Finally, on June 12, 1812, one hundred fourteen days after setting sail from Salem, Massachusetts, they finally sighted land. According to Captain Heard, they were off the coast of Orissa, India, and the mountains in the distance were the Golcondas. They sailed on up the Bay of Bengal towards Calcutta, edging closer to the coastline as they did so. Adoniram and Ann Judson and Samuel and Harriet Newell were fascinated by what they saw from the deck of the ship. Banana palms laden with bunches of bananas grew near the water’s edge. Bananas were a rare and expensive fruit in New England. In fact, none of the four missionaries had ever eaten one, and it amazed them to see so many of them just growing wild. As night fell the following day, the Caravan dropped anchor near the mouth of the Hooghly River at the northern end of the Bay of Bengal. There they waited for a pilot to come aboard and guide the ship through the treacherous shallow waters of the river mouth and then on up to Calcutta.
The following morning the pilot arrived and began the careful task of maneuvering the Caravan up the Hooghly River, a channel in the Ganges River delta. The four missionaries stayed on deck the whole time, excited to see their first glimpses of Indian people going about their daily activities. They watched as the ship sailed past brilliant green rice paddies. They observed fishermen casting their nets from the water’s edge and women walking along with enormous baskets balanced on their heads. Adoniram tried to take in every detail. He thanked God he had lived long enough to finally see the mission field.
At three o’clock the following day they reached Calcutta, and as they docked, Adoniram scanned the rows of ships looking for any sign of the Harmony. He had no idea whether they had reached India first, or whether the Notts, Gordon Hall, and Luther Rice would be waiting to meet them when they docked.
“No sign of the Harmony,” said Captain Heard, as if reading Adoniram’s thoughts. “Still, we can make inquiries when we get to the police station to register your presence. There’ll be all kinds of trouble if I don’t do that first. The East India Company is very particular about keeping track of all foreigners in India.”
When the Caravan was finally tied up alongside the dock in Calcutta, Adoniram went to find Samuel Newell so that the two of them could accompany Captain Heard to the police station. In the Newells’ cabin he found Ann and Harriet gorging themselves on bananas and pineapples.
“These taste wonderful,” said Ann, holding out half a plump banana for Adoniram to try. “This yellow fruit is a pineapple. It’s so sweet,” she added, pointing to the cut-up chunks of juicy yellow fruit on the table.
Adoniram laughed. He was happy, he was in India, and he knew his wife was going to enjoy the challenges that lay ahead of them.
An hour later, though, he was not so happy. The clerk at the police station had been rude and uninterested in their case. He had told them it was foolish to land in Calcutta without written permission from the directors of the East India Company. They ran things in India, and no one could stay without their permission. Adoniram knew this was true for the British, but since he was an American he had assumed the rules would be different for him. He told the clerk so.
“You Americans!” the clerk snorted with indignation. “You have no regard for rules, do you? Well, I can tell you this. I doubt you’ll get permission to stay here. All I can do for you is to give you a certificate to say you’ve reported here and pass the whole case on to the East India Company.” With that he stamped some papers and handed them to Adoniram and Samuel.
Dejected, the two men left the police station. As they did so, Adoniram pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. “I was wondering if Fort William College is close by,” he asked Captain Heard. “I would like to visit Dr. Carey.”
“It’s about a mile away,” replied the captain. “And I hope you get a warmer welcome there than you got at the police station. Come on, I’ll show you the way.”
Captain Heard led the way through a maze of densely populated streets to Fort William College. William Carey was working in his office. He invited Adoniram and Samuel in while Captain Heard returned to his ship to oversee the unloading of the Caravan’s cargo. William Carey was a short, bald man, but he had an enormous reputation, and Adoniram felt honored to meet him at last. He knew of Carey’s humble start in life as a shoemaker back in England. Despite his lowly start, through sheer determination Carey had opened the eyes of English Christians to the need to send out missionaries. He had founded the Baptist Missionary Society and gone out as the organization’s first missionary. His extraordinary ability translating foreign languages had earned him the position of professor of Oriental languages at Fort William College. Of course, Carey also continued his missions work, using his college salary to help support a large missionary community at Serampore, farther up the Hooghly River.
More than anything, Adoniram wanted to learn all that William Carey might know about missionary work in Burma. But the news was not good. Carey’s son Felix lived in Rangoon, Burma, but he was allowed to do so only because he was married to a Burmese woman. He was forbidden to do missionary work, and the penalty for disobeying was death.
Adoniram gulped hard when he heard this. “That sounds a little harsh,” he said.
William Carey nodded. “It does, but many people in Burma wake up each morning not knowing whether they will be alive by evening. Almost any offense carries a terrible punishment. A man could have boiling lead poured down his throat for chewing opium. Only three months ago a Burmese commander ordered that five hundred of his men be buried alive because they were new recruits and no one had yet told them all the rules. Burma is a place in great need of the gospel. There are fifteen million people living there, and they have not one Bible in their own language. But the king has no intention of letting any foreigners gain a foothold. It is a noble goal of yours to go to Burma, though perhaps not one that is obtainable. But,” concluded William Carey, stroking his chin, “you’ll have long enough to think about where you should go from here. The important thing is to get permission to stay until your friends arrive. I will do all I can to help. In the meantime, you are welcome to come to Serampore. We would all like to get to know you and your wives better.”
