USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume II > Part 8
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The shipbuilding industry was reviving in Boston, as we have seen, and the general condition of trade was more satisfactory in the spring and summer of 1:88 than it had been previously. We get a hint of this by way of London, in one of the papers of which city it was said: " Saturday some dispatches were received from Boston, which are dated July 20. They contain an account of the builders going on very fast on the shipping; that four large ships of three hundred tons were to be launched the beginning of August ; that trade continued brisk, and that everything was quiet in that quarter." In August the exports from the port of Boston, "for the year past," were stated to have been £ 145,- 146 5s. 4d. The principal articles were boards and staves, fish, rum, flour and provisions, pot and pearl ashes, furs, oil, candles, leather and shoes, tea, coffee, molasses, and naval stores. We give a few of the values: Fish, £66,245; New England rum, £ 50,620 ;. oil, £ 34,864 pot and pearl ashes, £30.485; flour, £13,420; flaxseed, £10,360
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furs, £10,000. Under date of November 20. 1:88, we find the ships Hercules and Omphale advertised for the Isles of France and India: "any person wishing to adventure to that part of the world may have an opportunity of sending goods on freight. The terms may be known by applying to Thomas Russell at his store in Boston." On the 25th of December the ship Adventure was cleared for the Isles of France; and two months later the Astroa, belonging to Mr. Derby, of Salem, sailed for Canton with an assorted cargo, under command of Captain Magee, who had recently completed a China voyage in the Hope. It required six months at that period to make up a cargo for such a voy- age : iron was brought from the Baltic, wine from Madeira, and ginseng and specie from New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Mr. Thomas Handasyd Perkins accompanied Captain Magee as supercargo, and for the community in which he was to become an eminent merchant and an honored citizen, the voyage was to have important results.
The ship Friendship arrived from Madras April 16, 1289, and Nathan Bond, a few days later, advertised for sale by auction at his store in Cornhill her cargo, consisting of chintzes, calicoes, book-muslins, ging- hams, cottons, sheetings, silks, and saltpetre. Captain Cleveland in his ** Voyages " refers to the "active and lucrative commerce with the Isles of France and Bourbon, which was continued up to the period of the conquest of those islands by the British (1810), since which it has nearly ceased." Of twenty-three sail of American vessels which ar- rived at the islands in 1289, sixteen were from Boston and Salem.
One of the first subjects pressed upon the attention of the Federal Congress on its assembling in 1289, was the decline of the deep-sea fisheries, which were suffering not only from adverse legislation abroad but from tariff duties imposed at home. Fisher Ames said: " Unless some extraordinary measures are taken to support our fisheries, I do not see what is to prevent their inevitable rnin. It is a fact, that near one-third of our fishermen are taken from their profession-not for want of skill and abilities in the art, for here they take the rank of every nation on earth -- but from the local, chilling policy of foreign nations, who shut us out from the avenues to market. If, instead of protection from the government, we extend to them oppression, 1 shudder for the consequences." Elbridge Gerry said in the same de- bate: " I will not reiterate the arguments respecting the fisheries: it is well known to be the best nursery for seamen ; the United States have no other, and it never can be the intention of gentlemen to leave the
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navigation of the Union to the merey of foreign powers. It is of necessity, then, that we lay the foundation of our maritime importance as soon as may be, and this can be done only by encouraging our fish- eries. It is well known that we have a number of rivals in this busi- ness desirous of excluding us from the fishing banks altogether. This consideration, of itself, is sufficient to induce a wise legislation to extend every encouragement to so important a concern." In response to these representations and appeals, Congress passed an act allowing a bounty on dried and pickled fish exported from the United States, and imposing a duty on foreign fish imported into the country. Two or three years later a specific allowance to vessels employed in the cod- fishery, graduated according to the size of the vessels, was substituted for the bounty on exported fish.
