USA > Massachusetts > The maritime history of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 > Part 4
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30
The merchants even shifted the burden of taxation to those who could least bear it. Forty per cent of the state expenses were raised by poll-taxes, which fell equally on rich and poor, merchant prince and plough- boy. The customs duties were low, and largely evaded; Samuel Breck tells in his "Recollections" how the best people would smuggle in a good proportion of each cargo, as if the customs were still the King's.
Owing to the dislocation of the West-India trade and the departure of the French and British armies, there was no longer a market for the farming and domestic produce of central New England. Prices and common labor fell to almost nothing. At this crisis, the state government began to distrain on tax delinquents, and the merchants on their debtors. The courts became clogged with suits. Farms which had been in one family for generations, were sold under the hammer at a fraction of their real value, to pay debts contracted at inflated prices, or a few years' overdue taxes. The situation became intolerable to men who had fought for liberty.
In the summer of 1786 the storm broke. The up-
36
REVOLUTION AND RECONSTRUCTION
country yeomanry, under the leadership of Revolu- tionary officers like Daniel Shays, began breaking up sessions of the courts, in the hope of a respite from confiscations until the next state election. Govern- ment ordered them to disperse, and preached "fru- gality, industry and self-denial." The yeomanry persisted, and the tide of lawlessness rolled nearer Boston. Governor Bowdoin proclaimed the rebel leaders outlaws. They then resolved to be outlaws in- deed, and attacked the Springfield arsenal in search of better weapons than pitchforks and Queen's arms. One ' whiff of grapeshot' dispersed the ragged battal- ions to the bleak hills of western Massachusetts. Loyal militia and gentlemen volunteers from the seaboard, advancing through the deep snow of a hard winter, broke up the remaining bands, early in 1787. It was a victory of property over democracy; of maritime Massachusetts over farming Massachusetts.
Notwithstanding these civil disorders, some brave efforts were made both by the Commonwealth and by private individuals, in the years near 1786, to make the state more self-sufficient. The Massachusetts Bank, first in the state, was chartered in 1784. A small manufacturing boom set in about the same time. The "Boston Glass House" was established by a group of local capitalists in 1786, and received a state monopoly for manufacturing window-glass. The Cabot family established the Beverly Cotton Manufactory in 1787. Most of these experiments closed their doors in a few years' time. But the Charles River Bridge from Boston to Charlestown, opened on the eleventh anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill, was a financial success, and encouraged the building of several other toll-bridges that greatly increased the facilities of the seaport towns.
37
MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
In the meantime, commerce was slowly reviving. Yankee skippers 1 were learning to outwit both Bar- bary corsairs and West India regulations. Orders in Council changed neither the Jamaican appetite for dried codfish, nor the Yankee thirst for Jamaica rum. A Massachusetts vessel putting into a British port "in distress" was likely to obtain an official permit to land its cargo and relieve the "starving population." France, thanks to Jefferson's diplomacy, gradually re- opened her insular possessions; and Spain permitted di- rect trade with Havana, Trinidad, and New Orleans. St. Eustatius, St. Bartholomew, and the Virgin Islands became entrepôts for illicit traffic. Much New England lumber and whale oil found its way to the West India and English markets by acquiring a "British " character in Nova Scotia. Despite the English disposition to "cramp us in the Cod-Fishery," as Stephen Higgin- son 'put it, and the bounties paid by France to her pêcheurs d'Islande, the West Indies took a greater pro- portion of our dried codfish in 1790 than in 1775. But the total exports were still far below those of the pre- Revolutionary era.
By 1787 the West-India trade was in a measure re- stored. Beverly, for instance, imported about 3100 gallons of foreign rum, 7000 gallons of "other foreign distilled spirits," 400 pounds of cocoa, 3500 pounds of sugar, and 50,000 pounds of leaf tobacco, between April I and July 1, 1787. The benefits of a reopened market for farm produce and wooden ware, percolating into the interior, did more to salve the wounds of Shays's Rebellion than all the measures passed by the Great and General Court.
1 This term is correctly used only for the masters of fishing vessels, coasters, and small craft such as traded with the West Indies. A docu- ment of 1775 in the Beverly Historical Society speaks of "the chuner Mary thomas Rusel Skiper & oner."
