The Old Merchant Marine - Chapters IV-V



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.