USA > Massachusetts > The maritime history of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 > Part 7
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Let us follow one of the privileged, an old-time provincial magnate now in the East-India trade, as with powdered wig, cocked hat, and scarlet cloak, attended by Pompey or Cuff with the precious tele- scope, he puffs up garret ladder to captain's walk. What a panorama! To the east stretches the noble North Shore, Cape Ann fading in the distance. No sail in that direction, save a fisherman beating inside Baker's. Across the harbor, obscuring the southerly channel, Marblehead presents her back side of rocky pasture to the world at large, and Salem in particular. Wind is due south, tide half flood and the afternoon waning, so if the master be a Salem boy he will bring his ship around Peach's Point, inside Kettle Bottom, Endeavors, Triangles, and the Aqua Vitæs. We adjust the glass to the outer point where she must first appear, and wait impatiently. A flash of white as the sun
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
catches foretopgallant sails over Naugus Head; then the entire ship bursts into view, bowling along at a good eight knots. Her ensign's apeak, so all aboard are well. A puff of smoke bursts from her starboard bow, and then another, as the first crack of a federal salute strikes the ear. Fort William replies in kind, and all Salem with a roar of cheering. Every one recognizes the smart East-Indiaman that dropped down-harbor thirty months ago.
"Is the front chamber prepared for Captain Rich- ard?" asks our elderly merchant, as he descends to greet his son - just in time, for the ship, hauling close to the wind, is making for Derby Wharf. Within ten minutes she has made a running moor, brailed up her sails, and warped into the best berth. The crowd parts deferentially as master and supercargo stalk ashore, gapes at a turbaned Oriental who shipped as cabin boy, exchanges good-natured if somewhat Rabelaisian banter with officers and crew, and waits to see the mysterious matting-covered bales, shouldered out of the vessel's hold.
To conclude this picture of Salem at the dawn of her period of greatest prosperity, read this abstract of the entries and customs duties during a period of twenty days, from May 31 to June 18, 1790, as I found them in the old custom house on Derby Street; and remem- ber that these are foreign entries only, not including the fishermen, and the coasters that distributed Salem's winnings to a hundred American ports.
May 31. Brig William & Henry, B. Hodges master, from Canton. Tea, coffee, silks, spices and nankeens for Gray & Orne, Benj. Hodges, George Dodge, Jno. Apple- ton, Samuel Hewes Jr., Simon Elliot, Robt. Wyer, Mark Haskoll. $9,783.81 June 2. Schooner Betsy, William Wooldridge master,
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Salem) Of 7 These are to Certify that Schne Kust Dans by a Majority of Files regularly admitted of . Henter of the Salem Marine Society, at a Meetingy hold the as day of Sept was Given under my hand of the Best of the loosely thes & day of No: 150 g.
For Making See?
Manter
SALEM MARINE SOCIETY CERTIFICATE OF MEMBERSHIP
Above is a view of Salem Harbor from South Salem. Derby and Crowninshield wharves are shown on the left; Baker Island and Naugus Head in right back- ground. The small engravings on the left show men heading a barrel of dried fish, and a vessel hove down, having her seams payed with tar
THE SALEM EAST INDIES
from Cadiz. Lemons, feathers, raisins, oil and salt for William Gray .. .
114.30
June 3. Schooner Active, Seward Lee master, from Lisbon. Wine, salt, lemons, and feathers for William Gray 171.47 June 5. Schooner Lark, Saml. Foster master, from Cadiz. Salt, Lemons, figs, &c. for Brown & Thorndike .. .. 35-40
166.92
June 5. Schooner Bee, Hezekiah Wallace master, from Lisbon. Wine, salt and feathers for William Gray. . June 5. Ship Astrea, James Magee master, from Can- ton. Tea, silks, China ware, nankeens and other mer- chandise for O. Brewster, J. Powers, Wm. Cabot, Webb & Brown, E. Verry, A. Jacobs, David Barber, B. Pick- man, J. McGregore, G. Dodge, E. H. Derby, S. Parkman, D. Sears, E. Johnson, N. West, J. Gardner Jr., T. H. Perkins, Jno. Derby Jr., Webb & Bray, Magee & Perkins, J. Magee, T. H. Perkins & Co., J. Magee & Co ..
