee to the safety of shore. They made one last desperate attempt to convince officials in Calcutta that they should be issued a permit to sail to the Isle of France instead of being deported to England. Miraculously, this time a permit for them to leave was issued, and quickly they hired a boat and raced off downriver to try to catch up to the Créole. They found her lying at anchor off Saugar in the mouth of the Hooghly River, waiting for two crew members to arrive before setting out across the Bay of Bengal.
It was now January 17, 1813, and the Créole was within sight of Port Louis on the Isle of France. It had been seven weeks since the missionaries had clambered aboard the ship at Saugar. For much of the voyage they just rested trying to recover from their harrowing six-month stay in India. Adoniram was amazed at how much energy it had taken trying to stay one step ahead of East India Company officials. And then there had been the big change. Staying at Serampore with Baptist missionaries had convinced Adoniram that the Baptists were right and he needed to be baptized their way himself. Much to his surprise and delight, Ann had been studying the issues herself and agreed with him. Together they had been baptized by William Ward.
William Carey and the other missionaries at Serampore had been careful not to try to influence Adoniram or Ann in any way. If they were Congregationalists, that was fine for them. But once the Judsons decided they wanted to be baptized by full immersion, the Baptist missionaries tried to support them in every way they could. They even offered to fund Adoniram and Ann’s missionary work for a year while they waited to hear whether the American Baptists would accept them as their missionaries. William Carey himself had written a letter to Baptist leaders in the United States commending Adoniram and asking that he and Ann be accepted as their first foreign missionaries. When they left Calcutta, Adoniram and Ann had not yet received a reply from the American Baptists.
“I wonder what Harriet will say about our no longer being Congregationalists,” pondered Ann as the buildings of Port Louis came into view. “Do you think she will mind?” she asked Adoniram.
“I doubt it, Ann. You two have been best friends for years. I’m sure Harriet will get over it. And although we won’t be able to work in the same mission, I’m hopeful we will be close enough so you can see her often.”
“And the baby,” interjected Ann. “I can’t wait to see the baby. It must be two months old by now. I wonder whether it’s a boy or a girl. And what did they name it?” Her eyes danced with anticipation.
“Here comes a boat alongside now. Perhaps it will have some news,” said Adoniram.
“Look! It’s Samuel,” said Ann, racing to the side of the ship. “Thank goodness, I won’t have to wait a moment longer for news.”
Adoniram and Ann waited together as Samuel Newell clambered up the rope ladder and onto the deck of the Créole. Samuel looked pale and was unsteady on his feet.
“Come and sit down in our cabin,” offered Ann once they had greeted each other. “Was the boat ride out rough?”
Samuel shook his head, and Adoniram noticed tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Ann put her hand on Samuel’s arm. “What is it? Is everything all right? Are Harriet and the baby well?”
Once again Samuel shook his head. “Dead,” he said in a low whisper. “Both of them are dead.”
Ann gasped, her hands pressed tightly over her mouth to suppress a cry.
Somehow Adoniram escorted them both to the cabin, where the facts came out. The Col. Gillespie, the ship on which the Newells had sailed, had sprung a leak and was forced to put into a small harbor for repairs. The repairs took two weeks, after which time they set sail again. But the winds were against them most of the way, and the ship made slow progress, so slow, in fact, that the time arrived for Harriet to have the baby. Lying on the cabin floor with only Samuel at her side, she had delivered a little girl. All went well, until the next day when they encountered a bad storm. Everything and everyone aboard the Col. Gillespie were soaked. The following day, Harriet’s nineteenth birthday, the baby became ill with pneumonia and died five days later. By then Harriet herself had become ill. The delivery of the baby and the damp conditions had combined with the symptoms of her tuberculosis to make her very weak. She thought constantly about her baby and longed to be in heaven with her. In the middle of November she got her wish, and Samuel Newell had buried her under a tree in the Port Louis cemetery.
The deaths stunned Adoniram and Ann, especially since Ann had just learned she was expecting a baby herself. What might go wrong with her pregnancy? Things seemed to have a way of turning out differently than expected.
The governor of the Isle of France was very kind to the missionaries, but Adoniram soon found out that because of the deplorable state of slavery, it was pointless to stay on the island. Almost the entire population of the Isle of France was enslaved to wealthy plantation owners. These slave owners forbid their slaves to practice any form of religion and forbid missionaries to preach to them. It was a strange situation. The island was filled with people in need of the gospel, but there was no opportunity to preach it to them or convert them.
After several weeks, Samuel Newell had recovered enough from the shock of his wife’s death to start thinking about what to do next. While he respected Adoniram’s decision to become a Baptist, he was still a Congregationalist and decided to head to Ceylon to try to track down Samuel and Roxana Nott and Gordon Hall and participate in the missionary work they were doing. Luther Rice did not stay long on the Isle of France, either. He had become ill with liver problems, and the doctor had told him he that if he didn’t find a cooler climate to live in he would surely die. Luther had also become a Baptist in Serampore, and he decided to return to the United States to help raise support among the American Baptists for the Judsons. He left on the first available ship, and soon Adoniram and Ann found themselves alone on the island.
