The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Story of the American Merchant Marine, by John Randolph Spears

THE STORY OF THE
AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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From a print in the possession of the Lenox Library

THE STORY
OF THE
AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE

BY
JOHN R. SPEARS
AUTHOR OF "STORY OF THE NEW ENGLAND
WHALERS," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1910
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1910,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1910.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE STORY OF THE MERCHANT MARINE

CHAPTER I
IN THE BEGINNING

THE first vessel built within the limits of the United States for commercial uses was a sea-going pinnace of thirty tons named the Virginia. Her keel was laid at the mouth of the Kennebec River, in Maine, on an unnamed day in the fall of 1607. The story of this vessel, though brief, is of great interest because, in part, of certain peculiarities of rig and hull which, in connection with a sea-going vessel, now seem astounding, but chiefly because it portrays something of the character of the men who, a little later, laid the foundations of the American Republic.

The adventure which led to the building of the Virginia grew out of that wonderful harvest of the sea, the cod fishery on the banks of Newfoundland. For more than a hundred years before she was built many fishermen of Europe had been sailing to the Banks in early spring and returning home each fall. Throughout the sixteenth century there were from 100 to 300 fishing vessels there every year, excepting only those years when wars raged the hardest. In 1577, for instance, as the records show, 350 vessels sailed for the Banks, gathered their harvest, went ashore in the bay where St. John, Newfoundland, now stands, cured the catch on flakes built on the beach, and then sailed for home well satisfied.

Though dimly seen now, those fishermen, as they flocked across the sea in the spring, form one of the most striking pictures in history. For no one had ever charted the western limits of that waste of waters. The Banks lay beyond a belt of the sea famous, or infamous, as the "roaring forties." And yet in ships so rude that the hulls were sometimes bound with hawsers to hold them together these men anchored where black fogs shut them in, where sleet-laden gales were a part of their common life, where bergs and fields of ice assaulted them, and where irresistible hurricanes from the unknown wilds beyond came to overwhelm them. To these real dangers they added others that, though born of the imagination, were still more terrifying. They saw evil spirits in the storm clouds, and demons came shrieking in the gales to carry their souls to eternal torment.

Even in pleasant weather life was hard. Masters ruled their crews by torture. To punish an obstinate sailor they wrapped a stout cord around his forehead and then set it taut until his eyes were popped from the sockets. The food brought from home spoiled. In the best vessels the crew slept in leaking, unwarmed forecastles, while in some of the vessels—those that were but partly decked over—they slept unsheltered. The brine of the sea covered them with sores called sea boils, and their hands dripped blood as they hauled in their cod lines.

Consider further that these fishermen came from four nations that were always at war with each other, either openly or in an underhanded way. And yet the English, the French, the Spanish, and the Portuguese anchored side by side on the Banks, built their flakes side by side on the Newfoundland beach, and when a ship opened her seams as she wallowed in the gale, the crews of the others within reach eagerly lowered their boats to rescue the drowning.

In courage, fortitude, sea skill, and resourcefulness those Banks fishermen had never been surpassed.

This is by no means to say that the fishermen never fought each other. Good fair fighting was a part of the comfort of life as they saw it. But the conditions that eliminated the weaklings naturally created in their minds a standard of justice under which all who survived could work.

Let it be noted now that with all their hardships they were not without compensating rewards. Good digestion waited on appetite. The life ashore while curing the catch—a life where venison and wild fowl replaced their salted meats, and the red people of the region came to visit them—was a time for jollification. But more important than all else they had leisure as well as hard work. For having a share in the catch instead of wages, they obtained enough money, on reaching home, to enable them to pass the winter beside the hearthstone, where they told tales of adventures that stirred the blood. So the love of the sea was cultivated and the race was perpetuated.

Into the midst of these fishermen, as they worked among their flakes upon the Newfoundland beach, came Sir Humphrey Gilbert, on August 5, 1583, who was the forerunner of the New England colonists. He told them he had come to take possession of the country and establish an English colony there. The fishermen saw that such a settlement would interfere with their business, but no resistance was made while he erected a monument and did such other things as the customs of the day required of those taking possession of a new land. One may fancy they saw in Sir Humphrey a man of their own sort. For he had crossed the sea in the ten-ton Squirrel, and although she was, as they said, "too small a bark to pass through the ocean sea at that season of the year," he sailed in her when bound for home; he would not ask his men to take a risk which he would not share. And when the storm that overwhelmed him came, he sat down at the stern of the little bark with a book in his hand, and shouted in a cheerful voice to the crew of the Hind, which was close alongside:—

"We are as near to heaven by sea as by land."

The sailors of Gilbert's expedition have been called "no better than pirates" (Bancroft), but at worst they were able to cherish the abiding faith of their master as expressed in those words. The seamen who sailed (1530) with William Hawkins in that "tall and goodlie ship of his own," the Paul, to the coasts of Africa and Brazil, and with Drake in the Pelican in that famous voyage around the world, and with Raleigh's expedition to the coast of North Carolina, were recruited from among these fishermen, to whom adventure was as the breath of life. And the men who did the actual work of building the Virginia were of the same class.

As the reader remembers, the first charter of Virginia as a colony provided for two colony-planting companies. One, the London Company, settled its colonists in what is now the State of Virginia, while the other, the West-of-England or Plymouth Company, was to people the northern coast. In May, 1607, the Plymouth Company sent two vessels to establish a fishing colony on what is now the coast of Maine. One of the vessels was a "fly-boat" called the Gift of God. A fly-boat was a flat-bottomed, shoal-draft vessel handy for exploring inland waters. The other was "a good ship" named the Mary and John. These ships shaped their course to an island off the coast then well known to the fishermen, and now called Monhegan, "a round high Ile," where they arrived on August 9. On the 18th they located their settlement on a peninsula, on the west side of the mouth of the Kennebec, which was "almost an island." There they erected dwellings, a storehouse, and a church, with a fort enclosing all. Then "the carpenters framed a pretty pinnace of about 30 tons, which they called the Virginia, the chief shipwright being one Digby of London." A plan of the fort as "taken by John Hunt, the VIII day of October in the yeere of our Lorde 1607," is reproduced in Brown's Genesis of the United States. This chart is important because it shows under the guns of the fort a small vessel which was, no doubt, the "pretty pinnace" Virginia.

While the dimensions of the Virginia were not recorded, we can get a fair idea of her size from Charnock's History of Marine Architecture (II, 431), where a smack named the Escape Royal, in 1660, was of 34 tons burden and 30 feet 6 inches long by 14 feet 3 inches wide, and 7 feet 9 inches deep. The 30-ton Virginia was not far from these dimensions. She carried a spritsail and a jib. As the sail spread was insufficient for driving the vessel in light airs and confined waters, oars were provided. The hull was partly decked, enough to protect the cargo.

The crew had to be content with an awning when the wind was light. When the wind was heavy, they had to face the gale, as was the custom on the Banks. And yet the Virginia was built by men who intended to use her not only in the fishery and the coasting trade with the Indians, but for oversea trade as well. It is a matter of record, too, that she made at least one voyage from England to the Chesapeake, and it is believed that some of the Kennebec colonists sailed in her upon that voyage.

Curiously enough, however, the Kennebec colony failed somewhat ingloriously. The winter was long and severe. A fire destroyed the storehouse and the provisions that had been brought from England. The unexplored wilderness oppressed them. In fact, while they would face a hurricane at sea in an open boat, the terrors of the wilderness, though chiefly of their own imagining, drove them away, and they were hard pressed at home to find excuses for what they had done.

In the meantime a settlement was made at Jamestown, Virginia. Of the 105 colonists at Jamestown, 48 were described as gentlemen, 12 as laborers, 4 as carpenters, and the others as servants and soldiers. The servants were white slaves, who were not, however, held for life. The ships with this oddly assorted colony arrived in the Chesapeake on April 20, 1607. Of the things done at Jamestown two only need be considered here. They began creating a merchant marine in 1611 by building a shallop of twelve or thirteen tons' burden. A Spaniard who visited the colony at that time noted that the iron used in the boat had been taken from a wreck at Bermuda—a fact that shows the colonists had not had enough interest in ship-building to bring iron for that purpose from home.

The truth is the Virginia colonists never had much interest in shipping, save only as they built many vessels of small size for use in local transportation on their inland waters. The reason for this condition of affairs is pointed out in Bruce's Economic History of Virginia. The money crop was, as it is now, in many parts of the State, tobacco. Tobacco had been introduced into England in 1586. The settlers found the Indians cultivating it on the James River, but they gave little heed to it until 1612, when John Rolfe, the first American "squaw man," began producing it partly for his own use and partly because he was trying to find some product that could be exported to England with profit. Thus Rolfe's garden was the first American agricultural experiment station. Under cultivation the leaf produced was of better quality than that obtained from the Indians, and when a trial shipment was sent to England the success of the venture was great. Thereupon the colonists became so eager to produce it that the authorities felt obliged to prohibit the crop unless at least two acres of grain were grown at the same time by each planter.

The demand for Virginia tobacco increased until the merchants sent their agents to the colony to buy and pay for the crop long before it was harvested; they even sent ships to lie there for months before the harvest in order to have first chance to secure it. Why should the Virginians build or buy ships under such circumstances?

Now consider some of the conditions surrounding the first New England settlers. Many fishermen had visited the New England coast before a settlement was made there. These adventurers found full fares and they looked upon the coast at a season when it was not "stern."

It was to this coast that the Pilgrims came.

Of the well-known story of the Pilgrims it seems necessary to recall here, first of all, the fact that they were Englishmen who had lived for several years among the Dutch, a people who described themselves upon their coinage as a nation whose "way is on the sea." More than a thousand ships were built every year in Holland where the Pilgrims were sojourning, and everybody lived in a seafaring atmosphere. Though a distinct people, the Pilgrims necessarily absorbed, as one may say, something of the Dutch aptitude for trade and sea life. Thus, when ready to migrate to America, they were able to secure the capital they needed for the venture from merchants who were acquainted with the success that had attended the fishing voyages to the coast.

It is worth noting, too, that Captain Thomas Jones, of the Mayflower, had fished in Greenland waters, and that Mate Robert Coppin was carried as the pilot of the ship because he had been on the parts of the coast to which the expedition was bound. The Pilgrims intended to settle somewhere near the Hudson River, but on November 11, 1620, the Mayflower was found at anchor under Cape Cod. While lying there a number of the company came to think that a settlement there would serve their purpose well, and the reasons given in support of this proposition are of interest because they show what business ideas animated these Pilgrims. The location, they said, "afforded a good harbor for boats." It was "a place of profitable fishing." "The master and his mate and others experienced in fishing" preferred it to the Greenland fishery where whaling made large profits. Moreover, the situation was "healthy, secure and defensible." While the desire for "freedom to worship God" was perhaps uppermost in their talk, as it was in their writings, the Pilgrims were "intensely practical in applying their theories of Providence and Divine control to the immediate business in hand," as Weeden says, in his Economic History of New England.

After settling at Plymouth, as the reader remembers, life was hard during the first years. But the poetic rhapsodies about the "stern and rock-bound coast" do not convey an accurate idea of the agricultural possibilities of the region. Some of the farm lands of eastern Massachusetts are among the most prolific and profitable in the nation. The average yield of Indian corn per acre in Massachusetts in 1907 (see Year Book, Department of Agriculture) was exceeded only by that of Maine (another part of the "stern and rock-bound coast") and that of the irrigated lands of Arizona. Arizona averaged 37.5 bushels per acre, Maine 37, and Massachusetts 36. Consider, too, that it was in April, "while the birds sang in the woods most pleasantly," that Squanto and Hobomoc, red neighbors, taught these Englishmen how to fertilize the fields with fish, and to plant corn in fields that the Indians had cleared. And corn, produced on these fields, formed the first cargo of the first American sea-trader of which we have a definite record.

Through various causes not necessary to enumerate the Pilgrims got on so poorly that it was not until 1624 that they began ship-building. The prosperity that came to them in that year was due to success in fishing. They took enough cod to freight a ship for England. The profit on the cod was so much beyond the immediate need of the people that they launched "two very good and strong shallops (which after did them greate service)."

As it happened, in the year following the building of these shallops the Pilgrims produced such an abundant crop of corn that they had some to sell. Accordingly they loaded a shallop with it, and sent it, under Winslow, to the Kennebec, where he traded it for 700 pounds of beaver skins.

A year later a more important, or at any rate a more profitable, voyage was made. Some English merchants who had maintained a trading-post on Monhegan Island sent word down the beach that they were going to abandon it and would sell the remainder of their goods at a bargain. Although in the years that had passed the Pilgrims had, at times, come so near to starvation that men had been seen to stagger in the street because they were faint with hunger, they had persisted. They had caught and sold fish. They had produced forest products and corn for sale. They had traded with the Indians for furs. They had traded with the fishermen who came over from England, and they had made a profit on every deal—they had not lived in Holland for nothing. When a bargain in trade goods on Monhegan Island was offered, they had capital to make a purchase, and going there with a shallop they secured stuff worth £400. Then, on finding at the mouth of the Kennebec some other goods that had been taken from a French ship wrecked on that coast, they bought an additional £100 worth, which was all their boat would hold, as one may suppose. For as soon as they reached Plymouth Bay they cut their shallop in two and lengthened her, so that when another opportunity was offered to buy goods at a bargain she would have a larger capacity.

Recall, now, a number of events occurring in America before, and at about the time of, the first voyages of the Pilgrim shallops. Henry Hudson had sailed in the Half Moon up the river that bears his name (September, 1609), and the Dutch, after building a few fur-buying posts in that country, had begun a permanent settlement on the lower end of Manhattan Island (1623). Adrien Block, a Dutch explorer, had built a "yacht" on Manhattan Island (during the winter of 1614-1615), that was used later in the coasting trade. At New Amsterdam the Dutch built many small boats for gathering furs on the Hudson, and they repaired ships coming to the port when there was need. But as late as October 10, 1658, J. Aldrichs wrote a letter from that town saying, in connection with a "galliot" that was needed for local use (N. Y. C. docs. II, 51):—

"We are not yet in condition to build such a craft here."

At a still earlier date the French had made a permanent settlement in Canada. In the long story of the French in America it is of interest to note first that the Bretons and Basques had been among the pioneers on the Newfoundland fishing banks. It is not difficult to believe that the Basques were there before Cabot's time.

