USA > Massachusetts > The maritime history of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 > Part 22
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1 Brig News Boy, III' X 26' 2" X II' 5", 299 tons, designed by D. J. Lawler and built at Thomaston, Maine, for Frederic Cunningham in 1854.
2 Barque Osmanli, 106' 2" X 24' 5" X 15', 287 tons; built by Water- man & Ewell at Medford in 1844.
3 Barque Race Horse, 125' × 30' 3" × 16', 514 tons; designed by Samuel H. Pook, and built by Samuel Hall at East Boston in 1850.
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Lewis Cunningham exclaimed, "Charles, I am very fond of you, but d-n your wines!" Like other Bostonians, he preferred the genuine article from Funchal, ripened in the hold of an East-Indiaman. Happily for our Fayal trade, only connoisseurs could tell the difference. Many a pipe of honest Pico was reshipped from Boston as "Choice old London par- ticular."
Baltic-bound vessels would often stop at Fayal to top off their cargoes with oranges, whale-oil, and wine. For Massachusetts approached Russia, as in Feder- alist days, by a long détour in Southern waters, and her merchants managed to maintain their early su- premacy in the Baltic until the Civil War.1
Sugar, shipbuilding, and cotton were the three keys to this triangular trade. Boston vessels took mixed cargoes to Havana, and there loaded sugar for the Baltic. By this means they paid for the Russia hemp and Baltic iron, which until the Civil War were es- sential raw materials for American shipbuilding. Manila was used on our merchantmen for sheets and halyards, lifts and braces; but the stout, inelastic Russia hemp was required for bolt-rope and standing rigging. Russia hemp upheld the lofty spars of our clipper ships, and indeed of all our vessels, until wire rigging was introduced in the sixties. Russian iron was preferred by the harpoon-makers of New Bedford; Swedish iron was used for the metal-work of wooden
1 In 1820 seventy-seven American vessels passed the Sound on home- ward passage. Of these twenty-nine were destined for Boston, eight for Salem, two for Newburyport, one for Marblehead, Gloucester, Plymouth, Beverly, and New Bedford. In 1840, out of sixty-four American vessels entering St. Petersburg, forty-nine belonged in Massachusetts; and out of sixty-five vessels entering the United States from St. Petersburg and Riga, thirty-two came to Boston and twelve (five of which belonged in Massachusetts) to New York. See also statistics in Appendix.
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ships, and in the ironworks of Plymouth County, which had fairly exhausted the native ore. From Russia, too, came a superior grade of iron boiler-plate, the secret of whose composition eluded the Pennsyl- vania ironmasters for fifty years; also bristles for the brush factories, rags for the paper-mills, crash and linen for the housewives of New England, and ex- pensive furs sewed up in leather trunks.
Boston remained the American emporium for Baltic products partly because it was the natural distributing point for shipbuilding materials, but mostly from the enterprise of her merchants. We have already seen, in William Bordman's letter-book, how a Baltic voyage fitted into the activities of a typical shipping mer- chant. Brigs and small ships were especially built for the trade. The itinerary of one such, the brig Cronstadt (100 feet long, 273 tons), built on the North River in 1829 for Thomas B. Wales and others of Boston,1 shows that even vessels as small as the usual Mediter- ranean fruiter could be profitably employed. Baltic- bound cargoes were commonly owned in thirds by the shipowner, the Cuban sugar merchant, and the Rus- sian consignee, who got the lion's share of profits through commissions not only on sales, but upon the heavy import duty, together with fees and tips as varied as the cumshaws of Canton.
In order to absorb to his own profit these heavy charges, William Ropes, of a Salem family long expert in the Russian trade, established himself at St. Peters- burg in 1832, and was admitted to the guild of mer- chants. He gave the Baltic trade a fresh impetus by
1 1834: Boston-Cuba-St. Petersburg twice, and Boston-Charleston- Marseilles with cotton. 1835-36: Boston-Matanzas-St. Petersburg twice; Boston-Charleston-Rotterdam. 1837: Boston-Rio de Janeiro- Hamburg twice, with coffee, and Boston-Charleston-Amsterdam; etc.
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importing Southern cotton in his own ships, to supply the new factories at Narva, Riga, and Reval. Leaving his son William Hooper Ropes in charge of the Rus- sian branch, he returned to Boston, and resumed the active charge of his firm. As soon as mineral illuminat- ing oil began to replace the New Bedford product, William Ropes exported it to Russia, and before his death in 1859 Ropski kerosin was known throughout the Empire.
