Trying to get in touch with the Sultan of Djambi, a native prince of the region, Gibson made the mistake of writing a message to that potentate in Malayan, offering to supply weapons and ships to free the natives from Dutch domination. Unluckily, the translator he chose happened to be a Malay spy who had been planted on him by the Dutch government police. Gibson’s sailing master, Graham, was sent to deliver this incriminating letter, which was found on his person when he was quickly captured by the vigilant Dutch.
Gibson was clapped into the Dutch prison of Weltevreden at Batavia, Java, on a charge of fomenting rebellion. He always claimed that the innocent letter of greeting he had dictated had been replaced with an incriminating document. He refused several chances to escape and hoped for rescue by the American government, even though there was at the time no American consul near at hand. His trial was postponed indefinitely, because if he were convicted the penalty had to be death, and his execution might lead to trouble with the United States.
Gibson endured sixteen months of imprisonment with fortitude. He learned the Dutch and Javanese languages, invented a brick-making machine, and studied for hours with Sahyeepah, “the winged one,” a native princess who visited him often in the free-and-easy Dutch jail.
He was finally brought to trial on February 14, 1852, and judged not guilty of high treason, but was ordered to be put in the pillory for two hours and then to be jailed for twelve years, paying his own board bill during his imprisonment. Other Dutch authorities, trusting that America had decided to abandon her erring son, ignored the sentence, and in April, 1853, a secret tribunal condemned him to death.
Yet the practical Dutch hoped that he would escape and thus solve the problem for them, and so a complicated scheme to get Gibson away from prison with the aid of the princess—who had fallen in love with him—was finally worked out. An American schooner, the N. B. Palmer, was fortunately being repaired in the vicinity and it was arranged, probably by the Dutch themselves, for Captain C. P. Low to take the fugitive aboard on April 24, 1853. According to Gibson’s later account of his escape, the Palmer while leaving the roadstead was fired on by the Dutch cruiser Boreas and after retaliating crowded on sail and evaded pursuit. This seems highly unlikely, for the ship passed easily through the Straits of Sunda next morning, leaving behind the confiscated Flirt, as well as Gibson’s hopes of becoming a second Rajah Brooke.
Two years later Gibson published an excellently written account of his attempt to free Sumatra, The Prison of Weltevreden, in which he adopts the device of recounting to the passengers on his rescue ship, the Palmer, the incidents of his complicated adventure. Like a male Scheherazade, for fifty-four days of the flight from Java he thus entertains the people of the Palmer, and if any modern reader longs for the old days of high-flown style, lofty sentiment and rich description, this narrative is recommended. His cell in the state prison he portrayed thus: “A narrow den, a foul sweltering oven; ten feet in length and eight in width, half filled by a coarse platform, its only furniture. No light or air, but from one double-barred grating in front. The cell stank, the air was dead and still; I sat down with sickened feeling, on the platform; the foulness and heat of that place was fearful.… The door was closed, the dead air felt deadlier and stiller, one quaff alone of the breezy air of the morning was prayed for; and then water, not thought of when the keeper was in the cell, water, water, I called for between those bars, but the brutal sentinel paid no heed; a little water, and a little air, were the craving wants of a dreadful night passed in the Stad prison of Batavia.”
When the Palmer arrived in England, Gibson sought out the American consul at Liverpool and asked for a loan to enable him to return to the United States. He proclaimed grandly that he was going to demand high indemnities from the Dutch government for his mistreatment at Batavia.
