Wm T. Davis. (signature)

Plymouth Memories
of an Octogenarian

BY

WILLIAM T. DAVIS

Author of “History of Plymouth,” “Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth,” History of
“The Massachusetts Judiciary,” History of “The Massachusetts Bar,” etc.
Former President of the Pilgrim Society
Honorary Member of the Connecticut Historical Society
Honorary Member of the Old Colony Historical Society

“A tree that’s severed from its root

Can bear no longer flowers or fruit;

A nation that forgets its past

Is without root and cannot last.”

PRINTED BY THE MEMORIAL PRESS, PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS.

Copyrighted, 1906.
By Bittinger Brothers,
Plymouth, Mass.

PREFACE

By the death of every person something within the range of his study and knowledge is lost beyond recovery. In publishing this book of memories it is my desire to rescue from oblivion persons and events coming under my observation during a long life, and to make a record of habits, customs and fashions which have prevailed at different periods within my knowledge. The book is not intended to be either in any sense an autobiography, or a mere collection of interesting reminiscences, but a legacy which I wish to leave for the benefit of those coming after me. I cannot permit its publication without a grateful acknowledgment of the service rendered during its preparation by friends too numerous to be mentioned by name in contributing material essential to its approximate completeness and accuracy.

Wm. T. Davis.

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to my children with the hope that they
will remember with love and pride their native town,
and be always ready to render it useful service.

WM. T. DAVIS.

CONTENTS

PLYMOUTH MEMORIES OF AN
OCTOGENARIAN

CHAPTER I.

Introductory.

In writing these memories I have in mind both the old and the young. With the old I may perhaps clear away some of the cobwebs which obscure their backward glance and reopen to their vision vistas of the past. With the young I may perhaps show how their fathers and grandfathers lived, and how through the results of their careers, the comforts and luxuries of the present generation have been evolved from the simple habits and ways of living of those who have gone before. An important lesson may be learned by the young, that, in this process of evolution, the achievements of today are only the culmination of the continuous labors of earlier generations; that all we are, and all we know, came to us from our fathers; and that the wonderful inventions and discoveries of which we boast, as if they were ours alone, would have been impossible without the lessons taught by the inventors and discoverers who blazed the way for our feet to tread.

Let me premise, without intending to enter the domain of history, by answering three questions, which, perhaps oftener than any others, are asked by visitors, and by young Plymoutheans who are beginning to study the career of their native town. The first question is—how and from whom did Plymouth receive its name? This question has been somewhat confused by the intimation of some writers that the name owes its origin, at least in part, to the Pilgrims. The facts show conclusively that such is not the case. In 1614 John Smith arrived on the coast of New England in command of an expedition fitted out under the patronage of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the Governor of the castle in old Plymouth. Anchoring his ships near the mouth of the present Penosbcot river he embarked in a shallop to explore the coast, with the hope of making such discoveries of mines of gold and copper, and of finding such opportunities of obtaining a cargo of fish and furs, as would at least defray the expenses of his expedition. While on his exploring trip he “drew a map from point to point, isle to isle, and harbor to harbor, with the soundings, sands, rocks and landmarks,” and gave the country the name of New England instead of Virginia, the name by which it had been previously known. Making a chart of the coast from the Penobscot to Cape Cod, he placed it on his return in the hands of Gorges, who submitted it to the inspection of Prince Charles, afterwards Charles the first, who affixed to it the names of three localities, which have adhered to them up to the present time. These were, Plymouth, probably named in honor of Gorges, the governor of the Plymouth castle, and the patron of Smith’s expedition; Charles River, named after himself, and Cape Ann named after his mother, Ann of Denmark. Other names affixed by the Prince were Stuard’s Bay for Cape Cod Bay, Cape James for Cape Cod, Oxford and London for two localities between Plymouth and what is now Boston, Cheviot Hills for the Blue Hills, and Bristol, Southampton, Hull, Ipswich, Dartmouth, Sandwich, Cambridge and Leith.

Nathaniel Morton, in his New England’s Memorial, published in 1669, suggested that the Pilgrims adopted the name for the above reason, and also because “Plymouth in old England was the last town they left in their native country, and because they received many kindnesses from some Christians there.” It seems to me that Morton was unfortunate in the use of language. If he had said that the name given by Prince Charles was agreeable to the Pilgrims on account of its associations with their last port of departure, he would have undoubtedly spoken the truth, but it should not be stated that a name, already conferred on the landing place of the Pilgrims, was originated five years after its well known place on Smith’s map. That the Pilgrims knew of the name there can be no doubt. Capt. Thomas Dermer was at Plymouth in the summer of 1620, and wrote a letter to Gorges, dated, Plymouth, in July of that year, advising any colony of fifty or more to settle there. That letter must have reached Gorges before the Mayflower sailed from old Plymouth on the 6th of September, and of its contents the Pilgrims must have been made acquainted by Gorges, who was their adviser and friend. Besides, Edward Winslow wrote a letter to England from “Plymouth in New England,” dated December 11th, 1620, the very day of the Landing, a date too early for any formal action to have been taken by the Colony concerning a name for the locality; and further, Winslow uses the term, “New England,” a title which Smith alone had given to the Northern part or Virginia, and which probably appeared nowhere else than on his map.

The second question is—when was Plymouth incorporated. The direct answer to this question, that Plymouth was never incorporated, would be very unsatisfactory without some explanation of the relations existing between the Colony and the town of Plymouth. It is all very well to speak of the settlement of the town instead of its incorporation, and fix the date at 1620, but the precise time, when the line was drawn between the colony and town, and when the town was clothed by official authority with the functions of a municipality, it is impossible to fix. In the records of 1626 Plymouth is called a plantation; in a deed dated, 1631, from John to Edward Winslow, the town of Plymouth is referred to; in accordance with the law passed by the General Court requiring towns to choose constables, one was chosen in Plymouth in 1633; and in 1638 at a meeting held for the purpose of considering the disposition of the gift of stock by James Sherley of London for the benefit of the poor of the town, it was decided “that the town should be considered as extending from the lands of Wm. Pontus and John Dunham (now the lands of Thomas O. Jackson) on the south, to the outside of New street (now North street) on the north. Finally in the year 1637 the first entry in the town records was made, and on the second day of November, 1640, it was ordered at a meeting of the Court of Assistants that “whereas by the Act of the General Court held the third of March in the sixteenth year of his Majesties now reign, the Governor and Assistants were authorized to set the bounds of the several townships, it is enacted and concluded by the Court that the bounds of Plymouth township shall extend southwards to the bounds of Sandwich township, and northward to the little brook falling into Black Water from the commons left to Duxbury, and the neighborhood thereabouts, and westward eight miles up into the lands from any part of the bay or sea; always provided that the bounds shall extend so far up into the woodlands as to include the South Meadows toward Agawam, lately discovered, and the convenient uplands thereabouts.” But notwithstanding all these references, it is enough to say that Plymouth was settled in 1620, but never formally incorporated.

The third question is: What was the disease which carried off one-half of the Plymouth Colony during the first four months after the landing. In answer to this question only plausible conjectures can be made. Various theories have been suggested by medical men and others, but unfortunately insufficient data as to the symptoms and general characteristics of the epidemic have been handed down to us to enable any definite diagnosis to be made. Some have suggested smallpox, and some yellow fever, some cholera and some quick consumption. Some also have raised the question whether the germs of the disease, which swept off the Indians living in Plymouth four or five years before, still lurking in the soil or in vegetation, might not have retained sufficient vitality to develop in the human system. This last suggestion would afford little satisfaction, for the question would remain unsolved as to the nature of the disease. After much thought given to the matter, I have come to what I think is the most natural conclusion, that the disease was what was well known in the days of Irish immigration, before ocean steam navigation was available, as ship fever. Many readers will remember that packet ships and transient vessels were constantly arriving at New York and Boston, crowded with immigrants—after long passages from England, and that long confinement below deck resulted frequently in the breaking out of ship fever and caused serious mortality. The voyage of the Mayflower from Southampton to Cape Cod harbor was more than ninety days in length, and during that time imperfect ventilation and inadequate nourishment in a vessel of only one hundred and eighty tons, carrying within her walls one hundred and twenty crew and passengers, must have furnished all the conditions necessary for the presence of that terrible infection, which in our own day was so fatal to the immigrants from Ireland.

Let me further premise, in closing this introductory chapter, by saying that, of events occurring during a period of seventy-five years, of the changes in the external character of Plymouth, and of the manners and customs and ways of living of its people, I have a distinct recollection. Some of these, at a still earlier period, I can imperfectly recall. For instance in 1825, when I was a few months more than three years of age, my mother carried me on a visit to her father in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, and while I recall nothing of the voyage made in a fishing schooner on her way to the Grand Banks, the accuracy of my memory concerning many localities in Shelburne, was confirmed on a visit to that place twenty-six years later in 1851. My grandfather, Gideon White, a native of Plymouth, and a descendant from Peregrine White, was a loyalist during the revolution, and, holding a Captain’s commission in the British army, served with his regiment in Jamaica during the war. With other loyalists he settled in Shelburne, where, receiving the appointment of Provincial Judge, he afterwards lived, making occasional visits to England, but none to the United States, until his death in 1833. He married Deborah Whitworth, the daughter of Miles Whitworth, a British Army surgeon, and four of his children married in Boston and Plymouth and Cambridge, while a son graduated at Harvard in 1812.

I remember, too, that at the age of four, in 1826, I was carried to my first school. It was kept by Mrs. Martha Weston, who was known as Mrs. Patty, or more generally Ma’am Weston, the widow of Coomer Weston, and grandmother of our townsman, Myles S. Weston, in the house on North street, the third below that of Miss Dr. Pierce, not long since occupied by Wm. W. Brewster. I remember well the school room, its sanded floor and the cricket on which I sat. From that dear old lady, with a pleasant smile and kindly voice, I first tasted the “sweet food of kindly uttered knowledge.” She died July 27, 1841, and but few of her scholars can now be left to join with me in blessing her memory.

CHAPTER II.

Before proceeding to a general consideration of the streets and ways of Plymouth, and their changes, this is a fitting place to refer to an important alteration, in one of its chief highways, which, though occurring during my life time, is a little beyond the scope of my memory. In ancient times the route from Plymouth to Sandwich was through the district of “half way ponds,” which thus received its name. When a stage line between the two towns was established the route ran through Chiltonville, leaving Bramhall’s corner on the right, and passing over Eel River bridge, turned to the right and by a diagonal course reached a point on the present road near the estate of Mr. Jordan. At that time the road through Clark’s valley by the cotton factory extended no farther south than the cross roads leading to the Russell Mills on the west, and by the old Edes & Wood factory on the east.

In 1825 this road was extended, making a junction with the old road, and thus establishing the present Plymouth and Sandwich highway.

In 1830 there were in Plymouth, north of Bramhall’s corner in Chiltonville, seventeen streets so called, thirteen lanes, three squares, nine places and ways, and four alleys, concerning all of which something will be said in their order. The streets were Court, Howland, Main, North, Water, Middle, Leyden, School, Market, Spring, High, Summer, Pleasant, Sandwich, Commercial, Green and South streets. Court street, which took its present name by a vote of the town in 1823, owes its origin to no formal laying out. It practically followed the old Massachusetts path, and was a way of necessity gradually evolved from a footway, and bridle path, and cart way to its present condition. There is a tradition, which needs confirmation, that opposite the head of the present Murray street, it once made a detour to the west through the valley in the rear of the houses of Mr. Charles G. Hathaway and others, and came out into the present road at some point beyond Cold Spring. There seems to have been no necessity for such a detour, and no available route for it to pursue, and I am inclined to the belief that the tradition is unfounded. There is another tradition, which may also be distrusted, that Tinker’s Rock Spring, now known as Cold Spring, was removed by an earthquake in 1755 from the east to the west side of the street, where it now flows. There can be no doubt that it once flowed on the east side, but I was told by Mr. John Kempton Cobb, who always lived in the neighborhood of the spring, and would be now, if he were living, one hundred and nineteen years of age, that it was moved by owners of a pasture on the west side to supply water for their cattle. Within my own knowledge for many years the water after it left the pipe, turned into and out of the pasture referred to, before it crossed the street and passed through the Nelson field on its way to the harbor. When the trench was opened in 1904 for the purpose of laying a sewer, I noticed that the water from the site of the old spring on the east side was conveyed to the present outlet, through a pipe laid across the street, for which the story of the earthquake would fail to account. The boundaries of Court street, notwithstanding widenings and straightenings in various places, have remained practically as they were in 1830, except in two places. Until 1851, at what is now the head of Murray street, there was a watering place on the east side, through which teams were driven to water their horses. In the above year the easterly line of the street was straightened, and the old watering place thrown into the adjoining lots. The brook at this place was called “second brook” by the Pilgrims, the “first brook” being that which in my boyhood was called “Shaw’s brook,” and which flows, or recently did flow, between the houses of Mrs. Helen F. Hedge and Mr. Ripley, through pipes under the brick block to the harbor. The above mentioned “second brook” flows from a spring just within the lot on the west side of the street, and the bridge over it was long ago the terminus of the evening walks of loving couples who, as they turned for home formally rechristened the bridge in the most natural way as “Kissing bridge.” The other place where the street underwent an important change was at the corner of North street, which in 1892 was cut off to meet the necessities of travel then increased by the recent construction of the street railway.

The greatest change which Court street has passed through in my day, has been brought about by the rows of elm trees along its sidewalks, all of which have been set out since 1830, and most of them as far as Cold Spring by the late Andrew L. Russell, to whose public spirit the town is chiefly indebted for one of its crowning glories. In the above year the only shade trees within the bounds of Main and Court streets, between Town Square and Cold Spring, were two ash trees in front of the house on the southerly corner of North street. North of the trees set out by Mr. Russell were the old mile tree, which stood in front of the estate of the late Joab Thomas, and the trees beyond the estate of Mrs. Knapp, for which the town is indebted to the late Leavitt T. Robbins, father of our late townsman of the same name. The mile tree was struck by lightning in 1829, and not long after was blown down and replaced by that now standing. The beauty which these trees have added to the town, even lending grace and ornament to the many houses of ordinary styles of architecture along Court street, suggests a remark made many years ago by John Quincy Adams, while walking with a friend one bleak cloudy day in March, in reply to his companion who had expressed a wonder that the Pilgrims settled here. “Oh,” Mr. Adams answered, “you must remember that there were no houses here then.” Mr. Adams must have been another Jonathan who

“Said he could not see the town

There were so many houses.”

Howland street was laid out August 6, 1728, by Thomas Howland, through his land, and by deed of that date, under the name of Howland street, was dedicated to public use. For more than a hundred years it extended only as far as the present westerly line of the Gas works land, though originally laid out to the shore, but on the tenth of September, 1859, it was formally laid out in accordance with the original intent of Mr. Howland.

Main street, once called Hanover street, like Court street, was one of the original ways, not formally laid out, but from time to time changed along its lines. The first important change was effected May 26, 1851, by straightening the westerly line from the corner of the land now owned by Wm. P. Stoddard, to the Plymouth Bank Building. Up to that time the Thomas house, now the Plymouth tavern, had a front yard perhaps twenty feet deep, and the law office of Wm. Thomas was on the southeast corner of the lot. Next south of the Thomas house and land, was an old house built out to the Thomas line, and both estates were cut off at the above date, thus establishing the present line of the street. Another important change was made August 3, 1886, by running a new line on the westerly side from the bank to Town Square, moving all the buildings back to the line, and giving the street at the narrowest point between Middle and Leyden streets, a width of fifty-eight feet seven inches. Its present name of Main street was adopted by the town in 1823. Middle street was laid out August 6, 1725, by Jonathan Bryant, Consider Howland, Isaac Little and Mayhew Little, owners of the land “for and in consideration of the public good, and for the more regular and uniform situation of the town of Plymouth, and to be forever hereafter called King street.” At the time of the revolution it informally received its present name, which was finally adopted by the town in 1823, and on the 6th of March, 1899, it was widened to its present width. The way from the foot of the street to Water street, which for the purposes of this narrative, may be considered a part of the street, was laid out September 21, 1768, and May 13, 1807.

Two remarkable coincidences have occurred in connection with Middle street. In the early part of the 18th century one of the Bryant family kept a tavern on the corner of Main and Middle streets, which is called on the records Bryant’s tavern, and in 1834 Danville Bryant kept a tavern on the same site. The other coincidence relates to the third Parish, which was established in Middle street, and built a meeting house in 1744, where the house occupied by Mr. Frink now stands. Rev. Thomas Frink of Rutland, Vt., was settled as its pastor, and more than a hundred years later our present townsman, bearing the same name, came to Plymouth, and now lives on the same site. These coincidences are constantly occurring as if men were mere puppets following unconsciously certain predestined lines. When the Plymouth Woolen Mill went into operation about 1865, a Scotchman by the name of Fernside was employed as a wool sorter. After the manufacture of flannels was abandoned he bought and settled on land in Duxbury, which a man of the same name occupied more than two hundred years before. A story of what perhaps may be called a coincidence, was told me by our townsman Wm. Burns. He came from Scotland, and on his arrival between 1850 and 1860, was employed in the Cordage Company’s store at Seaside. One day a man drove up to the store, and as he alighted, Mr. Burns said to him, “Good morning, Mr. Glass,—when did you come over?” “What do you mean by coming over?” replied the man. “Why, from Scotland,” said Mr. Burns. “I never was in Scotland, my ancestors have lived in Duxbury since about 1640.” “Is not your name Glass?” continued Mr. Burns. “Yes,” said the man. “Why, I thought you were Mr. Glass, a neighbor of mine in Scotland,” said Mr. Burns. This may, however, not have been a coincidence, but a remarkable perpetuation of a family type. I have had in my own experience more than one illustration of the descent of family types, through many generations, one of which recently occurred. A stranger met me in the street and asked me if I was Mr. Davis. I said, “Yes, and your name is Howland.” “How do you know that?” he asked, “I have never seen you before.” I said, “I know by your hand with its web fingers,” instances of which I have known in five generations of the family of Henry Howland, one of the early members of the Plymouth Colony. It is true that he might have descended from a female Howland, and thus borne another name, but I was right in calling him by that name.

North street was laid out in 1633, and at various times was called New street, Queen street, Howland street and North street, which last name was adopted by the town in 1823. The upper half of the street, on its northerly side, has been changed since 1830 by the erection of the following houses; that of Dr. Brown, built in 1833 by Jacob Covington, on the site of the old Marcy house; the next house built in 1830 by Rev. Frederick Freeman, the pastor of the Trinitarian Congregational church; the easterly addition of the house of the late Edward L. Barnes on the site of the house of Capt. William Rogers, and the house now occupied by Isaac M. Jackson, built about 1850, by Thomas T. Jackson, on the site of a house, which within my memory, was occupied by William Morton Jackson, and Richard Bagnall and others.

On the upper half of the street on the southerly side the following houses have been built since 1830; that built in 1838 by Ebenezer G. Parker, the cashier of the Old Colony Bank, and now occupied by the Misses Russell; that built in 1832 by Mrs. Betsey H. Hodge, recently occupied by Mrs. Thomas B. Drew; that occupied by Benjamin A. Hathaway, and built by Abraham Jackson on the site of one previously occupied by him, which was built about 1745 by Colonel George Watson; and finally the public library building built by the heirs of William G. Russell and Mary Ellen, his wife, on a part of the old Jackson land.

On the lower half of the street there have been several changes in its boundaries. From the way leading to the oil works, as Winslow street was called, at a point in front of the Willoughby house, there was for many years a way with steps running easterly and reaching the street below at an acute angle, thus breaking the continuity of the stone wall bounding the street. About 1858, while I was chairman of the selectmen, the board discontinued this way, and rebuilt the wall on a continuous line.

