USA > Massachusetts > The maritime history of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 > Part 8
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on shore, they Singing and Playing their Music all the way." At Guam, officers and crew had royal enter- tainment. The governor and family wept copiously at their departure, and pressed livestock, fruit, and other gifts on the captain until they overflowed the deck, and had to be towed astern in the jolly-boat.
This commerce with the Far East, in pursuit of which early discoverers had scorned the barren coast of Massachusetts, was a primary factor in restoring the commonwealth to prosperity and power, in giving her maritime genius a new object and a new training, in maintaining a maritime supremacy that ended in a burst of glory with the clipper ship. By 1800, Massa- chusetts had proved the power of her merchants and seamen, when unrestrained by a colonial system; had given the lie to tory pessimists who predicted her speedy decay when detached from the British Empire. A tea party in Boston Harbor, at the expense of the British East India Company, brought on the American Revolution. Twenty years later, tea and spices earned through trafficking with savage tribes, carried in Mas- sachusetts vessels and handled by her merchants, were underselling the imports of that mighty monopoly in the markets of Europe.
CHAPTER VIII SHIPS AND SEAMEN
1790-1812
SHIPBUILDING, the ancient key industry of Massachu- setts, expanded greatly during the Federalist period. Exactly how much, we have no means of knowing, for no record was kept of the many vessels built for other states and countries. But the total merchant and fishing fleet owned in Massachusetts (including Maine) tripled between 1789 and 1792, doubled again in the next decade, and by 1810 increased another fifty per cent, attaining 500,000 tons, a figure not surpassed until after 1830.
The far-flung commerce of Salem and Boston was conducted in vessels that were small even by contem- porary standards. 'King' Derby's entire fleet of six ships, one barque, four brigs, two ketches, and a schooner had a total tonnage of 2380, less than the clipper-ship Sovereign of the Seas a half-century later. William Gray owned 113 vessels first and last, before 1815; but only ten of them were over 300 tons burthen, and the largest was 425 tons. The average dimensions of six famous East-Indiamen of Salem, built between 1794 and 1805, are, length 99 feet, breadth 28 feet, burthen 336.1 The second Grand Turk (124 feet long, 564 tons), Salem's "Great Ship," was sold to New York in 1795 for $32,000, as "much too large for our Port & the method of our Trade." Salem Harbor was so shallow that vessels drawing more than twelve feet
1 The same length as, and a slightly greater breadth than the Boston mackerel schooner Fannie Belle Atwood in 1920.
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had to unload by lighters; but in Boston, twelve feet could be carried up to Long Wharf at low tide. Yet Boston vessels seem to have been no larger than those of Salem, and the average Nor'westman was nearer two hundred than three hundred tons.
"A wise marchant neuer adventures all his goodes in one ship," wrote Sir Thomas More. Even those who could afford large ships preferred to distribute the tonnage among several small ones. For it is a great mistake to suppose that the danger of seafaring de- creases as tonnage increases, beyond a certain point. Every square yard more sail area, in those days of single topsails, hemp rigging, and simple purchases, increased the difficulty of handling. Every foot more draft increased the danger of navigating uncharted seas and entering unbuoyed harbors. "Lost at sea with all hands," that frequent epitaph of the great clipper ships, was seldom if ever the fate of a Massa- chusetts vessel in the Federal period. The Crownin- shields lost but four of their great fleet of East-India- men by 1806; two on Cape Cod, one on Egg Harbor bar, and one on the French coast. Massachusetts builders, moreover, had not yet acquired the technique to con- struct large vessels properly. Hence the superstition, current in New England seaports until 1830 or there- abouts, that five hundred tons was the limit of safety; that a larger vessel might break her back in a heavy sea. To round the Horn in a vessel under one hundred tons, as did several of the Boston Nor'westmen, was a remarkable feat of seamanship. But the boldest Yankee shipmaster of 1800, if given the choice, would rather have taken a Chebacco boat around Cape Stiff than a two-thousand-ton clipper ship.
