The Dangerous Book of Heroes Page 11

  After an intensive period of study, Helen traveled home with Sullivan by train. Her entire family came to meet her at the station. They waited in fearful anticipation for her to speak, and when she greeted them aloud, her mother wept in joy and her sister, Mildred, kissed her hand.

  The following year was a difficult one for Helen. She wrote her first story, “The Frost King,” and sent it to Mr. Anagnos of the Perkins School for the Blind. He was impressed enough to publish it in the school’s report, and then it came out that Helen had somehow repeated most of a story she had heard, called “The Frost Fairies.”

  It was no small matter. She had no memory of the original story, but the similarities were too obvious to ignore. Mr. Anagnos felt he had been deceived and shamed, and at the school, Helen was summoned before a formal gathering to be questioned. Sullivan was not allowed to remain at her side, and Helen, a girl of twelve, suffered terribly. Marked by her grief, she never wrote fiction again, for fear that her mind would betray her into reproducing something she had once read or heard. In all her later writing, even letters to her mother, she was tortured by the idea that a sentence might not be her own and read each one over and over again to be sure.

  Her next attempt at writing came the following year—a brief account of her life for a periodical, written on a Braille typewriter. Around that time she also traveled to Niagara Falls and the World’s Fair, where she was allowed to touch the exhibits and sculptures. Alexander Graham Bell accompanied her and took pleasure in explaining the sights and inventions—from his own telephone to Egyptian mummies. Helen’s mind was flowering with Braille French and Latin as well as Greek, Roman, and American histories. In addition, she practiced and polished her speech constantly, hoping always to one day be understood even by strangers. Progress was very slow. How could she be corrected when the sound she made was not quite right? It was a hard, frustrating process, but she worked at it night and day.

  Her world was a small one, because only those who knew the manual alphabet or the techniques of getting a blind girl to read their lips by touch could speak to her. Even so, she went on to a school for the deaf in New York, where, among other things, she studied Latin, algebra, Greek, and geography for two years. She became almost fluent in German at that time and could read Braille in four languages.

  In 1896 she entered the Cambridge School for Young Ladies—the only deaf and blind pupil there. Sullivan was allowed to go with her and interpret when she could not read the teachers’ lips by touch. She could not make notes in class so had to retain all that she needed and then copy it out each evening on a typewriter.

  When it came to her exams, she sat in a room with a typewriter and the principal, Mr. Gilman, who had taken the time to learn the manual alphabet. She passed them all and achieved honors in English and German. Her teachers had assumed it would take five years for her to prepare for college but revised the estimate down to three. Helen worked herself into illness, and her mother withdrew her from the school and sent her to a tutor.

  In 1899, Keller, age twenty, took her final exams, reading them in American Braille. She qualified to go to Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1900. She was the first deaf and blind person to attend an institute of higher education and the first one to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She said later that she had felt compelled to try her strength against the standards of those who could see and hear.

  At the age of twenty-two, Keller wrote the details of her extraordinary life to that point. The Story of My Life was published and became a sensation; it was translated into more than fifty languages. It remains in print today, and from the first page, the vivid quality of the writing is astonishing when you consider that the author wrote without sound or color or light, on a Braille typewriter.

  Keller’s friendship with Sullivan continued, even through Sullivan’s marriage to John Macy in 1905. The three of them lived together for a time, and Macy introduced Keller to socialism.

  She became a fiery defender of the rights of the downtrodden and wrote numerous articles for magazines and journals on subjects such as the rights of women, deafness, blindness, and social inequality. Through her writing, she became known to a much wider audience. She and Sullivan toured the country, with Sullivan translating questions and answers between Keller and the public. Keller rarely trusted her speaking voice in public. She had no way of being certain that it was making the right sounds—for a mind with no concept of sound can only ever approximate. Sadly, she never became as fluent in speech to convey the words that flooded her mind, full of color and life.

