JOHN KENDRICK AND His SONS 295
year of his age. Delano gives a fulsome laudation of his character, 38 to which I can not wholly subscribe. In physical appearance he is said to have been "a very large man possessing great strength and courage." 39 From the sample of his handwriting and composition preserved in the Barrell letters 40 (being the instructions issued by him to Captain Gray while at the Falkland Islands in 1787) he seems to have had even less than the ordinary common school education of his time. As the commander of an expedition he was a complete failure; even his friend Hoskins has to admit that "to be sure the man was by no means calculated for the charge of such an expedition, but a better man might have done worse." But when his responsibility was reduced to the control and direction of a small vessel he showed qualities of initiative, perseverance, courage, energy, and foresight. He was a good seaman, a kind-hearted, though quick-tem- pered man. He seems to have been whimsical and vacil- lating. He shows himself as a man jealous of his author- ity, self-willed and dictatorial, but yet amenable to rea- son if approached in a proper spirit and manner. He had a keen eye for opportunities and possibilities of trade development, especially where they lay beyond, or at one side of, the beaten paths. His uncertainty of action and his leisurely movements were the defects which prevented him from obtaining those results to which his other qualities should have entitled him.
JOHN KENDRICK JUNIOR
Reference has already been made to the fact that Captain Kendrick's sons, John and Solomon, sailed with him on the first voyage of the Columbia, the former as fifth mate, the latter as an A. B. Haswell suggests that
38 Delano's Voyages, Boston, 1817, p. 400.
39 Cape Cod History and Genealogy, No. 35, Edward Kenwrick.
40 In the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