Of the French explorers we need to recall but one, Samuel de Champlain, "young, ardent, yet ripe in experience, a skilled seaman and a practiced soldier," who had been leading a strenuous life in the West Indies. In 1603 he made a voyage to the St. Lawrence River. In 1604 he helped to make a settlement on the St. Croix River, where he remained until the next year. When a badly needed relief ship came in 1605, he explored the New England coast down around Cape Cod.

In 1608 Champlain built a trading-post where Quebec now stands, and in 1616 there were two real home-builders there, a farmer named Louis Hebert and Champlain himself. In 1626 the population numbered 105, all told. It is not unlikely that the French ship, from which the Pilgrims obtained enough cheap goods to fill their shallop, in their second voyage to the Maine coast, had been wrecked while on a voyage to Quebec. The seafaring merchants of New England inevitably took much interest in the development of this colony from a rival nation.

Still more interesting, though in a different way, were the settlements of the West Indies. The Spaniards had introduced the sugar-cane and negro slavery, an economic combination of the greatest importance to the commerce of the world; for while the Spaniards maintained, as far as possible, a monopoly of their own trade, both slavery and sugar-planting spread all over the islands. Moreover, Spanish exclusiveness was to lead to adventures on the part of some New Englanders.

In 1605 the crew of an English ship took possession of Barbados. On February 17, 1625, an English ship "landed forty English and seven or eight negroes" on the island, and thus began building a colony that was of the utmost importance to New England traders in later years. In 1676 the export of sugar "was capable of employing 400 sail of vessels, averaging 150 tons."

In the meantime (1619), a Dutch privateer had come to Jamestown, Virginia, where "twenty Africans were disembarked," and sold to planters who were to use negro slaves, for many years thereafter, with profit, in the production of tobacco. And slaves, sugar, and tobacco were among the first articles of merchandise to bring profit to the New England ship-owners.

Most interesting of all, however, were the centres of population established upon the New England coast. The English fishermen who came to the coast after the arrival of the Pilgrims, occasionally landed men to remain through the winter in order to trade for furs and procure a supply of provisions—venison, wild fowl, etc.—for the use of the crews of the ships that were to return in the spring.

Of this character was a settlement made at Cape Ann in 1623. The Rev. John White, of Dorchester, England, having become interested in the fishermen, persuaded some merchants to send out people to form a colony. The whole business was badly managed; in 1626 the merchants abandoned the colony, and most of the people returned to England. But one Roger Conant and "a few of the most honest and industrious resolved to stay." They removed, however, to a point on the coast known as Naumkeag, where they made a settlement which they named Salem.

In the meantime White had been working faithfully in England to promote the interests of these men, and in 1628 sixty or seventy emigrants were sent over to join them. In 1629 White and other English Puritans procured a charter for "a colony under the title of The Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay." The settlers who came to America and lived under this charter were the "Puritans" of American history, a fact that seems worth especial mention because a modern mark of intelligence in New England is found in the ability to distinguish between the "Pilgrims" who formed the colony on Plymouth Bay, or the "Old Colony," and the "Puritans" who made the settlements at the head of Massachusetts Bay.

The colonists who came over in 1628 explored the head of the bay, and some of them located where Charlestown now stands. With its dancing waters, its green islands, and its views of the distant blue hills from which the Indians had already called it Massachusetts, the region was enchanting, and the Puritan explorers described it in such glowing colors that 200 more settlers were brought over the next year. The Puritans were the original "boomers" of America.

Among the 200 who arrived in 1629 there were wheelwrights, carpenters, and ship-builders. The ship-builders went up the Mystic River to the place where Medford now stands, and established a shipyard. A considerable number of the emigrants of 1630 joined them. This was the first American shipyard, properly so called.

It is also to be noted that some of these emigrants, under the lead of John Winthrop, located on the peninsula opposite Charlestown, which was distinguished by a three-pointed hill and a "Backbay," where they built a town named Boston.

The French, having a water-road to the far-away regions of the Great Lakes, became wholly absorbed in the fur trade. The Dutch on the Hudson, though less favorably situated, had a western outlet through the Iroquois Indian country, and did a large business in furs. The English on Barbados, having a favorable climate, a fertile soil, and slaves, were preparing to supply all Englishmen with sugar, while the English on the Chesapeake, having facilities similar to those at Barbados, were already astonishing the commercial world with their product of tobacco.

The New Englanders had no considerable back country from which they could draw furs; they had no water route to the interior, and at that time they were unable to produce any crop from the soil for which a good market could be found in Europe. But what they lacked in these respects they made up by hard work in the development of such resources as their country afforded. The histories of New England are full of tales of privation and suffering endured during the first years of their existence, and the stories are all true. But as soon as those settlers had learned how to supplement their prayers for daily bread by well-directed efforts to secure it, hunger fled. They then saw that the waters laving their feet were inviting them to go afloat to seek fortune in the uttermost parts of the earth, and they accepted the invitation.

On July 4, 1631 (the fact that it was on July 4 has attracted the attention of more than one New Englander as a "beautiful coincidence"), the ship-builders on the Mystic launched their first sea-going vessel. "The bark, being of thirty tons," was named the Blessing of the Bay. Her owner, Governor John Winthrop, recorded his reason for building her:—

"The general fear of want of foreign commodities, now that our money was gone, set us on work to provide shipping of our own."

That statement was characteristic of the people as well as of Winthrop. A "want"—any want—"set them on work" to provide for themselves.

The Blessing of the Bay was not a "bark" according to modern nomenclature. She was a vessel of one mast, and much like the vessel built by the less persistent people in the earlier settlement at the mouth of the Kennebec. On August 31 she "went on a voyage to eastward," to trade with the Indians, beyond a doubt, and to pick up such business as might be offered by the few settlers and the fishermen to be found along shore. The fishing and trading station which "fishmongers in London" had built on the Piscataqua, at which no planting was done, was probably the most important point visited.

Another incident of this year, 1631, is of almost as much interest as the launch of the Blessing of the Bay. One John Winter established a shipyard on Richmond Island, off Cape Elizabeth (near the site of the modern Portland), Maine. Some time in December Winter began to build there a ship for merchants in Plymouth, England. As already noted, other ships had been built in America by Europeans for European use, but Winter's work may be called the beginning of the American business of building ships for export.

Three facts about Winter's shipyard may be correlated. In 1638 sixty men were at work in it. During the year a 300-ton ship brought a cargo of wines and liquors to the island. "It was a sporadic" settlement, and it "dwindled away."

Winthrop's Blessing of the Bay appears to have been the first New England vessel to open trade with the Dutch on Manhattan Island. She went there in 1633, perhaps sooner. In 1627 the Dutch had invited "friendly commercial relations" with the Pilgrims by sending the governor of the colony "a rundlet of sugar and two Holland Cheeses," with a letter in which they offered to "accommodate"—to give credit. But the Pilgrims were shy because the Dutch had been trading with the Connecticut Indians, a region claimed by the English; the Dutch had come even to the head of Buzzard's Bay, where the Pilgrims were maintaining a post for the fur trade. However, in September, 1627, the Dutch sent Isaac de Rasieres with a small trial cargo in the "barque Nassau" to see what he could do, and he proved a worthy forerunner of the great race of American commercial travellers. For he carried soldiers and trumpeters along, not to fight, but to do honor to the occasion by means of salutes and blaring music; and he chose these men from among the residents of New Amsterdam who had known some of the Pilgrims in Holland. Indeed, some of them were related to the Pilgrims. Naturally, after "the joyful meeting of kindred as well as friends," and after much fine talk and the display of goods,—especially of "wampum,"—De Rasieres made what he called "the beginning of a profitable trade."

Wampum (bits of sea-shell) was the coin of the red men. The chief mint of the continent was on Long Island. All red men, at that time, were much more anxious to get wampum than the silver coin of the white man. The Pilgrims were glad to buy the wampum because the Indians of New England had but little, and were eager to get it.

It was no doubt to secure a supply of wampum and such West India products as sugar and salt, in which the Dutch traded, that Winthrop sent his Blessing of the Bay to Manhattan Island.

Certain details of the earlier voyages should now prove interesting. For instance, Winthrop's vessel was at first engaged in trading on her owner's account. She was not a freighter, looking for cargo to carry at a price per ton, but a floating store, so to say, carrying merchandise for sale or exchange. The distinction between the freighter and the ship trading on owners' account is to be kept in mind.

After the New Englanders had spread to Connecticut there is a record of the employment of the Blessing of the Bay as a freighter. She carried goods from Massachusetts Bay to Connecticut at 30s. per ton.

In 1629 the freight rate between England and Massachusetts Bay was £3 per ton. Passengers were carried at £5 each, and horses at £10 each. The goods rate increased after a time.

That the oversea rates were remunerative is manifest from the increase in the number of ships finding employment in the trade. In 1635 the Secretary to the Admiralty learned that forty ships were regularly employed in the trade, of which "six sail of ships, at least" belonged to the Americans.

The profits in the trade on owners' account were also recorded. In 1636 Thomas Mayhew and John Winthrop, Jr., as partners, sent a vessel to the Bermudas, then called the Summer Islands, where she sold corn and pork and bought oranges, lemons, and potatoes. Perhaps that was the first importation of Bermuda potatoes. The profit on the venture was "twenty od pounds."

The Richmond, a 30-ton vessel, built by Winter at Richmond Island, Maine, carried 6000 pipe-staves from the island to England, where they were sold at a profit of a little over £25 per thousand.

An idea of the profits on some of the voyages "eastward" to trade with the Indians can be had from the records of the Pilgrims, who, with their shallops, became experts in that line. Between 1631 and 1636, inclusive, the Pilgrims bought and shipped 12,150 pounds of beaver skins and 1156 of otter. "Ye parcells of beaver came to little less than 10,000 li. [pounds]. And ye otter skins would pay all ye charges," as Governor Bradford wrote. As otter skins sold for from 14 to 15s. a pound, "ye charges" in a business that gave a profit of "little less than £10,000" did not exceed £867. And this profit was made, although the Pilgrims had to buy some of their trade goods on credit and pay 40 per cent interest per annum on the sum thus borrowed.

It was at this period of the history of the American merchant marine that Captain Thomas Wiggin, an observing shipmaster from Bristol, England, wrote a letter about the New Englanders, in which he said:—

"The English, numbering about two thousand, and generally most industrious, have done more in three years than others in seven times that space, and at a tenth of the expense."

CHAPTER II
EARLY GROWTH

ALTHOUGH geographical conditions were in most respects against them, it is manifest from any study of the New Englanders that their chief mercantile interests, during the earliest years, were concentrated in the fur trade. The Pilgrims devoted their first surplus crop to that trade, and the first voyage of Winthrop's Blessing of the Bay was to "eastward." According to the contracts, they had come to make fishing stations; yet the large profits made on such furs as they were able to secure kept their minds fixed on the Indian trade. But, happily, at an opportune moment a man came to Salem who was able to see that enduring prosperity could be found by the colonists only in the fisheries; and by example as well as precept he speedily led them to accept his view. Curiously enough, as it must seem in our modern view of the profession, this man was a clergyman, the Rev. Hugh Peter (written also Peters).

Few more stirring stories are to be found in the history of New England than the biography of Hugh Peter. He was born in England, of wealthy parents, in 1599, graduated at Cambridge in 1622, and immediately took holy orders. Very soon, however, he had (or made) such trouble with the church authorities that he had to flee from the country. Then he served an English congregation in Rotterdam until 1634, when he came to New England and was made pastor of the Puritans at Salem.

In 1641 Peter was sent as ambassador to treat with the Dutch of New Amsterdam for a settlement of the disputes over the territory of Connecticut, and the records of his work, especially the proposals which he submitted (N. Y. C. docs. I, 567), show that he was a master of diplomacy. His work with the Dutch led the colonists to send him as their ambassador to England, when the civil war began there. Being a Puritan, he naturally joined the hosts of Cromwell and with such energy and zeal as were characteristic of the man.

In June, 1645, he was made "Chaplain of the Train," and a little later private secretary to Cromwell. He was with his chief at the storming of the castle at Winchester and when the dour hosts swept over the works at Basing. As a special honor, and because of his eloquence, Cromwell sent him on each occasion to tell Parliament how the battles were won; and the reader who would like to learn what a preacher had to say about such fighting as was done in those battles can find one of the addresses in Carlyle's Cromwell. Having been sent on a mission to Holland, he delivered a sermon which stirred the audience until "crowds of women" stripped the wedding rings from their fingers to aid in providing funds for the work of the great Commoner.

For his zeal he was arrested soon after the Restoration. "His trial was a scene of flagrant injustice," and he was condemned, hanged, and quartered. But he faced his accusers and death as he had faced all else in life. He was placed on the gallows while one of his friends was yet hanging there, and was compelled to look on while the corpse was lowered and cut to pieces. When this had been done, one of the executioners turned, and rubbing his bloody hands together, said to Peter:—

"How like you this?"

But Peter, in a voice of unconcern, replied—

"I thank God I am not terrified at it; you may do your worst."

When Hugh Peter came to Salem, he found the people of the colony, with few exceptions, living in log houses that had thatched roofs and dirt floors. They were frontiersmen, a thin line of population stretched along the beach. Although there were masters and servants, there was less division of labor than that fact would now seem to imply. Owners and servants worked together. They cut timber in the forest for lumber and fuel; they built houses of all needed kinds; they cultivated the soil and they cared for their cattle. The New World was almost without form and void, but the divine power of labor was moving upon the wastes. A natural-born leader was needed, however, and Hugh Peter was the man for the hour. He saw that the fur trade was slipping away and that some other resource must be provided. Better yet, he saw that the fisheries would provide a permanent prosperity, and he began to preach the gospel of good fish markets in far countries. No record of his arguments remains, but we may easily learn what he said by reading the contemporary writings of John Smith, who used the facts vigorously, as Peter did beyond a doubt.

In 1619 "there went" to America, said Smith, a ship "of 200 tuns ... which with eight and thirty men and boys had her freight, which she sold for £2100 ... so that every poor sailor that had but a single share had his charges and sixteen pounds ten shillings for his seven months work." In 1620 three different ships "made so good a voyage that every sailor that had a single share had twenty pounds for his seven months work, which is more than in twenty months he should have gotten had he gone for wages anywhere."