It was announced in one of the papers, July 3, 1488: " Orders have been sent from an American agent in China for building a ship of eight hundred tons for that trade. We learn with pleasure that the vessel is to be built in this town." Mr. Samuel Shaw was the agent referred to, and the vessel was the Massachusetts, which, however, was not built in Boston, but at Germantown, a promontory in the present town of Quincy. She was the largest merchant vessel which at that time had been built on this continent, her keel being one hundred and six- teen feet in length. She was a frigate-built ship, of eight hundred and twenty tons, pierced for thirty-six guns, of a remarkably fine model, and constructed in the most thorough manner. She was launched, or as the newspapers put it, she "slipt into her devoted element," in September, 1489, in the presence of thousands of spectators. Both the English and French naval commanders, at that time visiting Boston in national ships, expressed their admiration of the model of the new vessel, and it was afterward pronounced as nearly perfect as the then state of the art would permit, by naval commanders who saw her in the East Indies. The parties in interest were Messrs. M. M. Hays, State street, Samuel Parkman, Merchants' Row, William Shaw, "opposite the Golden Balf* in Dock Square, and Samuel Shaw, who had returned from China to take charge of the venture. With Captain Job Prince as commander, and a crew of seventy-five officers and men, and with twenty mounted guns, the Massachusetts took her departure at the end of March, 1790, firing a federal salute as she passed the fort. She made the passage to Batavia in one hundred and fifty-eight days, landed cargo there, and proceeded to Canton, where she was sold to
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agents of the Portuguese government for $65,000. Mr. Shaw came back to the United States to procure another ship and prepare for an- other voyage. . From this fourth voyage he did not live to return. Robert Gould Shaw, a prominent Boston merchant of the next gener- ation, was his nephew.
A few weeks after the Massachusetts had started on her long voyage, the Federalist arrived at New York from Canton, bringing news of the Columbia and the Washington. These vessels had reached Nootka Sound in September, 1188, and passed the winter in Friendly Cove, on what is now known as Vancouver Island. Having secured a good cargo of furs, Captain Kendrick decided to send Captain Gray home to Bos- ton with the Columbia while he remained cruising with the sloop. Ac- cordingly, Captain Gray sailed July 30, 1:89, for Canton, calling at the Hawaiian Islands for provisions, with his cargo consigned to Messrs. Shaw & Randall. The furs were sold at a much lower price than had been expected; the ship was loaded with teas and arrived in Boston August 10, 1490, after an absence of nearly three years, and having sailed about forty-nine thousand miles by her log. She was received with the greatest enthusiasm ; it seemed as though the whole popula- tion of the town were assembled on the wharves to welcome her, and her salutes were returned from the castle and from the town artillery. General Lincoln, the collector of the port, went on board with a party of friends, and Governor Hancock gave a reception to the owners and officers, which was largely attended. Captain Gray walked up State street in the procession with a young Hawaiian chief at his side, the first of that race ever to visit the United States. It was said in one of the newspapers of the day: "To Messrs. Barrell, Brown, Bulfinch, Hatch, Darby, and Pintard, who planned the voyage, their country is indebted for this experiment in a branch of commerce before unessayed by Americans. The Columbia and Washington are the first American vessels who have circumnavigated the globe, and the Wash- ington, which is only of ninety tons burthen, is the first sloop of any nation ever sent on so great a voyage."
The arrivals from abroad at the port of Boston in the year 1290 were 60 ships, f snows, 159 brigs, 140 schooners, 59 sloops; total, 455. This was exclusive of the vessels employed in the coasting trade, which were supposed to amount to 1,200 sail. The duties on tonnage, foreign and American, collected in Massachusetts, say on 192,368 tons, from Octo- ber 1, 1:89, to September 30, 1190, amounted to $21,026, and the net
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amount of duties collected on goods, wares and merchandise in the same year was $320,430.
