A Maine Mason at Sea

In 1852, shipbuilders in Calais, Maine, near the American border with Canada, launched a ship named the Lincoln. The following year, the Lincoln would commemorate American Independence Day many miles from Maine, in the Aegean port of Smyrna, Greece (now İzmir, Turkey). Like the Lincoln, her captain that day left his Maine home to make a living in the maritime world of the nineteenth century.

Bark Lincoln, W.H. Polleys Master Laying at Anchor in Smyrna July 4th 1853. Raffaele Corsini, Smyrna, Greece. Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, 85.9.

In this watercolor, acquired by the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library in 1985, the Lincoln is shown lying at anchor in the foreground, with the city, its castle, and surrounding hills in the background. The ship bears four flags: from bow to stern, the “Union Jack” or Navy Jack, a blue flag with a Masonic square and compasses, a masthead pennant, and an American flag. The Lincoln’s Union Jack, a blue flag with white stars flown on American ships, appears to have twenty-six stars and her American flag twenty-one stars. Given that the United States had thirty-one states by 1853, perhaps the ship’s owners or captain had not updated her flags or, more likely, the painter took artistic license with these details.

It is believed that ship’s captains sometimes raised a flag bearing a square and compasses to invite Masons in the area aboard their vessel. To local residents and other mariners, this signaled his fraternal affiliation and served as an invitation for conversation, informal meetings, and trade. The Lincoln was in Smyrna in July 1853 to purchase opium, a common ingredient in American patent medicines at the time.

The Lincoln’s captain and 1/16 share owner for her first five years was Woodbury H. Polleys. Polleys was born in Cape Elizabeth, Maine in 1817 and raised in Portland Lodge No. 1 in 1844. When he took command of the ship, he had been, as he later wrote in a letter to the Secretary of the Navy, “at sea as Master of a Ship since June 1848, principally trading between Europe & southern ports . . .”

After the Lincoln, Polleys went on to captain other vessels, including at least three Union ships during the Civil War. These included the USS Katahdin, USS Oleander, and USS Madgie. The latter two ships were part of the Atlantic Blockading Squadron, preventing Confederate vessels from eluding the Union trade blockade. After the Madgie sank off North Carolina in 1863, Polleys traveled north to Maine for a month’s leave “to procure a new outfit and visit my family.”

In the late 1870s and early 1880s, Polleys used his knowledge of international trade to serve the new United States as Consul to Barbados and Commercial Agent to Cuba. Woodbury H. Polleys died of suicide in 1885 and is buried in Portland’s Pine Grove Cemetery. His headstone bears a Masonic square and compasses, as his ship’s flag did that day in 1853, many miles from Maine.

If you want to dive into this piece of artwork further, you can visit it and many others in our exhibition, “What’s in a Portrait?,” now on view at the Museum & Library. You can also visit the online version of the exhibition.

Further Reading:

• Polleys was Acting Master of the steam boat USS Katahdin in November 1862. He requested a change of station on November 11, 1862. The request was approved – Polleys was in Essex, MA by December 1862, signing his name as “late Acting Master, USS Katahdin."
• Captain Polleys’ report on the loss of the USS Madgie: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, p. 34-35.
• Polleys captained another Maine ship, the bark S.W. Holbrook, in the late 1860s and early 1870s. He traveled from Cuba to Philadelphia with her in 1870.

The Ancient Landmark Lodge of Shanghai

The port town of Shanghai was one of the cities opened to foreign trade by the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. One of the effects of the treaty was that it created relationships between Shanghai and other, Western port cities. Trade, like colonialism, has been one of the factors that has led to the spread of Freemasonry around the world.  Boston was one of the American ports that exchanged goods with Shanghai.  Because of this trading relationship, the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, located in Boston, began to explore the possibility of establishing Masonic lodges in the Shanghai area.

In 1864, during the Civil War in the United States, the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts chartered a lodge in Shanghai, called the Ancient Landmark Lodge. In Shanghai at this time there were also individual lodges chartered by England and Scotland.  China was in many ways an open field for Masonic jurisdictions based in the West wishing to establish Masonic lodges in Shanghai, one of the faraway port cities that they traded with.

In 1922, Arthur D. Prince, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, made an official visit to the Ancient Landmark Lodge and to other Chinese lodges in the area.  He installed the officers of Ancient Landmark Lodge and wrote up a long report upon his return. 

By the 1920s men from the local Chinese population were being admitted to American Masonic lodges in the Shanghai area.  Freemasonry grew out of a Western philosophical system and for Masons, like Prince, an American in China in the 1920s, trying to apply Western thought to Eastern ideas could often prove challenging and sometimes revealed a common bias of the time that considered Western systems preferable to those in the East.  One of Prince's comments in his report was that many Chinese, who were followers of Confucius, could satisfy the requirements for admission to Freemasonry. This was probably because the basic teachings of Confucianism stress the importance of education and moral development of the individual as does Freemasonry.

In 1923, William Van Buskirk (b.1864), an American who lived in Shanghai, was made a Mason in Ancient Landmark Lodge. He  worked in a governmental position of Deputy Marshal for the Department of State of the United States.  Later, in 1926, Van Buskirk was elected Master of this lodge and was issued a Masonic certificate for this office, as seen in the image above. The National Heritage Museum also holds Van Buskirk's Masonic apron on loan.

Worshipful Master Certificate of William Buskirk, 1926, Loaned by the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts, GL2004.10854

Sources used in today's post:

Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, A. F. & A. M., Boston: Caustic-Claflin Company,  v.1922, p. 451-487, v.1926, p.644.
Call numbers: 17.9763 .G751 1922, 17.9763 .G751 1926

Roy, Thomas Sherrard. Stalwart Builders:  The Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts, 1733-1978, Worcester, Mass.:  Davis Press, 1980.
Call number: 17.9763 .G751 R888 1971