If a statement of the gains of a foremast hand would serve as an effective argument in England, it would be much more effective in New England, where many men low in the social scale were finding opportunities to rise—where, indeed, men who had come over as indentured servants had already become capitalists able to join in a venture afloat. The profits of the merchants were also known and printed, however, even though not considered a matter of first importance by Smith. Thus there was a statement that "the charge of setting forth a ship of 100 tuns with 40 persons to make a fishing voyage" was £420 11s. The average take of fish on the American coast would sell for £2100, of which £700 would be the share of the merchant supplying the outfit costing £420 11s. His profit on the voyage would therefore be near 100 per cent, even though the prevailing rate of interest on borrowed money were 40 per cent. The ship-owner took a third of the income from the voyage, and made a still larger profit, for a hundred-ton ship could be built in New England, as Randolph noted, for £4 per ton.

With these facts in hand Hugh Peter went among his people preaching the gospel of enterprise with as much enthusiasm no doubt as he felt and displayed later in preaching religious doctrines before Cromwell's men. As a result of his work he "procured a good sum of money to be raised to set on foot the fishing business, and wrote into England to raise as much more." Further than that, the General Court, as the governing body of the colony was called, appointed six men to fish "for general account."

The Salem people made money from the first. The business spread to near-by Marblehead, and the people there became so much interested that when a minister in the pulpit told them that they ought to seek the "kingdom of heaven to the exclusion of all earthly blessings," one of the congregation interrupted him by saying, "You think you are preaching to the people at the Bay. Our main end is to catch fish."

By 1640 the Salem people had made such progress and profits in their fishery that they were able to launch a ship of 300 tons, a monster of a vessel for the day and place. Moreover, Boston people were so wrought up by Peter's enterprise in this matter that they also built a ship at the same time, the Trial, of 160 (or 200) tons.

Unhappily for Salem, her people had no leader after Peter sailed for England, and Boston soon gained the ascendancy in commerce as in politics. But for many years Salem was a port of vast importance in the story of our merchant marine.

In the meantime (1636), the Desire, a ship of 120 tons, was built at Marblehead for the fishing business. It is likely that Peter inspired the people there to build her. She was engaged in fishing for two years and then made a voyage in the slave trade, and thus acquired enduring notoriety.

Of much more importance than these large vessels in promoting the shipping interests of the colonists were the small vessels, smacks, and shallops, which men of limited means built and used. A seven-ton shallop could be built for £25, and in the hands of her owners she was well able to go fishing. Friends and neighbors united their labor as well as their accumulations of capital in sending the small boats to sea. Even the dugout canoe which a man could make for himself was used in the bay fisheries, and the whole world was within the reach and grasp of a man who had the courage and enterprise to launch forth in a dugout canoe of his own making. It was in and through such men that the American colonists were gaining the sea habit.

The cod was the fish of chief importance, though other varieties were sent abroad, and used at home in enormous quantities. Mackerel, though some were eaten and some exported, were used chiefly for bait. Sturgeon eggs were made into caviare then, as now, while the flesh of the sturgeon was smoked and sold—perhaps as the flesh of some more delicate fish. Hake, halibut, and haddock were of some importance, but the one fish that ranked next after the cod was the alewife.

It is said that alewives were so called because their well-rounded abdomens reminded the fishermen of such of their wives as were too fond of malt drinks! Millions of alewives came to the coast and swarmed up the streams until the channels seemed to be filled solid with the struggling bodies. Seines, scoop-nets, and even the naked hands were used in taking them, but the weir was in common use from the first. Indeed, the Indians used weirs before the white men came.

The people naturally looked upon these swarming fish as common property, and when weirs were built by private enterprise and the owners were thus able to "control the market" to a certain extent, laws were promptly enacted to regulate these primitive "trusts." One John Clark was allowed to build a weir at Cambridge on condition that he sell to no one not an inhabitant of the town "except for bait." The interests of the commonwealth were placed ahead of those of the small community when there was a need of "bait." The price of alewives was fixed at "IIIs 6d per thousand." Another monopolist was to "fetch home the alewives from the weir; and he is to have XVId a thousand and load them himself for carriage; and to have the power to take any man to help him, he paying of him for his work."

The importance of alewives to the people is thus shown clearly. The notable uses of alewives were as food, as fertilizers, and as bait, but a few were smoked for export.

The early laws governing the fisheries may well have still further consideration here. After Hugh Peter began arousing an interest in the fisheries, the General Court exempted fishing vessels from all charges for a period of seven years, beginning in 1639. Fishermen and ship carpenters were excused from serving the public on training days. When alewives were taken at the weirs, the fishermen were to be served at statute-made prices before any were to be offered to the public. This was provided for, of course, after the farmers had learned their art well enough to prevent the fear of starvation. Land was set aside for fish-curing stages, and pasture was provided for the cattle which fishermen owned but could not attend to while at sea.

Until 1648 the fishermen, on coming ashore to "make" their catch, were allowed to land, cut timber, and erect their stages for the work regardless of the ownership of the ground where they landed. After that date they were still allowed to do the same things, but they were then required to pay the owner of the land for the use of land and timber. In 1652, to preserve the reputation of the colony product of fish, the law provided for "fish viewers" at "every fishing place," whose duty it was to separate cured fish into grades according to quality.

Some details of the early methods of taking fish on the Banks were recorded. Neither the dory nor the trawl had then been developed. Hand-lines thrown from the deck of the fishing ship were used exclusively. The hooks and lines were imported from England, and Smith records the price: "12 dozen of fishing lines, £6; 24 dozen of fishing hooks, £2." The Indians made fairly good hooks of bones and shells. They spun lines from the fibres of Indian hemp, which they saturated with grease and the wax of the bayberry bush, but the white men would not use any such gear.

Cod lines for use on the Grand Banks were from 50 to 75 fathoms long; the lines now used on the Georges Bank are often as much as 150 fathoms long. Sinkers (conical plummets of lead), were from 3 to 8 pounds in weight according to the strength of the tidal current where the fishing vessel anchored. The enthusiastic John Smith said: "Is it not pretty sport to pull up two pence, six pence and twelve pence as fast as you can haul and veer a line?" But the fishermen who stood at the rail, in freezing weather, hauling a wet line that was 75 fathoms or more in length, and weighted with 8 pounds of lead and a 100-pound codfish, did not find it exactly "pretty sport." Moreover, hauling and veering did not end their work, for when the school of fish was lost, the catch had to be cleaned and salted, even though the men had been at the rail day and night for 48 hours. But the work afforded better opportunities for "getting on," and so they found in it the "pleasing content" of which Smith also speaks.

As the reader knows, stoves were not invented until many years later, but the fishermen made shift by carrying a half hogshead nearly filled with sand. In the centre of the sand they scooped a hole in which the fire was built. By means of such a fire, built on deck, they cooked their food, warmed themselves, and dried their wet clothing. The scene where a fleet of fishermen anchored together on the banks by night, and all together cooked their suppers by the flaring fires, was memorable. One sees how easy it was for the imaginative sailor to name such a tub of fire a "galley," the name applied to the modern ship's kitchen.

In food supplies the New Englanders naturally fared better than their old-country competitors. Being nearer home, they had fresh vegetables for a greater proportion of the time afloat. Food was cheaper, too, and the circumstances or conditions under which the food was produced made them more lavish in using it. They raised their own peas and had barrels of them at home; why should they stint themselves on the Banks? To this day American ships are noted for superior food and hard work. Of course they ate plenty of fish, as all fishermen did, and they caught many sea-birds, of which they made savory dishes.

John Smith emphasizes the fact that in the English ships the catch was divided into three parts, of which the crew received only a third, the two-thirds going to the owner and the merchant who fitted out the expedition. Where one man owned and outfitted the ship, he took the two-thirds, of course. But as Weeden, in his Economic History of New England (quoting Bourne's Wells and Kennebunk), shows, in 1682-1685, if not earlier, "the capitalist fitting out the expedition with boat, provisions, seines, &c., took one-half the value of the catch, and the other part went to the crew." In the eighteenth century the share of the capitalist was reduced to one-fifth.

The whale fishery of the first half of the seventeenth century was of small importance in comparison with that of later years, but it is still worth mention. The chief source of oil and bone seems to have been found in the whales that died from natural causes and drifted to the beach. But men did go afloat in chase when the spouting spray and vapor were seen from the shore, and laws were provided at an early day to regulate the catch. The General Court, under these laws, took a share of all drift whales—from two barrels to a third of the whole product. In the chase the first harpoon that held its place claimed the whale. It was provided "5ly, that no whael shall be needlessly or fouellishly lansed behind ye vitall." The most important fact here is that at first the men who killed a whale shared equally. Later, when the men of superior skill claimed shares in proportion to the work they did, the "lay" system was evolved. The captain of a ship received from 1 barrel in 17 to 1 in 25; in recent years still more. Mates had from 1 in 30 to 1 in 50. The men who threw the harpoon had 1 in 75, say, while foremast men had still less, even down to 1 in 200 for a green hand. No better system for encouraging men to do as well as they could has ever been devised.

Of similar importance was the custom then prevailing of allowing the crews of merchant ships to carry a "private venture." When Skipper Cornell's Ewoutsen, in a Dutch cruiser, captured four New England ketches "in the neighborhood of Blocx Island," Captain Richard Hollingworth, commanding of one of the four, declared that he was "freighted on account of Wharton and Company, merchants of Boston, with 47 tubs of tobacco; Item, 6 tubs of tobacco for Mathew Cartwright and 13 tubs for himself and crew ... in all 66 tubs, with eight hides." The crew owned nearly a fifth of the cargo. (N. Y. C. docs. II, 662.) Seamen before the mast as well as officers took from port, in stated quantities, any commodities which they supposed they could sell to advantage in any of the ports to which the ship was bound. Here or there these goods were exchanged for others, which were again traded at other ports, or carried home to be sold. Wages were not so very low for common sailors, even by modern standards. They received on an average £2 10s. per month. Mates had, say, £3 10s., and captains £4 10s., and, rarely, £6 a month. On top of this the private venture was carried free, and the shrewd sailormen often made much more on the private venture than from wages. It is a matter of much importance.

The sailor, having a direct interest in the voyage, made haste to shorten sail when a squall threatened to carry away the masts; he worked with all his might whenever any danger threatened, because she carried his merchandise. More important still is the fact that the custom made merchants of the men, and that is to say, it made them self-respecting and ambitious. There were instances where the crew received no wages whatever; the owner, master, and men were all adventurers together.

There is no more instructive comparison in the history of the nation than that between these early-day merchants of the forecastle and the driven brutes before the mast in the clippers of a later day.

Consider now the influence of the poverty of the builder upon the character of the ship. Capital was so scarce that a man worth £4000 was called wealthy. Ships were built where scarcely a shilling in currency changed hands. The workmen were paid with goods. Where neighbors united to build a vessel, they traded produce of fishery field, or forest to the merchant for such iron, sails, and cordage as they needed, or they gave him a share in the vessel. The merchant traded the produce of the fisheries or forest in Europe for the outfit he gave to the builders. By hard labor and severe economy only were these vessels sent afloat. It was the European fashion of the day to build ships with enormous cabins piled high at the stern end, and to ornament the superstructures with carvings and paints. The New Englanders, having no capital to spare, had to forego the pleasure of ornamenting their ships with decorated superstructures; they were obliged to consider efficiency only. They did not know it at the time, but the fact was that this enforced economy led to an advance in the art of ship-building. On navigating the ships without superstructures, it was seen that the tall cabins had made the ships top-heavy, and had served to strain instead of strengthen the hulls. Moreover, the huge pile of timber had held the ship back in any winds but the fairest. Ships without superstructures were stronger, of greater capacity, swifter and handier.

Then there were the geographical influences which affected the model and rigs of ships. Whether in fishing or coasting voyages, the American ship must be prepared to meet winds from any point of the compass on every day she was out of port. The prevailing winds were westerly, but there was neither trade wind nor monsoon. The ship must therefore be rigged to force her way ahead against adverse winds. For such winds the spritsails, lugs, and others, where the cloth was stretched fore and aft, rather than to yards hung square across the masts, were more convenient. The schooner was a natural evolution of the coasting conditions.

The waters of the harbors were shallow. In England deep-water ports had favored deep hulls, but the American designer who wished to increase the capacity of a hull had to make it wider instead of deeper. Wide beam gave greater stability; a wide ship could carry wide sails and yet "stand up like a church" in a heavy wind. Of course stout masts were needed for wide sails, but the forests were full of enormous pines that could be had, at first, for the cutting. Wide hulls of shoal draft, with wide sails spread upon stout spars, made speedy ships, a fact that even now is not as well understood as it should be. The speedy ships invited their masters to "carry on"—to keep their sails spread full breadth while the gale increased to a weight that would "take the sticks out of" vessels of inferior design. The swift ship, well driven, soon brought fame as well as additional profit to crew and owners, and the pride in the ship which was thus developed led all who were in any way connected with her to look for still further improvements.

The short distances between harbors also had some influence upon the forms of ships. For one thing, short passages favored small vessels with small crews. The greater the number of vessels, the greater the number of captains accustomed to responsibility, a matter of no small importance in its effect upon the formation of the sea habit among a people. Then the short passage naturally led the crew into taking chances; they would risk a growing gale in a short run. Once out of port in "dirty weather," the manifest dangers set all hands thinking of improved ways of shortening sail in an emergency, and of improved shapes of hull and cut of canvas to help a vessel to "claw off" a lee shore. The men who worked in the shipyard building for themselves, and then went afloat, were particularly observant at such times. One of the most common statements to be found in the stories of perils at sea, as related by American shipmasters of other days, is this: "Every dollar I owned in the world was in that ship, and" for that reason every hardship was endured and every effort made to bring her to port.

In 1624 the Pilgrims exported their first cargo of fish. Boston sent its first cargo away in 1633. The owners of these fish had to pay three or four pounds a ton freight; and an agent in England, who charged a good commission for doing so, found a customer to buy them. The New Englanders saw that the vessel carrying the cargo made a profit for her owner. They saw, too, that an agent in a foreign country across the water would never have quite the interest in selling to advantage that they themselves would have if they were there to sell. In short, if the fish business were to be handled in the most profitable way possible, they must carry the cargo in their own ship direct to the consumer. Hugh Peter preached this doctrine with emphasis, beyond doubt, for it was he who led in building the 300-ton ship at Salem. From catching fish to carrying them to the oversea market was a short passage quickly made. With this in mind, consider the brief story of the voyage of the good ship Trial, Captain Thomas Coytemore, made after the fishing business was well in hand.