After several weeks of soul searching, the Judsons decided to head for Penang in the Straits of Malacca on the other side of the Indian Ocean. They would have to get there in two stages. First they would have to find a ship to take them to Madras, India, and once there, they would need to find another ship to take them on to Penang. They left Port Louis on May 7, 1813, aboard the Countess of Harcourt. A month later they arrived in Madras on the east coast of India.
In Madras they were hosted by two British missionaries. It was not long, however, before officials of the East India Company were on Adoniram’s trail again. He needed to find a ship bound for Penang, and quickly. Leaving Ann, now very pregnant, in the care of the missionaries, he set out for the docks each morning hoping to find some way to get to Penang. He did not find what he was looking for, and after a week he received word that the police were preparing to arrest him and Ann and deport them to England. He began desperately looking for a ship that would take them anywhere but to England.
Adoniram finally found a ship, the Georgiana, which was due to set sail the following day. The ship was a Portuguese vessel, and her name was a lot grander than her appearance. She was dilapidated, and she listed to starboard. But she was afloat and was scheduled to leave the next morning. That was a lot more important to Adoniram than her appearance.
“Where is she bound?” he asked the shipping agent, not much caring whether it was Penang or Madagascar.
“Rangoon, Burma,” came the reply.
For once Adoniram was speechless. What should he do? He hurried back to Ann and laid out the choices for her. If they stayed one more day in Madras, they would be arrested and sent to England. Or they could board the Georgiana, as unseaworthy as she was, and sail to one of the most inhospitable places on earth, a place that every missionary they had met so far had warned them against going to. Finally Adoniram took his wife’s hand. “You have a baby coming. What do you think we should do?” he asked.
Tears welled in Ann’s eyes. “If we go to England, the baby will be born onboard ship, like Harriet’s,” she said. “And even if we go to Burma, the baby might still come before we get there. I don’t know, Adoniram. You will have to decide what God is calling us to do.”
Adoniram tried to discuss with his new missionary friends in Madras what to do, but there was no room for discussion. Everyone had the same advice. “Don’t throw your life away in Burma. Go to England. Make your way back to the East and set up a mission station somewhere where you are welcomed.”
This made sense to Adoniram, and he would have followed their advice except for one thing: He could not get rid of the thought that God had set up circumstances in such a way as to get him and Ann to Burma.
And so it was that on June 22, 1813, the Judsons boarded the Georgiana, bound for Burma. With them was an Englishwoman they had hired to help Ann with the baby’s birth and to look after the baby once it arrived. The woman seemed strong and healthy, and Ann looked forward to the help and companionship she would provide. Within hours of the Georgiana’s setting sail, however, the woman fell to the deck writhing and groaning. Adoniram and Ann rushed to her side to help, but there was nothing they could do. The woman was already dead.
The Judsons were shocked by the turn of events. Was death to follow them everywhere they went? Adoniram also worried about Ann, who was so upset by the woman’s death that she climbed into her bunk and refused to get out. She soon found out that staying in bed was hard work, though. The Georgiana pitched and rolled so much that to avoid falling out of her bunk, Ann had to hook her feet under the bottom railings and brace herself with both arms.
The ship was still thrashing from side to side when it became time for the baby’s birth. Adoniram did all he could to make his wife comfortable, and after many hours of struggle, the baby was finally born—dead. Adoniram buried his head in his arms and wept. He wept for himself, for Ann, for the little son they would never raise.
On deck things were not going well either. The Georgiana was difficult to handle, and she had been blown off course into the straits between the Little and Great Andaman Islands. As Adoniram walked wearily up on deck to get some fresh air, the captain greeted him. “If you are a praying man, now is the time to do it,” he said in his Portuguese-accented English.
“Why is that?” asked Adoniram, wondering what could possibly go wrong now.
“Look down there,” the captain said, pointing to a pile of jagged black rocks jutting menacingly out of the water. “It’s the worst reef in the Indian Ocean. I’ve never navigated this strait. No captain in his right mind would, but fate has left us no choice. The wind brought us here, and it’s impossible to turn back.”
“Couldn’t we put in to shore and get some kind of pilot?” asked Adoniram, noting that both shorelines were very close.
“God forbid that should happen,” replied the captain. “The natives in the Andamans don’t take too kindly to strangers in their waters. If we put ashore or are shipwrecked, we’ll be eaten for sure.”
Adoniram gulped. “I’ll pray,” he said. “You can count on it.”
Twenty minutes later Adoniram was back below deck with Ann, who was weak but recovering. “The ship is still,” she said. “Thank God.”
Adoniram held his wife’s hand, unwilling to tell her that the quiet waters were caused by the shelter of the Andaman Islands and that the islands harbored natives who would gladly eat them if given the chance. Ann never knew the danger she was in as the captain skillfully maneuvered the Georgiana through the strait and back out into the open sea.