On the other side of the street there was another way with steps at its upper and lower ends opening opposite the northerly door of the Plymouth Rock House, and reaching the street below immediately above the house which stood on the corner of Water street. This way has also been discontinued by the selectmen. Through my youth a row of balm of Gilead trees stood below the wall extending from the elm tree in front of the house of Mrs. Ruth H. Baker to the way above mentioned. The Linden tree standing on the corner of Cole’s Hill, has an interesting romance associated with it. The tree was planted by a youthful couple as a memorial of their engagement, and when not long afterwards, in 1809, the engagement was discontinued, and the memorial was no longer prized by the lady in whose garden it had been planted, she one day pulled it up, and threw it into the street. My father, who happened to pass at the time, picked it up and planted it where it now stands. He lived in the house now known as the Plymouth Rock House, where he died in 1824, and under his careful nursing it survived its treatment, and has grown into the beautiful tree, now blessing so many with its grateful shade. In that house I was born in 1822, and lived until I was more than twenty years of age, and hundreds of times I have climbed the branches of the Linden, often with book in hand, seeking shelter from the summer sun.

North street received a new laying out February 11, 1716, and still another on the 7th of October, 1765, and after the estates on Water street below Cole’s Hill had been bought by the Pilgrim Society in 1856, and other dates, land was thrown out by the society, and the corner rounded.

So far as the houses on the lower half of North street are concerned, several changes have occurred since 1830. In my boyhood the double house now partly occupied by Miss Catherine Kendall, was a single house, occupied by the widow of Edward Taylor, who was then the wife of John Blaney Bates, whom she married in 1807. After the death of Mrs. Bates and her husband, whom I well remember, Jacob and Abner Sylvester Taylor, sons of Mrs. Bates, remodelled the house and divided it into two tenements. John Blaney Bates, the second husband of Mrs. Taylor, was one of the most skilful masons and master builders in southeastern Massachusetts, and was largely engaged in enterprises in other towns. He built the Plymouth Court House in 1820, the Barnstable Court House, and as many as eight or ten brick or stone dwelling houses on Summer street and Winthrop Place in Boston. A contract to build a house of hammered stone for George Bond in Winthrop Place, proved a disastrous one, and terminated his business career. After the failure of Whitwell and Bond, the house referred to was sold to Henry Cabot, the grandfather of Henry Cabot Lodge, and occupied by him until Winthrop Place was extended to Franklin street, and made a part of the present Devonshire street. Mr. Bates, as I remember him, was in his later days an inveterate sportsman, and would often spend hours behind an ice hummock, when the harbor was partially frozen, waiting for a possible shot at ducks in a sheet of open water near by. He died in 1831.

His stepsons, the Taylor brothers, who learned their mason’s trade with him, also became skilful workmen and contractors in Plymouth and neighboring towns. In 1824 they built Pilgrim Hall for the Pilgrim Society, and Mr. Taylor told me that when they signed the contract in July, the stone was lying undisturbed in a virgin rock on the easterly side of Queen Ann’s turnpike in Weymouth, and the timber stood uncut in the forests of Maine. So expeditiously, however, was the work performed that the hall was occupied by the Society at the anniversary celebration in the following December.

The house next east of the Taylor house was built in 1829 by the Messrs. Taylor on land of the Taylor estate. The Taylors had completed in that year their contract to build Long wharf and, having considerable material left, they put it into this house. I remember hearing it said that the partitions, and perhaps the walls, were constructed of some of the plank used in covering the wharf, and were consequently unusually solid and firm. The story was told that when Deacon Wm. P. Ripley, who bought the house, went to inspect it, he was told by one of the brothers that the partitions were so impervious to sound that conversation could not be heard from room to room. To confirm his statement he invited the Deacon to test it. After the doors were closed, the Deacon in one room and Mr. Taylor in another, the former called out loudly—“Do you hear?” and the answer “No,” came promptly back. The Deacon evidently was willing to take Mr. Taylor’s word, thus confirmed, and bought the house. Deacon Ripley, son of Nathaniel and Elizabeth (Bartlett) Ripley, was born in Plymouth in 1775, and after his first marriage in 1805, owned and occupied the house on Summer street, which after 1845 was owned and occupied by Benjamin Hathaway. He kept a dry goods store in that house many years, and after the sale of the house in 1833 to the heirs of Robert Dunham, the store was occupied by the millinery establishment of Mrs. Thomas Long, one of the heirs. After giving up the store, Deacon Ripley entered into a partnership with his son-in-law, Andrew S. March, in Boston, under the firm name of Ripley & March, 21 Central street, but finally returned to Plymouth and took the store afterwards occupied by Southworth Barnes, on the site of the present Sherman block. He died November 10, 1842, and in the next year the house on North street was sold to Phineas Wells, to whom reference will be hereafter made.

Within my recollection no persons have been universally called Deacons, irrespective of their church connections, besides Deacon Ripley and Deacon John Hall. The latter was many years Deacon of the Baptist church, and was a farmer living at the corner of Court and Hall streets, where he raised a family of sons, well known by the last generations as industrious, useful and worthy citizens.

In his church he was the supervisor of every act. I remember that on one occasion the minister announced from the pulpit that on the next Thursday evening “the Lord willing, there will be a prayer meeting in this house, the weather permitting, if Deacon Hall has no objections, and on Friday evening, whether or no.”

In middle life the Deacon bought a sloop and employed her in fishing, and in taking fishing parties into the bay. He scorned the fishing ledges generally resorted to, such as the Offer ledge, the House ledge, Faunce’s ledge and the Thrum Caps, and fished on ledges of his own, the bearings of which he kept to himself. I was with him once, one of a party of ten, and before ten o’clock, the party caught one hundred and sixty cod and one hundred and forty haddock. In those days haddock were thought an inferior fish, and were difficult to dispose of in the Plymouth market at one cent a pound. In fact, they were not even dignified by the name of “fish,” and I remember hearing a servant ordered to get a fish at the fish market, and if he could not get a fish, to get a haddock.

But some critical person found worms between the flakes of a codfish, and then another discovered that a haddock made a superior fry, and still another that in a chowder the flesh of a haddock was firmer than that of a codfish, and finally both came to be held in equal estimation. In my early days no lover of salt cod would eat anything but dunfish, and Deacon Hall was the only person in Plymouth, who cured them, Swampscott being generally looked to for a supply. They received their name from their dun color, which was of a reddish brown. They were caught in the spring, slack salted, and when partially dry, piled in a dark room covered with seaweed. After several weeks they were repiled, and after several weeks more, they were ready to be eaten.

In my mother’s day short, thick fish were selected for the table, and every Saturday three were served with a napkin above and below, the upper one being removed to the kitchen, and the middle one eaten, while the other two supplied minced fish for Sunday’s breakfast, and the Monday washing day dinner. A slice of dunfish cut up with potatoes, beets, carrots and onions, well covered with pork scraps and sweet oil, judiciously peppered, makes a dinner, which, with the white salt fish of today, it is impossible to prepare. Fish balls were not in vogue in my early days, but gradually took the place of mince fish, especially Sunday morning. Baked beans, now improperly called distinctively a New England dish, were according to my recollection, unknown in Plymouth, and were associated exclusively with Beverly, whose people were called Beverly beaners. A story was told of a vessel at sea running down to a schooner in distress, and finding that she was from Beverly, and out of beans. The first dish of baked beans I ever saw, was on a club dining table in Cambridge, after I entered college in 1838.

Deacon Hall understood the art of making a chowder as well as that of curing dunfish, or if his fishing party preferred a muddle, that is, a chowder with no potatoes and less liquor, he was equally skilful. Real lovers of fish and seafaring men I have generally found liked the muddle, as perhaps the following incident will attest. Capt. Ignatius Pierce, a man of dry humor, spent a number of years in California, never intimating in his letters any intention of an immediate return home. His wife, about nine o’clock one morning, received a telegram from him in Boston, merely saying, “have a muddle for dinner.”

The good Deacon would have been amused at the following description of the ingredients of a genuine New England chowder by a professor of modern languages in the University of Virginia, in a work published by him in 1872, “A many sided dish of pork and fish, potatoes and bread, onions and turnips all mixed up with fresh chequits and seabass, black fish and long clams, pumpkinseed, and an accidental eel, well peppered and salted, piled up in layers, and stewed together.” If such a dish as that had been placed before the Deacon he would in a changed form have followed the directions for cooking a coot—to wit, shoot your coot, pick it, parboil it, stuff it, roast it, baste it, and then throw it away.

CHAPTER III.

During my early life a house stood in North street between the house of Mrs. Ruth H. Baker and the present Plymouth Rock House, concerning the occupants of which I must say a word. It was a double house, the westerly end of which was occupied by Ebenezer Drew, his wife Deborah, or Aunt Debby, as she was called, and his brother Malachi. Ebenezer had no children and Malachi was a bachelor. They were the salt of the earth and the salt had not lost its savor. Without the three it would have been difficult for some of the neighbors, including my mother, to keep house. Malachi repaired the leaks in the roof, eased the doors, mended the chairs and kept the house generally in running order. Uncle Eben did the chores, fed and scratched the pig, sawed, split and piled the wood and wheeled our corn to the mill, taking care that Sylvanus Maxim, the miller, did not take out too much toll. In those days, every family bought or raised its own corn and sent it to the mill to be ground. When the steamboat arrived, if one happened to be running, Eben was always on the wharf with his handcart ready to take the luggage of passengers to their homes. I can see the old man now scraping with his jackknife the apples I occasionally gave him, which, with his loss of teeth, he could neither bite nor chew. He died January 6, 1851, at the age of 77 years.

But chief of “the blessed three” was Aunt Debby. She assisted in making soap and candles, would nurse the sick, diagnose the various diseases of children, such as measles, by their smell, administer picra and “yarb” tea, staunch the blood of a cut finger with cobwebs and with the buds of the balsam poplar, or balm of Gilead, heal the wound. She was the forerunner, too, of those who with no more accuracy than she exhibited, foretell the number of a winter’s snow storms. In my college vacation my first visit was always to her, and at Thanksgiving time it was often my privilege to bear a turkey and a couple of pies to her scanty board. She died April 15, 1844, at the age of 72. Peace to her ashes.

The easterly part of the house was occupied by William Collingwood, a worthy and intelligent Englishman, the father of our respected townsmen, George and James Bartlett Collingwood. He had been a manufacturer of pottery in Sunderland, in the shire of Durham, but owing to reverses he was induced to come to America, and took passage in 1819 with Capt. Plasket of Nantucket, bringing with him his wife Eleanor (Harrow) Collingwood and two sons, George and William, one year old. He settled in Nantucket, the home of Capt. Plasket, where he remained until 1825, when James Bartlett, who, with others, owned two ships in the whale fishery, induced him to come to Plymouth and take charge of the oil and candle works then recently established, which were situated between the house of the late Jesse R. Atwood and the shore. As long as the works remained in operation he was at their head, and afterwards for a time kept a restaurant at the corner of North and Water streets. He died in Plymouth in 1866, at the age of 76, and his wife died in 1884, at the age of 90. Three of Mr. Collingwood’s sons died in the civil war. Joseph W., born in Nantucket January 5, 1822, was captain in Company H, 18th Massachusetts regiment, and died in a field hospital December 24, 1862, of wounds received at the battle of Fredericksburg on the 13th of that month. John B., born December 30, 1825, was adjutant of the 29th Massachusetts regiment and died in St. John’s Hospital in Cincinnati, August 21, 1863. Thomas, born November 10, 1831, was a corporal in Company E, 29th Massachusetts regiment, and died at Camp Banks, Crab Orchard, Ky., August 31, 1863.

In 1843 Mrs. Collingwood was summoned to England to secure by identification an inheritance of property. She had then reached middle life, but, nevertheless, without a companion or attendant, she sailed on the 1st of July in the above year in the Cunard steamer Columbia, from Boston for Halifax and Liverpool. The Columbia, like all the earliest boats of the Cunard line, was a paddle wheel boat of about 1,200 tons. I know very well what those boats were, for I made a passage in the Hibernia of the same line in March, 1847, and I often wonder that in such small crafts, with one wheel buried in every roll of the sea, passengers were willing to expose themselves to the hazards of a winter passage. On Sunday, the second day out, when 240 miles from Boston, while still in charge of the pilot who, in accordance with the custom prevailing while the steamers called at Halifax, remained on board, the Columbia, in a thick fog, having been carried out of her course by an unusual Bay of Fundy current, struck a sloping rock on Black Ledge about a mile and a quarter from Seal Island, and 25 miles from Barrington, Nova Scotia, the nearest port on the mainland. Fortunately the sea was smooth and when the fog lifted a fishing schooner nearby came to the ship and with the boats of the steamer transferred to the island the passengers, 95 in number, including those in the steerage, and 73 officers and men, with luggage and the mails. The cargo was eventually saved, but the ship was a total loss. While on the island a sort of colonial government was established with Mr. Abbot Lawrence of Boston, one of the passengers at its head, to prevent excesses and possible disturbance, and a passing vessel was sent to Halifax with news of the wreck. In due time the steamer Margaret took them to that port, most of the passengers and crew continuing their passage in her to Liverpool. For the kindness and attention shown to Mrs. Collingwood by Mr. Lawrence she was always grateful. The valet of Mr. Lawrence was James Burr, a colored boy from Plymouth, who often with pride recounted to me the story of his adventure.

It is a little singular that our townsman, Robert Swinburn, recently deceased at an advanced age, came to Plymouth when a young man from Sunderland, the town in which Mr. Collingwood lived, and where he also was engaged in the employment of a potter, and should twenty years later than the voyage of Mrs. Collingwood have been also summoned to England for the purpose of obtaining an inheritance. A circumstance connected with the loss of the Columbia, which reminds us of the changes which have occurred in the facilities of communication, is the fact that the news of the wreck, which occurred on Sunday, the 2d of July, did not reach Boston until Sunday, the 9th.

I have given the loss of the Columbia a prominence in these memories because it was the only loss which the Cunard company has suffered during its career of 64 years, except that of the Oregon, a steamer sold to the company by another line after a collision and a transfer of her passengers to another vessel, which foundered near Fire Island. Two other ocean steamers had been previously lost, the President, with all on board, in 1841, and the West India packet steamer Solway, off Corunna, in April, 1843, with her captain and fifty lives.

Returning from this digression to North street, from which I have wandered long and far, I wish to correct a statement, based on misinformation, made by me in “Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth,” that the Willoughby house, built by Edward Winslow in 1755, was confiscated. Mr. Winslow held the office of collector of the port of Plymouth, registrar of wills and clerk of the superior court of common pleas, and the salaries from these offices, though he was not a rich man, enabled him to live in luxury and ease. He was generous to the poor and lavish in his entertainment of families in the aristocratic circles. He was a loyalist of the most pronounced type, and consequently lost his offices at the breaking out of the revolution. As nearly as I can learn from family records he remained in Plymouth several years, evidently assisted by friends, some of whom in a quiet way shared his loyalty to the king. In December, 1781, he reached the British garrison in New York with a part of his family, the remainder joining him at a later period. Sir Henry Clinton allowed him a pension of £200 per annum, with rations and fuel. On the 30th of August, 1783, he embarked with his wife, two daughters and three colored servants from New York and arrived at Halifax on the 14th of September. He died in Halifax the next year, 70 years of age. The house in question was taken on execution by his creditors, consisting of the town of Plymouth, Thomas Davis, William Thomas, Oakes Angier and John Rowe, and in 1782, 1789, 1790 and 1791 it was sold by the above parties to Thomas Jackson. In 1813 it passed under an execution from Thomas Jackson to his cousin, Charles Jackson, the father of the late Dr. Charles T. Jackson and Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Edward Winslow, son of the above, graduated in Harvard in 1765, and at the time of the revolution was naval officer of the port of Plymouth and held the offices of clerk of the court and register of probate jointly with his father. He joined the British army in Boston and went with Lord Percy on his disastrous expedition to Lexington and Concord, and was later appointed by Gen. Gage collector of Boston and register of probate for Suffolk county. At the evacuation of Boston, March 17, 1776, he went with the army to Halifax, where he was made by Sir William Howe secretary of the board of general officers, of which Lord Percy was president, for the distribution of donations to the troops. He afterwards went to New York and was appointed muster master general of the forces, and acted in that capacity during the war. In 1779 he was chosen by refugees in Rhode Island to command them, and served during two campaigns. After the war he was military secretary until the death of his father, and in 1785 went to New Brunswick, where he held the positions of king’s counsellor and paymaster of contingencies, and died in 1815.

In the Winslow house above referred to Ralph Waldo Emerson married, August 22, 1835, Lydia Jackson, daughter of Charles and Lucy (Cotton) Jackson. I have a distinct recollection of the first time I ever saw Mr. Emerson, and I have no doubt that it was the first time he ever visited Plymouth. It was, I feel sure, in 1833, soon after he left the pulpit of the Second Unitarian church in Boston and after he had begun his career as a lecturer. It is said that his first lecture was delivered before the Boston Mechanics Institute on the very practical subject of “Water.” At the time referred to he lectured in Pilgrim Hall on Socrates, and was the guest of Nathaniel Russell, whose daughter, Mary Howland Russell, born in 1803, was an intimate friend of Lydia Jackson, born in 1802. I believe that I am justified in assuming that on that visit he first saw his future wife. I remember well his appearance and manners on the lecture platform, and as a boy of eleven years I thought him oracular and dull. In the same year the wandering piper with his kilt and bagpipe appeared also in Pilgrim Hall, and Potter, the ventriloquist, entertained audiences by swallowing swords, and I am almost afraid to say that the exhibitions gave me more pleasure than the lecture. But my eyes had not at that early age been opened. Dr. Holmes once asked an English gentleman to whom he had just been introduced, how he liked America, and on receiving the reply that he had been in the country only nine days, told him that a pup required only nine days to open its eyes. But the doctor never hesitated to sacrifice courtesy for the sake of a joke, as the following story will further show: Hearing one evening at a party the name of a gentleman present, whom he had never seen before, he asked him if he were a relative of an apothecary of that name, and on receiving the answer that he was his son, he told him that he thought he recognized in his face the “liniments” of his father. But to return to Mr. Emerson, my eyes have been opened.

In concluding the changes which have occurred in North street within my recollection, it only remains to be said that the Manter building on the corner of Water street was removed in 1859 from Pilgrim wharf, and stands on land formerly occupied by a tenement house, and by a small one-story building occupied by Thomas Maglathlen.

Water street, including its extension, was laid out by various acts of the town, as follows: On the 16th of February, 1715, in 1762, on the 4th of April, 1881, the 9th of December, 1893, and the 22d of June, 1895. The changes on the extension of the street, caused by the erection of the woolen mill of Mr. Mabbett, the utilization of the old Jackson lumber yard by Mr. Craig and the erection of the Brockton and Plymouth trolley electric plant, have been so recent that no reference to them is necessary. With the exception of the foundry, which was built to take the place of the foundry burned in 1856, and the electric light building on the corner of Leyden street, no new structure has changed in my day the general character of the street.

In my youth, and later, there were eight buildings on the westerly side of the street between North street and the steps at the foot of Middle street. In the rear of these houses there were two terraces supported by stone walls, and some of the houses were entered by flights of steps leading down from the top of the hill. In 1856, and in the years immediately succeeding, the Pilgrim Society bought all these estates, and after the removal of the houses graded the slope as it is seen today. The granite steps from the surface of the hill to the canopy over the Rock was built by private subscription. The graded bank is the property of the Pilgrim Society, and the surface of the hill, which belongs to the town, was placed by a vote of the town under the superintendence and care of the society.

Until recently there were also eight buildings between the way leading to the Middle street steps and the grass bank on Leyden street. By the will of J. Henry Stickney of Baltimore, who died May 3, 1893, the sum of $21,000 was given to a board of trustees for the purpose of buying and removing these houses and grading the bank. The board of trustees consists of the chairman of the selectmen, the presidents of the two national banks, the president and secretary of the Pilgrim Society, the president of the Plymouth Savings Bank, and the judge of probate and treasurer of Plymouth county, and their successors in said offices. All the estates have been bought except that owned by Winslow Brewster Standish, and the grading as far as practicable has been done.

The only remaining change in the street to be referred to is that associated with Pilgrim wharf and the Rock. Until 1859 the wharf was devoted to commercial uses. In that year the upper part of the wharf came into the possession of the Pilgrim Society, and the building which had stood on the northerly corner of the wharf was moved to the corner of Water and North streets, and eventually came into the possession of Mr. Manter, its present occupant.