The voyage of the Columbia round the globe had brought more re- nown to its flag than profit to its owners, and Mr. Derby and Mr. Pin- tard sold out their shares; but the others were sufficiently sanguine to send out the ship again on the same errand as before, and she sailed on the 28th of September, 1190, with Captain Gray in command and Rob- ert Haswell as first officer. They reached the Northwest Coast in the month of June next following, and established headquarters in Clayo- quot Sound. They put up a log house, and, during the winter, built a sloop of forty-four tons which they called the Adventure. In the spring of 1792 Captain Gray sent the Adventure to the northward, under Cap- tain Haswell, to collect skins, while he cruised in the Columbia to the southward, for the same purpose. When in latitude 400 10', he saw a long stretch of breakers, and he was convinced that he was off the mouth of a great river. He approached the bar several times, but the outsetting current was so strong that he could not cross it, although he waited several days in the hope of doing so. On the 29th of April, near the Straits of Fuca, he fell in with the English commander, George Vancouver, who had just arrived on the coast from England with three naval vessels, on a voyage of exploration ; he had served as a mid- shipman under Captain Cook, and was soon to discover the island which bears his name. Captain Gray told Captain Vancouver of his recent experience off the breakers in latitude 46º, to which the latter replied that he had seen an opening in that latitude two days before, but sup- posing it to be a small river, he had not thought it worthy of further attention. Captain Gray determined to follow the exploration still further, and headed again for the breakers. At daybreak on the 11th of May he made out the entrance to the river, and, the wind being favorable, he bore away, and ran in, under full sail, through the breakers. He soon found himself in a magnificent stream of fresh water, four or five miles wide, up which he sailed ten miles and then anchored in ten fathoms. On the 14th the ship stood up the river four- teen miles further, and being convinced that it was navigable for an indefinite distance, the captain decided to return. On the 19th he landed with his crew near the mouth of the river, and formally named it, after his ship, the Columbia, raising the flag, and planting some coins under a pine-tree, near a bold headland which he called Cape Hancock, and opposite a low spit on the other shore which he named Point
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Adams. In due time Captain Gray proceeded to China; and, on the 9th of February, 1293, he sailed for home. He arrived in Boston on the evening of the 26th of July, bringing the latest news from Captains Magee, Kendrick and Ingraham; he reported that Mr. John Howell, formerly editor of the Argus, who went out as " historian " with Cap- tain Magee, had gone with Captain Kendrick to the Northwest Coast. " The Columbia, when passing the castle, saluted the flag of the United States, which salute was immediately returned, and on coming to anchor she gave the town a salute of thirteen guns, which was returned by a welcome huzza." Her second voyage had been even more brilliant in achievement than the first; but the owners were again disappointed in the pecuniary results, and, a few days after her arrival, she was ad- vertised by Lewis Hayt, of State street, to be sold at auction, with her inventory, at one of the wharves in Charlestown.
Having followed the fortunes of the good ship Columbia thus far, we must return in our narrative to 1290. Mr. Thomas H. Perkins, who accompanied Captain Magee to China in 1489, improved his time dur- ing his stay there in making himself acquainted with the habits of the Chinese, and collecting information about the trade of the empire in all its branches. In particular he ascertained the commercial value of the sea-otter skins and other furs carried thither from the Northwest Coast, and this knowledge "formed the basis of action for him afterward in planning numerous voyages and directing mercantile operations of great importance between America, Asia, and Europe." Immediately on his return to Boston, Mr. Perkins sent the brig Hope, under Capt. Joseph Ingraham, who had sailed as first officer in the Columbia on a voyage to the Northwest Coast and China. In April, 1791, Captain Ingraham discovered a cluster of islands in the Pacific, a few miles south of the equator, to two of which he gave the names of Washington and Adams. The islands are now known as part of the Marquesas group, but the names then given still appear on the maps. The main objects of the voyage of the Hope were defeated by untoward circumstances, but before this could have been known in Boston, Mr. Perkins and Captain Magee had built another vessel for the same trade. A paragraph in the Inde- pendent Chronicle, October 27, 1191, informs the public of the departure of this ship, and gives us a glimpse at the commercial activity then pre- vailing in the town: " Upwards of seventy sail of vessels sailed from this port on Monday last for all parts of the world. Among them was the ship Margaret, James Magec, esq .. commander, bound on a voyage of ob-
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servation and enterprise to the Northwest Coast of this continent. This vessel is copper-bottomed, and is said to be the best provided of any one that ever sailed from this port." Captain Magee carried out the frame of a vessel with three or four carpenters, and set up the little craft of about thirty tons under Captain Swift, then the chief carpenter. The schooner collected from twelve to fifteen hundred sea-otters during the season, which added much to the profits of the voyage, as the skins were worth thirty or forty dollars a piece when Captain Magee reached China.