William H. Ropes, attended by his head clerk, and a large dog "Tiger" as protection against bandits, trav- eled by sleigh thousands of miles in the interior of Russia every winter to buy bolt-rope, crash, and sheet-iron from the local merchants. His hobby was distributing among the peasants religious tracts, trans- lated into Russian by his student brother of the Im- perial University; his favorite charity, and his father's, was to give free passage in his ships, and hospitality at his mansion on the English Quay, to overworked New England ministers.
The Ropeses were not the only Russia merchants of Boston. The fortune that built Fenway Court is said to have originated in those northern waters. Enoch Train, the daring and public-spirited founder of the Train packet-line, saw that the Baltic cotton trade would require larger vessels. Waterman & Ewell built for him at Medford in 1839 the ship St. Petersburg, which broke all previous records for size in New England shipbuilding; she was 160 feet long, 33 feet broad, and 814 tons burthen. With the painted ports and square stern of a New York packet- ship, she had such beautiful fittings and accommoda- tions as to attract thousands of sight-seers at every port. Richard Trask, of Manchester, her master and part owner, was one of the dandy merchant-captains
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of his generation. After arranging for the return cargo at St. Petersburg and visiting his friends, he would leave the vessel in charge of the first officer and return via London by steamer.
Somewhat akin to the Baltic trade was the coffee carrying-trade from Brazil to Antwerp, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Königsberg; and the staves and brandy trade between Norfolk and La Rochelle, in which Thomas B. Wales and Nathaniel H. Emmons kept several small vessels employed. But to analyze every minor route of foreign trade that began and ended at Boston would be an endless task. Peruse, if you will, in the Appendix, the list of foreign ports from which vessels cleared for Boston in 1857, for emphatic proof of the variety and interest of her foreign com- merce.
Space and time likewise forbid a proper analysis of the North American coasting trade of Massachusetts. In 1831 American tonnage engaged in coasting for the first time exceeded the registered tonnage in foreign trade, and the disproportion grew in spite of the rail- roads. Coal and cotton explain the change. James Collier, of Cohasset (1813-91), who once won a bet in London for having commanded more vessels and voy- ages than any shipmaster in port, first won the title of captain at the age of eighteen, by taking the schooner Profit from Boston to Norfolk, returning with a cargo of coal for the Ames plow works. It was landed at Weymouth and carted to North Easton. In the forties this trade increased as the use of stoves and furnaces became general, as hardwood disappeared from the Maine coast, and as tidewater textile mills were es-
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tablished at Newburyport, Salem, New Bedford, and Fall River. Until the adoption of steam-towed coal barges, after the Civil War, the freighting of lumber and apples, fish and ice between New England and Philadelphia and Norfolk, to return with coal, em- ployed a great fleet of small sloops and schooners, representing the labor and the savings of seafarers in every village from Eastport to Westport.
The corn and cotton trade with the lower South, which we have already noted in several connections, deserves mention as one of the most lucrative routes for Massachusetts vessels between 1830 and 1860. In part it was a coasting trade; in part, the last sailing- ship phase of a Massachusetts interest two centuries old - the carrying of Southern staples to a market. Year by year the wealthy Cotton Belt wore out more boots and shoes, purchased more cottons for her slaves, used more Quincy granite in her public buildings, and consumed more Fresh Pond ice in her mint juleps. The New England mills, on their part, were calling for more cotton; and every pound of it that they re- ceived, before the Civil War, came by sailing vessel from Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New Or- leans. The factory hands were equally hungry for cheap food. Boston's total imports by sea from New Orleans totaled $3,334,000 in 1839, and steadily rose; in the period from September 1, 1841, to May 1, 1842, one-quarter of the lard, more than one-quarter of the flour, nearly half the pork and more than half the corn shipped out of New Orleans went to Boston.
Sailing packet-lines were insufficient to fill this de- mand. One hundred and seventy-five vessels cleared from Boston in 1855 for New Orleans alone. But not all of them returned directly to Boston. The typical Massachusetts cotton-carrier, after waiting for a
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place on the crowded levee of New Orleans, while the air rang with shouts of negro roustabouts and wild chanties of cotton-screwers' gangs, took the best pay- ing freight she could get to any foreign port. In keen competition with the merchant marine of England, France, and Germany, our vessels supplied the cotton- mills of Lancashire, Normandy, Flanders, Alsace, Prussia, Saxony, and the Baltic provinces. When freights were good - and anything above a cent a pound made a 'saving voyage' - a ship would dis- charge her cargo at Havre or Liverpool, and hasten back in ballast for more cotton.1 Otherwise she took a European cargo to Boston, or was chartered by a packet-line at Liverpool to relieve the heavy emigrant traffic. Boston's imports from England far exceeded those from any other country, and the freight money on cotton went a long way toward balancing accounts. Cotton, in fact, was the most important medium in our carrying trade, replacing colonial rum and codfish, and the Oriental goods of Federalist days.
