USA > Massachusetts > The maritime history of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 > Part 6
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What with the commissions, duties, presents, and graft that must be yielded at every step to hoppo, comprador, or linguist, the cost of doing business at Canton was very heavy. The Columbia's first lading, of one thousand and fifty sea-otter skins, sold for $21,404.71; but after fees, expenses, and repairs were deducted, only $11,241.51 remained to invest in a homeward cargo. Even after the ropes were learned, it was a clever captain who expended less than six thou- sand dollars at Canton. Yet the American demand for tea, nankeens, crapes, and silks increased so fast, and Boston merchant-shipowners proved so efficient in the cheap handling and distribution of China goods to all
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THE CANTON MARKET
parts of the world, that the trade grew by leaps and bounds. The value of imports at Canton on American vessels rose to over five million dollars in 1805-06; of this over one million was accounted for by 17,445 sea- otter, 140,297 seal, and 34,460 beaver-skins, and 1600 piculs of sandalwood. Most of the remainder was spe- cie brought directly from Boston, New York, and Phil- adelphia. The same year American vessels exported almost ten million pounds of tea from Canton. It was a constant marvel to Europeans, who conducted the China trade in great ships owned by chartered monopolies, how the Americans managed to survive these heavy charges with their small, individually owned vessels. Yet the American, and particularly the Boston way of China trading was the more econom- ical. Free competition, and elimination of pomp and circumstance, more than made up for the small craft's disadvantage in 'overhead.'
When the winter season brought favoring winds, the ships quickly completed their lading, obtained the Grand Chop that passed them down-river, and caught the northeast monsoon down the China Sea. Off the coast of Borneo began several hundred miles of danger- ous waters: shoals, reefs, and fantastic islands, baffling winds and treacherous currents, among which one had the feeling that Conrad describes, of being constantly watched. Let a vessel but touch on submerged reef, and hundreds of Malay proas come swarming to take her life's blood. Through Gaspar Passage or Banka Straits the vessel reached a welcome stretch of open water, and before long the sight of Java Head. A stop for fresh provisions was made off the village of Anjer, where Java "rose from level groves of shore palms to lofty blue peaks terraced with rice and red- massed kina plantations, with shining streams and
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
green kananga flowers and tamarinds, and the land breeze, fragrant with clove buds and cinnamon, came off to the ship like a vaporous dusk."1 There, the ship was quickly surrounded by a swarm of canoes plied by naked Malays, and laden with cocoanuts, oranges, mangoes and mangosteen; with Java sparrows, par- rots, monkeys, green turtles, and Malacca-joint canes.
From this enchanted spot the ship threaded the Sunda Straits, full of dangerous rocks that rose out of seventy-fathom depths, toward which the currents ir- resistibly drew becalmed vessels. "Thank God we are clear of Sunda Straits," confided a Boston shipmaster to his sea journal on November 19, 1801. "'T is sur- prising to see the joy depicted on every one's counte- nance at getting clear of these horrid straits. Many of the sailors who had never been off duty was now obliged to take to their beds. Many a time they had to support themselves on a Gun while doing their duty. Still they would not give out till we got clear. Such men as these deserve my best regards."
Once a vessel was clear of the straits, a quartering southeast wind stretched her across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar and the Cape of Good Hope. Simon's Town was frequently visited for a little smuggling. Then, after a last call at St. Helena, the China trader squared away for Cape Cod.
"There are better ships nowadays, but no better seamen," wrote an aged Boston merchant in 1860; and his words still hold good. Of these gallant Nor'west- men, who thought no more of rounding the Horn than their descendants do of rounding Cape Cod, Captain
1 Hergesheimer, Java Head.
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THE CANTON MARKET
' Bill' Sturgis was one of the best. A tough, beetly- browed son of a Cape Cod shipmaster, he left Boston for the Coast in 1798 as sixteen-year-old foremast hand on the ship Eliza, belonging to T. H. Perkins, his young but wealthy relative. He returned to Boston five years later as master of the Lambs' ship Caroline, and of the fur trade. On his third voyage, in command of Theodore Lyman's new ship Atahualpa with $300,- 000 in specie on board, he beat off an attack of sixteen pirate junks in Macao Roads. Returning, he formed with John Bryant, of Boston, the firm of Bryant & Sturgis, which after the War of 1812 revived the North- west fur trade, and opened the hide traffic with Cali- fornia.
