All was going well until William was called to perform a funeral service at sea. The Black woman traveling on the ship had become ill and died. She was buried at sea off the Cape of Good Hope. The death and funeral made Dolly even more nervous. Dolly had tried hard not to think of the dangers involved in what the family was doing, but the woman’s death brought all her fears flooding back. Dolly clung to the children and hardly let them out of the cabin. She spent her days sitting in the cabin, facing away from the porthole.
Then in the early morning hours of August 26, the Kron Princessa Maria ran into a violent storm. Fifty-foot high waves crashed around the little ship, tossing it one way and then the other. Every plank in the hull moaned and creaked. William was jarred awake with the scream of one of the boys being tossed from his bunk by the pitching, rolling ship. He leapt from his bed, trying to steady himself as best he could. He found William Jr. shaking and still on the floor where he had landed. William helped him back into his bunk. Dolly was already awake and clutching Jabez tightly against her. She was crying quietly, and William put his arm around her to comfort her as he stumbled back into bed.
Soon the cabin door flung open, and Kitty staggered in from her cabin next door. Her face was white, and she was trembling as she climbed onto the bed. William tried to comfort them all as they listened to the thunderous waves break against the ship. Above all the noise, they could hear Captain Christmas on deck frantically barking orders to the crew.
William was wondering what he should do next when Dr. Thomas appeared in the doorway. Dr. Thomas braced his arms and legs against the door frame as the ship rolled violently. “It looks bad,” he yelled against the backdrop of crashing waves and the creaking of the hull. “The main and fore topmasts have been washed overboard.”
“Stay in your bunks,” William instructed his family. “I’m going to see if they need help.” He pulled on his shirt and trousers and headed off into the darkness with Dr. Thomas.
The storm raged for two days, during which time William and Dr. Thomas took their turn helping the crew make sure the things stowed on deck stayed lashed down, and cutting free tangled lengths of rigging and broken yardarms that had snapped and swung menacingly in the ferocious wind. Then, as quickly as the storm had come, it was gone, but not before the sails had been shredded to rags and two of the three masts had broken.
It took ten days of feverish work to rig a jury-mast where the main mast had been and patch enough of the torn sails to get the Kron Princessa Maria under way again. Although no one was killed during the storm, several days later, the ship’s carpenter died as a result of pneumonia he caught during the storm. Once again, William held a funeral service at sea.
Beyond worrying about his own situation, William thought about all the continents and islands they had passed during the voyage. He wondered how many people in those places had never heard the gospel message. William put his thoughts down in a letter to the missionary society committee:
I hope the Society will go on and increase, and that the multitudes of heathen in the world may hear the glorious words of truth. Africa is but a little way from England; Madagascar but a little way farther; South America, and all the numerous and large islands in the Indian and Chinese Seas, I hope will not be passed over. A large field opens on every side and millions of perishing heathens tormented in this side by idolatry, superstition, and ignorance, and exposed to eternal miseries in the world to come are pleading.
As they headed farther out into the Indian Ocean, the situation aboard the Kron Princessa Maria became more desperate with each passing day. There was no more meat or pudding for dinner, not even at the captain’s table. The quartermaster had stowed only enough food and water to get from Dover to Cape Town, where normally they would have taken on more supplies. But since they hadn’t stopped in Cape Town, the quartermaster was forced to ration what little food was left. They were blessed to have some rain showers along the way, and the water that fell on the ship was carefully collected and stored in barrels on deck.
Finally, in October, the small Danish ship, proudly flying its red flag with a white cross on it, sailed into the Bay of Bengal. They were now only two hundred miles from their destination. But Captain Christmas was worried, and he was right to worry. The last of the monsoon winds had come and gone. Now the wind and current were against them, flowing out of the north. It was going to be a slow and tedious job sailing north toward their destination.
A sailing ship cannot sail directly into a headwind. It has to zigzag, or tack, as it is called, backward and forward across the wind, inching its way slowly in the direction of the headwind. William, who was interested in the whole process of navigation and sailing, spent many hours bent over the map with Captain Christmas, charting their progress. He wrote about what he learned in his diary:
A ship sails within six [compass] points of the wind; that is, if the wind blows from the North, a ship will sail ENE [east northeast] upon one tack, and WNW [west northwest] upon the other; if our course is North, we must therefore go ENE for a considerable way, then WNW; and if the wind shifts a point, the advantage is immediately taken,… sometimes, in spite of all that we can do, we go backwards instead of forwards.
Finally, on November 9, 1793, a full month after entering the Bay of Bengal, the Kron Princessa Maria pitched at anchor in the mouth of the Hooghly River, waiting for a pilot to come aboard and guide the ship up the river to Calcutta and Serampore beyond it. At the head of the Bay of Bengal, two mighty rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, fanned out to form a large delta. The Hooghly River was one of the many river branches that ran from the confluence of these two great rivers to the sea.