Two buildings on the south side, between the wharf and the store of Mr. Atwood, were also bought by the society and removed. That on the corner had for many years been occupied in its lower story by a cooper shop and in its upper story by the sail loft of Daniel Goddard, and the other had been occupied as a store successively by Richard Holmes, Holmes & Scudder, Holmes & Brewster and John Churchill.

In 1883 the Pilgrim Society bought the entire wharf, and after removing the store houses standing on it fitted it for a steamboat landing exclusively. The corner stone of the canopy over the Rock was laid on the 2d of August, 1859, and the structure was completed in 1867. It was designed by Hammatt Billings, but follows very closely the plan of the Arch of Trajan built on one of the moles of the harbor of Ancona on the shores of the Adriatic. The use of scallop shells on its top was suggested by the fact that this shell was the emblem worn by the Pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. The word Pilgrim, as applied to the Plymouth colonists, was never used, as far as I can learn, for more than a hundred and seventy years after the landing. They were called “first-comers” and “forefathers” until 1794, when Judge John Davis, in his ode written for the anniversary celebration in that year first used the word “Pilgrim” in the following verse:

“Columbia, child of heaven,

The best of blessings given,

Be thine to greet;

Hailing this votive day,

Looking with fond survey,

Upon the weary way,

Of Pilgrim feet.”

The next use of the word was made by Samuel Davis in a hymn written by him for the celebration in 1799, the first verse of which is as follows:

“Hail Pilgrim fathers of our race!

With grateful hearts your toils we trace.

Again this votive day returns

And finds us bending o’er your urns.”

The word was undoubtedly suggested to Judge Davis by a casual remark of Governor Bradford in his history of Plymouth Plantation expressing the regret of the colonists at leaving Leyden, as follows: “But they knew they were Pilgrims, and looked not much on those things but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and so quieted their spirits.” The first use of the scallop shell associated with the Plymouth Pilgrims was at the anniversary celebration in 1820, when at the ball in the evening some young ladies hung a shell suitably decorated on the breast of Mr. Webster, the orator of the day. It simply expresses the sentiment that man is a wayfarer travelling toward another and a better world. I have seen it somewhere stated that it was worn by the Pilgrims returning from the Holy Land, and if such is the case as the scallop is abundant on the shores of the Mediterranean, it may have been adopted to attest their pilgrimage. In the chamber of the canopy are deposited four skeletons of Pilgrims buried in the winter of 1620-1 on Cole’s Hill, which were discovered in 1854 by workmen digging a trench for laying water pipes in Carver street, a little south of the foot of Middle street.

Before concluding what I have to say concerning Water street with its business, its stores and their occupants, I wish to refer more particularly to Plymouth Rock and its history, to supply necessary links in the chain of my narrative. Its first public recognition as the landing place of the Pilgrims occurred in 1742, after a grant had been made to individuals by the town of a strip of land extending from the top of Cole’s Hill to low water mark, for the purpose of building a wharf. Thomas Faunce, the third elder of the Plymouth church, born in 1647, was ten years old when Governor Bradford died in 1657, twenty-six years old when John Howland died in 1673, thirty-three years old when George Soule died in 1680, and forty years old when John Alden died in 1687, all of whom were Mayflower’s passengers. Hearing of the proposed wharf, and believing that the Rock would be buried from sight, he gathered on the spot his children and grandchildren and told them the story of the landing, which he had received from the Pilgrims themselves. Dr. James Thacher was told of this incident by witnesses of the scene, and through the channel of his history of Plymouth, the authenticity of the Rock has become a matter of historic record.

The second recognition of the Rock as the place of the landing, occurred in 1774, when the inhabitants of Plymouth under the lead of Col. Theopilus Cotton assembled about it with about twenty yoke of oxen, with the view of removing it to Liberty Pole square, as they called Town square, and consecrating it to the shrine of liberty. In attempting to raise it it separated into two parts, one of which was permitted to remain and the other was carried to its destination. There it remained until 1834, resting against the lower elm tree on the southerly side of the square. In that year the fourth of July was celebrated by its removal to the front yard of Pilgrim hall. A procession, of which Capt. Samuel Doten was marshal, preceded by the school children of the town, escorted a decorated truck bearing the Rock, then weighing 6,997 pounds, which was followed by a model of the Mayflower mounted on a car and drawn by six boys, of whom I was one. The Plymouth Band and the Standish Guards performed escort duty, and on reaching Pilgrim hall an address was delivered by Dr. Chas. Cotton, and a prayer was made by Rev. Dr. James Kendall. The ceremonies of the day closed with a dinner served in the basement of the hall by Danville Bryant, proprietor of the Pilgrim House, at which Hon. Nathaniel M. Davis presided, assisted by Hon. Isaac L. Hedge, Abraham Jackson, John Bartlett 3d, Nathaniel Wood and Eliab Ward as vice presidents. In June of the next year the Rock, in its new place, was inclosed by an iron fence designed by George W. Brimmer of Boston, the designer of the Gothic meeting house of the Unitarian parish, and so remained until 1880, when it was removed without display and placed within the canopy on that part of the Rock from which it was separated one hundred and six years before. The iron fence has since that time served to inclose a granite memorial in front of Pilgrim Hall bearing on its face the text of the Pilgrim compact.

As far back as I can recall, in 1832, Water street retained much of the business aspect, which had characterized it for about seventy-five years. The whaling and fishing industries were active and prosperous and Boston had not yet drawn away from Plymouth any considerable portion of its foreign trade. Molasses and sugar from the West India Islands, salt from Turks Island and Cadiz, and iron from Gothenberg, continued to come in, the last free of that burdensome duty, which has destroyed the iron industries of the old colony. I can hear today the rattling of the bars which Stephen Thomas and others carted through our streets to the various manufactories established in Plymouth, Carver, Wareham, Plympton and Kingston. I can count within my memory twenty-six establishments engaged in the manufacture of iron in Plymouth county, while with only two or three exceptions the few now at work are in a languishing condition. I have letters in my possession written in Plymouth, opposing the imposition of high duties, and predicting as a result of their operation the very conditions which now exist.

CHAPTER IV.

Living as I did on Cole’s Hill through my youth, I have a distinct recollection of Water street and its business as far back as 1832. During the summer I spent much of my time out of school hours sculling a boat, or climbing vessels’ rigging. At those times my special playmate was Winslow Whiting, who during the last years of his seafaring life commanded the bark Volant, and when the brig Hannah was in her berth on the north side of Hedge’s wharf we laughed at the boys crawling through the lubber hole, while we proudly mounted the futtock shrouds.

At that time there were on Water street fourteen stores, three counting rooms, two blacksmith shops, two pump and blockmakers’ shops, two painters’ shops, one sail loft, one rigging loft, perhaps six cooper shops, one carpenter’s shop, a wood carver’s loft, and on the eight wharves leading from the street, sixteen storehouses. The stores were occupied by James Spooner, I. L. and T. Hedge, Richard Holmes, George Cooper, Elkanah Bartlett, William Nye, Josiah Robbins, Atwood L. Drew, Charles Bramhall, Phineas Wells, Levi Barnes, Scudder and Churchill, Leander Lovell and Henry Tillson.

James Spooner was the son of Deacon Ephraim Spooner, and lived all his life in the house on North street, now occupied by the widow of his grandson, James Walter Spooner. He occupied a store in the building still standing at the head of what is called Long Wharf. He owned several schooners engaged in the Grand Bank fishery, among which were the Swallow, Seneca and Leo. In the last named I was, though a boy, permitted to launch, and she was commanded for a time by the late Peter W. Smith. The Swallow had been a fisherman ever since 1803, but, nevertheless, continued in active business until 1873, when she was lost. Mr. Spooner died, March 5, 1838. He was succeeded in the store by William Churchill, a native of Duxbury, and the son of Peleg Churchill, whose daughter, Eliza, married Joseph Chandler, the father of the late Peleg Churchill Chandler of Plymouth, who was named after his grandfather. Mr. Churchill built and occupied for several years the house on Middle street, now occupied by Charles H. Frink. While in Plymouth he carried on the mackerel fishery, employing as packers and coopers, his brother, Otis Churchill, and Winslow Cole. He removed in 1838 to Boston, where on Long Wharf he continued the same business.

The store of I. L. and T. Hedge, occupied the easterly half of the building which stood on the northerly corner of Hedge’s wharf. With James Bartlett they were largely engaged in the whale fishery, having their counting room upstairs, and their store room below. Mr. Isaac L. Hedge moved in that year, 1832, into the house built by him, now owned and occupied by Father Buckley, where he died, April 19, 1867; Mr. Thomas Hedge was living in the house now owned by his daughter, Mrs. Lothrop, which he had bought off Thomas Jackson in 1830, and where he died, July 11, 1865.

John Thomas, who as a lawyer, occupied an office connected with the Hayward house on Main street, where the engine house now stands, was admitted to the firm in 1832, but in 1837 he removed to New York, where he engaged successfully in the wholesale iron business, and accumulated a handsome property. When retiring from business he bought an estate at Irvington on the North river, and built a house which he occupied until his death. He was killed by lightning in the hay field in July, 1855. He was the father of the late Wm. A. Thomas of Kingston.

Richard Holmes occupied a store standing immediately north of the present market of Anthony Atwood. He was a member of one of the oldest Plymouth families, and lived until 1835 in the house on Cole’s Hill, now occupied by Anthony Atwood. In that year he bought a lot of land immediately north of the house of Mrs. Lothrop, extending from Court street to the shore, and built a house with fish houses and fish flakes in its rear, where he lived until his death. In 1833, his son-in-law, Alonzo D. Scudder, became his partner in business, and, after his death, July 4, 1841, continued with his son, Richard W. Holmes. After the death of Mr. Scudder, April 5, 1853, Isaac Brewster became the partner of Richard W. Holmes, after whose death, February 15, 1862, the store was occupied by John Churchill. Holmes & Scudder and Holmes & Brewster were many years engaged in the Grand Bank fishery, and general navigation, and their skippers, among whom were Oliver C. Vaughn, Benjamin Jenkins and William Atwood, regardless of equinoctial storms remained on the Banks until they had wet their salt. They owned at various times the schooners Volant, Flash, Abeona, Medium, Seadrift, Swallow, Challenge, Flora, Anna Hincks and Palestine, all of which, except the last two, were engaged in the Grand Bank fishery.

The next building at the head of Davis wharf contained for many years prior to 1826 the counting room of my grandfather, William Davis, who died, January 5, in that year. After a short occupation by William Spooner, it was in 1832 occupied as a store by George Cooper. For several years before that date, and many years after 1833, Mr. Cooper was employed as a clerk, and as far as I know, was never concerned in navigation. His occupation of the store was short, and he was succeeded by Elisha Whiting and Bartlett Holmes, Jr., and William Davis Simmons and others, until it came into the possession of Jesse R. Atwood, whose son, Anthony Atwood, now occupies it for a fish market. Mr. Cooper died April 29, 1864.

Elkanah Bartlett kept a store at the northerly corner of Carver’s, now Craig’s wharf, until his death. John Darling Churchill was connected as clerk, and in other ways with Mr. Bartlett, for many years, and succeeded him in business. Mr. Churchill, like Mr. Bartlett, was engaged in the Grand Bank fishery, and with Nathaniel E. Harlow, owned the schooners Conanchet, Engineer, Oronoco and Wampatuck.

William Nye had a store a little back from the street between Carver’s wharf and Barnes’ wharf, where he bought and sold old iron and junk. My associations with his store are among the pleasantest of my youth, for there by the sale of old iron, which I most assiduously picked up for two or three weeks before that holiday which was so delightful to all boys, the old election day, I found the wherewithal for the holiday feast, which was held in the barn or carriage house of some one of our families, and consisted of election cake and lobster and lemonade in the morning, followed by a stomach ache in the afternoon. The town baker always made up a good batch of election cake or buns, for the occasion, and these articles formed as important a part in the diet of the day as succotash on Forefathers’ day. Mr. Nye would gather for his business at election time, a bag of bright new cents, and would tempt the æsthetic taste of the boys by asking them if they would take one bright cent or two dull ones. No day, not even Thanksgiving day, has such a firm seat in my memory as the old election day. It was the day of the meeting of the General Court, which until 1832, occurred on the third Wednesday in May. Mr. Nye lived in a house at the southerly end of Water street, which stood on the site of the house built and occupied by the late Rufus Churchill, who married one of his daughters. Mr. Nye came to Plymouth from Sandwich, and died February 25, 1849, and after his death, his house was moved across the street, where it now stands.

Alonzo D. Scudder, who came to Plymouth from Barnstable, began business in Water street with Lemuel B. Churchill for the sale of grain and flour, but precisely where their store was I cannot say. The partnership continued only a short time, and in 1833 Mr. Scudder became a partner with his father-in-law, Richard Holmes. He died as already stated, April 5, 1853, and Mr. Churchill died December 30, 1833.

Atwood L. Drew, I think, occupied a store, in 1832, in the basement of his father’s house, near the corner of Leyden street, and was quite extensively engaged at various times in the whale and Grand Bank fisheries, and in general navigation. In 1839 he was associated as a partner with Leander Lovell, and built the store now standing at the northerly corner of Barnes’ wharf. In later life he was associated in some capacity with his brother, William Rider Drew, an enterprising and prosperous manufacturer, who is still living, and whose extensive establishment for the manufacture of tacks and rivets is situated on Smelt Brook at Rocky Nook. Mr. Drew died November 25, 1877.

The store kept by Levi Barnes as early as 1830 was one of two in the building which stood on the southerly corner of the way leading to Middle street. In the latter part of his life he occupied the store which had been occupied by Phineas Wells. He died May 14, 1853, in the house on North street which he had owned and occupied since 1835.

Chas. Bramhall, who occupied the northerly store in the building above mentioned, was the son of Benjamin Bramhall, and one of a family of enterprising sons, five of whom I knew. His brother William was a prosperous merchant in Boston, and for many years President of the Shawmut Bank, a position now occupied by our summer townsman, Jas. P. Stearns, his son-in-law. Mr. Bramhall was actively engaged in the Grand Bank fishery, and died May 29, 1859, in the house where he had lived many years, recently occupied by B. O. Strong.

Henry Tillson was a son of Hamblin Tillson, and kept a shoe store on Water street, as early as 1828, and in 1832 removed to Market street, and died December 27, 1834.

Leander Lovell’s store on Water street I cannot locate, but he was there as early as 1827, and on the tenth of November in that year his store was entered by burglars. In 1839 he was associated in business with Atwood L. Drew, and in the later years of his life was a partner with J. H. Harlow in the dry goods business in the store on Main street, now occupied by H. H. Cole. He was Town Clerk from 1852 to 1878, and as chairman of the Board of Selectmen and Moderator for many years, I am glad to put on record my appreciation of his courtesy and fidelity in the performance of his municipal duties. He came to Plymouth from Barnstable and married a daughter of Capt. James Bartlett, and died October 1, 1879.

Phineas Wells came to Plymouth from Maine, and married in 1828 Mercy, daughter of George Ellis. He opened in 1827 a grocery store which occupied the whole front of the building opposite the head of Hedge’s wharf. He was a master of his business, prudent, methodical and industrious, and so far as salesroom and storeroom were concerned, his store has never been surpassed in Plymouth. In or about 1850 he moved across the street and fitted up a store on the northerly corner of Hedge’s wharf, where he remained until 1859, when he again moved to the store at the junction of Water and Leyden streets, where he remained until his death, December 8, 1869.

Josiah Robbins occupied a store at the head of Robbins’ wharf. In looking over the files of the Old Colony Memorial to verify my recollection of Water street, I find that he was there as early as 1827, and in that year advertised the sale of old currant wine. The temperance movement began in the above year, and I think in the sale of wines the lines must have been drawn at the product of currants, as the following officers of the Temperance Society organized in 1827 were chosen: Nathaniel Russell, President; Zabdiel Sampson, Vice-President; Wm. Thomas, Secretary; and Ichabod Morton, Nathan Hayward, Jacob Covington, Josiah Robbins, Thomas Atwood, John Russell, Thomas Russell and Isaac L. Hedge, Executive Committee. It is probable that up to that time every grocery store contained ardent spirits in its stock, and on the 8th of September, 1827, I. & E. Morton, whose senior partner was one of the above executive committee, advertised concerning their store at Wellingsley that “that prolific mother of miseries, that giant foe to human happiness, shall no longer have a dwelling place under our roof.” The movement was followed up by temperance lectures delivered in the church at Training Green by Mr. Daniel Frost, and total abstinence pledges were signed by nearly one quarter of the entire population of the town. Though the grocers as a body abandoned the sale of spirits, obedience to popular sentiment was by no means universal. Family use and individual consumption were largely diminished, and with the erection in 1835 of the frame of the double house on the corner of Howland street, the practice of using liquor at “raisings” ceased. In the ship yards, however, for some years after that date, work was regularly knocked off every day at eleven and four o’clock for the distribution among the men of New England rum. Public opinion, however, without its re-inforcement by law, finally prevailed, and I should say that from 1835 to 1840 it would have been impossible to buy either ardent spirits or wines, except at the hotels, and that there were less than a dozen houses in which they could be found. I am inclined to think that even under the operation of stringent laws there has been a reaction, and that they are now more generally, though not excessively used than they were sixty-five years ago. It cannot, however, be denied, that if total abstinence less widely prevails, intemperance is less common, and more severely condemned. May it not be true that public opinion is more potent than law?

I have said that in 1832 there were three counting houses on Water street, meaning such as were engaged in the business of foreign navigation. These were D. & A. Jackson, Nelson & Harlow, and Nathaniel Carver. The oldest and most important was that of D. & A. Jackson, which derived both its business and character from the old firm of Daniel and Charles Jackson, father and uncle of the members of the house. It did not immediately follow in chronological order the old house of Daniel and Charles Jackson, as for a time after the death of Charles Jackson in 1818 Daniel, the surviving partner, formed a partnership with his son Jacob, under the firm name of Daniel Jackson and son, which was dissolved in 1828. In this last year the firm of D. & A. Jackson had its origin. Though as far as the public knew only Daniel and Abraham were members of the firm, that at a later date their younger brother, Isaac Carver Jackson, became associated with them, there can be no doubt. It is within my recollection that the ship Iconium, the last ship built by the firm, was built in 1848 or thereabouts on the Sheepscott river, under Mr. Isaac C. Jackson’s exclusive supervision.

The Jackson brothers were a remarkable set of men, six in number, all about six feet in height, gentlemen in bearing and dress, and with their blue coats and brass buttons, and in summer, white beaver hats, white trousers, low shoes and white stockings, their appearance in our streets gave character and expression to the town. They were all confident, self-centered men, who knew what they wanted and how to accomplish it, meddling in no man’s business and permitting no man to meddle in theirs; neither asking for nor offering advice. They had means sufficient to carry out their enterprises and never sought outside of their family and their commanders, the contribution of a timber head to their ships.

The first vessels built by D. & A. Jackson were the Echo and Arno fishing vessels, which were sold. The Arno was probably the vessel of that name, which was many years one of the Plymouth fishing fleet. They next built a topsail schooner named the Janus, which made one voyage under command of Capt. Daniel Jackson to Russia, and was sold. In 1829 they built the brig Janus, commanded by Capt. William Holmes, who died in Valparaiso, May 10, 1831, while in command. They next built the brig Rhine of which Capt. Frederick Robbins was master a number of years, and which was finally lost on Fire Island. The brigs Maze and Autumn followed, engaged in general freighting business, and the brig Ganges commanded by Capt. Phineas Leach, and also the brig Cyclops. All of these vessels, including others up to perhaps 1835, were built in what was afterwards known as Battles’ lumber yard. The brig Eurotas, one of the Jackson fleet, was bought in Duxbury and placed in command of Capt. Eleazer Stevens Turner, which he commanded until he took command of the ship Thracian, when he was succeeded in the Eurotas by Capt. Ira Potter.

How well I remember those bright waisted brigs, graceful and weatherly, and especially the Cyclops with her figurehead representing the mythological giant with a single eye in the middle of his forehead.