William Sturgis became one of the wealthiest mer- chants of Boston, and lived to hear the news of Gettys- burg; but no one dared call him a merchant prince. Owing perhaps to the caricature of leisure-class display he had seen among the Northwest Indians, Captain Sturgis refused to surround himself with paintings, bric-à-brac, and useless furniture. Throughout the worst period of interior decoration, his simple mansion on Church Green remained as neat and bare as a ship's cabin. When he occupied a Boston seat in the Great and General Court, one of the professional orators of that body got off a long Greek quotation. Captain Bill replied in one of the Indian dialects of the North- west Coast, which, he explained, was much more to the point, and probably as well understood by his col- leagues, as that of the honorable and learned gentle- man. Public-spirited without self-advertisement, writ- ing and lecturing with salty emphasis on the Oregon country, an honored member of learned societies, yet proud that he came in through the hawse-hole; Wil- liam Sturgis was the finest type of Boston merchant
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
created by these far-flung adventures of Federalist days.
Another famous Nor'westman, who had neither the background nor the connections of William Sturgis, was Captain John Suter. Born of Scots parents near Norfolk, Virginia, in 1781, left a penniless orphan at the age of eight, he made his way to Boston on a schooner. The child was befriended by a Boston pilot, who taught him to hand, reef and steer, to read his Bible, and to live straight. At seventeen he began his deep-sea voyages. The next two years brought ad- ventures enough to have dampened any one's ardor for seafaring ; privateering against France, capture, and a Brest dungeon; a West-India voyage, impressment into a British frigate, an attack of smallpox, and one of yellow jack.' Yet no sooner was the boy back in Bos- ton than he shipped as foremast hand on the ship Alert outward bound to the Northwest Coast and Canton.
Without education, family, or anything but his own merits to recommend him, John Suter did so well on his first Northwest voyage that on his second, in 1804, he sailed as mate and "assistant trader" on the ship Pearl. On her return, he was promoted to master and supercargo, and made a most successful voyage to the Coast and Canton. The value of ship, outfit, and cargo, judging from statistics of other voyages, could not have exceeded forty thousand dollars.1 In spite of some unpleasantness with the Indians - who once had to be cleared from the Pearl's decks by cross-fire from the loopholes - Captain Suter collected enough furs
1 The cargoes of twelve vessels which cleared from Boston for the Northwest Coast between 1797 and 1800 were invoiced between $7500 and $19,700. (Solid Men of Boston, 76.) The Caroline in 1803 asked only $14,000 and obtained but $13,000 insurance for ship, cargo, and outfit. The rate was seventeen per cent, covering risk "against the Natives and as well on shore as on board."
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CAPTAIN WILLIAM STURGIS
CAPTAIN JOHN SUTER
THE CANTON MARKET
and sandalwood to pay all expenses at Canton, and lay out $156,743.21 in goods. His return cargo is so typical of that trade and period, that I give it in detail, from the Captain's own manuscript memoranda, with the prices realized at auction sale in Boston.
SALES OF SHIP PEARL'S CARGO AT BOSTON, 1810
50 blue and white dining sets, 172 pieces each. .. $ 2 290.00 480 tea sets, 49 pieces each 2 704.80 30 boxes enameled cups and sauces, 50 dozen each I 360.00 100 boxes Superior Souchong tea ..
795.87
100 chests Souchong 3 834.66
235 Hyson.
13 290.65
160 Hyson Skin
5 577.40
400
other teas. 13 668.48
200 chests Cassia of 2208 "matts" each 8 585.52
170 000 pieces 'Nankins' 118 850.00
14 000 (280 bales) blue do.
24 195.00
5 000 (50 ) yellow do.
6 800.00
2 000 (50 "
) white do
2 580.00
24 bottles oil of Cassia . 466.65
92 cases silks (black 'sinchaws,' black 'sattins,' white and blue striped do. dark brown plains, bottle-green and black striped 'sattins for Gentlemens ware'. 56 344.61
And sundries, bring the total to 261 343.18
Expenses of sale, including auctioneer's commission, wharfage, truckage, "advertising in Centinel and Gazette, 5.50," "advertising and crying of sales, 30.31," "liquors, 5.88" 2 129.06
Captain Suter's 'primage,' 5% on balance.
12 960.70
Balance to owners 246 253.42
On this were paid customs duties, within 12 months. .. 39 602.95
Net profit on voyage. 206 650.47
Having proved himself both a keen trader and an able master, Captain Suter was offered by George
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
Lyman a 'primage' of ten per cent, with the usual 'privilege' and salary, to succeed Captain Sturgis on the Atahualpa. He accepted, and took a sixteenth share in ship and cargo as well.