As the ship bobbed at anchor, many questions whirled around in William’s mind. Where should they start their missionary work? Where would they all live? And what would the East India Company do when they found out that two Englishmen were preaching to Indians? William had read that there were only about fifteen hundred English people in the whole of India at that time, and most of them worked for the East India Company. How could they ever hope to go unnoticed for very long?
None of these questions, however, was as important as the gloomy question William did not even want to think about but knew he had to: How were they going to get past the East India Company officials on their way to Serampore? If they were discovered on their way up the river, they might not even be allowed to set foot in India, let alone preach there.
William peered over the side of the ship into the yellow river water. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. Somehow, he had to find a way to get around what was written on that paper.
Chapter 9
On Indian Soil
William Carey sat at the desk in his cabin, turning the piece of paper in his hand over and over. Every few minutes he looked down and reread the words written on it. He hardly had to, though; he could recite them by heart:
If any subject of His Majesty, not being lawfully licensed, should at any time repair to or be found in the East Indies, such persons were to be declared guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor, and be liable to fine and imprisonment….
As well, William had written on the page the text of an order issued by the rulers of British-controlled India. He reread those words, too:
Every commander of a vessel arriving in India is to give to their pilot a faithful return of all passengers on board, and stating whether or not they have a license from the East India Company.
Government of India, 1789
William wasn’t sure what to do. He could not ask Captain Christmas to lie for him, nor could he risk being sent back to England. There had to be another way, but what was it?
As he mulled over the group’s predicament, an idea popped into his mind. He quickly read the words of the government decree one more time. The answer had been there all along. It had just taken him a while to see it! Captain Christmas had to declare all passengers on board. But what if a passenger, or group of passengers, was to disembark before the ship took on a pilot? There was nothing in the decree that said that a passenger had to wait for a pilot to come aboard before disembarking. William smiled to himself. That was his answer. Quickly, he stood up and went to find Captain Christmas. Four hours later, the eight members of the missionary party were secretly hoisted over the side of the ship into a small native boat called a pansi.
The plan was for the group to meet up with Captain Christmas and the Kron Princessa Maria in Calcutta, where she would be docked for several days before heading farther upriver to Serampore.
The tide was with them as they began the journey up the Hooghly River. William was fascinated with everything he saw along the riverbanks. The women, many of them balancing baskets on their heads, wore brightly colored long dresses called saris. The gathered skirts swished gently as the women walked along. The men, on the other hand, had turbans wrapped around their heads, and they wore wide, floppy cotton pants called pajamas. William felt as if he’d walked into the pages of an adventure story.
Finally, when the tide turned and the pansi could no longer make headway against the strong current, the boatman told Dr. Thomas they would have to stop and begin their journey again in six hours, when the tide had turned in their favor.
William could scarcely believe it when he was at last standing by the side of the river with both feet planted firmly on Indian soil. The pansi had tied up beside a village marketplace, and William gazed at the amazing sight—like nothing he had ever seen in England. All around him, merchants sat or squatted next to large, flat baskets filled with vegetables and fruits, most of which he had never seen before. Other merchants were selling dried fish, and still others sold brass and silverware, bright-colored cotton fabrics, sandals, and some things he had no idea what possible use they were for. Around the merchants, people milled, bartering for a fair price for the goods they wanted to buy. The air in the marketplace was also filled with odors. Some were pungent and repulsive, but others were sweet and inviting. Some of the smells William recognized, but there were many he did not.
Within minutes, a crowd had gathered around them. Brown hands reached out to pinch little Jabez’s cheeks and poke at the older boys. Dolly drew back, afraid of what might happen next. But there was nothing to be afraid of; it was just that most of the people had never before seen a white woman and her children alone without servants.
As the crowd gathered, William desperately wanted to preach to the assembled people, but he hadn’t yet learned enough Bengali. Instead, he urged Dr. Thomas to preach. For the next three hours, that’s exactly what Dr. Thomas did. As Dr. Thomas spoke, the residents of the village listened carefully. And when Dr. Thomas had said all he had to say, several people in the crowd brought a meal of curried vegetables and rice, proudly arranged on plantain leaf plates, for them all to eat. The villagers laughed among themselves as William, Dolly, and Kitty tried eating with their fingers for the first time. The visitors made quite a mess. The three oldest Carey boys, though, seemed to enjoy the new eating style, which brought a welcome change from the knives and forks they’d had to eat with at the captain’s table aboard ship.
When they had all finished eating, William continued exploring the marketplace while Dr. Thomas answered the village residents’ questions. Before William had run out of things to see, the boatmen yelled that the tide had turned and it was time to get under way again. Everyone climbed back in the pansi and continued on upriver toward Calcutta. As the missionaries cast off from the jetty, several people from the village yelled out that they would be welcome back anytime.
