By Michael Schreiber
A large obelisk commemorating the life Capt. Robert Rae stands in the Gloria Dei churchyard. Rae was “lost at sea” near the River Nuñez in 1839.
Rae’s gravestone was originally erected at Ronaldson’s Cemetery at 9th and Bainbridge Streets. When Ronaldson’s was converted into a city playground in the year 1950, the bodies were moved and most of the stones were destroyed. But a handful of stones were moved to this churchyard in order to memorialize them.
Although he was not a parishioner at Gloria Dei, Rae was a close neighbor, having lived for a number of years with his wife Jane on what is now Kenilworth Street. And so, it is appropriate that a monument to him stands in the Gloria Dei churchyard, although his body was never brought home.
How did Rae lose his life? Disease is the most likely answer, but there were other dangers on the African coast, including tensions with the local people, which had been whipped up to a boil from the actions of American and European slave traders.
In 1839, when Capt. Rae made his last voyage on the bark Rosalba, the area around the River Nuñez was in the midst of wars among the local tribes, which was interfering with commercial ship traffic. For example, a few weeks before the Rosalba arrived on the coast, a New York ship, the Transit, put into the River Nuñez after suffering heavy damage in a hurricane. The captain, Joseph Wise, had been killed in the storm, but the crew was soon to face further dangers.
Newspapers later printed a report by a British naval officer “that the ship Transit of New York, in passing down the river Nuñez, had been boarded by people of one of the kings of the country, and robbed of a considerable amount of property, and one man killed belonging to the ship before they surrendered. … The reason the king gave the supercargo of the ship for robbing her was that they had sold powder to his enemies up the river, with whom he was at war, and which enabled them to invade his dominions and make slaves of his people.”
In fact, these conflicts with the native people possibly led to a crucial mistake at the beginning of March 1839, when the Rosalba arrived off the River Nuñez to trade for palm oil and gold dust. According to newspaper reports at the time, Capt. Rae took the jolly boat to visit the shore, and supposedly, a large grouping of native people gathered on the beach to receive him. In the meantime, the mate, who had remained aboard, was watching Rae’s progress through his spyglass. He could not tell whether the gathering on the beach was friendly or not. Moreover, he explained later, he had imagined he saw that the boat was upset in the surf. This apparently created some alarm in his mind, which was reinforced when he saw that another boat had been dispatched from the shore to their vessel, bearing a white flag at the end of a pole.
The mate thought it was necessary to escape. He raised the anchor and ordered the Rosalba to put to sea. In the meantime, Captain Rae, who was stranded on shore but perfectly unharmed, thought that his mate had led a mutiny. Luckily, there was a fleet of British Navy vessels in the region, which were on the hunt for slave traders. Rae enlisted the help of the British commodore, who delegated four naval vessels to chase the Rosalba. Ultimately, they found her, and after the misunderstandings were clarified, Rae took command once again.
Rae then wrote a letter thanking the British ships for aiding him. Tragically, that might have been the last letter that he wrote. By the time it was reprinted in U.S. newspapers several months later, Rae was long dead.
A later letter by the mate, a man named Thomas Bevans, and written in Barbados, informed people back home that Captain Rae had died on April 2, 1839, and that he was buried the next the day. The mate’s letter is on file in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and is within a large folder of correspondence, mainly on legal matters related to Robert Rae’s untimely death.
The handwriting in the mate’s letter is extremely difficult to decipher. At the start, he states that Capt. Rae died “after a short … [illegible] of eight days.” The missing words seem to end with “stress,” so maybe it’s “distress.” It seems quite possible that he is referring to a disease, which lasted eight days, as the cause of Rae’s demise.
Bevans then states that the crew of the Rosalba was “suffering much at present.” They were running out of food and were unable to obtain any on shore. “I have got but one bb. of beef and but one of pork and bread none. I give the men farina in substitute for bread,” he wrote. He added that the vessel had been unable to land its cargo.
Another letter in the file, by an attorney, made the situation clearer. He wrote, “… the mate said that a civil war was going on among certain of the natives and he was very afraid to land the cargo as it might be subjected to the depredations incident to the unusual disorder which then existed in the country.”
At some point while still on the African coast, the Rosalba lost her anchor and cables. After crossing the Atlantic, the barque remained several days in Barbados in order to have those items replaced. She arrived in New York City in late July under Bevans’ command.
The legal matters detailed in the correspondence at the Historical Society had to do with the efforts of Rae’s widow, Jane, to sue Bevans. Robert Rae had owned the Rosalba, which they claimed was valued at $5000, as much as all the items in the rest of his estate put together (two houses at $2000 each, jewelry $500, furniture $458). But now, after a disastrous voyage, the Rosalba was up in New York in the hands of other people, while Bevans was demanding extra wages for the time that he was master of the vessel. So Jane Rae wished to recover some money.
The case dragged on for at least three years, and I am not sure how it turned out for Jane Rae. I did read in the Historical Society letters that in the meantime a rich aunt of hers died in northern England, and there was a good chance that she would inherit a lot of money.
As for what happened to Capt. Rae, it does not seem to have been made entirely clear to anyone. His widow’s chief attorney, John Cadwalader, even asked Thomas Buchanan, the governor of Liberia and brother of the future U.S. president, to try to inquire about the circumstances. Cadwalader wrote about Rae’s family having “a painful felling of uncertainty, which can only be relieved by some precise and authentic information of the time … and circumstances of his death. And would be a matter of some consolation if some particulars as to his burial could be added to the information.”
Buchanan wrote back (Sept. 4, 1840) that he would ask some of the British naval officers in the region if they knew anything, but he died exactly a year later on Sept. 3, 1841, and I’m not sure what he found out in the meantime. The file at the Historical Society does not contain any more particulars, so for now we have to leave the matter of how Capt. Rae died still imprecise.
To our Father and Mother Captn Robert Rae A native of Scotland Died April 2nd 1839 Aged 54 years And Jane Inness his wife died Dec. 9th 1856 aged 56 years Sallie Rae wife of Robert Rae died March 29th 1853 aged 20 years To our brothers and sisters John S. Henry Rae died Oct. 8th 1823 aged 4 years and 7 months Emma M. Rae died April 28th 1828 aged 1 year and 2 months Mary Olivia Rae died Aug. 6th 1836 aged 6 years and 4 months Anna Jennette Rae died Feb. 15th 1836 aged 9 years and 4 months
Type of Marker: Obelisk
Issues: Delamination, blistering, tilting
Comments: Stone complete
- Using a gantry, lift obelisk to reinforce or reconstruct foundation.
- Straighten all elements of the obelisk.
- Repoint all joints with a lime based mortar.
- Patch and fill all blistering and delaminating sections with a lime based mortar.
- Gently clean the surface of the stone with a biocide using a soft bristled brush.
- Treat the stone with an Ethyl Silicate consolidate.
Inventory Number: 532
Plot Number: 788
Cemetery Section: 11