Salem's fleet included vessels constructed on the North River, the Merrimac, or "Down East," but her
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merchants greatly preferred home-built ships, under their immediate supervision. A launching, "the no- blest sight man can exhibit," thought Dr. Bentley, was a gala occasion. In his diary for October 31, 1807, he writes: "This day Mr. Brigs in South Fields launched a ship [the Francis] for Mr. Peabody, Merchant of this town of Salem, into South river. And about an hour afterwards Barker, Magoun & Co. launched at the en- trance of the neck into the Lower harbour a Ship for Nathaniel Silsbee, Merchant of this Town. This last I saw. As the flats are level & the building ground low, the builders could not have the advantages of the two other yards which are steep banks of the rivers. But As soon as her stem block was taken away she began with a gradual increased motion to descend to the water, & without the least interruption or crack of anything near her, she rode upon the Ocean amidst the incessant shouts of the Spectators."
Most American seaports, including Boston, have shamefully neglected the splendid history of their maritime efforts. But Salem loved her ships, and cherished their memory. Hence she has taken first place by default, and her many writers have uncon- sciously given the modern public (as did their ances- tors the South-Sea islanders) the impression that Sa- lem means America; that nowhere else in the world were built or owned such fast and wonderful vessels. The Peabody Museum ship portraits deepen this im- pression; for Salem employed the best artists of the day to depict her vessels - Antoine Roux, of Mar- seilles, portraitiste de navires unsurpassed for precision of detail and artistic effect; Michele Corné, whom the Mount Vernon brought from Naples in 1800, to pass
1 the rest of his long life in New England seaports; and his pupil George Ropes. "In every house we see the
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ships of our harbor delineated for those who have navigated them," wrote Dr. Bentley in 1804; and the same holds true to-day. When Salem capital was transferred to cotton mills, her merchants, unlike those of Boston and New York, did not discard their ship pictures in favor of steel engravings after Sir Edmund Landseer, or dismal anonymous etchings of wintry trees.
Quaint and interesting the ships of the Federalist period certainly were, with their varied coloring (bright, lemon, or orange waist against black, blue, or dark green topsides, and a gay contrasting color for the inside of bulwarks); their carved 'gingerbread work' on stern, and 'quick-work' about the bows; their few large, well-proportioned sails (royals seldom, and skysails never being carried), and their occa- sionally graceful sheer. But strip off their ornaments, and you find, with few exceptions, a chunky, wall- sided model. The big ships of that day were built in Philadelphia and Europe; the small, fast clipper schooners and brigs, on Chesapeake Bay. New Eng- land builders obeyed the ancient tradition that "ships require a spreading body at the water's edge, both afore and abaft, to support them from being plung'd too deep into the sea." 1 The apparently sharp bow in some contemporary pictures is really nothing but deadwood, an ornamental cutwater preserving the tradition of a Roman galley's rostrum. The real bows were of the 'cod's head' type, bluff and full, buffeting a passage for the ship by sheer strength. And in no Massachusetts-built ship of this period whose dimen- sions are preserved, was the length as much as four times the beam.
1 William Hutchinson, Treatise on Practical Seamanship (Liverpool, 1777), 12.
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Several of these vessels made good, but not remark- able passages. The ship Fame (112 feet long, 263 tons), whose launching was a great event of 1802, once made Vineyard Haven in ninety-two days from Su- matra, completing the round voyage in seven months and seven days. But the full-bodied New York packet-ship Natchez, built in 1831, made her home port in sixty-seven days from Java Head, when driven by 'Bully' Waterman. The fastest Salem vessel of our period was the ship America, 114 feet long, 31 feet beam, and 473 tons burthen, built in 1809 by Retire Becket, with the aid of a local Scots draughtsman. Her beautiful portrait by Antoine Roux suggests easier lines than were then common. But her record day's run (over 240 miles) and bursts of speed (13 knots) were made as a privateer, with hull razeed to 331 tons, and a lofty rig that no mere merchantman could have carried. Another much-touted Salem- built vessel is the frigate Essex; but a careful reading of Captain David Porter's log of her Pacific cruise proves her to have been an uncommonly slow sailer for an American frigate. In the Peabody Museum, Salem, is an interesting half-model of the ketch Eliza (93 × 25 × 9 feet, 184 tons), built by Enos Briggs in 1794, and indicating a striving after speed. She has a curved stem, hollow water-lines, the stern of a modern navy cutter, and considerable deadrise; suggesting both a Baltimore clipper and the yacht America.1 The Eliza once made a round voyage to India in nine months. She must have carried very little cargo com- pared with the usual chunky type, for which reason, possibly, the experiment led to nothing.