27, 109.18
June II. Schooner Experiment, Joseph Teel master, from St. Eustatia. Sugar, rum, gin and salt for R. Beck- ett & J. Teel.
123.64
June II. Brig Three Brothers, John Collins master, from the West Indies. Sugar, rum, iron and salt for John Collins. .
207.82
June 12. Schooner Nancy, Sam. McIntire master, from the Isle of May.1 Salt for Samuel Page.
96.12
June 14. Schooner Hanah, Rich. Ober master, from Lisbon. Salt, wine, and lemons for Hill & Ober.
55.23
June 15. Ship Light Horse, Ichabod Nichols master, from Canton. Tea, silks and China ware for E. H. Derby, Hy. Elkins, J. Crowninshield, I. Nichols, Jno. Derby Jr., E. Gibaut.
16,312.98
June 17. . Schooner Dolphin, Thos. Bowditch Jr. master, from Port au Prince. Salt, sugar, and coffee for Norris & Burchmore. 56.97
June 17. Schooner Sally, John Burchmore master, from Port au Prince. Sugar and molasses for Jno. Norris & Co. June 18. Schooner Lydia, Gabriel Holman master, from Aux Cayes. Molasses for Sprague & Holman .. ... June 18. Schooner Sukey & Betsey; Thos. Bowditch master, from Martinico. Molasses, raisins & limes, for Saml. Ingersoll. 101.97
323.93
70.43
1 Maia, in the Cape Verde Islands.
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
June 18. Schooner John, Nehemiah Andrews master, from St. Lucia. Sugar, coffee, cocoa and molasses for N. West .. 297.42
June 18. Brig Favorite, William Bradshaw master, from Lisbon. Salt, wine, and lemons for Joshua Ward & Co .. 113.13
Boston was the Spain, Salem the Portugal, in the race for Oriental opulence. Boston followed Magellan and the Columbia westward, around the Horn; Salem sent her vessels eastward after the Astrea, around Af- rica, along the path blazed by Vasco da Gama. Trace a rough curve from the Chinese coast along 20° north latitude, pull it south before reaching Hawaii, to join 120° west longitude at the equator, and you have a rough line of demarcation between the two. Every- thing north and east was preempted by Boston. Salem never entered the Northwest fur trade, and her first circumnavigator was a humble sealskinner in 1802. But to the southward and westward of this line, in the Dutch East Indies, Manila, Mauritius, both coasts of Africa, and the smaller islands of the Pacific, Salem had the same connotation as Boston on the Northwest Coast; it stood for the whole United States. As late as 1833, Po Adam, the wealthiest merchant of Qual- lah Battoo, "believed Salem to be a country by itself, and one of the richest and most important sections of the globe." Boston vessels competed at Calcutta; Salem vessels sometimes attained Canton; the fleet met off Java Head and returned home together; but for the most part each respected the other's territory, and left little to divide between Providence, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
The usual Salem method of making a trading voyage was to start off with a mixed cargo, assembled from Southern ports, the Baltic, the West Indies, and New England; peddle it out at the Cape of Good Hope,
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THE SALEM EAST INDIES
Mauritius, and various ports in the East Indies; pick- ing up oddments here and there, taking freight when occasion offered, buying bills of exchange on London or Amsterdam, and like as not making three or four com- plete turnovers before returning home. A typical out- ward cargo was that of 'King' Derby's ship Henry, one hundred ninety tons, which cleared from Salem for the Ile de France (Mauritius) in 1791. Pottery and ale, iron and salt fish, soap and gin, hams and flints, whale oil and candles, saddles and bridles, lard and tobacco, chocolate and flour, tables and desks made up her manifest. Her twenty-one-year-old master, Jacob Crowninshield,1 was one of four brothers, each of whom commanded a vessel at about the same age. Their father, George Crowninshield, had but recently retired from the sea at the age of fifty-five, and was soon to rival 'King' Derby as merchant-shipowner. Captain Jacob had a great career before him; crowned by an offer, thirteen years later, of the Navy Department by President Jefferson. Ill health from long voyages in tropical waters obliged him to decline; but the same high office was subsequently conferred on a younger brother by President Madison.
