USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume II > Part 11
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A few days later the letter-of-marque schooner Tamaahmaah, Captain Porter, arrived from the Northwest Coast, September, 1813, and one hundred and fifteen days from Canton, with a full cargo of teas, nan- keens, cassia, alum, etc. She had sailed from Boston in the month of February, 1813, with supplies for various vessels on the Coast and to give them information about the war. These Canton cargoes were sold at auction immediately on arrival, in accordance with the custom of the trade.
On the 14th of May fifty-three vessels arrived " coastwise," with large quantities of flour, tobacco, hemp, molasses, whiskey, rice, oil, tar, coal, sugar, corn, gin, candles, grindstones, turpentine, plaster, oysters, ete. The Swedish ship Mercurius arrived May 19, forty-eight days from Liverpool, with dry goods, hardware, tin plates, coals, crates, ete. : also the Russian ship Alexander, fifty-one days from Lisbon, with salt, bar-iron, duck and corkwood. Eight days later the British
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brig Speedy, fifty-six days from Liverpool, came in with a cargo of dry goods, hardware, shot, iron, and crockery-ware, for Andrew Eliot, C. R. Codman, Trott & Bumstead, O. Everett, Lewis Tappan & Company, J. Sewall, S. G. Perkins, H. Higginson, John Tappan, F. Çabot, Kirk Boott & Son, Rice & Read, Thomas Cordis, etc. The ship Milo, Captain Glover, arrived from Liverpool June 3, and the Liverpool Packet, Captain Nichols, and Roscoe, Captain Amory, on the 5th, with assorted cargoes to a large number of consignees. Among those who advertised dry goods received by these vessels were Tuckerman, Rogers & Cushing, Benjamin C. Ward & Company, John Grew, Lane & Lamson, Henry Gassett & Company, Isaac Osgood, Phineas Foster, James Read. Those who advertised hardware were Jonathan and Ed- ward Phillips, Samuel May, Charles Scudder, John Bradford, Fairbanks & Burbeck. "The fine new ship Union, of six hundred and nineteen tons, belonging to the Hon. Mr. Gray, sailed from the outer roads on Monday last [June 5] for Caleutta." William Gray, one of the largest shipowners of that day, moved from Salem to Boston in 1809. He was lieutenant-governor of the Commonwealth from 1810 to 1812.
Among the arrivals at Boston, June ?, were the schooner Union, of Beverly, forty-four days from Lisbon, with lemons, salt, duck, etc., consigned to Ray & Gray ; and the British schooner Matchless, fifty-four days from London, with a cargo of cordage, duek, porter, iron, copperas, tin, steel, alum, crockery, paints, chalk, whiting, and thirty piano- fortes. The ship Hannibal, Captain Burgess, fifty-five days from Liverpool, arrived July 13; she brought about two thousand letters. On the same day the ship Beverly, Captain Edes, was cleared for Can- ton. The brig Mary arrived from Gottenburg, July 20, with iron, steel, block-tin, hones, slates, pencils, brass and card wire, pins, eam- phor, copperas, flats for hats, and dry-goods, to Walley & Foster, T. Williams, E. & J. Breed, and Beekford & Bates. The junior member of this last firm was Joshua Bates, who went to Europe in 1816 as Mr. William Gray's agent, and so continued for three years; in 1828 he be- came a partner in the house of Baring Brothers & Company. The Jacob Jones cleared for Canton August 21, and the Sultan for the Northwest Coast and Canton on the 23d; the latter vessel belonged to Boardman & Pope. On the 25th the John Adams, Captain Downing, arrived in forty-three days from Liverpool with an assorted cargo to Walley & Foster, owners, and others; and on the 7th of September the New Packet, Captain Bacon, came into port from Canton with teas and cassia to Ropes, Piekman & Company.
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Colonel Perkins wrote to his Canton house under date of October 4, 1815: " Three years of war, and twice that number of restrictions upon commerce, had made our people very rigidly economical; and they bought only what was necessary, not what was luxurious. In place of a silk gown or pelisse, they purchased cotton for the first, and dis- pensed with the last altogether. So with tea. Although they did not wholly forego it, they were careful in the use of it; and now, to make up for lost time, they feel as if they may indulge in the fashions of the city, and gratify their palates with the beverage of the East. This be- ing the case, it will take a long time to overstock the market with silks; though from the quantity of teas on hand when the war began, the im- portations since, and the economy spoken of during the war, we think the spring ships will cause a great fall of it in the market."