The consul, whose name adds luster to the Gibson legend, listened to tales that threatened to put the consul’s own volumes of romance in the shade. After the interview he reported that he found Gibson to be “a gentleman of refined manner, handsome figure, and remarkably intellectual aspect.… Literally, from his first hour, he had been tossed upon the surges of a most varied and tumultuous existence, having been born at sea, of American parentage, but on board of a Spanish vessel, and spending many of the subsequent years in voyages, travels, and outlandish incidents and vicissitudes which, methought, had hardly been paralleled since the days of Gulliver or Defoe. When his dignified reserve was overcome, he had the faculty of narrating these adventures with wonderful eloquence, working up his descriptive sketches with such intuitive perception of the picturesque points that the whole affair was thrown forward with a positively illusive effect, like matters of your own visual experience. In fact, they were so admirably done that I could not more than half believe them, because the genuine affairs of life are not apt to transact themselves so artistically. Many of his scenes were laid in the East, and among those seldom-visited archipelagoes of the Indian Ocean, so that there was an Oriental fragrance breathing through his talk, and an odor of the Spice Islands still lingering in his garments. He had much to say of the delightful qualities of the Malay pirates, who, indeed, carry on a predatory warfare against the ships of all civilized nations, and cut every Christian throat among their prisoners; but (except for deeds of that character, which are the rule and habit of their life, and a matter of religion and conscience with them) they are a gentle-natured people, of primitive innocence and integrity.” Those are the opinions of Nathaniel Hawthorne as recorded in his book of English observations, Our Old Home.
Then Hawthorne describes briefly one of the most completely typical of the Gibson antics. “Meanwhile,” he writes, “since arriving in England on his way to the United States, he had been providentially led to inquire into the circumstances of his birth on shipboard, and had discovered that not himself alone, but another baby, had come into the world during the same voyage of the prolific vessel, and that there were almost irrefragable reasons for believing that these two children had been assigned to the wrong mothers. Many reminiscences of his early days confirmed him in the idea that his nominal parents were aware of the exchange. The family to which he felt authorized to attribute his lineage was that of a nobleman, in the picture-gallery of whose country seat (whence, if I mistake not, our adventurous friend had just returned) he had discovered a portrait bearing a striking resemblance to himself. As soon as he should have reported to President Pierce and the Secretary of State, and recovered the confiscated property, he proposed to return to England and establish his claim to the nobleman’s title and estate.… The English romance was among the latest communications that he entrusted to my private ear; and as soon as I heard the first chapter,—so wonderfully akin to what I might have wrote out of my own head, not unpractised in such figments,—I began to repent having made myself responsible for the future nobleman’s passage homeward in the next Collins steamer.” Nevertheless, Hawthorne advanced $150 with which Gibson was able to travel to Washington, D. C.
There he persuaded the United States to present a formal claim against the Dutch for $100,000 in damages. When the Dutch refused to pay, the United States virtually threatened war, and conflict seemed imminent. Gibson meanwhile had obtained a post as attaché of the American Legation in Paris, and during rambles around Europe he “read the record of glorious adventure” and dreamed of further feats of daring. His favorite hero was Prince Henry the Navigator. The Emperor Napoleon III, hearing of his exploits, offered Gibson a place in the New Caledonian expedition then forming, but the adventurer declined. He still wanted to fight the Dutch.
Returning to the United States, Gibson aroused public sympathy for his claim by lectures and by the publication of his book, The Prison of Weltevreden. But when his case was to be put before Congress, an important letter was found to be missing from the State Department files on his case. Since Gibson himself, who had been given access to the file, was the only person who could have abstracted it, suspicion fell on him.<
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It just so happened that the Dutch diplomats had a duplicate of this purloined letter and they made it public. Written by Gibson, dated at Batavia on February 25, 1852, and addressed to the governor of the Netherlands Indies, the letter begged for its writer’s release and admitted making “vainglorious remarks” to the natives of Sumatra while under the influence of liquor. Gibson also confessed, “I have too often been led away in life by some high-colored romantic idea,” and he admitted having indulged in “bravadoes that I would become a potentate in the East.” Writing this letter and then pilfering it from the files destroyed Gibson’s claim in the eyes of Congress. War with the Dutch was thus fortunately averted.
Throughout the rest of his life Gibson mourned Sumatra as his lost empire, and we can believe that, like Queen Mary Tudor’s Calais, its name was engraved upon his heart. But his rajahdom being irretrievably lost, he spruced up and looked around for other conquests.
It was in Washington that he became interested in the Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints, and observing their difficulties with the United States government, he advocated settling all of them on some Pacific isle of Eden. But his plan was rejected by officials because the cost, five million dollars, was prohibitive, As he often pointed out later, the futile Mormon War subsequently cost the United States three times that amount.
