USA > Massachusetts > The maritime history of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 > Part 27
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1 15,683 running yards.
362
THE CLIPPER SHIP
in the year between February, 1854, and February, 1855.
With this group, the Lightning,1 Champion of the Seas,2 James Baines,3 and Donald McKay,4 American shipbuilding reached its apogee. The James Baines, on her way across, made the record transatlantic pas- sage for sailing vessels, twelve days, six hours from Boston Light to Rock Light, Liverpool. "She is so strongly built, so finely finished, and is of so beauti- ful a model," wrote a contemporary from Liverpool, "that even envy cannot prompt a fault against her. On all hands she has been praised as the most perfect sailing ship that ever entered the river Mersey." The portrait shows her powerful hull, with a row of ports along the passenger quarters; and her enormous rig, second only to the Great Republic's. In addition to three skysails, she carried skysail studdingsails and a main moonsail. When under way with thirty-four sails set, as a steamship once reported her in 1857 (and remember, she had single topsails and topgallant- sails), the James Baines might well have inspired Walt Whitman's "The Ship":
Lo! The unbounded sea!
On its breast a Ship, spreading all her sails- an ample Ship, carrying even her moonsails;
The pennant is flying aloft, as she speeds, she speeds so stately - below, emulous waves press forward,
They surround the Ship, with shining curving motions and foam.5
Owing to Matthew F. Maury's discoveries, vessels
1 Lightning, 243' X 42' 8" × 23', 2084 tons.
2 Champion of the Seas, 252' X 45' 6" × 29', 2448 tons.
3 James Baines, 266' × 44' 7" X 29', 2515 tons.
4 Donald McKay, 260' 6" × 46' X 29', 2595 tons.
5 From "Drum Taps," 1865. Walt afterwards marred this poem, for nautical readers, by inserting 'starting' after 'Ship' in the title, and the second line.
363
MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
en route to Australia now made 48° south latitude be- fore running their easting down, and let the brave west winds sweep them around the world. The James Baines in 1855 went from Liverpool to Liver- pool in 132 days, omitting her stay at Melbourne. No sailing vessel ever equaled this record.
The Donald McKay, on her maiden voyage to Liverpool, made a day's run of 421 miles, mostly under topsails and foresail. But this record had already been surpassed by the Lightning. The most remarkable of this group of Mckay clippers, built long and low, with the most daringly fine and hollow bow ever constructed, the Lightning looked her name of irresistible strength and unsurpassed speed. With mingled pride and regret Boston saw her glide down the harbor under a foreign flag, making scarce a ripple in the water as her topsails caught a light land-breeze. But on this maiden pas- sage to Liverpool, as if to honor the land that gave her birth, the Lightning made the greatest day's run ever performed by sailing vessel; a day's run that no steam- ship at that day could equal by a hundred miles, that no steamship equaled for a generation, and that barely fifty ocean steamers to-day could surpass. It began about five hundred miles off the Irish coast in latitude 52° 38' N., longitude 22° 45' W .; and here is the log of it:
March Ist. Wind south. Strong gales; bore away for the North Channel, carried away the foretopsail and lost jib; hove the log several times and found the ship going through the water at the rate of eighteen to eighteen and one half knots; lee rail under water, and rigging slack. Distance run in twenty-four hours, four hundred and thirty-six miles.
1
CLIPPER SHIP LIGHTNING
CLIPPER SHIP JAMES BAINES
CHAPTER XXIII CONCLUSION . 1857-1860
THE clipper ships, costly to build and to operate for their burthen, proved prodigal ventures on routes that paid normal freights. David Snow, of Boston, tried his clipper ship Reporter1 in the Boston-New Orleans- Liverpool trade in 1853; but as Captain Octavius Howe wrote, she was a "thousand-ton ship in capacity and a two thousand-ton ship to keep in repair." The pleasure of having the smartest vessel on that route did not compensate for losing voyages, and the Re- porter was shifted to the California trade.
By 1854 that path of riches yielded but normal profits, and 1855 brought the end of the clipper-ship era in shipbuilding; although American thoroughbreds won the sweepstakes in the world's carrying trade until the Civil War. Donald McKay, after completing his Australian Black Ball liners, wisely concluded that the limit had been reached; and the three or four clip- per ships that he built in 1855-56 were of the medium class. Nevertheless the era left its impress on naval architecture. No more bluff-bowed vessels of the an- cient model were built, except for whaling. A type of full-bodied ship, like Mckay's Glory of the Seas, was evolved; fuller and beamier than the clipper ship, less boldly rigged, yet with that clean appearance, round stern, and beautiful rake to the bow which make it difficult to distinguish from the genuine clipper.