1 Very likely her lines were copied from a Chesapeake Bay schooner. The "Fast-sailing Virginia built schooner Fox, 30 tons, 58 feet," is ad- vertised for sale in the Salem Gazette of July 15, 1796.
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JOSEPH PEABODY'S SHIP FRANCIS
THE CROWNINSHIELDS' SHIP AMERICA
TWO SALEM SHIP PORTRAITS BY ROUX OF MARSEILLES
SHIPS AND SEAMEN
It did not take much in those days to give a vessel a reputation for speed. In 1816, Augustine Heard, who had commanded Boston and Salem vessels for years, considered the brig Hindu fast, because on a voyage from Calcutta to Boston she sailed 7 to 7.5 knots an hour within six points of the wind, and 8.9 knots off the wind. Dr. Bentley notes that several Salem ves- sels, unable in their outward passage to breast the winds and currents off the coast of Brazil, were forced ignominiously to run home.
Until some competent naval architect makes a thorough study of American shipbuilding (and may the day come soon!) no one has a right to be dogmatic. But I venture the opinion that Salem-built vessels of the Federalist period were in no way superior to those constructed elsewhere in Massachusetts; that the builders of New York, the Delaware, and Long Island Sound were probably quite as competent as those of New England; and that the first real advance in the design of large American merchantmen, subsequent to the Revolution, came during or after the War of 1812.
The lower Merrimac from Haverhill to Newbury- port was undoubtedly the greatest shipbuilding center of New England, at this period as in colonial days. Currier's rare monograph on Merrimac shipbuilding lists about 1115 vessels constructed and registered there between 1793 and 1815, inclusive; and a number constructed for outside parties are not to be found on his list. Twelve thousand tons of shipping were launched on the Merrimac in the banner year of 1810. As in other shipbuilding centers, all the cordage, sails, blocks, pumps, ironwork, anchors, and other fittings were made locally, employing hundreds of skilled mechanics. The jolly ropemakers of Salem used to outwit the Puritan taboo on a merry Christmas, by
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MARITIME HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS
feasting St. Catherine of Alexandria, the patron saint of their profession, every December 25!
It was a Newburyport builder, Orlando B. Merrill, . who in 1794 invented the lift or water-line model, probably the greatest invention in the technique of naval architecture between the days of Drake and the days of Ericsson. The lifts of the model, measured with a foot-rule, determined the dimensions of the vessel; and when she was completed, the model was neatly sawed amidships, one-half going to the owner, the other remaining in the builder's shop. Every builder was his own designer, as a matter of course. The technique was handed down from father to son; but there was such competition that no shipbuilder ever grew rich in the Federalist period.1
Medford, where the Blessing of the Bay was launched in 1631, became again a shipbuilding center in 1802. In that year Thatcher Magoun, of Pembroke, a pupil of his townsman Enos Briggs at Salem, examined the shores and bed of the Mystic River. Finding them free of obstruction, noting the noble oak groves in the neighborhood, and estimating that the Middlesex Canal, just completed, would enable him to tap the
timber resources of the upper Merrimac, he decided to establish a shipyard at Medford. Calvin Turner, of Scituate, and another member of the house of Briggs, joined him in 1804. From the start, these Medford builders specialized in large ships and brigs - two hundred and fifty tons up - but until the War of 1812 they only built two or three apiece annually. After 1815, the vessels that he built for the China trade gave
1 I have found little data on the cost of vessels at this period. The Merrimac-built brig Enterprise, 164 tons, cost $5000 to build in 1792, and the Maine-built ship Wells, 205 tons, sold when three years old for $7000 in 1804.
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Thatcher Magoun a reputation second to none among American shipbuilders; and "Medford-built" came to mean the best.
Boston and Charlestown yards did little but naval construction and repairing during the Federalist pe- riod, although several fine ships were there built by Josiah Barker (of North River origin), and Edmund Hart, the master builders of the Constitution. The Bos- ton fleet, three times as great as Salem's and second only to New York's, was largely procured from the Maine coast, the Merrimac, and the North River. That narrow tidal stream, dividing the towns of Marshfield and Pem- broke from Scituate, Norwell, and Hanover, was like the Merrimac a cradle of New England shipbuilding.
