Marriage
Page 1
The day was hot and muggy with occasional short downpours typical for January in the tropics. A larger and more modern sailing ship than the Yankee was tied up in Papeete, Tahiti and was boarding a group of “students” arriving for a five-day cruise through the Society Islands. Though this group was more mature than SEA Semester students usually sailing on the SSV Robert C. Seamans, they anticipated the voyage ahead with the same enthusiasm and excitement.
From Westward Bound in the Schooner Yankee – Published by W.W. Norton & Co, Inc., copyright 1936. Used with the permission of Robert Johnson.
Captain Philip A. Sacks, a 25-year member of SEA’s faculty, wondered whether the visitors who briefly boarded yesterday would return before sailing; today’s departure time was carefully scheduled to avoid frequent comings and goings into the harbor of ferries traveling between Tahiti and the other islands. On the previous day a local man, Erwin Warren, accompanied by two daughters and a granddaughter, had arrived at the dock requesting permission to board and speak with the Captain.
Erwin Warren and Margaret Parker, January 2006.
Warren, a small man with a white ponytail, hoped that someone on the brigantine would be able to confirm the letter that was carefully tucked away in his daughter’s purse. He came in search of someone who could help legitimize the marriage of his parents performed over seventy years ago by another captain on another sailing vessel like this one. The 72-year-old Warren was being denied benefits by the French government of Polynesia where he now lived. By refusing to recognize the 1934 marriage of a Pitcairn islander named Sterling Warren and a young woman from Mangareva named Ruau, the government considered him illegitimate and not qualified to receive their equivalent of social security and medicare.
Sacks knew the backgrounds of the “students” who were arriving the next day for a special short program meant to acquaint new friends with SEA and to thank loyal friends for their support. Among them would be two people who sailed fifty years ago on the Yankee as young crewmembers during its seventh voyage.
Margaret Parker was nineteen when she signed on to sail as one of only four young females on an eighteen-month voyage with Captain Irving Johnson and his wife Electa (Exy). John Higginson, one of her shipmates on that voyage, was also arriving in Papeete that day to sail on the Seamans with his wife Lindsey.
Parker and Higginson had sailed with the Johnsons on the seventh and last circumnavigation of the Yankee, voyages that always included a long stop at Pitcairn Island. “Pitcairn was so isolated that the arrival of the Yankee was like Christmas for the Islanders,” said Parker. The boat always arrived with the latest Sears and Roebuck catalog that would be passed around the island for all to see. During the next three years, orders from Pitcairn Islanders would be passed through Johnson’s Bookstore in Springfield, Massachusetts. These goods would then be loaded onto the Yankee for delivery three years later. “This happened seven times,” said Parker.
L to R: Josephine Warren, Captain Phil Sacks and Dennis Nixon.
Shortly after arriving at the boat, Parker and the other 20 travelers, who included SEA’s President John Bullard, went below to change out of their damp clothes. They had flown all night from Los Angeles with many also traveling from the East Coast earlier the previous day. The Warren family returned to the Seamans with Warren wearing a green T-shirt, ‘Pitcairn Island’ printed on his chest. Coincidently, Parker had changed into a white shirt lettered in red with ‘Brigantine Yankee’. After introductions by the Captain, Warren unfolded the letter signed by Irving Johnson. John Higginson soon joined the group on deck and looked at the letter too.