  Her achievements inspired others, and she became a fund-raiser for the American Foundation for the Blind and sat on the first board of directors for the American Braille Press. She and Sullivan had to take on a secretary, Polly Thomson, to handle the correspondence. Her lectures and writing were vital work. At that time, many blind people were treated as helpless invalids. Some were even kept in asylums, with no attempt made to communicate with them. Helen Keller showed that the blind and the deaf were valuable. She spoke for those who had no voice when she said: “The public must learn that the blind man is neither a genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated, a hand which can be trained, ambitions which it is right for him to strive to realize, and it is the duty of the public to help him make the best of himself, so that he can win light through work.”

  Copyright © 2009 by Matt Haley

  Keller’s mother died in 1921, and Anne Sullivan Macy fell ill with bronchitis around the same time. For a while she could no longer translate for Keller at lectures and Polly Thomson took over the role, having worked closely with Keller for years. Sullivan died in 1936. The wonderful, dedicated woman who had given life and light to one of the great souls of the twentieth century had gone.

  Keller began writing a book about their relationship, but the first draft was destroyed in a fire while she was away on a fund-raising tour. She traveled by ship to Japan, Australia, Europe, and South America. She met many heads of state, and it was said that all ranks of people felt their troubles melt away when they met her. No matter what problems other people faced, she had walked over a higher hill and come down the other side. Mark Twain said: “The two most interesting people of the nineteenth century were Napoléon and Helen Keller.”

  Keller and Polly Thomson toured constantly, raising fortunes for the care of the blind around the world. Polly was not a young woman, and the workload was grueling. She suffered a stroke while they were in Japan, though she later recovered.

  Keller rewrote her book Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy, and it was published at last in 1955 to add to her other books and a host of articles. It is a poignant record of a life, written in a more mature style that is both extraordinarily vivid and learned.

  Helen Keller tried to use every day she had. She would not allow herself to rest, and the demanding workload wore her out as well as those around her. Thomson died after a stroke in 1960. Thomson’s nurse, Winnie Corbally, would care for Keller in her final years.

  By the 1960s, films and books had made Helen Keller the most famous deaf-blind woman in the world. Never again would a child like her be left to the terrors of darkness and silence. Her example shone further than she knew and remains compelling today.

  Her work and achievements were recognized while she was still alive. As well as countless awards and honors on her travels, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 and elected to the Women’s Hall of Fame at the World’s Fair.

  In 1968, Helen Keller died in her sleep at the age of eighty-eight. She was cremated and her ashes were placed next to those of Anne Sullivan Macy and Polly Thomson at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. There is a Braille plaque there that reads: HELEN KELLER AND HER BELOVED COMPANION ANNE SULLIVAN MACY ARE INTERRED IN THE COLUMBARIUM BEHIND THIS CHAPEL. The raised dots of the Braille letters have been worn down by so many gentle hands that the plaque has to be replaced regularly.

  Hele
n Keller inspired millions of those who had to struggle with blindness, deafness, or both. She inspired millions more who never did.

  Recommended

  The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

  Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy by Helen Keller

  James Cook

  On a Sunday morning in Kealakekua Bay in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) an islander struck a naval officer on the back of the head with a club. The officer staggered and fell onto one knee. Before he could rise, a dagger was thrust into the back of his neck. He tumbled into the knee-deep sea, and a crowd of islanders rushed to hold him underwater. He struggled, raising his great head toward his boat for help. He was pushed under, hit again on the head, then beaten with stones, knives, and clubs. The tropical water grew red before his body was dragged onto the beach and torn apart.

  That was the tragic end of the extraordinary life of James Cook, RN, on February 14, 1779—the death of the greatest explorer, navigator, discoverer, surveyor, seaman, cartographer, and ethnographer the world has ever seen.

  His ships’ names—Endeavour, Resolution, Adventure, Discovery—are still famous and have been used for research and exploration vessels ever since. Today they are also used in the exploration of space. How did the son of an obscure Yorkshire laborer come to die in the far Pacific, honored and revered by geographers and scientists throughout the world?

