At the precise moment the tide turned, the schooner Casco, casting off her bow and stern lines, was towed away from the pier. Her foresail, main, and two headsails hoisted and sheeted in, the graceful windship--ninety-four feet in length and of seventy-four ton registry--heeled to leeward and pointed her bow toward the Golden Gate, San Francisco's portal to the open sea. Once outside the bay, with the wind freshened and the seas increased, the Casco set its course southwest by south, and her rail dug deep in the tumbling seas as they sped astern. Again and again, her plunging bow sent showers of spray back along the deck. The passengers and most of the crew sought shelter below decks, leaving only a forward lookout and a helmsman aft to brave the elements and see to the ship's safety.
Below, in a handsomely appointed forward cabin, five passengers huddled together experiencing doubts about the wisdom of undertaking an extended ocean voyage in such a "tiny boat." They also wondered how soon seasickness would take hold. Only one of them, Louis, was having the time of his life, observing--much to the disgust of the rest--how good it was to be out on the open sea, where the air was fresh and the ocean was an exquisite blue.
While these passengers were behaving much like any others might on their first day at sea, this collection of voyagers was hardly commonplace. They were the Stevenson family, comprised of author Robert Louis, his wife Fanny, his mother Margaret, his stepson Lloyd, and Fanny's French maid Valentine. The date was June 27, 1888, and the Stevensons were on their way to the Marquesas, the first of their many ports of call on this sea venture among the fabled islands in the South Seas.
The idea for the Pacific cruise originated with Stevenson and his wife several months earlier, during an exceptionally cold and raw winter in Saranac, New York. He was not only progressing poorly with his new book, The Master of Ballantrae, but his health had been bad. His chronic ailment, which he called "Bluidy Jack"--probably tuberculosis--threatened him constantly with pulmonary hemorrhage, which drained his strength and made it difficult for him to work. To add insult to injury, one particularly raw night his ink froze solid. These conditions--and having just finished reading Charles Warren Stoddard's South Sea Idyls--prompted Stevenson to think more and more seriously of a sojourn in some tropical place. After all, he and Fanny had often fantasized about a visit to a balmy Pacific island world.
In March, Fanny prepared to visit friends in California, and as Stevenson was saying farewell, he commented as an afterthought, "If you find a yacht out there, mind you take it." Just six weeks later a telegram arrived in Saranac, reading:
Can secure splendid sea-going yacht Casco for seven hundred and fifty a month with most comfortable accommodations for six aft and six forward. Can be ready for sea in ten days. Reply immediately.
Reply he did:
Blessed girl, take the yacht and expect us in ten days.
Louis.
The voyage of the
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