The details into which we have gone, will show how vigorously the process of recuperation set in, by which Boston recovered itself from the effects of the war, and how comprehensive and far reaching was its commercial activity. An era of great prosperity now lay before it. The population, which was 33, 250 in 1810, rose to 43, 298 in 1820. Dur- ing the same decade the taxable valuation of the town more than doubled; in 1810 it was $18,500,000; in 1820 it was $38,000,000. In the period from 1800 to 1810 it had increased only from $15,000,000 to $18,500,000. Among the prominent business men of this period, in ad- dition to those whose names have been mentioned, were: Samuel Park- man, Robert G. Shaw, John Parker & Sons, Israel Thorndike, Thomas C. Amory & Company, Thomas Wigglesworth, Isaac Winslow, James Ingersoll, Josiah Bradlee, and Cornelius Coolidge & Company. The leading auctioneers were Plimpton & Marett, Whitwell & Bond, T. K. Jones & Company, and Coolidge, Deblois & Company.
Soon after the war the export trade in ice was started and carried for- ward by Mr. Frederic Tudor. Several years previously Mr. Tudor had taken a cargo to Martinique, and although the venture had not been a pecuniary success, it had demonstrated that this article could be car- ried to a warm climate. The British government now offered him the monopoly, for a term of years, for Jamaica, upon certain conditions, which were readily acceded to; and it further encouraged him by re- leasing all ships bringing ice from port charges. The first prominent and permanent establishment of ice-houses in the West Indies was at Kingston. Soon after the monopoly was secured for Havana, and lib- eral concessions were made for the introduction of ice into other ports
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in Cuba. The first cargo for Charleston was shipped in 181;, and ice- houses were established in Savannah in 1818, and in New Orleans in 1820. Of the ice trade to the East Indies we shall speak later on.
We have already mentioned the name of Capt. Robert Bennet Forbes. The story of his early life furnishes another illustration of the splendid but severe training which made so many of the successful shipmasters and merchants of from sixty to eighty years ago. His father, Ralph Bennet Forbes, having been unfortunate in business, and being much broken in health, Bennet, as the boy was called, went at the age of twelve years into the employ of his cousins, the Messrs. Perkins, jr., whose store was at Foster's Wharf. His duties, he says in his " Personal Reminiscences," were "to sweep out, make the fires, close and open the store, copy letters into a book in a very indifferent manner, collect wharfage bills, run errands extending from Winnisimmet Ferry to the wind-mill, which stood far to the south, probably near to the new bridge between South Boston and Boston proper." His employers had con- trol of two vessels, the brig Pedlar, and the top-sail sloop Haymaker, which were generally engaged in the trade between Boston and Phila- delphia, sometimes bringing oats and shorts, which it was his duty to measure out to the truckmen. Bennet was in the habit of visiting the ships owned by his uncles as they lay at Central Wharf, and one day, early in October, 1817, he met Colonel Perkins on board one of them, the Canton Packet, who asked him abruptly, which he intended to go in. The boy, who had received plain intimations previously that he had bet- ter take up a seafaring life, answered promptly, "I am ready to go in this one." He was taken at his word, and as soon as he had obtained the assent of his parents, he was told to provide himself with a quadrant, a copy of Bowditch's "Practical Navigator," a log-book, etc., also a sea- chest with a full outfit of sailor's clothes. A few days later, on the 19th of the same month, he sailed out of Boston, and although he had only just completed his thirteenth year, he took his place among the motley erew in the forecastle, stood his watch, and took his turn in reefing top- sails.
A few months before, the Canton Packet, loaded with lumber for the Isle of France and having on board a large sum in specie, was blown up while at anchor off Long Wharf and set on fire. It is a tradition that the explosion was the work of a colored steward, who was angry because he had been denied the pleasures of artillery election day, or, in the words of an old song, " 'Cause he couldn't go to 'lection, An
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shake paw paw, " this being a favorite game on the Common on public days, played with four sea-shells and for money. The ship was run into the mud near T Wharf and the fire was extinguished. The specie was landed and sent to the " long-room " on India Wharf, and the clerks of the firms interested in the voyage were detailed to go and live there, to unpack. wash, count, and repaek the money. This was no small matter, as it amounted to about $200,000; it had been stowed in the run of the ship, where also was a quantity of cochineal, with which the dol- lars had become much stained. The vessel was repaired, went to Ja- maica and back, bringing a large amount of quicksilver, and was then fitted out for the voyage to China, upon which we have seen her start.
