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diff --git a/3099.txt b/3099.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..337faa5 --- /dev/null +++ b/3099.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4417 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Merchant Marine, by Ralph D. Paine + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Old Merchant Marine + A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in + the Chronicles Of America Series + +Author: Ralph D. Paine + +Editor: Allen Johnson + +Posting Date: February 12, 2009 [EBook #3099] +Release Date: February, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD MERCHANT MARINE *** + + + + +Produced by The James J. Kelly Library of St. Gregory's +University, Alev Akman, Dianne Bean, and Carrie Lorenz + + + + + + +THE OLD MERCHANT MARINE, + +A CHRONICLE OF AMERICAN SHIPS AND SAILORS + +By Ralph D. Paine + + +CONTENTS + + I. COLONIAL ADVENTURERS IN LITTLE SHIPS + II. THE PRIVATEERS OF '76 + III. OUT CUTLASES AND BOARD! + IV. THE FAMOUS DAYS OF SALEM PORT + V. YANKEE VIKINGS AND NEW TRADE ROUTES + VI. "FREE TRADE AND SAILORS' RIGHTS!" + VII. THE BRILLIANT ERA OF 1812 + VIII. THE PACKET SHIPS OF THE "ROARING FORTIES" + IX. THE STATELY CLIPPER AND HER GLORY + X. BOUND COASTWISE + + BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + + + + + +THE OLD MERCHANT MARINE + + + +CHAPTER I. COLONIAL ADVENTURERS IN LITTLE SHIPS + +The story of American ships and sailors is an epic of blue water which +seems singularly remote, almost unreal, to the later generations. A +people with a native genius for seafaring won and held a brilliant +supremacy through two centuries and then forsook this heritage of +theirs. The period of achievement was no more extraordinary than was its +swift declension. A maritime race whose topsails flecked every ocean, +whose captains courageous from father to son had fought with pike and +cannonade to defend the freedom of the seas, turned inland to seek a +different destiny and took no more thought for the tall ships and rich +cargoes which had earned so much renown for its flag. + +Vanished fleets and brave memories--a chronicle of America which had +written its closing chapters before the Civil War! There will be other +Yankee merchantmen in times to come, but never days like those when +skippers sailed on seas uncharted in quest of ports mysterious and +unknown. + +The Pilgrim Fathers, driven to the northward of their intended +destination in Virginia, landed on the shore of Cape Cod not so much to +clear the forest and till the soil as to establish a fishing settlement. +Like the other Englishmen who long before 1620 had steered across to +harvest the cod on the Grand Bank, they expected to wrest a livelihood +mostly from salt water. The convincing argument in favor of Plymouth was +that it offered a good harbor for boats and was "a place of profitable +fishing." Both pious and amphibious were these pioneers whom the +wilderness and the red Indian confined to the water's edge, where +they were soon building ships to trade corn for beaver skins with the +Kennebec colony. + +Even more energetic in taking profit from the sea were the Puritans who +came to Massachusetts Bay in 1629, bringing carpenters and shipbuilders +with them to hew the pine and oak so close at hand into keelsons, +frames, and planking. Two years later, Governor John Winthrop launched +his thirty-ton sloop Blessing of the Bay, and sent her to open "friendly +commercial relations" with the Dutch of Manhattan. Brisk though the +traffic was in furs and wampum, these mariners of Boston and Salem +were not content to voyage coastwise. Offshore fishing made skilled, +adventurous seamen of them, and what they caught with hook and line, +when dried and salted, was readily exchanged for other merchandise in +Bermuda, Barbados, and Europe. + +A vessel was a community venture, and the custom still survives in the +ancient ports of the Maine coast where the shapely wooden schooners are +fashioned. The blacksmith, the rigger, the calker, took their pay +in shares. They became part owners, as did likewise the merchant who +supplied stores and material; and when the ship was afloat, the master, +the mates, and even the seamen, were allowed cargo space for commodities +which they might buy and sell to their own advantage. Thus early +they learned to trade as shrewdly as they navigated, and every voyage +directly concerned a whole neighborhood. + +This kind of enterprise was peculiar to New England because other +resources were lacking. To the westward the French were more interested +in exploring the rivers leading to the region of the Great Lakes and in +finding fabulous rewards in furs. The Dutch on the Hudson were similarly +engaged by means of the western trails to the country of the Iroquois, +while the planters of Virginia had discovered an easy opulence in the +tobacco crop, with slave labor to toil for them, and they were not +compelled to turn to the hardships and the hazards of the sea. The New +Englander, hampered by an unfriendly climate, hard put to it to grow +sufficient food, with land immensely difficult to clear, was between the +devil and the deep sea, and he sagaciously chose the latter. Elsewhere +in the colonies the forest was an enemy to be destroyed with infinite +pains. The New England pioneer regarded it with favor as the stuff with +which to make stout ships and step the straight masts in them. + +And so it befell that the seventeenth century had not run its course +before New England was hardily afloat on every Atlantic trade route, +causing Sir Josiah Child, British merchant and economist, to lament in +1668 that in his opinion nothing was "more prejudicial and in prospect +more dangerous to any mother kingdom than the increase of shipping in +her colonies, plantations, or provinces." + +This absorbing business of building wooden vessels was scattered in +almost every bay and river of the indented coast from Nova Scotia to +Buzzard's Bay and the sheltered waters of Long Island Sound. It was +not restricted, as now, to well-equipped yards with crews of trained +artisans. Hard by the huddled hamlet of log houses was the row of +keel-blocks sloping to the tide. In winter weather too rough for +fishing, when the little farms lay idle, this Yankee Jack-of-all-trades +plied his axe and adze to shape the timbers, and it was a routine task +to peg together a sloop, a ketch, or a brig, mere cockleshells, in which +to fare forth to London, or Cadiz, or the Windward Islands--some of them +not much larger and far less seaworthy than the lifeboat which hangs +at a liner's davits. Pinching poverty forced him to dispense with the +ornate, top-heavy cabins and forecastles of the foreign merchantmen, +while invention, bred of necessity, molded finer lines and less clumsy +models to weather the risks of a stormy coast and channels beset with +shoals and ledges. The square-rig did well enough for deepwater voyages, +but it was an awkward, lubberly contrivance for working along shore, +and the colonial Yankee therefore evolved the schooner with her flat +fore-and-aft sails which enabled her to beat to windward and which +required fewer men in the handling. + +Dimly but unmistakably these canny seafarers in their rude beginnings +foreshadowed the creation of a merchant marine which should one day +comprise the noblest, swiftest ships driven by the wind and the finest +sailors that ever trod a deck. Even then these early vessels were +conspicuously efficient, carrying smaller crews than the Dutch or +English, paring expenses to a closer margin, daring to go wherever +commerce beckoned in order to gain a dollar at peril of their skins. + +By the end of the seventeenth century more than a thousand vessels +were registered as built in the New England colonies, and Salem already +displayed the peculiar talent for maritime adventure which was to make +her the most illustrious port of the New World. The first of her line +of shipping merchants was Philip English, who was sailing his own ketch +Speedwell in 1676 and so rapidly advanced his fortunes that in a few +years he was the richest man on the coast, with twenty-one vessels which +traded coastwise with Virginia and offshore with Bilbao, Barbados, +St. Christopher's, and France. Very devout were his bills of lading, +flavored in this manner: "Twenty hogsheads of salt, shipped by the Grace +of God in the good sloop called the Mayflower.... and by God's Grace +bound to Virginia or Merriland." + +No less devout were the merchants who ordered their skippers to cross +to the coast of Guinea and fill the hold with negroes to be sold in the +West Indies before returning with sugar and molasses to Boston or Rhode +Island. The slave-trade flourished from the very birth of commerce in +Puritan New England and its golden gains and exotic voyages allured +high-hearted lads from farm and counter. In 1640 the ship Desire, built +at Marblehead, returned from the West Indies and "brought some cotton +and tobacco and negroes, etc. from thence." Earlier than this the Dutch +of Manhattan had employed black labor, and it was provided that the +Incorporated West India Company should "allot to each Patroon twelve +black men and women out of the Prizes in which Negroes should be found." + +It was in the South, however, that this kind of labor was most needed +and, as the trade increased, Virginia and the Carolinas became the most +lucrative markets. Newport and Bristol drove a roaring traffic in "rum +and niggers," with a hundred sail to be found in the infamous Middle +Passage. The master of one of these Rhode Island slavers, writing home +from Guinea in 1736, portrayed the congestion of the trade in this wise: +"For never was there so much Rum on the Coast at one time before. Not +ye like of ye French ships was never seen before, for ye whole coast is +full of them. For my part I can give no guess when I shall get away, +for I purchast but 27 slaves since I have been here, for slaves is very +scarce. We have had nineteen Sail of us at one time in ye Road, so that +ships that used to carry pryme slaves off is now forced to take any that +comes. Here is seven sail of us Rum men that are ready to devour one +another, for our case is desprit." + +Two hundred years of wickedness unspeakable and human torture beyond all +computation, justified by Christian men and sanctioned by governments, +at length rending the nation asunder in civil war and bequeathing a +problem still unsolved--all this followed in the wake of those +first voyages in search of labor which could be bought and sold as +merchandise. It belonged to the dark ages with piracy and witchcraft, +better forgotten than recalled, save for its potent influence in +schooling brave seamen and building faster ships for peace and war. + +These colonial seamen, in truth, fought for survival amid dangers so +manifold as to make their hardihood astounding. It was not merely a +matter of small vessels with a few men and boys daring distant voyages +and the mischances of foundering or stranding, but of facing an +incessant plague of privateers, French and Spanish, Dutch and English, +or a swarm of freebooters under no flag at all. Coasts were unlighted, +charts few and unreliable, and the instruments of navigation almost as +crude as in the days of Columbus. Even the savage Indian, not content +with lurking in ambush, went afloat to wreak mischief, and the records +of the First Church of Salem contain this quaint entry under date of +July 25, 1677: "The Lord having given a Commission to the Indians to +take no less than 13 of the Fishing Ketches of Salem and Captivate the +men... it struck a great consternation into all the people here. The +Pastor moved on the Lord's Day, and the whole people readily consented, +to keep the Lecture Day following as a Fast Day, which was accordingly +done.... The Lord was pleased to send in some of the Ketches on the Fast +Day which was looked on as a gracious smile of Providence. Also there +had been 19 wounded men sent into Salem a little while before; also a +Ketch sent out from Salem as a man-of-war to recover the rest of the +Ketches. The Lord give them Good Success." + +To encounter a pirate craft was an episode almost commonplace and often +more sordid than picturesque. Many of these sea rogues were thieves with +small stomach for cutlasses and slaughter. They were of the sort that +overtook Captain John Shattuck sailing home from Jamaica in 1718 when he +reported his capture by one Captain Charles Vain, "a Pyrat" of 12 guns +and 120 men who took him to Crooked Island, plundered him of various +articles, stripped the brig, abused the crew, and finally let him go. +In the same year the seamen of the Hopewell related that near Hispaniola +they met with pirates who robbed and ill-treated them and carried off +their mate because they had no navigator. + +Ned Low, a gentleman rover of considerable notoriety, stooped to filch +the stores and gear from a fleet of fourteen poor fishermen of Cape +Sable. He had a sense of dramatic values, however, and frequently +brandished his pistols on deck, besides which, as set down by one of his +prisoners, "he had a young child in Boston for whom he entertained such +tenderness that on every lucid interval from drinking and revelling, I +have seen him sit down and weep plentifully." + +A more satisfying figure was Thomas Pounds, who was taken by the sloop +Mary, sent after him from Boston in 1689. He was discovered in Vineyard +Sound, and the two vessels fought a gallant action, the pirate flying +a red flag and refusing to strike. Captain Samuel Pease of the Mary +was mortally wounded, while Pounds, this proper pirate, strode his +quarter-deck and waved his naked sword, crying, "Come on board, ye dogs, +and I will strike YOU presently." This invitation was promptly accepted +by the stout seamen from Boston, who thereupon swarmed over the bulwark +and drove all hands below, preserving Thomas Pounds to be hanged in +public. + +In 1703 John Quelch, a man of resource, hoisted what he called "Old +Roger" over the Charles--a brigantine which had been equipped as a +privateer to cruise against the French of Acadia. This curious flag of +his was described as displaying a skeleton with an hour-glass in one +hand and "a dart in the heart with three drops of blood proceeding from +it in the other." Quelch led a mutiny, tossed the skipper overboard, and +sailed for Brazil, capturing several merchantmen on the way and looting +them of rum, silks, sugar, gold dust, and munitions. Rashly he came +sailing back to Marblehead, primed with a plausible yarn, but his men +talked too much when drunk and all hands were jailed. Upon the gallows +Quelch behaved exceedingly well, "pulling off his hat and bowing to the +spectators," while the somber Puritan merchants in the crowd were, many +of them, quietly dealing in the merchandise fetched home by pirates who +were lucky enough to steer clear of the law. + +This was a shady industry in which New York took the more active part, +sending out supplies to the horde of pirates who ravaged the waters of +the Far East and made their haven at Madagascar, and disposing of the +booty received in exchange. Governor Fletcher had dirtied his hands by +protecting this commerce and, as a result, Lord Bellomont was named +to succeed him. Said William III, "I send you, my Lord, to New York, +because an honest and intrepid man is wanted to put these abuses down, +and because I believe you to be such a man." + +Such were the circumstances in which Captain William Kidd, respectable +master mariner in the merchant service, was employed by Lord Bellomont, +royal Governor of New York, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, to command +an armed ship and harry the pirates of the West Indies and Madagascar. +Strangest of all the sea tales of colonial history is that of Captain +Kidd and his cruise in the Adventure-Galley. His name is reddened with +crimes never committed, his grisly phantom has stalked through the +legends and literature of piracy, and the Kidd tradition still has magic +to set treasure-seekers exploring almost every beach, cove, and headland +from Halifax to the Gulf of Mexico. Yet if truth were told, he never cut +a throat or made a victim walk the plank. He was tried and hanged for +the trivial offense of breaking the head of a mutinous gunner of his +own crew with a wooden bucket. It was even a matter of grave legal doubt +whether he had committed one single piratical act. His trial in London +was a farce. In the case of the captured ships he alleged that they +were sailing under French passes, and he protested that his privateering +commission justified him, and this contention was not disproven. The +suspicion is not wanting that he was condemned as a scapegoat because +certain noblemen of England had subscribed the capital to outfit his +cruise, expecting to win rich dividends in gold captured from the +pirates he was sent to attack. Against these men a political outcry was +raised, and as a result Captain Kidd was sacrificed. He was a seaman who +had earned honorable distinction in earlier years, and fate has played +his memory a shabby trick. + +It was otherwise with Blackbeard, most flamboyant of all colonial +pirates, who filled the stage with swaggering success, chewing +wine-glasses in his cabin, burning sulphur to make his ship seem +more like hell, and industriously scourging the whole Atlantic coast. +Charleston lived in terror of him until Lieutenant Maynard, in a small +sloop, laid him alongside in a hammer-and-tongs engagement and cut off +the head of Blackbeard to dangle from the bowsprit as a trophy. + +Of this rudely adventurous era, it would be hard to find a seaman more +typical than the redoubtable Sir William Phips who became the first +royal Governor of the Massachusetts Colony in 1692. Born on a frontier +farm of the Maine coast while many of the Pilgrim fathers were living, +"his faithful mother," wrote Cotton Mather, "had no less than twenty-six +children, whereof twenty-one were sons; but equivalent to them all was +William, one of the youngest, whom, his father dying, was left +young with his mother, and with her he lived, keeping ye sheep in Ye +Wilderness until he was eighteen years old." Then he apprenticed himself +to a neighboring shipwright who was building sloops and pinnaces and, +having learned the trade, set out for Boston. As a ship-carpenter he +plied his trade, spent his wages in the taverns of the waterside and +there picked up wondrous yarns of the silver-laden galleons of Spain +which had shivered their timbers on the reefs of the Bahama Passage or +gone down in the hurricanes that beset those southerly seas. Meantime +he had married a wealthy widow whose property enabled him to go +treasure-hunting on the Spanish main. From his first voyage thither in a +small vessel he escaped with his life and barely enough treasure to pay +the cost of the expedition. + +In no wise daunted he laid his plans to search for a richly ladened +galleon which was said to have been wrecked half a century before off +the coast of Hispaniola. Since his own funds were not sufficient for +this exploit, he betook himself to England to enlist the aid of the +Government. With bulldog persistence he besieged the court of James II +for a whole year, this rough-and-ready New England shipmaster, until +he was given a royal frigate for his purpose. He failed to fish up more +silver from the sands but, nothing daunted, he persuaded other patrons +to outfit him with a small merchantman, the James and Mary, in which he +sailed for the coast of Hispaniola. This time he found his galleon and +thirty-two tons of silver. "Besides that incredible treasure of plate, +thus fetched up from seven or eight fathoms under water, there were vast +riches of Gold, and Pearls, and Jewels.... All that a Spanish frigot was +to be enriched withal." + +Up the Thames sailed the lucky little merchantman in the year of +1687, with three hundred thousand pounds sterling as her freightage +of treasure. Captain Phips made honest division with his backers and, +because men of his integrity were not over plentiful in England after +the Restoration, King James knighted him. He sailed home to Boston, "a +man of strong and sturdy frame," as Hawthorne fancied him, "whose face +had been roughened by northern tempests and blackened by the burning sun +of the West Indies.... He wears an immense periwig flowing down over +his shoulders.... His red, rough hands which have done many a good day's +work with the hammer and adze are half-covered by the delicate lace rues +at the wrist." But he carried with him the manners of the forecastle, +a man hasty and unlettered but superbly brave and honest. Even after he +had become Governor he thrashed the captain of the Nonesuch frigate of +the royal navy, and used his fists on the Collector of the Port after +cursing him with tremendous gusto. Such behavior in a Governor was too +strenuous, and Sir William Phips was summoned to England, where he died +while waiting his restoration to office and royal favor. Failing both, +he dreamed of still another treasure voyage, "for it was his purpose, +upon his dismission from his Government once more to have gone upon his +old Fishing-Trade, upon a mighty shelf of rock and banks of sand that +lie where he had informed himself." + + + +CHAPTER II. THE PRIVATEERS OF '76 + +The wars of England with France and Spain spread turmoil upon the high +seas during the greater part of the eighteenth century. Yet with an +immense tenacity of purpose, these briny forefathers increased their +trade and multiplied their ships in the face of every manner of +adversity. The surprising fact is that most of them were not driven +ashore to earn their bread. What Daniel Webster said of them at a later +day was true from the beginning: "It is not, sir, by protection and +bounties, but by unwearied exertion, by extreme economy, by that manly +and resolute spirit which relies on itself to protect itself. These +causes alone enable American ships still to keep the element and show +the flag of their country in distant seas." + +What was likely to befall a shipmaster in the turbulent eighteenth +century may be inferred from the misfortunes of Captain Michael Driver +of Salem. In 1759 he was in command of the schooner Three Brothers, +bound to the West Indies on his lawful business. Jogging along with +a cargo of fish and lumber, he was taken by a privateer under British +colors and sent into Antigua as a prize. Unable to regain either his +schooner or his two thousand dollar cargo, he sadly took passage for +home. Another owner gave him employment and he set sail in the schooner +Betsy for Guadaloupe. During this voyage, poor man, he was captured and +carried into port by a French privateer. On the suggestion that he might +ransom his vessel on payment of four thousand livres, he departed for +Boston in hope of finding the money, leaving behind three of his sailors +as hostages. + +Cash in hand for the ransom, the long-suffering Captain Michael Driver +turned southward again, now in the schooner Mary, and he flew a flag +of truce to indicate his errand. This meant nothing to the ruffian +who commanded the English privateer Revenge. He violently seized the +innocent Mary and sent her into New Providence. Here Captain Driver +made lawful protest before the authorities, and was set at liberty with +vessel and cargo--an act of justice quite unusual in the Admiralty Court +of the Bahamas. + +Unmolested, the harassed skipper managed to gain Cape Francois and +rescue his three seamen and his schooner in exchange for the ransom +money. As he was about to depart homeward bound, a French frigate +snatched him and his crew out of their vessel and threw them ashore at +Santiago, where for two months they existed as ragged beachcombers until +by some judicial twist the schooner was returned to them. They worked +her home and presented their long list of grievances to the colonial +Government of Massachusetts, which duly forwarded them--and that was +the end of it. Three years had been spent in this catalogue of +misadventures, and Captain Driver, his owners, and his men were helpless +against such intolerable aggression. They and their kind were a prey to +every scurvy rascal who misused a privateering commission to fill his +own pockets. + +Stoutly resolved to sail and trade as they pleased, these undaunted +Americans, nevertheless, increased their business on blue water until +shortly before the Revolution the New England fleet alone numbered six +hundred sail. Its captains felt at home in Surinam and the Canaries. +They trimmed their yards in the reaches of the Mediterranean and +the North Sea or bargained thriftily in the Levant. The whalers of +Nantucket, in their apple-bowed barks, explored and hunted in distant +seas, and the smoke of their try-pots darkened the waters of Baffin Bay, +Guinea, and Brazil. It was they who inspired Edmund Burke's familiar +eulogy: "No sea but is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not +a witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland nor the +activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of England ever +carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which +it has been pushed by this recent people--a people who are still, as it +were, but in the gristle and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." + +In 1762, seventy-eight whalers cleared from American ports, of which +more than half were from Nantucket. Eight years later there were one +hundred and twenty-five whalers out of Nantucket which took 14,331 +barrels of oil valued at $358,200. In size these vessels averaged no +more than ninety tons, a fishing smack of today, and yet they battered +their way half around the watery globe and comfortably supported six +thousand people who dwelt on a sandy island unfit for farming and having +no other industries. Every Nantucket lad sailed for his "lay" or share +of the catch and aspired to command eventually a whaler of his own. + +Whaler, merchantman, and slaver were training a host of incomparable +seamen destined to harry the commerce of England under the new-born +Stars and Stripes, and now, in 1775, on the brink of actual war, +Parliament flung a final provocation and aroused the furious enmity of +the fishermen who thronged the Grand Bank. Lord North proposed to forbid +the colonies to export fish to those foreign markets in which every +seacoast village was vitally concerned, and he also contemplated driving +the fishing fleets from their haunts off Newfoundland. This was to rob +six thousand sturdy men of a livelihood afloat and to spread ruin among +the busy ports, such as Marblehead and Gloucester, from which sailed +hundreds of pinks, snows, and schooners. This measure became law +notwithstanding the protests of twenty-one peers of the realm who +declared: "We dissent because the attempt to coerce by famine the whole +body of the inhabitants of great and populous provinces is without +example in the history of this, or perhaps, of any civilized nation." + +The sailormen bothered their heads very little about taxation without +representation but whetted their anger with grudges more robust. They +had been beggared and bullied and shot at from the Bay of Biscay to +Barbados, and no sooner was the Continental Congress ready to issue +privateering commissions and letters of marque than for them it was up +anchor and away to bag a Britisher. Scarcely had a shipmaster signaled +his arrival with a deep freight of logwood, molasses, or sugar than +he received orders to discharge with all speed and clear his decks for +mounting heavier batteries and slinging the hammocks of a hundred eager +privateersmen who had signed articles in the tavern rendezvous. The +timbered warehouses were filled with long-toms and nine-pounders, +muskets, blunderbusses, pistols, cutlases, boarding-pikes, hand +grenades, tomahawks, grape, canister, and doubleheaded shot. + +In the narrow, gabled streets of Salem, Boston, New York, and Baltimore, +crowds trooped after the fifes and drums with a strapping recruiting +officer to enroll "all gentlemen seamen and able-bodied landsmen who had +a mind to distinguish themselves in the glorious cause of their country +and make their fortunes." Many a ship's company was mustered between +noon and sunset, including men who had served in armed merchantmen and +who in times of nominal peace had fought the marauders of Europe or +whipped the corsairs of Barbary in the Strait of Gibraltar. Never was a +race of seamen so admirably fitted for the daring trade of privateering +as the crews of these tall sloops, topsail schooners, and smart +square-riggers, their sides checkered with gun-ports, and ready to drive +to sea like hawks. + +In some instances the assurance of these hardy men was both absurd and +sublime. Ramshackle boats with twenty or thirty men aboard, mounting one +or two old guns, sallied out in the expectation of gold and glory, only +to be captured by the first British cruiser that chanced to sight them. +A few even sailed with no cannon at all, confident of taking them out +of the first prize overhauled by laying alongside--and so in some cases +they actually did. + +The privateersmen of the Revolution played a larger part in winning the +war than has been commonly recognized. This fact, however, was clearly +perceived by Englishmen of that era, as "The London Spectator" candidly +admitted: "The books at Lloyds will recount it, and the rate of +assurances at that time will prove what their diminutive strength was +able to effect in the face of our navy, and that when nearly one hundred +pennants were flying on our coast. Were we able to prevent their going +in and out, or stop them from taking our trade and our storeships even +in sight of our garrisons? Besides, were they not in the English and +Irish Channels, picking up our homeward bound trade, sending their +prizes into French and Spanish ports to the great terror of our +merchants and shipowners?" + +The naval forces of the Thirteen Colonies were pitifully feeble in +comparison with the mighty fleets of the enemy whose flaming broadsides +upheld the ancient doctrine that "the Monarchs of Great Britain have a +peculiar and Sovereign authority upon the Ocean... from the Laws of God +and of Nature, besides an uninterrupted Fruition of it for so many Ages +past as that its Beginnings cannot