The Trial, as noted, was the ship built in Boston when the people there were stirred to emulation by the work of Hugh Peter in Salem. Loaded with fish and pipe-staves, she sailed away to Fayal (1642). Fayal was chosen because the people there had religious views leading them to eat fish instead of flesh on many days of the year, and they were wine-makers who used many casks every year. The Trial found the market at Fayal "extraordinary good," and Captain Coytemore exchanged the fish and staves for wine, sugar, etc., which he carried to St. Christopher's, in the West Indies. There he traded wine for cotton, tobacco, and some iron which the people had taken from a ship that had been wrecked on the coast, and was then visible, though so far under water that the wreckers had abandoned all work upon it. As the New Englanders were exceedingly anxious to get all kinds of iron things used about a ship, Captain Coytemore must needs have a look at the wreck, and after due examination, he determined to try to recover more of the wreckage. Slinging a "diving tub" (doubtless a good stout cask, well weighted, and with the open end down), above the hulk, he got into it, and having been lowered to the sunken deck, made shift to hook good stout grapnels to the valuable things lying within reach.

An Early View of Charleston Harbor

From a print in the possession of the Lenox Library

Comparisons, though sometimes odious, may be excused when instructive. The conditions of life in Canada led the French to devote themselves to furs only. The Dutch at Manhattan Island were absorbed in furs and the trade of the West India Company. The Virginians and the English West Indians devoted themselves almost exclusively to producing tobacco and sugar by means of slave labor.

Under the conditions of life in New England, the people became perforce farmers, growing their own food; loggers, cutting timber in the near-by forest for use in building houses, fishing smacks, and ships; fishermen, going afloat in the smacks and then curing the catch on the beach; seamen, who, blow high or blow low, carried the catch in their own ships direct to the consumer; traders, meeting the competition of the keenest merchants in the world; inventors, who, when unable to do their work by methods already in use, promptly improvised something new that would serve the purpose.

CHAPTER III
EVOLUTION OF THE SMUGGLER AND THE PIRATE

AMONG the first acts of the English Parliament for the regulation of the commerce of the American colonies, notable here, was that passed in 1646, by which it was provided that no colonial produce should be carried away to foreign ports except in vessels under the British flag.

Since the days of Raleigh, who had done his utmost to create the sea habit among his countrymen, the English people had been growing jealous of the enterprising Dutch, who then were carrying the commerce of the world. This act was a measure to restrain the freedom of the Dutch carrying trade and to give it to English (including colonial) ships. In 1650, although England was yet torn by civil war, Parliament prohibited all foreign ships from trading with the colonies without first obtaining a license. A year later came the culminating act of the Protector's Parliament, "the famous Act of Navigation," as McCulloch calls it (London edition, 1839, p. 817). It provided that no goods produced or manufactured in Asia, Africa, or America should be imported into any part of the English domain except in ships belonging to English subjects whereof the master and more than half the crew were Englishmen. The importation of European goods was prohibited except in English ships, or ships belonging to the country where the goods were produced, or those of the country from which they could only be or were most usually exported. As is well known, this act was intended as a final blow at the Dutch carrying trade.

Consider, now, that "shipping" means one thing, "commerce" or "trade" another. While modern American "commerce" is increasing in a way that seems marvellous, American shipping has been almost entirely driven from the foreign "carrying trade." The English enactments relating to the colonies, from the settlement of Virginia down to and including the "famous Act of Navigation," were all designed to favor all colonial commerce as well as shipping.

After the Restoration, Parliament passed what is known as the Navigation Act of 1660, which was followed by another in 1663, which was still more stringent. The object of these laws, as expressly stated in the later act itself, was in part "the maintaining the greater correspondence and kindness between subjects at home and those in the plantations; keeping the colonies in a firmer dependence upon the mother country; making them yet more beneficial to it; ... it being the usage of other nations to keep their plantation trade exclusively to themselves."

To this end it was first "enacted" (to quote McCulloch), "that certain specified articles, the produce of the colonies, and since well known in commerce by the name of enumerated articles, should not be exported directly from the colonies to any foreign countries, but that they should first be sent to Britain, and there unladen (the words of the act are, laid upon the shore), before they could be forwarded to their final destination. Sugar, molasses, ginger, fustic, tobacco, cotton and indigo were originally enumerated; and the list was subsequently enlarged by the addition of coffee, hides and skins, iron, corn [i.e. grain], lumber, &c."

That is to say, the colonists were compelled to take the enumerated products to England and there lay them "upon the shore." The restriction was laid upon the "commerce" of the colonists; there was no restriction upon the use of colonial ships.

The writer begs the indulgence of intelligent readers while he treats this matter as if for a kindergarten. From the days of McCulloch to the present time no one has sufficiently emphasized the difference between commerce and shipping, a distinction that must be made entirely plain before one can see clearly just how these navigation acts affected the American merchant marine.

Having compelled the colonies to send all their enumerated products to England (it was not necessary to sell them there; they could be reëxported under certain regulations), Parliament went still further in its effort to maintain a "greater correspondence and kindness" between the colonists and the home subjects, by enacting, in 1663, that "no commodity of the growth, production or manufacture of Europe, shall be imported into the British plantations but such as are laden and put on board in England, Wales, or Berwick-upon-Tweed," and in English-built shipping with an English crew.

The export trade of the colonies was to be restricted for the benefit of the merchants of England; so also was this import trade. Whether so intended or not, the restrictions resulted in a lowering of the prices of the colonial enumerated products when sent to England, because the market was glutted. At the same time the prices of the European products, which the colonist wished to buy, were, with few exceptions, greatly enhanced. The colonial producer was robbed by the artificial reduction of the selling price of his products, and the artificial increase of the price he paid for his European goods—robbed twice by arbitrary laws.

In 1672 Parliament passed another act still further to increase the "correspondence and kindness" existing between the colonials and the subjects living in the mother-country. A heavy tax was laid upon the commerce between the colonies.

"By these successive regulations," says Robertson, "the plan of securing to England a monopoly of its colonies ... was perfected."

It should now be interesting to note the actual influence of all this legislation upon the colonial merchant marine. On July 4, 1631, Massachusetts had launched her first ship, a vessel of 30 tons. In 1676 Randolph reported that her people owned 30 ships of from 100 to 250 tons' burden, 200 of from 50 to 100 tons, 200 of from 30 to 50 tons, and 300 of from 6 to 10 tons, the latter being chiefly fishing smacks, though some were engaged in the coasting trade. The colony owned 430 vessels as large or larger than the Blessing of the Bay. Many ships were also owned in the other New England colonies. In 1678 New York owned "5 smale ships and a Ketch" that were in the coasting trade.

Sir Josiah Child, a notable Englishman engaged in the trade with America, said, in a book which he wrote on commercial matters:—

"Of all the American plantations his Majesty has none so apt for building of shipping as New England, nor any comparably so qualified for the breeding of seamen, not only by reason of the natural industry of that people, but principally by reason of their cod and mackerel fisheries." And to this he adds a statement which for the first time gave expression to what has since been known as the "American Peril." He said, "And, in my poor opinion, there is nothing more prejudicial and in prospect more dangerous to any mother kingdom than the increase of shipping in her colonies."

All this is to say that while Parliament had passed three acts that were confessedly intended to prohibit a part, and hamper all of the colonial trade, except that with the mother-country; and while these acts had proved injurious and vexatious to the colonial producers and merchants, the colonial shipping, the merchant marine, had had such a vigorous growth that it was alarming the ship-owners who lived in England.

This condition of affairs becomes all the more interesting when it is remembered that a restriction of colonial trade was likely to affect colonial shipping indirectly, at any rate; that is, through a reduction in the amount of cargo to be carried. This injury was sure to appear in any reduction of trade between the colonies, and it was certain to affect the ships trading on owner's account first of all.

One easily finds a variety of reasons why colonial shipping had grown so rapidly in spite of legislation adverse to trade. For one thing, good ships were built in New England for £4 per ton burden—carrying capacity; the cost in England was higher. Charnock says it was a little less than £6 there, while Sir Josiah Child says it was from £7 to £8. Whatever the difference, it is a memorable fact that the mechanics in New England received higher wages than those in the old country.

Naturally many merchants of England bought colony-built ships, and this proved beneficial indirectly to all colonial shipping. The New England shipyards were full of orders the year round. The percentage of the inhabitants engaged in building ships and in supplying the ships' builders with forest and farm products was therefore very large. These forest and farm owners, as well as the shipyard hands and the crews of colonial vessels, helped to cultivate the sea habit among all the people. Then the farms were all within driving distance of navigable water; all farm surplus exported, either abroad or to other colonies, went in ships, and the farmer from the most remote plantation was not unlikely to see his produce loaded upon a ship of some kind. In fact, many a man behind the plough could "hand, reef and steer."

Reference has already been made to the resourcefulness of the American seaman of the period, but it may be said again that the manner of life of the people—the fact that "even at the end of the colonial period the average American led a life of struggling and privation"—made American crews the most efficient in the world. Captain John Gallop, in a sloop of twenty tons, manned by two men and two boys, was, in 1636, not only able to take care of his vessel in a gale of wind but to retake another sloop that had been captured by the Indians. Many vessels traded to the West Indies with but five men and a boy on board. Raleigh had mourned because Dutch ships, in his day, needed no more than half as many sailors as English ships, but in 1676 the New England ships needed less than the Dutch or any other ships. It was when contemplating a New England ship manned by a New England crew that Sir Josiah Child discovered the "American Peril." He saw that a colonial ship manned by a colonial crew was more efficient than the same ship manned by any other crew, and that is a most important fact in this story.

A most interesting cause of the growth of the colonial merchant marine is found in the bounties which the navigation laws offered to, and the facilities they provided for, those who would engage in clandestine trade. It was unlawful to carry tobacco from the colonies direct to a foreign port, but the export of fish and staves was permitted. Importations of salt were permitted, but Spanish iron must be purchased in England at a time when Spanish iron was the best in the world for ship-builder's use. The restriction on tobacco lowered the price in the colonies; that on the iron raised the price there. If tobacco were clandestinely exported direct to Spain and iron brought directly home, the ship made far greater profits than in the days before the hated laws. Moreover, the smuggled cargo paid no tariff-for-revenue dues or port charges. And it was easy to smuggle in any kind of a cargo.

In connection with this provision of a bounty on smuggling, consider the influence of the fact that the laws were intentionally unfair to the colonists. The colonists resented the injustice, and all the more because their trade previous to the enactment of the laws had been free. Then the conditions under which the laws were enforced were inquisitorial and otherwise vexatious. A time came when forts were built and revenue cutters were provided for the enforcing of the laws, and the officials of forts and cutters were insolent and overanxious to confiscate accused ships.

Recall, now, the mental attitude of the colonists toward all authority. Some had emigrated from England to escape religious tyranny. Many had come over as indentured servants, looking forward to a time when they should be free, and become men of influence. Then all the conditions of colonial life, and especially its dangers, cultivated a feeling of manly independence of all authority. Finally, the colonists had from the first made at least their local laws according to their own standards of right.

"It is not unknown to you that they look upon themselves as a free State ... there being many against owning the King, or having any dependence on Engld." (Letter dated March 11, 1660.)

In short, the colonists had been rapidly developing the American habit of doing what they happened to believe to be right, regardless of the law in the case, and they called, or were to call, this habit an appeal to the "higher law."

Inspired by honest indignation and an opportunity to increase their profits, the colonial ship-owners and crews, with much unanimity, appealed to the "higher law."

Smuggling began as soon as attempts were made to enforce the law. It was estimated that the losses to the British revenue through the direct sale of tobacco to the Dutch at Manhattan Island previous to the year 1664 amounted to £10,000 a year. When, in 1665, the king took notice of colonial dereliction, by issuing instructions for a strict enforcement of the laws, the General Court of Massachusetts replied that they were not conscious of having "greatly violated" them. In 1776 Edward Randolph was sent over especially "Impowered" to prevent "Irregular Trade," and the letters he wrote to the "Lords Commissioners of the Council of Trade and Plantations"[^[1]] are full of references to the ways of the smugglers. Other letters of the period, especially those of Governor Bellomont, are similarly interesting.

At first the evasions were quite open. It is related that Skipper Clæs Bret loaded the ship De Sterre in the Chesapeake "in the name of an English skipper," and sent her to the Island of Jersey. Virginia officials must have aided this transaction. Weeden quotes from the Massachusetts archives the story of another Dutch skipper whose ship was seized because he "broake his word to the Governor in not clearing his ship to belong to the English." Governor Andros, who tried to enforce the laws, complained because there were "noe Custom houses," and because the "Governor of Massachusetts gives clearings, certificates and passes for every particular thing from thence to New York" without inquiring whether these things had been lawfully imported into Massachusetts.

The king's instructions to Governor Dongan tell him how "to prevent the acceptance of forged Cockets (which hath been practiced to our great prejudice)." A cocket is a document given by a customs officer to a merchant as a certificate that the goods have been entered according to law. Randolph reported (April, 1698) that he had asked the Governor of Pennsylvania "to appoint an Attorney Generall to prosecute" certain men who had aided in an evasion of the laws, "but he did nothing in it." In the same year Randolph was arrested in New York by aggrieved merchants because he had, as he alleges, seized a smuggler in Virginia, and although his case seems now to have been according to law, Governor Bellomont had much difficulty in getting him out of jail. No one sympathized with a revenue official.

Before Bellomont's time no official except Governor Andros had tried to enforce the navigation acts. When Bellomont took office, he found all New York opposing him in his efforts to enforce them. When the ship Fortune, Captain Thomas Moston, came to port, bringing cargo worth £20,000 direct from Madagascar (where it had been purchased of a gang of pirates), and Bellomont asked Collector of Customs Chidley Brooks to seize her, he replied that "it was none of his business, but belonged to a Man of Warr; that he had no boat; and other excuses; and when I gave him positive commands to do it, which he could not avoid, yet his delay of four days" gave the smugglers time to unload and conceal all of the cargo except a part estimated to be worth £1000. Thus runs one of Bellomont's letters. He also acknowledged that several cargoes had already been smuggled in without his learning the fact until it was too late to intercept them.