Owing to his ruthless repulse of a band of Indians who had boarded the Pearl, Captain Suter returned to the Coast a marked man. One day an Indian chief came on board, ostensibly to trade. Immediately a flotilla of dugouts, containing over two thousand warriors, issued from behind a wooded point and sur- rounded the Atahualpa. They found a worthy suc- cessor to Captain Sturgis on her quarterdeck. Suter took the chief by the throat, put a pistol to his head, and told him to order the canoes away or he would blow his brains out. The order was given. Deliber- ately weighing anchor, Captain Suter made sail, and when free of the canoes released his prisoner, who turned out to be the very Indian who had successfully attacked John Jacob Astor's Tonquin.
Owing to the War of 1812 and the presence of British cruisers in the Pacific, Captain Suter sold the Atahu- alpa at Hawaii at considerable sacrifice; but he got enough furs into Canton to send home, after peace was concluded, a cargo that netted the owners almost $120,000 on their original adventure of not over $40,000.
Would that we could reproduce the language, ex- pressions, and motions of that extinct breed, the Nor'- westman of Boston! Of John Suter, little survives but bare facts, and one anecdote. He was more deeply religious than most New England-born sea-captains, and read the Bible aloud daily on shipboard. One young scamp of a supercargo amused himself by put- ting back the bookmark at the conclusion of every day's reading, until the Captain remarked mildly that
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THE CANTON MARKET
he seemed to be having head winds through the Book of Daniel! After a sixth and a seventh voyage around the world, Captain Suter settled down in Boston to the tranquil joys of home and family, church and lodge, that he had fairly won from sea and savage barter.
"Sir, you'l please to let my mama know that I am well, Mr. Boit [the fifth mate, aged seventeen] also requests you'l let his parent know he is in health." This postscript to a letter of John Hoskins, clerk of the Columbia, to her principal owner, reminds us how young were the Yankee seamen of that period. 'It seems that the generation of Revolutionary privateers- men was so quickly absorbed in our expanding mer- chant marine as to call the youngest classes to the colors. A famous youngsters' voyage to Eastern waters, many times described, was that of the Derby ship Benjamin, of Salem, in 1792-94. Captain Na- thaniel Silsbee, later United States Senator from Massachusetts, was but nineteen when he took com- mand of this vessel; yet he had followed the sea for five years, served as Captain Magee's clerk on the Astrea, and commanded two voyages to the West In- dies. His first mate, Charles Derby, was but one year older; his clerk, Richard J. Cleveland, but eighteen. The second mate, an old salt of twenty-four, proved insubordinate and was put ashore!
With a miscellaneous cargo, including hops, saddlery, window glass, mahogany boards, tobacco, and Madeira wine, these schoolboys made a most successful voyage to the Cape of Good Hope and Ile de France, using sound judgment as to ports, cargoes, and freight, amid embargoes and revolutions; slipping their cables at Capetown after dark in a gale of wind to escape a British frigate; drifting out of Bourbon with the ebb tide to elude a French brig-o'-war; spending a few
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
days fishing, shooting wild goats, and catching turtles at Ascension ; returning to Salem after nineteen months' absence, with a cargo which brought almost five hun- dred per cent profit to the owner, and enabled the young master to make a home for his mother and sisters.
Captain Silsbee was by no means the youngest ship- master on record. James Howland, 2d, of New Bed- ford, was given a merchant ship by his father on his eighteenth birthday, and as her captain went on a honeymoon voyage to the Baltic with his still younger bride, before the year elapsed.
But the most remarkable youthful exploit in this bright dawn of Pacific adventure, that has come to my notice, is John Boit, Jr.'s voyage around the world, in the eighty-nine-ton sloop Union, of Boston.
At the age of nineteen, on August 1, 1794, he sailed from Newport as master of this sixty-foot craft and her crew of twenty-two, with ten carriage guns, eight swivels, and a full cargo and outfit for the Northwest Coast. The voyage south was pleasantly broken by catching green turtles and shooting albatross - one measuring sixteen feet tip to tip; by celebrating Christ- mas Day, and stopping at St. Iago and the Falklands, to save the crew from scurvy, and to hunt wild hogs. The Union rounded the Horn safely in thick, blowy weather, reaching 57º 42' south latitude on February 4, 1795. On May 16, two hundred and sixty days out, she sighted land, and the next day dropped anchor in "Columbia's cove, Bulfinch's Sound," on Vancouver Island. Here, young Boit tells us, he felt quite at home. The natives recognized him, and inquired after each and every member of the Columbia's crew. Furs were double the price of 1792, but trade was brisk, and the sloop went as far north as 54° 15' to complete her cargo.