Few converts were obtained by the abolitionists in Boston counting-rooms. Society, business, and politics in Massachusetts were dominated by a triple entente between the "Lords of the Lash and the Lords of the Loom" - and the Lords of Long Wharf.
1 The records of the ship Rubicon (Medford built, 490 tons) from 1836 to 1838 show that in two years, on a total investment of $25,094.28 and disbursements of $10,960.40, she made $29,698.43 "cash receipts" for her owners in the New Orleans-Havre cotton trade.
CHAPTER XIX CAPE COD AND CAPE ANN 1820-1860
CAPE COD was ripening off, as Thoreau walked its sandy length in 1855. Untouched, through lack of water-power, by the industrial revolution; neglected alike by foreign commerce and railroad; producing but a fraction of its own food; Barnstable County in- creased in population and in wealth solely by the skill of its people in farming the sea. The towns and vil- lages of the Cape, from Sandwich to Provincetown, and down the back side around Chatham to Wood's Hole, increased their sea-borne tonnage six fold be-" tween 1815 and 1850. Not only Barnstable and Prov- incetown, but every tidal harbor and tiny creek - Yarmouthport, Sesuet, Namskaket, Herring River, Rock Harbor, Wellfleet, Pamet, Chatham, Bass River, Harwichport, Hyannis, Osterville, and Cotuit - had its fishing fleet, with dependent shipyards, sail-lofts, stores, and wharves. Coasting vessels plied "down East" or "out South," and made foreign connections at Boston, to which every place on the Bay side ran a sailing packet. Provincetown and Wood's Hole had a small fleet of whalers, and all parts received an occa- sional oily bounty from a school of blackfish, driven on the beach and tried out by the united effort of the community, with a spirit that would delight Lenin.
Of the minority that did not engage in fishing or coasting, the more adventurous entered the merchant marine, the stay-at-homes worked the oyster-beds and clam-flats, or harnessed wind and sun to extract salt
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CAPE COD AND CAPE ANN
from the sea.1 Many young men worked at a trade in Charleston or some other Southern seaport during the winter, returning to the Cape by sea in time for a summer's fishing. Widows and retired captains in- vested their savings in sixteenth-shares of fishing ves- sels, or in the stock of a local marine insurance com- pany. Until 1850 almost every one lived in a snug Cape cottage, built with that nice sense of proportion that a ship-carpenter instinctively absorbs. The pop- ulation of thirty-five thousand (1850) was ninety-five per cent native-born, and in about the same propor- tion dependent on the sea for a livelihood.
Distinct section that it was, Cape Cod's every town was distinctive. Chatham had a small fleet of shad- seiners about 1840. Provincetown, with its capacious harbor, had the largest fleet of fishermen and whalers, and the greatest salt-works. Her shores were lined with picturesque windmills, which pumped sea-water into pine vats for evaporation; her quaint cottages emerged from sand and fish-flakes, instead of gardens and shrubbery. Brewster, having no proper harbor, was a nursery of sea-captains for the merchant marine, and snug harbor in their old age. Barnstable, the county seat, had a native aristocracy of lawyers, judges, and clipper-ship commanders. Sandwich, where the Cape begins, capitalized Cape sand. Its six-acre glass factory was the largest in the country, and one of the first in New England to use steam power.
Wellfleet maintained its oyster-breeding reputation. Seed oysters were obtained in Wareham Harbor, the
1 The salt industry on the Cape did not entirely close until about 1870, but it was pretty well killed off before the Civil War, through the import duty being reduced from twenty to two cents per bushel, 1830-46. In 1837 the Cape had 668 salt-works and produced to the value of $225,098; in 1855 this had fallen to 181 and $47,657.
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Taunton River, and other points in Buzzard's and Narragansett bays. In winter the local mackerel fleet brought bivalves from Chesapeake Bay and bedded them down on the Wellfleet flats, where during the R-less months they grew plump for the Boston market. About 1824 Wellfleet schooners began bringing Vir- ginia oysters directly to Northern markets; but a sojourn behind Billingsgate Island greatly enhanced their value. In the fifties the canning industry ex- tended the market not only for oysters, but for lobster and Penobscot salmon. From colonial times to the present, almost every oyster-dealer in New England has been a Wellfleet man. Isaac Rich climbed on oyster-shells to a fortune, which he left to Boston University.