During the stay of the Canton Packet in China young Forbes lived with his relative, Mr. Cushing, then at the head of the Canton house of Perkins & Company, and made himself useful as a clerk, weighing teas, packing silks, ete. He had the opportunity of remaining ashore in this position, but, as he says, he had chosen the life of a sailor, and had promised his uncles to stick by the ship until he commanded her; he felt, also, that the place belonged to his older brother, Thomas, who went out soon after, and who was drowned in 1829. When the ship was ready for her voyage homeward, therefore, in June, 18Is, he re- sumed his place in her before the mast, although not in the close and stifling forecastle.
The Canton Packet registered only three hundred and twelve tons; ships of more than five hundred tons were considered too large to be quite safe, and it was not until 1842 that Captain Forbes owned a ves- sel of this size, the Narragansett, which he bought for the China trade. The homeward cargo from Canton consisted of teas, nankeens, cassia. crapes, silks, preserves, camphor, and certain pungent oils. Captain Forbes tells us how the ship was loaded: " A ship of the usual model was floored off with shingle ballast, carefully graded; the tea boxes were stripped of the rattan bindings and stowed so closely by Chinese stevedores that a mouse could scarcely find lodging between them, and all spaces between beams and earlines were filled with small mats containing cassia. The silks and crapes were generally stowed under the main hatch in what was called . the silk room,' a space between the tea-chests left vacant for the purpose. The cases of camphor and oils were stowed on deck, sometimes in or under the long boat, but more generally around the after hatch, covered by a well-secured mat-
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house, under which, as I can vouch from an experience of two passages. lived the carpenter, the cook, and sometimes, two boys. The old ships must have been good sea boats, for I do not call to mind being dis- turbed by the shipping of anything worse than sprays."
Captain Forbes has recorded the several steps of his advancement in these words: " At the age of sixteen 1 filled a man's place as third mate ; at the age of twenty 1 was promoted to a command ; at the age of twenty- six I commanded my own ship; at twenty-eight I abandoned the sea as a profession ; at thirty-six I was at the head of the largest business house in China."
In giving an account of the China trade Captain Forbes said, that as the trade of the Northwest Coast fell off a demand sprang up in China for American goods-sheetings and drills. Specie became the excep- tion, and bills on London became popular in making funds for the pur- chase of cargoes. For many years the duty on teas was very heavy, but the government helped the merchant by giving him twelve and eighteen months in which to make payments. This enabled him to send back to Canton and purchase a second cargo with the proceeds of the first. On the other hand, he was obliged to sell his merchandise on long credit, say, six, eight and nine months, but usually the banks would discount the paper for him at six per cent. per annum.
Captain Sturgis, in a lecture to young men in 1844, gave an account of the changes which had taken place in his day in the China trade. Nankeen, he said, was, once imported in large quantities. As late as 1820 there was $1,000,000 worth imported; now there was none. In 1806 Canton crape was first used; in 1810 ten cases were imported; in 1825 the importations amounted to $1,500,000, and in 1844 the article was not imported at all. Silk was once imported in large quantities from China ; one cargo worth nearly $1, 000,000 was mentioned ; now the whole yearly importation amounted to less than $100,000. In 1818 $7,000,000 were carried to China in specie. In 1844 settlements were made by bills of exchange.
A meeting of merchants and others, "interested in the prosperity of commerce and agriculture," was held August 12, 1820, to take into con- sideration a communication from the Chamber of Commerce of Phila- delphia, relating to a tariff measure which had been considered by Congress at its last session, but had not been acted upon. This was four years after the adoption of the tariff which Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Lowndes, and Mr. Clay had been mainly instrumental in passing. The
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president of the meeting was William Gray, and the secretary William Foster, jr. A committee of twenty-seven was appointed to adopt such measures as it should deem expedient, and a sub-committee was in- structed to prepare a report with resolutions. There seems to have been but one opinion in Boston at this time among the men of the greatest influence in the town in reference to the tariff, and it was de- cidedly in favor of low rates of duty and in opposition to any policy that was likely to endanger the prosperity of the shipping interest. The sub-committee mentioned above consisted of James Perkins, Samuel P. Gardner, Daniel Webster, Samuel A. Welles, William Shimmin, William Sturgis and John Dorr; and at an adjourned meeting held in Faneuil Hall, October 2, a carefully prepared report was presented, written, as we suppose, by Mr. Webster, and recommending the adop- tion of eight resolutions, four of which we quote, and all of which were approved :
Resolved, That the supposition that until the proposed tariff or some similar measure be adopted, we are and shall be dependent on foreigners for the means of subsistence and defence is, in our opinion, altogether fallacious and fanciful, and derogatory to the character of the nation.