Still, an idea had struck fire in his febrile brain, and he betook himself out to Salt Lake City, where on October 29, 1859, he suggested to Brigham Young that he sell Utah to the United States and move the Mormon state—lock, stock and barrel—to Papua or New Guinea. He told Brother Brigham that his high object was to do good to the natives of those lands, as he had reason to believe they were the Lost Tribes of Israel. Instead of accepting this bizarre plan, Young countered with the suggestion that Gibson become a Mormon and perhaps go to the Pacific islands to convert the natives to that sect.
After some heart searching, Walter Murray Gibson on January 15, 1860, became a member of the Saints. He lectured for a while in Utah and then went to some of the eastern states to recruit converts, but he soon wearied and raised money to bring himself back to Utah, along with his three children. On arrival he heard the joyous news. His great desire had been realized—he had been cleared as a preacher and was appointed to carry the Mormon gospel to all the Pacific islands.
Accompanied by his daughter Talula (the two sons remained for the while in Salt Lake), Gibson headed west, and lectured in California, where because of high tensions he found it expedient to deny being a Mormon. Nor did he admit his affiliation when he landed on July 4, 1861, in the Hawaiian capital of Honolulu after a voyage on the ship Yankee. There he gave lectures on Malaysia and passed himself off as a world traveler on his way to the East Indies.
The Civil War had now broken out in the States, and the king of independent Hawaii, Kamehameha IV, had proclaimed his country’s neutrality. Union sympathizers in Hawaii quickly became suspicious of this mysterious, energetic, glib-talking Captain Gibson of South Carolina. They guessed that he was planning a privateering venture. On September 2, while calling at the U.S. Legation, Gibson was prodded into a fiery defense of Jeff Davis, and Union spies were convinced they had their man. But two hours later he confounded everyone by leaving with his daughter on the steamer Kilauea for the island of Maui.
The United States consul on Maui was alerted regarding the suspicious Southerner and had him followed. He uncovered some highly perplexing data, for Gibson was accompanied by two worthies—one an ex-bartender—whom he had picked up on the ship from California. These two were now found to be wandering around Maui trying to peddle a compendium called Dr. Warren’s Household Physician. The Union spies were utterly confused and no one knew what to do about Gibson; then suddenly he stepped forth as a full-blown Mormon missionary. His first act was, characteristically, to devise a Mormon flag with individual stars for the eight Hawaiian islands. The Union forces, withdrawing from the field, sneered at it as a “secession flag.”
Gibson began his missionary labors among the native Mormon Church members, who had lacked a white leader for three years. Within a few weeks he was presiding over a conference of Mormons on Maui. But now the Hawaiian government became suspicious of him, and the Cabinet Council minute book shows that fifty dollars was authorized for obtaining any information regarding what Brother Walter was really up to. The missionary forestalled them, however, by giving a solemn promise that he would never take any Hawaiian subjects away to New Guinea. Somehow this made everything all right.
Meanwhile Gibson, in a whaleboat owned by a native, had visited the little island of Lanai. Here the heads of the Mormon Church had decided in 1853 to establish a stronghold. A tract of five thousand acres was obtained, a town site was laid out, houses were built and farms started, and slowly the City of Joseph rose. Gibson, viewing the scene, the site of his future grandiose operations, said sententiously: “I will plant my stakes here and make a home for the rest of my days.”
He began to work to build up the Mormon settlements on Lanai, and by November 5 he and Talula were living at Palawai on that island. He was now head of a colony of about 180 Hawaiians, ruling under the title of “Priest of Melchisedec and Chief President of the Isles of the Sea,” and this robust title seems to have awakened once more the dreams of his youth, for he wrote in his diary on January 31, 1862: “O smiling Palawai, thou infant hope of my glorious kingdom! Blessed is Lanai among the isles of the sea.” From that moment, he was on his way to empire.
To further his plans, the Priest of Melchisedec began making a study of Hawaiian history, customs and language, and soon became so proficient that he was venerated by the natives. His style became even more florid: “This is the time when the gentiles of America shall be swept from the face of the earth, as has been foretold in the prophecies of the Prophet, Joseph Smith. As for Zion, her time has come to be set free, and the Prophet, Brigham Young, is to become as the King of Kings.… You, the red-skinned children of Abraham, have attained the joy of preparing to found the New Jerusalem.”