In Boston, as Bellomont learned, there were various ways of smuggling. "When ships come in the masters swear to their manifests; that is, they swear to the number of parcels they bring, but the contents unknown; then the merchant comes and produces an invoice, and whether true or false is left to his ingenuity."

"If the merchants of Boston be minded to run their goods," he continues, "there's nothing to hinder them. Mr. Brenton, the Collector is absent and has been these two years; his deputy is a merchant; the two waiters keep public houses, and besides that, that coast is naturall shap'd and cut out to favour unlawful trade." It was a "common thing to unload their ships at Cape Ann and bring their goods to Boston in wood boats." If that were thought too expensive the goods could be "run" within the city, where there were "63 wharfs," or in Charlestown, where there were fourteen more, all unguarded. French and Spanish ships were bringing many goods to Newfoundland and the ports of Canada, where they met New England ships ready to "swap" cargoes. There was lively trade carried directly to the ports of Canada and to the French and Spanish ports of the West Indies.

After returning to New York from Boston, Bellomont wrote that "Nassaw alias Long Island" was notorious for smugglers and pirates. "There are four towns that make it their daily practice to receive ships and sloops with all sorts of merchandise, tho' they be not allowed ports." They were "so lawless and desperate a people" that the governor could "get no honest man" to go among them to collect the revenue. From Long Island the goods were brought to New York by wagons and small boats. "There is a town called Stamford in Connecticut colony" where "one Major Selleck lives who has a warehouse close to the Sound.... That man does us great mischief with his warehouse for he receives abundance of goods, and the merchants afterwards take their opportunity of running them into this town." During Bellomont's time Selleck's warehouse was the favorite resort of the merchants doing business with the Madagascar pirates. Selleck had £10,000 worth of the goods which Captain Kidd brought from the East.

Turning now to the stories of the pirates, we read that when one Captain Cromwell, a pirate with three ships, manned by eighty men, came to Plymouth in 1646, and remained five or six weeks with the Pilgrims, Governor Bradley referred to the visit in these words:—

"They spente and scattered a great deal of money among ye people, and yet more, sine, than money."

The statement that the Pilgrims (of all others!) entertained the pirates so well as to detain them for weeks in the harbor is somewhat shocking to one not fully acquainted with the conditions of commerce in that period. The facts regarding the pirates seem worth, therefore, some consideration.

While pirates were found upon the ocean as soon as other ships in the early history of the world, some of the piracy affecting the early commerce of the colonies grew out of a curious system of private reprisals that was previously countenanced by European governments. Thus, when the Inquisition in the Canary Islands seized the property of Andrew Barker, an Englishman, in 1576, and he was unable to obtain redress from any Spanish authority, he, with the permission of his government, "fitted out two barks to revenge himself." He captured enough Spanish merchantmen to recoup his loss with interest. His commission was called a letter of marque and reprisal.

Then recall the system of forcing trade that was practised in the West Indies. Sir John Hawkins sold slaves to the Spanish at the muzzles of his guns. Eventually Sir John's fleet was "bottled up" in Vera Cruz by a Spanish squadron and destroyed. Drake was one of the men ruined by this act of Spanish "perfidy," and to recoup his losses he began the series of raids by which he acquired fortune and a title.

Reprisals led to wanton aggressions, like those of the buccaneers, and wanton aggressions produced reprisals again. All governments encouraged their merchantmen to rob those of rival peoples as a means of promoting commerce, just as the warring fur traders on the American frontier were encouraged in their fights waged to the same end.

The encouragement of reprisals was at all times more or less covert. In war times the armed merchantmen were openly commissioned and sent afloat not only to prey upon the ships of the enemy but upon those of neutral powers as well. It was the theory of all statesmen that the best way to encourage the shipping of one nation was to injure as much as possible, and by all means, the shipping of all rivals. As late as the end of the eighteenth century the Barbary pirates were subsidized by some governments to encourage them to prey upon the shipping of rivals.

At one time the privateer captain was the judge of the offending of the neutral. Later, when privateers were obliged to carry captured ships before a court of admiralty, the difference between the robbery as committed by the privateer and the confiscation ordered by the court was found only in the course of procedure.

A theorist here and there denounced the systems of reprisals and privateering. Governor Bradford was worried somewhat by the doings of Cromwell's men. Government officials denounced as pirates the privateers who smuggled in goods instead of bringing them in openly and paying the usual fees and duties. But the state of civilization warranted the Pilgrims in the warmth of the reception they gave to the pirates.

How far the piratical cruisers influenced the American merchant marine is not definitely told in the documents, but it is certain that damage was inflicted. We get a glimpse of a vicious raid in the story of a French pirate (perhaps he had a commission, however) named Picor, who landed on Block Island in July, 1689. The pirates "remained in possession of the island, plundering the houses, and despoiling it of every moveable thing," for a week. Two of the islanders were tortured to make them reveal the hiding-place of valuables, and two negroes were killed.

From the island the pirates went to New London, but they were driven away. On sailing toward the open sea once more, they were intercepted by two armed sloops that had been sent out from Newport under one Captain Paine. A Naval History of Rhode Island says that Paine had "followed the privateering design" in former years as a lieutenant under Picor, and that the Frenchman, on recognizing him, fled, saying he "would as soon fight the devil as Paine."

In the Canadian Archives (1894) are two stories of raids upon French possessions, made in one case by "Englishmen" (they took Quebec), and in the other by "the people of Massachusetts."

Many letters charging various colonies with encouraging pirates are found in the old documents. Rhode Island, New York, and the two Carolinas were accused in this way more frequently than the others, and New York was the chief offender in the days of Governor Benjamin Fletcher (1692-1697). While the buccaneers were ravaging the Spanish mainland, another horde found opportunity in the conditions prevailing on the coast of Asia. These latter pirates formed a settlement upon Madagascar Island, wherein gold and jewels were abundant, but such products of civilization as rum and weapons were scarce and much wanted. New York merchants usually supplied these wants, but New Englanders sent them at least one cargo of masts and yards for their ships. The merchant captains engaged in this supply trade also took a turn at piracy whenever opportunity offered. Governor Fletcher did a thriving business in supplying captains with commissions when they sailed, and "protections" when they returned. Captain Edward Coates, of the ship Jacob, said that he paid £1300 for "his share" of the price of the commission with which the ship sailed. At the end of the voyage the crew "shared the value of 1800 pieces of eight, a man." Fletcher took the ship, valued at £800, for his bribe when he allowed Coates to land the cargo. The sailors had to pay the governor from seventy-five to one hundred pieces of eight for "protections."

Captain Giles Shelly, of the ship Nassau, carried rum which cost two shillings a gallon to Madagascar, and sold it for from fifty shillings to three pounds a gallon. "A pipe of Madeira wine which cost him £19 he sold for £300."

Captain William Kidd was the most notorious of the captains engaged in the Madagascar trade, but the story of his career is interesting chiefly because of the light it throws upon the state of civilization then prevailing. His troubles began when Lord Bellomont and some other noble lords of England fitted out a private armed ship to go to Madagascar and rob the pirates. Bellomont describes this venture as "very honest." Kidd was chosen to command the ship—The Adventure Galley. On arriving at Madagascar, he found that the pirates had a stronger ship than his, and he was afraid to attack them. The crew had been shipped on the usual privateer plan of no prize, no pay, and on finding they were to get no prize they became mutinous. Many of them deserted to the pirates of the island. In a half-hearted effort to maintain discipline among those remaining, Kidd hit a man with a bucket and happened to kill him. Then he went cruising, pirate fashion, and captured a ship belonging to "the Moors," which was valued at £30,000. In this ship Kidd sailed for home. He learned, on the way, that he had been proclaimed as a pirate. Bellomont had been accused by political enemies in Parliament of fitting out a piratical cruiser, and being unwilling to face the charge by telling the facts frankly, he shuffled, told falsehoods, and eventually made a scapegoat of Kidd, who was hanged (May 12, 1701).

That this man, who at worst had killed one man in a sea brawl, and had taken one ship, should have had ballads written about him in which he was described as "bloody" is one of the most remarkable facts in the history of the sea. But that he should have been referred to ever since in all literature as a typical pirate is still more remarkable.

A book, Hughson's Carolina Pirates and Colonial Commerce, has been written to tell about the deeds of such men as Bane, Stede Bonnet, Moody, and Edward Thatch, or Blackbeard, but it has little to say about the influence of the pirates upon commerce, because there is little to say. The pirates mentioned captured a few ships, American as well as English, and for brief periods interrupted the trade of various ports. On the other hand, some of them supplied the colonists with low-priced goods, and at times the only coin in circulation was that brought in by the freebooters.

On the whole, in a financial point of view, the pirates benefited the young merchant marine more than they damaged it. In anticipation of attacks by pirates, all ships in deep-water trade carried cannon, and some coasters did so, especially in the longer voyages. In the trade with Spain and Portugal and the Canary Islands the American vessels were often chased, and sometimes captured, by Barbary pirates who had learned their trade from European renegades. New England ships in the West Indies were always obliged to keep a sharp lookout for piratical cruisers under French and Spanish flags. But these aggressions were not an unmixed evil. For such conditions increased freight rates and the profits on cargoes carried on owners' account. Thus the freight rate from Boston to Barbados, in 1762, was "14 per ton or four times former rates," and all because of pirates. Sure fortune came to the ship captain who was equal to the emergencies of the trade. Dangers cultivated the courage and enterprise of the crews. In a still broader view the habits of a people soon to become an independent nation were forming, and it was well worth while for some of them to learn how to swim in rough water.

CHAPTER IV
BEFORE THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION

TWO of the trades in which the ships of the American colonies were largely engaged during the seventeenth century are of special interest here—the whale fishery and the slave trade. It was in 1712 that Captain Christopher Hussey, while off Nantucket, in an open boat, looking for whales, was blown away to sea, where he killed a sperm whale, the profitable sale of which led the people of his famous home island to go cruising in deep water for more whales of the kind. The growth of the fishery that followed was swift. In 1730 Nantucket alone had twenty-five deep-water whalers, and they brought home oil and bone that sold for £3200. In the meantime the islanders had begun sending their products directly to London, thus establishing a new line of trade. With the increase of profits came an extension of the territory where the search for whales was made. In 1751 they went to Disco Island in the mouth of Baffin's Bay. In 1763 they were found on the coast of Guinea (looking for whales and ignoring the slave trade), and that, too, in spite of the wars that had covered the seas with pirates. In 1767 no less than fifty whalers crossed the equator "by way of experiment." That statement is perhaps the most significant of any that can be made of the fishery. Nantucket alone owned 125 whalers in 1770; they were, on the average, 93 tons' burden in size, and in the course of the year they brought home 14,331 barrels of oil worth $358,200 as soon as landed.

These facts are of special interest to the story of the American merchant marine for several reasons. The oil and bone formed an important part of what a farmer might call the cash crops of the nation. Then the whalers were producers whose work added to the comfort and prosperity of the world. Travellers from Europe were astonished to learn that America was a land where "no one begged." Nantucket was a community not only where no one begged but where every man was a capitalist, or at worst had capital within reach. For every man went whaling, or might do so, and a "greasy" voyage made every member of the ship's crew rich enough to buy shares in a whale ship. The "lay" of the whale ship was like the private venture of the freighter. Further than that the whaler carried a number of petty officers found on no other kind of a ship—the "boatsteerers." The ambitious youth before the mast found promotion nearer at hand. Many a youth who went afloat as a "greenhorn" returned proudly wearing the badge of the boatsteerer. It was a matter of no small importance in a country wherein were many bond-servants looking forward to freedom and an opportunity to rise in the world.

More important still was the influence of the adventures enjoyed and dangers risked by the whalers. Wherever whale-oil was burned, men were found telling the tales of the sea. The people who listened were peculiarly susceptible, for they had come across the sea, looking for new lands and opportunities, or they were the immediate descendants of those who had done so. When Captain Shields led the way around Cape Horn, he not only aroused a spirit of emulation in all other whalers, but he inspired a whole people. As they listened to the story the people of the interior were reminded that the streams before their doors were dimpling highways to the sea and the wonder world beyond its borders; and there were no other highways worth mention in the country in those days.[^[2]]

In every story of the slave trade one must remember that modern readers are able only with great difficulty to obtain the right point of view.

We err greatly in judging the people of the seventeenth century by the standards of the twentieth. There was work to do—the world's work—and many of the workers, though they saw dimly, or not at all, the task in hand, were so eager to do their share of it that they voluntarily sold themselves into bondage in order to go about it. Were such men as these, or their contemporaries, likely to see anything wrong in compelling the less developed but strong-armed Africans to take hold and "keep the ball rolling"? Manifestly, slavery was an unavoidable feature of the evolution of the race, and the slave-owners of yesterday were as well justified in their belief that slavery was just, as we are in our belief that the able financier—the good business man—is entitled to a much greater share of the good things of life than a man of different mental caliber—say a college professor, for example.

The traffic in slaves followed immediately upon demand. Says Winthrop's Journal:—

"One of our ships which went to the Canaries with pipe-staves in the beginning of November last, [1644] returned now and brought wine, and sugar and salt and some tobacco which she had at Barbadoes in exchange for Africans which she carried from the Isle of Maio."

The Desire, with her slaves from Providence, was the first American slaver, but long before the end of the seventeenth century the colonial ships trading to the Madeiras and Canaries made a regular practice of slaving. For the wine and salt which were obtained in the islands were not of sufficient bulk to fill the holds of their ships. The enterprising captains wanted to make use of the vacant space between cargo and deck, and nothing they could find for that purpose would yield as much profit as negro slaves bought on the coast of Africa, and carried to the one-crop colonies like Barbados and Virginia.

It is true that when the captain of a Massachusetts ship helped to raid an African village, and thus, by assault, captured two slaves, the General Court ordered them returned to Africa. But in deciding the questions arising in this case the Court distinctly, if indirectly, affirmed the doctrine that slaves were property: "For the negroes, (they being none of his but stolen), we think meete to alowe nothing." If he had obtained them by purchase, the Court would have allowed him full value.

Between 1585 and 1672 inclusive, six monopolistic companies were organized in England to control the African trade. Because of the monopolistic work of the last one, the people of Barbados declared, at first, that it was "killing the provision trade from New England." That is to say, that for a time New England ships were driven from the island trade; but the smugglers soon circumvented the monopoly. "Interlopers" attempting to leave England for the slave trade were easily detained at the request of the company, but American ships were not to be so detained. Then the company appointed agents to intercept the cargoes brought to the Barbados ports, but all in vain. "Armed multitudes on foot and on horseback" attacked the unfortunate agents who tried to do their duty. Cargoes of slaves were landed on the beach between ports while agents slept. The work of the company simply increased the profits of the "interlopers."