  Recognizing his intelligence his father sent the young James to the village school so that he knew the three Rs of reading, writing, and ’rithmetic. With education he hoped James might become manager—perhaps even owner—of a grocer’s or draper’s shop. However, during his apprenticeship to a shopkeeper in a town on the northeast coast, young James saw the masts and sails of North Sea colliers in Whitby Harbor, and that was the end of potatoes, groceries, and linen for him.

  At the age of seventeen, Cook was apprenticed to the collier Free-love, carrying coal from northeast ports to London and sometimes to Scandinavia and the Baltic. It was an exacting trade sailing through the shoals, sandbanks, estuaries, fogs, wild weather, and lee shores of the North Sea. Good seamanship was vital there, and Cook learned and excelled in his new career.

  Cook was twenty-six and first mate when he entered the Wapping naval depot to join the Royal Navy. He was posted able seaman to the fifty-eight-gun HMS Eagle, going from second in command of a merchant ship to nobody; from a small cabin of his own to fourteen inches in which to swing his hammock. Cook took a romantic gamble with fate, or perhaps he recognized destiny.

  In a few weeks he was promoted to master’s mate, a lowly petty officer, while a new captain took command. Hugh Palliser immediately noticed the tall, big-boned Yorkshireman who knew his way about the ship as if he’d been there for years. Very shortly, Cook was made boatswain and given command of the Eagle’s forty-foot sloop, patrolling the English Channel and the Western Approaches. The Seven Years’ War, fought by Britain and Prussia against Austria, France, Russia, and Spain, began in 1756, and Cook saw his first action.

  The Eagle captured two French ships and Cook was made prize master of the larger to sail her to London. He was paid off when the Eagle was refitted, but with the recommendations of both Captain Palliser and the MP for Whitby, he was made master. Such a promotion was more usual after some six years in the navy; James Cook had served just two. Palliser, who went on to become Lord of the Admiralty, knew a good seaman when he saw one.

  Cook was appointed master to the sixty-gun Pembroke and in 1758 made his first ocean voyage, escorting the fleet from Plymouth to Nova Scotia for the Canadian campaign. It was a horrendous passage, the weather dead foul, and it took an amazing three months. The French, however, knew of British plans to capture Quebec and had made preparations. The city seemed impregnable, and all the navigation marks and buoys in the Saint Lawrence River had been removed.

  Cook was ordered to survey, chart, and buoy the rock-strewn and shoaling Saint Lawrence so that the navy could sail soldiers upriver to attack Quebec. He borrowed masters from other ships and completed the task in one week—at night. They were seen by native Canadians supporting the French, and in one attack, as natives clambered over the stern of a launch, Cook left rapidly by the bow. During daylight Cook drew a chart of the Saint Lawrence that was so accurate it remained in use for more than a century.

  On a September night, the ships sailed up Cook’s channel to reach the Heights of Abraham. Not one vessel went aground or was damaged, and General Wolfe went on to defeat General Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham to take Quebec.

  In 1763, James Cook was given his first command, becoming master and commander of the schooner Grenville. He was known as “Mr. Cook, Engineer, Surveyor of Newfoundland and Labrador.” For five years, from spring to autumn, he surveyed and charted the east coasts of Canada, while in winter in Britain he drew his charts, wrote sailing directions for other mariners, and studied spherical trigonometry and astronomy. In 1766 there was an eclipse of the sun. Cook took many observations and measurements and presented a scientific paper to the Royal Society in London, the first of several to the world’s premier scientific organization. Yet the navy had other extraordinary plans for this farm laborer’s son.

  The Pacific Ocean was then a mostly unknown region where there might be—some geographers said must be—a continent known as Terra Australis Nondum Cognita, the “southern land not yet known.” The Pacific was greater in area than all the lands of the earth added together, but it was the Enlightenment, and high time for Great Britain to find out whether what is now known as Antarctica existed or not. The Royal Society and the Royal Navy raised an expedition.