The duties collected at the ports of Massachusetts during the year ended September 30, 1991, amounted to $420,604, about one-seventh of the total collected at all the ports of the United States. The exports from Massachusetts in the fiscal year 1792 were valued at $3,389,922. Among the exports from Boston in 1792 were fifty thousand barrels of pork and beef, of which twenty thousand barrels, at least, were packed here. The foreign entries at the port in 1793 were 376, the foreign clearances 292. The following is from a descriptive sketch written by Mr. Thomas Pemberton in 1794: " There are eighty wharves and quays, chiefly on the east side of the town. Of these the most distinguished is Boston pier, or the Long Wharf, which extends from the bottom of State street one thousand seven hundred and forty-three feet into the harbor. Here the principal navigation of the town is carried on; ves- sels of all burdens load and unload; and the London ships generally discharge their cargoes. It is the general resort of all the inhabitants, and is more frequented, we think, than any other part of the town." The same writer says further: "The harbour of Boston is at this date (November, 1794), crowded with vessels. Eighty-four sail have been counted lying at two of the wharves only. It is reckoned that not less than four hundred and fifty sail of ships, brigs, schooners, sloops, and small craft are now in this port."
At the very time when Mr. Pemberton was writing his " Description of Boston," Edmund Hart was laying the keel, and preparing to set up the frame of the frigate Constitution at his wharf, the site of which is now covered by Constitution Wharf. To show the capabilities of the town for the construction and equipment of ships, it may be said that Paul Revere furnished the copper, bolts and spikes, drawn from malle- able copper by a process then new; and Ephraim Thayer, who had a shop at the South End, made the gun-carriages for the frigate. Her sails were made in the Granary building at the corner of Park and Tre-
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mont streets; no other building in Boston was large enough for the pur- pose. There were then fourteen rope-walks in Boston, so that there could be no difficulty in obtaining cordage; and there was an incorpo- rated company for the manufacture of sail-cloth, whose factory was on the corner of Tremont and Boylston streets, and which was encour- 'aged by a bounty on its product from the General Court ; this product had increased to eighty or ninety thousand yards per annum, and is said to have competed successfully with the duck brought from abroad. The anchors came from Hanover in Plymouth county, and a portion of the timber used in what was then looked upon as a mammoth vessel, was taken from the woods of Allentown, on the borders of the Merrimac, fifty miles away. The Constitution was launched October 21, 1497, and proceeded to sea on her first cruise August 13, 1798.
The foreign commerce of those days required not only large capital for its successful prosecution, but general ability of a high order. Com- prehensive and authentic information, shrewd and sound judgment, and bold enterprise had to be brought together in combination, when voyages were planned which were to compass the globe, and which were to be prolonged for two or three years. All the requisite qualities for such purposes the merchants of Boston possessed ; but as time went on and their operations multiplied and extended, serious complications arose, for which neither they nor their country could be held respon- sible, and difficulties and dangers presented themselves, which no fore- sight could have anticipated, and no prudence averted. In the long wars between Great Britain and France, which kept the whole world in a turmoil, the commerce of neutrals suffered almost, if not quite, as se verely as that of the belligerents, and American merchants and ship- owners found themselves almost hopelessly involved to their constant annoyance, and often to their very great loss. England claimed the right of seizing French goods from American vessels, and even of capt- uring neutral ships laden with breadstuffs for France. Later an order in council authorized British cruisers to seize all vessels carrying French goods and bound to a French colony.
On the 1st of February, 1793, a few days after the execution of Louis XVI. the French government declared war against England and llol- land.
The government at Washington, and the more conservative portion of the community, desired and honestly sought to maintain a strict neu- trality, as between the combatants. A meeting of merchants and trad-
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ers was held in Faneuil Hall, July 22, at which the Hon. Thomas Rus- sell was president, and Mr. Thomas H. Perkins was secretary. A com- mittee, consisting of Thomas Russell, Stephen Higginson, John Coffin Jones, Nathaniel Fellows, Samuel Brown, Charles Jarvis, and Eben Parsons, reported a series of resolutions, which were adopted by an unanimous vote, sustaining a proclamation recently issued (April 22) by President Washington in favor of neutrality, and protesting against the fitting out of armed vessels or privateers by American citi- zens. The sentiment of the meeting was this: The preservation of neutrality is important to the interest and honor of the country.