38
REVOLUTION AND RECONSTRUCTION
But the general commercial situation in Massachu- setts was still most unsatisfactory. Every state, under the Confederation, had its own customs duties and tonnage laws. When Massachusetts attempted to dis- criminate against British vessels, her neighbors re- ceived them with open arms; and British goods reached Boston from other ports by coasting sloops. Not even the coasting trade was confined to the American flag; and the port dues were constantly changed. More commercial treaties were needed with foreign powers. Federal bounties were needed to revive fishing. Shays's Rebellion, fortunately, sent such a thrill of horror through the states, that conservative forces drew to- gether to create a more perfect union.
In the struggle of 1788 over the ratification of the Federal Constitution, Massachusetts was a pivotal state. The voters returned an anti-Federalist majority to her ratifying convention. By various methods, enough votes were changed to obtain ratification. A meeting of four hundred Boston mechanics (following, it is said, a promise by local merchants to order three new vessels upon ratification) drew up strong Federalist resolutions, which turned the wavering Samuel Adams. Governor Hancock was reached by methods less direct. Boston hospitality had its influence. "I most Tel you I was never Treated with So must politeness in my life as I was afterwards by the Treadesmen of Boston merchants & every other Gentlemen," wrote a backwoods member. Finally the Convention ratified, by a majority of 19 out of 355 votes. The sectional alignment was significant. The coast and island coun- ties of Massachusetts proper cast 102 votes in favor, and only 19 against, ratification. The inland counties 1
1 Including Middlesex and Bristol, the bulk of whose population was agricultural at this period.
39
MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
cast 60 in favor, 128 against. For the third time in ten years, maritime Massachusetts won over farming Massachusetts.
On her proper element, maritime Massachusetts was already winning a cleaner fight :- victory over lethargy and despair; victory over powers who would cramp her restless energy, doom her ships to decay, and her seamen to emigrate. Some subtle instinct, or maybe thwarted desire of Elizabethan ancestors who, seeking in vain the Northwest Passage, founded an empire on the barrier, was pulling the ships of Massa- chusetts east by west, into seas where no Yankee had ever ventured. Off the roaring breakers of Cape Horn, in the vast spaces of the Pacific, on savage coasts and islands, and in the teeming marts of the Far East, the intrepid shipmasters and adventurous youth of New England were reclaiming their salt sea heritage.
CHAPTER IV PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC 1784-1792
MARITIME commerce was the breath of life for Massa- chusetts. When commerce languished, the common- wealth fell sick. When commerce revived even a little, the hot passions of Shays's Rebellion cooled just enough to permit a ratification of the Federal Con- stitution. Prosperity, not only of the seaport towns, but of the agricultural interior, depended as of old upon the success of seafaring Massachusetts. Without prosperity, emigration would follow, and slow decay, and death. The codfishermen must exact tribute from the Banks; the whalers must pursue their 'gigantic game' around the Horn, the merchants and trading vessels must recover their grip on the home market and the handling of Southern exports; must find substitutes for the protected trade of colonial days; must elude the Spanish guarda costas along the circumference of South America; must compete with English, Scots, and Dutchmen in the Baltic and the Indies; and must seek out new, virgin markets and sources of supply in the Pacific. All this had to be done, that Massachu- setts retain her position among the brighter stars of the American constellation. The doing of it determined her political orientation ; transformed a revolutionary com- munity, the most fecund source of political thought in the western world, into a conservative commonwealth, the spearhead of the aggressively reactionary Federal- ist party.
"From 1790 to 1820, there was not a book, a speech,
4I
MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
a conversation, or a thought in the State," wrote Emerson. Speaking relatively and broadly, he was right. The Yankee mind, engrossed in the struggle for existence, neglected things spiritual and intellectual during this Federalist period of its history; and the French Revolution made thought suspicious to a com- mercial community. Yet thought there was, even though the Sage of Concord might not call it by that name; the thought that opens up new channels of trade, sets new enterprises on foot, and erects a political system to consolidate them. By such thought, no less than the other, the grist of history is ground.
Every seaport of Massachusetts proper from New- buryport to Edgartown was quickening into new activity in 1789; none more so than the capital. The Boston of massacre and tea-party, of Sam Adams and Jim Otis, of uproarious mobs and radical meetings, was in transition to that quiet, prosperous, orderly Federalist Boston, the Boston of East-India merchants and Federalist statesmen; of Thomas Handasyd Per- kins, Charles Bulfinch, and Harrison Gray Otis.