This head was doubtless the work of Samuel W. Gleason, who came to Plymouth from Middleboro and exhibited much talent as a wood carver. Two of his sons continued in business in Plymouth as long as ship building was active in Plymouth and Duxbury and Kingston, when they removed to Boston, and achieved some very commendable work on the clipper ships of the California and Australian period.

The Jackson firm were not long content with the building of brigs. While such vessels were well enough adapted to the iron trade, they were unsuited to the carrying of sugar from the West Indies to the North of Europe, and still more unsuited to the transportation of cotton. It was not an uncommon thing for vessels in the sugar trade bound from Havana to Cronstadt, to put into Plymouth to take out a clean bill of health. I remember well the ship Harvest, Capt. Lawton with George Warren supercargo, belonging to Barnabas Hedge, anchoring in Saquish cove, and proceeding with a new bill of health. The complete abandonment of the brig was effected when, at a later period, coal transportation became extensive on the Delaware and other rivers. The last full rigged brig in Plymouth was the old brig Hannah, which was owned by Barnabas Hedge, and commanded many years by Capt. Isaac Bartlett in the West India trade. Her last service was on a fishing trip to the straits, commanded by Capt. Ignatius Pierce, the father of the late Capts. Ignatius and Ebenezer Pierce. The last American brig ever seen by me was in Salem harbor about thirty years ago, engaged in the African trade.

The ships Thracian and Persian were built in a yard about where the foot of Brewster street now is, by James Collins, master carpenter, who had already built the ships Brenda and Dromo for Arthur French of Boston, a brother-in-law of Abraham Jackson. The Jackson fleet of ships was completed by the purchase in Maine of the Tyrian and the building of the Iconium. Of each of these ships I have something to say. Many a trenail turned out by me in a trenail machine on a Saturday afternoon was put into the bottoms of the Thracian and Persian, and many a cracker and slice of cheese have I eaten in the ship house at their launchings. Capt. Frederick Robbins was transferred from the brig Rhine to the Persian, Capt. Eleazer Stevens Turner from the brig Eurotas to the Thracian, and Capt. Daniel Lothrop Jackson, son of the senior partner of the house, was given the command of the Tyrian.

Capt. Turner was eventually transferred to the Iconium, on which ship he was finally succeeded by Capt. William Davie. These ships were first class ships in every particular, and for one or each of them the schooner Capitol was bought in Maine and placed in command of Capt. Richard Rogers, who was sent to Virginia with wood choppers, teams and provisions and a gang of carpenters under Benjamin Bagnall, to get out frames on a tract of timber land, which the Jacksons had bought or leased for the purpose.

In December, 1846, I was in Marseilles waiting for a steamer to take me to Genoa and Naples. Having been in Paris away from the sea six months or more, I have never before or since experienced the pleasure which a sight of the Mediterranean gave me. My first excursion from the hotel, after my arrival, was as it would have been at home—down among the shipping. The new harbor had not then been opened, and the ships were made fast with their sterns to the mole. Seeing an American flag at one mast head, I soon read on the stern of the ship, “Persian of Plymouth.” Inquiring of the ship keeper if Capt. Robbins, whom I knew was the captain, was on board, and learning that he was not, I walked along the mole, looking into the various stores, and soon saw him astride a chair, club house fashion, with his arms folded on the back, looking at me as I entered. During the three days I was obliged to wait for my steamer, I spent a half hour each day with him on board his ship. He was soon to sail for New Orleans, and as I afterwards learned he died while on the passage, or soon after his arrival. He was succeeded by Capt. Thomas Appling, who had commanded the Cyclops, who died at sea of yellow fever, and was succeeded by Capt. Lewis Robbins. After leaving Capt. Robbins I walked farther down the mole and read on the stern of a bark flying the stars and stripes, the familiar name, “Griffin of Boston.” I knew Capt. Charles Blake, her owner and commander, who lived directly opposite my grandmother’s house in Winthrop place. His vessel was half yacht, half trader, and sometimes with guests, and sometimes without. He was a skimmer of the seas, taking comfort and pleasure, for which his freight list might pay in whole or in part. While I was at Naples he came over and anchored his bark directly in front of the hotel where I was stopping.

But my story of Yankee vessels is not all told. On my way down the coast of the Mediterranean a fellow passenger on the steamer, an Englishman named James Buchanan, was constantly boasting of the superiority of English vessels over all others. Of course I defended my own, nor was it difficult, in those days at least, to find fault with the squat sails, short top gallant masts, clumsy blocks, poorly set up spars, and if at anchor with sails furled, the untidy bunts which often looked like bundles of rags on the yards of the Englishmen. As we came to an anchor one morning in the harbor of Genoa, I pointed out to Mr. Buchanan a very trig looking bark, anchored near by, which had a familiar look. “She’s a tidy craft,” said he, “and she’ll be English, of course.” I knew better, and calling a boatman, directed him to row to the vessel. As we rowed round her stern I was not very much surprised to read, “Truman of Kingston,” in hospitable letters. I had often seen the Truman, Capt. Doane, as well as her sister ship, the Cecilian, Capt. Dawes, belonging to Joseph Holmes, and I spent a pleasant hour with the captain in his cabin before going ashore for a day’s stroll before leaving for Naples in the evening. It was singular that the only three American vessels visited by me in nearly a year’s absence from home, should have hailed from Plymouth, Kingston and Boston, and that all should have been commanded by men whom I knew. Another American vessel not actually visited by me during my trip to Europe in 1846, but seen under interesting circumstances, emphasized the environment enveloping me associated with home. On the second of May in the above year, Capt. John Eldridge of Yarmouth, Mass., master of the New York and Liverpool packet ship Liverpool, on which I was a passenger, sighted a dismasted vessel. She lay ahead of us directly on our course, and in answer to our hail as we rounded her stern, we found her to be the bark Espindola of and for New York from Liverpool, with four hundred steerage passengers, and commanded by Capt. Barstow of Hanover, Mass., fourteen miles distant from my house. Capt. Barstow reported that while he was in his cabin at eight o’clock on the morning before, the ship under full sail with a light northerly wind, without warning, was struck by a whirlwind, and completely dismasted. She wanted spars and provisions. The subsequent scenes were full of interest.

Luffing up into the wind and running close hauled about three miles, while spare spars were got out and lashed outside, and provisions were got in readiness, we ran back and layed to to the windward of the wreck. With a picked crew, under the command of the mate, the life boat was sent off in a rough sea, the mate holding in his hand a coil of lanyard attached to a Manila line that would float, fastened to the spars. When all was ready the lashings of the spars were cut, and when the boat was near enough the coil was thrown on board the wreck, and the spars pulled alongside. The mate backing up to the bark jumped into the chains, when she rolled to windward, and soon had the supply of meats and other provisions put on board. Capt. Barstow learning that a Plymouth man was on board the Liverpool, sent his compliments to me, and after about three hours’ detention, we were again on our course. I afterwards saw that the Espindola obtained more spars from the packet ships, Ashburton and Hottinger, and reached New York after a passage of forty days.

The Tyrian, commanded by Capt. Daniel Lothrop Jackson, met an untimely fate. During the Irish famine she loaded with corn for Glasgow, and after her departure from New York no tidings of her were ever received. Of the Iconium I have a story to tell, as I received it from Capt. Turner’s own lips on his way from Boston to Plymouth, the day after his marvelous escape from shipwreck in Boston Bay. It must have been in the month of March in the early 1850s that he came round the Cape with a load of cotton for Boston, and with a strong northeast wind, without rain or snow, he expected to find his way without trouble into lighthouse channel. But as the day wore on the wind increased to a gale, while the weather became so thick that to haul off shore, if possible, was the only safe course to pursue. With a light cotton ship, the sagging to leeward made it necessary, as night approached, to come to an anchor. With both anchors down and a long scope of cable, Capt. Turner hoped to ride out the gale. As near as he could judge he lay a mile and a half northeast and by north of the outer Minot’s Rocks. The wind veered a little to the southeast, but as it veered it increased in intensity until about midnight one chain parted. He then cut away his spars, hoping that with an eased ship the other cable would stand by. But at daybreak the gale still increasing, the last cable parted, and the ship drifted, stern foremost, toward Strawberry Hill. The wind had veered at this time still more to the south, so that if the bow could be twisted to the northward and westward, and steerage way be got on the ship, it might be still possible to enter the harbor. Capt. Turner managed to set a piece of canvas on the foremast stump, but it did no good, and the ship continued to drift stern foremost. At this time the air had cleared, but the gale had not abated, and as a last resort he carried his kedge anchor aft, and dropped it over the stern, thinking it barely possible that it might catch long enough to turn the ship on her heel and give her steerage way. It worked as he hoped, and with the wind still veering, and hundreds on the shore awaiting a final disaster, he crawled along between Hardings and the breakers and rounded Point Allerton without a fathom to spare. A station pilot boat lying at anchor in the roads put a pilot on board, and Capt. Turner, as he told me, went into his cabin and crying like a child, thanked God for his deliverance. Not long after this he retired temporarily from the sea to recruit his enfeebled health, and was succeeded in the Iconium by Capt. William Davie, but in 1861 was commissioned Sailing Master in the Navy, and while in command of the storeship Relief, bound to the East Indies, he died at Rio Janeiro, August 5, 1864. In just appreciation of his seamanship and skill, the Boston Underwriters made him a present of five hundred dollars.

Daniel Jackson, the senior member of the Jackson house, died July 1, 1852, Abraham Jackson died February 6, 1859, and Isaac Carver Jackson May 23, 1875.

CHAPTER V.

Finding it difficult to define the ownership of vessels engaged in commerce, with which other counting houses on Water street were at various times within my memory associated, I shall subjoin a list as accurate as I have been able to make it, of all vessels except those engaged in the cod fishery hailing from Plymouth since about the year 1828. Those vessels in the list engaged in whaling will be referred to more particularly in a narrative of the whaling industry, while it was carried on in Plymouth. Those vessels engaged in the cod fishery, which only occasionally engaged in commercial pursuits, are not included in the list, but will be spoken of in a separate chapter. Packets and coasters and smacks are included in the list, but the packets will be further considered under their own head.

The four following ships, Granada, Hampden, Massasoit and Sydney in the above list were managed by Capt. John Russell, who bought or built them with the aid of contributions from Sydney Bartlett, William Perkins, William Thomas, Thomas Davis of Boston, and Thomas Russell of Plymouth. I think the Massasoit was the only one of the four built in Plymouth, and she was lost on Point Allerton on her return from a Calcutta voyage in February, 1843. A Mr. Holbrook of Dorchester, either passenger or supercargo, was lost. The negro cook calling himself Professor Steamburg, some years afterwards opened a barber’s shop in the Danforth building at the corner of North street, having been attracted here by the name of the town to which the ship belonged on which he was wrecked.

Exclusive of the packets and smacks, some of which were also built in Plymouth, a large majority of the vessels in the above list were launched in Plymouth yards. There were building yards in Plymouth as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century, one of which was at the foot of Middle street, and another on the site of the electric plant at the foot of Leyden street. The last must have been a well known and much used yard, and was situated on the northerly shore of the Mill pond, which was then an arm or cove of the harbor, with a broad entrance which was later traversed by the causeway and bridge existing today. At the beginning of the Revolution John Peck, a naval constructor, was sent to Plymouth to design and build two vessels of war, which were named Belisarius and Mercury, the latter being put in the command of the noted Capt. Simeon Sampson. It is probable that in early days, when only vessels of light draft of water were required, building yards were located on shores in close proximity to the woods, from which with short hauls building materials could be obtained. Thus the ship building industries of the south shore of Massachusetts Bay were established and continued active until the exigencies of commerce demanded larger vessels, and the construction of railroads and the transport by water rendered it easy to supply with timber the yards of East Boston and Medford and Newburyport. I have no conclusive record to guide me, but I am inclined to think that up to the time of the civil war as many vessels were built in Plymouth and Kingston and Duxbury, and on the North River as in all the remainder of New England.

Some indication of the extent of the building of vessels in Duxbury may be seen in the following record of the industry in that town from 1826 to 1831, inclusive. In 1826 thirteen square rigged vessels, and three schooners were built; in 1827, seven square rigged and one schooner; in 1828, two ships, three brigs and five schooners; in 1829, two ships, six brigs and two schooners; in 1830, one ship, two brigs and eight schooners, and in 1831, four ships, three brigs and eight schooners.

In 1834 Ezra Weston of Duxbury, or King Cæsar, as he was called, who was reckoned the largest ship owner in the United States next to Wm. Gray of Salem, built the ship Hope of 800 tons, which I remember seeing anchored in the Cow Yard waiting to be towed to Boston to be rigged. She was the largest merchantman ever seen in Boston. In my vacation visits to my grandmother in Boston, where I was in the habit of rambling about the wharves, I remember the largest ships of that time, the Asia, the St. Petersburg and the Akbar, owned by Daniel C. Bacon and others, and none were larger than 400 tons. After the death of Mr. Weston, which occurred August 15, 1842, ship building in Duxbury practically ceased.

So far as the North River is concerned the building of vessels was begun as early as 1678, and the first one there built was launched on the Hanover side of the river, a little above the present bridge on the Plymouth and Boston road. Up to 1889, according to the record of Dr. L. V. Briggs, ten hundred and twenty-five vessels had been built, many of which before the Revolution were owned in England. The largest vessel was a ship of six hundred and fifty tons, and the classes numbered one hundred and one sloops, four hundred and eight schooners, sixty-six brigantines, one hundred and thirty-three brigs, fifty-three barks and two hundred and eight ships. The North River industry gradually declined as the demand for larger vessels than could float in the waters of the river, increased. The records of the ship building industry of the Merrimac river, and those of Medford and East Boston, show where the industry went. The industry on the Merrimac river began at a very early period, it having the advantage of floating its timber from the northern woods directly to the ship yards. Before the Revolution, what were called Jew’s Rafts, were built on the Merrimac for a London Jew named Levi, bolted and fastened with the equipment of a ship, and sent across the ocean. In an English newspaper of 1770 it was announced “that the Newbury,” Capt. Rose, had arrived in the Thames, a raft of timber in the form of a ship, in twenty-six days from Newbury, New England.

No record of vessels built before the Revolution exists, but after the Revolution, up to 1883, about five hundred vessels were built on the Merrimac, and registered in the Custom House at Newburyport. The career of John Currier, Jr., of that city, was a remarkable one. Between 1831 and 1883, he built ninety-two ships, four barks and one schooner, of which the largest measured nineteen hundred and forty-five tons, and the average tonnage of the whole number was nine hundred and fifty-six.

Unfortunately there is no available record of the East Boston and Medford ships, but though the career of Donald McKay was shorter than that of Mr. Currier, it was more remarkable. Knowing something of Mr. McKay’s origin and early life, I may be pardoned for making a special reference to him. He belonged to a family living in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, my mother’s native town, and was engaged there in his trade as ship carpenter. My uncle, Cornelius White, a merchant, and the American Consul in that town, knowing his ability, advised him to go to Boston, and provided him with letters to such persons as he thought would advance his interests. Through these letters to my uncle, Isaac P. Davis, and William Sturgis, he at once secured work in the Charlestown Navy Yard. An entering wedge was enough for a man of genius like him, and the clipper ships which came one after another from his hands, soon placed him at the head of his profession in the country. A few years ago I had an interview in New York with his youngest brother, Nathaniel White McKay, named after another of my uncles, with regard to a steamboat for the Boston and Plymouth line, and I think the steamer Shrewsbury, which ran one season, was chartered through him.

The greatest triumph of Mr. McKay was the ship Great Republic, built at East Boston, three hundred and twenty-five feet long, fifty-three feet wide, and thirty-seven feet deep, with a capacity of four thousand tons. She had four masts, the after one called the spanker mast of a single spar fore and aft rigged. Her main yard was one hundred and twenty feet long, and her suit of sails contained 15,653 yards of canvas. She was partially burned at her dock in New York, and razeed to three decks and three masts.

In 1803 the foreign trade of Plymouth was at the height of its prosperity. In that year it was carried on by seventeen ships, sixteen brigs and forty schooners, and the duties paid into the Plymouth Custom House amounted to nearly one hundred thousand dollars. The above list of vessels shows how much the trade was reduced during the first quarter of the last century. This was due to the embargo act passed Dec. 22, 1807, on the recommendation of President Jefferson, and later to the war of 1812. The embargo act prohibited the departure from United States ports of all but foreign armed vessels with public commissions, or foreign merchant ships in ballast, or with such cargo only as they might have on board when notified of the law. All American vessels engaged in the coasting trade were obliged to give bonds to land their cargo in the United States. This embargo was repealed by a law taking effect March 15, 1809, except so far as it related to France and Great Britain, and their dependencies, and in regard to them also after the next session of Congress. Of course such a law struck a severe blow at the trade on which Plymouth most depended for the support of its people, and at a town meeting held in August, 1808, a petition to the President for a suspension of the embargo, was adopted in which it was stated that “prohibitory laws that subject the citizens to grevious privations and sufferings, the policy of which is at least questionable, and the temptations to the violations of which from the nature of man are almost irresistible, will gradually undermine the morals of society, and introduce a laxity of principle and contempt of the laws more to be deplored than even the useless waste of property.”

The President replied that “he would with great willingness have executed the wish of the inhabitants of Plymouth had the Berlin and Milan decrees, and the British orders in Council, which endangered the safety of neutral ships been repealed, but while the edicts remain, Congress alone can suspend the embargo.”

During the fifteen months of the continuance of the embargo, many of the business men of Plymouth were seriously crippled, and to some who survived its effects, the war which followed it, brought absolute ruin. During the war the wharves were crowded with vessels with their topmasts housed, and canvas bags, which received the name of Madison night caps, covered the hounds of their rigging. It is not to be supposed that yankee shrewdness entirely failed to evade the watchfulness of government officers, whose duty it was to prevent departures from port. Some of the vessels were already loaded with cargoes of fish for the West Indies when the war embargo began, and those which succeeded in the darkness of some stormy night in quietly setting up their rigging, and bending their sails, and getting to sea, found ready markets for their fish at from fifteen to twenty dollars per quintal.

I will close this chapter with a list of the captains of all vessels excepting those engaged in the cod fishery, who have served within my recollection.

CHAPTER VI.

To the remaining features of Water street about the year 1830, it is not worth while to devote much space or time. The two blacksmith shops were conducted by Henry Jackson, with whom his son, Henry Foster Jackson, was associated, opposite the head of Davis’s wharf, and by Southworth Shaw and his son Ichabod at the foot of Leyden street. A twelve-foot way from Leyden street, in direct continuation to Water street, separated the Shaw shop on the north from the building, which David Turner occupied as a pump and blockmaker’s shop on the south. Thus the blacksmith building, the northerly part of which was converted into a grocery store, was surrounded by Water street, Leyden street and the way above mentioned. There is a photograph in Pilgrim Hall of the above buildings as they were before the changes were made which resulted in the present condition of that neighborhood.

These blacksmith shops as I remember them were confined to vessel and general work, and did not include horse shoeing in their business. Joshua Standish came to Plymouth from Middleboro in 1828, and established a blacksmith shop opposite the jail on what is now South Russell street, and went into the shoeing business; and there were shops of Lewis Perry near Bradford street, of Ezekiel Rider at Hobbs Hole, of Caleb Battles at Bramhall’s corner, and of Isaac and Henry Morton at Chiltonville. The shop now on Summer street, and one carried on by Newell Raymond and Job Churchill at the head of North wharf, were started at a later period.

Henry Jackson lived in the house at the corner of Middle street and Cole’s Hill, and died there, September 29, 1835. His son, Henry Foster Jackson, who succeeded him in business, died in the same house, March 10, 1868. While I remember the personality of the father, I recall nothing of his character, but the fact that he was fourteen years a member of the board of Selectmen shows him to have been a respected and trusted citizen. The son, never taking special interest in town matters, was closely observant of public affairs, and was reliable authority on all questions relating to the nautical history of the town.