Party feeling was intense, and it divided the community even in the presence of threatened danger from abroad. The Federalists had a bias, of which they were more or less unconscious, for Great Britain, and the Republicans, for France. Samuel Adams, in his first address as governor of Massachusetts, quotes from Montesquieu; and his biog- rapher says that there is scarcely a document of his, during his admin- istration, which does not contain evidences of his decided sympathy with the French Revolution. The merchants as a class were Federalists, and it was charged that their meeting in Fanueil Hall was a political demonstration, and that it had been held for party purposes. It had been asserted at the meeting, as a fact generally known by the inhab- itants, that, two or three days previously, privateers, fitted out and armed, had sailed from the port, and that others were now fitting out, some manned and to be manned partly by Frenchmen and partly by citizens of the United States. A town meeting was convened, there- fore, July 26, at which the Hon. Thomas Dawes presided, and it was positively declared "that there was no just foundation for the assertion, but that the disposition of the citizens of Boston is entirely in favor of observing the rules of a strict neutrality respecting the powers at war in Europe,"
France, as a reputed friend and ally, was hardly less exacting and overbearing than Great Britain. George Cabot spoke the truth in 1997, when he said: "History will recall the fact that France has been willing to see us independent of Britain, but not independent of her- self." There was a treaty between the United States and France, by which "free bottoms were declared to make free ships;" but this prin- ciple was not recognized by the French men-of-war on the coast in their interference with American commerce. The Columbian Centinel of September 11, 1293, says : "The prizes taken by the Marseilles
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privateer, now in this port, are seven in number, besides the ship Presi- dent, of Baltimore; " and, in reference to this vessel, it is added : " She is an American built and registered vessel, owned by Americans, sail- ing under American colors, had American property on board, and has been a constant trader between Maryland and Great Britain. The pre- tence for a capture was that she had English property on board, which, if every article had been, would not warrant the outrage." On the other hand, the British vessels of war captured a large number of American ships with their cargoes, for alleged violation of the paper blockade of the French ports, and on the suspicion that French property was covered by the American flag ; and this suspicion extended to all vessels bound to or from a French port. The decisions of the prize courts were often arbitrary and flagrantly unjust; and the de- meanor of the naval officers was in many instances dictatorial and in- sulting. Much hardship and serious disaster ensued, and excitement and indignation prevailed in every shipping community along the coast. But, bad as it was here, the state of things in England was far worse. London dates in the Boston papers to May 24, 1793, reported: "The bankrupteies in England are numerous, beyond all belief."
At a meeting of the merchants of Boston held September 12, 1293, a committee was appointed, consisting of Thomas Russell, Stephen Hig- ginson, John Coffin Jones, Caleb Davis, and David Sears, to receive and transmit to the president "authenticated evidence of injuries done to our commerce by the armed vessels of any belligerent power."
Barry, writing of this period, and of British interference with American commerce, says: "Instead, however, of resorting to force for redress-though an embargo for thirty days and sequestrating reso- lutions were advocated by some-a special embassy was instituted by Washington ; and John Jay, a man of the loftiest and most disinterested patriotism, was dispatched to the Court of St. James, for the purpose of negotiation." There was a temporary embargo, although we do not find it mentioned in the histories; for the Centine, the organ of the Federalists in Boston, reproduced the following paragraph from a Hali- fax newspaper of June 19, 1994: "Tuesday arrived several vessels from New York and Boston. These vessels have been for a long time detained in the American States by the embargo. But Congress, find- ing at length that the embargo effected no other purpose but to leave the produce of their farmers to perish on their hands, and to starve their mechanics in their seaports, have very prudently put an end to the
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measure, to the great regret of the merchants, farmers, and fishermen of Nova Scotia, whose exertions in supplying the West India Islands have been such as to show what this country is capable of doing in any like emergency."
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