The Henry obtained most of her return lading at Mauritius. But British sea power gradually strangled this eastern emporium of France, and Salem vessels were obliged to go to the source of supplies. This led to Massachusetts men taking up their residence in the seaports of British India. Samuel Shaw found his friend Benjamin Joy already established at Calcutta, on his return from China; and Thomas Lechmere, of Salem, became an alderman of Bombay.
In this sort of commerce, a large discretion was left to shipmasters and supercargoes. A typical letter of
1 Pronounced 'Grounsell' at that period, but now as it is spelled.
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
instruction is one of 1792 from William Gray, another Salem rival of the Derbys, to Captain William Ward, of the brig Enterprise, one hundred sixty-four tons. He will dispose of his Russia duck, 'coles' (from Liver- pool), and anything that he may think proper, at the Cape of Good Hope. There he is to pick up wine, brandy, raisins, and almonds for the Ile de France, where the whole cargo ought to sell for one hundred per cent profit, provided the Enterprise arrives before a certain Boston vessel. Captain Ward is to purchase there anything that will pay cent per cent at Salem, according to a list of prices current furnished him. His next stop should be Calcutta to take on sugar, saltpeter, and " Bandanno silk Handkerchiefs" at the same rate. Otherwise he must try to get a 'cheep' cargo of teak to exchange at Canton for China goods. He may even sell the brig, if a good opportunity offers. As Captain Ward did not find prices low enough for his owner's modest expecta- tions, he took freight from India to Ostend, and there filled his hold with European merchandise.
Until 1811, when British regulations (surprisingly liberal at first) forbade all but direct voyages between India and the United States, the East-India trade was susceptible of infinite variety. Benjamin Carpenter, the Salem master of the Boston ship Hercules, wrote in 1794 that profits might be pyramided indefinitely by freighting goods between Ceylon, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, and by judicious turnovers at Rangoon, Bengal, and Coromandel. That is, provided one tipped heavily, and behaved like a gentleman. "From the Governor to the meanest citizen, I have made it my study to please. Let a man's occupation be what it will, you may have occasion for his aid. I have known a present of 10 s. to be the means of saving £1oo. Good language will have the same effect, therefore exert
86
THE SALEM EAST INDIES
yourself as much as possible this way and set apart £20 for these purposes."
During the European war, Madeira acquired an im- portant relation to the East-India trade. Salem and Boston merchants exchanged general cargoes there for Madeira wine, which found a ready sale in Cal- cutta. They also began the pleasant practice of lay- ing in a few pipes 1 for home consumption, the long voyage in southern waters improving its flavor. A typical voyage was that of the Maine-built ship Her- ald, three hundred twenty-eight tons, commanded by Nathaniel Silsbee (formerly of the Benjamin), and owned by himself, Samuel Parkman, and Ebenezer Preble. She sailed from Boston in January, 1800, with a cargo consisting of butter, beef, tobacco, codfish, rum, nankeen from China, two hundred thirty-six pipes of French brandy that had run the British blockade, and a large quantity of silver dollars and bills of ex- change. Most of the provisions, the nankeen and the liquor were exchanged at Madeira for two hundred sixty pipes of "India market" wine and a score of "choice old London particular" for Boston. This genial cargo was carried around the Cape of Good Hope to Madras, where the India market wine was sold, and pepper, blue cloth, 'camboys' and 'Pulicate' handkerchiefs taken aboard. At Bombay and Calcutta, the bills and specie purchased pepper, sugar, ginger, and a bewildering array of India cottons, for which the fashions of that day, and the absence of domestic competition, afforded an excellent market in the United States.2 The Herald's
1 A pipe was a double hogshead, containing 110 to 125 gallons.
2 In the "Beverly Shipping Documents," I, at the Beverly Historical Society, is an important letter of 1796 from Benjamin Pickman, of Salem, to Israel Thorndike, of Beverly, advising him how best to lay out $20,000 at Calcutta, with samples of several different cottons attached. It ap- pears from this that Beerboom Gurrahs, a stout white sheeting, cost
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
invoice shows 'Callipatti Baftas,' 'Beerboom Gurrahs,' 'Allabad Emerties,' and a score of different weaves. Madras chintzes and seersuckers are the only names recognizable to-day.