Southworth Shaw lived in the house now standing at the southerly corner of Court and Vernon streets, which had been occupied by his ancestors since 1701, when the southerly part of the house was built, and it is now owned and partially occupied by his granddaughter, Lucia Shaw, having been in the family more than two hundred years. He had seven children, Southworth, late of Boston, Ichabod, Betsey, who married the late Wm. Bramhall of Boston, Maria, Samuel of Plymouth, and the late George Atwood and James R. of Boston. He died January 18, 1847. His son, Ichabod, who continued the business, died March 20, 1873.

The two painters on Water street were Isaac and John Tribble. Isaac Tribble’s shop was on his own premises a little north of the blacksmith’s shop of Henry Jackson. He lived in the house to which his shop was attached, until 1834, when he bought the house recently standing next east of the house of John Russell on North street, where he died, Feb. 16, 1865. John Tribble’s shop stood north of the shop now occupied by Winslow B. Standish, and he lived at the corner of High street and Ring Lane, where he died, June 2, 1862.

The pump and blockmakers on Water street were John Sampson Paine and David Turner. Mr. Paine lived for some years in a building set back from Water street, and facing the way leading from that street to the Middle street steps, and his shop was in the brick basement of the house, and facing Water street. Many years before his death, which occurred September 29, 1878, he bought and occupied the Samuel Robbins’ estate on the north side of Middle street, including the hall, which for a long time was called Paine’s hall.

David Turner occupied a shop at the foot of Leyden street already described in connection with the Shaw blacksmith shop. Over his shop was a hall, long known as Turner’s hall, which was somewhat historic in its career. In that hall a public female school was first established in Plymouth in 1827, under the direction of the committee of the Central District. In 1827, Miss Laura Dewey from Sheffield, Mass., who married in 1832 Andrew Leach Russell of Plymouth, opened a private school for girls there, and in 1829 Horace H. Rolfe opened a private school. In 1832 Wm. H. Simmons, son of Judge Wm. Simmons of Boston, opened a private school for girls, and one of David Turner’s sisters, and Miss Louisa S. Jackson taught school there for a time. For many years it was a favorite hall for singing schools kept by Webster Seymour and Wm. Atwood and others. I have always looked on that hall as sacred to the memory of a lost musical genius, for on my second day’s attendance at Mr. Seymour’s school I was dismissed because I could not raise the octave. When I have heard some of my fellow pupils sing, who succeeded where I failed, I have regretted that the dismissals were not more general. If I am not mistaken, in that hall the Know Nothings held their meetings during their period of incubation before the demonstration of their strength in Town meeting in 1854. There also the Mayflower Lodge, I. O. O. F., was instituted Dec. 3, 1844. The hall was only about thirty-five feet long by about twenty wide, having an access to it by a flight of outside steps on the westerly end with a closed porch at the top. So deficient was the town in halls before Pilgrim Hall was built in 1824, and before the hall in the hotel on the corner of Middle street, built in 1825 was available, that dancing parties were often held in this hall, and I have heard my mother say that she once attended an anniversary ball there, use being made of the shop beneath for a supper room, to which access was had by means of a trap door in the floor, and a stairway built for the occasion. Mr. Turner lived in a house a little west of his shop on Leyden street, and died May 14, 1869.

The two sailmakers were Daniel Goddard, with a loft at the southerly corner of Hedge’s wharf and Water street, and David Drew at a later period, with a loft in the Bramhall building south of the way leading to the Middle street steps. Mr. Goddard lived next to my mother’s house on Cole’s Hill, and I had occasion many times as a boy to thank him for his kindness. If I wanted a ball of twine for my kite he gave it to me, and if I picked out a pumpkin from the products of his farm for a jack lantern, he made me a present of it. He was farmer as well as sailmaker, and employed on his farm as well as in his loft, Alpheus Richmond, his brother-in-law, and his brother Nathan and John A. Richmond, the son of Alpheus. Associated with him in the loft was Lemuel Simmons, brother of his wife, who a few years after the death of Mr. Goddard, which occurred October 30, 1844, retired from business. Mr. Goddard married Beulah Simmons, and I have the liveliest recollections of her house and neat kitchen and cool dairy, where I, or some other member of our family, had our milk pail filled with morning and evening milk. Those were not the days of milk carts, for a large portion of the families in town kept cows, and those who did not, sent daily to some neighbor who did. The building up of the town has so far reduced available pasturage near its centre that reliance for a supply of milk now rests entirely on the remote districts of Plymouth and on the adjoining towns. Not long ago I saw an old assessor’s book for the year 1748, when with a population of about eighteen hundred, there were kept in town four hundred and thirty-eight cows, one for about every four of all the men, women and children. In the last year, 1904, with a population of about eleven thousand, there were three hundred and forty-seven cows, or one for every thirty-two inhabitants.

In 1831 there were three or four besides Mr. Goddard, who kept small herds of cows, and among them was Lemuel Stephens, who near his residence at the foot of Fremont street, then known as Stephen’s lane, had an abundance of pasturage. In the above year Mr. Stephens had a milk cart, supplying customers, and I remember his son Lemuel calling at our house on the morning of the 21st of November of that year, and telling us that the new Unitarian church had that morning been struck by lightning. The son, Lemuel, must have been either merely assisting the driver of the cart, or driving it temporarily during Thanksgiving vacation, as in that year he entered Harvard College at the age of seventeen, and graduated in 1835. The mention of his name recalls an incident in his life as Professor in later years in Girard College. With many people the memory of Stephen Girard, the founder of the college was held sacred, and one of the articles on exhibition was a suit of clothes which had been worn by him. Professor Stephens told me that during the absence from home one Saturday afternoon of himself and wife, he found on his return that quite a party had visited his house. “What did they want,” asked the Professor of the servant. “Oh, sir, and for sure, they wanted to see Brother Stephens’ old clothes.” “Well Bridget, what did you do?” “Oh, and for certain, I showed them some old clothes of your own hanging on a line in the attic, and sir you ought to have seen what a time they had over them, stroking and kissing them, and almost crying over them.” “Well, Bridget,” said the Professor, “if they call again, you may tell them they may have the lot for five dollars.”

As I am getting somewhat garrulous and running away from the main thread of my narrative, I may be excused if I tell another story, which the mention of Girard College suggests. It is well known that Mr. Girard provided in his will that no clergyman should ever be admitted to the grounds and buildings of the college. Some years ago a convention was held in Philadelphia of the Masonic order, of which Dr. Winslow Lewis of Boston, a distinguished physician and surgeon, was a member. One of the entertainments provided for the convention was a visit to Girard College. Dr. Lewis, whom I remember well, always wore a high white clerical cravat, and as the procession marched into the grounds, an official at the gate said to him—“excuse me sir, but you cannot be admitted.” “The hell I can’t” said the Doctor. “Walk in sir,” said the official. It is an interesting commentary on the will of Mr. Girard that profanity could serve as a ticket of admission where the insignia of religion failed.

Returning from this digression, as I have spoken of Mrs. Goddard, I cannot refrain from saying a word about her brother, Capt. George Simmons, the father of the late George Simmons. He sailed for my father and grandfather many years in command of the brig Pilgrim in foreign trade, and was one of their most efficient and trustworthy captains. My father was in Boston in 1824, fitting the brig for a voyage, when he was taken sick, and Captain Simmons brought him home in a chaise, to die two days later. He named his second son Wm. Davis Simmons, born in 1811, the master of the ill-fated packet Russell, after my grandfather, and a daughter, Joanna White, born in 1826, after my mother. It always gave me pleasure to meet and talk with him when in later years, enfeebled by lameness, he was employed as weigher of coal at the pockets on the wharves. He died, July 26, 1863, at the age of eighty-one years. I know no family with more marked physical traits than the family of which he and Mrs. Goddard and Lemuel Simmons were conspicuous members. I have noticed these traits in other families in Plymouth, not always the same, sometimes in figure, sometimes in walk, and again in voice, in mould of features, and in ways of doing things. They are such that neither time nor marriage can extinguish, and any close observer may have seen them in the Jackson, Kendall, Warren, Russell, Spooner and Simmons families, and in the Perkins family of Newfields street.

Not many years ago I was in the Town Clerk’s office, and seeing a man dismounting from a wagon in the Square, I said to the clerk, “I never saw that man before but I feel sure that his name is Simmons, or he has Simmons blood in his veins.” When I went out and addressed him as Mr. Simmons, I asked him if I was right in so calling him, and he said, “yes, that is my name.” “Where do you live?” I asked him. “In West Duxbury,” he replied. “Are you connected with the Plymouth Simmons family?” and he said he supposed he was distantly, but he was not acquainted with any of them. It has always been interesting to me to observe and study these family traits.

David Drew, the other sail maker, learned his trade of Mr. Goddard, and began business about 1840. He lived many years on Pleasant street, opposite Training Green, and died within a year or two, more than ninety years of age.

The old fashioned coopers who in the first half of the 19th century were numerous on Water street, have entirely disappeared. Mr. John C. Barnes now buys shooks and puts together twenty thousand barrels for cranberries annually. The coopers whom I recall were David and Heman Churchill, Otis Churchill, Winslow Cole, David Dickson, Ansel H. and Abner H. Harlow, Perez Pool and Gideon Holbrook.

Among the riggers who had their lofts on the wharves, may be mentioned, Lewis and Thomas Goodwin, John Chase, Merrick Ryder, Coleman Bartlett, Isaac J. Lucas and Peter W. Smith; and among the caulkers and gravers, Wm. Pearsons, Abbet and Atwood Drew, Clement Bates and Eliab Wood.

The master shipwrights, who ought to be mentioned were James Collins, Wm. R. Cox, Benjamin Bagnall, Richard W. Bagnall, Wm. Drew and Joseph Holmes; and among the ship carpenters were, Gamaliel Collins, Samuel Lanman, Elias Cox, Richard and Samuel West Bagnall, Abijah Drew, David Thrasher and Isaac Lanman.

The house carpenter mentioned on Water street was Benjamin Weston, who, associated with his brother Lewis, had a shop south of the bridge opposite the foundry. He lived for many years in the house inherited from his father, Lewis Weston, on North street, immediately west of the house of the late Edward L. Barnes, and died July 25, 1858.

Before closing this chapter it will be pertinent, in connection with those engaged in the equipment of vessels, to speak of the patent windlass invented by a native of Plymouth. Samuel Nicolson was the son of Thomas and Hannah (Otis) Nicolson, and was born in the house which formerly stood on the north side of Court square, Dec. 22, 1791. His father was a shipmaster, and in the revolution commanded the privateer sloop America, owned by Wm. Watson and Ephraim Spooner and others, carrying six swivels and seventy men, with Corban Barnes first lieutenant, and Nathaniel Ripley, second lieutenant, commissioned September 6, 1776. Mr. Nicolson invented in 1830 what is known as the Nicolson windlass, and was the patentee of other inventions, among which was the Nicolson pavement. He had two sisters, Hannah Otis, who married William Spooner, and Caroline, the wife of Edw. Miller, and the mother of the wife of Chief Justice George T. Bigelow. He died in Boston, January 6, 1866, and is buried on Burial Hill.

CHAPTER VII.

In speaking of the part Plymouth took in the whale fishery, it may be well to refer to the general history of that industry. In the year, 1640, Thomas Macy came from Chilmark, England, and settled in Salisbury, Mass. In 1659 he embarked from Salisbury in an open boat with his family and Edward Starbuck, and landed at Nantucket, where they were the first white settlers. Not long after their arrival, additions were made to the settlement, and to the appearance of a whale in their harbor, which they succeeded in capturing, seems to be due the origin of that great industry, for which Nantucket was for many years distinguished. Whales were abundant in the waters of the island, and for some years they were taken by boats, which brought the dead carcasses to the shore, where their blubber was peeled off and carried to the try pots of the fishermen.

In order to facilitate their work, the fishermen erected masts on the land with crow’s nests at their tops, in which in suitable weather, observers were stationed, and when a spout was seen the boats were launched. This method was pursued for thirty or forty years, when small sloops were employed, making shorter or longer cruises during the summer months, and bringing in the blubber to be tried out on the island. Gradually larger vessels were employed, furnished with try pots, which made cruises to Davis straits as early as 1746, to Baffin’s Bay in 1751, to the African coast in 1763, to the Brazil ground in 1774, and round Cape Horn to the Pacific in 1791. I have heard it said that Gamaliel Collins of Plymouth was one of the crew of the first American whaler to round the Horn.

It is a little singular that until 1821 no persistent effort was made in Plymouth to engage in the whale fishery. Whales were always at certain seasons abundant in the bay, but as far as I can learn only occasional attempts were made to take them. It is recorded that while the Mayflower was at anchor in Cape Harbor, “large whales of the best kind for oil and bone came daily alongside, and played about the ship.” On the second of February, 1673, the town ordered that whatsoever whale, or part of a whale, or other great fish that will make oil, shall by the Providence of God be cast up, or come on shore, within the bounds of this township, that every such whale or part of a whale, or other such fish as will make oil; two parts of three thereof are to belong and appertain to the town, viz: the proprietors aforesaid, and the other third part to such of the town as shall find and cut them up and try the oil.

The following entry is made in the town records: “The marks of a whale left on record by Benjamin Drew of Plymouth, Dec. 17, 1737; the said whale was struck by Joseph Sachemus Indian at Manomet Ponds, the 25th of November, 1737, there were several irons put into her, one was a backward iron on her left side, and two irons on her right side pretty backward, and one lance on her right side, the iron on the left side was broke about six inches from the socket. She carried away one short warp with a drug to it, and a long warp with a drug without a buoy, one of the drug staves was made with a white birch, one of the irons was marked with an I on the head as the Indians think, with a blind S on the other side of the head, the rest of the irons we cannot give an account of the marks.”

Thus it will be seen that though whales made their appearance in Massachusetts Bay, and the means for taking them were possessed in Plymouth, yet no serious movement was made to engage in the business of their capture. In 1821 a company was formed to prosecute the fishery, consisting of James Bartlett, Jr., Isaac Barnes, Isaac L. and Thomas Hedge, Benjamin Barnes, Henry Jackson, Ichabod Shaw, Southworth Shaw, Atwood Drew, Thomas Jackson, Jr., Daniel Jackson, Jacob Jackson, Josiah Robbins, John Harlow, Jr., Samuel Doten, Nathaniel Ripley, Nathaniel Ripley, Jr., William P. Ripley, Richard Holmes, Jr., Benjamin Bramhall, Wm. Davis, Jr., and John B. Bates of Plymouth, John Wheeler and Luther Gay of Cambridge and Stephen Griggs of Boston. Though at a later period Isaac L. and Thomas Hedge were active in the management of one or more whalers, they were young men at the time of the formation of the company, the former twenty-three, and the latter, twenty-one, and James Bartlett, Jr., was the projector of the enterprise, and the leader in its management. The company contracted with Nehemiah Newhall of Berkley to build the ship Mayflower of 345 59-95 tons, and she sailed for the Pacific in September of that year under the command of George Harris. The fitting of this ship with the hopes, which the advent of a new industry inspired, seemed to arouse the dormant energies of the town, which the war, so recently closed, had done much to paralyze. Coopers and bakers and dealers in general supplies, as well as mechanics, felt the quickening impulse, and the people of the town generally were ready to contribute their capital in enlarging and extending the new business. The Mayflower was absent nearly three years, and landed between two and three thousand barrels of oil. How much of her cargo was sperm oil, and how much whalebone she brought, I have no record to show. Before her arrival an oil and candle factory was established between what is now Winslow street and the shore, about where the house stands recently occupied by George H. Jackson.

The Mayflower made two more voyages to the Pacific of about three years each, under the command of Capt. Harris, landing about five thousand barrels, and in 1830 she was sold to Gideon Randall of New Bedford, an interest in her being retained in Plymouth by Jas. Bartlett, Jr., Abner S. Taylor and the heirs of Atwood Drew. While the Mayflower was on her first voyage, after the establishment of the oil and candle factory, Mr. Bartlett, while in Nantucket on business, induced Mr. Wm. Collingwood, then living there, to come to Plymouth and superintend the refining of oil, and the manufacture of spermaciti candles.

In 1822 another company was formed consisting of James Bartlett, Jr., Josiah Robbins, Isaac L. and Thomas Hedge, John B. Bates, Thomas Jackson, Jr., John Thomas, Henry Jackson, Jacob Covington, Daniel Jackson, Jacob Jackson, Allen Danforth, Isaac Sampson, John Harlow, Jr., Richard Holmes, Jr., Ichabod Shaw, Isaac Barnes, Lemuel Bradford, George Bacon, Rufus Robbins and Ephraim Harlow. They contracted with Richard Currier of Amesbury to build the bark Fortune of 278 47-95 tons for the same service. She sailed for the Pacific in September, 1822, under the command of Peter C. Myrick, and returned in 1825 with two thousand barrels of oil. The names of the members of both this and the other company show the interest taken in the new industry by men of all occupations and professions, merchants, lawyers, traders, blacksmiths, owners of cod fishermen, silversmiths and masons, and a determination to make it a success. Among them appears the name of Allen Danforth, who became in that year a permanent resident of Plymouth as the editor of the Old Colony Memorial.

The Fortune made a second voyage of three years in 1825, and a third in 1829, under the command of Charles P. Swain, and a fourth in 1833, under the command of David Upham. In 1837 she sailed under the command of Albert G. Goodwin of Plymouth, and in 1840 she made her last voyage from Plymouth under the command of Wm. Almy. I remember the Fortune well on her return in 1832, from her third voyage, and her sailing on her fourth in 1833. Owing to shoal water at the wharves, she made her fitting as did the other ships and barks in the Cow Yard, and the whale boats as they came and went loaded with supplies were especially attractive to the boys. One of my schoolmates, Nathaniel Lothrop Hedge, went with her. Being called out by Mr. Stoddard, the teacher of the high school, to receive a flogging for some offense, which must have been trivial, for he was never guilty of any other, he quietly took his cap from the nail above his head, and walked out of school to ship the next day for a three years’ voyage. Two other Plymouth men, I think, shipped in the Fortune, John Barrett, who became the captain of a ship from New Bedford, and his brother, William, who became one of the best boat steerers of his day. On her voyage begun in 1837, George Collingwood of Plymouth was one of the crew, and Ozen Bates of Plymouth shipped on that or another voyage of the same ship. The Fortune was sunk to aid in blocking Charleston harbor in 1861.

In 1830 James Bartlett, Jr., Isaac L. and Thomas Hedge and Jacob Covington bought the ship Arbella of 404 26-95 tons, built in Bath, and in August of that year sent her to the Pacific under the command of George Harris, the first Captain of the Mayflower. She sailed again in 1834, and 1836 under the command of Ellis E. Eldridge, but what became of her after her return I have no means of knowing. I remember well the Arbella hove down near the end of the new Long wharf, with a raft under her bottom, being either caulked or sheathed or both. My impression is that most of the whalers made their voyages with either a bare or sheathed bottom. The process of heaving down was resorted to where docks were not available, and was safe in shoal water. The process of heeling for the purpose of making repairs below the water line is sometimes dangerous in deep water. The British man of war, George, heeled at Spithead in 1782, was caught by a slight squall with her ports open, and sunk with the loss of six hundred lives.

In 1831 Isaac L. and Thomas Hedge, Jacob Covington, John Thomas and James Bartlett, Jr., bought the ship Levant of 332 34-95 tons, built at Newbury, and in July of that year, under the command of Thomas Russell of Nantucket, she sailed for the Pacific. She returned with 2,700 barrels of oil, and was sold February 14, 1835, for $15,600. This vessel was under the management of the Hedge firm.

In 1833 Jacob Covington, James Bartlett, Jr., Josiah Robbins, Jacob H. Loud and John B. Thomas, bought the bark Triton of 314 49-95 tons, built in Durham, N. H., and in November she sailed for the Pacific under the command of Mason Taber. She made two other voyages, one in 1835, under the command of Thomas Russell, and one in 1838 under the command of Chandler Burgess, Jr., of Plymouth. On her first voyage William Collingwood of Plymouth was one of the crew.

In 1838 James Bartlett, Jr., Daniel Jackson, Abraham Jackson, John B. Thomas, Jacob H. Loud, Nathaniel Russell, Nathaniel Russell, Jr., Allen Danforth, Thomas Russell and the heirs of Jacob Covington of Plymouth, and Thomas Russell of Nantucket, bought the bark Mary and Martha of 316 56-95 tons, built in Westbrook, Me., and in December she sailed for the Pacific on her only voyage from Plymouth, under the command of Thomas Russell. Wm. Collingwood of Plymouth was one of her crew.