be traced out." * + + + * "The Seaman's Vade-Mecum." London, 1744. + + +In 1776 only thirty-one Continental cruisers of all classes were in +commission, and this number was swiftly diminished by capture and +blockade until in 1782 no more than seven ships flew the flag of the +American Navy. On the other hand, at the close of 1777, one hundred and +seventy-four private armed vessels had been commissioned, mounting two +thousand guns and carrying nine thousand men. During this brief period +of the war they took as prizes 733 British merchantmen and inflicted +losses of more than two million pounds sterling. Over ten thousand +seamen were made prisoners at a time when England sorely needed them for +drafting into her navy. To lose them was a far more serious matter than +for General Washington to capture as many Hessian mercenaries who could +be replaced by purchase. + +In some respects privateering as waged a century and more ago was a +sordid, unlovely business, the ruling motive being rather a greed of +gain than an ardent love of country. Shares in lucky ships were bought +and sold in the gambling spirit of a stock exchange. Fortunes were won +and lost regardless of the public service. It became almost impossible +to recruit men for the navy because they preferred the chance of booty +in a privateer. For instance, the State of Massachusetts bought a +twenty-gun ship, the Protector, as a contribution to the naval strength, +and one of her crew, Ebenezer Fox, wrote of the effort to enlist +sufficient men: "The recruiting business went on slowly, however, but +at length upwards of three hundred men were carried, dragged, and driven +abroad; of all ages, kinds, and descriptions; in all the various stages +of intoxication from that of sober tipsiness to beastly drunkenness; +with the uproar and clamor that may be more easily imagined than +described. Such a motley group has never been seen since Falstaff's +ragged regiment paraded the streets of Coventry." + +There was nothing of glory to boast of in fetching into port some little +Nova Scotia coasting schooner with a cargo of deals and potatoes, whose +master was also the owner and who lost the savings of a lifetime because +he lacked the men and guns to defend his property against spoliation. +The war was no concern of his, and he was the victim of a system now +obsolete among civilized nations, a relic of a barbarous and piratical +age whose spirit has been revived and gloried in recently only by the +Government of the German Empire. The chief fault of the privateersman +was that he sailed and fought for his own gain, but he was never guilty +of sinking ships with passengers and crew aboard, and very often he +played the gentleman in gallant style. Nothing could have seemed to him +more abhorrent and incredible than a kind of warfare which should drown +women and children because they had embarked under an enemy's flag. + +Extraordinary as were the successes of the Yankee privateers, it was a +game of give-and-take, a weapon which cut both ways, and the temptation +is to extol their audacious achievements while glossing over the +heavy losses which their own merchant marine suffered. The weakness +of privateering was that it was wholly offensive and could not, like +a strong navy, protect its own commerce from depredation. While the +Americans were capturing over seven hundred British vessels during the +first two years of the war, as many as nine hundred American ships were +taken or sunk by the enemy, a rate of destruction which fairly swept +the Stars and Stripes from the tracks of ocean commerce. As prizes these +vessels were sold at Liverpool and London for an average amount of two +thousand pounds each and the loss to the American owners was, of course, +ever so much larger. + +The fact remains, nevertheless--and it is a brilliant page of history +to recall--that in an inchoate nation without a navy, with blockading +squadrons sealing most of its ports, with ragged armies on land which +retreated oftener than they fought, private armed ships dealt the +maritime prestige of Great Britain a far deadlier blow than the Dutch, +French, and Spanish were able to inflict. In England, there resulted +actual distress, even lack of food, because these intrepid seamen could +not be driven away from her own coasts and continued to snatch their +prizes from under the guns of British forts and fleets. The plight of +the West India Colonies was even worse, as witness this letter from a +merchant of Grenada: "We are happy if we can get anything for money by +reason of the quantity of vessels taken by the Americans. A fleet +of vessels came from Ireland a few days ago. From sixty vessels +that departed from Ireland not above twenty-five arrived in this and +neighboring islands, the others, it is thought, being all taken by +American privateers. God knows, if this American war continues much +longer, we shall all die of hunger." + +On both sides, by far the greater number of captures was made during the +earlier period of the war which cleared the seas of the smaller, slower, +and unarmed vessels. As the war progressed and the profits flowed +in, swifter and larger ships were built for the special business of +privateering until the game resembled actual naval warfare. Whereas, +at first, craft of ten guns with forty or fifty men had been considered +adequate for the service, three or four years later ships were afloat +with a score of heavy cannon and a trained crew of a hundred and fifty +or two hundred men, ready to engage a sloop of war or to stand up to +the enemy's largest privateers. In those days single ship actions, now +almost forgotten in naval tactics, were fought with illustrious skill +and courage, and commanders won victories worthy of comparison with +deeds distinguished in the annals of the American Navy. + + + +CHAPTER III. OUT CUTLASES AND BOARD + +Salem was the foremost privateering port of the Revolution, and from +this pleasant harbor, long since deserted by ships and sailormen, there +filled away past Cape Ann one hundred and fifty-eight vessels of all +sizes to scan the horizon for British topsails. They accounted for four +hundred prizes, or half the whole number to the credit of American arms +afloat. This preeminence was due partly to freedom from a close blockade +and partly to a seafaring population which was born and bred to its +trade and knew no other. Besides the crews of Salem merchantmen, +privateering enlisted the idle fishermen of ports nearby and the +mariners of Boston whose commerce had been snuffed out by the British +occupation. Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston sent some splendid +armed ships to sea but not with the impetuous rush nor in anything like +the numbers enrolled by this gray old town whose fame was unique. + +For the most part, the records of all these brave ships and the +thousands of men who sailed and sweated and fought in them are dim and +scanty, no more than routine entries in dusty log-books which read like +this: "Filled away in pursuit of a second sail in the N. W. At 4.30 she +hoisted English colors and commenced firing her stern guns. At 5.90 took +in the steering sails, at the same time she fired a broadside. We opened +a fire from our larboard battery and at 5.30 she struck her colors. Got +out the boats and boarded her. She proved to be the British brig Acorn +from Liverpool to Rio Janeiro, mounting fourteen cannon." * But now and +then one finds in these old sea-journals an entry more intimate and +human, such as the complaint of the master of the privateer Scorpion, +cruising in 1778 and never a prize in sight. "This Book I made to keep +the Accounts of my Voyage but God knows beste what that will be, for I +am at this time very Impashent but I hope soon there will be a Change to +ease my Trubled Mind. On this Day I was Chaced by Two Ships of War which +I tuck to be Enemies, but coming on thick Weather I have lost site of +them and so conclude myself escaped which is a small good Fortune in the +midste of my Discouragements." * * A burst of gusty laughter still echoes +along the crowded deck of the letter-of-marque schooner Success, whose +master, Captain Philip Thrash, inserted this diverting comment in his +humdrum record of the day's work: "At one half past 8 discovered a sail +ahead. Tacked ship. At 9 tacked ship again and past just to Leeward of +the Sail which appeared to be a damn'd Comical Boat, by G-d." + + + * From the manuscript collections of the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass. + + + * * From the manuscript collections of the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass. + + +There are a few figures of the time and place which stand out, +full-length, in vivid colors against a background that satisfies the +desire of romance and thrillingly conveys the spirit of the time and the +place. Such a one was Captain Jonathan Haraden, Salem privateersman, who +captured one thousand British cannon afloat and is worthy to be ranked +as one of the ablest sea-fighters of his generation. He was a merchant +mariner, a master at the outbreak of the Revolution, who had followed +the sea since boyhood. But it was more to his taste to command the Salem +ship General Pickering of 180 tons which was fitted out under a letter +of marque in the spring of 1780. She carried fourteen six-pounders and +forty-five men and boys, nothing very formidable, when Captain Haraden +sailed for Bilbao with a cargo of sugar. During the voyage, before his +crew had been hammered into shape, he beat off a British privateer of +twenty guns and safely tacked into the Bay of Biscay. + +There he sighted another hostile privateer, the Golden Eagle, larger +than his own ship. Instead of shifting his course to avoid her, Haraden +clapped on sail and steered alongside after nightfall, roaring through +his trumpet: "What ship is this? An American frigate, sir. Strike, or +I'll sink you with a broadside." + +Dazed by this unexpected summons in the gloom, the master of the Golden +Eagle promptly surrendered, and a prize crew was thrown aboard with +orders to follow the Pickering into Bilbao. While just outside that +Spanish harbor, a strange sail was descried and again Jonathan Haraden +cleared for action. The vessel turned out to be the Achilles, one of the +most powerful privateers out of London, with forty guns and a hundred +and fifty men, or almost thrice the fighting strength of the little +Pickering. She was, in fact, more like a sloop of war. Before Captain +Haraden could haul within gunshot to protect his prize, it had been +recaptured by the Achilles, which then maneuvered to engage the +Pickering. + +Darkness intervened, but Jonathan Haraden had no idea of escaping under +cover of it. He was waiting for the morning breeze and a chance to +fight it out to a finish. He was a handsome man with an air of serene +composure and a touch of the theatrical such as Nelson displayed in his +great moments. Having prepared his ship for battle, he slept soundly +until dawn and then dressed with fastidious care to stroll on deck, +where he beheld the Achilles bearing down on him with her crew at +quarters. + +His own men were clustered behind their open ports, matches lighted, +tackles and breechings cast off, crowbars, handspikes, and sponge-staves +in place, gunners stripped to the waist, powder-boys ready for the word +like sprinters on the mark. Forty-five of them against a hundred and +fifty, and Captain Haraden, debonair, unruffled, walking to and fro with +a leisurely demeanor, remarking that although the Achilles appeared to +be superior in force, "he had no doubt they would beat her if they were +firm and steady and did not throw away their fire." + +It was, indeed, a memorable sea-picture, the sturdy Pickering riding +deep with her burden of sugar and seeming smaller than she really was, +the Achilles towering like a frigate, and all Bilbao turned out to +watch the duel, shore and headlands crowded with spectators, the blue +harbor-mouth gay with an immense flotilla of fishing boats and pleasure +craft. The stake for which Haraden fought was to retake the Golden +Eagle prize and to gain his port. His seamanship was flawless. Vastly +outnumbered if it should come to boarding, he handled his vessel so as +to avoid the Achilles while he poured the broadsides into her. After two +hours the London privateer emerged from the smoke which had obscured the +combat and put out to sea in flight, hulled through and through, while +a farewell flight of crowbars, with which the guns of the Pickering had +been crammed to the muzzle, ripped through her sails and rigging. + +Haraden hoisted canvas and drove in chase, but the Achilles had the +heels of him "with a mainsail as large as a ship of the line," and +reluctantly he wore ship and, with the Golden Eagle again in his +possession, he sailed to an anchorage in Bilbao harbor. The Spanish +populace welcomed him with tremendous enthusiasm. He was carried through +the streets in a holiday procession and was the hero of banquets and +public receptions. + +Such a man was bound to be the idol of his sailors and one of them quite +plausibly related that "so great was the confidence he inspired that if +he but looked at a sail through his glass and told the helmsman to steer +for her, the observation went round,'If she is an enemy, she is ours.'" + +It was in this same General Pickering, no longer sugar-laden but in +cruising trim, that Jonathan Haraden accomplished a feat which Paul +Jones might have been proud to claim. There lifted above the sky-line +three armed merchantmen sailing in company from Halifax to New York, a +brig of fourteen guns, a ship of sixteen guns, a sloop of twelve guns. +When they flew signals and formed in line, the ship alone appeared +to outmatch the Pickering, but Haraden, in that lordly manner of his, +assured his men that "he had no doubt whatever that if they would +do their duty he would quickly capture the three vessels." Here +was performance very much out of the ordinary, naval strategy of an +exceptionally high order, and yet it is dismissed by the only witness +who took the trouble to mention it in these few, casual words: "This he +did with great ease by going alongside of each of them, one after the +other." + +One more story of this master sea-rover of the Revolution, sailor and +gentleman, who served his country so much more brilliantly than many +a landsman lauded in the written histories of the war. While in the +Pickering he attacked a heavily armed royal mail packet bound to England +from the West Indies, one of the largest merchant vessels of her day and +equipped to defend herself against privateers. A tough antagonist and a +hard nut to crack! They battered each other like two pugilists for four +hours and even then the decision was still in the balance. Then Haraden +sheered off to mend his damaged gear and splintered hull before closing +in again. + +He then discovered that all his powder had been shot away excepting one +last charge. Instead of calling it a drawn battle, he rammed home this +last shot in the locker, and ran down to windward of the packet, so +close that he could shout across to the other quarter-deck: "I will give +you five minutes to haul down your colors. If they are not down at the +end of that time, I will fire into you and sink you, so help me God." + +It was the bluff magnificent--courage cold-blooded and calculating. +The adversary was still unbeaten. Haraden stood with watch in hand and +sonorously counted off the minutes. It was the stronger will and not the +heavier metal that won the day. To be shattered by fresh broadsides at +pistol-range was too much for the nerves of the gallant English skipper +whose decks were already like a slaughterhouse. One by one, Haraden +shouted the minutes and his gunners blew their matches. At "four" the +red ensign came fluttering down and the mail packet was a prize of war. + +Another merchant seaman of this muster-roll of patriots was Silas +Talbot, who took to salt water as a cabin boy at the age of twelve and +was a prosperous shipmaster at twenty-one with savings invested in a +house of his own in Providence. Enlisting under Washington, he was made +a captain of infantry and was soon promoted, but he was restless ashore +and glad to obtain an odd assignment. As Colonel Talbot he selected +sixty infantry volunteers, most of them seamen by trade, and led them +aboard the small sloop Argo in May, 1779, to punish the New York Tories +who were equipping privateers against their own countrymen and working +great mischief in Long Island Sound. So serious was the situation that +General Gates found it almost impossible to obtain food supplies for the +northern department of the Continental army. + +Silas Talbot and his nautical infantrymen promptly fell in with the New +York privateer Lively, a fair match for him, and as promptly sent her +into port. He then ran offshore and picked up and carried into Boston +two English privateers headed for New York with large cargoes of +merchandise from the West Indies. But he was particularly anxious to +square accounts with a renegade Captain Hazard who made Newport his base +and had captured many American vessels with the stout brig King George, +using her for "the base purpose of plundering his old neighbors and +friends." + +On his second cruise in the Argo, young Silas Talbot encountered the +perfidious King George to the southward of Long Island and riddled her +with one broadside after another, first hailing Captain Hazard by name +and cursing him in double-shotted phrases for the traitorous swab that +he was. Then the seagoing infantry scrambled over the bulwarks and +tumbled the Tories down their own hatches without losing a man. A prize +crew with the humiliated King George made for New London, where there +was much cheering in the port, and "even the women, both young and old, +expressed the greatest joy." + +With no very heavy fighting, Talbot had captured five vessels and was +keen to show what his crew could do against mettlesome foemen. He found +them at last well out to sea in a large ship which seemed eager to +engage him. Only a few hundred feet apart through a long afternoon, they +briskly and cheerily belabored each other with grape and solid shot. +Talbot's speaking-trumpet was shot out of his hand, the tails of his +coat were shorn off, and all the officers and men stationed with him on +the quarter-deck were killed or wounded. + +His crew reported that the Argo was in a sinking condition, with the +water flooding the gun-deck, but he told them to lower a man or two in +the bight of a line and they pluckily plugged the holes from overside. +There was a lusty huzza when the Englishman's mainmast crashed to +the deck and this finished the affair. Silas Talbot found that he had +trounced the privateer Dragon, of twice his own tonnage and with the +advantage in both guns and men. + +While his crew was patching the Argo and pumping the water from her +hold, the lookout yelled that another sail was making for them. Without +hesitation Talbot somehow got this absurdly impudent one-masted craft +of his under way and told those of his sixty men who survived to prepare +for a second tussle. Fortunately another Yankee privateer joined the +chase and together they subdued the armed brig Hannah. When the Argo +safely convoyed the two prizes into New Bedford, "all who beheld her +were astonished that a vessel of her diminutive size could suffer so +much and yet get safely to port." + +Men fought and slew each other in those rude and distant days with a +certain courtesy, with a fine, punctilious regard for the etiquette of +the bloody game. There was the Scotch skipper of the Betsy, a privateer, +whom Silas Talbot hailed as follows, before they opened fire: + +"You must now haul down those British colors, my friend." + +"Notwithstanding I find you an enemy, as I suspected," was the dignified +reply, "yet, sir, I shall let them hang a little bit longer,--with your +permission,--so fire away, Flanagan." + +During another of her cruises the Argo pursued an artfully disguised +ship of the line which could have blown her to kingdom come with a +broadside of thirty guns. The little Argo was actually becalmed within +short range, but her company got out the sweeps and rowed her some +distance before darkness and a favoring slant of wind carried them +clear. In the summer of 1780, Captain Silas Talbot, again a mariner by +title, was given the private cruiser General Washington with one hundred +and twenty men, but he was less fortunate with her than when afloat in +the tiny Argo with his sixty Continentals. Off Sandy Hook he ran into +the British fleet under Admiral Arbuthnot and, being outsailed in a +gale of wind, he was forced to lower his flag to the great seventy-four +Culloden. After a year in English prisons he was released and made his +way home, serving no more in the war but having the honor to command the +immortal frigate Constitution in 1799 as a captain in the American Navy. + +In several notable instances the privateersmen tried conclusions with +ships that flew the royal ensign, and got the better of them. The hero +of an uncommonly brilliant action of this sort was Captain George Geddes +of Philadelphia, who was entrusted with the Congress, a noble privateer +of twenty-four guns and two hundred men. Several of the smaller British +cruisers had been sending parties ashore to plunder estates along the +southern shores, and one of them, the sloop of war Savage, had even +raided Washington's home at Mount Vernon. Later she shifted to the +coast of Georgia in quest of loot and was unlucky enough to fall athwart +Captain Geddes in the Congress. + +The privateer was the more formidable ship and faster on the wind, +forcing Captain Sterling of the Savage to accept the challenge. Disabled +aloft very early in the fight, Captain Geddes was unable to choose his +position, for which reason they literally battled hand-to-hand, hulls +grinding against each other, the gunners scorched by the flashes of the +cannon in the ports of the opposing ship, with scarcely room to ply +the rammers, and the sailors throwing missiles from the decks, hand +grenades, cold shot, scraps of iron, belaying-pins. + +As the vessels lay interlocked, the Savage was partly dismasted and +Captain Geddes, leaping upon the forecastle head, told the boarders to +follow him. Before they could swing their cutlases and dash over the +hammock-nettings, the British boatswain waved his cap and yelled that +the Savage had surrendered. Captain Sterling was dead, eight others were +killed, and twenty-four wounded. The American loss was about the same. +Captain Geddes, however, was unable to save his prize because a British +frigate swooped down and took them both into Charleston. + +When peace came in 1783, it was independence dearly bought by land and +sea, and no small part of the price was the loss of a thousand merchant +ships which would see their home ports no more. Other misfortunes added +to the toll of destruction. The great fishing fleets which had been the +chief occupation of coastwise New England were almost obliterated and +their crews were scattered. Many of the men had changed their allegiance +and were sailing out of Halifax, and others were impressed into British +men-of-war or returned broken in health from long confinement in British +prisons. The ocean was empty of the stanch schooners which had raced +home with lee rails awash to cheer waiting wives and sweethearts. + +The fate of Nantucket and its whalers was even more tragic. This colony +on its lonely island amid the shoals was helpless against raids by sea, +and its ships and storehouses were destroyed without mercy. Many vessels +in distant waters were captured before they were even aware that a +state of war existed. Of a fleet numbering a hundred and fifty sail, one +hundred and thirty-four were taken by the enemy and Nantucket whaling +suffered almost total extinction. These seamen, thus robbed of their +livelihood, fought nobly for their country's cause. Theirs was not the +breed to sulk or whine in port. Twelve hundred of them were killed or +made prisoners during the Revolution. They were to be found in the +Army and Navy and behind the guns of privateers. There were twenty-five +Nantucket whalemen in the crew of the Ranger when Paul Jones steered +her across the Atlantic on that famous cruise which inspired the old +forecastle song that begins + + 'Tis of the gallant Yankee ship + That flew the Stripes and Stars, + And the whistling wind from the west nor'west + Blew through her pitch pine spars. + With her starboard tacks aboard, my boys, + She hung upon the gale. + On an autumn night we raised the light + Off the Old Head of Kinsale. + +Pitiful as was the situation of Nantucket, with its only industry wiped +out and two hundred widows among the eight hundred families left on the +island, the aftermath of war seemed almost as ruinous along the whole +Atlantic coast. More ships could be built and there were thousands of +adventurous sailors to man them, but where were the markets for the +product of the farms and mills and plantations? The ports of Europe had +been so long closed to American shipping that little demand was left for +American goods. To the Government of England the people of the Republic +were no longer fellow-countrymen but foreigners. As such they were +subject to the Navigation Acts, and no cargoes could be sent to that +kingdom unless in British vessels. The flourishing trade with the West +Indies was made impossible for the same reason, a special Order in +Council aiming at one fell stroke to "put an end to the building and +increase of American vessels" and to finish the careers of three hundred +West Indiamen already afloat. In the islands themselves the results +were appalling. Fifteen thousand slaves died of starvation because the +American traders were compelled to cease bringing them dried fish +and corn during seasons in which their own crops were destroyed by +hurricanes. + +In 1776, one-third of the seagoing merchant marine of Great Britain had +been bought or built to order in America because lumber was cheaper +and wages were lower. This lucrative business was killed by a law which +denied Englishmen the privilege of purchasing ships built in American +yards. So narrow and bitter was this commercial enmity, so ardent +this desire to banish the Stars and Stripes from blue water, that Lord +Sheffield in 1784 advised Parliament that the pirates of Algiers and +Tripoli really benefited English commerce by preying on the shipping of +weaker nations. "It is not probable that the American States will have +a very free trade in the Mediterranean," said he. "It will not be to the +interest of any of the great maritime Powers to protect them from the +Barbary States. If they know their interests, they will not encourage +the Americans to be carriers. That the Barbary States are advantageous +to maritime Powers is certain." + +Denied the normal ebb and flow of trade and commerce and with the +imports from England far exceeding the value of the merchandise exported +thence, the United States, already impoverished, was drained of its +money, and a currency of dollars, guineas, joes, and moidores grew +scarcer day by day. There was no help in a government which consisted of +States united only in name. Congress comprised a handful of respectable +gentlemen who had little power and less responsibility, quarreling among +themselves for lack of better employment. Retaliation against England by +means of legislation was utterly impossible. Each State looked after +its commerce in its own peculiar fashion and the devil might take +the hindmost. Their rivalries and jealousies were like those of petty +kingdoms. If one State should close her ports is to English ships, the +others would welcome them in order to divert the trade, with no feeling +of national pride or federal cooperation. + +The Articles of Confederation had empowered Congress to make treaties of +commerce, but only such as did not restrain the legislative power of +any State from laying imposts and regulating exports and imports. If a +foreign power imposed heavy duties upon American shipping, it was for +the individual States and not for Congress to say whether the vessels of +the offending nation should be allowed free entrance to the ports of the +United States: It was folly to suppose, ran the common opinion, that +if South Carolina should bar her ports to Spain because rice and indigo +were excluded from the Spanish colonies, New Hampshire, which furnished +masts and lumber for the Spanish Navy, ought to do the same. The idea of +turning the whole matter over to Congress was considered preposterous by +many intelligent Americans. + +In these thirteen States were nearly three and a quarter million people +hemmed in a long and narrow strip between the sea and an unexplored +wilderness in which the Indians were an ever present peril. The Southern +States, including Maryland, prosperous agricultural regions, contained +almost one-half the English-speaking population of America. As colonies, +they had found the Old World eager for their rice, tobacco, indigo, +and tar, and slavery was the means of labor so firmly established that +one-fifth of the inhabitants were black. By contrast, the Northern +States were still concerned with commerce as the very lifeblood of their +existence. New England had not dreamed of the millions of spindles which +should hum on the banks of her rivers and lure her young men and women +from the farms to the clamorous factory towns. The city of New York +had not yet outgrown its traffic in furs and its magnificent commercial +destiny was still unrevealed. It was a considerable seaport but not yet +a gateway. From Sandy Hook, however, to the stormy headlands of Maine, +it was a matter of life and death that ships should freely come and +go with cargoes to exchange. All other resources were trifling in +comparison. + + + +CHAPTER IV. THE FAMOUS DAYS OF SALEM PORT + +In such compelling circumstances as these, necessity became the mother +of achievement. There is nothing finer in American history than the +dogged fortitude and high-hearted endeavor with which the merchant +seamen returned to their work after the Revolution and sought and +found new markets for their wares. It was then that Salem played +that conspicuous part which was, for a generation, to overshadow the +activities of all other American seaports. Six thousand privateersmen +had signed articles in her taverns, as many as the total population of +the town, and they filled it with a spirit of enterprise and daring. +Not for them the stupid monotony of voyages coastwise if more hazardous +ventures beckoned and there were havens and islands unvexed by trade +where bold men might win profit and perhaps fight for life and cargo. + +Now there dwelt in Salem one of the great men of his time, Elias Hasket +Derby, the first American millionaire, and very much more than this. He +was a shipping merchant with a vision and with the hard-headed sagacity +to make his dreams come true. His was a notable seafaring family, +to begin with. His father, Captain Richard Derby, born in 1712, had +dispatched his small vessels to the West Indies and Virginia and with +the returns from these voyages he had loaded assorted cargoes for Spain +and Madeira and had the proceeds remitted in bills of exchange to +London or in wine, salt, fruit, oil, lead, and handkerchiefs to America. +Richard Derby's vessels had eluded or banged away at the privateers +during the French War from 1756 to 1763, mounting from eight to twelve +guns, "with four cannon below decks for close quarters." Of such a +temper was this old sea-dog who led the militia and defiantly halted +General Gage's regulars at the North River bridge in Salem, two full +months before the skirmish at Lexington. Eight of the nineteen cannon +which it was proposed to seize from the patriots had been taken from the +ships of Captain Richard Derby and stored in his warehouse for the use +of the Provincial Congress. + +It was Richard's son, Captain John Derby, who carried to England in the +swift schooner Quero the first news of the affair at Lexington, ahead of +the King's messenger. A sensational arrival, if ever there was one! This +Salem shipmaster, cracking on sail like a proper son of his sire, making +the passage in twenty-nine days and handsomely beating the lubberly +Royal Express Packet Sukey which left Boston four days sooner, and +startling the British nation with the tidings which meant the loss of an +American empire! A singular coincidence was that this same Captain John +Derby should have been the first mariner to inform the United States +that peace had come, when he arrived from France in 1783 with the +message that a treaty had been signed. + +Elias Hasket Derby was another son of Richard. When his manifold +energies were crippled by the war, he diverted his ability and abundant +resources into privateering. He was interested in at least eighty of the +privateers out of Salem, invariably subscribing for such shares as might +not be taken up by his fellow-townsmen. He soon perceived that many +of these craft were wretchedly unfit for the purpose and were easily +captured or wrecked. It was characteristic of his genius that he +should establish shipyards of his own, turn his attention to naval +architecture, and begin to build a class of vessels vastly superior in +size, model, and speed to any previously launched in the colonies. They +were designed to meet the small cruiser of the British Navy on even +terms and were remarkably successful, both in enriching their owner and +in defying the enemy. + +At the end of the war Elias Hasket Derby discovered that these fine +ships were too large and costly to ply up and down the coast. Instead +of bewailing his hard lot, he resolved to send them to the other side of +the globe. At a time when the British and the Dutch East India companies +insolently claimed a monopoly of the trade of the Orient, when American +merchant seamen had never ventured beyond the two Atlantics, this was a +conception which made of commerce a surpassing romance and heralded the +golden era of the nation's life upon the sea. + +His Grand Turk of three hundred tons was promptly fitted out for a +pioneering voyage as far as the Cape of Good Hope. Salem knew her as +"the great ship" and yet her hull was not quite one hundred feet long. +Safely Captain Jonathan Ingersoll took her out over the long road, his +navigating equipment consisting of a few erroneous maps and charts, a +sextant, and Guthrie's Geographical Grammar. In Table Bay he sold his +cargo of provisions and then visited the coast of Guinea to dispose of +his rum for ivory and gold dust but brought not a single slave back, +Mr. Derby having declared that "he would rather sink the whole capital +employed than directly or indirectly be concerned in so infamous a +trade"--an unusual point of view for a shipping merchant of New England +in 1784! + +Derby ships were first to go to Mauritius, then called the Isle of +France, first at Calcutta, and among the earliest to swing at anchor off +Canton. When Elias Hasket Derby decided to invade this rich East India +commerce, he sent his eldest son, Elias Hasket, Jr., to England and the +Continent after a course at Harvard. The young man became a linguist +and made a thorough study of English and French methods of trade. Having +laid this foundation for the venture, the son was now sent to India, +where he lived for three years in the interests of his house, building +up a trade almost fabulously profitable. + +How fortunes were won in those stirring days may be discerned from +the record of young Derby's ventures while in the Orient. In 1788 the +proceeds of one cargo enabled him to buy a ship and a brigantine in the +Isle of France. These two vessels he sent to Bombay to load with cotton. +Two other ships of his fleet, the Astrea and Light Horse, were filled +at Calcutta and Rangoon and ordered to Salem. It was found, when the +profits of these transactions were reckoned, that the little squadron +had earned $100,000 above all outlay. + +To carry on such a business as this enlisted many men and industries. +While the larger ships were making their distant voyages, the brigs and +schooners were gathering cargoes for them, crossing to Gothenburg and +St. Petersburg for iron, duck, and hemp, to France, Spain, and Madeira +for wine and lead, to the French West Indies for molasses to be turned +into rum, to New York, Philadelphia, and Richmond for flour, provisions, +and tobacco. These shipments were assembled in the warehouses on Derby +Wharf and paid for the teas, coffees, pepper, muslin, silks, and ivory +which the ships from the Far East were fetching home. In fourteen years +the Derby ships made one hundred and twenty-five voyages to Europe and +far eastern ports and out of the thirty-five vessels engaged only one +was lost at sea. + +It was in 1785 when the Grand Turk, on a second voyage, brought back +a cargo of silks, teas, and nankeens from Batavia and China, that "The +Independent Chronicle" of London, unconsciously humorous, was moved to +affirm that "the Americans have given up all thought of a China trade +which can never be carried on to advantage without some settlement in +the East Indies." + +As soon as these new sea-trails had been furrowed by the keels of Elias +Hasket Derby, other Salem merchants were quick to follow in a rivalry +which left no sea unexplored for virgin markets and which ransacked +every nook and corner of barbarism which had a shore. Vessels slipped +their cables and sailed away by night for some secret destination with +whose savage potentate trade relations had been established. It might +be Captain Jonathan Carnes who, while at the port of Bencoolen in +1793, heard that pepper grew wild on the northern coast of Sumatra. He +whispered the word to the Salem owner, who sent him back in the schooner +Rajah with only four guns and ten men. Eighteen months later, Jonathan +Carnes returned to Salem with a cargo of pepper in bulk, the first +direct importation, and cleared seven hundred per cent on the voyage. +When he made ready to go again, keeping his business strictly to +himself, other owners tracked him clear to Bencoolen, but there he +vanished in the Rajah, and his secret with him, until he reappeared with +another precious cargo of pepper. When, at length, he shared this trade +with other vessels, it meant that Salem controlled the pepper market of +Sumatra and for many years supplied a large part of the world's demand. + +And so it happened that in the spicy warehouses that overlooked Salem +Harbor there came to be stored hemp from Luzon, gum copal from Zanzibar, +palm oil from Africa, coffee from Arabia, tallow from Madagascar, whale +oil from the Antarctic, hides and wool from the Rio de la Plata, nutmeg +and cloves from Malaysia. Such merchandise had been bought or bartered +for by shipmasters who were much more than mere navigators. They had to +be shrewd merchants on their own accounts, for the success or failure +of a voyage was mostly in their hands. Carefully trained and highly +intelligent men, they attained command in the early twenties and were +able to retire, after a few years more afloat, to own ships and exchange +the quarterdeck for the counting-room, and the cabin for the solid +mansion and lawn on Derby Street. Every opportunity, indeed, was offered +them to advance their own fortunes. They sailed not for wages but for +handsome commissions and privileges--in the Derby ships, five per cent +of a cargo outward bound, two and a half per cent of the freightage +home, five per cent profit on goods bought and sold between foreign +ports, and five per cent of the cargo space for their own use. + +Such was the system which persuaded the pick and flower of young +American manhood to choose the sea as the most advantageous career +possible. There was the Crowninshield family, for example, with five +brothers all in command of ships before they were old enough to vote and +at one time all five away from Salem, each in his own vessel and three +of them in the East India trade. "When little boys," to quote from +the memoirs of Benjamin Crowninshield, "they were all sent to a common +school and about their eleventh year began their first particular study +which should develop them as sailors and ship captains. These boys +studied their navigation as little chaps of twelve years old and were +required to thoroughly master the subject before being sent to sea.... +As soon as the art of navigation was mastered, the youngsters were sent +to sea, sometimes as common sailors but commonly as ship's clerks, in +which position they were able to learn everything about the management +of a ship without actually being a common sailor." + +This was the practice in families of solid station and social rank, for +to be a shipmaster was to follow the profession of a gentleman. Yet the +bright lad who entered by way of the forecastle also played for high +stakes. Soon promoted to the berth of mate, he was granted cargo space +for his own adventures in merchandise and a share of the profits. +In these days the youth of twenty-one is likely to be a college +undergraduate, rated too callow and unfit to be intrusted with the +smallest business responsibilities and tolerantly regarded as unable +to take care of himself. It provokes both a smile and a glow of pride, +therefore, to recall those seasoned striplings and what they did. + +No unusual instance was that of Nathaniel Silsbee, later United States +Senator from Massachusetts, who took command of the new ship Benjamin in +the year 1792, laden with a costly cargo from Salem for the Cape of +Good Hope and India, "with such instructions," says he, "as left the +management of the voyage very much to my own discretion. Neither +myself nor the chief mate, Mr. Charles Derby, had attained the age +of twenty-one years when we left home. I was not then twenty." This +reminded him to speak of his own family. Of the three Silsbee brothers, +"each of us obtained the command of vessels and the consignment of their +cargoes before attaining the age of twenty years, viz., myself at the +age of eighteen and a half, my brother William at nineteen and a half, +and my brother Zachariah before he was twenty years old. Each and all of +us left off going to sea before reaching the age of twenty-nine years." + +How resourcefully these children of the sea could handle affairs was +shown in this voyage of the Benjamin. While in the Indian Ocean young +Silsbee fell in with a frigate which gave him news of the beginning of +war between England and France. He shifted his course for Mauritius and +there sold the cargo for a dazzling price in paper dollars, which he +turned into Spanish silver. An embargo detained him for six months, +during which this currency increased to three times the value of the +paper money. He gave up the voyage to Calcutta, sold the Spanish dollars +and loaded with coffee and spices for Salem. At the Cape of Good Hope, +however, he discovered that he could earn a pretty penny by sending his +cargo home in other ships and loading the Benjamin again for Mauritius. +When, at length, he arrived in Salem harbor, after nineteen months away, +his enterprises had reaped a hundred per cent for Elias Hasket Derby and +his own share was the snug little fortune of four thousand dollars. Part +of this he, of course, invested at sea, and at twenty-two he was part +owner of the Betsy, East Indiaman, and on the road to independence. + +As second mate in the Benjamin had sailed Richard Cleveland, another +matured mariner of nineteen, who crowded into one life an Odyssey of +adventure noteworthy even in that era and who had the knack of writing +about it with rare skill and spirit. In 1797, when twenty-three years +old, he was master of the bark Enterprise bound from Salem to Mocha for +coffee. The voyage was abandoned at Havre and he sent the mate home +with the ship, deciding to remain abroad and gamble for himself with the +chances of the sea. In France he bought on credit a "cutter-sloop" +of forty-three tons, no larger than the yachts whose owners think it +venturesome to take them off soundings in summer cruises. In this little +box of a craft he planned to carry a cargo of merchandise to the Cape of +Good Hope and thence to Mauritius. + +His crew included two men, a black cook, and a brace of boys who were +hastily shipped at Havre. "Fortunately they were all so much in debt +as not to want any time to spend their advance, but were ready at the +instant, and with this motley crew, (who, for aught I knew, were robbers +or pirates) I put to sea." The only sailor of the lot was a Nantucket +lad who was made mate and had to be taught the rudiments of navigation +while at sea. Of the others he had this to say, in his lighthearted +manner: + +"The first of my fore-mast hands is a great, surly, crabbed, raw-boned, +ignorant Prussian who is so timid aloft that the mate has frequently +been obliged to do his duty there. I believe him to be more of a +soldier than a sailor, though he has often assured me that he has been +a boatswain's mate of a Dutch Indiaman, which I do not believe as he +hardly knows how to put two ends of a rope together.... My cook... a +good-natured negro and a tolerable cook, so unused to a vessel that in +the smoothest weather he cannot walk fore and aft without holding onto +something with both hands. This fear proceeds from the fact that he is +so tall and slim that if he should get a cant it might be fatal to +him. I did not think America could furnish such a specimen of the negro +race... nor did I ever see such a simpleton. It is impossible to teach +him anything and... he can hardly tell the main-halliards from the +mainstay. + +"Next is an English boy of seventeen years old, who from having lately +had the small-pox is feeble and almost blind, a miserable object, +but pity for his misfortunes induces me to make his duty as easy as +possible. Finally I have a little ugly French boy, the very image of a +baboon, who from having served for some time on different privateers has +all the tricks of a veteran man-of-war's man, though only thirteen years +old, and by having been in an English prison, has learned enough of the +language to be a proficient in swearing." + +With these human scrapings for a ship's company, the cutter Caroline was +three months on her solitary way as far as the Cape of Good Hope, where +the inhabitants "could not disguise their astonishment at the size of +the vessel, the boyish appearance of the master and mate, and the queer +and unique characters of the two men and boy who composed the crew." The +English officials thought it strange indeed, suspecting some scheme of +French spies or smuggled dispatches, but Richard Cleveland's petition +to the Governor, Lord McCartney, ingenuously patterned after certain +letters addressed to noblemen as found in an old magazine aboard his +vessel, won the day for him and he was permitted to sell the cutter and +her cargo, having changed his mind about proceeding farther. + +Taking passage to Batavia, he looked about for another venture but found +nothing to his liking and wandered on to Canton, where he was attracted +by the prospect of a voyage to the northwest coast of America to buy +furs from the Indians. In a cutter no larger than the Caroline he risked +all his cash and credit, stocking her with $20,000 worth of assorted +merchandise for barter, and put out across the Pacific, "having on board +twenty-one persons, consisting, except two Americans, of English, Irish, +Swedes and French, but principally the first, who were runaways from +the men-of-war and Indiamen, and two from a Botany Bay ship who had made +their escape, for we were obliged to take such as we could get, served +to complete a list of as accomplished villains as ever disgraced any +country." + +After a month of weary, drenching hardship off the China coast, this +crew of cutthroats mutinied. With a loyal handful, including the black +cook, Cleveland locked up the provisions, mounted two four-pounders +on the quarterdeck, rammed them full of grape-shot, and fetched up the +flint-lock muskets and pistols from the cabin. The mutineers were then +informed that if they poked their heads above the hatches he would blow +them overboard. Losing enthusiasm and weakened by hunger, they asked to +be set ashore; so the skipper marooned the lot. For two days the cutter +lay offshore while a truce was argued, the upshot being that four of the +rascals gave in and the others were left behind. + +Fifty days more of it and, washed by icy seas, racked and storm-beaten, +the vessel made Norfolk Sound. So small was the crew, so imminent the +danger that the Indians might take her by boarding, that screens +of hides were rigged along the bulwarks to hide the deck from view. +Stranded and getting clear, warding off attacks, Captain Richard +Cleveland stayed two months on the wilderness coast of Oregon, trading +one musket for eight prime sea-otter skins until there was no more +room below. Sixty thousand dollars was the value of the venture when +he sailed for China by way of the Sandwich Islands, forty thousand +of profit, and he was twenty-five years old with the zest for roving +undiminished. + +He next appeared in Calcutta, buying a twenty-five-ton pilot boat under +the Danish flag for a fling at Mauritius and a speculation in prizes +brought in by French privateers. Finding none in port, he loaded seven +thousand bags of coffee in a ship for Copenhagen and conveyed as a +passenger a kindred spirit, young Nathaniel Shaler, whom he took into +partnership. At Hamburg these two bought a fast brig, the Lelia Byrd, +to try their fortune on the west coast of South America, and recruited +a third partner, a boyish Polish nobleman, Count de Rousillon, who had +been an aide to Kosciusko. Three seafaring musketeers, true gentlemen +rovers, all under thirty, sailing out to beard the viceroys of Spain! + +From Valparaiso, where other American ships were detained and robbed, +they adroitly escaped and steered north to Mexico and California. At +San Diego they fought their way out of the harbor, silencing the +Spanish fort with their six guns. Then to Canton with furs, and Richard +Cleveland went home at thirty years of age after seven years' absence +and voyaging twice around the world, having wrested success from almost +every imaginable danger and obstacle, with $70,000 to make him a rich +man in his own town. He was neither more nor less than an American +sailor of the kind that made the old merchant marine magnificent. + +It was true romance, also, when the first American shipmasters set foot +in mysterious Japan, a half century before Perry's squadron shattered +the immemorial isolation of the land of the Shoguns and the Samurai. +Only the Dutch had been permitted to hold any foreign intercourse +whatever with this hermit nation and for two centuries they had +maintained their singular commercial monopoly at a price measured in +terms of the deepest degradation of dignity and respect. The few Dutch +merchants suffered to reside in Japan were restricted to a small +island in Nagasaki harbor, leaving it only once in four years when the +Resident, or chief agent, journeyed to Yeddo to offer gifts and most +humble obeisance to the Shogun, "creeping forward on his hands and feet, +and falling on his knees, bowed his head to the ground, and retired +again in absolute silence, crawling exactly like a crab," said one of +these pilgrims who added: "We may not keep Sundays or fast days, or +allow our spiritual hymns or prayers to be heard; never mention the name +of Christ. Besides these things, we have to submit to other insulting +imputations which are always painful to a noble heart. The reason which +impels the Dutch to bear all these sufferings so patiently is simply the +love of gain." + +In return for these humiliations the Dutch East India Company was +permitted to send one or two ships a year from Batavia to Japan and to +export copper, silk, gold, camphor, porcelain, bronze, and rare woods. +The American ship Franklin arrived at Batavia in 1799 and Captain James +Devereux of Salem learned that a charter was offered for one of these +annual voyages. After a deal of Yankee dickering with the hard-headed +Dutchmen, a bargain was struck and the Franklin sailed for Nagasaki with +cloves, chintz, sugar, tin, black pepper, sapan wood, and elephants' +teeth. The instructions were elaborate and punctilious, salutes to be +fired right and left, nine guns for the Emperor's guard while passing +in, thirteen guns at the anchorage; all books on board to be sealed +up in a cask, Bibles in particular, and turned over to the Japanese +officials, all firearms sent ashore, ship dressed with colors whenever +the "Commissaries of the Chief" graciously came aboard, and a carpet on +deck for them to sit upon. + +Two years later, the Margaret of Salem made the same sort of a voyage, +and in both instances the supercargoes, one of whom happened to be a +younger brother of Captain Richard Cleveland, wrote journals of the +extraordinary episode. For these mariners alone was the curtain lifted +which concealed the feudal Japan from the eyes of the civilized world. +Alert and curious, these Yankee traders explored the narrow streets of +Nagasaki, visited temples, were handsomely entertained by officers and +merchants, and exchanged their wares in the marketplace. They were as +much at home, no doubt, as when buying piculs of pepper from a rajah of +Qualah Battoo, or dining with an elderly mandarin of Cochin China. It +was not too much to say that "the profuse stores of knowledge brought +by every ship's crew, together with unheard of curiosities from +every savage shore, gave the community of Salem a rare alertness of +intellect." + +It was a Salem bark, the Lydia, that first displayed the American +flag to the natives of Guam in 1801. She was chartered by the Spanish +government of Manila to carry to the Marianne Islands, as those dots on +the chart of the Pacific were then called, the new Governor, his family, +his suite, and his luggage. First Mate William Haswell kept a diary in a +most conscientious fashion, and here and there one gleans an item with +a humor of its own. "Now having to pass through dangerous straits," he +observes, "we went to work to make boarding nettings and to get our arms +in the best order, but had we been attacked we should have been taken +with ease. Between Panay and Negros all the passengers were in the +greatest confusion for fear of being taken and put to death in the dark +and not have time to say their prayers." + +The decks were in confusion most of the time, what with the Governor, +his lady, three children, two servant girls and twelve men servants, +a friar and his servant, a judge and two servants, not to mention some +small hogs, two sheep, an ox, and a goat to feed the passengers who were +too dainty for sea provender. The friar was an interesting character. A +great pity that the worthy mate of the Lydia should not have been more +explicit! It intrigues the reader of his manuscript diary to be told +that "the Friar was praying night and day but it would not bring a +fair wind. His behavior was so bad that we were forced to send him to +Coventry, or in other words, no one would speak to him." + +The Spanish governors of Guam had in operation an economic system which +compelled the admiration of this thrifty Yankee mate. The natives +wore very few clothes, he concluded, because the Governor was the only +shopkeeper and he insisted on a profit of at least eight hundred per +cent. There was a native militia regiment of a thousand men who were +paid ten dollars a year. With this cash they bought Bengal goods, +cottons, Chinese pans, pots, knives, and hoes at the Governor's store, +so that "all this money never left the Governor's hands. It was fetched +to him by the galleons in passing, and when he was relieved he carried +it with him to Manila, often to the amount of eighty or ninety thousand +dollars." A glimpse of high finance without a flaw! + +There is pathos, simple and moving, in the stories of shipwreck and +stranding on hostile or desert coasts. These disasters were far more +frequent then than now, because navigation was partly guesswork and +ships were very small. Among these tragedies was that of the Commerce, +bound from Boston to Bombay in 1793. The captain lost his bearings and +thought he was off Malabar when the ship piled up on the beach in the +night. The nearest port was Muscat and the crew took to the boats in the +hope of reaching it. Stormy weather drove them ashore where armed Arabs +on camels stripped them of clothes and stores and left them to die among +the sand dunes. + +On foot they trudged day after day in the direction of Muscat, and how +they suffered and what they endured was told by one of the survivors, +young Daniel Saunders. Soon they began to drop out and die in their +tracks in the manner of "Benjamin Williams, William Leghorn, and Thomas +Barnard whose bodies were exposed naked to the scorching sun and finding +their strength and spirits quite exhausted they lay down expecting +nothing but death for relief." The next to be left behind was Mr. Robert +Williams, merchant and part owner, "and we therefore with reluctance +abandoned him to the mercy of God, suffering ourselves all the horrors +that fill the mind at the approach of death." Near the beach and a +forlorn little oasis, they stumbled across Charles Lapham, who had +become separated from them. He had been without water for five days "and +after many efforts he got upon his feet and endeavored to walk. Seeing +him in so wretched a condition I could not but sympathize enough with +him in his torments to go back with him" toward water two miles away, +"which both my other companions refused to do. Accordingly they walked +forward while I went back a considerable distance with Lapham until, his +strength failing him, he suddenly fell on the ground, nor was he able +to rise again or even speak to me. Finding it vain to stay with him, I +covered him with sprays and leaves which I tore from an adjacent tree, +it being the last friendly office I could do him." + +Eight living skeletons left of eighteen strong seamen tottered into +Muscat and were cared for by the English consul. Daniel Saunders worked +his passage to England, was picked up by a press-gang, escaped, and so +returned to Salem. It was the fate of Juba Hill, the black cook from +Boston, to be detained among the Arabs as a slave. It is worth noting +that a black sea-cook figured in many of these tales of daring and +disaster, and among them was the heroic and amazing figure of one Peter +Jackson who belonged in the brig Ceres. While running down the river +from Calcutta she was thrown on her beam ends and Peter, perhaps dumping +garbage over the rail, took a header. Among the things tossed to him as +he floated away was a sail-boom on which he was swiftly carried out of +sight by the turbid current. All on board concluded that Peter Jackson +had been eaten by sharks or crocodiles and it was so reported when they +arrived home. An administrator was appointed for his goods and chattels +and he was officially deceased in the eyes of the law. A year or so +later this unconquerable sea-cook appeared in the streets of Salem, +grinning a welcome to former shipmates who fled from him in terror as +a ghostly visitation. He had floated twelve hours on his sail-boom, +it seemed, fighting off the sharks with his feet; and finally drifting +ashore. "He had hard work to do away with the impressions of being +dead," runs the old account, "but succeeded and was allowed the rights +and privileges of the living." + +The community of interests in these voyages of long ago included not +only the ship's company but also the townspeople, even the boys and +girls, who entrusted their little private speculations or "adventures" +to the captain. It was a custom which flourished well into the +nineteenth century. These memoranda are sprinkled through the account +books of the East Indiamen out of Salem and Boston. It might be Miss +Harriet Elkins who requested the master of the Messenger "please to +purchase at Calcutta two net beads with draperies; if at Batavia or any +spice market, nutmegs or mace; or if at Canton, two Canton shawls of the +enclosed colors at $5 per shawl. Enclosed is $10." + +Again, it might be Mr. John R. Tucker who ventured in the same ship one +hundred Spanish dollars to be invested in coffee and sugar, or Captain +Nathaniel West who risked in the Astrea fifteen boxes of spermaceti +candles and a pipe of Teneriffe wine. It is interesting to discover what +was done with Mr. Tucker's hundred Spanish dollars, as invested for him +by the skipper of the Messenger at Batavia and duly accounted for. +Ten bags of coffee were bought for $83.30, the extra expenses of duty, +boat-hire, and sacking bringing the total outlay to $90.19. The coffee +was sold at Antwerp on the way home for $183.75, and Mr. Tucker's +handsome profit on the adventure was therefore $93.56, or more than one +hundred per cent. + +It was all a grand adventure, in fact, and the word was aptly chosen to +fit this ocean trade. The merchant freighted his ship and sent her +out to vanish from his ken for months and months of waiting, with the +greater part of his savings, perhaps, in goods and specie beneath her +hatches. No cable messages kept him in touch with her nor were there +frequent letters from the master. Not until her signal was displayed by +the fluttering flags of the headland station at the harbor mouth could +he know whether he had gained or lost a fortune. The spirit of such +merchants was admirably typified in the last venture of Elias Hasket +Derby in 1798, when unofficial war existed between the United States and +France. + +American ships were everywhere seeking refuge from the privateers under +the tricolor, which fairly ran amuck in the routes of trade. For this +reason it meant a rich reward to land a cargo abroad. The ship Mount +Vernon, commanded by Captain Elias Hasket Derby, Jr., was laden with +sugar and coffee for Mediterranean ports, and was prepared for trouble, +with twenty guns mounted and fifty men to handle them. A smart ship and +a powerful one, she raced across to Cape Saint Vincent in sixteen days, +which was clipper speed. She ran into a French fleet of sixty sail, +exchanged broadsides with the nearest, and showed her stern to the +others. + +"We arrived at 12 o'clock [wrote Captain Derby from Gibraltar] popping +at Frenchmen all the forenoon. At 10 A.M. off Algeciras Point we were +seriously attacked by a large latineer who had on board more than one +hundred men. He came so near our broadside as to allow our six-pound +grape to do execution handsomely. We then bore away and gave him our +stern guns in a cool and deliberate manner, doing apparently great +execution. Our bars having cut his sails considerably, he was thrown +into confusion, struck both his ensign and his pennant. I was then +puzzled to know what to do with so many men; our ship was running large +with all her steering sails out, so that we could not immediately bring +her to the wind, and we were directly off Algeciras Point from whence I +had reason to fear she might receive assistance, and my port Gibraltar +in full view. These were circumstances that induced me to give up the +gratification of bringing him in. It was, however, a satisfaction to +flog the rascal in full view of the English fleet who were to leeward." + + + +CHAPTER V. YANKEE VIKINGS AND NEW TRADE ROUTES + +Soon after the Revolution the spirit of commercial exploration began +to stir in other ports than Salem. Out from New York sailed the ship +Empress of China in 1784 for the first direct voyage to Canton, to make +the acquaintance of a vast nation absolutely unknown to the people +of the United States, nor had one in a million of the industrious and +highly civilized Chinese ever so much as heard the name of the little +community of barbarians who dwelt on the western shore of the North +Atlantic. The oriental dignitaries in their silken robes graciously +welcomed the foreign ship with the strange flag and showed a lively +interest in the map spread upon the cabin table, offering every facility +to promote this new market for their silks and teas. After an absence +of fifteen months the Empress of China returned to her home port and her +pilgrimage aroused so much attention that the report of the supercargo, +Samuel Shaw, was read in Congress. + +Surpassing this achievement was that of Captain Stewart Dean, who very +shortly afterward had his fling at the China trade in an eighty-ton +sloop built at Albany. He was a stout-hearted old privateersman of the +Revolution whom nothing could dismay, and in this tiny Experiment of +his he won merited fame as one of the American pioneers of blue water. +Fifteen men and boys sailed with him, drilled and disciplined as if the +sloop were a frigate, and when the Experiment hauled into the stream, of +Battery Park, New York, "martial music and the boatswain's whistle were +heard on board with all the pomp and circumstance of war." Typhoons +and Malay proas, Chinese pirates and unknown shoals, had no terrors for +Stewart Dean. He saw Canton for himself, found a cargo, and drove home +again in a four months' passage, which was better than many a clipper +could do at a much later day. Smallest and bravest of the first Yankee +East Indiamen, this taut sloop, with the boatswain's pipe trilling +cheerily and all hands ready with cutlases and pikes to repel boarders, +was by no means the least important vessel that ever passed in by Sandy +Hook. + +In the beginnings of this picturesque relation with the Far East, Boston +lagged behind Salem, but her merchants, too, awoke to the opportunity +and so successfully that for generations there were no more conspicuous +names and shipping-houses in the China trade than those of Russell, +Perkins, and Forbes. The first attempt was very ambitious and rather +luckless. The largest merchantman ever built at that time in the United +States was launched at Quincy in 1789 to rival the towering ships of the +British East India Company. This Massachusetts created a sensation. +Her departure was a national event. She embodied the dreams of Captain +Randall and of the Samuel Shaw who had gone as supercargo in the Empress +of China. They formed a partnership and were able to find the necessary +capital. + +This six-hundred-ton ship loomed huge in the ayes of the crowds which +visited her. She was in fact no larger than such four-masted coasting +schooners as claw around Hatteras with deck-loads of Georgia pine or +fill with coal for down East, and manage it comfortably with seven or +eight men for a crew. The Massachusetts, however, sailed in 411 the +old-fashioned state and dignity of a master, four mates, a purser, +surgeon, carpenter, gunner, four quartermasters, three midshipmen, a +cooper, two cooks, a steward, and fifty seamen. The second officer was +Amasa Delano, a man even more remarkable than the ship, who wandered far +and wide and wrote a fascinating book about his voyages, a classic of +its kind, the memoirs of an American merchant mariner of a breed long +since extinct. + +While the Massachusetts was fitting out at Boston, one small annoyance +ruffled the auspicious undertaking. Three different crews were signed +before a full complement could be persuaded to tarry in the forecastle. +The trouble was caused by a fortune-teller of Lynn, Moll Pitcher by +name, who predicted disaster for the ship. Now every honest sailor knows +that certain superstitions are gospel fact, such as the bad luck brought +by a cross-eyed Finn, a black cat, or going to sea on Friday, and +these eighteenth century shellbacks must not be too severely chided for +deserting while they had the chance. As it turned out, the voyage did +have a sorry ending and death overtook an astonishingly large number of +the ship's people. + +Though she had been designed and built by master craftsmen of New +England who knew their trade surpassingly well, it was discovered when +the ship arrived at Canton that her timbers were already rotting. They +were of white oak which had been put into her green instead of properly +seasoned. This blunder wrecked the hopes of her owners. To cap it, the +cargo of masts and spars had also been stowed while wet and covered +with mud and ice, and the hatches had been battened. As a result the +air became so foul with decay that several hundred barrels of beef were +spoiled. To repair the ship was beyond the means of Captain Randall +and Samuel Shaw, and reluctantly they sold her to the Danish East India +Company at a heavy loss. Nothing could have been more unexpected than to +find that, for once, the experienced shipbuilders had been guilty of a +miscalculation. + +The crew scattered, and perhaps the prediction of the fortune-teller of +Lynn followed their roving courses, for when Captain Amasa Delano tried +to trace them a few years later, he jotted down such obituaries as these +on the list of names: + + "John Harris. A slave in Algiers at last accounts. + Roger Dyer. Died and thrown overboard off Cape Horn. + William Williams. Lost overboard off Japan. + James Crowley. Murdered by the Chinese near Macao. + John Johnson. Died on board an English Indiaman. + Seth Stowell. Was drowned at Whampoa in 1790. + Jeremiah Chace. Died with the small-pox at Whampoa in 1791. + Humphrey Chadburn. Shot and died at Whampoa in 1791. + Samuel Tripe. Drowned off Java Head in 1790. + James Stackpole. Murdered by the Chinese. + Nicholas Nicholson. Died with the leprosy at Macao. + William Murphy. Killed by Chinese pirates. + Larry Conner. Killed at sea." + +There were more of these gruesome items--so many of them that it appears +as though no more than a handful of this stalwart crew survived the +Massachusetts by a dozen years. Incredible as it sounds, Captain +Delano's roster accounted for fifty of them as dead while he was still +in the prime of life, and most of them had been snuffed out by violence. +As for his own career, it was overcast by no such unlucky star, and he +passed unscathed through all the hazards and vicissitudes that could +be encountered in that rugged and heroic era of endeavor. Set adrift in +Canton when the Massachusetts was sold, he promptly turned his hand to +repairing a large Danish ship which had been wrecked by storm, and he +virtually rebuilt her to the great satisfaction of the owners. + +Thence, with money in his pocket, young Delano went to Macao, where +he fell in with Commodore John McClure of the English Navy, who was +in command of an expedition setting out to explore a part of the South +Seas, including the Pelew Islands, New Guinea, New Holland, and the +Spice Islands. The Englishman liked this resourceful Yankee seaman and +did him the honor to say, recalls Delano, "that he considered I should +be a very useful man to him as a seaman, an officer, or a shipbuilder; +and if it was agreeable to me to go on board the Panther with him, I +should receive the some pay and emoluments with his lieutenants and +astronomers." A signal honor it was at a time when no love was lost +between British and American seafarers who had so recently fought each +other afloat. + +And so Amasa Delano embarked as a lieutenant of the Bombay Marine, to +explore tropic harbors and goons until then unmapped and to parley with +dusky kings. Commodore McClure, diplomatic and humane, had almost no +trouble with the untutored islanders, except on the coast of New Guinea, +where the Panther was attacked by a swarm of canoes and the surgeon was +killed. It was a spirited little affair, four-foot arrows pelting like +hail across the deck, a cannon hurling grapeshot from the taffrail, +Amasa Delano hit in the chest and pulling out the arrow to jump to his +duty again. + +Only a few years earlier the mutineers of the Bounty had established +themselves on Pitcairn Island, and Delano was able to compile the first +complete narrative of this extraordinary colony, which governed itself +in the light of the primitive Christian virtues. There was profound +wisdom in the comment of Amasa Delano: "While the present natural, +simple, and affectionate character prevails among these descendants +of the mutineers, they will be delightful to our minds, they will be +amiable and acceptable in the sight of God, and they will be useful +and happy among themselves. Let it be our fervent prayer that neither +canting and hypocritical emissaries from schools of artificial theology +on the one hand, nor sensual and licentious crews and adventurers on the +other, may ever enter the charming village of Pitcairn to give disease +to the minds or the bodies of the unsuspecting inhabitants." + +Two years of this intensely romantic existence, and Delano started +homeward. But there was a chance of profit at Mauritius, and there he +bought a tremendous East Indiaman of fourteen hundred tons as a joint +venture with a Captain Stewart and put a crew of a hundred and fifty men +on board. She had been brought in by a French privateer and Delano was +moved to remark, with an indignation which was much in advance of his +times: "Privateering is entirely at variance with the first principle of +honorable warfare.... This system of licensed robbery enables a wicked +and mercenary man to insult and injure even neutral friends on the +ocean; and when he meets an honest sailor who may have all his earnings +on board his ship but who carries an enemy's flag, he plunders him of +every cent and leaves him the poor consolation that it is done according +to law.... When the Malay subjects of Abba Thule cut down the cocoanut +trees of an enemy, in the spirit of private revenge, he asked them why +they acted in opposition to the principles on which they knew he always +made and conducted a war. They answered, and let the reason make us +humble, 'The English do so.'" + +In his grand East Indiaman young Captain Delano traded on the coast of +India but soon came to grief. The enterprise had been too large for him +to swing with what cash and credit he could muster, and the ship was +sold from under him to pay her debts. Again on the beach, with one +solitary gold moidore in his purse, he found a friendly American skipper +who offered him a passage to Philadelphia, which he accepted with the +pious reflection that, although his mind was wounded and mortified by +the financial disaster, his motives had been perfectly pure and honest. +He never saw his native land with so little pleasure as on this return +to it, he assures us, and the shore on which he would have leaped with +delight was covered with gloom and sadness. + +Now what makes it so well worth while to sketch in brief outline the +careers of one and another of these bygone shipmasters is that they +accurately reflected the genius and the temper of their generation. +There was, in truth, no such word as failure in their lexicon. It is +this quality that appeals to us beyond all else. Thrown on their beam +ends, they were presently planning something else, eager to shake dice +with destiny and with courage unbroken. It was so with Amasa Delano, who +promptly went to work "with what spirits I could revive within me. After +a time they returned to their former elasticity." + +He obtained a position as master builder in a shipyard, saved some +money, borrowed more, and with one of his brothers was soon blithely +building a vessel of two hundred tons for a voyage into the Pacific +and to the northwest coast after seals. They sailed along Patagonia and +found much to interest them, dodged in and out of the ports of Chili and +Peru, and incidentally recaptured a Spanish ship which was in the hands +of the slaves who formed her cargo. + +This was all in the day's work and happened at the island of Santa +Maria, not far from Juan Fernandez, where Captain Delano's Perseverance +found the high-pooped Tryal in a desperate state. Spanish sailors who +had survived the massacre were leaping overboard or scrambling up to the +mastheads while the African savages capered on deck and flourished their +weapons. Captain Delano liked neither the Spaniard nor the slavetrade, +but it was his duty to help fellow seamen in distress; so he cleared +for action and ordered two boats away to attend to the matter. The chief +mate, Rufus Low, was in charge, and a gallant sailor he showed himself. +They had to climb the high sides of the Tryal and carry, in hand-to-hand +conflict, the barricades of water-casks and bales of matting which the +slaves had built across the deck. There was no hanging back, and even +a mite of a midshipman from Boston pranced into it with his dirk. The +negroes were well armed and fought ferociously. The mate was seriously +wounded, four seamen were stabbed, the Spanish first mate had two musket +balls in him, and a passenger was killed in the fray. + +Having driven the slaves below and battened them down, the American +party returned next morning to put the irons on them. A horrid sight +confronted them. Thirsting for vengeance, the Spanish sailors had +spread-eagled several of the negroes to ringbolts in the deck and were +shaving the living flesh from them with razor-edged boarding lances. +Captain Delano thereupon disarmed these brutes and locked them up in +their turn, taking possession of the ship until he could restore order. +The sequel was that he received the august thanks of the Viceroy of +Chili and a gold medal from His Catholic Majesty. As was the custom, the +guilty slaves, poor wretches, were condemned to be dragged to the gibbet +at the tails of mules, to be hanged, their bodies burned, and their +heads stuck upon poles in the plaza. + +It was while in this Chilean port of Talcahuano that Amasa Delano heard +the tale of the British whaler which had sailed just before his arrival. +He tells it so well that I am tempted to quote it as a generous tribute +to a sailor of a rival race. After all, they were sprung from a common +stock and blood was thicker than water. Besides, it is the sort of +yarn that ought to be dragged to the light of day from its musty burial +between the covers of Delano's rare and ancient "Voyages and Travels." + +The whaler Betsy, it seems, went in and anchored under the guns of the +forts to seek provisions and make repairs. The captain went ashore +to interview the officials, leaving word that no Spaniards should be +allowed to come aboard because of the bad feeling against the English. +Three or four large boats filled with troops presently veered alongside +and were ordered to keep clear. This command was resented, and the +troops opened fire, followed by the forts. Now for the deed of a man +with his two feet under him. + +"The chief officer of the Betsy whose name was Hudson, a man of +extraordinary bravery, cut his cable and his ship swung the wrong way, +with her head in shore, passing close to several Spanish ships which, +with every vessel in the harbor that could bring a gun to bear, together +with three hundred soldiers in boats and on ship's decks and the two +batteries, all kept up a constant fire on him. The wind was light, +nearly a calm. The shot flew so thick that it was difficult for him to +make sail, some part of the rigging being cut away every minute. + +"He kept his men at the guns, and when the ship swung her broadside so +as to bear upon any of the Spanish ships, he kept up a fire at them. In +this situation the brave fellow continued to lie for three-quarters of +an hour before he got his topsails sheeted home. The action continued +in this manner for near an hour and a half. He succeeded in getting the +ship to sea, however, in defiance of all the force that could be brought +against him. The ship was very much cut to pieces in sails, rigging, and +hull; and a considerable number of men were killed and wounded on board. + +"Hudson kept flying from one part of the deck to the other during the +whole time of action, encouraging and threatening the men as occasion +required. He kept a musket in his hand most part of the time, firing +when he could find the leisure. Some of the men came aft and begged him +to give up the ship, telling him they should all be killed--that the +carpenter had all one side of him shot away--that one man was cut in +halves with a double-headed shot as he was going aloft to loose the +foretopsail and the body had fallen on deck in two separate parts--that +such a man was killed at his duty on the forecastle, and one more had +been killed in the maintop--that Sam, Jim, Jack, and Tom were wounded +and that they would do nothing more towards getting the ship out of the +harbor. + +"His reply to them was, 'then you shall be sure to die, for if they +do not kill you I will, so sure as you persist in any such cowardly +resolution,' saying at the same time, 'OUT SHE GOES, OR DOWN SHE GOES.'" + +By this resolute and determined conduct he kept the men to their duty +and succeeded in accomplishing one of the most daring enterprises +perhaps ever attempted. + +An immortal phrase, this simple dictum of first mate Hudson of the +Betsy, "Out she goes, or down she goes," and not unworthy of being +mentioned in the same breath with Farragut's "Damn the torpedoes." + +Joined by his brother Samuel in the schooner Pilgrim, which was used +as a tender in the sealing trade, Amasa Delano frequented unfamiliar +beaches until he had taken his toll of skins and was ready to bear away +for Canton to sell them. There were many Yankee ships after seals in +those early days, enduring more peril and privation than the whalemen, +roving over the South Pacific among the rock-bound islands unknown +to the merchant navigator. The men sailed wholly on shares, a seaman +receiving one per cent of the catch and the captain ten per cent, and +they slaughtered the seal by the million, driving them from the most +favored haunts within a few years. For instance, American ships first +visited Mas a Fuera in 1797, and Captain Delano estimated that during +the seven years following three million skins were taken to China from +this island alone. He found as many as fourteen vessels there at one +time, and he himself carried away one hundred thousand skins. It was a +gold mine for profit while it lasted. + +There were three Delano brothers afloat in two vessels, and of their +wanderings Amasa set down this epitome: "Almost the whole of our +connections who were left behind had need of our assistance, and to look +forward it was no more than a reasonable calculation to make that +our absence would not be less than three years... together with the +extraordinary uncertainty of the issue of the voyage, as we had nothing +but our hands to depend upon to obtain a cargo which was only to be done +through storms, dangers, and breakers, and taken from barren rocks in +distant regions. But after a voyage of four years for one vessel and +five for the other, we were all permitted to return safe home to our +friends and not quite empty-handed. We had built both of the vessels we +were in and navigated them two and three times around the globe." Each +one of the brothers had been a master builder and rigger and a navigator +of ships in every part of the world. + +By far the most important voyage undertaken by American merchantmen +during the decade of brilliant achievement following the Revolution was +that of Captain Robert Gray in the Columbia, which was the first ship +to visit and explore the northwest coast and to lead the way for such +adventurers as Richard Cleveland and Amasa Delano. On his second voyage +in 1792, Captain Gray discovered the great river he christened Columbia +and so gave to the United States its valid title to that vast territory +which Lewis and Clark were to find after toiling over the mountains +thirteen years later. + + + +CHAPTER VI. "FREE TRADE AND SAILORS' RIGHTS" + +When the first Congress under the new Federal Constitution assembled +in 1789, a spirit of pride was manifested in the swift recovery and the +encouraging growth of the merchant marine, together with a concerted +determination to promote and protect it by means of national +legislation. The most imperative need was a series of retaliatory +measures to meet the burdensome navigation laws of England, to give +American ships a fair field and no favors. The Atlantic trade was +therefore stimulated by allowing a reduction of ten per cent of the +customs duties on goods imported in vessels built and owned by American +citizens. The East India trade, which already employed forty New England +ships, was fostered in like manner. Teas brought direct under the +American flag paid an average duty of twelve cents a pound while teas in +foreign bottoms were taxed twenty-seven cents. It was sturdy protection, +for on a cargo of one hundred thousand pounds of assorted teas from +India or China, a British ship would pay $27,800 into the custom house +and a Salem square-rigger only $10,980. + +The result was that the valuable direct trade with the Far East was +absolutely secured to the American flag. Not content with this, Congress +decreed a system of tonnage duties which permitted the native owner to +pay six cents per ton on his vessel while the foreigner laid down fifty +cents as an entry fee for every ton his ship measured, or thirty cents +if he owned an American-built vessel. In 1794, Congress became even more +energetic in defense of its mariners and increased the tariff rates on +merchandise in foreign vessels. A nation at last united, jealous of its +rights, resentful of indignities long suffered, and intelligently alive +to its shipping as the chief bulwark of prosperity, struck back with +peaceful weapons and gained a victory of incalculable advantage. +Its Congress, no longer feeble and divided, laid the foundations for +American greatness upon the high seas which was to endure for more than +a half century. Wars, embargoes, and confiscations might interrupt but +they could not seriously harm it. + +In the three years after 1789 the merchant shipping registered for the +foreign trade increased from 123,893 tons to 411,438 tons, presaging a +growth without parallel in the history of the commercial world. Foreign +ships were almost entirely driven out of American ports, and ninety-one +per cent of imports and eighty-six per cent of exports were conveyed +in vessels built and manned by Americans. Before Congress intervened, +English merchantmen had controlled three-fourths of our commerce +overseas. When Thomas Jefferson, as Secretary of State, fought down +Southern opposition to a retaliatory shipping policy, he uttered a +warning which his countrymen were to find still true and apt in the +twentieth century: "If we have no seamen, our ships will be useless, +consequently our ship timber, iron, and hemp; our shipbuilding will be +at an end; ship carpenters will go over to other nations; our young men +have no call to the sea; our products, carried in foreign bottoms, +will be saddled with war-freight and insurance in time of war--and the +history of the last hundred years shows that the nation which is our +carrier has three years of war for every four years of peace." + +The steady growth of an American merchant marine was interrupted only +once in the following decade. In the year 1793 war broke out between +England and France. A decree of the National Convention of the French +Republic granted neutral vessels the same rights as those which flew the +tricolor. This privilege reopened a rushing trade with the West Indies, +and hundreds of ships hastened from American ports to Martinique, +Guadeloupe, and St. Lucia. + +Like a thunderbolt came the tidings that England refused to look upon +this trade with the French colonies as neutral and that her cruisers +had been told to seize all vessels engaged in it and to search them +for English-born seamen. This ruling was enforced with such barbarous +severity that it seemed as if the War for Independence had been fought +in vain. Without warning, unable to save themselves, great fleets of +Yankee merchantmen were literally swept from the waters of the West +Indies. At St. Eustatius one hundred and thirty of them were condemned. +The judges at Bermuda condemned eleven more. Crews and passengers were +flung ashore without food or clothing, were abused, insulted, or perhaps +impressed in British privateers. The ships were lost to their owners. +There was no appeal and no redress. At Martinique an English fleet and +army captured St. Pierre in February, 1794. Files of marines boarded +every American ship in the harbor, tore down the colors, and flung two +hundred and fifty seamen into the foul holds of a prison hulk. There +they were kept, half-dead with thirst and hunger while their vessels, +uncared for, had stranded or sunk at their moorings. Scores of outrages +as abominable as this were on record in the office of the Secretary of +State. Shipmasters were afraid to sail to the southward and, for lack +of these markets for dried cod, the fishing schooners of Marblehead were +idle. + +For a time a second war with England seemed imminent. An alarmed +Congress passed laws to create a navy and to fortify the most important +American harbors. President Washington recommended an embargo of thirty +days, which Congress promptly voted and then extended for thirty +more. It was a popular measure and strictly enforced by the mariners +themselves. The mates and captains of the brigs and snows in the +Delaware River met and resolved not to go to sea for another ten days, +swearing to lie idle sooner than feed the British robbers in the West +Indies. It was in the midst of these demonstrations that Washington +seized the one hope of peace and recommended a special mission to +England. + +The treaty negotiated by John Jay in 1794 was received with an outburst +of popular indignation. Jay was damned as a traitor, while the sailors +of Portsmouth burned him in effigy. By way of an answer to the terms of +the obnoxious treaty, a seafaring mob in Boston raided and burned +the British privateer Speedwell, which had put into that port as a +merchantman with her guns and munitions hidden beneath a cargo of West +India produce. + +The most that can be said of the commercial provisions of the treaty is +that they opened direct trade with the East Indies but at the price of +complete freedom of trade for British shipping in American ports. It +must be said, too, that although the treaty failed to clear away the +gravest cause of hostility--the right of search and impressment--yet it +served to postpone the actual dash, and during the years in which it was +in force American shipping splendidly prospered, freed of most irksome +handicaps. + +The quarrel with France had been brewing at the same time and for +similar reasons. Neutral trade with England was under the ban, and the +Yankee shipmaster was in danger of losing his vessel if he sailed to or +from a port under the British flag. It was out of the frying-pan into +the fire, and French privateers welcomed the excuse to go marauding in +the Atlantic and the Caribbean. What it meant to fight off these greedy +cutthroats is told in a newspaper account of the engagement of +Captain Richard Wheatland, who was homeward bound to Salem in the ship +Perseverance in 1799. He was in the Old Straits of Bahama when a +fast schooner came up astern, showing Spanish colors and carrying +a tremendous press of canvas. Unable to run away from her, Captain +Wheatland reported to his owners: + +"We took in steering sails, wore ship, hauled up our courses, piped all +hands to quarters and prepared for action. The schooner immediately took +in sail, hoisted an English Union flag and passed under our lee at a +considerable distance. We wore ship, she did the same, and we passed +each other within half a musket. A fellow hailed us in broken English +and ordered the boat hoisted out and the captain to come aboard, which +he refused. He again ordered our boat out and enforced his orders with a +menace that in case of refusal he would sink us, using at the same time +the vilest and most infamous language it is possible to conceive of. +... We hauled the ship to wind and as he passed poured a whole +broadside into him with great success. Sailing faster than we, he ranged +considerably ahead, tacked and again passed, giving us a broadside and +furious discharge of musketry, which he kept up incessantly until the +latter part of the engagement. His musket balls reached us in every +direction but his large shot either fell short or went considerably over +us while our guns loaded with round shot and square bars of iron were +plied so briskly and directed with such good judgment that before he +got out of range we had cut his mainsail and foretopsail all to rags and +cleared his decks so effectively that when he bore away from us there +were scarcely ten men to be seen. He then struck his English flag and +hoisted the flag of The Terrible Republic and made off with all the sail +he could carry, much disappointed, no doubt, at not being able to give +us a fraternal embrace. We feel confidence that we have rid the world of +some infamous pests of society." + +By this time, the United States was engaged in active hostilities with +France, although war had not been declared. The news of the indignities +which American commissions had suffered at the hands of the French +Directory had stirred the people to war pitch. Strong measures for +national defense were taken, which stopped little short of war. The +country rallied to the slogan, "Millions for defense but not one cent +for tribute," and the merchants of the seaports hastened to subscribe +funds to build frigates to be loaned to the Government. Salem launched +the famous Essex, ready for sea six months after the keel was laid, at +a cost of $75,000. Her two foremost merchants, Elias Hasket Derby and +William Gray, led the list with ten thousand dollars each. The call sent +out by the master builder, Enos Briggs, rings with thrilling effect: + +"To Sons of Freedom! All true lovers of Liberty of your Country! Step +forth and give your assistance in building the frigate to oppose French +insolence and piracy. Let every man in possession of a white oak tree be +ambitious to be foremost in hurrying down the timber to Salem where the +noble structure is to be fabricated to maintain your rights upon the +seas and make the name of America respected among the nations of the +world. Your largest and longest trees are wanted, and the arms of them +for knees and rising timber. Four trees are wanted for the keel which +altogether will measure 146 feet in length, and hew sixteen inches +square." + +This handsome frigate privately built by patriots of the republic +illuminates the coastwise spirit and conditions of her time. She was +a Salem ship from keel to truck. Captain Jonathan Haraden, the finest +privateersman of the Revolution, made the rigging for the mainmast at +his ropewalk in Brown Street. Joseph Vincent fitted out the foremast and +Thomas Briggs the mizzenmast in their lofts at the foot of the Common. +When the huge hemp cables were ready for the frigate, the workmen +carried them to the shipyard on their shoulders, the parade led by fife +and drum. Her sails were cut from duck woven in Daniel Rust's factory +in Broad Street and her iron work was forged by Salem shipsmiths. It +was not surprising that Captain Richard Derby was chosen to command +the Essex, but he was abroad in a ship of his own and she sailed under +Captain Edward Preble of the Navy. + +The war cloud passed and the merchant argosies overflowed the wharves +and havens of New England, which had ceased to monopolize the business +on blue water. New York had become a seaport with long ranks of +high-steeved bowsprits soaring above pleasant Battery Park and a forest +of spars extending up the East River. In 1790 more than two thousand +ships, brigs, schooners, and smaller craft had entered and cleared, +and the merchants met in the coffee-houses to discuss charters, +bills-of-lading, and adventures. Sailors commanded thrice the wages of +laborers ashore. Shipyards were increasing and the builders could build +as large and swift East Indiamen as those of which Boston and Salem +boasted. + +Philadelphia had her Stephen Girard, whose wealth was earned in ships, +a man most remarkable and eccentric, whose career was one of the great +maritime romances. Though his father was a prosperous merchant of +Bordeaux engaged in the West India trade, he was shifting for himself as +a cabin-boy on his father's ships when only fourteen years old. With +no schooling, barely able to read and write, this urchin sailed between +Bordeaux and the French West Indies for nine years, until he gained +the rank of first mate. At the age of twenty-six he entered the port of +Philadelphia in command of a sloop which had narrowly escaped capture by +British frigates. There he took up his domicile and laid the foundation +of his fortune in small trading ventures to New Orleans and Santo +Domingo. + +In 1791 he began to build a fleet of beautiful ships for the China +and India trade, their names, Montesquieu, Helvetius, Voltaire, and +Rousseau, revealing his ideas of religion and liberty. So successfully +did he combine banking and shipping that in 1813 he was believed to be +the wealthiest merchant in the United States. In that year one of his +ships from China was captured off the Capes of the Delaware by a British +privateer. Her cargo of teas, nankeens, and silks was worth half a +million dollars to him but he succeeded in ransoming it on the spot by +counting out one hundred and eighty thousand Spanish milled dollars. No +privateersman could resist such strategy as this. + +Alone in his old age, without a friend or relative to close his eyes +in death, Stephen Girard, once a penniless, ignorant French cabin-boy, +bequeathed his millions to philanthropy, and the Girard College for +orphan boys, in Philadelphia, is his monument. + +The Treaty of Amiens brought a little respite to Europe and a peaceful +interlude for American shipmasters, but France and England came to grips +again in 1803. For two years thereafter the United States was almost the +only important neutral nation not involved in the welter of conflict on +land and sea, and trade everywhere sought the protection of the +Stars and Stripes. England had swept her own rivals, men-of-war and +merchantmen, from the face of the waters. France and Holland ceased to +carry cargoes beneath their own ensigns. Spain was afraid to send her +galleons to Mexico and Peru. All the Continental ports were begging for +American ships to transport their merchandise. It was a maritime harvest +unique and unexpected. + +Yankee skippers were dominating the sugar trade of Cuba and were rolling +across the Atlantic with the coffee, hides, and indigo of Venezuela and +Brazil. Their fleets crowded the roadsteads of Manila and Batavia +and packed the warehouses of Antwerp, Lisbon, and Hamburg. It was a +situation which England could not tolerate without attempting to thwart +an immense traffic which she construed as giving aid and comfort to her +enemies. Under cover of the so-called Rule of 1756 British admiralty +courts began to condemn American vessels carrying products from enemies' +colonies to Europe, even when the voyage was broken by first entering an +American port. It was on record in September, 1805, that fifty American +ships had been condemned in England and as many more in the British West +Indies. + +This was a trifling disaster, however, compared with the huge calamity +which befell when Napoleon entered Berlin as a conqueror and proclaimed +his paper blockade of the British Isles. There was no French navy to +enforce it, but American vessels dared not sail for England lest they +be snapped up by French privateers. The British Government savagely +retaliated with further prohibitions, and Napoleon countered in like +manner until no sea was safe for a neutral ship and the United States +was powerless to assert its rights. Thomas Jefferson as President used +as a weapon the Embargo of 1807, which was, at first, a popular measure, +and which he justified in these pregnant sentences: "The whole world +is thus laid under interdict by these two nations, and our own vessels, +their cargoes, and crews, are to be taken by the one or the other for +whatever place they may be destined out of our limits. If, therefore, on +leaving our harbors we are certainly to lose them, is it not better as +to vessels, cargoes, and seamen, to keep them at home?" + +A people proud, independent, and pugnacious, could not long submit to a +measure of defense which was, in the final sense, an abject surrender to +brute force. New England, which bore the brunt of the embargo, was first +to rebel against it. Sailors marched through the streets clamoring for +bread or loaded their vessels and fought their way to sea. In New +York the streets of the waterside were deserted, ships dismantled, +countinghouses unoccupied, and warehouses empty. In one year foreign +commerce decreased in value from $108,000,000 to $22,000,000. + +After fifteen months Congress repealed the law, substituting a +Non-Intercourse Act which suspended trade with Great Britain and France +until their offending orders were repealed. All such measures were +doomed to be futile. Words and documents, threats and arguments could +not intimidate adversaries who paid heed to nothing else than broadsides +from line-of-battle ships or the charge of battalions. With other +countries trade could now be opened. Hopefully the hundreds of American +ships long pent-up in harbor winged it deep-laden for the Baltic, the +North Sea, and the Mediterranean. But few of them ever returned. Like +a brigand, Napoleon lured them into a trap and closed it, advising the +Prussian Government, which was under his heel: "Let the American ships +enter your ports. Seize them afterward. You shall deliver the cargoes to +me and I will take them in part payment of the Prussian war debt." + +Similar orders were executed wherever his mailed fist reached, the +pretext being reprisal for the Non-Intercourse Act. More than two +hundred American vessels were lost to their owners, a ten-million-dollar +robbery for which France paid an indemnity of five millions after +twenty years. It was the grand climax of the exploitation which American +commerce had been compelled to endure through two centuries of tumult +and bloodshed afloat. There lingers today in many a coastwise town an +inherited dislike for France. It is a legacy of that far-off catastrophe +which beggared many a household and filled the streets with haggard, +broken shipmasters. + +It was said of this virile merchant marine that it throve under pillage +and challenged confiscation. Statistics confirm this brave paradox. In +1810, while Napoleon was doing his worst, the deep-sea tonnage amounted +to 981,019; and it is a singular fact that in proportion to population +this was to stand as the high tide of American foreign shipping until +thirty-seven years later. It ebbed during the War of 1812 but rose again +with peace and a real and lasting freedom of the seas. + +This second war with England was fought in behalf of merchant seamen +and they played a nobly active part in it. The ruthless impressment +of seamen was the most conspicuous provocation, but it was only one +of many. Two years before hostilities were openly declared, British +frigates were virtually blockading the port of New York, halting and +searching ships as they pleased, making prizes of those with French +destinations, stealing sailors to fill their crews, waging war in +everything but name, and enjoying the sport of it. A midshipman of +one of them merrily related: "Every morning at daybreak we set about +arresting the progress of all the vessels we saw, firing off guns to the +right and left to make every ship that was running in heave to or wait +until we had leisure to send a boat on board to see, in our lingo, what +she was made of. I have frequently known a dozen and sometimes a couple +of dozen ships lying a league or two off the port, losing their fair +wind, their tide, and worse than all, their market for many hours, +sometimes the whole day, before our search was completed." + +The right of a belligerent to search neutral vessels for contraband of +war or evidence of a forbidden destination was not the issue at stake. +This was a usage sanctioned by such international law as then existed. +It was the alleged right to search for English seamen in neutral vessels +that Great Britain exercised, not only on the high seas but even in +territorial waters, which the American Government refused to recognize. +In vain the Government had endeavored to protect its sailors from +impressment by means of certificates of birth and citizenship. These +documents were jeered at by the English naval lieutenant and his +boarding gang, who kidnapped from the forecastle such stalwart tars as +pleased their fancy. The victim who sought to inform an American consul +of his plight was lashed to the rigging and flogged by a boatswain's +mate. The files of the State Department, in 1807, had contained the +names of six thousand American sailors who were as much slaves and +prisoners aboard British men-of-war as if they had been made captives by +the Dey of Algiers. One of these incidents, occurring on the ship Betsy, +Captain Nathaniel Silsbee, while at Madras in 1795, will serve to show +how this brutal business was done. + +"I received a note early one morning from my chief mate that one of my +sailors, Edward Hulen, a fellow townsman whom I had known from boyhood, +had been impressed and taken on board of a British frigate then being +in port.... I immediately went on board my ship and having there learned +all the facts in the case, proceeded to the frigate, where I found Hulen +and in his presence was informed by the first lieutenant of the frigate +that he had taken Hulen from my ship under a peremptory order from his +commander to visit every American ship in port and take from each of +them one or more of their seamen.... I then called upon Captain Cook, +who commanded the frigate, and sought first by all the persuasive means +that I was capable of using and ultimately by threats to appeal to the +Government of the place to obtain Hulen's release, but in vain.... +It remained for me only to recommend Hulen to that protection of +the lieutenant which a good seaman deserves, and to submit to the +high-handed insult thus offered to the flag of my country which I had no +means either of preventing or resisting." + +After several years' detention in the British Navy, Hulen returned to +Salem and lived to serve on board privateers in the second war with +England. + +Several years' detention! This was what it meant to be a pressed man, +perhaps with wife and children at home who had no news of him nor any +wages to support them. At the time of the Nore Mutiny in 1797, there +were ships in the British fleet whose men had not been paid off for +eight, ten, twelve, and in one instance fifteen years. These wooden +walls of England were floating hells, and a seaman was far better off in +jail. He was flogged if he sulked and again if he smiled flogged until +the blood ran for a hundred offenses as trivial as these. His food was +unspeakably bad and often years passed before he was allowed to set foot +ashore. Decent men refused to volunteer and the ships were filled with +the human scum and refuse caught in the nets of the press-gangs of +Liverpool, London, and Bristol. + +It is largely forgotten or unknown that this system of recruiting was +as intolerable in England as it was in the United States and as fiercely +resented. Oppressive and unjust, it was nevertheless endured as the +bulwark of England's defense against her foes. It ground under its heel +the very people it protected and made them serfs in order to keep them +free. No man of the common people who lived near the coast of England +was safe from the ruffianly press-gangs nor any merchant ship that +entered her ports. It was the most cruel form of conscription ever +devised. Mob violence opposed it again and again, and British East +Indiamen fought the King's tenders sooner than be stripped of their +crews and left helpless. Feeling in America against impressment was +never more highly inflamed, even on the brink of the War of 1812, than +it had long been in England itself, although the latter country was +unable to rise and throw it off. Here are the words, not of an angry +American patriot but of a modern English historian writing of his own +nation: * "To the people the impress was an axe laid at the foot of the +tree. There was here no question, as with trade, of the mere loss of +hands who could be replaced. Attacking the family in the person of its +natural supporter and protector, the octopus system of which the gangs +were the tentacles, struck at the very foundations of domestic life and +brought to thousands of households a poverty as bitter and a grief as +poignant as death. ... The mutiny at the Nore brought the people face to +face with the appalling risks attendant on wholesale pressing while the +war with America, incurred for the sole purpose of upholding the right +to press, taught them the lengths to which their rulers were still +prepared to go in order to enslave them." * + + + * The Press Gang Afloat and Ashore, by J. R. Hutchinson. + + + +CHAPTER VII. THE BRILLIANT ERA OF 1812 + +American privateering in 1812 was even bolder and more successful than +during the Revolution. It was the work of a race of merchant seamen who +had found themselves, who were in the forefront of the world's trade and +commerce, and who were equipped to challenge the enemy's pretensions to +supremacy afloat. Once more there was a mere shadow of a navy to protect +them, but they had learned to trust their own resources. They would send +to sea fewer of the small craft, slow and poorly armed, and likely to +meet disaster. They were capable of manning what was, in fact, a +private navy comprised of fast and formidable cruisers. The intervening +generation had advanced the art of building and handling ships beyond +all rivalry, and England grudgingly acknowledged their ability. The year +of 1812 was indeed but a little distance from the resplendent modern era +of the Atlantic packet and the Cape Horn clipper. + +Already these Yankee deep-water ships could be recognized afar by their +lofty spars and snowy clouds of cotton duck beneath which the slender +hull was a thin black line. Far up to the gleaming royals they carried +sail in winds so strong that the lumbering English East Indiamen were +hove to or snugged down to reefed topsails. It was not recklessness but +better seamanship. The deeds of the Yankee privateers of 1812 prove this +assertion to the hilt. Their total booty amounted to thirteen hundred +prizes taken over all the Seven Seas, with a loss to England of forty +million dollars in ships and cargoes. There were, all told, more +than five hundred of them in commission, but New England no longer +monopolized this dashing trade. Instead of Salem it was Baltimore that +furnished the largest fleet--fifty-eight vessels, many of them the fast +ships and schooners which were to make the port famous as the home +of the Baltimore clipper model. All down the coast, out of Norfolk, +Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans, sallied the +privateers to show that theirs was, in truth, a seafaring nation +ardently united in a common cause. + +Again and more vehemently the people of England raised their voices in +protest and lament, for these saucy sea-raiders fairly romped to and fro +in the Channel, careless of pursuit, conducting a blockade of their own +until London was paying the famine price of fifty-eight dollars a barrel +for flour, and it was publicly declared mortifying and distressing +that "a horde of American cruisers should be allowed, unresisted and +unmolested, to take, burn, or sink our own vessels in our own inlets and +almost in sight of our own harbors." It was Captain Thomas Boyle in the +Chasseur of Baltimore who impudently sent ashore his proclamation of a +blockade of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which he +requested should be posted in Lloyd's Coffee House. + +A wonderfully fine figure of a fighting seaman was this Captain Boyle, +with an Irish sense of humor which led him to haunt the enemy's coast +and to make sport of the frigates which tried to catch him. His Chasseur +was considered one of the ablest privateers of the war and the most +beautiful vessel ever seen in Baltimore. A fleet and graceful schooner +with a magical turn for speed, she mounted sixteen long twelve-pounders +and carried a hundred officers, seamen, and marines, and was never +outsailed in fair winds or foul. "Out of sheer wantonness," said an +admirer, "she sometimes affected to chase the enemy's men-of-war of +far superior force." Once when surrounded by two frigates and two naval +brigs, she slipped through and was gone like a phantom. During his +first cruise in the Chasseur, Captain Boyle captured eighteen valuable +merchantmen. It was such defiant rovers as he that provoked the "Morning +Chronicle" of London to splutter "that the whole coast of Ireland from +Wexford round by Cape Clear to Carrickfergus, should have been for above +a month under the unresisted domination of a few petty fly-by-nights +from the blockaded ports of the United States is a grievance equally +intolerable and disgraceful." + +This was when the schooner Syren had captured His Majesty's cutter +Landrail while crossing the Irish Sea with dispatches; when the Governor +Tompkins burned fourteen English vessels in the English Channel in quick +succession; when the Harpy of Baltimore cruised for three months off +the Irish and English coasts and in the Bay of Biscay, and returned to +Boston filled with spoils, including a half million dollars of money; +when the Prince de Neuchatel hovered at her leisure in the Irish +Channel and made coasting trade impossible; and when the Young Wasp of +Philadelphia cruised for six months in those same waters. + +Two of the privateers mentioned were first-class fighting ships whose +engagements were as notable, in their way, as those of the American +frigates which made the war as illustrious by sea as it was ignominious +by land. While off Havana in 1815, Captain Boyle met the schooner St. +Lawrence of the British Navy, a fair match in men and guns. The Chasseur +could easily have run away but stood up to it and shot the enemy +to pieces in fifteen minutes. Brave and courteous were these two +commanders, and Lieutenant Gordon of the St. Lawrence gave his captor a +letter which read, in part: "In the event of Captain Boyle's becoming +a prisoner of war to any British cruiser I consider it a tribute justly +due to his humane and generous treatment of myself, the surviving +officers, and crew of His Majesty's late schooner St. Lawrence, to state +that his obliging attention and watchful solicitude to preserve our +effects and render us comfortable during the short time we were in his +possession were such as justly entitle him to the indulgence and respect +of every British subject." + +The Prince de Neuchatel had the honor of beating off the attack of a +forty-gun British frigate--an exploit second only to that of the General +Armstrong in the harbor of Fayal. This privateer with a foreign name +hailed from New York and was so fortunate as to capture for her owners +three million dollars' worth of British merchandise. With Captain J. +Ordronaux on the quarterdeck, she was near Nantucket Shoals at noon on +October 11, 1814, when a strange sail was discovered. As this vessel +promptly gave chase, Captain Ordronaux guessed-and as events proved +correctly--that she must be a British frigate. She turned out to be the +Endymion. The privateer had in tow a prize which she was anxious to +get into port, but she was forced to cast off the hawser late in the +afternoon and make every effort to escape. + +The breeze died with the sun and the vessels were close inshore. +Becalmed, the privateer and the frigate anchored a quarter of a mile +apart. Captain Ordronaux might have put his crew on the beach in boats +and abandoned his ship. This was the reasonable course, for, as he had +sent in several prize crews, he was short-handed and could muster no +more than thirty-seven men and boys. The Endymion, on the other hand, +had a complement of three hundred and fifty sailors and marines, and in +size and fighting power she was in the class of the American frigates +President and Constitution. Quite unreasonably, however, the master of +the privateer decided to await events. + +The unexpected occurred shortly after dusk when several boats loaded to +the gunwales with a boarding party crept away from the frigate. Five +of them, with one hundred and twenty men, made a concerted attack +at different points, alongside and under the bow and stern. Captain +Ordronaux had told his crew that he would blow up the ship with all +hands before striking his colors, and they believed him implicitly. This +was the hero who was described as "a Jew by persuasion, a Frenchman by +birth, an American for convenience, and so diminutive in stature as +to make him appear ridiculous, in the eyes of others, even for him to +enforce authority among a hardy, weatherbeaten crew should they do aught +against his will." He was big enough, nevertheless, for this night's +bloody work, and there was no doubt about his authority. While the +British tried to climb over the bulwarks, his thirty-seven men and boys +fought like raging devils, with knives, pistols, cutlases, with their +bare fists and their teeth. A few of the enemy gained the deck, but +the privateersmen turned and killed them. Others leaped aboard and were +gradually driving the Americans back, when the skipper ran to the hatch +above the powder magazine, waving a lighted match and swearing to drop +it in if his crew retreated one step further. Either way the issue +seemed desperate. But again they took their skipper's word for it and +rallied for a bloody struggle which soon swept the decks. + +No more than twenty minutes had passed and the battle was won. The enemy +was begging for quarter. One boat had been sunk, three had drifted away +filled with dead and wounded, and the fifth was captured with thirty-six +men in it of whom only eight were unhurt. The American loss was +seven killed and twenty-four wounded, or thirty-one of her crew of +thirty-seven. Yet they had not given up the ship. The frigate Endymion +concluded that once was enough, and next morning the Prince de Neuchatel +bore away for Boston with a freshening breeze. + +Those were merchant seamen also who held the General Armstrong against +a British squadron through that moonlit night in Fayal Roads, inflicting +heavier losses than were suffered in any naval action of the war. It is +a story Homeric, almost incredible in its details and so often repeated +that it can be only touched upon in this brief chronicle. The leader +was a kindly featured man who wore a tall hat, side-whiskers, and a tail +coat. His portrait might easily have served for that of a New England +deacon of the old school. No trace of the swashbuckler in this Captain +Samuel Reid, who had been a thrifty, respected merchant skipper until +offered the command of a privateer. + +Touching at the Azores for water and provisions in September, 1814, +he was trapped in port by the great seventy-four-gun ship of the +line Plantagenet, the thirty-eight-gun frigate Rota, and the warbrig +Carnation. Though he was in neutral water, they paid no heed to this +but determined to destroy a Yankee schooner which had played havoc with +their shipping. Four hundred men in twelve boats, with a howitzer in +the bow of each boat, were sent against the General Armstrong in one +flotilla. But not a man of the four hundred gained her deck. Said an +eyewitness: "The Americans fought with great firmness but more like +bloodthirsty savages than anything else. They rushed into the boats +sword in hand and put every soul to death as far as came within their +power. Some of the boats were left without a single man to row them, +others with three or four. The most that any one returned with was about +ten. Several boats floated ashore full of dead bodies.... For three days +after the battle we were employed in burying the dead that washed on +shore in the surf." + +This tragedy cost the British squadron one hundred and twenty men in +killed and one hundred and thirty in wounded, while Captain Reid lost +only two dead and had seven wounded. He was compelled to retreat ashore +next day when the ships stood in to sink his schooner with their big +guns, but the honors of war belonged to him and well-earned were the +popular tributes when he saw home again, nor was there a word too much +in the florid toast: "Captain Reid--his valor has shed a blaze of +renown upon the character of our seamen, and won for himself a laurel of +eternal bloom." + +It is not to glorify war nor to rekindle an ancient feud that such +episodes as these are recalled to mind. These men, and others like them, +did their duty as it came to them, and they were sailors of whom +the whole Anglo-Saxon race might be proud. In the crisis they were +Americans, not privateersmen in quest of plunder, and they would gladly +die sooner than haul down the Stars and Stripes. The England against +which they fought was not the England of today. Their honest grievances, +inflicted by a Government too intent upon crushing