When, in 1698, Parliament opened the trade to all merchantmen, the increase of the trade was considered "so Highly Beneficial and Advantageous to this Kingdom" that efforts were made to secure the slave traffic of the Spanish islands also, and with success. The most valued feature of the Peace of Utrecht (March 13, 1713) was the Assiento by which Spain agreed to permit England to send not less than 4800 slaves every year thereafter to the Spanish colonies.

With Spanish as well as all English West India islands open to the trade of the New England slavers, it is interesting to note that one port soon forged ahead of all others in the number of ships engaged in the traffic. Rhode Island merchants secured a much greater share of it than those of other parts of the coast. Their success appears to have been due in part to geographical conditions. Thus the people of Massachusetts led those of Rhode Island in the fisheries because they lived nearer the Banks, but they had no advantage in carrying forest and farm products to the West Indies. In fact, Newport was measurably nearer to Barbados than Boston was; her ships did not have to risk the dangers of Cape Cod. This was a small advantage, but all the more interesting on that account. Boston gave her attention chiefly to fish; Newport perforce made a specialty of something else, and of all the products of the soil used in trade, within her reach, there was nothing that gave so large a profit as molasses, when it was the raw material for the manufacture of rum. Newport thought to fish, at one time; a bounty was paid on whale-oil taken by ships of the colony. But the production of rum needed no artificial stimulation. Molasses cost thirteen or fourteen pennies a gallon, and Rhode Island distillers became so expert that some of them made a gallon of rum from one of molasses, though the ordinary product was 96 gallons in 100. Rum was not only cheap, it was satisfying. Even the French Canadians bought rum, instead of brandy from their native land.

Gaining the lead in the manufacture of rum gave the Newport merchants the lead in the slave trade, for of all goods carried by enlightened and civilized white men to the degraded heathen of Africa nothing proved so tempting as this deadly stupefier.

Many stories of the early slave trade remain, but none shows the conditions as they were better than that of a voyage made by Captain David Lindsay, in the 40-ton brigantine Sanderson, belonging to William Johnson & Co., of Newport, in 1752. She sailed for the black coast on August 22, at 11.32 o'clock, the exact minute being noted on an astrologer's chart which the captain had obtained as a guide. The chief part of her cargo consisted of "80 hhds. six bbs. and 3 tierces of rum, containing 8220 gals." Lumber and staves for sale at Barbados, as well as for use in making the slave deck, were also carried, but in small quantities. A partial description of the vessel before sailing says she was "tite as yet." In a letter dated "Anamaboe 28th Feb. 1753," Captain Lindsay reports progress:—

"I have got 13 or 14 hhds of Rum yet left a board & God noes when I shall get clear of it. Ye traid is so dull it is actually a noof to make a man Creasy." Officers and men had been sick, one was likely to die, "and wors than yt have wore out my small cable & have been obliged to buy one heare.... I beg you not blaime me in so doeing. I should be glad I could come rite home with my slaves for my vesiel will not last to proceed farr. We can see day Lite al round her bow under deck."

In his next report (Barbadoes, June 17, 1759), the captain says:—

"These are to acqt you of my arivel heare ye day before yesterday from anamaboe. I met on my passage 22 days of very squaly winds & continued Rains so that it beat my sails alto piceses.... My slaves is not landed as yet: they are 56 in number for owners all in helth & fatt.... I've got 40 ounces gould dust & eight or nine hundred weight maligabar pepper for owners."

As we see it the trade was horrible, but consider the courage and fortitude of the captain and crew who, after seeing "day Lite al round her bow under deck," headed away across the ocean on a passage lasting ten weeks, during which, for twenty-two days, they faced storms which beat the sails to pieces and poured floods of water through the open seams.

A report of the consignee shows that forty-seven of the slaves sold for £1432 12s. 6d. The usual price of a slave on the African coast was 110 gallons of rum. After deducting expenses, the consignees credited the owners of the ship with £1324. After adding the gold dust, the pepper, and the small sums received for the lumber and staves, one sees that the dividend on the cost of the Sanderson (£450) was large. Of the price received for the remaining negroes, and the profit on the molasses which was probably carried home, nothing is said in the record. (See Am. Hist. Record, August and September, 1872).

The income of the slaver captain was large for that day. In addition to the ordinary monthly wages, he received several commissions. "You are to have four out of 104 for your coast commission," wrote the owner of the schooner Sierra Leone, in which Captain Lindsay made a voyage in 1754, "& five per cent for the sale of your cargo in the West Indies & five per cent for the goods you purchase for return cargo. You are to have five slaves Privilege, your cheafe mate Two, if he can purchase them, & your second mate two."

The "Privilege" was the "private venture" of the trade. The foremast hands had no "privilege." Their pay was about £3 per month.

As a matter of record, to show something of the way business was done by the ship-owners of the day, here is a copy of a bill of lading, followed by a letter of instructions to a captain about to sail in the slave trade:—

"Shipped by the Grace of God in good order and well conditioned, by William Johnson & Co., owners of the Sierra Leone, in & upon the said Schooner Sierra Leone, where of is master under God for this present voyage David Lindsay, & now riding at Anchor in Harbour of Newport, and by God's Grace bound for the Coast of Africa: To say, Thirty-four hogsheads, Tenn Tierces, Eight barrels & six half barrels Rum, one barrel Sugar, sixty Musketts, six half barrels Powder, one box beads, Three boxes Snuff, Two barrels Tallow, Twenty-one barrels Beef, Pork and Mutton, 14 cwt. 1 qr. 22 lbs. bread, one barrel mackerel, six shirts, five Jacketts, one piece blue Calico, one piece Chex, one mill, shackles, handcuffs &c.

"Being marked and numbered as in the Margent; & are to be delivered in like good Order & well conditioned, at the aforesaid port of the coast of Affrica (the Dangers of the Seas only excepted) unto the said David Lindsay or to his assigns, he or they paying Freight for the said Goods, nothing, with Primage and Average accustomed. In Witness whereof, the master or purser of the said Schooner hath affirmed unto three Bills of Lading: all of this Tenor and date: one of which Three Bills of Lading being accomplished the other two stand void. And so God send the good Schooner to her desired Port in Safety: Amen."

The enormous profits of the slave trade were made in spite of active competition. In 1750 there were 101 Liverpool merchants in it, while London had 135, and Bristol 157. The English slavers were much larger than the American, on the average, being able to carry 300. Nevertheless, New Rhode Island held her own well. In 1740 she had, according to The American Slave Trade, 120 vessels in the trade, and in 1770 the number was 150.

An interesting view of the seafaring people of New England in the seventeenth century is found in the autobiography of the Rev. John Barnard, who served Marblehead well, beginning in 1714. He says that upon his arrival in the place "there was not so much as one proper carpenter nor mason nor tailor nor butcher in the town. The people contented themselves to be the slaves that digged in the mines [figuratively speaking] and left the merchants of Boston, Salem and Europe to carry away the gains; by which means the town was always in dismally poor circumstances, involved in debt to the merchants more than they were worth; ... and they were generally as rude, swearing, drunken and fighting a crew as they were poor.

"I soon saw that the town had a price in its hands, and it was a pity they had not a heart to improve it. I therefore laid myself out to get acquainted with the English masters of vessels that I might by them be let into the mystery of the fish trade; and in a little time I gained a pretty thorough understanding of it. When I saw the advantages of it I thought it my duty to stir up my people ... that they might reap the benefit of it.... But alas! I could inspire no man with courage and resolution enough to engage in it, till I met with Mr. Joseph Swet, a young man of strick justice, great industry, enterprising genius, quick apprehension and firm resolution, but of small fortune. To him I opened myself fully, laid the scheme clearly before him, and he hearkened unto me.... He first sent a small cargo to Barbadoes.

"He soon found he increased his stock, built vessels and sent the fish to Europe, and prospered in the trade.... The more promising young men of the town soon followed his example," and "now, [1766] we have between thirty and forty ships, brigs, snows and topsail schooners engaged in foreign trade."

Moreover (and it is an important matter in that it shows one influence of shipping in that day), foreign trade had improved the manners of the people. "We have many gentlemanlike and polite families."

Captain Kidd's House at Pearl and Hanover Streets, New York, 1691

Copyright, 1900, by Title Guarantee and Trust Company

One finds in the documents many glimpses and not a few detailed stories of life in what may be called the ordinary trades of the American merchant marine during the eighteenth century. Here, for example, are some extracts from a diary kept by a Salem youth, who had recently graduated from Harvard and was making a voyage to Gibraltar with Captain Richard Derby, in 1759. The diary is to be found in the possession of the East India Marine Society of Salem:—

"Nov. 12.—Saw a sail standing to the S. W. I am stationed at the aftermost gun and its opposite with Captain Clifford. We fired a shot at her and she hoisted Dutch colors.

"15.—Between 2 and 3 this morning we saw two sail which chased us, the ship fired three shots at us which we returned. They came up with us by reason of a breeze which she took before we did. She proved to be the ship Cornwall from Bristol.

"23.—We now begin to approach to land. At eight o'clock two Teriffa (Barbary) boats came out after us, they fired at us which we returned as merrily. They were glad to get away as well as they could. We stood after one, but it is almost impossible to come up with the piratical dogs.

"Dec.—10.... In the morning we heard a firing and looked out in the Gut and there was a snow attacked by 3 of the piratical Teriffa boats. Two cutters in the Government service soon got under sail, 3 men-of-war that lay in the road manned their barges and sent them out, as did a privateer. We could now perceive her (the snow) to have struck, but they soon retook her. She had only four swivels and six or eight men.... They got some prisoners (of the pirates) but how many I cannot learn, which it is to be hoped will meet with their just reward which I think would be nothing short of hanging."

Tales of the resourcefulness of the foremast hands on the colonial vessels are of special interest here. As an example, consider that of the brig Sally, which turned bottom up while on her way from Philadelphia to Santo Domingo, on August 8, 1765. Six of the crew who were on deck saved themselves at first by clinging to such wreckage as floated beside the hull, and then, when the squall was over, climbed to the upturned keel. Then, to procure food and drink, they cut the wreath (a flat bar of iron encircling the mainmast head) from its place, using their jackknives, it may be supposed, and with that as a tool made a hole through the bottom of the hulk. It took six days of continuous labor, watch and watch, of course, but they succeeded, and got out a barrel of bottled beer and another of salt pork. During the six days of work they subsisted without water, and with no other food than the barnacles on the planking. Moreover, they built a platform of staves and shingles upon the sloping bottom of the hull, upon which they could sleep without danger of rolling into the sea. In this fashion they lived until September 1, twenty-three days, when they were rescued.

Of the lost rudders that were replaced with pieces of spare spars bound together with rope, and the small boats made by castaways who had nothing but barrel hoops and staves with canvas for planking, no more than mention need be made.

In the log of the sloop Adventure, Captain Francis Boardman, during a West India voyage, in 1774, are found the following entries:—

"This Morning I Drempt that 2 of my upper teeth and one Lower Dropt out and another Next the Lower one wore away as thin as a wafer and Sundry other fritful Dreams. What will be the Event of it I can't tell."

"this Blot I found the 17th. I can't tell, but Something Very bad is going to hapen me this Voyage. I am afeard but God onley Noes What may hapen on board the Sloop Adventure—the first Voyage of being Master."

There were terrors of the sea of which the masters were more "afeard" than they were of the "Teriffa" pirates, but, in spite of all, they held fast tack and sheet, continued on the course, and finally told in the log-book—at least Captain Boardman did—just what came after the dire portents. On arriving off Boston, Boardman wrote:—

"The End of this Voyage for wich I am very thankful on Acct. of a Grate Deal of Trouble by a bad mate. His name is William Robson of Salem. He was drunk most part of the voyage."

The Captain Richard Derby mentioned above was one of several generations of Salem Derbys that followed the sea with success. A letter written by him while at Gibraltar, in 1758, gives a good idea of the state of trade at that time:—

"I wrote you the 1st instant by way of Cadiz and Lisbon; since which I have landed my white sugar and sold it for $17½ per cwt., and my tar I have sold at $8½ per bbl. I have not as yet sold any of my fish, nor at present does there appear to be any buyer for it; but as it is in very good order, and no fear of its spoiling, I intend to keep it a little longer. I am in hopes that this Levanter will bring down a buyer for it. I hope to get $12 for my brown sugar. We have this day had the Sallie delivered up to us, and intend to sell her for the most she will fetch; as to sending her to the West Indies, I am sure if she was loaded for St. Eustia, she would be seized by the privateers before she got out of the road, and having no papers but a pass, would be sufficient to condemn her in the West Indies, if she should be taken by an English cruiser. I have bought 140 casks of claret, at $10 per cask, which I intend to bring home with me. I have written Alicant for 500 dozen handkerchiefs, if they can be delivered for $4 current per dozen. My cargo home I intend shall be 140 casks of claret, 20 butts of Mercil wine, 500 casks of raisins, some soap, and all the small handkerchiefs I can get."

By way of illustrating the dangers of losses from assaults by armed vessels under the English flag, it should be told that in 1759 a Salem schooner named the Three Brothers was overhauled by an English privateer that took away such specie from her as was found on board, and then sent her to one of the West India Islands "to be robbed again by a court of admiralty," as the senior Derby, her owner, wrote. In 1672 another Derby vessel was captured by a Frenchman who took a bond of, and released, her. The old captain sent a cartel in due course to redeem the bond, but a British warship seized her on the charge that she was bound to a port of the enemy. The court in England acquitted the cartel, but in the meantime the owner of the vessel had been put to a great expense unnecessarily, and he had no redress.

Richard Derby mentioned above bought a French prize of 300 tons at Gibraltar, loaded her with wine, and sent her under Captain George Crowninshield to the West Indies, where her cargo was sold to good advantage, and sugar purchased. With this she headed away for Leghorn, but was taken by an English privateer on the plea that she had no register. As a matter of fact the voyage was entirely lawful; she had no register, but being a purchased prize, she did not need one until she should be able to go to an English port. Nevertheless, when the vessel was taken before the court in the Bahamas, she was at once condemned. It was sheer robbery. The records of that court showed that, of 200 ships that had been brought in, the only ones escaping condemnation were a few belonging to owners who had been willing to pay the judge a higher price than the privateers were. The governor of the colony as well as this judge had gone to their posts poor, but in a few years they retired worth fortunes of £30,000 each.