Resolved, That high bounties on such domestic manufactures as are principally benefited by that tariff, favor great capitalists rather than personal industry or the owners of small capital, and, therefore, that we do not perceive its tendency to promote national industry.
Resolved, That the imposition of duties, which are enormous and deemed by a large portion of the people to be unequal and unjust, is dangerous, as it encourages the practice of smuggling.
Resolved, That in our opinion, the proposed tariff and the principles on which it is avowedly founded, would, if adopted, have a tendency, however different may be the motives of those who recommend them, to diminish the industry, impede the prosperity and corrupt the morals of the people.
The last mention we can find of the Boston Importing Company, formed in 1805, is an advertised notice to the associates, signed by Philip Ammidon, secretary, of a meeting to be held at the Exchange Coffee House on the evening of July 8, 1811. The company's ship Packet had arrived two or three weeks before from Gluckstadt on the Elbe, a few miles below Hamburg. She had been " forbidden by the French government to take any letters or papers under pain of confiscation, not even dispatches from our minister." On her
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arrival in Boston she was advertised for sale, and was described as har- ing been built at Braintree in 180?, three hundred and twenty-seven tons, constantly employed in the Liverpool trade, and " known and acknowledged to exceed in sailing any ship ever built in the State." Evidently her voyage from the Elbe was the last made by any vessel belonging to the company, which, in consequence of the many hin- drances to successful ocean navigation at that time, and in view of the strong probability of war with England, was winding up its affairs. In the winter of 1821 and 1822 the Boston and Liverpool Packet Company was projected. In a pamphlet which lies before us it is announced as the purpose of the company to build four ships to ply regularly between Boston and Liverpool. "The object primarily intended to secure, by the regular and punctual departures from both ports of these packet ships," was "the more frequent supplies of goods and the convenience of passengers." The capital stock of the company was fixed at $100, 000, in one thousand shares, and it was expected that the importers of the town would subscribe and hold a major part of the stock, and maintain the control and direction of the business. It was estimated that the four ships would cost, exclusive of coppering, and with one chain cable each, a sum not exceeding $78,000, the copper, another chain cable for each vessel, and a few other articles, to be procured in Liverpool, would be $7,000 more, making a total of $85,000 for the four ships, or $21,250 for each. The tonnage of the ships was to be about three hundred and twenty-five tons; they were to be excellent models and to be " finished and furnished in excellent style." They were to have experienced and popular commanders, who were each to own some share of the stock; the agents were to hold a considerable amount of ' the stock, and the vessels were to be consigned each to a separate house in Liverpool, largely interested in shipping goods to Boston.
The statisties of the trade between Liverpool and Boston for the pre- ceding two years were as follows: During 1820 there were forty-seven arrivals at Boston from Liverpool -- thirty-four ships and thirteen brigs. Of these, nine were arrivals of regular traders, namely, the Triton, two; the Falcon, two; the Mercury, two; the Herald, two; and the Metcor, one. In 1821 the arrivals were fewer than in 1820, although the amount of the importations was farger; there were thirty-seven- thirty-three ships and four brigs. There were seventeen arrivals of regular traders, namely, the Triton, three; the Falcon, two; the Ras- sclas, two; the Herald, two; the Mercury, one; the Glide, one; the
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Suffolk, one; the Milo, one; the Meteor, one; the Parthian, two; and the Mount Vernon, one.
The new company applied to the Legislature for an act of incorpo- ration, as its predecessor had done seventeen years before, and with the same negative result. A bill in favor of the petitioners was reported by the committee to which the matter had been referred, and passed its third reading; its further consideration was then indefinitely post- poned.
On the 15th of October, 1822, S. Austin, jr., and J. W. Lewis, "at the end of India Wharf," advertised the immediate departure for Liverpool, by way of Charleston, of "the Boston and Liverpool Packet Company's ship Emerald, a new vessel, Philip Fox, master;" also for Liverpool direct, of the Herald, Hector Coffin, master. It was added: " The above ships, with two others now building, will positively leave on the days stated, if the weather permits." We suppose that the Topas, built at Medford by Thatcher Magoun in 1822, was one of the two vessels referred to, and the Amethyst may have been the other.