In appearance, the Boston of 1790 was unchanged since 1750. Charles Bulfinch had returned from Eu- rope, but his native town had barely taken up the slack of the turbulent era; some accumulation of wealth was needed to employ his architectural talents. The eight- een thousand inhabitants were not crowded on their peninsula of seven hundred and eighty acres - about nine-tenths the area of Central Park, New York. As one approached it by the Charles River Bridge in 1790, Boston seemed "almost to stand in the water, at least to be surrounded by it, and the shipping, with the houses, trees, and churches, have a charming effect." Beacon Hill, a three-peaked grassy slope, still innocent of the gilded dome, dominated the town. From its
42
SAMUEL SHAW
PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC
base a maze of narrow streets paved with beach stones, wound their way seaward among ancient dwellings; dividing around Copp's and Fort Hills to meet again by the water's edge. One of them, to be sure, led to "landward to the west," but at spring tides even that, too, went "downward to the sea." Buildings crowded out to the very capsills of the wharves, which poked boldly into deep water. The uniform mass of slate and mossy shingle roofs, pointed, hipped, and gambreled, was broken by a few graceful church spires, serene elders of the masts that huddled about the wharves. As for the people, "Commerce occupies all their thought," writes Brissot de Warville in 1788, "turns all their heads, and absorbs all their speculations. Thus you find few estimable works, and few authors." But "let us not blame the Bostonians; they think of the useful before procuring themselves the agreeable. They have no brilliant monuments; but they have neat and commodious houses, superb bridges, and ex- cellent ships." To Timothy Dwight, of New Haven, the Bostonians seemed "distinguished by a lively imagination. ... Their enterprises are sudden, bold, and sometimes rash. A general spirit of adventure prevails here."
One bright summer afternoon in 1790 saw the close of a great adventure. On August 9, Boston town heard a salute of thirteen guns down-harbor. The ship Columbia, Captain Robert Gray, with the first Ameri- can ensign to girdle the globe snapping at her peak, was greeting the Castle after an absence of three years. Coming to anchor in the inner harbor, she fired another federal salute of thirteen guns, which a "great con- course of citizens assembled on the various wharfs re- turned with three huzzas and a hearty welcome." A rumor ran through the narrow streets that a native of
43
A
MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
"Owyhee" - a Sandwich-Islander - was on board; and before the day was out, curious Boston was grat- ified with a sight of him, marching after Captain Gray to call on Governor Hancock. Clad in a feather cloak of golden suns set in flaming scarlet, that came halfway down his brown legs; crested with a gorgeous feather helmet shaped like a Greek warrior's, this young Hawaiian moved up State Street like a living flame.
The Columbia had logged 41,899 miles since her de- parture from Boston on September 30, 1787. Her voyage was not remarkable as a feat of navigation; Magellan and Drake had done the trick centuries be- fore, under far more hazardous conditions. It was the practical results that counted. The Columbia's first voyage began the Northwest fur trade, which enabled the merchant adventurers of Boston to tap the vast reservoir of wealth in China.
The history of this discovery goes back to the close of hostilities, and reveals a thread of optimism and energy running through years of depression. In December, 1783, the little fifty-five-ton sloop Harriet, of Hingham, Captain Hallet, sailed from Boston with a cargo of ginseng for China. Putting in at the Cape of Good Hope, she met with some British East-Indiamen who, alarmed at this portent of Yankee competition, bought her cargo for double its weight in Hyson tea. Captain Hallet made a good bargain, but lost the honor of hoisting the first American ensign in Canton, to a New York ship, the Empress of China.
Although the capital and the initiative were of New York, the direction of this voyage was entrusted
44
PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC
to the supercargo 1 of the Empress, Major Samuel Shaw, of Boston, one of the few sons of New England mercantile families who had served through the entire war. The Empress of China arrived at Macao on August 23, 1784, six months out from New York; and despite Shaw's inexperience brought home a cargo that proved America need pay no further tribute for teas or silks to the Dutch or British. Major Shaw's report to the government was published, stimulating others to repeat the experiment; and he freely gave of his ex- perience to all who asked. After receiving the purely honorary title of American consul at Canton, he re- turned thither in 1786, on the ship Hope of New York, James Magee master, to establish the first American commercial house in China. He was also one of the first in the East-India trade. A short residence in Bombay so affected his liver, that he died on a home- ward voyage in 1794, in his fortieth year. Of Samuel Shaw it was said by that rugged shipmaster of Dux- bury, Amasa Delano, that "he was a man of fine tal- ents and considerable cultivation; he placed so high a value upon sentiments of honor that some of his friends thought it was carried to excess. He was can- did, just and generous, faithful in his friendships, an agreeable companion, and manly in all his inter- course."
