- John Ledyard
John Ledyard (November 1751 –
January 10 ,1789 ) was an Americanexplorer and adventurer.Ledyard was born in
Groton, Connecticut , the oldest son of John and Abigail (Hempstead) Ledyard and the nephew ofContinental Army ColonelWilliam Ledyard . After his father, a sea captain, died of malaria in theCaribbean , Ledyard's mother and family moved to Southold,Long Island . Three years later Ledyard joined his grandfather inHartford, Connecticut , where he attended school. His grandfather died just before Ledyard turned 20; perhaps due to Ledyard's profligacy the bulk of the family inheritance was left to a younger brother.Ledyard briefly attended
Dartmouth College (which was then only 3 years old), arriving onApril 22 ,1772 . He left for two months without permission in August and September of that year, led a mid-winter camping expedition, and finally abandoned the college for good in May 1773. Memorably he fashioned his own dugout canoe and paddled it for a week down theConnecticut River to his grandfather's farm. Today, the Ledyard Canoe Club, a division of theDartmouth Outing Club sponsors an annual canoe trip down the Connecticut River in his honor. At loose ends, he decided to travel; "I allot myself a seven year's ramble more," he wrote to a cousin. He shipped as a common seaman on a year-long trading voyage toGibraltar , theBarbary Coast , and theCaribbean . On his next voyage, he jumped ship inEngland , but was soon impressed and forced to join the British Navy as a marine.Captain Cook's third voyage
In June 1776, Ledyard joined Captain
James Cook 's third and final voyage as a British marine. The expedition lasted until October 1780. During these four years, its two ships stopped at theCanary Islands ,Cape of Good Hope , thePrince Edward Islands off South Africa, theKerguelen Islands ,Tasmania ,New Zealand , theCook Islands ,Tonga ,Tahiti , and thenHawaii (discovered by the expedition). It continued to the northwest coast ofNorth America , making Ledyard perhaps the first U.S. citizen to touch its western coast, along theAleutian islands andAlaska into theBering Sea , and back toHawaii where Cook was killed. The return voyage touched uponKamchatka ,Macau , Batavia (nowJakarta ), around theCape of Good Hope again, and back toEngland .Still a marine in the British Navy, Ledyard was sent to North America to fight in the
American Revolution . Instead he deserted, returned to Hartford, and began to write his "Journal of Captain Cook's Last Voyage". It was published in 1783, five years after he had visited Hawaii,cite web |url= http://www.hanahou.com/pages/magazine.asp?Action=DrawArticle&ArticleID=372&MagazineID=23 |title= Captain Cook's American |author= John W. Perry |work=Hana Hou! Vol. 5, No. 3, June/July 2002 |quote= ] and was the first work to be protected bycopyright in the United States. (It was in fact protected byConnecticut state copyright by special act of the legislature; federal copyright was not introduced until 1790.) Today, this work is annotated in rare-book bibliographies as the first travelogue describing Hawaii ever to be published in America.The fur trade
As Ledyard had noticed that sea otter furs from the American northwest commanded extremely high prices in Macau, he lobbied during the early 1780s for the formation of fur-trading companies. Ledyard suggested trading furs for Chinese silk and porcelain, which could then be sold in the United States. Although his abortive partnership with
Philadelphia financier Robert Morris was not successful, it did lay the pattern of the subsequent China trade.Ledyard left the United States in June 1784 to find financial backers in Europe. In Paris he partnered with Captain
John Paul Jones ; however this venture, too, failed to reach fruition.Overland around the world
In Paris, Ledyard conceived a remarkably bold scheme of exploration with encouragement from
Thomas Jefferson , then American ambassador, and with financial backing from theMarquis de Lafayette , botanistJoseph Banks , andJohn Adams ' son-in-law, William Smith. Jefferson suggested that Ledyard explore the American continent by proceeding overland throughRussia , crossing at theBering Strait , and heading south throughAlaska and then across the American West toVirginia .Ledyard left
London in December 1786, and made it most of the way acrossRussia . He leftSt. Petersburg in June 1787 to travel throughMoscow ,Ekaterinburg ,Omsk ,Tomsk ,Irkutsk , andKirensk , reachingYakutsk after 11 weeks. Here he stopped for the winter but then returned toIrkutsk to join a larger expedition led byJoseph Billings (of the Cook voyage). However, Ledyard was arrested under orders from EmpressCatherine the Great in February 1788, returned toMoscow by approximately his original route, then deported to Poland.African expedition
Back in London, Ledyard came across the
African Association , then recruiting explorers for Africa. Ledyard proposed an expedition from theRed Sea to theAtlantic . He arrived inAlexandria in August 1788, but the expedition was slow to start, and Ledyard died of illness inCairo ,Egypt onJanuary 10 ,1789 . He was buried in an unmarked grave.Selected works
* "The Last Voyage of Captain Cook: The Collected Writings of John Ledyard", ed. James Zug, National Geographic Adventure Classics, National Geographic Society, 2005.
References
* "Memoirs of the Life and Travels of John Ledyard",
Jared Sparks , 1828.
* "American Traveler: The Life and Adventures of John Ledyard, the Man Who Dreamed of Walking the World", James Zug, Basic Books; March 30, 2005.
* "Ledyard: In Search of the First American Explorer", Bill Gifford, Harcourt; February 5, 2007, ISBN 0-151-01218-0.
* "The Making of John Ledyard", Edward Gray, Yale Press, 2007.External links
*Page images of the 1783 edition of John Ledyard’s [http://memory.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfpercep/perceptledyard.html "Journal of Captain Cook's last voyage to the Pacific ocean"] on the "Meeting of the Frontiers" web page (United States
Library of Congress , Russian National Library).
* [http://www.wamu.org/audio/kn/07/03/k2070312-12988.asx "America's first "Restless Wanderer"] , NPR interview of Bill Gifford, Features Editor, "Men's Journal"; author, "Ledyard: In Search of the First American Explorer" (Harcourt), first edition (February 5, 2007), ISBN-10: 0151012180
* [http://www.dartmouth.edu/~doc/tripreports/ledyardtrek/ The Ledyard Trek]
*Jared Sparks , [http://www.archive.org/details/libraryambio24sparrich "Memoirs of the Life and Travels of John Ledyard "] . 1828, part of theLibrary of American Biography series. ViaInternet Archive .
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