The Derby vessels were seized in each case on the charge that they had violated one or another section of the navigation laws. The navigation laws had at last begun to injure the shipping of the colonial owners. A remarkable change had taken place in the condition of affairs. What had happened, and through what agencies had the change come?

A small space only is needed for a statement of the important facts, but the reader is reminded that here, as in the case of slavery, it is difficult to get the right point of view. The eighteenth-century state of morality, not that of the twentieth, prevailed.

From the beginning of the eighteenth century until well past the middle, England was constantly at war with France and Spain in spite of treaties that were made from time to time to provide for peace. There was never a day from 1700 to 1763 when the ships of either nation were free to sail the seas unmolested. It was the period during which Lord Clive fought the battles of his country in the East Indies, and when, in America, the frontiersman never saw the sun set without a well-grounded fear that the night would bring bloodthirsty and fiendishly cruel enemies prowling around his cabin. According to the documents that remain, these long wars were seemingly no more than disputes over boundaries (neighborhood quarrels over line fences), or efforts to avenge some such personal injury as that when Captain Jenkins had his ear cut off by the Spaniards while sailing near the coast of Cuba. But as seen now, each seemingly petty quarrel was but a feature of a prolonged struggle between races for the commercial control of the New World.

"Shall half the World be England's for industrial purposes, ... or shall it be Spain's for arrogant-torpid, sham-devotional purposes contrary to every Law?" is the way Carlyle put the question in his history of Frederick the Great, and he adds: "The incalculable Yankee Nation itself, biggest Phenomenon (once thought beautifullest) of these Ages,—this too ... lay involved."

In the middle of the century, while the prolonged struggle was culminating, privateering as a method of warfare reached its zenith. The Thurots and De Cocks of France and the Wrights of England swarmed over the seas, gathering fortune and a sort of fame not soon to be forgotten. They captured thousands of ships—literally, and if the truth be told, the French got more ships than the Wrights did. But during the period preceding the declaration of open war in 1756 the English privateers were alone especially active and successful. They brought in 300 ships manned by 10,000 men, and the ships were confiscated and the men imprisoned.

Still more important to this story, however, is the fact that many Dutch as well as French ships were looted by the English. While the assaults upon the French were justified because they avenged similar assaults made by French privateers, and because enough French sailors to man a fleet of battleships were thereby sequestered, there was no such excuse for looting the Dutch. Nevertheless, by the real standards of international law of that century (not the avowed standards), these captures were justified on the ground of necessity in connection with the end for which the war was waged with such "fierce, deep-breathed doggedness"—commercial supremacy. For when war was raging, the ships of neutral nations were permitted by ordinary international usage to carry on their commercial operations unmolested. The Dutch, being neutrals, gained rapidly in the carrying trade of the world. They even had hope that they might attain the proud position they had occupied in the early part of the seventeenth century. The situation looked ominous to the English. If they were to retain the supremacy which good fighting in Cromwell's time had given them, it was absolutely necessary to destroy, or at least check, in some way, the growing prosperity of the Dutch. It was to this end that English privateers (even fishermen in open boats, armed with clubs) were encouraged in looting Dutch merchantmen. To give color of law to this form of piracy, the "Rule of 1756" was provided. Under this rule, which was merely a dictum of the English crown, neutral ships were forbidden to enter any trade in time of war from which they were commonly excluded in time of peace. For example, the Dutch were excluded from the trade between France and the French colonies in time of peace; when war was declared, the French were glad to have Dutch ships in the trade, but England declared she would confiscate every Dutch ship found in it.

With these facts in mind,—remembering especially that in the state of civilization then prevailing, some forms of piracy were justified by expediency,—recall the feeling with which an influential part of the people of England were coming to regard the colonies.

"How much I despise them!" wrote Lord Bellomont, in 1700, when some New England merchants objected to his seizure, confessedly contrary to law, of a cargo of timber. In 1724 the master ship-builders of the Thames united in a formal complaint to the king, in which they said, truthfully, that their trade was depressed and their workmen were emigrating because of the competition of the New England yards. Nor were the ship-builders the only ones in England who were depressed by American competition. The books of Sir Josiah Child were, perhaps, no longer read, but his warnings were coming to be heeded more and more, and the contempt which Lord Bellomont had expressed was well-nigh universal among the nobility.

As the reader remembers, the petition of the Thames ship-builders was not granted. As late as 1739 Walpole said:—

"It has been a maxim with me to encourage the trade of the American colonies in the utmost latitude. Nay, it has been necessary to pass over some irregularities."

That was a most important statement. In 1739 Walpole encouraged the trade of the Americans in the utmost latitude. With inconsiderable exceptions as to time and conditions, the Americans had been, in fact, encouraged in the utmost latitude during nearly 100 years. Even a tax laid on foreign molasses, at the request of the English West Indies, in 1733, had been as dead as the navigation laws of Charles II.

But when the privateers of England were loosed to prey upon neutral ships as well as on those of the enemy, the navigation laws were suddenly revived. The privateers found, in the colonial evasions of these laws, golden opportunities to secure plunder, for colonial ships were constantly evading the laws, and the penalty for doing so was confiscation in favor of the informer. Naturally the English privateers seized the colony ships all the more eagerly because of England's growing jealousy of American shipping. The rôle of these piratical privateers as guardians of the law was supported by courts of admiralty which were composed of judges who received fees that were increased by every condemnation.

For the sake of emphasis let the facts be repeated. After a period of nearly 100 years, during which such leaders as Walpole had "encouraged" American ship-owners "in the utmost latitude," a horde of pirates and corrupt judges resurrected the law; and when a valuable prize was in question, they even disregarded the law they pleaded, as well as justice, to condemn her. And there was no redress.

Of the acts of the British government in connection with the Stamp Act, the duty on tea, and the other efforts to tax the American colonists contrary to their constitutional rights as British citizens, nothing need be said here except to remind the reader that ships of the royal navy were commissioned as revenue cutters and stationed on the American coast (1764), from Casco Bay to Cape Henlopen.

To illustrate the conditions that prevailed thereafter until the War of the Revolution, here is a brief account of the events in Rhode Island waters that led to the destruction of the British naval revenue cutter Gaspé.

The schooner St. John, Lieutenant Hill commanding, was the first of the naval fleet stationed in Rhode Island waters. It was the duty of Lieutenant Hill to examine every vessel trading in those waters to learn whether she were violating the laws. A brig that had discharged cargo at Howland's Ferry was suspected of being a smuggler, but she was not molested until she had gone to sea. Then she was followed, brought back, and found to be entirely innocent. If examined before sailing, no injury to her owners would have resulted, but to bring her back when well under way, and that, too, at the whim of a supercilious naval officer, not only caused loss but roused indignation. A mob of Newport people gathered to attack the schooner, but they were prevented doing so by the arrival of another man-o'-war in the harbor.

While the people were yet fretted by the needless interference with the brig, the man-o'-war Maidstone came to port, and began impressing seamen from the merchant ships in the bay, and finally took the entire crew from a ship just home from the year-long voyage to the coast of Africa. It seems impossible, now, that a naval officer should be guilty of such needless cruelty as taking men under such circumstances, but the truth is that the naval officers of that period found pleasure in cruelty. It was because of inhumanity—the harshness with which men were treated in the navy—that impressment was necessary. The friends and relatives of the impressed seamen were unable to obtain redress, but they expressed their feelings by burning one of the Maidstone's small boats.

In 1769 Captain William Reid, commanding the war-sloop Liberty, seized a merchant brig on Long Island Sound and brought her to Newport, where, although it was found that she was not, and had not been, violating the law in any way, she was held for several days. And when the captain of the brig went to the Liberty in an effort to secure release, and, on failing, expressed his indignation in sailor language, a number of muskets were fired at him. To avenge this indignity, a mob boarded the Liberty that night, cut away her mast, threw her guns overboard, and when she drifted ashore on Goat Island, burned her.

Finally the Gaspé, commanded by Lieutenant William Dudingston, came to the bay. Dudingston thought that every innocent colonial vessel in those waters ought to be subjected to every inconvenience rather than let one smuggler escape. In fact, the naval officers on the coast had all come to the opinion that all colonists were criminals, as well as of the lowest class of people in the social scale, and that it was a duty to inflict punishment upon them whenever possible.

In this frame of mind Dudingston stopped everything afloat, including the open boats carrying farm produce across the bay; threw here and there the cargoes, regardless of the losses thus created; looted some of the produce, and finally seized a sloop (Fortune), carrying twelve hogsheads of rum, and sent her to the Court of Admiralty at Boston, although the law expressly provided that vessels seized in Rhode Island waters should be tried by the Rhode Island court.

"I was not ignorant of the statute to the contrary," wrote Dudingston to Admiral Montegue. He violated the law because he supposed the Massachusetts court would be more likely to condemn the sloop. The zeal of the lieutenant was highly commended by the admiral.

Having thus roused the indignation of every American living in the region, Dudingston went in chase of the packet sloop Hannah, in her passage from Newport to Providence, on the memorable 8th of June, 1772. The Hannah was called a packet because she plied regularly on one route. She had fully complied with the laws before leaving Newport, but Dudingston stopped everything, as said, and he now tried to bring-to the Hannah, but Captain Lindsey, commanding her, held his course. She had sailed at noon with a fair tide, but Lindsey knew that she would have the tide against her for two hours, at best, and he was not going to spoil the passage by stopping, and thus losing what tide was coming his way. Indignant at this lack of respect for one of the king's naval officers, Lieutenant Dudingston made all sail in chase, and followed the Hannah until she tacked across what was called Namquit (now Gaspee) point, when, in trying to follow her, the Gaspé grounded.

When Captain Lindsey told his story in Providence, a drummer paraded the streets, gathering recruits, and enough men assembled to fill eight "long boats," the largest size of boat carried by merchant ships. Though these men were going to attack a naval vessel armed with cannon, they were armed with but few weapons better than clubs and paving-stones. Having disguised themselves in the garb of Indians, they rowed with muffled oars to the stranded schooner, shot down the lieutenant with one of the few muskets carried, clubbed the rest of the crew into submission, and then burned the schooner.

The owner of the Hannah, who instigated this attack upon the king's vessel, was Captain John Brown, the wealthiest merchant in Providence. The leader of the expedition was Captain Abraham Whipple, who, as a privateer, had taken a million dollars' worth of prizes during the wars with France and Spain. The whole mob, for a mob it was in the eyes of the law, were representative citizens not only of Rhode Island but of all the seafaring people of the colonies. The time had come when Americans would, in defence of Justice, do more than evade an unjust law; in burning the Gaspé they were, as Lord Dartmouth declared, "levying war against the king."

CHAPTER V
MERCHANTMEN IN BATTLE ARRAY

SOME of the most stirring tales in the history of the American merchant marine are those of the battles of men who, like Captain Jonathan Haraden, of Salem, commanded armed merchantmen during the War of the Revolution. These stories are of special interest here because they portray one side of the character of the American sailors as developed by the peculiar conditions where forest life and sea life met at the surf-line. But before giving any of these tales, it seems necessary to describe briefly the peculiarities of the ships in use in the colonies during the eighteenth century.

While the dictionaries define, fairly well, all sorts of sea terms, it seems worth noting here that a ship, in the earliest days of the colonies, had three masts, two of which were fitted with yards to spread four-sided sails across the hull, while the third carried a long, slender yard that spread a lateen sail fore and aft. Moreover, a square sail was spread by a yard that hung beneath the end of the bowsprit. Because the lateen sail was difficult to handle, and the one on the spritsail-yard dipped into the water, both were soon abolished on the American ships. American sailors were high-priced, economy was necessary, and rigs that reduced the number of men needed were adopted perforce.

The ketch was another rig that did not last long. A ketch had one mast amidships, with yards crossed upon it, and another smaller mast well aft, upon which yards were also crossed, though sometimes a fore-and-aft sail was found there. It was, doubtless, the worst rig ever seen in American waters.

The snow was a modified brig. She had two masts with yards crossed as in a ship, and in addition had a slender mast close abaft the main—a sort of spencer-mast upon which a fore-and-aft sail was set. This style of rig lasted much longer than its name, though that persisted until the nineteenth century.

The most popular rig, during the first hundred years of the colonies, was the sloop, and it can still be seen on oyster boats, brick carriers, and yachts. No other rig will give a hull as great speed, in proportion to the canvas, as this one, and yet the rig can be managed by few men, provided they know their work, and are vigilant. Long coasting voyages were made with sloops carrying forty tons of cargo, and no more than four men. Voyages to the West Indies were made in larger sloops with six men, while oversea voyages were accomplished with one or two more.

In 1713 a contemplation of the advantages of the sloop rig led Captain Andrew Robinson, of Gloucester, Mass., to build a hull, somewhat larger than the ordinary sloop of the day, and place in it two masts, each of which carried the sloop rig. If rigged as a sloop, the one sail would need to be so large that it would be difficult to handle. By dividing the canvas between two sails of the same form, a great enough spread for speed would be obtained, and yet neither sail would be larger than the single one on a smaller hull. The sails were probably stretched before this vessel was launched, and one may believe that the novelty of the rig drew a large crowd to the launching. Beyond doubt, too, everybody cheered as the hull took the water, and one enthusiast shouted,—

"Oh, how she scoons!"

"Scoon" referred to the light and swift motion of the hull as it seemed to glide over, rather than plough through, the water, but Captain Robinson, who had been wondering what he would name the curious rig, seized upon the word "scoon" and said, "A scooner let her be!"

Perhaps the most important event in the shipyards of America, previous to the launching of Fulton's steamer, was the invention of the schooner. For under this rig a hull of twice the capacity of an ordinary sloop could be handled with no, or but a small, increase in the number of men. Moreover, the cost of the rig was less than that of any other for a hull of similar size. In short, a schooner gave her owner more ton-miles of work than any other kind of vessel for each dollar of expense. Schooners were soon used almost exclusively in the cod-fishery on the banks. They rapidly made their way into the coasting trade, where they gathered cargoes for the ships used in the export trade, and served to strengthen the slender cords binding one part of the country to the other. They even went on foreign voyages with great success—as they might do now, if only American owners would take what lies before them.