A regional readjustment in the fishing industry went on between 1835 and 1855.1 Boston, the second great- est fishing port in 1837, gradually went out of the business, and no other town on Boston Bay but Hing- ham owned a fishing schooner in 1855. The South Shore and the Merrimac declined; the North Shore remained stationary. The only regions which in- creased their fleet during these eighteen years were Cape Cod, and her rocky rival Cape Ann. The latter's fishing fleet in 1837 was less than half that of Cape Cod. But in the next twenty years Cape Ann caught up. The population of Gloucester and Rockport (sep- arated in 1840) more than doubled between 1820 and 1855. Sandy Bay Breakwater (hardy perennial of river and harbor bills), which the federal government began to construct about 1836, protected the fishing coves on the exposed side of Cape Ann, and made it possible for the Rockport granite quarries to compete with Quincy. But concentration was the tendency of
1 See statistics in Appendix.
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the age, and "the harbor" (Gloucester) gradually ab- sorbed all Cape Ann fisheries.
Newburyport lost half her fleet in this period, but codfishing remained the typical industry of the smaller ports of Essex County until the Civil War. Swamp- scott, despite an influx of summer boarders, increased her fleet to thirty-nine small schooners, dried her cod- fish exceptionally well, and remained the last place where the delectable dunfish was properly cured.1 It was no uncommon sight to see fifty to one hundred farmers' teams at one time on King's and Blaney's beaches, dickering with the fishermen for a winter's supply.
"Our neighbors of Beverly have dropped quietly back into the fisheries again," writes Dr. Bentley in 1816. "I saw several fields replanted with flakes, which had been divided for house lots. ... At Beverly they have received half a million of fish in 16 vessels." Her fleet rose from twenty-one sail in 1825 to sixty- four in 1840, when it began to decline: and the Beverly schooners were Grand Bankers, thrice the tonnage of the Swampscott vessels.
Shoemaking brought a great change in the economy of North Shore fishing ports after 1815. The schoon- ers, instead of refitting for a winter's trading voyage, were now hauled out by Thanksgiving Day; the fish- ermen, instead of idling or shipping abroad, pegged and cut shoes in a neighborly "ten-footer" shop, dis- cussing meanwhile the ways of fish and politicians, ships and women. Many fishermen from 'abroad'
1 Fish for 'dunning' at this period was caught in deep water, pref- erably off the Isles of Shoals in early spring. It was split and slack salted, piled up for two or three months, covered with salt hay or eel grass in a dark store, uncovered once and restacked under pressure, and by late summer, if nothing went wrong, had acquired the proper ripeness and dun color.
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(Cape Cod) brought their catch for curing to Beverly,1 whose rocky shores as far as West Beach were white and odorous every autumn with drying cod. A pleas- ant, well-balanced life had the North Shore fisherman- farmer-shoemakers, for about two generations. The industrial revolution then made a factory industry of their sociable handicraft; and on the stony acres of their forefathers arose the palaces and Italian gardens of a new feudalism.
Marblehead still had a large fleet of Bankers, and even in its absence the Provincetown mackerel fleet, putting in for shelter, would fill her harbor with sail. Glorious nights there were, when the Cape Codders came ashore, bent on draining every Marblehead grog- shop, kissing every Marblehead girl, and blacking the eyes of every Marblehead boy. Glorious mornings followed, when a clearing northwest breeze sent wave- lets slap-slap-slapping on black topsides, while the surf still roared outside; when to the chuckling chorus of halyard blocks, foresails and mainsails arose to catch the dawn; when "Shanandore" or "Lowlands" from five hundred lusty throats, brought up, all stand- ing, such aged natives as had thought it worth while to retire. Glorious days, too, when the Marblehead Banker fleet departed for its summer fare. Church- bells ring, fish-horns blare, and in sight of the whole town each schooner, dressed in all her colors and new- est suit, must sail up and down the harbor thrice, and for good luck toss a penny on Halfway Rock.
Plymouth increased her fishing fleet at this period to over fifty sail, and specialized in mackerel; but the smaller South Shore fishing villages allowed their
1 On account of her early railroad facilities, which attracted buyers from the interior. The Eastern Railroad reached Salem in 1838, Marble- head and Beverly in 1839.
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fleets to decline in the forties. Probably the active shipyards of Cohasset, Scituate, the North River, and Duxbury were absorbing the slack. West of the Cape there was little codfishing; but the Maine coast was becoming a worthy rival.