The brig Yeoman, afterwards changed to a bark, was built in Plymouth in 1833, by James Spooner, Southworth Shaw, Ichabod Shaw, Ichabod Shaw, Jr., Benjamin Bagnall, Nathaniel C. Lanman, Wm. M. Jackson and Stephen Turner, and made several voyages to the South Atlantic, under the command of John Gooding and James M. Clark, and on several of her voyages George Collingwood was one of her crew.

The brig James Monroe, of 114 91-95 tons, built in Sandwich, was owned by Isaac L. Hedge, George Churchill, Nathaniel C. Lanman, Benjamin Hathaway, Southworth Barnes, John B. Thomas, Ichabod Shaw, Comfort Bates, Joseph W. Hodgkins, Nathaniel Russell, Albert G. Goodwin, Isaac Barnes, Thomas Hedge and Nathaniel M. Davis, and was engaged in the Atlantic fishery, under the command of Simeon Dike of Plymouth, and probably made a second voyage.

The schooner Exchange, of 99 91-95 tons, owned by Alonzo D. Scudder, Henry F. Jackson, James Collins, Wm. Nelson, and Rufus B. Bradford, was under the command of James King of Plymouth, and Rufus Hopkins of Provincetown. She made four voyages, in three of which George Collingwood was sailor, and in one, mate, and William Collingwood was a seaman when she was wrecked in the West India waters.

The schooner Maracaibo, 93 53-95 tons, built in Plymouth, and owned by Atwood L. Drew, Josiah Drew, Ephraim Harlow, James Doten, Ellis B. Bramhall, James Morton, Bartlett Ellis, Andrew L. Russell, Benjamin Barnes, 2d, David Turner, Lemuel Simmons, John Harlow, 3d, Robert Hatch, Nathaniel Holmes and David Holmes, engaged also in the Atlantic fishery, under the command of Capt. Pope and George Collingwood. She was lost September 19, 1846, off Bermuda.

The only other vessels engaged in the whale fishery were the schooner Mercury, of 74 34-95 tons, built in Middleboro and owned by Isaac Barnes, Southworth Barnes, Ivory L. Harlow, and Charles Goodwin, and commanded by Capt. Nickerson, and the schooner Vesper, of 95 52-95 tons, built in Essex, and owned by Bradford Barnes, Jr., William Atwood, Samuel Robbins, Jr., Benjamin Barnes, Bradford Barnes, Ellis Barnes, Nathaniel C. Barnes, Nathaniel E. Harlow, Bartlett Ellis, Joseph White, Robert Hatch, Heman Cobb, Jr., Corban Barnes, Jeremiah Farris, Samuel N. Diman, David Turner, Charles Goodwin, Southworth Barnes, Joab Thomas, Jr., Nathan H. Holmes, David Holmes, Ellis Drew, Ebenezer Ellis, Jr., and Edwin A. Perry. The Vesper afterwards entered the fishing and merchant service.

James Bartlett, the projector of the enterprise, which seemed to promise new life, and an aroused activity in Plymouth, stood in the front rank among the business men of his native town. He was the son of Capt. James Bartlett, a successful shipmaster in days when it was necessary that a captain engaged in foreign trade should be something more than a navigator and seaman. He had, to be sure, his sailing orders from his owners, seemingly controlling his actions, but sailing orders, in the many which I have read, written by my grandfather, really left the fortunes of a voyage to the discretion of the master. Capt. Bartlett died December 22, 1840, at the age of 81. There were others whom I might mention, some still living in Plymouth, who also represented the best class of merchant captains.

Mr. Bartlett, when quite a young man, was appointed supercargo on board a ship belonging to Barnabas Hedge, engaged in foreign trade. Such a position, with the responsibilities it imposed, was the best popular training school for a commercial life, and consequently when he projected the whaling industry in 1821, he possessed all the qualifications for its successful management. He occupied for some years the easterly part of the Winslow House on North street, but in 1832 he bought the LeBaron estate on Leyden street, at the corner of LeBaron’s Alley, and built the house now occupied by his grandson, Wm. W. Brewster, where he died July 29, 1845, fifty-nine years of age.

With regard to the packet service of Plymouth there were four packets within my lifetime, which are not within my memory, the Belus, Capt. Thomas Atwood; the Falcon, Capt. Samuel Briggs; the Sally Curtis, Capt. Samuel Robbins, and the Betsey, Capt. Isaac Robbins. There was a fifth, the Argo, Capt. Sylvanus Churchill, which I have a hazy recollection of seeing at her berth at the end of Davis’ wharf. Of the eight succeeding packets I have very definite pictures in my mind. These, in the order of their probable ages, were the Polly, Eagle, Splendid, Hector, Harriet, Atalanta, Thetis and Russell. The Polly was a black sloop, a dull sailer, unattractive in appearance, and poorly equipped for passengers. Her captain was Joseph Cooper, who lived in High street at the upper corner of Cooper’s alley, leading to Town Square. At the northerly end of his garden on Church street, then known as Back street, there was a store house which, when he retired from the packet service in 1835, he altered into a grocery store, which he kept until his death, which occurred November 25, 1851, in the 83d year of his age. He was one of the last grocers in town to keep spirituous liquors for sale, and his stock in these was confined to Cicily Madeira wine. In 1835, or thereabouts, one of my mother’s brothers, living in Nova Scotia, arrived unexpectedly one evening on the stage, and finding that she was out of wine to dispense the hospitalities of the occasion, she sent me with one of those square bottles made to fit partitions in the closet of the sideboard, up to Capt. Cooper’s for two quarts of the above mentioned wine. I had nearly performed my errand in safety, when slipping on the icy sidewalk I fell near the doorstep and broke the bottle. Enough wine, however, was saved for immediate purposes, but it was the last wine my mother ever bought.

I remember that one afternoon in 1831, when two or three of the packets had been wind bound during a long spell of easterly weather, Capt. Cooper came down to the wharf in a hurried manner, evidently about to make a move. One of the other captains said: “What is the matter, old man, what are you going to do?” “I am going to cast off and hoist my jib,” the Captain replied. “Parson Kendall’s vane pints sou’west.” “Hm,” said the other Captain, “I’d stay here a month before I’d go to sea by Parson Kendall’s rooster.” This was before April, 1831, because in that month the old meeting house was taken down, rooster and all.

Sectarianism was active in those days, but Dr. Kendall was so little of a controversialist, and so much respected, that he occasionally exchanged pulpits with the evangelical ministers in Plymouth and adjoining towns. On one occasion he exchanged with Rev. Benjamin Whittemore of Eel River, and after church a conversation between two parishioners was heard—something to this effect: “Well, Captain, how did you like the parson?” The Captain replied, “I don’t take much to this one God doctrine.” “I guess,” said the other, “one God is enough for Eel River, they only claim three in Boston.”

In this connection it may not be improper to refer to an incident creditable to all concerned, which may interest my readers. The editors of the Congregationalist, the leading New England Trinitarian Congregational journal, inserted in its issue of March 4, 1851, the following notice:

“A premium of $30 is offered for a dissertation containing the most full and perfect and the best narrative of historical and other facts bearing upon the following question, viz: ‘So far as Christian salvation is a change effected in individuals, and may be known to them and be by them described to others, does the saving power of Christ eminently attend upon a knowledge of his life, as it is revealed in his manifestations from his birth to his ascension; and is it reasonable to expect that the redeeming effect of this saving power will be proportioned to the faithfulness with which his life is studied, and the perfectness with which it becomes known, and is contemplated?’”

After the decision on the merits of the dissertations had been reached, it was found on opening the envelopes containing the names of the authors, that the premium had been awarded to Rev. Geo. Ware Briggs, pastor of the First Church in Plymouth, Unitarian.

The sloop Eagle had her berth at Hedge’s wharf. She was a snub nosed, broad beamed craft, without a figure head, and painted a dull green, unattractive to the public and not a much better sailer than the Polly. She was commanded for a time by John Battles, Jr., but through most of the years of my boyhood, by Richard Pope. Captain Pope was a genial man, kind to his crew, and accommodating to his passengers, and by his popular ways secured his full share of both freight and passengers. After giving up the packet service, perhaps about 1840, he engaged in other pursuits, one of which will be mentioned in connection with the steamboats running on the line between Plymouth and Boston. In 1849 he went to California in the ship Samuel Appleton, sailing from New York, and on his return he was for a time sexton of the Unitarian church, and then was appointed keeper of the lighthouse at the Gurnet. Later he was a town watchman for some years, and died July 29, 1881, at 83 years of age.

The sloop Splendid was a handsome craft, well modelled, tall masted, had a figure head, was painted bright green, and was a fast sailer. To my youthful eyes she was the queen of the line. For a short time she was commanded by Richard Pope and Sylvanus Churchill, but through most of my boyhood, after 1832, by George Simmons. Capt. Simmons was an energetic man, taking advantage of every opportunity, running perhaps at times some risk, and making a trip to Boston and back, while the vessels of his prudent rivals lay in their berths. I remember seeing him leave the wharf one afternoon at sunset with a full load of hollow ware from the Federal furnace, and finding her the next morning but one, when I looked out of my window at Cole’s Hill, lying in her berth with a full load of hemp for the Plymouth Cordage Company. Capt. Simmons, after he left the packet service, engaged for some years in the coal business, and as wharfinger of Hedge’s wharf, and afterwards until his death, as the manager of trucking teams. He died June 4, 1886, eighty years of age. Capt. Sylvanus Churchill died March 2, 1878.

The sloops Harriet and Hector, both probably built in Plymouth, I speak of together, because they were of about the same age, and looked very much alike. Both were painted a bright green, and were good sailers. The Harriet had a berth at Barnes’ wharf, and was commanded as long as I knew her by Samuel Doten Holmes. Captain Holmes bought in 1829 the house with a brick end, opposite the Universalist church, which he occupied until 1834, when he built and occupied until his death the house next above it. He died October 22, 1861.

The Hector had her berth at Carver’s wharf, and was commanded by Bradford Barnes for a short time, but chiefly by Edward Winslow Bradford, who after the opening of the Old Colony Railroad established with Samuel Gardner, who had been a driver on the Boston stage line, the Bradford and Gardner express. After some years he sold his interest in the express to Isaac B. Rich, but again later he established Bradford’s express, which he conducted until his death, which occurred December 27, 1874. Bradford Barnes, who for a time commanded the Hector, lived many years in the house on the southerly corner of Lincoln street, in the house which stood where Davis building stands, and in the house next north of the Universalist church. He died January 22, 1883.

The sloop Atalanta was built in Plymouth as early as 1830, and was commanded at first by Truman C. Holmes. She was afterwards rigged as a schooner, and as early as 1837 was commanded by Samuel H. Doten. I think she had her berth for a time at Carver’s wharf, but I remember seeing her loading at Hedge’s wharf on the 12th of June, 1837, the day after the Broad street riot in Boston, about which the crew talked as they took in their cargo. Of Capt. Holmes I shall have something to say in connection with the steamboat General Lafayette, and of Capt. Doten in connection with the Civil War.

The sloop Thetis was commanded by Isaac Robbins, and had her berth at Hedge’s wharf. She was changed to a schooner in 1843, and I saw her last about 1865, at anchor off Marblehead Neck, loading with gravel.

The last packet equipped with any view to passenger service was the schooner Russell, owned by N. Russell & Co., Phineas Wells, and her commander William Davis Simmons, which had her berth at Davis wharf. Having the business of her owners she survived the advent of the railroad, and continued in service until her wreck. Her fate was a sad one. She left Boston on the afternoon of Friday, March 17, 1854, with a crew, besides her captain, consisting of Erastus Torrence, Alpheus Richmond and Ichabod Rogers, and with five passengers, Harvey H. Raymond, and his son, Benjamin B. Raymond, Elkanah Barnes, Edmund Griffin, son of Grenville W. Griffin, and Henry H. Weston, son of Henry Weston. The next day in a northwest gale, she went ashore near Billingsgate light on Cape Cod, and with the schooner a total wreck, all on board were lost. All the bodies came ashore at Wellfleet and Truro, and as I was requested to act as administrator of Capt. Simmons’ estate, it became my duty to visit the tombs in those towns, where they were deposited, and after their identification to arrange for their removal to Plymouth.

The cause of the disaster can only be conjectured. The gale was from the west northwest, and as Billingsgate is about east southeast from the Gurnet, where the Russell was seen early Saturday morning, it is certain that she was driven helpless before it. And as the bodies came ashore in the immediate vicinity of the wreck, it is equally certain that those on board did not leave the vessel before she struck. I see no reason why if the rudder was under control, the schooner could not, even with the partial loss of her sails, have been sheered a little southerly to a lee under Manomet, or a little easterly to a lee under Wood End. I am therefore inclined to think that her rudder was disabled, either by striking a rock at the Gurnet in getting away from her anchorage, or by striking the tail of Brown’s Island in missing stays, and that in that condition she became the prey of the gale.

Since the loss of the Russell the following freighters have run at different periods between Plymouth and Boston, though not in the order stated:

The Glide, commanded by Thomas Bartlett and Capt. Joy.

The Wm. G. Eadie, commanded by Thomas Bartlett and Kendall Holmes.

The M. R. Shepard and Eliza Jane, commanded by Thomas Bartlett.

The Shave and Mary Eliza, commanded by Kendall Holmes.

The Emma T. Story and Anna B. Price, commanded by Wm. Nightingale.

The Martha May, commanded by Wm. Swift, and the Sarah Elizabeth, commanded by Daniel O. Churchill.

Besides the above there were two sloops, the Comet, Capt. Ephraim Paty, and the Coral, Capt. John Battles, Jr., which were quasi packets, running on no special lines, but sailing for any near port to or from which they could find freight. Before railroads were built from Boston to the sea ports of Massachusetts, all kinds of freight to and from those ports were carried necessarily by water. Thus packets were running from Boston to every town of importance on the New England coast. Those to the nearer places were sloops as to Salem, Newburyport, Portsmouth, Barnstable, Plymouth and Provincetown; those to places a little more distant topsail schooners; those to Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, Savannah and Charleston, brigs, and those to Mobile and New Orleans, ships. Plymouth had a very considerable amount of freight to distribute, cotton cloth, nails, anchors, hollow ware, cordage, fish and imported iron, sugar and molasses. When these were sent in small amounts they were sent to Boston by the regular packets, and transhipped to the packets in Boston running on other lines. But if any considerable amount of freight, a gang of rigging for instance for Nantucket, a dozen or two anchors for New Bedford, or twenty hogsheads of molasses for Hartford, or some other port, were wanting transportation, then the Comet and Coral found their opportunity, trusting to chance for more or less of a return cargo for Plymouth or Boston. If they were needed to go to Maine ports they were reasonably sure of a lumber freight home. Indeed, as I remember, these vessels did practically the entire lumber business of the town. Capt. Paty died in California July 24, 1849, and Capt. Battles died in Plymouth March 1, 1872.

There were other packets besides those of Plymouth seen in our waters. There was the Juventa, a Kingston packet, and there were the Duxbury packets Union and Glide, commanded by Capt. Martin Winsor, the Spy, the Jack Downing, Capt. Holmes, the Traveller, Capt. John Alden, and the Reform, so that with the fifteen running to and from the three towns there was rarely a day in suitable weather when more than one did not pass the old square pier. In addition to all the above, the Barnstable packet sloop Henry Clay not only passed within sight, but frequently sought an anchorage in the Cow Yard, or came to the wharves. The distance by stage of Barnstable from Boston induced a large passenger traffic, and she was fitted with a handsome cabin extending to the main hatch, lighted by skylights, and containing ample and luxurious accommodations.

There was one other vessel to whose memory I wish to pay a tribute on account of the pleasant fishing parties on board of her, in which I have participated. Her name was the Rainbow, but whence she came, what her regular business was, and whither she went, I never knew. She was a queer craft, sailing well on the starboard tack, but as dull as a log on the port tack. She would loaf along up Saquish channel with the wind southwest, but after rounding the pier she would come up Beach channel like a race horse. She reminded me of the story of a traveller, who said he saw in South America a race of goats made with two long legs on one side and two short ones on the other, so that they could walk easily round the mountain side. A sailor in the group cried out: “Belay there, Captain, how did them air goats sail on t’other tack?”

CHAPTER VIII.

It is singular that the spirit of invention and enterprise, which New England has displayed in the advance of civilization, should have been apparently indifferent in the development of steam navigation. It is true that her activities have been fully exerted in other directions, and that, as necessity is the mother of invention, the requirements of her manufacturing industries have demanded to the fullest extent the display of her genius. The Hudson River and New York bay seem to have been the theatre in which those early experiments were made, which laid the foundation in this country of successful navigation by steam. In these experiments, as early as 1803, Robert Fulton, assisted by Chancellor R. Livingston, seems to have led the way. In 1804 Col. John Stevens made a trial of a propelling power, consisting of a small engine and a screw. He later attached two screws to the engine, and the identical machine which he used is now owned by the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. It was placed on a new hull in 1844, and made on the Hudson eight miles an hour. In 1806 Robert Fulton built a sidewheel boat one hundred and thirty feet long, propelled by steam, with paddles 15 feet in diameter, and floats with two feet dip, and went to Albany at the rate of five miles an hour. This boat was called the Clermont, the name of the seat on the Hudson of Chancellor Livingston, and in 1808 made regular trips from New York to Albany.

While these operations were going on, causing a complete revolution in the commercial life of the country, New England never saw the smoke of a steamboat. The first boat to enter Massachusetts Bay was the Massachusetts, built in Philadelphia, and designed by its owners, Joseph and John H. Andrews, Wm. Fettyplace, Stephen White, Andrew Watkins and Andrew Bell, to run between Boston and Salem. After a few unsuccessful trips she was sent to Charleston, S. C., and was lost on the passage.

The next steamboat to enter the waters of Massachusetts was the Eagle, which was built in New York and had been for a time in Chesapeake Bay, under command of Capt. Moses Rogers, who was later commander of the steamboat Savannah, the first steam vessel to cross the Atlantic. She came to Plymouth in 1818, commanded by Lemuel Clark. Capt. Clark was either a Plymouth man, or the son of a Plymouth man, and had married in 1817 Lydia Bartlett, daughter of the late Ezra Finney, who lived, as many of my readers will remember, on the westerly corner of Summer and Spring streets. He had a son, William, one of my school and playmates, the father of William Clark, now living on Cushman street, who at one time was the master of the bark Evangeline of Boston. It is probable that Capt. Lemuel Clark was induced by his connection with Plymouth to bring his vessel here, where she must have been an object of great interest to the people of Plymouth and the adjoining towns. She remained here a number of days, having her berth at Carver’s wharf and taking daily excursion parties into the bay. She was eight hours on her passage from Boston, making about five and one-half statute miles per hour. On her return to Boston she ran for a time on the Hingham line, but I have no record of her later history. A picture of her in oil hangs on the walls of Pilgrim Hall, taken from a contemporaneous drawing, and presented, through the good offices of Mr. George P. Cushing, the manager of the Nantasket Steamboat Company, by the artist to the Pilgrim Society, and occupies a frame given by the grandchildren of Capt. Lemuel Clark.