1 Reporter, 207' 6" × 39' × 24' 6", 1474 tons; built by Paul Curtis at East Boston, 1853, at a cost of $80,750.
365
MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
Throughout the clipper-ship era, nearly all the traditional lines of Massachusetts maritime commerce continued to expand and new ones were created; cod- fishing and whaling attained their apogee, and the commercial prosperity of Boston, in 1857, reached its high-water mark for the ante-bellum period. The coffee trade with South America declined, owing to the establishment of steamship lines between Europe and Brazil; the Russia trade declined, as Russia's staple exports were being produced to a great extent in the United States; the China trade continued its migration to New York; but all others increased greatly, and Boston continued to hold her ancient supremacy in the East-Indian, Smyrna, Mediterra- nean, and South American wool trades, and in such Russian trade as remained profitable.1 Her exports of ice more than doubled between 1847 and 1856, rum rose from four hundred thousand to over one million gallons, and three times as many boots and shoes left the port as ten years previously. The Boston dry- goods trade with the West, the bulk of which still went by water, had doubled since 1854, and increased twenty-fold over 1847. Arrivals from foreign ports at Boston increased fifty per cent between 1845 and 1856, and their tonnage a hundred and twenty per cent; even Newburyport and Salem showed an increase, owing to the new Canadian trade.
The Canadian Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 was of more benefit to Massachusetts commerce than any treaty before or since, for it wiped out the artificial barrier which limited her market and source of supply to the northward and eastward. The trade was con- ducted almost exclusively in Canadian bottoms, which somewhat obscured its benefits, and gave that increase
1 See statistics of arrivals in the Appendix.
366
CONCLUSION
to the statistics of foreign sail in our ports, which has been made so much of by ship-subsidy pamphlets masquerading as histories of the American merchant marine. As a matter of fact, if the "Geordies" and "Johnny wood-boats," as the Yankees called the clumsy down-East schooners, had not been permitted free access to our ports, the Canadians would have made Liverpool their entrepôt instead of Boston, or developed their own direct export trade - as they afterwards did, when the reciprocity treaty was abro- gated. From Nova Scotia and New Brunswick flowed a constant and increasing stream of firewood, coal, fish, flour, provisions, grain, and dairy products to Boston and the Essex County ports, where the 'blue- nose' merchants made their purchases of East- and West-India goods, manufactures, whaling products, and hides.
Boston now had the facilities and the materials for an export trade to the newer countries, to California, Australia, and South Africa. New England manufac- tures, though less in value, were then much more diversified than nowadays, when lines such as beef- packing, furniture, and vehicles have been forced to move nearer the raw materials. Whatever was lacking came from other parts of the world to Boston wharves. A merchant could make up at short notice, within half a mile of State Street, an export cargo containing the entire apparatus of civilized life, from cradles and teething-rings to coffins and tombstones. Of such na- ture were the outward ladings to California, Australia, and Cape Town in the eighteen-fifties. Ploughs and printing-presses, picks and shovels, absinthe and rum, house-frames and grindstones, clocks and dictionaries, melodeons and cabinet organs, fancy biscuits and canned salmon, oysters and lobsters; in fact every-
367
MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
thing one can imagine went through Boston on its way to the miners and ranchers of the white man's new empires. Henry W. Peabody and others operated lines of Australian packets, which brought back wool and hides.1 Benjamin C. Pray and others kept a fleet of barques plying between Boston and Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London, where fifty years before the only American trade had been a little smuggling of East-India goods on homeward passages. From South Africa were brought wool, goatskins, ostrich feathers, and, after 1870, diamonds.2 The California trade entered a new phase in 1855, when the Somerset-built clipper barque Greenfield took the first consignment of grain from San Francisco, and the Newburyport-built clipper ship Charmer of Boston took a full cargo of California wheat to New York, re- ceiving twenty-eight dollars a ton freight.