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THE CANTON MARKET
On June 20, when lying at anchor in Puget Sound, the Union was attacked by several hundred Indians under Chief Scootch-Eye. With husky savages swarm- ing around the sloop and over his bulwarks, Captain Boit and his crew kept their nerve, and without a sin- gle casualty to themselves killed the chief and forty of his warriors. When they got under weigh, and stood in toward the nearest village, the Indians came out trembling, waving green boughs and offering otter- skins in propitiation.
After a fruitless attempt to cross the bar at the mouth of the Columbia River, the Union went north again to Queen Charlotte's Island, and left the Coast for Canton on September 12, 1795. One month later, Captain Boit sighted "Owhyhee," at a distance of thirty leagues. The next day, sailing alongshore, the sloop was visited by native canoes bringing hogs and pineapples, and "the females were quite amorous." On December 5, the sloop joined seven larger American vessels at Whampoa. After exchanging his sea-otter for silk and nankeens, and taking freight and passen- gers for the Ile de France, he got under weigh in com- pany with the American fleet on January 12, 1796. It was a two months' sail through the China Sea, the Straits of Sunda, and the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. Completing his cargo there with coffee and pepper, Captain Boit began the last leg of his voyage at the end of March, 1796. After passing the Island of Mada- gascar, he found the sloop's mast sprung, and had to fish it and apply preventer backstays while under weigh. Then came a four days' westerly gale, which stove in part of the Union's bulwarks, and swept the hen-coops off her deck, as she lay to. Early in May she rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and caught the southeast trades. Off Georges Bank, she was brought
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
to by the French sloop-of-war Scipio, but allowed to pass "with the utmost politeness." Near Boston Har- bor the British frigate Reason fired a shot through the Union's staysail, and forced the young master to come aboard with his papers, but "finding they could not make a prize of the sloop, suffer'd me to pass, after treating me in a rough and ungentlemanlike manner." At last, on July 8, came the welcome gleam of Boston Light. Castle William, as seafaring men still called Fort Independence, saluted the returning sloop with fifteen guns, which she returned. Anchoring in the inner harbor, she saluted the town, and got "three huzzas of welcome" from the wharves. The Union made a "saving voyage," beat most of the fleet home, and was the first, possibly the only, sloop-rigged vessel ever to circumnavigate the globe.
In view of the newspaper publicity given nowadays to men of twice Boit's age and experience for cross- ing the Atlantic in vessels no smaller than the Union and far better equipped, it is refreshing to note the scant attention he got. "Sloop Union, Boit, Canton," in small type at the end of 'Arrivals' in the "Boston Centinel." That was all ! 1
Many a Boston family owes its rise to fame and fortune to the old Nor'west and China trade; and not a few of them were founded by masters who came in through the hawse-hole, like Sturgis and Suter. Emoluments were much higher than on any other trade route. Masters and mates received only twenty to twenty-five dollars monthly wages; but each officer
1 Another Boston paper reports his experience with the men-of-war, but makes no comment on his voyages.
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SLOOP UNION ENTERING BOSTON HARBOR AFTER HER VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD
THE CANTON MARKET
had the 'privilege' of one-half to five tons (twenty to two hundred cubic feet) cargo space on the homeward passage for his private adventures in China goods; beside 'primage,' a commission of from one to eight per cent1 on the net proceeds of the voyage. It was only prudent for owners to be generous with their ships' officers, on a route where the opportunities for private trading and fixing accounts were so great. Even with half the luck of John Suter, a master could clear twenty-five hundred dollars a year, and pyramid his profits by taking a share in the next voyage he commanded.
These wages and allowances were sufficient to at- tract the best type of New Englander. Nor'westmen's officers were almost exclusively native-born or adopted Yankees, and the men recruited largely from Cape Cod, Boston, and 'down East.' But every forecastle contained a few foreigners.2
No Richard Dana has told the story of the Nor'- westmen from the foremast angle. Unless the rec- ords of our admiralty courts yield something, the common seaman's side is lost. Certain it is, that the Northwest fur trade, until it existed no more, enjoyed a greater prestige and popularity among New England seamen than any other route.3 Mutinies occurred, but
1 Suter's primage of ten per cent on the Atahualpa was exceptional. On his next voyage, in the Mentor, he received but seven and one-half. The Mentor's chief mate had twenty dollars wages, one per cent on net sales at Canton, and two and one-half tons 'privilege' home.
2 See chapter VIII.
' Dana tells a good story illustrating this, in his Two Years Before the Mast. On her homeward voyage from the California coast, with a cargo of hides, the Alert spoke a Plymouth brig, and sent a boat aboard to procure fresh provisions. Her Yankee mate leaned over the rail, and asked where they were from. "From the Nor'west Coast!" said sailor Joe, wishing to gain glory in the eyes of this humble West-India trader. "What's your cargo?" came next. "Skins!" said Joe. "Here and there a horn?" said the mate dryly, and every one laughed.