Napoleon to be fair +to neutrals, have long ago been obliterated. This War of 1812 cleared +the vision of the Mother Country and forever taught her Government that +the people of the Republic were, in truth, free and independent. + +This lesson was driven home not only by the guns of the Constitution and +the United States, but also by the hundreds of privateers and the forty +thousand able seamen who were eager to sail in them. They found no great +place in naval history, but England knew their prowess and respected it. +Every schoolboy is familiar with the duels of the Wasp and the Frolic, +of the Enterprise and the Boxer; but how many people know what happened +when the privateer Decatur met and whipped the Dominica of the British +Navy to the southward of Bermuda? + +Captain Diron was the man who did it as he was cruising out of +Charleston, South Carolina, in the summer of 1813. Sighting an armed +schooner slightly heavier than his own vessel, he made for her and was +unperturbed when the royal ensign streamed from her gaff. Clearing for +action, he closed the hatches so that none of his men could hide below. +The two schooners fought in the veiling smoke until the American could +ram her bowsprit over the other's stern and pour her whole crew aboard. +In the confined space of the deck, almost two hundred men and lads were +slashing and stabbing and shooting amid yells and huzzas. Lieutenant +Barrette, the English commander, only twenty-five years old, was +mortally hurt and every other officer, excepting the surgeon and one +midshipman, was killed or wounded. Two-thirds of the crew were down but +still they refused to surrender, and Captain Diron had to pull down the +colors with his own hands. Better discipline and marksmanship had won +the day for him and his losses were comparatively small. + +Men of his description were apt to think first of glory and let the +profits go hang, for there was no cargo to be looted in a King's ship. +Other privateersmen, however, were not so valiant or quarrelsome, and +there was many a one tied up in London River or the Mersey which had +been captured without very savage resistance. Yet on the whole it is +fair to say that the private armed ships outfought and outsailed the +enemy as impressively as did the few frigates of the American Navy. + +There was a class of them which exemplified the rapid development of the +merchant marine in a conspicuous manner--large commerce destroyers too +swift to be caught, too powerful to fear the smaller cruisers. They were +extremely profitable business ventures, entrusted to the command of the +most audacious and skillful masters that could be engaged. Of this type +was the ship America of Salem, owned by the Crowninshields, which made +twenty-six prizes and brought safely into port property which realized +more than a million dollars. Of this the owners and shareholders +received six hundred thousand dollars as dividends. She was a stately +vessel, built for the East India trade, and was generally conceded to +be the fastest privateer afloat. For this service the upper deck was +removed and the sides were filled in with stout oak timber as an armored +protection, and longer yards and royal masts gave her a huge area +of sail. Her crew of one hundred and fifty men had the exacting +organization of a man-of-war, including, it is interesting to note, +three lieutenants, three mates, a sailingmaster, surgeon, purser, +captain of marines, gunners, seven prize masters, armorer, drummer, +and a fifer. Discipline was severe, and flogging was the penalty for +breaking the regulations. + +During her four cruises, the America swooped among the plodding +merchantmen like a falcon on a dovecote, the sight of her frightening +most of her prey into submission, with a brush now and then to exercise +the crews of the twenty-two guns, and perhaps a man or two hit. Long +after the war, Captain James Chever, again a peaceful merchant mariner, +met at Valparaiso, Sir James Thompson, commander of the British frigate +Dublin, which had been fitted out in 1813 for the special purpose of +chasing the America. In the course of a cordial chat between the two +captains the Briton remarked: + +"I was once almost within gun-shot of that infernal Yankee +skimming-dish, just as night came on. By daylight she had outsailed +the Dublin so devilish fast that she was no more than a speck on the +horizon. By the way, I wonder if you happen to know the name of the +beggar that was master of her." + +"I'm the beggar," chuckled Captain Chever, and they drank each other's +health on the strength of it. + +Although the Treaty of Ghent omitted mention of the impressment of +sailors, which had been the burning issue of the war, there were no more +offenses of this kind. American seafarers were safe against kidnapping +on their own decks, and they had won this security by virtue of their +own double-shotted guns. At the same time England lifted the curse of +the press-gang from her own people, who refused longer to endure it. + +There seemed no reason why the two nations, having finally fought their +differences to a finish, should not share the high seas in peaceful +rivalry; but the irritating problems of protection and reciprocity +survived to plague and hamper commerce. It was difficult for England +to overcome the habit of guarding her trade against foreign invasion. +Agreeing with the United States to waive all discriminating duties +between the ports of the two countries--this was as much as she was at +that time willing to yield. She still insisted upon regulating the trade +of her West Indies and Canada. American East Indiamen were to be limited +to direct voyages and could not bring cargoes to Europe. Though this +discrimination angered Congress, to which it appeared as lopsided +reciprocity, the old duties were nevertheless repealed; and then, +presto! the British colonial policy of exclusion was enforced and eighty +thousand tons of American shipping became idle because the West India +market was closed. + +There followed several years of unhappy wrangling, a revival of the old +smuggling spirit, the risk of seizure and confiscations, and shipping +merchants with long faces talking ruin. The theory of free trade versus +protection was as debatable and opinions were as conflicting then as +now. Some were for retaliation, others for conciliation; and meanwhile +American shipmasters went about their business, with no room for +theories in their honest heads, and secured more and more of the world's +trade. Curiously enough, the cries of calamity in the United States +were echoed across the water, where the "London Times" lugubriously +exclaimed: "The shipping interest, the cradle of our navy, is half +ruined. Our commercial monopoly exists no longer; and thousands of our +manufacturers are starving or seeking redemption in distant lands. +We have closed the Western Indies against America from feelings +of commercial rivalry. Its active seamen have already engrossed an +important branch of our carrying trade to the Eastern Indies. Her +starred flag is now conspicuous on every sea and will soon defy our +thunder." + +It was not until 1849 that Great Britain threw overboard her long +catalogue of protective navigation laws which had been piling up since +the time of Cromwell, and declared for free trade afloat. Meanwhile the +United States had drifted in the same direction, barring foreign +flags from its coastwise shipping but offering full exemption from all +discriminating duties and tonnage duties to every maritime nation which +should respond in like manner. This latter legislation was enacted in +1828 and definitely abandoned the doctrine of protection in so far as +it applied to American ships and sailors. For a generation thereafter, +during which ocean rivalry was a battle royal of industry, enterprise, +and skill, the United States was paramount and her merchant marine +attained its greatest successes. + +There is one school of modern economists who hold that the seeds of +decay and downfall were planted by this adoption of free trade in 1828, +while another faction of gentlemen quite as estimable and authoritative +will quote facts and figures by the ream to prove that governmental +policies had nothing whatever to do with the case. These adversaries +have written and are still writing many volumes in which they almost +invariably lose their tempers. Partisan politics befog the tariff issue +afloat as well as ashore, and one's course is not easy to chart. It is +indisputable, however, that so long as Yankee ships were better, faster, +and more economically managed, they won a commanding share of the +world's trade. When they ceased to enjoy these qualities of superiority, +they lost the trade and suffered for lack of protection to overcome the +handicap. + +The War of 1812 was the dividing line between two eras of salt water +history. On the farther side lay the turbulent centuries of hazard and +bloodshed and piracy, of little ships and indomitable seamen who pursued +their voyages in the reek of gunpowder and of legalized pillage by the +stronger, and of merchant adventurers who explored new markets wherever +there was water enough to float their keels. They belonged to the rude +and lusty youth of a world which lived by the sword and which gloried +in action. Even into the early years of the nineteenth century these +mariners still sailed--Elizabethan in deed and spirit. + +On the hither side of 1812 were seas unvexed by the privateer and the +freebooter. The lateen-rigged corsairs had been banished from their +lairs in the harbors of Algiers, and ships needed to show no broadsides +of cannon in the Atlantic trade. For a time they carried the +old armament among the lawless islands of the Orient and off +Spanish-American coasts where the vocation of piracy made its last +stand, but the great trade routes of the globe were peaceful highways +for the white-winged fleets of all nations. The American seamen who +had fought for the right to use the open sea were now to display their +prowess in another way and in a romance of achievement that was no less +large and thrilling. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. THE PACKET SHIPS OF THE "ROARING FORTIES" + +It was on the stormy Atlantic, called by sailormen the Western Ocean, +that the packet ships won the first great contest for supremacy and knew +no rivals until the coming of the age of steam made them obsolete. Their +era antedated that of the clipper and was wholly distinct. The Atlantic +packet was the earliest liner: she made regular sailings and carried +freight and passengers instead of trading on her owners' account as was +the ancient custom. Not for her the tranquillity of tropic seas and +the breath of the Pacific trades, but an almost incessant battle with +swinging surges and boisterous winds, for she was driven harder in all +weathers and seasons than any other ships that sailed. In such battering +service as this the lines of the clipper were too extremely fine, her +spars too tall and slender. The packet was by no means slow and if +the list of her record passages was superb, it was because they were +accomplished by masters who would sooner let a sail blow away than take +it in and who raced each other every inch of the way. + +They were small ships of three hundred to five hundred tons when the +famous Black Ball Line was started in 1816. From the first they were the +ablest vessels that could be built, full-bodied and stoutly rigged. They +were the only regular means of communication between the United States +and Europe and were entrusted with the mails, specie, government +dispatches, and the lives of eminent personages. Blow high, blow low, +one of the Black Ball packets sailed from New York for Liverpool on the +first and sixteenth of every month. Other lines were soon competing--the +Red Star and the Swallow Tail out of New York, and fine ships from +Boston and Philadelphia. With the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 +the commercial greatness of New York was assured, and her Atlantic +packets increased in size and numbers, averaging a thousand tons each in +the zenith of their glory. + +England, frankly confessing herself beaten and unable to compete +with such ships as these, changed her attitude from hostility to open +admiration. She surrendered the Atlantic packet trade to American +enterprise, and British merchantmen sought their gains in other waters. +The Navigation Laws still protected their commerce in the Far East and +they were content to jog at a more sedate gait than these weltering +packets whose skippers were striving for passages of a fortnight, with +the forecastle doors nailed fast and the crew compelled to stay on deck +from Sandy Hook to Fastnet Rock. + +No blustering, rum-drinking tarpaulin was the captain who sailed the +Independence, the Ocean Queen, or the Dreadnought but a man very careful +of his manners and his dress, who had been selected from the most highly +educated merchant service in the world. He was attentive to the comfort +of his passengers and was presumed to have no other duties on deck than +to give the proper orders to his first officer and work out his daily +reckoning. It was an exacting, nerve-racking ordeal, however, demanding +a sleepless vigilance, courage, and cool judgment of the first order. +The compensations were large. As a rule, he owned a share of the ship +and received a percentage of the freights and passage money. His rank +when ashore was more exalted than can be conveyed in mere words. Any +normal New York boy would sooner have been captain of a Black Ball +packet than President of the United States, and he knew by heart the +roaring chantey + + It is of a flash packet, + A packet of fame. + She is bound to New York + And the Dreadnought's her name. + She is bound to the west'ard + Where the stormy winds blow. + Bound away to the west'ard, + Good Lord, let her go. + + +There were never more than fifty of these ships afloat, a trifling +fraction of the American deep-water tonnage of that day, but the laurels +they won were immortal. Not only did the English mariner doff his hat to +them, but a Parliamentary committee reported in 1837 that "the American +ships frequenting the ports of England are stated by several witnesses +to be superior to those of a similar class among the ships of Great +Britain, the commanders and officers being generally considered to be +more competent as seamen and navigators and more uniformly persons of +education than the commanders and officers of British ships of a similar +size and class trading from England to America." + +It was no longer a rivalry with the flags of other nations but an +unceasing series of contests among the packets of the several lines, and +their records aroused far more popular excitement than when the great +steamers of this century were chipping off the minutes, at an enormous +coal consumption, toward a five-day passage. Theirs were tests of real +seamanship, and there were few disasters. The packet captain scorned a +towboat to haul him into the stream if the wind served fair to set all +plain sail as his ship lay at her wharf. Driving her stern foremost, +he braced his yards and swung her head to sea, clothing the masts with +soaring canvas amid the farewell cheers of the crowds which lined the +waterfront. + +A typical match race was sailed between the Black Ball liner Columbus, +Captain De Peyster, and the Sheridan, Captain Russell, of the splendid +Dramatic fleet, in 1837. The stake was $10,000 a side, put up by the +owners and their friends. The crews were picked men who were promised a +bonus of fifty dollars each for winning. The ships sailed side by side +in February, facing the wild winter passage, and the Columbus reached +Liverpool in the remarkable time of sixteen days, two days ahead of the +Sheridan. + +The crack packets were never able to reel off more than twelve or +fourteen knots under the most favorable conditions, but they were kept +going night and day, and some of them maintained their schedules almost +with the regularity of the early steamers. The Montezuma, the Patrick +Henry, and the Southampton crossed from New York to Liverpool in fifteen +days, and for years the Independence held the record of fourteen days +and six hours. It remained for the Dreadnought, Captain Samuel Samuels, +in 1859, to set the mark for packet ships to Liverpool at thirteen days +and eight hours. + +Meanwhile the era of the matchless clipper had arrived and it was one of +these ships which achieved the fastest Atlantic passage ever made by a +vessel under sail. The James Baines was built for English owners to be +used in the Australian trade. She was a full clipper of 2515 tons, twice +the size of the ablest packets, and was praised as "the most perfect +sailing ship that ever entered the river Mersey." Bound out from Boston +to Liverpool, she anchored after twelve days and six hours at sea. + +There was no lucky chance in this extraordinary voyage, for this clipper +was the work of the greatest American builder, Donald McKay, who at the +same time designed the Lightning for the same owners. This clipper, +sent across the Atlantic on her maiden trip, left in her foaming wake a +twenty-four hour run which no steamer had even approached and which +was not equaled by the fastest express steamers until twenty-five years +later when the greyhound Arizona ran eighteen knots in one hour on her +trial trip. This is a rather startling statement when one reflects +that the Arizona of the Guion line seems to a generation still living +a modern steamer and record-holder. It is even more impressive when +coupled with the fact that, of the innumerable passenger steamers +traversing the seas today, only a few are capable of a speed of more +than eighteen knots. + +This clipper Lightning did her 436 sea miles in one day, or eighteen and +a half knots, better than twenty land miles an hour, and this is how the +surpassing feat was entered in her log, or official journal: "March 1. +Wind south. Strong gales; bore away for the North Channel, carrying away +the foretopsail and lost jib; hove the log several times and found the +ship going through the water at the rate of 18 to 18 1/2 knots; lee rail +under water and rigging slack. Distance run in twenty-four hours, 436 +miles." The passage was remarkably fast, thirteen days and nineteen and +a half hours from Boston Light, but the spectacular feature was this +day's work. It is a fitting memorial of the Yankee clipper, and, save +only a cathedral, the loveliest, noblest fabric ever wrought by man's +handiwork. + +The clipper, however, was a stranger in the Atlantic and her chosen +courses were elsewhere. The records made by the James Baines and the +Lightning were no discredit to the stanch, unconquerable packet ships +which, year in and year out, held their own with the steamer lines until +just before the Civil War. It was the boast of Captain Samuels that +on her first voyage in 1853 the Dreadnought reached Sandy Hook as +the Cunarder Canada, which had left Liverpool a day ahead of her, was +passing in by Boston Light. Twice she carried the latest news to Europe, +and many seasoned travelers preferred her to the mail steamers. + +The masters and officers who handled these ships with such magnificent +success were true-blue American seamen, inspired by the finest +traditions, successors of the privateersmen of 1812. The forecastles, +however, were filled with English, Irish, and Scandinavians. American +lads shunned these ships and, in fact, the ambitious youngster of the +coastwise towns began to cease following the sea almost a century ago. +It is sometimes forgotten that the period during which the best American +manhood sought a maritime career lay between the Revolution and the War +of 1812. Thereafter the story became more and more one of American ships +and less of American sailors, excepting on the quarter-deck. + +In later years the Yankee crews were to be found in the ports where the +old customs survived, the long trading voyage, the community of interest +in cabin and forecastle, all friends and neighbors together, with +opportunities for profit and advancement. Such an instance was that of +the Salem ship George, built at Salem in 1814 and owned by the great +merchant, Joseph Peabody. For twenty-two years she sailed in the East +India trade, making twenty-one round voyages, with an astonishing +regularity which would be creditable for a modern cargo tramp. Her +sailors were native-born, seldom more than twenty-one years old, +and most of them were studying navigation. Forty-five of them became +shipmasters, twenty of them chief mates, and six second mates. This +reliable George was, in short, a nautical training-school of the best +kind and any young seaman with the right stuff in him was sure of +advancement. + +Seven thousand sailors signed articles in the counting-room of Joseph +Peabody and went to sea in his eighty ships which flew the house-flag +in Calcutta, Canton, Sumatra, and the ports of Europe until 1844. These +were mostly New England boys who followed in the footsteps of their +fathers because deep-water voyages were still "adventures" and a career +was possible under a system which was both congenial and paternal. +Brutal treatment was the rare exception. Flogging still survived in the +merchant service and was defended by captains otherwise humane, but +a skipper, no matter how short-tempered, would be unlikely to abuse a +youth whose parents might live on the same street with him and attend +the same church. + +The Atlantic packets brought a different order of things, which was to +be continued through the clipper era. Yankee sailors showed no love for +the cold and storms of the Western Ocean in these foaming packets which +were remorselessly driven for speed. The masters therefore took +what they could get. All the work of rigging, sail-making, scraping, +painting, and keeping a ship in perfect repair was done in port instead +of at sea, as was the habit in the China and California clippers, and +the lore and training of the real deep-water sailor became superfluous. +The crew of a packet made sail or took it in with the two-fisted mates +to show them how. + +From these conditions was evolved the "Liverpool packet rat," hairy and +wild and drunken, the prey of crimps and dive-keepers ashore, brave and +toughened to every hardship afloat, climbing aloft in his red shirt, +dungaree breeches, and sea-boots, with a snow-squall whistling, the +rigging sheathed with ice, and the old ship burying her bows in the +thundering combers. It was the doctrine of his officers that he could +not be ruled by anything short of violence, and the man to tame and +hammer him was the "bucko" second mate, the test of whose fitness was +that he could whip his weight in wild cats. When he became unable to +maintain discipline with fists and belaying-pins, he was deposed for a +better man. + +Your seasoned packet rat sought the ship with a hard name by choice. +His chief ambition was to kick in the ribs or pound senseless some +invincible bucko mate. There was provocation enough on both sides. +Officers had to take their ships to sea and strain every nerve to make +a safe and rapid passage with crews which were drunk and useless when +herded aboard, half of them greenhorns, perhaps, who could neither +reef nor steer. Brutality was the one argument able to enforce instant +obedience among men who respected nothing else. As a class the packet +sailors became more and more degraded because their life was intolerable +to decent men. It followed therefore that the quarterdeck employed +increasing severity, and, as the officer's authority in this respect was +unchecked and unlimited, it was easy to mistake the harshest tyranny for +wholesome discipline. + +Reenforcing the bucko mate was the tradition that the sailor was a dog, +a different human species from the landsman, without laws and usages +to protect him. This was a tradition which, for centuries, had been +fostered in the naval service, and it survived among merchant sailors as +an unhappy anachronism even into the twentieth century, when an +American Congress was reluctant to bestow upon a seaman the decencies of +existence enjoyed by the poorest laborer ashore. + +It is in the nature of a paradox that the brilliant success of the +packet ships in dominating the North Atlantic trade should have been a +factor in the decline of the nation's maritime prestige and resources. +Through a period of forty years the pride and confidence in these ships, +their builders, and the men who sailed them, was intense and universal. +They were a superlative product of the American genius, which still +displayed the energies of a maritime race. On other oceans the situation +was no less gratifying. American ships were the best and cheapest in the +world. The business held the confidence of investors and commanded an +abundance of capital. It was assumed, as late as 1840, that the wooden +sailing ship would continue to be the supreme type of deep-water vessel +because the United States possessed the greatest stores of timber, +the most skillful builders and mechanics, and the ablest merchant +navigators. No industry was ever more efficiently organized and +conducted. American ships were most in demand and commanded the highest +freights. The tonnage in foreign trade increased to a maximum of 904,476 +in 1845. There was no doubt in the minds of the shrewdest merchants and +owners and builders of the time that Great Britain would soon cease to +be the mistress of the seas and must content herself with second place. + +It was not considered ominous when, in 1838, the Admiralty had requested +proposals for a steam service to America. This demand was prompted by +the voyages of the Sirius and Great Western, wooden-hulled sidewheelers +which thrashed along at ten knots' speed and crossed the Atlantic in +fourteen to seventeen days. This was a much faster rate than the average +time of the Yankee packets, but America was unperturbed and showed no +interest in steam. In 1839 the British Government awarded an Atlantic +mail contract, with an annual subsidy of $425,000 to Samuel Cunard and +his associates, and thereby created the most famous of the Atlantic +steamship companies. + +Four of these liners began running in 1840--an event which foretold the +doom of the packet fleets, though the warning was almost unheeded in +New York and Boston. Four years later Enoch Train was establishing a new +packet line to Liverpool with the largest, finest ships built up to that +time, the Washington Irving, Anglo-American, Ocean Monarch, Anglo-Saxon, +and Daniel Webster. Other prominent shipping houses were expanding +their service and were launching noble packets until 1853. Meanwhile the +Cunard steamers were increasing in size and speed, and the service was +no longer an experiment. + +American capital now began to awaken from its dreams, and Edward K. +Collins, managing owner of the Dramatic line of packets, determined to +challenge the Cunarders at their own game. Aided by the Government +to the extent of $385,000 a year as subsidy, he put afloat the four +magnificent steamers, Atlantic, Pacific, Baltic, and Arctic, which were +a day faster than the Cunarders in crossing, and reduced the voyage to +nine and ten days. The Collins line, so auspiciously begun in 1850, and +promising to give the United States the supremacy in steam which it had +won under sail, was singularly unfortunate and short-lived. The Arctic +and the Pacific were lost at sea, and Congress withdrew its financial +support after five years. Deprived of this aid, Mr. Collins was unable +to keep the enterprise afloat in competition with the subsidized +Cunard fleet. In this manner and with little further effort by American +interests to compete for the prize, the dominion of the Atlantic passed +into British hands. + +The packet ships had held on too long. It had been a stirring episode +for the passengers to cheer in mid-ocean when the lofty pyramids of +canvas swept grandly by some wallowing steamer and left her far astern, +but in the fifties this gallant picture became less frequent, and a +sooty banner of smoke on the horizon proclaimed the new era and the +obliteration of all the rushing life and beauty of the tall ship under +sail. Slow to realize and acknowledge defeat, persisting after the +steamers were capturing the cabin passenger and express freight +traffic, the American ship-owners could not visualize this profound +transformation. Their majestic clippers still surpassed all rivals in +the East India and China trade and were racing around the Horn, making +new records for speed and winning fresh nautical triumphs for the Stars +and Stripes. + +This reluctance to change the industrial and commercial habits of +generations of American shipowners was one of several causes for the +decadence which was hastened by the Civil War. For once the astute +American was caught napping by his British cousin, who was swayed by no +sentimental values and showed greater adaptability in adopting the iron +steamer with the screw propeller as the inevitable successor of the +wooden ship with arching topsails. + +The golden age of the American merchant marine was that of the +square-rigged ship, intricate, capricious, and feminine in her beauty, +with forty nimble seamen in the forecastle, not that of the metal trough +with an engine in the middle and mechanics sweating in her depths. When +the Atlantic packet was compelled to abdicate, it was the beginning +of the end. After all, her master was the fickle wind, for a slashing +outward passage might be followed by weeks of beating home to the +westward. Steadily forging ahead to the beat of her paddles or +the thrash of her screw, the steamer even of that day was far more +dependable than the sailing vessel. The Lightning clipper might run a +hundred miles farther in twenty-four hours than ever a steamer had +done, but she could not maintain this meteoric burst of speed. Upon the +heaving surface of the Western Ocean there was enacted over again the +fable of the hare and the tortoise. + +Most of the famous chanteys were born in the packet service and shouted +as working choruses by the tars of this Western Ocean before the +chanteyman perched upon a capstan and led the refrain in the clipper +trade. You will find their origin unmistakable in such lines as these: + + As I was a-walking