Calcutta, lying eighty miles up the Hoogly River, was a port most difficult of access before the days of tugboats. After passing the Sand Heads - a consid- erable feat of navigation in itself, at times - it often took weeks to beat up-river. The anchorage at Cal- cutta was dangerous on account of the tidal bores, which in certain seasons worked havoc with ground-tackle and shipping. In the southwest monsoon season of 1799, writes William Cleveland, of Salem, insurance from Calcutta to Hamburg was sixteen per cent; but premiums would be written for half that rate from the Sand Heads to Hamburg.
The Herald left the Hoogly in company with three vessels from Philadelphia and one from Baltimore. Outside competition was evidently becoming serious. It was the period of our naval hostilities with France. When the Americans fell in with a British East-India- man, under fire from a French privateer, they decided to bear a hand, and formed line-of-battle. The master of the vessel abreast the Herald expressed a keen desire to leave, his speed being sufficient to elude the privateer. Captain Silsbee roared through his speaking-trumpet, "If you do, I'll sink you!" To which his colleague re- plied, "Damn you, Silsbee, I know you would!"; and saw the action through to a successful finish.
Small "private adventures" for the officers' and
about twelve cents a yard, white print cloth seven to eleven cents, and "mock Pulicat Handkerchiefs," eighty-four to ninety-five cents for eight. William Tileston, of Boston, known as 'Count Indigo,' did an extensive business printing India bandannas at his dyehouse in the old feather store, Dock Square, and at Staten Island. The duty saved by importing plain goods made this profitable.
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THE SALEM EAST INDIES
owners' friends, varying in amount from a box of cod- fish to several thousand dollars in specie, were carried both by China and East-India traders. Captain Gibaut, of Salem, in 1796, "had private orders to execute in his ship at Canton amounting to $4000, for the little ele- gancies of life . . . so rapid are our strides to wealth and luxury," notes the Reverend William Bentley. On the brig Caravan, of Salem (two hundred sixty-seven tons), early in 1812, Captain Augustine Heard took two thou- sand silver dollars to invest for his father, the same for each brother, and from twenty to one hundred dollars for sundry maiden aunts and retired Ipswich sea-cap- tains. Numerous friends requested him to purchase for their wives red cornelian necklaces, camel's-hair shawls, pieces of cobweb muslin or Mull Mull, straw carpets, bed coverings, and pots of preserved ginger. Henry Pickering wanted a Sanskrit bible, and three children gave him a dollar each to invest in Calcutta.1 Besides there was a cargo valued at forty thousand dollars, and the first consignment of missionaries, male and female, sent by the Puritan Church of Massachu- setts to "India's coral strand." But the Reverend and Mrs. Adoniram Judson and Samuel Newell were not wanted at Calcutta by the British authorities, and had to be dropped at Mauritius.
Augustine Heard was a shipmaster whose cool daring became legendary. Approaching the Sand Heads in an onshore hurricane, having lost his best bower anchor, and drawing a foot more water than there was on the bar, Captain Heard shook a reef out of his topsails, and laying the vessel on her beam ends, managed to
1 One of the notes pasted in the Caravan's invoice book is: "Sir - Please to purchase for Capt. John Barr - $200 - 2 Camels Hair Shawls - White - 2 yards in Length & I2 yards in width, with a Broad Palm leaf Border mostly Green." A feminine hand has added, "narrow Border round Edge avoid Red. If any Ballance] buy best Bandannas."