In September, 1857, came a great financial crisis, which, unlike that of twenty years previous, affected Boston most grievously. The East-India merchants, anticipating a stoppage of trade by the Sepoy mutiny, had glutted the Boston market with Calcutta goods. Prices of all sorts of merchandise fell one-quarter to one-half, and freights sunk until it paid a shipowner to let his vessels rot.
For two years ocean freights were dull and business depressed. The Canadian trade alone showed con- spicuous progress. By 1860 conditions were getting back to normal. Of the world's fleet en route to Aus- tralia in January of that year, thirteen ships were
1 Six different Australian packet-lines, none of them operating clipper ships, announce sailings in the Boston Daily Advertiser for March 7, 1853, and Oak Hall advertises "clothing manufactured expressly for the Australian and California markets."
2 It was Benjamin C. Pray who, in cooperation with a Boston jeweler, introduced diamond-cutting into the United States.
368
BOSTON HARBOR IN CLIPPER-SHIP DAYS
CONCLUSION
from Boston, as against twelve ships and seven barques from New York, and none from any other American port save San Francisco. The merchants, tardily ap- preciating the importance of steam navigation, built four splendid iron screw steamers over two hundred feet long, for two new lines to Charleston and New Orleans.1 The sailing fleet found better employment than in any year since 1857. Then came the firing on Fort Sumter; and for four years the best energies of Massachusetts, maritime and interior, were devoted to preserving the Union.
Every great war has brought an upheaval in Mas- sachusetts commerce; some for the better, but the Civil War conspicuously for the worse. Not that the Confederate cruisers were responsible. The American merchant marine had increased and prospered during the earlier wars, in spite of depredations infinitely greater than those of the Alabama and her consorts. So prospered, of late, the British marine, despite Ger- man under-sea boats. I agree with John R. Spears that the decadence of American shipping " was wholly due to natural causes- to conditions of national development ... that were unavoidable." The Civil War merely hastened a process that had already begun, the substitution of steam for sail. It was the ostrich- like attitude of maritime Massachusetts toward this process, more than the war, by which she lost her an- cient preëminence. Far better had the brains and en-
1 The Massachusetts, South Carolina, Merrimack, and Mississippi. They were designed by Samuel H. Pook and built by Harrison Loring at South Boston in 1860-61. The Merchants' and Miners' Line to Nor- folk and Baltimore, founded a few years previously, acquired two iron . side-wheelers in 1860, and the Philadelphia Line was also improved.
369
7
MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
ergy that produced the clipper ships been put into the iron screw steamer (in the same sense that Phidias had been better employed in sanitation, and Euripides in discovering the printing press). After Appomattox, national expansion and the protective tariff killed or atrophied many lines of commerce in which Massa- chusetts merchants had specialized; and the trans- atlantic cable made merchants, in the old sense, anach- ronisms. Several firms continued the carrying trade profitably in sailing vessels for some years; and many remained faithful to blue water for the rest of their lives. But it was Maine rather than Massachusetts that kept the flag afloat at the spanker-gaff of sailing ships. The era of tramp steamers and four or five per cent profit had little attraction for merchants who could gain six to ten per cent by exploiting the great West. Many an old shipowner's ledger, that begins with tea and indigo and sixteenth-shares of the ship Canton Packet and brig Owhyhee, ends up by record- ing large blocks of C. B. & Q., and Calumet & Hecla.
The maritime history of Massachusetts, then, as distinct from that of America, ends with the passing of the clipper. 'T was a glorious ending! Never, in these United States, has the brain of man conceived, or the hand of man fashioned, so perfect a thing as the clipper ship. In her, the long-suppressed artistic impulse of a practical, hard-worked race burst into flower. The Flying Cloud was our Rheims, the Sov- ereign of the Seas our Parthenon, the Lightning our Amiens; but they were monuments carved from snow. For a brief moment of time they flashed their splendor around the world, then disappeared with the sudden
370
CONCLUSION
completeness of the wild pigeon. One by one they sailed out of Boston, to return no more. A tragic or mysterious end was the final privilege of many, fa- vored by the gods. Others, with lofty rig cut down to cautious dimensions, with glistening decks and top- sides scarred and neglected, limped about the seas under foreign flags, like faded beauties forced upon the street.