Expansion marked the industry as a whole between 1820 and 1860. Mackerel-fishing now for the first time attained the dignity and importance of codfish- ing. The sportive and elusive mackerel taxed the in- genuity of fishermen far more than the stolid cod, but the amount of him brought into Massachusetts in- creased from twelve thousand barrels full, the highest for any year before the war, to over three hundred thousand in 1830. Prices rose as well.1 There fol- lowed a lean decade, when the mackerel fled the coast, but in 1840 a series of heavy catches began again. In 1851 the mackerel fleet of Massachusetts numbered eight hundred and fifty sail, of over fifty-three thou- sand tons burthen.
The same types of vessel were used in mackerel as in codfishing. Chebacco boats and 'heel-tappers' were gradually superseded by pinkies - an enlarged and improved Chebacco boat with bowsprit and jib, meas- uring twenty to sixty tons.2 About 1830 a new type of square-sterned schooner, of twenty to ninety tons burthen, came into use. Apple-bowed, barrel-sided, and clumsy craft that they were, these 'new-style bankers' or 'jiggers' had easier lines than the old type, and a flush deck. They were built all along the New
1 The price of No. I mackerel rose from $5 per barrel in 1830 to $19 in 1856. Codfish in the same period rose from $2.12 to $3.75 per quintal of 112 pounds.
2 The measurements of an early pinkie, the "pink-stern schooner Pink of Edgartown," in the Plymouth registry for 1810, are 42' X 12' 6" × 5' 3", tonnage 24}. One is shown in the engraving of Boston Harbor in chapter XXII.
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England shore from Frenchman's Bay to Dartmouth. In accommodations they were no improvement on earlier models. All the cooking, even the tea and coffee, was done in a large iron pot over a brick hearth di- rectly under the fore scuttle, through which the smoke was supposed to find its way out. Halibut's fins and napes, smoked to a pungent flavor on the cabin beams of the pinkies and jiggers, were a favorite delicacy in Massachusetts coast towns.
Swampscott adopted small, fast schooners of im- proved model about 1840.1 The launching, at Essex, of the so-called clipper schooner Romp, in 1847, ex- tended this principle to the larger vessels. Only two years elapsed before Samuel Hall designed the schoon- ers Express and Telegraph for the Wellfleet oyster and mackerel fleet. Of clipper model, increased size (one hundred tons or thereabouts), and large sail area, these vessels set the fashion for New England fishing schooners for the next generation. The Frank Atwood, designed by Donald McKay in 1868, was the most famous of this class. But the clipper schooners were too shallow and tender for safety; every great storm brought a holocaust of New England fishermen. About 1890 a new, faster, and safer type was evolved through the collaboration of yacht designers with master mariners. To this class belongs the Esperanto, champion of the North American fishing fleet in 1920.
In codfishing the ancient method of hand-lining from the vessel's deck, day and night, prevailed unti! the Civil War. Stories are told of 'high-liners' who fished twenty hours a day, lashed to the rigging lest they fall overboard when they dozed off. Mackerel- fishing was more sporty. The schools were generally found within fifty miles of the New England coast,
1 See picture of Nahant regatta, above.
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and at times they struck into Massachusetts Bay in such numbers that a vessel could make her 'trip o' fish' twixt dawn and dark. But often the mackerel schoon- ers would sail "clear to Scatteree" in search of a fare.
The universal method of catching mackerel was 'jigging.' A mackerel 'jig,' invented about 1812, was simply a hook around the shank of which was cast a plummet of lead or pewter. For bait, herring or small mackerel, or menhaden ('po'gies') were 'slivered' (sliced), and then ground up by the night watch in a bait-mill like a farmer's feed-cutter. A favorite Cape Cod joke was the fisherman whose wife had to grind a bait-mill at home to make him sleep.
A school of mackerel was 'tolled' or attracted to the surface by throwing this chopped bait broadcast while the vessel slowly drifted, hove to. The fish were caught on sliver-baited jigs, each member of the crew handling two or three short lines, and dextrously snapping his mackerel into a barrel with the same mo- tion that jerked him out of water. It was an exciting moment when flashes of silver and drumming of lively fish in empty barrels announced that a 'spurt' had struck the edge of the fleet; and each master, with hair's-breadth handling that a yachtsman would envy, endeavored to dribble his schooner under the lee bow of some vessel with a 'fishy' skipper, like "Osceola Dick" Rich, of Truro, or John Pew, of Gloucester. The sight of such a fleet, two hundred sail, perhaps, engaged in these nervous evolutions; or (as Thoreau saw them) 'pouring around the Cape'; or, winging it for home with a full fare, was one of the many beauti- ful maritime spectacles of sailing days.
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