down Rotherhite Street, + 'Way, ho, blow the man down; + A pretty young creature I chanced for to meet, + Give me some time to blow the man down. + Soon we'll be in London City, + Blow, boys, blow, + And see the gals all dressed so pretty, + Blow, my bully boys, blow. + + +Haunting melodies, folk-song as truly as that of the plantation negro, +they vanished from the sea with a breed of men who, for all their +faults, possessed the valor of the Viking and the fortitude of the +Spartan. Outcasts ashore--which meant to them only the dance halls of +Cherry Street and the grog-shops of Ratcliffe Road--they had virtues +that were as great as their failings. Across the intervening years, with +a pathos indefinable, come the lovely strains of + + Shenandoah, I'll ne'er forget you, + Away, ye rolling river, + Till the day I die I'll love you ever, + Ah, ha, we're bound away. + + + +CHAPTER IX. THE STATELY CLIPPER AND HER GLORY + +The American clipper ship was the result of an evolution which can be +traced back to the swift privateers which were built during the War of +1812. In this type of vessel the shipyards of Chesapeake Bay excelled +and their handiwork was known as the "Baltimore clipper," the name +suggested by the old English verb which Dryden uses to describe the +flight of the falcon that "clips it down the wind." The essential +difference between the clipper ship and other kinds of merchant craft +was that speed and not capacity became the chief consideration. This was +a radical departure for large vessels, which in all maritime history had +been designed with an eye to the number of tons they were able to +carry. More finely molded lines had hitherto been found only in the much +smaller French lugger, the Mediterranean galley, the American schooner. + +To borrow the lines of these fleet and graceful models and apply them +to the design of a deepwater ship was a bold conception. It was first +attempted by Isaac McKim, a Baltimore merchant, who ordered his builders +in 1832 to reproduce as closely as possible the superior sailing +qualities of the renowned clipper brigs and schooners of their own port. +The result was the Ann McKim, of nearly five hundred tons, the first +Yankee clipper ship, and distinguished as such by her long, easy +water-lines, low free-board, and raking stem. She was built and finished +without regard to cost, copper-sheathed, the decks gleaming with +brasswork and mahogany fittings. But though she was a very fast and +handsome ship and the pride of her owner, the Ann McKim could stow so +little cargo that shipping men regarded her as unprofitable and swore by +their full-bodied vessels a few years longer. + +That the Ann McKim, however, influenced the ideas of the most +progressive builders is very probable, for she was later owned by the +New York firm of Howland and Aspinwall, who placed an order for the +first extremely sharp clipper ship of the era. This vessel, the Rainbow, +was designed by John W. Griffeths, a marine architect, who was a pioneer +in that he studied shipbuilding as a science instead of working by +rule-of-thumb. The Rainbow, which created a sensation while on the +stocks because of her concave or hollowed lines forward, which defied +all tradition and practice, was launched in 1845. She was a more radical +innovation than the Ann McKim but a successful one, for on her second +voyage to China the Rainbow went out against the northeast monsoon in +ninety-two days and came home in eighty-eight, a record which few ships +were able to better. Her commander, Captain John Land, declared her to +be the fastest ship in the world and there were none to dispute him. + +Even the Rainbow however, was eclipsed when not long afterward Howland +and Aspinwall, now converted to the clipper, ordered the Sea Witch to be +built for Captain Bob Waterman. Among all the splendid skippers of the +time he was the most dashing figure. About his briny memory cluster a +hundred yarns, some of them true, others legendary. It has been argued +that the speed of the clippers was due more to the men who commanded +them than to their hulls and rigging, and to support the theory the +career of Captain Bob Waterman is quoted. He was first known to fame in +the old Natchez, which was not a clipper at all and was even rated as +slow while carrying cotton from New Orleans to New York. But Captain Bob +took this full-pooped old packet ship around the Horn and employed her +in the China tea trade. The voyages which he made in her were all fast, +and he crowned them with the amazing run of seventy-eight days from +Canton to New York, just one day behind the swiftest clipper passage +ever sailed and which he himself performed in the Sea Witch. Incredulous +mariners simply could not explain this feat of the Natchez and suggested +that Bob Waterman must have brought the old hooker home by some new +route of his own discovery. + +Captain Bob had won a reputation for discipline as the mate of a Black +Ball liner, a rough school, and he was not a mild man. Ashore his +personality was said to have been a most attractive one, but there is +no doubt that afloat he worked the very souls out of his sailors. The +rumors that he frightfully abused them were not current, however, +until he took the Sea Witch and showed the world the fastest ship under +canvas. Low in the water, with black hull and gilded figurehead, she +seemed too small to support her prodigious cloud of sail. For her +there were to be no leisurely voyages with Captain Bob Waterman on the +quarter-deck. Home from Canton she sped in seventy-seven days and then +in seventy-nine--records which were never surpassed. + +With what consummate skill and daring this master mariner drove his ship +and how the race of hardy sailors to which he belonged compared with +those of other nations may be descried in the log of another of them, +Captain Philip Dumaresq, homeward bound from China in 1849 in the +clipper Great Britain. Three weeks out from Java Head she had overtaken +and passed seven ships heading the same way, and then she began to rush +by them in one gale after another. Her log records her exploits in such +entries as these: "Passed a ship under double reefs, we with our royals +and studdingsails set.... Passed a ship laying-to under a close-reefed +maintopsail.... Split all three topsails and had to heave to.... Seven +vessels in sight and we outsail all of them.... Under double-reefed +topsails passed several vessels hove-to." Much the same record might be +read in the log of the medium clipper Florence--and it is the same story +of carrying sail superbly on a ship which had been built to stand +up under it: "Passed two barks under reefed courses and close-reefed +topsails standing the same way, we with royals and topgallant +studding-sails," or "Passed a ship under topsails, we with our royals +set." For eleven weeks "the topsail halliards were started only once, to +take in a single reef for a few hours." It is not surprising, therefore, +to learn that, seventeen days out from Shanghai, the Florence exchanged +signals with the English ship John Hagerman, which had sailed thirteen +days before her. + +Two notable events in the history of the nineteenth century occurred +within the same year, 1849, to open new fields of trade to the Yankee +clipper. One of these was the repeal of the British Navigation Laws +which had given English ships a monopoly of the trade between London +and the British East Indies, and the other was the discovery of gold +in California. After centuries of pomp and power, the great East India +Company had been deprived of its last exclusive rights afloat in 1833. +Its ponderous, frigate-built merchantmen ceased to dominate the British +commerce with China and India and were sold or broken up. All British +ships were now free to engage in this trade, but the spirit and customs +of the old regime still strongly survived. Flying the house-flags of +private owners, the East Indiamen and China tea ships were still built +and manned like frigates, slow, comfortable, snugging down for the night +under reduced sail. There was no competition to arouse them until the +last barrier of the Navigation Laws was let down and they had to meet +the Yankee clipper with the tea trade as the huge stake. + +Then at last it was farewell to the gallant old Indianian and her +ornate, dignified prestige. With a sigh the London Times confessed: "We +must run a race with our gigantic and unshackled rival. We must set our +long-practised skill, our steady industry, and our dogged determination +against his youth, ingenuity, and ardor. Let our shipbuilders and +employers take warning in time. There will always be an abundant supply +of vessels good enough and fast enough for short voyages. But we +want fast vessels for the long voyages which otherwise will fall into +American hands." + +Before English merchants could prepare themselves for these new +conditions, the American clipper Oriental was loading in 1850 at Hong +Kong with tea for the London market. Because of her reputation for +speed, she received freightage of six pounds sterling per ton while +British ships rode at anchor with empty holds or were glad to sail at +three pounds ten per ton. Captain Theodore Palmer delivered his sixteen +hundred tons of tea in the West India Docks, London, after a crack +passage of ninety-one days which had never been equaled. His clipper +earned $48,000, or two-thirds of what it had cost to build her. Her +arrival in London created a profound impression. The port had seen +nothing like her for power and speed; her skysail yards soared far +above the other shipping; the cut of her snowy canvas was faultless; all +clumsy, needless tophamper had been done away with; and she appeared +to be the last word in design and construction, as lean and fine and +spirited as a race-horse in training. + +This new competition dismayed British shipping until it could rally +and fight with similar weapons The technical journal, Naval Science, +acknowledged that the tea trade of the London markets had passed almost +out of the hands of the English ship-owner, and that British vessels, +well-manned and well-found, were known to lie for weeks in the harbor +of Foo-chow, waiting for a cargo and seeing American clippers come in, +load, and sail immediately with full cargoes at a higher freight than +they could command. Even the Government viewed the loss of trade with +concern and sent admiralty draftsmen to copy the lines of the Oriental +and Challenge while they were in drydock. + +British clippers were soon afloat, somewhat different in model from the +Yankee ships, but very fast and able, and racing them in the tea trade +until the Civil War. With them it was often nip and tuck, as in the +contest between the English Lord of the Isles and the American clipper +bark Maury in 1856. The prize was a premium of one pound per ton for +the first ship to reach London with tea of the new crop. The Lord of +the Isles finished loading and sailed four days ahead of the Maury, and +after thirteen thousand miles of ocean they passed Gravesend within ten +minutes of each other. The British skipper, having the smartest tug +and getting his ship first into dock, won the honors. In a similar race +between the American Sea Serpent and the English Crest of the Wave, both +ships arrived off the Isle of Wight on the same day. It was a notable +fact that the Lord of the Isles was the first tea clipper built of iron +at a date when the use of this stubborn material was not yet thought of +by the men who constructed the splendid wooden ships of America. + +For the peculiar requirements of the tea trade, English maritime talent +was quick to perfect a clipper type which, smaller than the great Yankee +skysail-yarder, was nevertheless most admirable for its beauty and +performance. On both sides of the Atlantic partizans hotly championed +their respective fleets. In 1852 the American Navigation Club, organized +by Boston merchants and owners, challenged the shipbuilders of Great +Britain to race from a port in England to a port in China and return, +for a stake of $50,000 a side, ships to be not under eight hundred nor +over twelve hundred tons American register. The challenge was aimed at +the Stornaway and the Chrysolite, the two clippers that were known to be +the fastest ships under the British flag. Though this sporting defiance +caused lively discussion, nothing came of it, and it was with a spirit +even keener that Sampson and Tappan of Boston offered to match their +Nightingale for the same amount against any clipper afloat, British or +American. + +In spite of the fact that Yankee enterprise had set the pace in the +tea trade, within a few years after 1850 England had so successfully +mastered the art of building these smaller clippers that the honors were +fairly divided. The American owners were diverting their energies to +the more lucrative trade in larger ships sailing around the Horn to San +Francisco, a long road which, as a coastwise voyage, was forbidden +to foreign vessels under the navigation laws. After the Civil War the +fastest tea clippers flew the British flag and into the seventies they +survived the competition of steam, racing among themselves for the +premiums awarded to the quickest dispatch. No more of these beautiful +vessels were launched after 1869, and one by one they vanished into +other trades, overtaken by the same fate which had befallen the Atlantic +packet and conquered by the cargo steamers which filed through the Suez +Canal. + +Until 1848 San Francisco had been a drowsy little Mexican trading-post, +a huddle of adobe huts and sheds where American ships collected +hides--vividly described in Two Years Before the Mast--or a whaler +called for wood and water. During the year preceding the frenzied +migration of the modern Argonauts, only two merchant ships, one bark +and one brig, sailed in through the Golden Gate. In the twelve months +following, 775 vessels cleared from Atlantic ports for San Francisco, +besides the rush from other countries, and nearly fifty thousand +passengers scrambled ashore to dig for gold. Crews deserted their +ships, leaving them unable to go to sea again for lack of men, and in +consequence a hundred of them were used as storehouses, hotels, and +hospitals, or else rotted at their moorings. Sailors by hundreds jumped +from the forecastle without waiting to stow the sails or receive their +wages. Though offered as much as two hundred dollars a month to sign +again, they jeered at the notion. Of this great fleet at San Francisco +in 1849, it was a lucky ship that ever left the harbor again. + +It seemed as if the whole world were bound to California and almost +overnight there was created the wildest, most extravagant demand for +transportation known to history. A clipper costing $70,000 could pay for +herself in one voyage, with freights at sixty dollars a ton. This gold +stampede might last but a little while. To take instant advantage of it +was the thing. The fastest ships, and as many of them as could be built, +would skim the cream of it. This explains the brief and illustrious era +of the California clipper, one hundred and sixty of which were launched +from 1850 to 1854. The shipyards of New York and Boston were crowded +with them, and they graced the keel blocks of the historic old ports +of New England--Medford, Mystic, Newburyport, Portsmouth, Portland, +Rockland, and Bath--wherever the timber and the shipwrights could be +assembled. + +Until that time there had been few ships afloat as large as a thousand +tons. These were of a new type, rapidly increased to fifteen hundred, +two thousand tons, and over. They presented new and difficult problems +in spars and rigging able to withstand the strain of immense areas of +canvas which climbed two hundred feet to the skysail pole and which, +with lower studdingsails set, spread one hundred and sixty feet from +boom-end to boom-end. There had to be the strength to battle with the +furious tempests of Cape Horn and at the same time the driving power to +sweep before the sweet and steadfast tradewinds. Such a queenly clipper +was the Flying Cloud, the achievement of that master builder, Donald +McKay, which sailed from New York to San Francisco in eighty-nine days, +with Captain Josiah Creesy in command. This record was never lowered and +was equaled only twice--by the Flying Cloud herself and by the Andrew +Jackson nine years later. It was during this memorable voyage that +the Flying Cloud sailed 1256 miles in four days while steering to the +northward under topgallantsails after rounding Cape Horn. This was a +rate of speed which, if sustained, would have carried her from New York +to Queenstown in eight days and seventeen hours. This speedy passage was +made in 1851, and only two years earlier the record for the same voyage +of fifteen thousand miles had been one hundred and twenty days, by the +clipper Memnon. + +Donald McKay now resolved to build a ship larger and faster than the +Flying Cloud, and his genius neared perfection in the Sovereign of the +Seas, of 2421 tons register, which exceeded in size all merchant vessels +afloat. This Titan of the clipper fleet was commanded by Donald's +brother, Captain Lauchlan McKay, with a crew of one hundred and five +men and boys. During her only voyage to San Francisco she was partly +dismasted, but Lauchlan McKay rigged her anew at sea in fourteen days +and still made port in one hundred and three days, a record for the +season of the year. + +It was while running home from Honolulu in 1853 that the Sovereign of +the Seas realized the hopes of her builder. In eleven days she sailed +3562 miles, with four days logged for a total of 1478 knots. Making +allowance for the longitudes and difference in time, this was an average +daily run of 378 sea miles or 435 land miles. Using the same comparison, +the distance from Sandy Hook to Queenstown would have been covered in +seven days and nine hours. Figures are arid reading, perhaps, but these +are wet by the spray and swept by the salt winds of romance. During one +of these four days the Sovereign of the Seas reeled off 424 nautical +miles, during which her average speed was seventeen and two-thirds knots +and at times reached nineteen and twenty. The only sailing ship which +ever exceeded this day's work was the Lightning, built later by the +same Donald McKay, which ran 436 knots in the Atlantic passage already +referred to. The Sovereign of the Seas could also boast of a sensational +feat upon the Western Ocean, for between New York and Liverpool she +outsailed the Cunard liner Canada by 325 miles in five days. + +It is curiously interesting to notice that the California clipper era +is almost generally ignored by the foremost English writers of maritime +history. For one thing, it was a trade in which their own ships were not +directly concerned, and partizan bias is apt to color the views of +the best of us when national prestige is involved. American historians +themselves have dispensed with many unpleasant facts when engaged with +the War of 1812. With regard to the speed of clipper ships, however, +involving a rivalry far more thrilling and important than all the races +ever sailed for the America's cup, the evidence is available in concrete +form. + +Lindsay's "History of Merchant Shipping" is the most elaborate English +work of the kind. Heavily ballasted with facts and rather dull reading +for the most part, it kindles with enthusiasm when eulogizing the +Thermopylae and the Sir Launcelot, composite clippers of wood and iron, +afloat in 1870, which it declares to be "the fastest sailing ships +that ever traversed the ocean." This fairly presents the issue which a +true-blooded Yankee has no right to evade. The greatest distance sailed +by the Sir Launcelot in twenty-four hours between China and London was +354 knots, compared with the 424 miles of the Sovereign of the Seas and +the 436 miles of the Lightning. Her best sustained run was one of seven +days for an average of a trifle more than 300 miles a day. Against this +is to be recorded the performance of the Sovereign of the Seas, 3562 +miles in eleven days, at the rate of 324 miles every twenty-four hours, +and her wonderful four-day run of 1478 miles, an average of 378 miles. + +The Thermopylae achieved her reputation in a passage of sixty-three days +from London to Melbourne--a record which was never beaten. Her fastest +day's sailing was 330 miles, or not quite sixteen knots an hour. In six +days she traversed 1748 miles, an average of 291 miles a day. In this +Australian trade the American clippers made little effort to compete. +Those engaged in it were mostly built for English owners and sailed by +British skippers, who could not reasonably be expected to get the most +out of these loftily sparred Yankee ships, which were much larger than +their own vessels of the same type. The Lightning showed what she could +do from Melbourne to Liverpool by making the passage in sixty-three' +days, with 3722 miles in ten consecutive days and one day's sprint of +412 miles. + +In the China tea trade the Thermopylae drove home from Foo-chow in +ninety-one days, which was equaled by the Sir Launcelot. The American +Witch of the Wave had a ninety-day voyage to her credit, and the Comet +ran from Liverpool to Shanghai in eighty-four days. Luck was a larger +factor on this route than in the California or Australian trade because +of the fitful uncertainty of the monsoons, and as a test of speed it was +rather unsatisfactory. In a very fair-minded and expert summary, Captain +Arthur H. Clark, * in his youth an officer on Yankee clippers, has +discussed this question of rival speed and power under sail--a question +which still absorbs those who love the sea. His conclusion is that +in ordinary weather at sea, when great power to carry sail was not +required, the British tea clippers were extremely fast vessels, chiefly +on account of their narrow beam. Under these conditions they were +perhaps as fast as the American clippers of the same class, such as the +Sea Witch, White Squall, Northern Light, and Sword-Fish. But if speed +is to be reckoned by the maximum performance of a ship under the most +favorable conditions, then the British tea clippers were certainly no +match for the larger American ships such as the Flying Cloud, Sovereign +of the Seas, Hurricane, Trade Wind, Typhoon, Flying Fish, Challenge, and +Red Jacket. The greater breadth of the American ships in proportion to +their length meant power to carry canvas and increased buoyancy which +enabled them, with their sharper ends, to be driven in strong gales and +heavy seas at much greater speed than the British clippers. The latter +were seldom of more than one thousand tons' register and combined in a +superlative degree the good qualities of merchant ships. + + + * "The Clipper Ship Era." N.Y., 1910. + + +It was the California trade, brief and crowded and fevered, which saw +the roaring days of the Yankee clipper and which was familiar with +racing surpassing in thrill and intensity that of the packet ships of +the Western Ocean. In 1851, for instance, the Raven, Sea Witch, and +Typhoon sailed for San Francisco within the same week. They crossed the +Equator a day apart and stood away to the southward for three thousand +miles of the southeast trades and the piping westerly winds which +prevailed farther south. At fifty degrees south latitude the Raven and +the Sea Witch were abeam of each other with the Typhoon only two days +astern. + +Now they stripped for the tussle to windward around Cape Horn, sending +down studdingsail booms and skysail yards, making all secure with extra +lashings, plunging into the incessant head seas of the desolate ocean, +fighting it out tack for tack, reefing topsails and shaking them out +again, the vigilant commanders going below only to change their clothes, +the exhausted seamen stubbornly, heroically handling with frozen, +bleeding fingers the icy sheets and canvas. A fortnight of this inferno +and the Sea Witch and the Raven gained the Pacific, still within sight +of each other, and the Typhoon only one day behind. Then they swept +northward, blown by the booming tradewinds, spreading studdingsails, +skysails, and above them, like mere handkerchiefs, the water-sails and +ring-tails. Again the three clippers crossed the Equator. Close-hauled +on the starboard tack, their bowsprits were pointed for the last stage +of the journey to the Golden Gate. The Typhoon now overhauled her rivals +and was the first to signal her arrival, but the victory was earned +by the Raven, which had set her departure from Boston Light while the +others had sailed from New York. The Typhoon and the Raven were only a +day apart, with the Sea Witch five days behind the leader. + +Clipper ship crews included men of many nations. In the average +forecastle there would be two or three Americans, a majority of English +and Norwegians, and perhaps a few Portuguese and Italians. The hardiest +seamen, and the most unmanageable, were the Liverpool packet rats who +were lured from their accustomed haunts to join the clippers by the +magical call of the gold-diggings. There were not enough deep-water +sailors to man half the ships that were built in these few years, and +the crimps and boarding-house runners decoyed or flung aboard on sailing +day as many men as were demanded, and any drunken, broken landlubber was +good enough to be shipped as an able seaman. They were things of rags +and tatters--their only luggage a bottle of whiskey. + +The mates were thankful if they could muster enough real sailors to +work the ship to sea and then began the stern process of whipping the +wastrels and incompetents into shape for the perils and emergencies of +the long voyage. That these great clippers were brought safely to port +is a shining tribute to the masterful skill of their officers. While +many of them were humane and just, with all their severity, the stories +of savage abuse which are told of some are shocking in the extreme. +The defense was that it was either mutiny or club the men under. Better +treatment might have persuaded better men to sail. Certain it is that +life in the forecastle of a clipper was even more intolerable to the +self-respecting American youth than it had previously been aboard the +Atlantic packet. + +When Captain Bob Waterman arrived at San Francisco in the Challenge +clipper in 1851, a mob tried very earnestly to find and hang him and his +officers because of the harrowing stories told by his sailors. That +he had shot several of them from the yards with his pistol to make +the others move faster was one count in the indictment. For his part, +Captain Waterman asserted that a more desperate crew of ruffians had +never sailed out of New York and that only two of them were Americans. +They were mutinous from the start, half of them blacklegs of the vilest +type who swore to get the upper hand of him. His mates, boatswain, +and carpenter had broken open their chests and boxes and had removed a +collection of slung-shots, knuckle-dusters, bowie-knives, and pistols. +Off Rio Janeiro they had tried to kill the chief mate, and Captain +Waterman had been compelled to jump in and stretch two of them dead with +an iron belaying-pin. Off Cape Horn three sailors fell from aloft and +were lost. This accounted for the casualties. + +The truth of such episodes as these was difficult to fathom. Captain +Waterman demanded a legal investigation, but nothing came of his request +and he was commended by his owners for his skill and courage in bringing +the ship to port without losing a spar or a sail. It was a skipper of +this old school who blandly maintained the doctrine that if you wanted +the men to love you, you must starve them and knock them down. The fact +is proven by scores of cases that the discipline of the American clipper +was both famously efficient and notoriously cruel. It was not until long +after American sailors had ceased to exist that adequate legislation was +enacted to provide that they should be treated as human beings afloat +and ashore. Other days and other customs! It is perhaps unkind to judge +these vanished master-mariners too harshly, for we cannot comprehend the +crises which continually beset them in their command. + +No more extreme clipper ships were built after 1854. The California +frenzy had subsided and speed in carrying merchandise was no longer +so essential; besides, the passenger traffic was seeking the Isthmian +route. What were called medium clippers enjoyed a profitable trade +for many years later, and one of them, the Andrew Jackson, was never +outsailed for the record from New York to San Francisco. This splendid +type of ship was to be found on every sea, for the United States was +still a commanding factor in the maritime activities of South America, +India, China, Europe, and Australia. In 1851 its merchant tonnage +rivaled that of England and was everywhere competing with it. + +The effects of the financial panic of 1857 and the aftermath of business +depression were particularly disastrous to American ships. Freights were +so low as to yield no profit, and the finest clippers went begging for +charters. The yards ceased to launch new tonnage. British builders had +made such rapid progress in design and construction that the days of +Yankee preference in the China trade had passed. The Stars and Stripes +floated over ships waiting idle in Manila Bay, at Shanghai, Hong-Kong, +and Calcutta. The tide of commerce had slackened abroad as well as at +home and the surplus of deep-water tonnage was world-wide. + +In earlier generations afloat, the American spirit had displayed amazing +recuperative powers. The havoc of the Revolution had been unable to +check it, and its vigor and aggressive enterprise had never been +more notable than after the blows dealt by the Embargo, the French +Spoliations, and the War of 1812. The conditions of trade and the temper +of the people were now so changed that this mighty industry, aforetime +so robust and resilient, was unable to recover from such shocks as the +panic of 1857 and the Civil War. Yet it had previously survived and +triumphed over calamities far more severe. The destruction wrought by +Confederate cruisers was trifling compared with the work of the British +and French privateers when the nation was very small and weak. + +The American spirit had ceased to concern itself with the sea as the +vital and