Shortly after her arrival at Canton, the Hope was joined by the Grand Turk, of Salem, Captain Ebenezer West, the first Massachusetts vessel to visit the Far
1 A supercargo was the representative on shipboard of owners and consigners. He took no part in navigation, but handled the business side of the voyage. A captain often acted as supercargo, especially when a relative of the owners; in such cases he generally carried a clerk to keep the books. Promotion of a supercargo to the command of a vessel was called "coming in through the cabin window"; promotion of a foremast hand, "coming in through the hawse-hole."
45
MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
East. Her return to Salem on May 22, 1787, brought fabulous profits to her owner, whetted the appetite of every Massachusetts merchant, and (what was equally important) fixed their good wives' ambition on a chest of Hyson, a China silk gown, and a set of Canton china.
Although America was outstripping every other nation in China trade, save Britain, she could not long compete with Britain without a suitable medium. The Canton market accepted little but specie and eastern products. British merchants could import the spoil of India and the Moluccas - opium and mummie and sharks' fins and edible birds' nests. Yet Britain paid for the major part of her teas and silks in silver. Massachusetts, on the morrow of Shays's Rebellion, could not afford to do this. Ginseng could be procured and sold only in limited quantities. Unless some new product were found to tickle the palate or suit the fancy of the finicky mandarins, the Grand Turk's voyage were a flash in the pan. To find some- thing salable in Canton, was the riddle of the China trade. Boston and Salem solved it.
The ship Columbia was fitted out by a group of Boston merchants who believed the solution of the problem lay in the furs of the Northwest Coast. Cap- tain Cook's third voyage, the account of which was published in 1784, and John Ledyard's report of the Russian fur trade in Bering Sea, gave them the hint. Possibly they had also learned from Samuel Shaw that a few Anglo-Indian traders, whom Captain Gray later met on the Coast, had already sold Alaskan sea-otter at Canton.
Although privately financed, with fourteen shares of $3500 each,1 the voyage was conceived in the public
1 The shareholders were Joseph Barrell, Samuel Brown, and Captain Crowell Hatch, prominent Boston merchants; Charles Bulfinch the
46
CAPTAIN GRAY ASHORE AT WHAMPOA
SHIP COLUMBIA ATTACKED BY INDIANS IN JUAN DE FUCA STRAIT
PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC
spirit of the old merchant adventurers. A medal was struck to distribute among the natives. An expert furrier, a surgeon, and (luckily for us) an artist were taken. John Kendrick, of Wareham, commanded both the expedition, and the ship Columbia, eighty- three feet long, two hundred twelve tons burthen, built at Hobart's Landing on the North River, Scitu- ate, in 1773. Robert Gray, born of Plymouth stock in Tiverton, Rhode Island, and a former officer in the Continental navy, was master of the ninety-ton sloop Lady Washington, which accompanied the Columbia as tender. Both vessels made an unusually long passage, and encountered heavy westerly gales off Cape Horn, which they were the first North American vessels to pass. On April 1, 1788, in latitude 57° 57' south, they parted company. Gray reached the coast of "New Albion" eleven months out of Boston, and was joined by the Columbia at Nootka Sound, the fur-trading center on Vancouver Island. It was too late to do any trading that season, so both vessels were anchored in a sheltered cove, while the crew lived ashore in log huts and built a small boat. In the summer of 1789, before a full cargo of skins had been obtained, provisions began to run low. Captain Kendrick therefore remained be- hind, but sent Gray in the Columbia to Canton, where he exchanged his cargo of peltry for tea, and returned to Boston around the world.
The Columbia's first voyage, like most pioneering enterprises, was not a financial success. Fourteen American vessels preceded her to Canton, and most of them reached home before her. Four of them, belong- ing to Elias Hasket Derby, of Salem, had approached the China market from a different angle and with
architect, John Derby, son of E. H. Derby, of Salem, and J. M. Pintard, a merchant of New York.
47
-
MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
greater success. The ship Astrea, Captain James Magee,1 carried a miscellaneous cargo, which had taken almost a year to assemble. The barques Light Horse and Atlantic exchanged provisions at Mauritius (Ile de France) for bills which at Bombay, Calcutta, and Surat bought a good assortment for Canton; the brig Three Sisters, Captain Benjamin Webb, disposed of a mixed cargo at Batavia, where she was chartered by a Dutch merchant to carry Java products to Canton. She and the Atlantic were there sold, and the entire proceeds invested in silks, chinaware, and three- quarters of a million pounds of tea, which were loaded on the two larger vessels.