To build Zion on Lanai and advance the farming projects there, the faithful children of Abraham donated goats, fowls, donkeys, furniture and cash. Gibson supplemented these funds by selling offices in his church; a post as one of the twelve apostles under him went for a price of $150, but other positions could be purchased for as low as fifty cents. At this point Gibson seems to have become more interested in wealth and political power than in erecting a religious Utopia, for in a revealing communication he assured the government that he could influence 2500 votes in the kingdom.
Gibson had his troubles. The two cronies he had picked up on the ship ungratefully denounced him, called him a “black-hearted schemer” and accused him of sympathy with the Confederate cause. What was worse, a drought and a worm pest threatened the harvest in March, 1862, but Gibson resolutely ordered that teams of natives be harnessed to the plough to break new land, and under similar conditions of slavery, most of the crop was saved. Although the Gibson diary now referred to “windy, desolute Lanai,” success in raising cattle and sheep helped the colony prosper.
But now a few doubting natives began to wonder if what they were suffering was really the Lord’s way, and a committee complained to Salt Lake City about their pastor’s methods. In April a grim-faced delegation of Mormon elders arrived at Lahaina, Maui, where their investigations showed conclusively that the church had been betrayed. Gibson had diverted its funds to the purchase of about half the island of Lanai, and all the church property was in his name.
The elders were apoplectic, and Robert Louis Stevenson claimed some years later that “there is evidence to the effect that he was followed to the islands by Mormon assassins.” But no Avenging Angel laid Gibson low for his theft and sacrilege. It does seem certain, however, that Elder Joseph F. Smith told the backslider: “Gibson, you will die in a gutter!”
Gibson was excommunicated by the Mormon Church within a month, and he ceased calling himself a Mormon. Most of the sett
lers left Lanai and went to build the New Jerusalem somewhere else. A much more promising site was chosen at Laie, Oahu, where after some years of hard work the community established a thriving sugar plantation which brought funds that enabled the erection of the imposing Mormon Temple that today glistens among the fields of waving cane. Gibson, however, stayed on Lanai with his fraudulent acres. In 1864 he was joined by his two sons, and thereafter he increased his island estates and flourished.
To the consternation of his enemies, the fruits of his wickedness seemed to multiply, and in a moving passage he recorded his reactions to his new home and its people: “They are material for a very little kingdom. They would not affect the course of trade nor change much the earth’s balances of power. They are not material for a Caesar, nor a cotton lord, nor a railroad contractor. They would not be very potent secessionists and surely will seem but small material for me, after all the hope and grasp of my heart. But they are thorough, what they are. There is no cant among the kanakas. They bring a chicken or some yams to make up for their deficiencies in courtesy in approaching me.… I hope to influence the government to let us have all of this valley and most of the island to develop, and then we will dig and tunnel and build and plant and make a waste place a home for rejoicing thousands. I could make a glorious little kingdom out of this or any such chance, with such people, so loving and obedient. I would make a port and a commerce, a state and a civilization. I would make millions of fruits where one was never thought of. I would fill this lovely crater with corn and wine and oil and babies and love and health and brotherly rejoicing and sisterly kisses and the memories of me for evermore.”
Gibson, realizing that at last he had a good thing, became a naturalized citizen of Hawaii on March 26, 1866. He made a trip back to New York in the fall of 1868, where he turned up as the “commercial agent to the colony of Singapore,” trying to encourage the idea of Malaysian immigration into Hawaii, where labor was badly needed on the spreading sugar plantations. He also journeyed to Washington on his own account, where he lobbied for a reciprocity treaty between the United States and Hawaii that would break down the tariff wall on sugar and other articles exchanged by the two countries. Ignoring his Hawaiian citizenship, he tried to get himself a job on an American commission concerned with Oriental immigrants in the United States. And in his spare time he looked for good mainland farmers to bring back with him to the islands, but the few families he brought home to Lanai did not want to work very hard and the idea was a failure.