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
scrape across. Once, he is said to have run a pirate ship under in the China Sea. There are two versions of his return voyage in the Caravan, after the War of 1812 had commenced. According to one, he sold the Caravan and cargo to avoid capture in a South American port, and disguised as a shipwrecked mariner, with the specie proceeds in his sea-chest, took passage on a slaver to Rio de Janeiro, and thence to Boston. Ac- cording to the other, the Caravan was captured off the coast of Madagascar by an English cruiser, which sent a lieutenant and prize crew aboard. All the Ameri- cans were placed in irons except the colored cook, and Captain Heard. Some days afterwards, a sudden and violent storm arose. While the English crew was aloft taking in sail, and the lieutenant busy giving orders, Heard went into the galley, got the cook, and with his aid knocked the irons off his own people. They then seized arms, rushed on deck, and as each English Jack descended the rigging, clapped him in irons and sent him below. Captain Heard then extended the courtesies of the cabin to the English officer, and brought him and his crew as prisoners into Salem Harbor.
On the Northwest coast of Sumatra, Salem found wealth and adventure such as Boston men obtained on the Northwest coast of America. Her merchant sea- men, like the Portuguese before them, tracked Eastern spices to their source. It was at Benkulen, in 1793, that Captain Jonathan Carnes heard a rumor of wild pepper to the northwestward. Returning to Salem, he was given command of a fast schooner, and cleared for unknown destination. "Without chart or guide of any kind, he made his way amid numerous coral reefs, of which navigators have so much dread even at the present day, as far as the port of Analaboo."1 His 1 J. H. Reynolds, Voyage of the U.S. Frigate Potomac (1835), 201.
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THE SALEM EAST INDIES
cargo, costing (with expenses) eighteen thousand dol- lars, sold for seven hundred per cent profit at Salem. The town went pepper mad. A dozen vessels cleared for Benkulen; but few of them got so much as a sneeze for their trouble. Gradually, however, the secret leaked out; and by 1800, years before there was a published chart of the Malay archipelago, the harbors of Analabu, Susu, Tally-Pow, Mingin, Labuan-Haji, and Muckie and all those treacherous waters now il- luminated by the genius of Conrad, were as familiar to Salem shipmasters as Danvers River. Twenty-one American vessels, ten from Salem and eight from Bos- ton, visited this coast between March I and May 14, 1803, bargaining with local datus for the wild pepper as the natives brought it in. Between the two north- west coasts there was little choice, in point of danger. Many a Salem man's bones lie in Sumatran waters, a Malay kreese between the ribs.
By way of reward, Salem became the American, and for a time the world emporium for pepper. In 1791, the United States exported 492 pounds of pepper; in 1805, it exported 7,559,244 pounds - over seven- eighths of the entire Northwest Sumatran crop; and a very large proportion of this was landed in Salem. Captain James Cook imported over one million pounds of pepper in one lading of his five-hundred-ton ship Eliza.
Some of the tinware that itinerant Yankees peddled throughout the Eastern States, was made from Banka tin, obtained by Salem traders from an island beside the Gaspar Straits. Batavia, the Tyre of Java, shortly This is the usual version of the origin of the Northwest Sumatra trade. W. Vans, however, claims that he and Jonathan Freeman opened that trade in their brigantine Cadet in 1788. (Life of William Vans (1832), 4.) See forthcoming articles by Mr. George Putnam in Essex Historical Collections.
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
after the ship Massachusetts was refused entrance, opened her doors to American vessels, which brought home increasing amounts of sugar and coffee.
The famous Astrea, John Gibaut master, ventured into the harbor of Pegu, near Rangoon, in 1793, and was promptly commandeered by His Burmese Majesty. Thisenabled Captain Gibaut to travel up the Irawaddy River, collecting curiosities for the East-India Museum and for his Salem pastor, Dr. Bentley. He was un- doubtedly the first American to take this classic road to Mandalay. No permanent trading connection, how- ever, seems to have been established with Burma. A year later, one of the numerous Captain Hodges of Salem adventured a quantity of gum lacquer from Pegu, but was unable to dispose of it at any price.