There is no record of the visit of any other steamboat to Plymouth until the advent of the General Lafayette, in 1828. She was built in New York in 1824, and bought in Boston by James Bartlett, Jr., James Spooner and Jacob Covington, with the view of establishing a steamboat line between Plymouth and Boston. According to her enrolment in the Plymouth Custom House, issued September 16, 1828, her name was General Lafayette, with one deck, two masts, 82 feet, 7 inches long, 6 feet, 1 inch deep, and measured 92 54-95 tons. For her better accommodation the owners of the boat bought Jackson’s wharf at the foot of North street, and contracted with Jacob and Abner S. Taylor to build at the end of the wharf an extension nine hundred feet long and twenty-eight feet wide with a T at the end projecting northwesterly one hundred feet square. The extension built of piles and timber and plank was not completed until the autumn of 1828. In the meantime the Lafayette ran through the summer of that year from Hedge’s wharf, leaving Plymouth at hours when the tide served, and leaving Boston at hours which on her arrival would enable her to reach her dock. Of course her fuel was wood, and she made the passage in five hours, making about eight and one-half statute miles per hour. The point reached by the wharf was that point on what was called the Town Guzzle, where at mean low tide there were four or five feet of water. With that depth of water a small steamboat like the General Lafayette could reach the extreme end of the wharf at all times of tide. The Town Guzzle was a circuitous one. It left Broad channel at its extreme southwesterly end, and running southwesterly five or six hundred feet, it made an easy curve; thence running northwesterly about eight hundred feet, and thence with another easy curve running southwesterly about four hundred feet to a point reached by the wharf. It was perhaps forty feet wide, and with sufficient water beyond that width for the dip of paddle wheels, at any time except within an hour of low water, there was rarely any detention. Steamboats of moderate length found little difficulty in rounding the curves, but those of greater length found it anything but easy work. I remember once the steamboat Connecticut left the wharf at near low tide, with a spring line from her bow to the wharf to twitch her round the curve, and as the line tautened, it snapped, the hither end coming back like a whip lash and tripping up, without serious injury, about a dozen persons standing near the cap log. I learned the lesson then and there to always stand at a distance from a spring line.

In the angle where the T joined the main wharf, there was a flight of substantial steps, where boats at all times could land, drawing not over two feet of water. This was a great convenience, enabling Sam Burgess, with his fish for the market, lobster boats from the Gurnet, and the Island and Saquish boats, to land without regard to the stage of the tide. Many a householder with his mouth made up for a fish dinner has sat by the hour together at the head of those steps, waiting for Sam. In those days, too, the only purveyor of lobsters was Joseph Burgess, the keeper of the light, and as regular as the day he would appear with his lobsters and wearing his red thrum cap, would wheel his barrow full about the town. There was no talk then of short lobsters, nor of extravagant prices, for nine pence, or twelve and a half cents in the currency of the time, would buy a three or four pound lobster. The scarcity and small size of this delicious shell fish in our day have not been satisfactorily explained. I am inclined to think that the cause is not to be found in the excessive amount of their catch, but in the appearance on our shores, and the increasing numbers, of the tautog, which not only exhausts the food, which the lobster feeds upon, but also feeds on the lobster itself. In my early boyhood, if I am not mistaken, the tautog was an unknown fish north of Cape Cod. The sandy shores of Barnstable county formed an effectual barrier to its northern migration. I think that about 1830 Capt. Josiah Sturgis, commander of the Revenue Cutter Hamilton, brought some live tautog round the Cape and dropped them in Plymouth Bay. A very few years afterwards the first tautog was caught off Manomet, and one or two years later several were caught off the Gurnet, while now they are found all along the shores of Massachusetts and Maine. To this new fish, in my judgment, may fairly be attributed the gradual disappearance of a food fish which was once abundant and cheap.

Returning now to the Lafayette, it can only be said that her career was a short one. Under the command of Capt. Truman C. Holmes, with Seth Morton as steward, she ran through the seasons of 1828 and 1829, the latter year making her berth at Long wharf, or steamboat wharf, as for many years it was called, and then was laid up in Tribble’s Dock, or building yard, as it was called, north of the wharf to die. Her upperworks were removed, and her engine taken out, and my only recollection of the vessel is of a dismantled hulk with her planking stripped off, and her timbers fastened to the keel, standing otherwise unsupported, just visible at high tide above the surface of the water. The only incident of her service, which I remember, was an attempt with a party of excursionists, of which my mother was one, to go to Boston and return the same day. Night came without her return, and about midnight my mother reached home, having ridden from Scituate, where the steamboat had put in out of wood. Capt. Holmes, her commander, took command in 1830 of the new packet sloop Atalanta, and served with her several years until she was altered to a schooner, and placed under command first of Sylvanus Churchill, and then of Samuel H. Doten. He died March 14, 1880, eighty-five years of age.

In 1830, the year after the Lafayette ceased to run, the steamboat Rushlight, Capt. Currie, came to Plymouth and advertised to carry passengers to Boston for a dollar and a quarter, the fare by stage being two dollars, but how long this arrangement continued I do not know.

I know of no other steamboat in Plymouth until 1839, when the Suffolk ran on excursions to Boston and elsewhere during July and August. In 1840 a small steamboat, the Hope, Capt. Van Pelt, with a light draft, made regular trips to and from Boston during a part of the season. I recall an incident suggested by the mention of her name. On the 11th of September in that year I was called to Plymouth, being then in college, on account of the death of my brother-in-law, Ebenezer G. Parker, and left an order at the stage office in the City Hotel on Brattle street, to be called for by the stage at my grandmother’s in Winthrop Place, leading out of Summer street. The Hope left Boston at two o’clock, reaching Plymouth at six. The leaving hour of the stage was the same, and as the passengers on that day were few in number, it was exactly two when I took my seat by the side of Samuel Gardner, the driver. As we started, Mr. Gardner said to me, “Mr. Davis, I am going to beat the boat today.” The air was clear and exhilarating, the four horses were in good trim, and the road was in its best condition. Mr. Gardner did not leave the box during the trip, the horses were ready at the three places where changes were made, and as I dismounted at my mother’s house at Cole’s Hill, the boat passengers were coming up the wharf. I doubt very much whether any regular stage line in this country has ever travelled as our stage did that day, thirty-six miles in four hours.

Shortly after 1840 the steamboat Connecticut came to Plymouth and took excursion parties into the bay, but I do not remember that she made any regular trips to Boston. In 1844, if I am correct in the dates, the steamboat Express, Capt. Sanford, ran between Boston and Barnstable, stopping at Plymouth to leave and take passengers. She was a good boat, and made the passage to Plymouth in three and a half hours. Her managers had built a flat bottomed barge with scow ends, which, under the charge of Capt. Richard Pope, at low water met her at the upper end of Broad Channel, and exchanged passengers and freight. The return of the barge, by the way of the Guzzle, especially with wind and tide against her, was sometimes tedious, frequently consuming an hour. In 1844 the steamer Yacht ran a part of the season.

After 1845 I know of no steamboats coming to Plymouth, except occasionally on excursions from Boston for the day, until 1880. In the meantime the wharf began to suffer from storms and decay. Of course it was convenient for vessels to make fast to, until they could reach their regular berths, and in northeast storms it served as a barrier to protect the vessels at the short wharves from the wind and waves. At one time a bathing house was constructed beneath its flooring. Two bathing pools were built in two bays of the wharf, with plank floors and walls, and steps leading up into two dressing rooms above the wharf, to which subscribers, or those buying tickets, were admitted. These bathing rooms served their purpose for a time, but soon, like the wharf, needed repairs and were abandoned.

In 1880 the steamboat Hackensack, owned, I think, by the Seaver fish guano factory of Duxbury, made regular daily trips to or from Boston, or both, during the summer, except while she was repairing damages occasioned by a fire at Comey’s wharf in Boston, where she lay. At that time the whole wharf, except about three hundred feet, which had been kept in repair, had by the action of storms and ice been practically destroyed, leaving only about a hundred piles within sight above the water. These were pulled up in 1880 by the tug Screamer, some of them requiring a force of thirty-three tons to start them from their beds.

In 1876 an appropriation made by Congress was expended in dredging a channel fifty feet wide, and six feet deep from Broad channel to the wharf, and in later years the width has been increased to one hundred and fifty feet, and the depth to nine feet, at mean low water. A basin connecting with the channel has been dredged in front of the short wharves so that not only can steamboats of sufficient size reach the docks, but barges drawing sixteen feet of water find no difficulty in berthing at the pockets of the coal dealers. In 1881 the steamboat Stamford, commanded by E. W. Davidson, began to run regularly from Boston to Plymouth and back daily, and continued to run uninterruptedly until 1895, under the same command, except during a part of one season, when, owing to some difficulty between Capt. Davidson and her owner, Nathaniel Webster of Gloucester, the former was temporarily displaced. Capt. Davidson also ran the Shrewsbury and Wm. Story each one season, and as a supplementary freight boat after the close of one season the Shoe City of Lynn. Since 1897, or about that time, the following boats have run on the route: The Lillie, Putnam, O. E. Lewis, Henry Morrison, Plymouth, Cape Cod, Governor Andrew, and Old Colony. During one season the Stamford ran after her name was changed to Endicott. During the last three seasons the Nantasket Steamboat Co. have had exclusive leases of available wharves, and have run the Governor Andrew and the Old Colony. The latter is a new boat running in 1904 for the first time, and is recognized as the most convenient, safest and most elegant excursion boat in the waters of Massachusetts. The wharf is now, with three hundred feet of its old timber and pile extension, owned by Charles I. and Henry H. Litchfield of Plymouth who, having fitted it expressly for steamboat purposes, keep it in excellent repair, and have leased it to the Nantasket Steamboat Company. The Pilgrim Society, owning Pilgrim wharf, refrain from leasing it to any competing line, believing that the Nantasket Co. should be encouraged in their efforts to establish a permanent and successful enterprise.

CHAPTER IX.

Allusion has been made to the embargo and to the Yankee shrewdness which evaded the watchfulness of government officers whose duty it was to prevent departures from port. The following narrative, for the incidents in which I am indebted to Capt. Charles C. Doten, illustrates the shrewdness to which I referred.

During the Embargo, Plymouth’s fishing fleet was laid up in the docks, and the owners found themselves cut off from the trade with the West India Islands. The catch of fish from the Grand Banks could not be sold to advantage for want of this market, and after being cured remained stored in the fish houses.

England and France then being at war their West India dependencies were subject to blockade, and as a consequence provisions which could be run into the ports of either nationality, commanded high prices. With such a temptation it was not strange that there were found adventurous men in fishing ports to hazard the loading of vessels with dry fish, and disregarding embargo penalties of our own government, surreptitiously depart “for the West Indies and a market.”

Plymouth was not lacking in this sort of enterprise, and the writer proposes to sketch one or two of the “run-a-ways,” to show the character of the men of those days who a little later did the country good service as “privateersmen” when the war between the United States and England was fought.

Anticipating that these attempts to break the embargo would be made in spite of stringent regulations, orders were given to the customs officers at every port to keep strict watch and prevent vessels from going to sea. Accordingly at Plymouth, Water street was nightly patrolled, and a guard boat well manned, and in charge of Capt. Joseph Bradford, was stationed in Beach channel to intercept any outward bound vessel which might succeed in getting away from the wharves. With these precautions it would seem to have been difficult to evade successfully the minions of the law and run out a cargo of fish in defiance of all the Federal government could do to prevent it, yet it was done.

The first schooner was the Hannah, lying at Hedge’s, now known as Pilgrim wharf, which then had two or three warehouses on it, one of them containing fish. On a dark night an industrious gang of men quietly loaded the vessel from the warehouse, but unluckily, before their work was completed, the tide fell so that the Hannah grounded, and could not get to sea that night as intended. Next day the custom house officers noted that the vessel did not rise buoyantly with the tide, so going on board they lifted the hatches, and at once discovered “what was the matter with Hannah.”

Felicitating themselves that they had caught their mouse, and determining that there should be no escape, they stripped the vessel “to a girtline,” that is, they removed all her sails together with the running and standing rigging, leaving nothing aloft but a single block on each mast through which a line was rove for the purpose of hoisting a man when the craft was to be re-rigged. All the gear was carted away, and, while the fish were left on board, the Hannah being absolutely reduced to bare poles, the officials were perfectly certain that they had made it impossible for her to take her cargo to the West Indies. Of course the laugh went round town at the expense of the defeated owners, and the officials were “cocky” over their smartness. Weeks went by and the incident passed out of mind, the deeply laden Hannah meantime lying in her berth and daily rising and falling with the tide. All the same her voyage to Martinique was made up, her captain and crew engaged, and the man who was to rig and take her out of dock had his gang picked for the purpose, and only awaited his opportunity. This man was Capt. Samuel Doten, father of our townsmen, the late Major Samuel H. and Capt. Charles C. Doten, one of the most energetic shipmasters of his day, whom nothing ever daunted, and who liked nothing better than a bit of dare-devil business, being perfectly competent for anything pertaining to seamanship or calling for executive ability. These qualities were well known in this town, so naturally he was “in it” with the Hannah. Capt. George Adams, another old sea dog, was his right-hand man in the part he had to do, and there were two or three others, who could handle a marlinspike and make a knot or seizing as well in darkness as at noonday.

Capt. Doten lived at the foot of the Green, on what is now Sandwich street and kept a boat on the south shore near the place, where he afterwards built the wharf, now owned by Capt. E. B. Atwood. The long waited opportunity came one night with a howling southeast rain storm, from which the Water street watch sought shelter in one of the stores. There the officers with pipes and toddy made themselves comfortable, while right before their noses the Hannah’s decks were alive with her own crew, and Capt. Doten’s gang of riggers, who had come alongside in boats. A loft which contained the gear of another vessel, likewise clean stripped by her careful owner, so her rigging might not get weather worn in the months of the tie-up, was broken open and the shrouds and stays were carried on board the Hannah. Capt. Adams was the man to go aloft and put the eyes of the rigging over the mast heads, and Capt. Doten arranged for a system of wooden tags to be tied to the pieces as they went up, so that by feeling the notches cut in the tags, Capt. Adams would know whether what he received belonged on the starboard or port side. So it was also with the blocks and halliards, and all being understood, Capt. Adams took his place in the sling tied in the end of the girtline, and was soon hoisted to the crosstrees. The hours passed, but before daylight the Hannah was rigged, halliards rove fore and aft, and sails bent, though both rigging and sails were too large for her, belonging as they did to another vessel of greater tonnage. Capt. Doten had met this difficulty in the case of the standing rigging, which was too long, by turning up the ends of the shrouds over hand spikes used for shearpoles, and passing the lanyards from the deadeyes at the rail also over the handspikes, his deck men then setting taut with the watch tackles they had brought, and seizing all off securely. The sails were made smaller simply by putting in a reef.

All was now ready, and the Hannah cast off and dropped down to the end of the wharf. Capt. Doten, who was a good pilot for the harbor, took charge, and with the hoisting of the jib the vessel quickly fell off before the wind and ran directly along the shore for High Cliff, there then being no Long wharf in the way. This course was taken to avoid the guard boat which was supposed to be patrolling the channel along by the Beach, the usual way of leaving the port. It was the top of high water and there was little likelihood that with proper care the vessel would touch anything. At High Cliff Capt. Doten ordered the mainsail set and pointed the Hannah’s nose for the open sea. Then giving the helm to her captain, whose name the writer unfortunately has never heard, he gave the course to steer, and the schooner went romping down by Beach Point at a pace which left no chance for the guard boat to intercept her, when from away up Beach channel Capt. Bradford descried the fleeting sail. Before getting far down the harbor Capt. Doten and his men wished the Hannah and her crew a successful voyage, and jumping into their boat towing alongside were, before the early morning, snugly stowed away in their respective homes. Of course there was great excitement when it was found the bird had flown, and instantly the conclusion was reached that “Sam Doten had run away with the Hannah,” so the officers at once repaired to his house where his wife was unconcernedly getting breakfast, and Capt. Doten, having apparently just arisen, was leisurely dressing. The officers were greatly surprised at finding him and he equally surprised to learn from them that the Hannah had got away, nor did he hesitate to express his gratification that the custom house gang had been so thoroughly outwitted.

The Hannah made an excellent run to the West Indies and arrived safely at Martinique, where she sold her fish at $20 per quintal of 112 pounds and the vessel also was disposed of, the aggregate sum which ultimately got around to her owners being a very handsome one for the venture.

The Hope and the Cutter.

The brig Hope was the next Plymouth vessel to “run the embargo.” She belonged to William Holmes of this town, and loaded a cargo of dry fish at Provincetown, where she was seized by the customs officers of that port, and anchored in the harbor, with a revenue cutter commanded by Capt. Thomas Nicolson of Plymouth lying near at hand to prevent her from going to sea. Under these circumstances her owner induced Capt. Samuel Doten, who had “assisted” in the Hannah adventure, to become the principal in “cutting out” the Hope from under the guns of the revenue vessel.

Selecting his crew, Capt. Doten took charge of the brig and waited for things to come around to his liking. What he wanted was a smart northeast gale, which is a fair wind out of Provincetown, though of course a pretty rough affair to contend with in the open bay, and against which he would have to work his vessel out past the Cape after getting clear of the harbor. No abler or more daring seaman ever trod a deck, and, whatever the chances, Capt. Doten was ready to take them, so when one night the weather shut in “nasty” with indications of the wished for gale the next day, he made his preparations. A mooring line was run out aft to keep the brig’s head toward the harbor mouth, so that her square sails should immediately fill before the wind when hoisted. On the yards the gaskets keeping the furled sails in place were nearly cut off, so that while they still preserved the shape, they would part and allow the topsails to be hoisted without having to send men aloft to loose them as usual when getting under way, much depending on gaining a few minutes over the cutter at the start. Vessels of those days had hemp cables, and Capt. Doten meant to “cut and run” when the decisive moment came.

With the morning the gale was piping smartly, and it never occurring to the captain of the revenue cutter that a vessel would attempt to go to sea in such a blow, he took his gig with her crew and went ashore. The ebb tide left the boat on the beach while Capt. Nicolson and his men were up town, and meanwhile the sympathetic Provincetowners, ready to help the Hope, stole the thole pins and an oar or two. This was the favorable moment, while the cutter was disabled for want of her commander and several men, for whose return on board she would have to wait, so Capt. Doten cut his cable and stern mooring line, quickly hoisted and sheeted home his fore topsail, and was moving down the harbor before the lieutenant in charge of the cutter realized the situation. Seizing a musket he fired at Capt. Doten, who was at the Hope’s helm, but made a bad shot. Then he let go a big gun at the brig, which also was poorly aimed, and did no harm. It served, however, as a signal for Capt. Nicolson to come on board, if he needed more than the evidence of his eyes. The town was immediately alive with excitement, for the seafaring men took in the whole plan and shouted with delight over its boldness and sheer sailor-like daring. Men hindered more than they helped while pretending to assist in getting the boat down to the water, but at last, with her captain on board again, the cutter got into full chase, firing her bow guns at the brig in hope of crippling her spars if doing nothing more damaging. Provincetown has rarely seen anything more exciting than that running fight, and the story is told there even to this day, as the writer can vouch, having himself heard it from an old sea dog over there within a few years.

The Hope was a good sailer, and soon doubled round the long, sandy point at the harbor mouth, across which the cutter still continued firing, the shots sending the sand into the air in clouds as they skipped over the beach.

After getting outside, Capt. Doten made more sail for the better handling of his vessel, and one of his men, William Stacy of Boston, went aloft to loose a to’gallant sail. Just as he reached the crosstrees and gripped the shrouds for further ascent, a shot passed so close to him that, holding by his hands, the wind of it strung him out like a flag. Getting his footing again he yelled: “A good shot, try it again,” and went on with his duty.

The cutter soon got into the open bay where the sea was so rough that her firing became entirely ineffectual, and she could only chase. Capt. Nicolson, however, was one of the plucky kind and meant to do his full duty by keeping the Hope in sight if he could do nothing more. The gale became fiercer, and the sea rougher as the two vessels got from under the lee of the Cape, and that night the cutter was forced ashore near Scituate and wrecked, but with no loss of life. Capt. Doten, with a loaded vessel under him, which he knew how to handle, made better weather of it, and succeeded in beating the Hope out past Cape Cod against the storm, and in a day or two was running for the West Indies, intending to make Martinique.

All went well until nearing his destination, when one afternoon a big British frigate poked her nose out from behind an island right across his path and fired a gun for him to heave to. There was nothing for it but to obey, and a boat with a boarding party was soon alongside. The officer wanted to know where the brig was bound, to which Capt. Doten replied, “West Indies and a market.” “You mean Martinique, don’t you?” said the officer, “and let me tell you that had you got in there the Frenchmen would have given you $25 a quintal for your fish; but you will do well as it is, for I’m going to send you into the English island of St. Lucia, and our people will give you $16.” “Very well,” answered Capt. Doten, “I’ll go to St. Lucia then.” “Yes,” replied the officer, “I’m sure you will, as I’m going with you, for you Yankees are altogether too smart and slippery to be trusted alone, with $9 on a quintal of fish difference as to where you land them.”

