Annie's mother Louise’s time as whaling wife began because her husband Amos had, in his previous voyage, been held captive on Pohnpei (Ponope, Ascension) Island in the South Pacific after the south’s civil war steamship, the Shenandoah, burned it and two other ships to the waterline. They spent the next six months as "guest captives of the King" in our way of saying it, before the war ended, and they were rescued.

 

Amos secured another voyage quickly, captaining The Platina, almost before he and Louise went about enlarging their family.   From 1867 to 1890, on six long voyages, Louise "never let him out of her sight again.” Annie’s time as a whaling child began in 1868, during Louise's very first voyage, when Louise debarked the Platina to give birth to Annie in the whaling enclave in Pita, Peru, while Amos hunted in the Northern Pacific grounds off the coast. Captain Chase brought his wife and new daughter back on board when Annie was six months old. Here is an excerpt on Amos' actions during the capture of his ship. It is fromThe Lost Fleet, A Yankee Whaler's Struggle Against the Confederation Navy and Arctic Disaster, by Marc Songini.

​

The excerpts begin after Grimball, a confederate officer, comes up beside the three captain's rowboat further down the coast. Unfortunately, they had all left their posts to visit a missionary (see our family's letter from him in the final panel). 

​

Please note: the white text in italics to the left of the book excerpts is written by us.