Elias Hasket Derby, ignorant even of the arrival of his vessels at Canton, was beginning to feel a bit nerv- ous toward the end of May, 1790, when a brig arrived with news of them. On June I, the Astrea was sighted in Salem Bay. But Mr. Derby's troubles were not yet over. On June 15, the Light Horse appeared; but for lack of wind was forced to anchor off Marblehead. In the night an easterly gale sprang up. The vessel was too close inshore to make sail and claw off. Early in the morning her crew felt that sickening sensation of dragging anchors. Astern, nearer, nearer came the granite rocks of Marblehead, where the ragged popula- tion perched like buzzards, not displeased at the pros- pect of rich wreckage at Salem's expense. "King Darby" hurried over in his post-chaise to watch half his fortune inching toward disaster on his very door- step. Finally, with but a few yards to spare between rudder and rocks, the anchors bit, and saved the Light
1 Captain James Magee (1750-1801), described as " a convivial, noble- hearted Irishman," during the Revolution commanded the man-of-war brig General Arnold, which was wrecked in Plymouth Bay. He mar- ried Margaret Elliot, sister of Mrs. Thomas Handasyd Perkins, and lived in the old Governor Shirley mansion at Roxbury.
48
PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC
Horse until a shift of wind brought her to the haven where she would be.
Two months later, Captain Gray entered Boston with a damaged cargo to find Captain Magee adver- tising China goods in the Boston papers. But the Columbia had opened a channel to fortune that her rivals were quick to follow.
As supercargo of the Astrea, Mr. Derby had chosen Captain Magee's young brother-in-law, Thomas Hand- asyd Perkins. The Boston " Herald of Freedom " for January 6, 1789, announced that all persons "wishing to adventure" aboard the Astrea "may be assured of Mr. Perkins' assertions for their interest." Those who accepted were not disappointed; and the pedigrees of many Boston fortunes can be traced to that China voyage and its consequences. Young Perkins inherited an aptitude for the fur trade from his grandfather, Thomas Handasyd Peck, the leading fur exporter of the province; and he had learned the mercantile busi- ness at his mother's knee. The widow Perkins, one of those remarkable New England women of the Revo- lutionary period, carried on her husband's business with such success that letters used to be received from abroad addressed to "Elizabeth Perkins, Esq." No wonder that, with such forbears, Thomas Handasyd Perkins became the first of Boston merchants, both in fortune and in public spirit.
On returning to Boston in 1790, young Perkins bought the little seventy-ton brigantine Hope, and sent her under Captain Gray's former mate, Joseph Ingraham, to the Northwest Coast. In a single summer she collected fourteen hundred sea-otter skins. The Columbia started on her second voyage in September, 1790, and the brigantine Hancock, one hundred fifty- seven tons, Samuel Crowell master, two months later.
49
MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
Lieutenant Thomas Lamb and his brother James, merchants, joined Captain Magee in building at Bos- ton, the ship Margaret, one hundred fifty tons, which sailed under the latter's command on December 24, 1791, "bound on a voyage of observation and enter- prise to the North-Western Coast of this Continent." Others quickly followed.
By 1792 the trade route Boston-Northwest Coast- Canton-Boston was fairly established. Not only the merchantmen of Massachusetts, but the whalers (of whom more anon), balked of their accustomed traffic by European exclusiveness, were swarming around the Horn in search of new markets and sources of supply. It was on May 12, 1792, that Captain Gray (according to the seventeen-year-old fifth mate of the Columbia, John Boit, Jr.) "saw an appearance of a spacious harbour abreast the Ship, haul'd our wind for it, observ'd two sand bars making off, with a passage between them to a fine river. Out pinnace and sent her in ahead and followed with the Ship under short sail, carried in from 1/2 three to 7 fm. and when over the bar had 10 fm. water, quite fresh. The River extended to the NE. as far as eye cou'd reach, and water fit to drink as far down as the Bars, at the entrance. We directed our course up this noble River in search of a Village. The beach was lin'd with Natives, who ran along shore following the Ship. Soon after, above 20 Canoes came off, and brought a good lot of Furs, and Salmon, which last they sold two for a board Nail. The furs we likewise bought cheap, for Copper and Cloth. They appear'd to view the Ship with the great- est astonishment and no doubt we was the first civ- ilized people that they ever saw. At length we arriv'd opposite to a large village, situate on the North side of the River, about 5 leagues from the entrance. . .. Capt.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.