Daniel, one of three children of Simon Carew (10/2/1776 – 9/12/1865) and Sarah (Sally) Goddard Carew (3/7/1767 ─ 10/29/1845) was born in Stonington CT on March 30, 1808. He married Grace Billings Palmer (8/28/1812 ─ 5/22/1883), daughter of Luke Palmer and Sarah Potter Denison, on June 21, 1830. Daniel and Grace had three children, Sarah Elizabeth, Abbie Cheseborough, and Daniel Jr., who died in infancy. Although the circumstances surrounding Daniel’s death are not entirely clear, we know that he died at sea on August 19, 1837, as inscribed on his memorial stone in Stonington Borough Cemetery. Whalinghistory.org links his death with the 1837 voyage of the brig UXOR (AS2544), with a home port ofMystic CT, on which he was both master and part-owner of the vessel. A brief item in The Evening Post (New York, N.Y.) of 9/4/1837 states that Daniel died on board the UXOR.
Although Daniel was master of several voyages during his short career at sea, only two were on vessels with a home port of New London.
FRANCES (AS1393) (brig/schooner, 98 tons, built in Stonington CT in 1827, surrendered at Falkland Islands on February 15, 1842, vessel lost). FRANCESsailed for the South Seas on October 20, 1832 and returned in 1833 after a successful whaling season. The Connecticut Ship Database shows the 1832-1833 voyage of schooner FRANCES as being under the command of Daniel Carew. An initial search of this voyage in whalinghistory.org lists Pemberton as master, but access to the crew list itself clearly shows Carew to be the master and Edward Pemberton a crew member.
Contradictory information about this voyage exists most likely due to the two different spellings of the name of the vessel on the crew list, signed by Daniel (FRANCIS and FRANCES). Although AOWV connects a voyage of a ship named FRANCIS (AS1398) with Daniel Carew, the time frame of the two voyages would overlap and there is no available crew list for this voyage. Starbuck does notinclude a voyage with either spelling for this time period, but records a 1941 voyage for a 98-ton brig FRANCIS, which he notes was lost at Falkland Islands in 1842, making this vessel appear to be the same one as FRANCES in the Connecticut Ship Database. AV05099
TALMA (AS2471) (schooner, 65 tons, built in Waterford CT in 1830). AOWV records its departure from New London as July 16, 1834 for a sealing voyage to the Pacific Ocean, but the return on April 25, 1836 with the harvest of a whaling voyage. As noted by Decker (p. 114), many New London vessels departed for both a whaling and sealing voyage and at times it was difficult to tell which one they pursued the most. There is no reference to the TALMA in Starbuck, and Colby lists both Daniel Carew and his brother, Ebenezer Goddard Carew (AM0814), under Masters of Fur-Sealing Vessels, most of which hailed from Stonington. Joseph Lawrence was the agent for this voyage. AV13692
Voyages on vessels from other home ports, all with Daniel as master, include the following:
BREAKWATER (AS1006), Stonington, 1830, 1831
PACIFIC (AS2129), New Haven, 1834-1835
CHARLES ADAMS (AS1071), Stonington, 1836-1837
UXOR (AS2544), Mystic, 1837
Considering the short span of his career, Daniel had several harrowing experiencesat sea. On one of his earlier voyages in 1831 as master of the schooner BREAKWATER (AS1006) of Stonington, Daniel and his crew found themselves at the center of an international dispute over the status of the Falkland Islands, and Daniel was briefly imprisoned for violating seal hunting laws. On another voyage to the Falkland Islands under his command, the ship CHARLES ADAMS (AS1071, also of Stonington, accidently caught fire and burned in the harbor while Daniel and the crew were off whaling. The vessel with its cargo of 500 barrels of oil was totally destroyed (Dennis Wood Abstracts, 1-117; Boston Post, 8/26/1837).
The Carew family plot in Stonington Borough Cemetery contains a memorial stone to “Capt. Daniel Carew.” Other family members buried there include his father,Simon, an owner of clipper ships who served as a private in the War of 1812; his older brother, Simon Sheffield, and wife Julia; and Daniel and Grace’s infant son,Daniel. His younger brother, Ebenezer, went to Alabama in 1835 as master of a clipper ship, married, and settled there permanently.
Daniel’s daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, painted a memorial picture to her father when she was eleven years old. This early example of American mourning remembrances is part of the Mystic Seaport Museum collection (MSM Accession #1986.13).
Sources used: see sidebar and sources cited in the text.
Maija M. Lutz
American Institute for Maritime Studies (AIMS)
Mystic Seaport Museum
November 2024