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
mutinies prove little. One that Captain Suter sup- pressed in Honolulu Harbor, with his strong right arm and cutlass, was caused by gambling among the crew. Many deserted in the Sandwich Islands, but who would not? Rumors have come down of unscrupulous own- ers, who in order to save money abandoned men on the Northwest Coast and substituted Kanakas. Cap- tain James Magee brought the first Chinaman to the United States, but he was a student, not a sailor. And few such made the voyage twice. As "China Jack" (the favorite Whampoa factotum for American ves- sels) remarked after essaying a round trip to Boston, "Too muchee strong gale, sea allsame high mast head - no can see sky!"
CHAPTER VII THE SALEM EAST INDIES 1790-1812
THE most formidable rival to Boston in the contest for Oriental wealth lay but sixteen miles "to the east'd," as we say on the Massachusetts coast when we mean north. Salem, with a little under eight thousand in- habitants, was the sixth city in the United States in 1790.1 Her appearance was more antique even than that of Boston, and her reek of the salt water, that almost surrounded her, yet more pronounced. For half a mile along the harbor front, subtended by the long finger of Derby Wharf, ran Derby Street, the residen- tial and business center of the town. On one side were the houses of the gentry, Derbys and Princes and Crowninshields, goodly gambrel or hip-roofed brick and wooden mansions dating from the middle of the century, standing well back with tidy gardens in front. Opposite were the wharves, separated from the street by counting-rooms, warehouses, ship-chandlers' stores, pump-makers' shops, sailmakers' lofts; all against a background of spars, rigging, and furled or brailed-up sails. Crowded within three hundred yards of Derby Street, peeping between the merchants' mansions and over their garden walls like small boys behind a po- lice cordon, were some eighteen or nineteen hundred wooden buildings, including dwellings of pre-witch- craft days, with overhanging upper stories, peaked gables, small-paned windows, and hand-rifted clap- boards black with age.
1 Not including Beverly, which with three thousand, three hundred inhabitants in 1790, was combined with Salem as a port of entry in 1789.
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
A few steps from the merchant's mansion lies his counting-room and wharf, where his favorite vessel is loading Russia duck, West-India sugar, New-England rum and French brandy for anywhere beyond the Cape of Good Hope; to return with goodness knows what produce of Asia, Africa, and the Malay Archipel- ago, which you may then purchase at wholesale or retail from the selfsame wharf. From his front chamber the merchant may watch the progress of his new vessel in the near-by shipyard; but unless he be a privileged character like 'King' Derby, with "an intuitive faculty in judging of models and proportions," he had best not interfere. Shipbuilding, an ancient industry in Salem, is now growing fast; the China voyages of the Grand Turk and Astrea produced such a demand for new ton- nage that Enos Briggs, a master builder of Pembroke in the Old Colony, has come to Salem, and at the head of Derby Wharf is constructing a new Grand Turk of five hundred and sixty tons, for which the new duck manufactory is weaving sailcloth. Next year he shall astonish the natives by launching a vessel sideways from the wharf; all Salem, summoned by town crier, helping or cheering. Ebenezer Mann, another North- Riverite, has the barque Good Intent on the stocks for Simon Forrester; and a vessel is rising on every slip of the ancient yard where Retire Becket carries on the business of his ancestors.
A Salem boy in those days was born to the music of windlass chanty and caulker's maul; he drew in a taste for the sea with his mother's milk; wharves and ship- yards were his playground; he shipped as boy on a coaster in his early teens, saw Demerara and St. Petersburg before he set foot in Boston, and if he had the right stuff in him, commanded an East-Indiaman before he was twenty-five.
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THE SALEM EAST INDIES
Whenever a Salem lad could tear himself away from the wharves, he would go barefoot to Juniper Point or pull a skiff to Winter Island, and scan the bay for approaching sail. Marblehead was a better vantage- point; but it was a lion-hearted Salem boy indeed who dared venture within the territorial waters of Marble- head in those days! The appearance of a coaster or fisherman or West-India trader caused no special emotion; but if the stately form of an East-Indiaman came in view, then 't was race back to Derby Wharf, and earn a silver Spanish dollar for good news. The word speeds rapidly through the town, which begins to swarm like an ant-hill; counting-room clerks rush out to engage men for unloading, sailors' taverns and board- ing-houses prepare for a brisk run of trade, parrots scream and monkeys jabber, and every master of his own time makes for cap-sill, roof-tree, or other vantage- point.
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