The master builders, reluctant to raise barnyard fowls where once they had reared eagles, dropped off one by one. Donald McKay, dying almost in poverty after a career that should have brought him wealth and honor, sleeps at Newburyport among the comrades of his young manhood. The commonwealth, so gen- erous in laurel to second-rate politicians and third-rate soldiers, contains no memorial line to this man who helped to make her name immortal. But in the elm branches over his grave the brave west winds that he loved so well, murmur soft versions of the tunes they once played on the shrouds of his glorious ships.
Soon he will be joined by the last of the men he knew and loved, the shipbuilders and
Sea-captains young or old, and the mates, and ... intrepid sailors Pick'd sparingly without noise by thee, old ocean, chosen by thee, . .. Suckled by thee, old husky nurse, embodying thee, Indomitable, untamed as thee.
The seaports of Massachusetts have turned their backs to the element that made them great, save for play and for fishing; Boston alone is still in the deep- sea game. But all her modern docks and terminals and dredged channels will avail nothing, if the spirit perish that led her founders to "trye all ports."
371
MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
Sicut patribus ... We can ask no more here. But in that unknown harbor toward which we all are scudding may our eyes behold some vision like that vouchsafed our fathers, when a California clipper ship made port after a voyage around the world.
A summer day with a sea-turn in the wind. The Grand Banks fog, rolling in wave after wave, is dis- solved by the perfumed breath of New England hay- fields into a gentle haze, that turns the State House dome to old gold, films brick walls with a soft patina, and sifts blue shadows among the foliage of the Com- mon elms. Out of the mist in Massachusetts Bay comes riding a clipper ship, with the effortless speed of an albatross. Her proud commander keeps skysails and studdingsails set past Boston light. After the long voyage she is in the pink of condition. Paint- work is spotless, decks holystoned cream-white, shrouds freshly tarred, ratlines square. Viewed through a powerful glass, her seizings, flemish-eyes, splices, and pointings are the perfection of the old-time art of rigging. The chafing-gear has just been removed, leaving spars and shrouds immaculate. The boys touched up her skysail poles with white paint, as she crossed the Bay. Boom-ending her studdingsails and hauling a few points on the wind to shoot the Narrows, between Georges and Gallups and Lovells Islands, she pays off again through President Road, and comes booming up the stream, a sight so beautiful that even the lounging soldiers at the Castle, persistent baiters of passing crews, are dumb with wonder and admira- tion.
Colored pennants on Telegraph Hill have an- nounced her coming to all who know the code. Top- liff's News Room breaks into a buzz of conversation, comparing records and guessing at freight money; 372
CLIPPER SHIP FLYING CLOUD
CONCLUSION
owners and agents walk briskly down State Street; countingroom clerks hang out of windows to watch her strike skysails and royals; the crimps and hussies of Ann Street foregather, to offer Jack a few days' scabrous pleasure before selling him to a new master. By the time the ship has reached the inner harbor, thousands of critical eyes are watching her every movement, quick to note if in any respect the mate has failed to make sailormen out of her crew of broken Argonauts, beach-combers, Kanakas, and Lascars.
The 'old man' stalks the quarterdeck in top hat and frock coat, with the proper air of detachment; but the first mate is as busy as the devil in a gale of wind. Off India Wharf the ship rounds into the wind with a graceful curve, crew leaping into the rigging to furl topgallant sails as if shot upward by the blast of pro- fanity from the mate's bull-like throat. With backed topsails her way is checked, and the cable rattles out of the chain lockers for the first time since Shanghai. Sails are clewed up. Yards are braced to a perfect parallel, and running gear neatly coiled down. A warp is passed from capstan to stringer, and all hands on the capstan-bars walk her up to the wharf with the closing chantey of a deep-sea voyage:
SOLO
220
I. O, the times are hard and the wa - ges low,
CHORUS
SOLO
Leave her, John - ny, leave her; I'll pack my bag and
CHORUS
go be - low; It's time for us to leave her.
APPENDIX I
COD AND MACKEREL FISHERIES OF MASSACHUSETTS 1837-1865
Vessels fitted out
Value of catch
Fishing ports of
Year
No.
