Word: ledyard
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...island women would have sex for trinkets and clothes; when the ships reached the frigid Alaskan waters, some men had trouble staying warm in their few remaining clothes. Cook’s men infected the natives with devastating venereal diseases, which were transmitted back in a vicious cycle. Ledyard was infected. In Hawaii, the natives “aplly’d to us, for help in their great distress: they had a Clap, their Penis was much swell’d, & inflamed,” a lieutenant reported...
...Ledyard, the trip wasn’t entirely a failure. In Alaska, he encountered an outpost of Russian traders who introduced him to otter furs, which would become his own lifelong obsession. When the ships later sailed to China, Ledyard discovered that otter furs fetched a fortune?...
Cook’s two ships returned to England sans Cook, and Ledyard went back to his garrison. Feeling trapped in the rigid military, Ledyard deserted when his unit was stationed in Long Island for the Revolution. “Bound by the conventional and the ordinary, he would revolt,” Zug writes. Having quickly spent his navy pay, the poor Ledyard wrote a popular memoir of his voyage with Cook in an effort to drum up support among potential donors for a fur-trading expedition. Ledyard stirred up an interested group, but corruption abounded and Ledyard...
...Ledyard traveled to France, where his celebrity allowed him to befriend Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette, among others. He considered himself out of place among the rich and famous, since he was chronically short on money and always borrowing from his friends. Ledyard tried to set up a fur-trading mission again, this time with the help of the brash American naval hero, John Paul Jones. The plan met resistance from the major European powers, each of which was trying to corner the fur market for itself. His dreams dashed, Ledyard felt footloose...
...Ledyard decided to walk through both Europe and Asia, and, as if that were not enough, traverse the still-undiscovered western half of North America. Jefferson suggested that Ledyard have a 12-inch ruler tattooed on his arm so he could measure longitude without an instrument. (Ledyard rebuffed the suggestion...