To the editor:
Among all the interesting articles in the last issue (Dec.05/ Jan.06) of the always interesting Working Waterfront, David Tyler’s piece on James Swan, and the Robert Manns play, “The Swan that Slept,” caught my immediate attention because James Swan happens to be the subject of one of my own projects…
What we know about our Colonel James Swan — and Galen Turner is surely right, we know only “the tip of the iceberg” — ultimately goes back to Dr. Small’s 1898 history of Swans Island; Small was an early rusticator on the island, fell in love with the place (which is still very easy to do, as my wife and I can attest — our last 12 summer vacations have been spent there, and we hope to return), and then decided to write a history, for which purpose he even did some research in the Massachusetts Archives. My own poking about in history and biography led me to the happily suggestive discovery that James Swan may well have known personally the paternal grandfather of none other than Herman Melville. Thomas Melvill (as the name was spelled then), born in Boston in 1751, was a close friend of Sam Adams, and like Swan, a member of the Sons of Liberty, participant in the Boston Tea Party, and a combatant at Bunker Hill. In 1776 Melvill led the cannon fire upon the retreating British fleet. I can imagine a scene with Swan and Melvill side by side, tossing tea into Boston Harbor…
Donald C. Riechel
Columbus, Ohio