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And then he always loved the sea so dearly!" said Emily Judson of her husband's dying days aboard the French bark, Aristide Marie, in 1850. Although no prayerful tribute or elaborate headstone marked Adoniram Judson's watery grave, Emily thought it appropriate that he was buried at sea. "Neither could he have a more fitting monument than the blue waves which visit every coast; for his warm sympathies went forth to the ends of the earth."

Born in Massachusetts, the 18th-century heart of maritime America, Adoniram grew up near Salem just as the port entered the profitable East Indies trade. By 1805, American ships had imported more than ten million pounds of tea from China and eight million pounds of pepper from the East Indies, not to mention innumerable trade goods to decorate fashionable New England homes.

As the exotic products of southern Asia spread through the region, so did stories of strange cultures and people who did not know the Christian God. Sailors brought back descriptions and drawings of "Hindoos" who "made pilgrimage for to bathe in the Great River Ganges which they hold most Sacred." A whole new world opened to the young men and women who matured during America's first global awakening. Thus it was no coincidence that the dying Adoniram expressed his love for the sea, for the ocean had literally brought him his calling.

The growth in international seaborne commerce made worldwide missions possible, but also difficult. The voyages of the 19th-century missionaries illustrates this tension. The same ocean that divided missionaries, often permanently, from their native land offered these modern Argonauts the opportunity to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to previously unknown worlds.

Time and space formed the first obstacles for the early American missionaries, who faced a four- to six-month-long voyage to a destination nearly 10,000 miles away. The missionaries felt keenly the separation from family and friends. Even the beauty of a gentle sea on a moonlit night could not ease Ann Judson's melancholy. "My native land, my home, my friends, and all my forsaken enjoyments, rushed into my mind; my tears flowed profusely, and I could not be comforted." While second voyages were not out of the question, missionaries did not anticipate them. As Harriet, the wife of Samuel Newell, later wrote her sister, "I used to think, when on the water, that I never should return to America again, let my circumstances in Asia be as bad as they could be." The distance and time involved in an ocean voyage before the invention of steamships meant that most missionaries purchased only one passage.

Since the missionaries fully expected that they would never return home, written correspondence carried by an amenable ship's captain furnished their only earthly link with those they missed. No wonder they were inveterate letter writers, seizing every opportunity to write home once they arrived in the mission field. Harriet Newell frequently confided in her journal (addressed to her mother), "You know not how much I think of you all, how ardently I desire to hear from you, and see you." Specific replies to letters might not come for at least a year.

Life aboard the ship itself involved a major lifestyle change. Maximizing cargo space made for close and cramped living quarters. Sleeping compartments were not normally more than four feet wide and five feet long. Because the missionaries were middle-class professionals, they shared the cabin space with the ship's officers. Thus they were usually spared confinement below decks, where poorer passengers resided among the ship's cargo. Even these relatively more favorable conditions gave rise to complaints. Harriet lamented, "The vessel is very damp, and the cabin collects some dirt, which renders it necessary that I should frequently change my clothes, in order to appear decent. I think I shall have clothes enough for the voyage, by taking a little care."

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