With the growth of American shipping it was inevitable that American sailors should go privateering. The love of adventure was born into the people who lived where salt spray gave a tang to the odors of a pine forest. Armed ships from Boston hunted Dutch merchantmen as long as the Hudson region was called New Amsterdam. American sailors ate broiled rawhide with Morgan on the banks of the Chagres River. Kidd came from London to New York seeking sailors born in the Highlands of the Hudson, because they were, of all men in the world, best fitted by experience and natural inclination for the work he had in hand. Franklin at one time expressed the hope that the American coast would never shelter such hosts as were found in Algiers and Tripoli, and the thought was founded on his knowledge of the eager determination to get on in life, at all hazards, which the conditions of life in America had generated.

The most important era in the apprenticeship of the colonial merchantmen was that passed in fighting the French and Spanish during England's long struggle for commercial supremacy in the eighteenth century, a period during which New York alone commissioned 48 vessels, carrying 675 guns and 5530 men. As affording interesting views of the work done by the American seamen at that time, consider some of the incidents of the siege of Louisburg, for while the siege was a land contest, it was carried on by men the majority of whom, perhaps, were sailors, and the incidents to be recalled were, at any rate, peculiarly characteristic of the New England foremast hand.

The armed ships numbered thirteen, and ninety merchantmen were chartered to carry the men. The number of ships then owned in the colonies at that time is nowhere stated, but it was not difficult to gather this fleet in New England.

Although the heavy masonry forts at Louisburg mounted 42-pounders, the heaviest guns the fleet carried were 22-pounders; but 42-pounder shot were cast for the expedition, and taken along, because every man in the fleet was entirely confident that 42-pounders would soon be captured from the enemy.

Having landed about two miles from the main fortification (April 30, 1745), one William Vaughan, "a youth of restless and impetuous activity," led 400 men "to the hills near the town and saluted it with three cheers." On May 2 this same impetuous youth, while wandering around with a squad of twelve men and boys, reached a number of unguarded storehouses belonging to the enemy. They were so far from the main scene of activity of the colonists that the French, apparently, had not thought it worth while to guard them. Vaughan set them on fire, and the conflagration frightened the soldiers in a large detached fort so much that they fled. A little later Vaughan and his gang took possession of the abandoned fort, and while a boy of eighteen years climbed the flagstaff and spread a red coat to the breeze in place of a flag, another one ran to the colonial general (Pepperrell) with this message from Vaughan:—

"May it please your Honour to be informed that by the grace of God and the courage of thirteen men, I entered the Royal Battery about 9 o'clock, and am waiting for a reinforcement and a flag."

The 42-pounders for which shot had been cast in Boston were secured—twenty-eight of them, besides two 18-pounders.

When the siege guns were landed from the transports, and an effort was made to take them forward across a wide swamp, in order to mount them where they would reach the town, they sank out of sight in the mud. Thereupon the men made a broad-runner sled for each gun, harnessed themselves to the sleds, and waded across the swamp, dragging the guns after them. That feat has excited the admiration of all historians who have written about it. But these men had built ships a mile from the water—back in the woods—and, when each was ready for the sea had dragged it to the beach with many yoke of oxen; dragging cannon across the swamp was a small matter in their estimation.

A trained engineer wanted them to advance upon the big fort of the enemy in the usual scientific manner—by digging parallels, one after another, and covering every step of the advance with earthworks. The proposal made them laugh. Taking advantage of a foggy night, they went forward, rolling sugar hogsheads, brought for the purpose, before them, until they arrived at the most advanced point desirable, and there they up-ended the hogsheads, filled them with dirt, mounted their siege guns (including 42-pounders taken from the royal fort), and opened fire.

Meanwhile they were without tents; their clothing and shoes wore out under the excessive abrading of their work; they were soaked by cold rains, but shelters of evergreen boughs were erected, and "while the cannon bellowed in front ... the men raced, wrestled, pitched quoits, fired at marks," and "ran after the French cannon balls that sometimes fell in the camp" where "frolic and confusion reigned" perpetually.

The capture of Louisburg had small effect upon the country, but the work of the besiegers, rightly seen, was of the most important ever done in the colonies. Throughout the siege they were inspired by the idea that "the All of Things is an infinite conjugation of the verb To Do"; they took hold of each task with hearty good-will, and were irrepressible; their rude disregard for convention gave opportunity to their resourcefulness, and contributed to the evolution of military science. And lessons learned before Louisburg were applied at Bunker Hill, and elsewhere, during the Revolution.

Among the heroes of the privateer ships of the Revolution we may well recall Captain Jonathan Haraden, as a type. In 1780 he sailed from Salem in the 180-ton ship Pickering, armed with fourteen 6-pounders, manned by about fifty men, all told, bound to Bilboa with a cargo of sugar. At this period of the war the British, taught by experience, had sent out fleets of frigates and sloops of war, besides many brigs, cutters, and privateers of large size in order to suppress the armed ships of the "rebels." On the way across, Haraden met a heavy cutter and beat her off. While reaching across the Bay of Biscay, one night, he overhauled a ship the lookouts of which appeared to be asleep; for there was no stir upon her deck until Haraden hailed and ordered her to surrender, saying that his ship was an American frigate and he intended firing a broadside immediately. The sleepy captain obeyed the order. It was then learned that she was a privateer much superior to the Pickering in the number of guns and of men. On arriving off Bilboa a big armed ship was seen coming out, and the captured captain told Haraden she was the privateer Achilles, mounting forty-two guns and manned by 140 men.

"I shan't run from her," said Haraden, quietly.

The Achilles took possession of the privateer captured in the Bay of Biscay, but because it was a calm night, and the Pickering would be unable to escape, the captain of the Achilles determined to wait until morning before attacking. On seeing this, Haraden arranged a proper lookout and then went to sleep.

At dawn, when the Achilles came down ready for battle, the Pickering was lying so far inshore that a throng of people, supposed to number 100,000, gathered on the hills to watch the contest, and they found the spectacle worth the trouble taken. Calling his men to the mast, Haraden assured them that they would win in spite of the greater force of the enemy, and then ordered them to "Take particular aim at the white boot top."

Inspired by the air of confidence with which the captain had addressed them, the men returned to quarters. Their ship was loaded down so far in the water that she "appeared little larger than a long boat" when the Achilles ranged alongside, but, as Captain Haraden had foreseen, the difference in height gave him a decisive advantage.

The Achilles, with her great battery and numerous crew, opened a fire that seemed overwhelming. But at that time (and for years afterward) English sailors relied upon speed of fire only to win their battles; the guns of the Achilles were discharged without aiming, and because the gun deck was far above the water, nearly every shot passed over the Pickering. But the American gunners were half sailor, half backwoodsmen; they took particular aim at the white boot top of the Achilles, and drove so many shot through her side near the water-line that, after about three hours of fighting, the British captain found that he would have to haul off or sink. He decided to fly. Then, on seeing the British sailors running to the braces to swing the yards, Haraden ordered his gunners to load with crowbars, hoping to cut the rigging of the Achilles with these curious projectiles, and thus keep her from running away; but "she had a mainsail as large as a ship of the line," and when that sail began to draw she escaped.

As the Pickering and her recaptured prize came to anchor in the bay, the enthusiastic spectators of the battle flocked off in such numbers that at one time it would have been possible to build with the boats around her a pontoon bridge reaching from ship to shore.

When Captain William Gray was a lieutenant on the privateer Jack, she was attacked by one of the enemy of such superior force that she was soon disabled. Thereupon the enemy came alongside and tried to board. In heading his men in repelling the attack, Gray was struck by a bayoneted musket which had been pitchpoled at him. The bayonet pinned him fast to a gun carriage so that he was unable to get away, but after one of his men had withdrawn the bayonet, he again attacked the boarders and they were repelled.

When Captain John Manly commanded the privateer Jason, of Boston, he was chased by a British frigate into a roadstead near the Isle of Shoals. He would have been captured there but for a friendly squall which, while it dismasted him, drove away the frigate. At this, however, Manly's troubles began. He had previously lost the privateer Cumberland, and his crew decided that the dismasting was clear proof that he was unlucky. A mutiny followed, but Manly, snatching a cutlass from one of the crew, attacked the mutineers single-handed, and after cutting down two of them, set the remainder at work rerigging the ship; and he kept them at it until she was ready for sea thirty-six hours later. Finally, he went to Sandy Hook and captured two big privateers fresh from that port and very valuable.

As noted in the Story of the New England Whalers, there is abundant reason for saying that "out of the 1700 men who had manned Nantucket whalers before the war, some hundreds shipped on the privateers. They took kindly to a calling in which there was such a strong element of chance. The hope of good luck was strong within them." When an American privateer was captured by the enemy, they separated the Nantucket men from the remainder of the crew, and then by bribery on the one hand, and starvation and other kinds of ill treatment, on the other, they forced as many as possible into the English whaleships.

Many more tales might be related, but the facts here given show well enough that the men who were at once woodsmen, ship-builders, fishermen, and sailors could also fight. It is especially notable that they could usually think calmly and decide swiftly, as Haraden did. The conditions under which the American seamen of the period had been reared had made them, as so frequently pointed out herein, at once resourceful, enterprising, persistent, and unafraid.

The records of the privateers are so few in number that only imperfect estimates can be made of the number and force of the fleet. The Continental Congress bonded 1699 privateers during the war, but since many ships were bonded more than once, some under different names, it is not possible to say how many individual ships were thus represented. Further than that the colonies commissioned many vessels that had no commission from the Congress. Hale, in Winsor's History of America, says that Massachusetts owned 600 privateers. Salem alone owned 158. More than 200 were owned in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. The fleets of the Delaware, the Chesapeake, and of Charleston were considerable. Certainly more than 1000 armed ships were sent to sea by American owners to seize the merchantmen of the enemy. The fishing smack Wasp, carrying 9 men and no cannon, was, perhaps, the weakest;[^[3]] the Deane, carrying 30 cannon and 210 men, was the most powerful. There were 40 American privateers of the force of 20 guns and 100 men or larger.

American histories have, almost without exception, glorified these privateers. They note that Dodsley's Register for 1778 recorded the capture of 733 British ships by American cruisers, of which 559 were brought into port. What these prizes sold for is not recorded, but it appears that the British loss was estimated at £2,600,000. Gomer Williams, in his history of the Liverpool privateers, says that the War of the Revolution put an entire stop to the commercial progress of that port. It was the venturesome American privateer who haunted the Irish channel until the Dublin linen fleet sailed under convoy to Chester, that thus injured Liverpool. According to Troughton, another Liverpool historian, "the manners of the common people" of the town "made a retrogression towards barbarism." Mr. Hale estimates that 3000 British ships were captured, and that the losses crippled the commercial prosperity of England severely.

On the other hand, however, while the American cruisers were capturing the 773 British ships, the British cruisers captured and sent into port 904 American ships, which brought the captors £2000 each on the average. The losses of the American owners were, of course, much larger. Worse yet, the American ships were all eventually driven from the seas, save only as a few of the largest and most powerful were able to dodge and outsail the frigates and sloops-of-war which the British sent in pursuit of them. Haraden himself, though he captured more than a thousand guns from the enemy, was at last caught at St. Eustatia by Admiral Rodney's fleet.

If the accounts of gains and losses could be posted ledger fashion, the struck balance would show that while the captured goods[^[4]] were at times almost the only resource of the colonists needing goods of foreign manufacture, and while, too, a few individuals were enriched, the losses of the ship merchants as a class, and of the country, far outweighed the gains. American independence was not won, as so often claimed, by the privateers; it was not even forwarded.

There was a further loss, which, though it cannot be measured, was real. There is abundant evidence to show that the successes of the few made gamblers, and even thieves, of many merchants. While two frigates were on the stocks in Rhode Island, the timber belonging to the government was stolen for use in privateers. Still another evil influence is found in the fact that the magnified stories of privateer work made the people believe that the greed of the merchants would serve to defend the new-born nation from foreign aggression better than a navy could do it. And not until after the War of 1812 was brought upon us was the miserable delusion dispelled.

In two respects only did the privateers serve the American merchant marine well: they gave some thousands of individual seamen increased ability to handle ships under difficult conditions, and they improved the speed of the whole fleet.

Captain Elias Hasket Derby, of Salem, was perhaps the first American to make a systematic study of ship models with a view of increasing speed. He established a shipyard near his wharf at Salem; with untrammelled mind he made experiments, and eventually he built 4 ships of from 300 to 360 tons' burden, each of which became noted for strength and speed. One of them (the Astræ, a vessel less than 100 feet long), while on her way to the Baltic, made the run from Salem to the Irish coast in eleven days. In 1783 this vessel crossed from Salem to France in 18 days, and she made the passage home in 19.

Only a few ships remained in commission to float the flag of the "new constellation" at the end of the War of the Revolution, but it was a matter of no small significance that these ships were, on the average, far superior to those that had formed the American merchant marine in colonial days. Indeed, they were literally the best merchantmen in the world. And the conditions under which they were to sail, though harrowing to the owners and to all patriotic Americans, were to maintain the standard of the fleet for many years to come.

CHAPTER VI
EARLY ENTERPRISE OF THE UNITED STATES MERCHANT MARINE

WHEN the War of the Revolution came to an end, the territory of the United States extended along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia, and westward over the Appalachian Mountains as far as the Mississippi River. The population, including slaves, numbered no more than 3,500,000. The settlements have usually been considered in groups—those of New England, of the Middle states, of the Southern states, and, last of all, that most interesting group west of the mountains. Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania were the most populous states. Philadelphia, the largest city, boasted a population of 42,520 in the first census year (1790). New York was second, Boston third, Charleston fourth, and Baltimore fifth. Newport and Portsmouth, though small, were yet ports of importance, and so, too, was Salem.

The interests of the different groups of population of the country were then supposed to be in some ways antagonistic. The Southern states produced tobacco, rice, and indigo for export, and had relatively few ships; wanting low freight rates, they expressed, at times later, the fear of combinations between owners of ships living elsewhere, by which rates would be raised. The seeming antagonisms were magnified by the lack of means of intercourse between them. While roads wide enough for vehicles had been cut from town to town near the coast as far south as Virginia, and a few had been opened into the interior along the routes of armies during the war, the most comfortable way of travelling was by water, and ships were the only means for transporting freight, save only as some goods were carried on mules and wagons into the interior—on one route as far as Pittsburg.