With the help of William Carey, Adoniram and Samuel were able to get temporary permits that allowed them to stay in India for the time being. Finally, the missionaries said good-bye to Captain Heard, who had been so kind to them throughout the voyage from Salem. They loaded themselves into a small boat and set off upriver to Serampore, the Danish-controlled enclave William Carey had fled to when the East India Company had tried to expel him from India.
What Adoniram saw on his arrival in Serampore astonished him. There on the banks of the Hooghly River sat a large Christian community. William Carey’s two associates, William Ward and Joshua Marshman, showed the group around. One of the centerpieces of the compound was a large print shop, complete with its own papermaking equipment. As the men walked, they passed a burned-out building that Joshua Marshman explained had been destroyed in a fire several months before. “The building housed the translation rooms and was where the type was set. A lot was lost in the fire, but Dr. Carey is not a man to give up easily. We have already begun the translation work again, and plans are being drawn up for a new building.”
The Judsons and the Newells had been guests at Serampore for two weeks when, on July 1, the men were summoned to the police station in Calcutta. The news was every bit as bad as they dreaded it would be. The East India Company had decided to brand them “undesirables” and had ordered Captain Heard to return all four of them to the United States. To make sure the captain did so, no port clearance would be given to him unless the four missionaries were onboard his ship.
Adoniram was devastated by the news. He wondered what he should do next. The Harmony had not yet arrived, and how could he ever explain having to return to America? Arriving home on the same ship he’d left on could spell the end to any future American missions. He had hoped to be the first of many successes, not the first failed American missionary.
Thoughts swirled though Adoniram’s mind as he returned to Serampore. He had come so far, but where could he go now? Burma sounded out of the question, as did any other British-controlled area. The officer of the East India Company had made that very plain at the police station. There was one missionary in China, Robert Morrison, but he was officially recognized as a translator. If it became known he was a Christian, or if other missionaries joined him, he would be put to death. Then there were Arabia, Turkey, and Persia, but the Moslem rulers there had made it clear that death awaited all Christians who came ashore to convert others to their religion.
Many of Adoniram and Ann’s new friends in Calcutta and Serampore urged the couple to return to the United States and become missionaries to the American Indians in the uncharted territories west of the Mississippi River. But Adoniram’s heart was not there. He told himself that if William Carey would not give up after such a destructive fire, then neither would he. He would find a mission field in East Asia, or he would die trying.
Captain Heard was not due to set sail again for at least six weeks, which gave the missionaries a little more time in India to try to come up with a plan. Joshua Marshman from the Serampore mission made a trip to Calcutta to see what he could do about the situation. Eventually, he was able to prevail with his contacts in the East India Company, and he was unofficially told that the missionaries would be allowed to find passage on another ship as long as they headed for the Isle of France (today called Mauritius) in the western Indian Ocean and away from East India Company-controlled territory.
A ship, the Col. Gillespie, was found. It was about to set sail for the Isle of France, but it had room for only two passengers. Harriet Newell’s baby was due in just three months, and it was decided that Harriet and Samuel should be the ones to make the trip. That way they could get themselves established in the Isle of France before the baby arrived.
Adoniram and Ann stood watching the Newells disappear down the Hooghly River aboard the Col. Gillespie. Ann yelled a final word to her childhood friend. “God bless you, Harriet. We’ll all meet in the Isle of France as soon as we can find a ship. Wait for us.”
Adoniram waved, too, and he hoped all would be well when they met again.
Four days after the Newells left for the Isle of France, the Harmony finally docked in Calcutta. The ship had not been boarded by privateers or sunk in a storm after all, but she had encountered unfavorable winds in the Bay of Bengal. Adoniram and Ann had a wonderful reunion with Samuel and Roxana Nott, Gordon Hall, and Luther Rice. The friends had not seen each other since their official send-off service in Salem, Massachusetts, seven months before. Now they were all safely together in India. But they didn’t have long together there. If the East India Company had been unhappy about the Judsons and the Newells being in India, they were furious when four more American missionaries arrived. In fact, within days of the Harmony’s arrival, the missionaries were informed that they were all being deported to England in a convoy of ships that would soon be setting sail from Calcutta. Adoniram knew they had to do something, and fast.
Chapter 9
Don’t Throw Your Life Away
Getting out of Calcutta proved more difficult than Adoniram had imagined. The missionaries played a cat-and-mouse game with the East India Company, always trying to stay one step ahead. The Notts and Gordon Hall had finally managed to book passage on a ship and sneak out of Calcutta without being detected by East India Company officials. They headed for the island of Ceylon off the southeast tip of India where they hoped to establish a mission station.