The North River attained the height of its activity in Federalist days. Thirty vessels were completed here in 1801, and an average of twenty-three a year, 1799 to 1804. Looking downstream from the Hanover bridge, eleven shipyards were in view, filled with ves- sels in various stages of construction. Every morning at daybreak the shipwrights might be seen crossing the pastures or walking along the sedgy riverbank to their work, for a dollar a day from dawn to dark. When the sun rose above the Marshfield hills, like a great red ball through the river mist, there began the cheery clatter of wooden shipbuilding - clean, musi- cal sounds of steel on wood, iron on anvil, creak of tackle and rattle of sheave; with much geeing and hawing as ox-teams brought in loads of fragrant oak, pine, and hackmatack, and a snatch of chanty as a large timber is hoisted into place. At eleven o'clock, and again at four came the foreman's welcome shout of "Grog O!" For it took rum to build ships in those days; a quart to a ton, by rough allowance; and more to launch her properly.
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Standing on this same Hanover bridge to-day, it is hard to believe what the records show to be true, that within a few hundred yards, where there seems hardly water enough for a good-sized motor boat, were built for New York merchants in 1810-II the ships Mount Vernon 1 and Mohawk, respectively 352 and 407 tons burthen. Farther down, near the Columbia's birth- place, even greater vessels were launched - poking their sterns into the opposite bank, and having to be dug out. Getting them down this narrow, tortuous river, full of rocks and shoals, was a ticklish business, entrusted to a special breed of North River pilots. Crews of men followed the vessel on both banks, with long ropes attached to each bow and quarter, hauling or checking as the pilot, enthroned between knight- heads, commanded, "Haul her over to Ma'sh-field!" or, "Haul her over to Sit-u-wate!" Motive power was provided by kedging, heaving up to an anchor dropped ahead by the pilot's boat. Fourteen tides were some- times required to get a vessel to sea, as the mocking river sauntered for miles behind the barrier beach, and dribbled out over a bar that taxed all Yankee ingenu- ity to surmount. When shipbuilding had ceased, a new outlet opened at the nearest point to the ocean.
The North River builders did much work for "for- eign" (i.e., non-Massachusetts) order, and for the whalemen. Their vessels seem to have lacked even a local reputation for speed. Very few paintings of them have survived. One, of the ship Minerva, 223 tons, built by Joshua Magoun at Pembroke in 1808 for Ezra Weston and others of Duxbury, shows a vessel built in the best style of the day; gray-blue topsides
1 Length 99 feet, 6 inches, breadth 28 feet, depth 14 feet, 3 inches. The largest vessel ever constructed on the North River was another ship Mount Vernon, 464 tons, built in 1815 for Philadelphia by Samuel Hartt.
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and bulwarks, with bright waist, quarter-galleries, beautiful quick-work on the bows, and a finely pro- portioned sail plan.
Fishermen and other small vessels were constructed in Plymouth Bay at this period; and at Wareham and Mattapoisett on Buzzard's Bay were more children of North River, building three-hundred-ton whalers for Nantucket, and neutral traders for New Bedford. Fishing vessels were also built on Cape Cod, Cape Ann, and Essex, as well as in the' larger centers. The pres- ence in the Boston registry of the two-hundred-ton ship Merry Quaker, built at Dighton in 1795, proves that that center of religious dissent on the Taunton was up and doing. But having viewed the Merrimac, Salem, the Mystic and North Rivers, we have made the rounds of the greater shipyards in Massachusetts proper.
And now for the sailors. A frequent occurrence in the New England of our period is illustrated by a pretty story of Cohasset. One spring evening young South- ward Pratt, a farmer's barefoot boy, goes out as usual to drive the cattle home. But the cows are heard lowing at the pasture bars, long after their accustomed hour to be milked. There is no trace of the lad. Some- thing called him from that rocky pasture; a sea-turn in the wind, perhaps; or a glimpse of Massachusetts Bay, deep blue and sail-studded, laughing in the May sunshine. True to his name, Southward obeyed the call.
Three years pass. The cows are now tended by young Mercy Gannett, who has come from Scituate to live with the Pratts as hired girl, in the friendly fashion of
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the day. One summer evening she comes running home from the pasture, frightened, breathless. A strange young man with bronzed face and lithe, free move- ments, had appeared at the pasture bars, and an- nounced he would drive the cattle home that evening. Of course it was the prodigal son; and naturally he married Mercy, and lived happily ever after.