So the Hope went into St. Lucia, where Capt. Doten sold both fish and vessel, and later he found his way home with $25,000 in Spanish doubloons, a large part of the sum being sewed into his clothing, and the writer has heard the Captain’s wife tell of letting him into the house at about two o’clock one morning, and of their sitting up in bed together, ripping out the gold pieces and tossing them into a shining pile, of which “Hope told a flattering tale.”

CHAPTER X.

At the beginning of the Revolution the cod fishery of Plymouth was active and successful, and during the previous ten years had employed an average of sixty vessels. During the war it was of course seriously depressed, but after the declaration of peace its recuperation was rapid. In 1802 it had reached its maximum of prosperity, before the embargo and the war of 1812 again crippled it. In that year there were thirty-seven vessels engaged in it, employing two hundred and sixty-six men, and landing twenty-six thousand, one hundred and seventy-five quintals of codfish, or an average of seven hundred and seven quintals for each vessel. All but six of these vessels made two trips. The following list of the vessels engaged that year with their tonnage, the names of the skippers and the fare of each may be interesting to some of my readers.

Lucy, Thomas Sears, 75 tons, 800 quintals.
Old Colony, George Finney, 80 tons, 850 quintals.
Wm. Davis, Jr., Elkanah Finney, 90 tons, 1000 quintals.
Mary, Clark Finney, 75 tons, 450 quintals.
Swan, Thadeus Churchill, Jr., 60 tons, 895 quintals.
Polly, Amasa Churchill, 45 tons, 800 quintals.
Ceres, Wm. Brewster, 60 tons, 1,100 quintals.
Washington, Amasa Brewster, 90 tons, 840 quintals.
Swallow, Melzar Whiting, 50 tons, 900 quintals.
Benj. Church, Nathaniel Clark, 70 tons, 350 quintals.
Crusoe, Stephen Payne, 60 tons, 900 quintals.
Nightingale, Ansel Holmes, 35 tons, 700 quintals.
Union, Samuel Virgin, 70 tons, 850 quintals.
Rose, Barnabas Dunham, 55 tons, 710 quintals.
Dove, Wm. Barnes, 34 tons, 650 quintals.
Seaflower, Isaac Bartlett, 60 tons, 1,000 quintals.
— — — Nathaniel Sylvester, 80 tons, 800 quintals.
— — — Ansel Holmes, 60 tons, 500 quintals.
Phebe, John Allen, 75 tons, 700 quintals.
New State, Joseph Holmes, 50 tons, 700 quintals.
Drake, Barnabas Faunce, 44 tons, 550 quintals.
Columbia, Truman Bartlett, 70 tons, 700 quintals.
Neptune, Chandler Holmes, 55 tons, 600 quintals.
Esther, Seth Robbins, 45 tons, 600 quintals.
Lucy, Eben Davie, 50 tons, 600 quintals.
Caroline, Ellis Holmes, 60 tons, 800 quintals.
Hero, Joseph Doten, 60 tons, 600 quintals.
Industry, Joseph Ryder, 60 tons, 600 quintals.
Federalist, Finney Leach, 80 tons, 750 quintals.
Eagle, Jabez Churchill, 30 tons, 300 quintals.
Polly, Lemuel Leach, 70 tons, 700 quintals.
Leader, Job Brewster, 35 tons, 660 quintals.
Manson, Ellis Brewster, 105 tons, 450 quintals.
Rosebud, Andrew Bartlett, 40 tons, 580 quintals.
Hawk, Samuel Churchill, 60 tons, 700 quintals.
Seaflower, Ansel Bartlett, 40 tons, 790 quintals.
Rebecca, —— Codman, 50 tons, 700 quintals.

After the peace of 1815 the fishery entered upon a season of renewed activity, which continued with occasional periods of relaxation until its final extinction. The government having found during the revolution that fishermen made up a large share of naval enlistments, adopted the policy of aiding and encouraging the fishing industry, and in 1789 Congress passed an act granting a bounty of five cents per quintal on dried fish, and imposed a duty of fifty cents per quintal on imported fish. In 1790 the bounty of five cents was increased to ten, but on the 16th of February, 1792, the bounty of ten cents per quintal was discontinued, and an allowance was made to vessels employed in the cod fishery at sea for four months between the last day of February and the last day of November, according to the following rates: Vessels between twenty and thirty tons were to receive $1.50 per ton annually, and those of more than thirty tons, $2.50 per ton, but the allowance to any vessel was limited to $170. In 1797 the allowance was increased one-third; but in 1807 all bounties were abolished. In 1813 the bounty was revived and the allowance fixed as follows: To vessels from five to twenty tons, $1.60 per ton; to those from twenty to thirty, $2.40 per ton, and to those above thirty, $4, but no vessel was to receive more than $272. In 1819 an allowance was made to vessels from five to thirty tons of $3.50 per ton, and to those of more than thirty, $4 per ton, but vessels having a crew of ten men were to be allowed $3.50 per ton on a service of three months and a half. No vessel, however, was to receive more than $360. By an act passed in 1817, it was required in order to entitle a vessel to receive a bounty that the master and three quarters of the crew should be citizens of the United States, but in 1864 this requirement was limited to the masters. By an act passed July 28, 1866, bounties were abolished, and duties on salt used in curing fish were remitted.

The abolition of bounties was a blow to the fishing interests, which was destined to be followed by a more deadly one. It cannot, however, be said that it was wholly undeserved, for the requirement of four months’ service at sea had been often evaded. A very considerable number of the fishing fleet returned home before four months had expired, and anchoring in beach channel by night and cruising in the bay by day, spent the time in what was called bounty catching, until the expiration of the four months.

But a severer blow than the loss of bounty soon fell on the fishery. In 1871 the treaty of Washington between the United States and Great Britain provided that “fish oil and fish of all kinds, except fish of the inland lakes, and of the rivers falling into them, and except fish preserved in oil, being the produce of the fisheries of the United States, or of the Dominion of Canada, or of Prince Edward Island, shall be admitted into each country, respectively, free of duty.” This treaty went into operation July 1, 1873, to remain in force for ten years, and further until the expiration of two years after the United States or Great Britain shall have given notice to terminate it.

At the time of the repeal of the bounty law in 1866, the product of the Plymouth fishery taking the returns from the previous year as a basis of an estimate was as follows: Value of fish, $261,053; value of oil, $24,530; bounties, $14,249, and the number of men employed was 420. I am inclined to think that the largest number of vessels ever employed was in the year 1862, when sixty-seven were employed, but in 1873, the year the treaty of Washington went into operation, there were only twenty.

As nearly as I can judge the following is a correct list of vessels engaged in the fishery since 1828:

The following list of vessels employed in 1868 shows the gradual reduction of the fleet from sixty-seven in 1862 to twenty in 1873:

In 1869 there were fifty-four; in 1870, fifty-two; in 1871, forty; in 1872, twenty-six; in 1873, twenty; in 1874, twelve; in 1876, twelve; in 1878, eleven; in 1879, ten; in 1880, eight; in 1881, seven; in 1882, two; in 1883, two; in 1884, eight; in 1885, three; in 1886, one; in 1888, one, the Hannah Coomer, Capt. Nickerson, the last vessel to go to the Banks from Plymouth. In 1882 Prince Manter bought the Sabine, and Capt. James S. Kelley made seven trips in her in four summers, the last vessel to go to the Grand Banks, while the Hannah Coomer was the last to go to Quereau Bank.

The following is a list of fishing vessels lost since 1828, as complete as I am able to make it:

Abby Morton, Joseph Whitton, master, lost in Hell Gate, New York.

Adelaide, Capt. Joseph Sampson, was lost on the Banks.

Samuel, condemned in Nova Scotia.

Brontes, on a passage from Aux Cayes, to Boston, left Holmes Hole December 31, 1862, and was never heard from. Her crew consisted of John E. Morton, captain; George Morey, mate, and Samuel Howland, Isaac Howland, Bartlett Finney and Josiah H. Swift.

Charles, Isaac Howland, master, was lost on Cape Cod.

Charles, Isaac Swift, master, left Plymouth September 29, 1868, on a fall fishing trip, and was never heard from.

Congress, owned by Samuel Doten, was lost.

Wampatuck, seized in Nova Scotia in 1870 or 1871.

Delos, sunk in Nantucket Roads in 1872.

Wm. Tell, sold before 1828, and lost on Grand Banks in 1829.

Christie Johnson, Solomon M. Holmes, master, was lost on the banks in 1874.

Ellis, was lost on Cape Cod in 1844.

Flash, Eli H. Minter, master, was lost in the West Indies in 1865.

Fred Lawrence was lost.

Herald, lost or sold in Nova Scotia in 1870.

Linnet, Wm. Langford, master, was lost with all hands, in September, 1870.

Martha Washington, Capt. Gooding, was lost in Nova Scotia in 1874.

Mary A. Taylor, Lewis King, master, was lost or sold in Nova Scotia in 1874.

May was lost in 1871.

Ocean, Jerry McCuskey, master, was lost in Nova Scotia in 1870.

Olive Branch was lost in 1869.

President, John Ellis Bartlett, master, lost in 1828, bound to Martinique.

President, Stephen D. Drew, master, was lost on Cape Cod in 1844.

Rollins, Charles Harlow, master, was lost on Cape Cod in 1868.

Seadrift was lost or sold in 1871 in Nova Scotia.

Speedwell was lost in the West Indies in 1865.

Swallow was lost or sold in Nova Scotia in 1871.

Thatcher Taylor, James Simmons, was lost or sold in 1871.

Fearless, Capt. George N. Adams, sailed from Boston for Aux Cayes, August 13, 1862, and was never heard from.

John Eliot, Francis H. Weston, master, sailed from Boston October 9, 1863, for Cape Haytien, and crew taken off November 21 by schooner Thrasher, and landed at Port Spain.

Mary Holbrook, was lost in the Gulf, January 25, 1831.

Joshua Bates was lost on Richmond Island in February, 1876.

Franklin was lost at the Western Islands in 1837.

George Henry, Lamberton, master, was condemned in West Indies, 1869.

Vesper, Capt. Burgess, sailed from New York, February 28, 1846, for Jamaica, and was lost probably in a gale March 2.

Flora, Benjamin Jenkins, master, was spoken August 8, 1846, with 15,000 fish; August 21, with 21,000; August 28, with 23,000; September 17, with 30,000, and was probably lost in a gale which occurred September 19, 1846.

Coiner, Samuel Rogers, master, was lost on a passage home from Inagua in 1865.

Stranger was lost at sea near St. Thomas, 1835.

Oronoco was lost in 1871.

Schooner Maracaibo, changed to a brig before she entered the whale fishery, has been earlier mentioned without any details of her loss. She sailed from Plymouth on a whaling voyage September 12, 1846. On the 19th, in latitude 38.22, and longitude 72.35, she was capsized, losing second mate, Wm. Tripp, of Tiverton, David Sylvia seaman, and George Ellis of Plymouth, also a seaman, who was drowned in the forecastle. The masts went by the board, and the brig righted, and Capt. Collingwood and eighteen men were lashed to the wreck ninety-six hours with only a barrel of sugar to eat. On the twenty-third they battened down the hatches and bailed the vessel out, and on the twenty-fourth set up jury masts. On the twenty-fifth they obtained from the bark Newton of New Bedford two spars and gear, and a quadrant, and finally, after being on the wreck twenty-one days, were taken off by the bark Clement.

The question is often asked, what becomes of all the vessels that have been built? Upon this question official records throw some light. The last accessible statistics show that during the ten years from 1879 to 1889, nineteen thousand one hundred and ninety United States vessels were wrecked on or near the coasts, or on the inland waters of the United States, and during the same period, sixty-six hundred and forty-one British vessels.

The following is an imperfect list of skippers since 1828:

There are several disconnected items which may be mentioned in this chapter. The Sunbeam, sold a few years ago, was employed in 1905 in carrying gravel from the Gurnet to Boston, and the Sabine, sold at the same time, is used as a house boat in Boston harbor by a Portuguese lobsterman. The Maria of Plymouth, and the schooner R. Leach of Bucksport, Me., were the first United States vessels to use, in 1859, trawls in salt fishing. It was a method of fishing introduced by the French, and until the above date was looked upon as an experiment. It may not be generally known that there is a Plymouth Rock on the banks. It is laid down in “Sailing Directions for the Island and Banks of New Foundland,” etc., published in 1882, as one of the Eastern shoals, a group around Nine-fathom Bank, which latter lies in latitude 46.26.45 N. and longitude 50.28.06 W. Plymouth Rock has 15 fathoms of water, and was named in honor of Capt. Burgess, of the schooner Lyceum of Plymouth, who discovered it.

CHAPTER XI.

The following is a detailed account of the loss of the Plymouth bark Charles Bartlett, which on the 27th of June, 1849, was run down and sunk by the Cunard steamship Europa. The incidents attending the disaster possess an interest in themselves, while the trial in the English law courts of a suit for damages brought by the owners of the bark in the early days of ocean steam navigation, was an important one, establishing as it did the duties of steam navigators and their liability in damages for a failure to perform them.

The Charles Bartlett was a bark of four hundred tons, built in Westbrook, Maine, and owned by Wm. L. Finney and others of Plymouth. She left the Downs on the 14th of June, 1849, bound for New York with a cargo of about four hundred and fifty tons of iron, lead, etc., and with one cabin passenger and one hundred and sixty-two in the steerage. Her officers and crew were William Bartlett of Plymouth, Captain; Thomas Parker of Charleston, S. C., first officer; Wm. Prince, second officer, and George Parsons of Portland, Me., Wm. Rich of Gravesend, England, Isaac Hanson, James Fraser, John Bell, Joshua Carey, Levi Hunt, Wm. Perry, John Jordan, John Jackson and Harrison D. White, seamen. On the 27th of June, in latitude 50.48 N., longitude 29 W., in a thick fog, which gathered after the noon observation had been taken, the bark was heading northwest with the wind west by south, close hauled and all sails set. At half-past three the captain, who was standing on the weather side of the poop deck, caught sight of the steamship about one point forward of the beam, and about four hundred yards distant. He ordered his helm up and shouted to the steamer to port her helm. The officer of the deck on the Europa, however, ordered his helm put to starboard, which order was countermanded before the wheel had been turned one round. If the starboard helm had produced any effect, it was of course to make a collision the more sure, while if the helm had been at first promptly put to port there is room for doubt whether, as the bark was all the time going ahead, the steamer might not have slipped by her stern without causing serious damage. As it was, the Europa going at twelve and a half knots, struck the bark abreast of her main shrouds in one minute after she was first seen, and three minutes later the bark went down. The steamer’s bow entered to within a foot of the after hatch, tearing away twenty feet of the bark’s side, and suffering as her own damage only the loss of her head knees and her foretopmast. At the moment of the collision, about one hundred passengers were on deck, and it was estimated that about one half of them were killed by the impact. The captain and second officer and nine of the crew and thirty passengers were saved, all but ten of whom, who were picked up by boats, were saved by clinging to the bows of the steamer, and climbing on board.

The Europa had a full passenger list, and the excitement caused by the terrible scenes of the collision was followed by a serious anxiety for the safety of their own vessel, which only prompt investigations and the assurance of the officers that the hull was uninjured could allay. Among the passengers was Capt. Robert B. Forbes of Boston, who with that generous impulse and heroic courage which had always characterized him risked his life by leaping into the sea and aided in the rescue of his drowning fellow men. For the service rendered by him, a medal was presented to him by the Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society, and another by the Massachusetts Humane Society. The Cunard Steamship Company gave twenty pounds toward the relief of the survivors of the Charles Bartlett, and a free passage to America.

A suit was brought by the owners and underwriters to recover damages estimated at twelve thousand pounds, and tried in the English Admiralty Court, and the facts which I have stated were presented to the court by the plaintiffs. The responsive allegation in behalf of the Europa, claimed that the collision occurred in the usual track for steamers, but that it was two or three degrees to the north of the usual track of sailing vessels. It denied that there was a concentrating point in the Atlantic, and alleged that the noise of the paddle wheels might have been heard in the direction of the bark three or four miles, and that it was owing to some negligence that the bark was not therefore warned of the approach of the steamer. It further alleged that though the third officer ordered the helm to be starboarded, before the order could be obeyed the order was revoked, and the wheel was directed to be put hard a port. The engines were stopped so that before the collision the steamer had come up to the wind a point and a half. It was still further alleged that the bark was going from five and a half to six knots an hour, having all possible sails set, and had neglected to fire guns, blow her fog horn or ring her bell at short intervals, so that those on board the steamer could be cognizant of her approach.

The presiding judge, addressing his brethren of the Court, said that these cases are becoming so numerous that it was for the interest of the owners of ships that they should be decided promptly. With regard to the burden of proof, it is of course necessary for the plaintiff to present all the evidence reasonably within his power, but that after he has done that it rests upon the other party to show that they have not been guilty of the acts attributed to them. With regard to the distance at which the vessels were seen by each other, and the time which elapsed before the collision, nothing is more difficult than to find consistent evidence. The conclusion of the allegation in defense is in substance that the collision was either the result of inevitable accident, or was the fault of those on board the Charles Bartlett. What is an inevitable accident? Inevitable must be considered as a variable term, and must be construed with regard to the circumstances of each case. In almost every case it is possible to avoid a collision by going at a slow pace, or lying to during a fog, but the import of the words “inevitable accident” is this, where a man is pursuing his lawful vocation in a lawful manner, and something occurs which no ordinary caution could prevent. Continuing, the presiding Judge said to his brethren of the Court, “It is very easy to define what is a lawful vocation, but it is not so easy to say what is a lawful manner. The test is the probability of injury to others, and that of course depends on circumstances, as for instance the time and locality where the occurrences take place. The object of our inquiry is whether in the case of the Europa going about twelve and a half knots an hour in so dense a fog that she could not see beyond one hundred and fifty or two hundred yards, and in latitude 50.48 and longitude 29, there was more than ordinary probability of meeting vessels. If there was a reasonable probability of a collision, then beyond all doubt she would be to blame. If, however, there was no reasonable probability of meeting vessels in the track pursued, she was nevertheless bound to take all necessary precautions to insure safety. One of the most important questions as to these precautions which we are to decide, is whether there was or was not a sufficient lookout on board the Europa. The law undoubtedly requires as a reasonable lookout the most ample that could be adopted. Was there such a lookout on board the steamer? According to the evidence the general practice on the Europa in dense fogs was as follows: first to station an officer on the foremost bridge; second, his junior at the Con; third, a quartermaster at the wheel; fourth, a second hand in the wheelhouse, and fifth and sixth, two lookouts on the topgallant forecastle. There is some evidence also tending to show that a man was stationed in case of a fog on the lee side of the bridge, and also a man at the crank to convey orders to the engine room. Now, the actual watch when the collision occurred was as follows: Wardell, the second officer, was on the bridge; Coates, a quartermaster, on the topgallant forecastle; White, at the wheel, and Fern, another quartermaster, at the Con, and I do not find any other person on the lookout. The second man is placed at the wheel so that in case of necessity it may be turned as promptly as possible. There is an entire absence of evidence as to whether at the time of the collision there was in operation any means of communicating orders to the engine room, or whether any orders were really communicated.” Continuing, the presiding Judge said: “You will have to decide also whether there was more than one man at the wheel, and lastly, whether the order to starboard the helm, which is agreed on all hands to have been erroneous, did or did not produce any effect in the case. Looking at the rapidity with which the vessels were approaching each other, the last mentioned consideration is one of importance.”

With regard to the Charles Bartlett the Judge said, “Was she carrying too much sail; was there a want of a sufficient look-out, and above all is it your opinion that she ought to have sounded a fog horn or rung a bell? Whether she ought to have heard the paddle wheels before she did, and neglected to take measures to avert a collision, is one of the questions for you to decide. But it is in evidence that even if she could have heard them, no fog horn could have been heard on board the steamer above the sound of the paddles.”