Tonnage
Cod
Mackerel
ESSEX COUNTY, N. of Cape Ann
-
1837 1855 1865
151
8,019
$50,048
$150,647
1,135
60
4,105
30,000 42,606
93,020 108,988
767
1837
221
9,824
186,516 346,850
335,566
1,580
CAPE ANN
1855
347
21,269
3,177
1865
378
25,836
839,675
2,259,150
4,939
1837
151
10,232
275,799
33,950
1,133
NORTH SHORE
1855
146
11,184
471,249
193,550
991
1865
80
5,631
360,508
47,925
643
BOSTON BAY
1837 1855
109
8,595
4,500
331,364
1,264
1865
58
2,969
159,900
241,482
47I
SOUTH SHORE (Cohasset to
- 1837
168
11,302
187,214
148,034
1,418
1855
100
7,014
120,117
75,698
893
Plymouth, incl.)
1865
75
5,360
337,720
127,500
706
1837
359
21,280
392,772
490,638
3,37I
CAPE COD
1855
376
26,757
443,869
450,984
3,389
1865
314
50,166
976,328
1,169,074
3,832
24I
15,28I
488,010
478,407
2,572
421,991
705
83
4,245
Hands em- ployed
375
APPENDIX: STATISTICS
II ANNUAL AVERAGES OF MASSACHUSETTS WHALING INDUSTRY, AT THREE EARLY PERIODS 1
1
Dates
Total
Sperm
Whale
No.
So.
1771-75
183
I2I
27,840
75
115
1,250,785
272,475
1787-89
91
31
10,210
64
142
251,370
413,595
1803-06
30
9,360
312
395,6402
677,422 2
1 Tables for the first two periods are compiled from those in Pitkin, Statistical View (1816 ed.), 78-79; for 1803-06, the best years of the Federalist period, from the tables in the appendix to W. S. Tower, History of American Whaling Industry. The only Massa- chusetts ports fitting out whalers between 1803 and 1806 were Nantucket and New Bed- ford, and the only other American whaling ports were Hudson and Sag Harbor, N.Y., and New London, Conn., each of which fitted out an average of one whaler annually. 2 Average for 1805-06 only.
III COMPARISON OF ARRIVALS FROM CERTAIN FOREIGN PORTS AT BOSTON, NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA, BALTIMORE, AND NEW ORLEANS, 1857 1
Vessels from
Boston
New York
Philadelphia
Baltimore
New Orleans
British East Indies
98
37
Manila, Batavia, etc.
24
20
China
6
4I
..
..
. .
Chile
15
2
..
12
. .
Buenos Aires
15
26
..
3
. .
Brazil
17
151
45
74
83
Porto Rico
7
192
16
56
7
Hayti and St. Domingo
161
174
15
Cuba
289
967
163
81
3II
Russia
23
8
Mediterranean
III
179
48
22
66
Turkey
24
7
..
. .
British West Indies
29
261
54
90
25
England
IIO
583
75
30
II36
Canada and
Maritime Provinces
1913
342
77
73
.
Total
2842
2990
493
44I
I628
1 Boston Board of Trade, Fourth Annual Report (1858), 85.
376
1
Number of vessels annually fitted out for
Tonnage
Gallons of oil brought in
Average per vessel
Northern fishery
Southern fishery
.
. .
. .
. .
APPENDIX: STATISTICS IV FOREIGN PLACES WHENCE VESSELS ARRIVED IN PRINCIPAL CUSTOMS DISTRICTS OF MASSA- CHUSETTS, YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1857 1
NEW- BURYPORT
GLOUCES- TER
SALEM
BOSTON
NEW BEDFORD
No.
Tons
No.
Tons
No.
Tons
No.
Tons
No.
Tons
British East Indies
. .
.
·
I
275
98
80,780
.
·
Philippines
. .
. .
I
289
19
14,429
Dutch East Indies China
. .
..
. .
6
3,368
.
..
Africa
. .
..
.
..
32
7,843
15
4,058
.
..
Azores, Cape Verde Islands, Canaries
15
3,835
4
941
Gibraltar & Malta
582
..
Spanish Mediterra- nean ports
I7
4,879
..
French Mediterra- nean ports
Sardinia
Tuscany
. .
.
IO
4,389
..
Naples & Sicily
. .
..
..
. .
..
..
..
.
2
771
. .
Spain, Atlantic ports France,
I
300
I
492
3
733
17
14,657
·
. .
. .
. .
. .
5
1,858
Norway & Sweden
Russia
.. .
..
4
2,198
2
707
140 143,299
..
..
Belgium & Holland
. .