"This day a letter from an Arabian Chief, Said Aimed," records Dr. Bentley on October 2, 1805, "by Mr. Bancroft, a Salem Factor in those seas. He men- tioned the wish of a Jew to write to me in that country, from whom I may expect to hear by Capt. Elkins." That year Salem imported two million pounds of coffee from Arabia. So remote from the beaten track of ves- sels was Mocha, that the Recovery, of Salem, Captain Joseph Ropes, which opened the trade in 1798, was given a reception similar to that of Columbus in the new world. In 1806, the ship Essex, Captain Joseph Orne, with sixty thousand dollars in specie, adventured up the Red Sea to Hodeda. At Mocha he augmented his crew with some Arabs, who turned out to be 'in- side men' of a notorious pirate. The Essex was cap- tured, and her entire crew massacred. When the news reached the Salem owner, who was Captain Orne's uncle, he is said to have remarked, "Well, the ship is insured !"
A more cheerful story of the Mocha trade is the
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CAPTAIN JACOB CROWNINSHIELD
CAPTAIN BENJAMIN CARPENTER
THE SALEM EAST INDIES
maiden voyage of the well-armed ship America, owned by George Crowninshield and his sons, and com- manded by his nephew, Benjamin Crowninshield. On July 2, 1804, she left Salem with very positive and emphatic orders to proceed to Sumatra for pepper, and nowhere else; for Captain Benjamin was too much inclined to use his own judgment. "Obey orders if you break owners," was a maxim of the old merchant ma- rine. Yet this independent master received at Mauri- tius such favorable news of the coffee market that once more he determined to disobey. On November 30, the America passed "through the straits of Babelmandel, and anchored off Mocha, the Grand Mosque bearing E. by S." There, and at Aden and Macalla Roads she took in coffee, gum arabic, hides, goatskins, and senna, and cleared for Salem.
Now, by June, 1805, when the America was sighted from Salem town, pepper had fallen and coffee risen to such an extent that the owners were praying Captain Ben had broken orders! Unable to restrain their im- patience until she docked, the Crowninshield brothers put off in a small boat. Approaching her to leeward, they began sniffing the air. One was sure he smelled the desired bean; but another suggested it might be merely a pot of coffee on the galley stove. Finally, dis- regarding all marine etiquette, Benjamin W. Crownin- shield shouted, "What's your cargo?" - "Pe-pe-per!" answered the Captain, who was enjoying the situation hugely. "You lie! I smell coffee!" roared the future Secretary of the Navy through his speaking-trumpet.
Once having found their way into the Pacific Ocean, Salem shipmasters began to exploit its "Milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown archi- pelagoes and impenetrable Japans." The crews of Sa- lem vessels, undismayed by the occasional killing and
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
eating of their comrades by Fiji cannibals, gathered edible birds' nests from surf-beaten rocks, employed native divers to fish tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl; and gathered slimy sea-cucumbers ('beech de mer') from coral reefs, to make soup for the mandarins. Thus a new medium was obtained for purchasing China tea. One lonely group in the South Atlantic, Tristan de Cunha, was taken in formal possession by Jonathan Lambert, of Salem, remaining his private principality until his death in 1813.
A second ship Astrea, Henry Prince master, dis- played her ensign in Manila Bay on October 3, 1796, and opened a trade in sugar, hemp, and indigo that con- tinued as long as Salem men owned vessels. No Salem boy, in seventeen ninety-eight, thought the Philippines were canned goods! Most of our present insular pos- sessions were visited by Boston or Salem ships before the nineteenth century - except Guam, which was saved for 1801. The barque Lydia, of Boston, Moses Barnard master, was chartered by the Spanish govern- ment to convey thither a new governor of the Mari- anas, with "Lady, three Children and two servant girls and 12 men servents, A Fryar & his servent, A Judge and two servents." The log of this voyage, by the Lydia's first mate, William Haswell, is among the most entertaining of the several hundred sea-journals pre- served in Salem. The Lydia first put in at Zamboanga (Mindanao), a pleasant place which produced nothing but "Cocoa Nuts, water & Girls." Six of the latter were brought on board by the governor's sons, with "Music to Entertain us, but the Ship was so full of Lumber that they had no place to shew their Dancing in; how ever we made a shift to amuse ourselves till 3 in the Morning, the Currant then turning and a light breeze from the Northward springing up sent them all
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