  It was not by any means the first venture into the Pacific. The Spanish had discovered the Philippines, the Dutch western “New Holland” (Australia) and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), while the British had touched Japan and discovered western North America, the Tuamotus, Otaheite (Tahiti), the Gilberts (Kiribati), New Britain, New Ireland, the Carolines, and other islands. Yet all had sailed through the middle and the north of the Pacific. None had sailed south, where Terra Australis was expected to be. The Royal Society also wanted observations of the forthcoming transit of Venus across the sun, in order to calculate exactly the distance from the earth to the sun. Captain Wallis, returned from discovering Otaheite, recommended that island as an observatory because of its friendly people, ample food, and fresh water and because its exact position was known.

  The Royal Society wanted the expedition to be commanded by Alexander Dalrymple, the world’s expert on Terra Australis, but he was a difficult man and refused to sail under naval authority. Someone in the Admiralty—perhaps Palliser—proposed James Cook. It was pointed out that he wasn’t a commissioned officer, so he was commissioned for the task.

  On April 1, the Admiralty announced that the Whitby collier Earl of Pembroke had been purchased for the expedition and renamed Endeavour. She cost £2,307 5s. 6d., and a further £2,500 was spent fitting her out to carry people, equipment, stores, and food for more than two years. The new Lieutenant Cook hoisted his commissioning pennant and took command of His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour on May 27, at Deptford on the River Thames.

  The Royal Society accepted that Cook qualified as one astronomer and sent Charles Green of the Royal Observatory as another. Also sailing were botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, completing a ship’s company of ninety-four, including a dozen marines. Also joining the crew was a previous circumnavigator—the Dolphin’s goat, a good milker and not prone to seasickness.

  Cook sailed first to Plymouth, which took three weeks. The Endeavour was a sturdy, safe, but not fast vessel; her maximum speed was no more than eight knots in ideal conditions. She was a three-masted bark, 110 feet long with a 29¼-foot beam. At 2 P.M. on August 26, 1768, the Endeavour and Cook departed Plymouth for the South Seas, the first of the three greatest voyages of exploration, discovery, and mapping ever made.

  The Endeavour was not equipped with one of Harrison’s new chronometers, vital for the most accurate
measurement of longitude. Instead, Cook and Green used the complicated lunar observations invented by Sir Isaac Newton, although Cook did have a copy of the very first Nautical Almanac (1767), containing the most up-to-date lunar tables.

  He also took it upon himself to be ship’s purser, so that the type of food served was under his control. He was determined that there would be no deaths from scurvy—a lack of vitamin C then guaranteed in long voyages. To this end, he packed the holds with barrels of pickled cabbage, tubs of orange and lemon juice, hogsheads of malt, portable soup (solid blocks of meat extract), wort (infusions of malt), and saloups (a drink made from sassafras).

  Down the length of the North and South Atlantic oceans sailed the little ship to reach the southernmost tip of South America by Christmas. Cook rounded Cape Horn in remarkably good weather and, taking the opportunity, sailed farther southwest searching for land. He reached 60° south, the farthest south ever recorded, to find only the fetch of the sea: deep, long swells from the west indicating no land for perhaps a thousand miles. There might be land or ice to the south—Cook suspected there was—but nothing in the immediate west. In a good wind, he turned northwest for Otaheite, again sailing seas never crossed before. He found no Terra Australis and reached Matavai Bay in April 1769.

  For three months the Endeavour remained at the exotic green island of Otaheite. Cook and Green observed the transit of Venus. Several seamen were flogged for harshness to the Tahitians and ignoring Cook’s rules of fair barter. Cook explored and charted the beautiful island; two marines deserted and took to the hills with their Tahitian “wives,” and draftsman Buchan died of a fit. The two marines were returned by Tahitians and put in irons, and it was discovered that there was now venereal disease in paradise. King Tynah of Otaheite said it had arrived with French sailors under Bougainville.