. .
.
..
Canada
8
915
I56
I
104
Maritime Provinces
29
2,340
183
15,885
290
24,978
1913 235,998
42
5,957
S. Pierre & Miquelon
6
727
..
..
Cuba
Porto Rico
8
1,120
. .
I
17I
29
5,929
..
Other W. Indies
3
708
I2:
2,249
..
Hayti & San Domingo
I
194
·
.
·
5
6
1,124
New Grenada & Venezuela
Surinam & Cayenne
Brazil
. .
14
2,430
17
3,695
..
Uruguay
I
222
.
. 7,927
.
Peru
. .
..
. .
3
2,087
.
Sandwich Islands
..
..
. .
I
1,089
3
2,391
Returned from Whaling
. .
3
617
3
845
132
40.565
TOTAL
38
3,760
211
23,975
375 43,488
3012
714,821
183 50,009
. .
.
. .
. .
289
70,526
I
51
British W. Indies
..
.
22
5,206
II
2,095
II
596 2,113
Argentine Republic
4
1,194
15
4,823
. .
Chile
.
..
15
10,452
.
.
England & Scotland
. .
..
. .
IO
5,744
..
..
.
I
341
14
5,502
..
..
.
5
2,466
.
..
Smyrna
24
8,026
Black Sea
I
527
Portugal
. .
..
.
:
..
.
.
65
22,285
3,390
. .
..
. .
.. .
7
1,IOI
.
..
Mexico & Central America
. .
I61
27,028
. .
British Honduras
. .
. .
·
. .
3
1 From Commerce and Navigation Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, 1857. Vessels are entered only once for a voyage in this table, generally from the last port of call, or from the port where the principal cargo was taken.
377
.
..
22
10,380
22
5
3
I
. .
V
TONNAGE OF SHIPPING OWNED IN EACH CUSTOMS DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, AND IN THE DISTRICT OF NEW YORK CITY. 1798-1860.1
DISTRICT 2
Dec. 31, 1798
Dec. 31, 1800
Dec. 31, 1807
Dec. 31, 1810
Dec. 31, 1820
Dec. 31, 1830
Sept. 30, 1840
June 30, 1850
June 30, 1855
June 30, 1860
Newburyport
19,673 (with
20,615 Salem)
34,630
39,100
20,44I
16,577
23,965
23,261 578
418
976
Gloucester
10,279
9,375
13,052
11,394
11,440
11,74I
17,072
22,474 28,916
34,237
40,500
Salem
25,646
25,82 I
41,083
41,463
33,046
28,195
37,020
1
3,173 6,842
8,869
7,906
Boston
80,74I
96,312
119,510
149,12I
23,028
21,070
19,476
220,243 27,504
10,722
10,235
8,210
Fall River
5,468
5,996
6,780
7,126
6,353
3,661
8,815
13,10I
20,534
16,128
New Bedford
14,532
16,355
25,222
26,378
32,245
55,256
89,089
127,960
169,986
149,700
Barnstable
16,100
13,707
18,454
16,175
20,810
25,184
56,556
91,102
80,615
63,566
Edgartown
402
645
1,000
1,392
2,792
8,130
7,609
8,484
8,753
Nantucket
13,709
11,760
17,540
16,777
1,500 28,513
22,327
31,915
29,012
23,135
10,437
TOTAL, MASS.
215,177
231,258
321,035
354,153
316,069
329,498
536,526
685,437
979,207
835,435
New York
155,435
146,442
217,381
268,548
231,215
256,557
414,817
835,867
1,288,235
1,464,001
1 From the Commerce and Navigation Reports and American State Papers Commerce and Navigation, I and II.
2 Newburyport district included all towns on the lower Merrimac; Ipswich included Essex, and until after 1800 both were included in Salem; Gloucester included Rockport and Manchester; the district of Salem and Beverly, separated after 1840, included Danvers; Marblehead included Swampscott and Nahant; Boston included Charlestown, Medford, all towns on Boston Bay, and Cohasset. Plymouth included Scituate, Duxbury and Kingston; Barnstable included the whole of Cape Cod; Fall River (called Dighton before 1840), included all ports on the Taunton River; New Bedford included Fairhaven, the western side of Buzzards Bay, and Westport; Edgartown included Martha's Vineyard and Elizabeth Islands.
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