Four Autograph Letters Signed, 8pp. + integral stampless address leaves. To Dr. George Clymer, USS Cyane, c/o US Consul, Valparaiso [Chile].

In the ten months after the USS Cyane, flagship of Commodore Thomas Jones, prematurely “captured” California in October 1842, seizing Monterey from Mexican authorities in the mistaken belief that the United States was at War with Mexico, the embarrassed Jones sailed his small Pacific squadron to Los Angeles, Mazatlan, Valparaiso, and, finally, the Hawaiian Islands, where the Cyane and its crew, including Naval Surgeon, Dr. George Clymer, remained for nearly four months. The appearance of the 39 year-old physician, a polished and well-traveled Philadelphia bachelor whose grandfather had signed the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, was a social godsend to the homesick New England women of Honolulu, especially 25 year-old Evaline Calkin of Maine. She and her husband Milo enjoyed the company of visiting Naval officers far more than that of dull missionaries. Calkin himself had gone to sea as a teenage carpenter aboard the a Nantucket whaling ship, surviving its South Seas shipwreck and the 1500-mile small boat trip to Hawaii, where he became an independent merchant - he mentions his selling a China Trade cargo in one letter to Clymer – and proposed to the Hawaiian King the first scheme for Yankee investment in the Islands’ “natural resources”. In these letters, Mrs. Calkin, who apparently had flirted innocently with the Doctor, gossips about the Americans he had met during his stay – and describes her dangerous boat trip (“nearly capsized”) to Maui (“dirty streets" & "most beautiful scenery”). The couple soon relocated to Lahaina, where Calkin, thanks to his own Navy friendships, became US Vice Consul and developer of a Seaman’s Hospital. Before the Gold Rush, they left the Islands for California, where Calkin became Hawaiian Consular Agent at San Francisco. There, years later, he and his wife would have a reunion with Dr. Clymer, who, meanwhile married an Admiral’s daughter, and was on his way to becoming the Navy’s chief Medical Officer with the rank of Commodore. Full transcript of the letters on request.