dominant element. The footsteps of the young men no longer +turned toward the wharf and the waterside and the tiers of tall ships +outward bound. They were aspiring to conquer an inland empire of prairie +and mountain and desert, impelled by the same pioneering and adventurous +ardor which had burned in their seafaring sires. Steam had vanquished +sail--an epochal event in a thousand years of maritime history--but the +nation did not care enough to accept this situation as a new challenge +or to continue the ancient struggle for supremacy upon the sea. England +did care, because it was life or death to the little, sea-girt island, +but as soon as the United States ceased to be a strip of Atlantic +seaboard and the panorama, of a continent was unrolled to settlement, +it was foreordained that the maritime habit of thought and action +should lose its virility in America. All great seafaring races, English, +Norwegian, Portuguese, and Dutch, have taken to salt water because there +was lack of space, food, or work ashore, and their strong young men +craved opportunities. Like the Pilgrim Fathers and their fishing +shallops they had nowhere else to go. + +When the Flying Cloud and the clippers of her kind--taut, serene, +immaculate--were sailing through the lonely spaces of the South Atlantic +and the Pacific, they sighted now and then the stumpy, slatternly rig +and greasy hull of a New Bedford whaler, perhaps rolling to the weight +of a huge carcass alongside. With a poor opinion of the seamanship +of these wandering barks, the clipper crews rolled out, among their +favorite chanteys: + + Oh, poor Reuben Ranzo, + Ranzo, boys, O Ranzo, + Oh, Ranzo was no sailor, + So they shipped him aboard a whaler, + Ranzo, boys, O Ranzo. + +This was crass, intolerant prejudice. The whaling ship was careless of +appearances, it is true, and had the air of an ocean vagabond; but there +were other duties more important than holystoning decks, scraping spars, +and trimming the yards to a hair. On a voyage of two or three +years, moreover, there was always plenty of time tomorrow. Brave and +resourceful seamen were these New England adventurers and deep-sea +hunters who made nautical history after their own fashion. They +flourished coeval with the merchant marine in its prime, and they passed +from the sea at about the same time and for similar reasons. Modernity +dispensed with their services, and young men found elsewhere more +profitable and easier employment. + +The great days of Nantucket as a whaling port were passed before the +Revolution wiped out her ships and killed or scattered her sailors. +It was later discovered that larger ships were more economical, and +Nantucket harbor bar was too shoal to admit their passage. For this +reason New Bedford became the scene of the foremost activity, and +Nantucket thereafter played a minor part, although her barks went +cruising on to the end of the chapter and her old whaling families were +true to strain. As explorers the whalemen rambled into every nook +and corner of the Pacific before merchant vessels had found their way +thither. They discovered uncharted islands and cheerfully fought savages +or suffered direful shipwreck. The chase led them into Arctic regions +where their stout barks were nipped like eggshells among the grinding +floes, or else far to the southward where they broiled in tropic calms. +The New Bedford lad was as keen to go a-whaling as was his counterpart +in Boston or New York to be the dandy mate of a California clipper, and +true was the song: + + I asked a maiden by my side, + Who sighed and looked to me forlorn, + "Where is your heart?" She quick replied, + "Round Cape Horn." + +Yankee whaling reached its high tide in 1857 when the New Bedford fleet +alone numbered 329 sail and those owned in other ports of Buzzard's Bay +swelled the total to 426 vessels, besides thirty more hailing from New +London and Sag Harbor. In this year the value of the catch was more +than ten million dollars. The old custom of sailing on shares or +"lays" instead of wages was never changed. It was win or lose for +all hands--now a handsome fortune or again an empty hold and pockets +likewise. There was Captain W.T. Walker of New Bedford who, in 1847, +bought for a song a ship so old that she was about to be broken up for +junk and no insurance broker would look at her. In this rotten relic +he shipped a crew and went sailing in the Pacific. Miraculously keeping +afloat, this Envoy of his was filled to the hatches with oil and bones, +twice running, before she returned to her home port; and she earned +$138,450 on a total investment of eight thousand dollars. + +The ship Sarah of Nantucket, after a three years' cruise, brought +back 3497 barrels of sperm oil which sold for $89,000, and the William +Hamilton of New Bedford set another high mark by stowing 4181 barrels of +a value of $109,269. The Pioneer of New London, Captain Ebenezer Morgan, +was away only a year and stocked a cargo of oil and whalebone which sold +for $150,060. Most of the profits of prosperous voyages were taken +as the owners' share, and the incomes of the captain and crew were +so niggardly as to make one wonder why they persisted in a calling so +perilous, arduous, and poorly paid. During the best years of whaling, +when the ships were averaging $16,000 for a voyage, the master received +an eighteenth, or about nine hundred dollars a year. The highly skilled +hands, such as the boat-steerers and harpooners, had a lay of only one +seventy-fifth, or perhaps a little more than two hundred dollars cash as +the reward of a voyage which netted the owner at least fifty per cent on +his investment. Occasionally they fared better than this and sometimes +worse. The answer to the riddle is that they liked the life and had +always the gambling spirit which hopes for a lucky turn of the cards. + +The countless episodes of fragile boats smashed to kindling by fighting +whales, of the attack renewed with harpoon and lance, of ships actually +rammed and sunk, would fill a volume by themselves and have been +stirringly narrated in many a one. Zanzibar and Kamchatka, Tasmania and +the Seychelles knew the lean, sun-dried Yankee whaleman and his motto of +a "dead whale or a stove boat." The Civil War did not drive him from the +seas. The curious fact is that his products commanded higher prices +in 1907 than fifty years before, but the number of his ships rapidly +decreased. Whales were becoming scarce, and New England capital +preferred other forms of investment. The leisurely old sailing craft was +succeeded by the steam whaler, and the explosive bomb slew, instead of +the harpoon and lance hurled by the sinewy right arm of a New Bedford +man or Cape Verde islander. + +Roving whaler and armed East Indiaman, plunging packet ship and stately +clipper, they served their appointed days and passed on their several +courses to become mere memories, as shadowy and unsubstantial as the +gleam of their own topsails when seen at twilight. The souls of their +sailors have fled to Fiddler's Green, where all dead mariners go. They +were of the old merchant marine which contributed something fine and +imperishable to the story of the United States. Down the wind, vibrant +and deep-throated, comes their own refrain for a requiem: + + We're outward bound this very day, + Good-bye, fare you well, + Good-bye, fare you well. + We're outward bound this very day, + Hurrah, my boys, we're outward bound. + + + +CHAPTER X. BOUND COASTWISE + +One thinks of the old merchant marine in terms of the clipper ship and +distant ports. The coasting trade has been overlooked in song and story; +yet, since the year 1859, its fleets have always been larger and more +important than the American deep-water commerce nor have decay and +misfortune overtaken them. It is a traffic which flourished from the +beginning, ingeniously adapting itself to new conditions, unchecked by +war, and surviving with splendid vigor, under steam and sail, in this +modern era. + +The seafaring pioneers won their way from port to port of the +tempestuous Atlantic coast in tiny ketches, sloops, and shallops when +the voyage of five hundred miles from New England to Virginia was a +prolonged and hazardous adventure. Fog and shoals and lee shores beset +these coastwise sailors, and shipwrecks were pitifully frequent. In +no Hall of Fame will you find the name of Captain Andrew Robinson +of Gloucester, but he was nevertheless an illustrious benefactor and +deserves a place among the most useful Americans. His invention was the +Yankee schooner of fore-and-aft rig, and he gave to this type of vessel +its name. * Seaworthy, fast, and easily handled, adapted for use in +the early eighteenth century when inland transportation was almost +impossible, the schooner carried on trade between the colonies and was +an important factor in the growth of the fisheries. + + + * It is said that as the odd two-master slid gracefully into the water, +a spectator exclaimed: "See how she scoons!" "Aye," answered Captain +Robinson, "a SCHOONER let her be!" This launching took place in 1718 or +1714. + + +Before the Revolution the first New England schooners were beating up +to the Grand Bank of Newfoundland after cod and halibut. They were of +no more than fifty tons' burden, too small for their task but manned +by fishermen of surpassing hardihood. Marblehead was then the foremost +fishing port with two hundred brigs and schooners on the offshore banks. +But to Gloucester belongs the glory of sending the first schooner to the +Grand Bank. * From these two rock-bound harbors went thousands of trained +seamen to man the privateers and the ships of the Continental navy, +slinging their hammocks on the gun-decks beside the whalemen of +Nantucket. These fishermen and coastwise sailors fought on the land as +well and followed the drums of Washington's armies until the final +scene at Yorktown. Gloucester and Marblehead were filled with widows and +orphans, and half their men-folk were dead or missing. + + + * Marvin's "American Merchant Marine," p. 287. + + +The fishing-trade soon prospered again, and the men of the old ports +tenaciously clung to the sea even when the great migration flowed +westward to people the wilderness and found a new American empire. +They were fishermen from father to son, bound together in an intimate +community of interests, a race of pure native or English stock, +deserving this tribute which was paid to them in Congress: "Every +person on board our fishing vessels has an interest in common with his +associates; their reward depends upon their industry and enterprise. +Much caution is observed in the selection of the crews of our fishing +vessels; it often happens that every individual is connected by blood +and the strongest ties of friendship; our fishermen are remarkable for +their sobriety and good conduct, and they rank with the most skillful +navigators." + +Fishing and the coastwise merchant trade were closely linked. Schooners +loaded dried cod as well as lumber for southern ports and carried back +naval stores and other southern products. Well-to-do fishermen owned +trading vessels and sent out their ventures, the sailors shifting from +one forecastle to the other. With a taste for an easier life than the +stormy, freezing Banks, the young Gloucesterman would sign on for a +voyage to Pernambuco or Havana and so be fired with ambition to become +a mate or master and take to deep water after a while. In this way was +maintained a school of seamanship which furnished the most intelligent +and efficient officers of the merchant marine. For generations they were +mostly recruited from the old fishing and shipping ports of New England +until the term "Yankee shipmaster" had a meaning peculiarly its own. + +Seafaring has undergone so many revolutionary changes and old days and +ways are so nearly obliterated that it is singular to find the sailing +vessel still employed in great numbers, even though the gasolene motor +is being installed to kick her along in spells of calm weather. The +Gloucester fishing schooner, perfect of her type, stanch, fleet, and +powerful, still drives homeward from the Banks under a tall press of +canvas, and her crew still divide the earnings, share and share, as did +their forefathers a hundred and fifty years ago. But the old New England +strain of blood no longer predominates, and Portuguese, Scandinavians, +and Nova Scotia "Bluenoses" bunk with the lads of Gloucester stock. Yet +they are alike for courage, hardihood, and mastery of the sea, and the +traditions of the calling are undimmed. + +There was a time before the Civil War when Congress jealously protected +the fisheries by means of a bounty system and legislation aimed against +our Canadian neighbors. The fishing fleets were regarded as a source +of national wealth and the nursery of prime seamen for the navy and +merchant marine. In 1858 the bounty system was abandoned, however, and +the fishermen were left to shift for themselves, earning small profits +at peril of their lives and preferring to follow the sea because they +knew no other profession. In spite of this loss of assistance from the +Government, the tonnage engaged in deep-sea fisheries was never so great +as in the second year of the Civil War. Four years later the industry +had shrunk one-half; and it has never recovered its early importance * + + + * In 1882, the tonnage amounted to 193,459; in 1866, to 89,336. + + +The coastwise merchant trade, on the other hand, has been jealously +guarded against competition and otherwise fostered ever since 1789, when +the first discriminatory tonnage tax was enforced. The Embargo Act of +1808 prohibited domestic commerce to foreign flags, and this edict was +renewed in the American Navigation Act of 1817. It remained a firmly +established doctrine of maritime policy until the Great War compelled +its suspension as an emergency measure. The theories of protection +and free trade have been bitterly debated for generations, but in this +instance the practice was eminently successful and the results were +vastly impressive. Deepwater shipping dwindled and died, but the +increase in coastwise sailing was consistent. It rose to five million +tons early in this century and makes the United States still one of the +foremost maritime powers in respect to saltwater activity. + +To speak of this deep-water shipping as trade coastwise is misleading, +in a way. The words convey an impression of dodging from port to port +for short distances, whereas many of the voyages are longer than those +of the foreign routes in European waters. It is farther by sea from +Boston to Philadelphia than from Plymouth, England, to Bordeaux. A +schooner making the run from Portland to Savannah lays more knots over +her stern than a tramp bound out from England to Lisbon. It is a shorter +voyage from Cardiff to Algiers than an American skipper pricks off on +his chart when he takes his steamer from New York to New Orleans or +Galveston. This coastwise trade may lack the romance of the old school +of the square-rigged ship in the Roaring Forties, but it has always +been the more perilous and exacting. Its seamen suffer hardships unknown +elsewhere, for they have to endure winters of intense cold and heavy +gales and they are always in risk of stranding or being driven ashore. + +The story of these hardy men is interwoven, for the most part, with the +development of the schooner in size and power. This graceful craft, +so peculiar to its own coast and people, was built for utility and +possessed a simple beauty of its own when under full sail. The schooners +were at first very small because it was believed that large fore-and-aft +sails could not be handled with safety. They were difficult to reef or +lower in a blow until it was discovered that three masts instead of two +made the task much easier. For many years the three-masted schooner was +the most popular kind of American merchant vessel. They clustered in +every Atlantic port and were built in the yards of New England, New +York, New Jersey, and Virginia,--built by the mile, as the saying was, +and sawed off in lengths to suit the owners' pleasure. They carried +the coal, ice, lumber of the whole seaboard and were so economical of +man-power that they earned dividends where steamers or square-rigged +ships would not have paid for themselves. + +As soon as a small steam-engine was employed to hoist the sails, it +became possible to launch much larger schooners and to operate them at +a marvelously low cost. Rapidly the four-master gained favor, and then +came the five- and six-masted vessels, gigantic ships of their kind. +Instead of the hundred-ton schooner of a century ago, Hampton Roads +and Boston Harbor saw these great cargo carriers which could stow under +hatches four and five thousand tons of coal, and whose masts soared a +hundred and fifty feet above the deck. Square-rigged ships of the same +capacity would have required crews of a hundred men, but these schooners +were comfortably handled by a company of fifteen all told, only ten of +whom were in the forecastle. There was no need of sweating and hauling +at braces and halliards. The steam-winch undertook all this toil. The +tremendous sails, stretching a hundred feet from boom to gaff could +not have been managed otherwise. Even for trimming sheets or setting +topsails, it was necessary merely to take a turn or two around the drum +of the winch engine and turn the steam valve. The big schooner was the +last word in cheap, efficient transportation by water. In her own sphere +of activity she was as notable an achievement as the Western Ocean +packet or the Cape Horn clipper. + +The masters who sailed these extraordinary vessels also changed and had +to learn a new kind of seamanship. They must be very competent men, for +the tests of their skill and readiness were really greater than those +demanded of the deepwater skipper. They drove these great schooners +alongshore winter and summer; across Nantucket Shoals and around Cape +Cod, and their salvation depended on shortening sail ahead of the gale. +Let the wind once blow and the sea get up, and it was almost impossible +to strip the canvas off an unwieldy six-master. The captain's chief fear +was of being blown offshore, of having his vessel run away with him! +Unlike the deep-water man, he preferred running in toward the beach and +letting go his anchors. There he would ride out the storm and hoist sail +when the weather moderated. + +These were American shipmasters of the old breed, raised in schooners +as a rule, and adapting themselves to modern conditions. They sailed for +nominal wages and primage, or five per cent of the gross freight paid +the vessel. Before the Great War in Europe, freights were low and the +schooner skippers earned scanty incomes. Then came a world shortage +of tonnage and immediately coastwise freights soared skyward. The big +schooners of the Palmer fleet began to reap fabulous dividends and their +masters shared in the unexpected opulence. Besides their primage they +owned shares in their vessels, a thirty-second or so, and presently +their settlement at the end of a voyage coastwise amounted to an income +of a thousand dollars a month. They earned this money, and the +managing owners cheerfully paid them, for there had been lean years and +uncomplaining service and the sailor had proved himself worthy of his +hire. So tempting was the foreign war trade, that a fleet of them was +sent across the Atlantic until the American Government barred them from +the war zone as too easy a prey for submarine attack. They therefore +returned to the old coastwise route or loaded for South American +ports--singularly interesting ships because they were the last bold +venture of the old American maritime spirit, a challenge to the Age of +Steam. + +No more of these huge, towering schooners have been built in the last +dozen years. Steam colliers and barges have won the fight because time +is now more valuable than cheapness of transportation. The schooner +might bowl down to Norfolk from Boston or Portland in four days and be +threshing about for two weeks in head winds on the return voyage. + +The small schooner appeared to be doomed somewhat earlier. She had +ceased to be profitable in competition with the larger, more modern +fore-and-after, but these battered, veteran craft died hard. They +harked back to a simpler age, to the era of the stage-coach and the +spinning-wheel, to the little shipyards that were to be found on every +bay and inlet of New England. They were still owned and sailed by men +who ashore were friends and neighbors. Even now you may find during your +summer wanderings some stumpy, weatherworn two-master running on for +shelter overnight, which has plied up and down the coast for fifty or +sixty years, now leaking like a basket and too frail for winter voyages. +It was in a craft very much like this that your rude ancestors went +privateering against the British. Indeed, the little schooner Polly, +which fought briskly in the War of 1812, is still afloat and loading +cargoes in New England ports. + +These little coasters, surviving long after the stately merchant marine +had vanished from blue water, have enjoyed a slant of favoring fortune +in recent years. They, too, have been in demand, and once again there is +money to spare for paint and cordage and calking. They have been granted +a new lease of life and may be found moored at the wharfs, beached on +the marine railways, or anchored in the stream, eagerly awaiting their +turn to refit. It is a matter of vital concern that the freight on +spruce boards from Bangor to New York has increased to five dollars a +thousand feet. Many of these craft belong to grandfatherly skippers who +dared not venture past Cape Cod in December, lest the venerable Matilda +Emerson or the valetudinarian Joshua R. Coggswell should open up and +founder in a blow. During the winter storms these skippers used to hug +the kitchen stove in bleak farmhouses until spring came and they could +put to sea again. The rigor of circumstances, however, forced others to +seek for trade the whole year through. In a recent winter fifty-seven +schooners were lost on the New England coast, most of which were unfit +for anything but summer breezes. As by a miracle, others have been able +to renew their youth, to replace spongy planking and rotten stems, and +to deck themselves out in white canvas and fresh paint! + +The captains of these craft foregather in the ship-chandler's shops, +where the floor is strewn with sawdust, the armchairs are capacious, +and the environment harmonizes with the tales that are told. It is an +informal club of coastwise skippers and the old energy begins to show +itself once more. They move with a brisker gait than when times were so +hard and they went begging for charters at any terms. A sinewy patriarch +stumps to a window, flourishes his arm at an ancient two-master, and +booms out: + +"That vessel of mine is as sound as a nut, I tell ye. She ain't as big +as some, but I'd like nothin' better than to fill her full of suthin' +for the west coast of Africy, same as the Horace M. Bickford that +cleared t'other day, stocked for SIXTY THOUSAND DOLLARS." + +"Huh, you'd get lost out o' sight of land, John," is the cruel retort, +"and that old shoe-box of yours 'ud be scared to death without a harbor +to run into every time the sun clouded over. Expect to navigate to +Africy with an alarm-clock and a soundin'-lead, I presume." + +"Mebbe I'd better let well enough alone," replies the old man. "Africy +don't seem as neighborly as Phippsburg and Machiasport. I'll chance it +as far as Philadelphy next voyage and I guess the old woman can buy a +new dress." + +The activity and the reawakening of the old shipyards, their slips all +filled with the frames of wooden vessels for the foreign trade, is +like a revival of the old merchant marine, a reincarnation of ghostly +memories. In mellowed dignity the square white houses beneath the New +England elms recall to mind the mariners who dwelt therein. It seems +as if their shipyards also belonged to the past; but the summer visitor +finds a fresh attraction in watching the new schooners rise from the +stocks, and the gay pageant of launching them, every mast ablaze with +bunting, draws crowds to the water-front. And as a business venture, +with somewhat of the tang of old-fashioned romance, the casual stranger +is now and then tempted to purchase a sixty-fourth "piece" of a splendid +Yankee four-master and keep in touch with its roving fortunes. The +shipping reports of the daily newspaper prove more fascinating than the +ticker tape, and the tidings of a successful voyage thrill one with a +sense of personal gratification. For the sea has not lost its magic +and its mystery, and those who go down to it in ships must still battle +against elemental odds--still carry on the noble and enduring traditions +of the Old Merchant Marine. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + +As a rule, American historians like McMaster, Adams, and Rhodes give +too little space to the maritime achievements of the nation. The gap has +been partially filled by the following special works: + +Winthrop L. Marvin, "The American Merchant Marine: Its History and +Romance from 1620 to 1902" (1902). This is the most nearly complete +volume of its kind by an author who knows the subject and handles it +with accuracy. + +John R. Spears, "The Story of the American Merchant Marine" (1910), "The +American Slave Trade" (1901), "The Story of the New England Whalers" +(1908). Mr. Spears has sought original sources for much of his material +and his books are worth reading, particularly his history of the +slave-trade. + +Ralph D. Paine, "The Ships and Sailors of Old Salem: The Record of a +Brilliant Era of American Achievement" (1912). A history of the most +famous seaport of the Atlantic coast, drawn from log-books and other +manuscript collections. "The Book of Buried Treasure: Being a True +History of the Gold, Jewels, and Plate of Pirates, Galleons, etc." +(1911). Several chapters have to do with certain picturesque pirates and +seamen of the colonies. + +Edgar S. Maclay, "A History of American Privateers" (1899). The only +book of its kind, and indispensable to those who wish to learn the story +of Yankee ships and sailors. + +J. R. Hutchinson, "The Press Gang Afloat and Ashore" (1914). This recent +volume, written from an English point of view, illuminates the system of +conscription which caused the War of 1812. + +Nothing can take the place, however, of the narratives of those master +mariners who made the old merchant marine famous: + +Richard Henry Dana, Jr., "Two Years Before the Mast" (1840). The latest +edition, handsomely illustrated, (1915). The classic narrative of +American forecastle life in the sailing-ship era. + +Captain Richard Cleveland, "Narrative of Voyages and Commercial +Enterprises" (1842). This is one of the fascinating autobiographies of +the old school of shipmasters who had the gift of writing. + +Captain Amasa Delano, "Narrative of Voyages and Travels" (1817). +Another of the rare human documents of blue water. It describes the most +adventurous period of activity, a century ago. + +Captain Arthur H. Clark, "The Clipper Ship Era" (1910). A thrilling, +spray-swept, true story. Far and away the best account of the clipper, +by a man who was an officer of one in his youth. + +Robert Bennet Forbes, "Notes on Ships of the Past" (1888). Random facts +and memories of a famous Boston ship-owner. It is valuable for its +records of noteworthy passages. + +Captain John D. Whidden, "Ocean Life in the Old Sailing Ship Days" +(1908). The entertaining reminiscences of a veteran shipmaster. + +Captain A. W. Nelson, "Yankee Swanson: Chapters from a Life at Sea" +(1913). Another of the true romances, recommended for a lively sense of +humor and a faithful portrayal of life aboard a windjammer. + +There are many other personal narratives, some of them privately printed +and very old, which may be found in the libraries. Typical of them is +"A Journal of the Travels and Sufferings of Daniel Saunders" (1794), in +which a young sailor relates his adventures after shipwreck on the coast +of Arabia. + +Among general works the following are valuable: + +J. Grey Jewell, "Among Our Sailors" (1874). A plea for more humane +treatment of American seamen, with many instances on shocking +brutalities as reported to the author, who was a United States Consul. + +E. Keble Chatterton, "Sailing Ships: The Story of their Development" +(1909). An elaborate history of the development of the sailing vessel +from the earliest times to the modern steel clipper. + +W. S. Lindsay, "History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce," 4 +vols. (1874-76). An English work, notably fair to the American marine, +and considered authoritative. + +Douglas Owen, "Ocean Trade and Shipping" (1914). An English economist +explains the machinery of maritime trade and commerce. + +William Wood, "All Afloat." In "The Chronicles of Canada Series." +Glasgow, Brook and Co., Toronto, 1914. + +J. B. McMaster, "The Life and Times of Stephen Girard, Mariner and +Merchant," 2 vols. (1918). + +The relation of governmental policy to the merchant marine is discussed +by various writers: + +David A. Wells, "Our Merchant Marine: How It Rose, Increased, Became +Great, Declined, and Decayed" (1882). A political treatise in defense of +a protective policy. + +William A. Bates, "American Marine: The Shipping Question in History +and Politics" (1892); "American Navigation: The Political History of Its +Rise and Ruin" (1902). These works are statistical and highly technical, +partly compiled from governmental reports, and are also frankly +controversial. + +Henry Hall, "American Navigation, With Some Account of the Causes of Its +Former Prosperity and Present Decline" (1878). + +Charles S. Hill, "History of American Shipping: Its Prestige, Decline, +and Prospect" (1883). + +J. D. J. Kelley, "The Question of Ships: The Navy and the Merchant +Marine" (1884). + +Arthur J. Maginnis, "The Atlantic Ferry: Its Ships, Men, and Working" +(1900). + +A vast amount of information is to be found in the Congressional Report +of the Merchant Marine Commission, published in three volumes (1905). + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Old Merchant Marine, by Ralph D. 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