The ships built on the coast of Massachusetts at the end of the last century, and during the first third of the present, must have been re- markable both in model and construction, or they could not have accomplished so successfully their voyages across the Atlantic and round the stormy capes. Small as they were, they rode the waves well, and we have reason to believe that they usually delivered their cargoes in good order. Their outfit was often meagre, and their nautical instruments were of the simplest character. They knew nothing of chronometers or charts, and for this reason, certainly in part, the most formidable perils that confronted them were not those of the wide ocean but of the coast. This was especially true of the vessels employed in the English trade, of which only too many met their fate between the Scilly Isles and the Downs, or between Fastnet and the mouth of the Mersey. Captain Silsbee, of whom we have already spoken, records in his autobiography that as late as 18 ?? he made a passage in a brig to Rotterdam, when they had no chronometer on board and knew nothing of lunar observations, but navigated by dead reckoning.
Only a few years ago one of the vessels mentioned above, the Em- crald, registering three hundred and fifty-six tons, which was built in Boston for the Liverpool line, was reported as in good condition and employed in the trade of the Pacific. She was built of the best live
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oak, and was copper-fastened, and when in 1882, sixty years afterward, she underwent repairs in San Francisco, her timbers and bolts were found in a good state of preservation. She had just before encountered a severe typhoon to the south of the Island of Formosa, in which more than one vessel, younger and larger than herself, had perished. Pre- viously to this she had done duty as a whaler in the South Seas for more than twenty years. There is a tradition that the Emerald, when a new vessel, and under the command of Captain Jabez Howes, sailed from Boston to Liverpool and back again to Boston harbor in thirty- two days.
How disastrous the incidence of taxation may prove to the business interests of a community, and so, in the long run, to the prosperity of a State, is illustrated by the action of the Legislature of Massachusetts in 1824, laying a tax of one per cent. on all sales of merchandise at auetion. The rich cargoes from Canton, which were disposed of in this way, seemed to superficial observation to present a valuable and per- manent basis for the collection of revenue; and, although the mer- chants remonstrated and predicted that the effect of the tax would inevitably be to drive the China trade to the port of New York, where no such tribute was exacted, their advice and warning were unheeded, and the non-commercial members of the General Court had their own way. Subsequent efforts to secure the repeal of the law were alike uin- availing. One meeting to take measures to this end, of which we know, was held at the Exchange Coffee House, October 11, 1822; the tax was declared to be "impolitic, injurious and unjust," and a committee to memorialize the Legislature for its repeal was appointed, consisting of William Goddard, Isaac Winslow, Charles G. Loring, Enoch Silsby, David Henshaw, Abel Adams, John F. Priest, Parker H. Pierce, Thomas Thaeher, Joseph Ballister, Andrew Cunningham and Nathan- iel H. Emmons. Remedial legislation came later, and it came too late. In 1849 the obnoxious tax was reduced to one-quarter of one per cent. on merchandise imported from beyond the Cape of Good Hope, and in 185% it was repealed altogether. In the mean time the diversion of the China trade had been made, and the current could not be brought back to the old channel. The movement toward New York was grad- ual, but steady, until in 1857 there were forty-one arrivals from China at that port, twenty of these were ships owned in Boston, and only six arrived here. During the last twenty-five years the course of the China trade has been altogether changed by the completion of the transconti-
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nental railways and the opening of the Suez Canal, and whatever inter- est American merchants may now have in the cargoes, they have none in the ships that carry them. Of the more than three thousand vessels that passed through the Suez Canal in 188;, three vessels, with a gross tonnage of two thousand one hundred tons, bore the American flag.
A similar tax to that levied by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1824 drove from Philadelphia the ships of that port, coming from beyond the Cape of Good Hope. Mr. Samuel Cunard told the writer in London in 1857, that before the steamship line, which bears his name, was started, ships of war and those carrying the mails were exempt from port charges at Halifax, but that after the establishment of the line and when the steamers began to call regularly at Halifax, the exemption so far as related to mail packets was removed. Mr. Cunard lived at Halifax at this time, and it was taken for granted that the ships of his company would continue to come there indefinitely. Soon, however, those which were going to and from New York ceased to make it a port of call, and it is many years since any of the Boston line were seen there. Other considerations, no doubt, had much to do with the abandonment of Halifax by the company, but when the Legislature of Nova Scotia took advantage of the existing conditions to levy a tax upon it, it made the way all the more easy for the changes that followed.
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