Southward's sudden departure, and his return, are both typical of the Massachusetts merchant marine. The Bay State, more seafaring in her taste (if one in- cludes Maine) than any other American common- wealth, has never had a native deep-sea proletariat. Her fleet was manned by successive waves of adven- ture-seeking boys, and officered by such of them as determined to make the sea their calling. The Euro- pean type of sailor, the "old salt" of English fiction, content to serve before the mast his entire lifetime, was almost unknown in New England. High wages and the ocean's lure pulled the Yankee boys to sea; but only promotion - or rum - could keep them there. If Southward or Hiram enjoyed his first voyage and made good, he was soon given an officer's berth, of which there were plenty vacant in a marine that in- creased from 58,800 to 435,700 tons (excluding fisher- men 1) between 1789 and 1810, which required from eleven to fifteen men per ton, and in which the pro- portion of officers to seamen was not less than one to five. If quickly cured of his wanderlust, he went back to the farm, and was replaced by another boy. When the embargo tied up Salem shipping, the discharged crews returned to their villages - precisely as did the Russian workmen during the late Revolution.
Speaking broadly, officers' berths in European ma-
1 For the crews of fishermen, to which these statements do not apply, see chapter x.
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rines were class preserves, going by favor and influ- ence to the sons of shipmasters, merchants, and their dependents. Few European sailors had the education to qualify themselves for command. But in the Massa- chusetts marine the great majority of masters came in through the hawse-hole, and the vast majority of seamen had sufficient command of the three R's to post a log, draft a protest, draw up a manifest, and, with a little instruction on shore or shipboard, find a position at sea. Captain Zachary G. Lamson, of Bev- erly, tells of sailing as foremast hand on a Salem brigan- tine, every one of whose crew of thirteen rose to be master of a vessel. With officers thoroughly trained in the rudiments of their profession, and young, ambi- tious seamen culled from the most active element of a pushing race, it is no wonder that the Massachusetts marine achieved great things.
Never, save possibly at some colonial period, has the Massachusetts marine been one hundred per cent American. In Federalist days, it certainly contained an appreciable minority of foreigners. How much, it is impossible to say. Not until 1817 did federal law re- quire two-thirds of a crew to be American. Even be- fore 1793 we find a foreign minority in the crew lists of some famous Pacific traders; 1 and after that date,
1 On the ship Massachusetts in 1790, there were six petty officers from Massachusetts, four from England, and one each from New Hampshire, Ireland, Scotland, and Sweden. Before the mast were nineteen from Massachusetts, seven from other New England states, ten from England, six from Ireland, and one each from Scotland and Virginia (Delano, Voy- ages, 27). Eight nationalities were represented in the Boston's crew of fifteen, in 1803 (Jewitt's Narrative); but this crew was enlisted in Eng- land. The New York brig Betsey, in the China trade, picked up her- crew at New Haven and Stonington (Edmund Fanning, Voyages, 1833 ed., 69). The Margaret, Captain James Magee, had two Swedes, one Dutchman, and sixteen Americans before the mast. On the Boston ship Hercules, in a voyage to Calcutta in 1792-94, all four officers, eight
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when British subjects with forged naturalization pa- pers, or birth certificates purchased from a discharged American, sought whatever protection the American flag afforded, these crew lists are open to suspicion. A Spanish boy named Benito, who joined the Astrea at Cadiz, shipped on his next voyage as Benjamin Eaton, of Salem. Captain Samuel Snow, of Cohasset, was really Salvador Sabate y Morell, brought from Spain many years before by Captain Ephraim Snow, of Truro. William Gray testified in 1813 that in his opin- ion one-fifth of the seamen in the American merchant marine were foreigners. Adam Seybert, the statisti- cian, estimated one-sixth in 1807. Probably the pro- portion was less in New England, where the native supply was abundant. A British agent was told by Salem merchants in 1808 that they no longer em- ployed British seamen, in order to avoid trouble from impressment. John Lowell asserts that only the ves- sels of the middle and southern states, where the native population had little maritime aptitude, em- ployed foreigners to any extent. This statement must be taken with caution, as made for political effect; but the argument is reasonable. Only a careful examina- tion and rigorous checking-up of the crew lists in our custom-house records can establish the truth.
Looking over these crew lists of registered vessels, one finds a small, constant minority of foreigners - not only Englishmen, but Germans, Scandinavians, and Latins - who acknowledge themselves such. But the great majority profess to be native-born Yan- kees, and probably were. Newburyport drew farmers'
out of nine petty officers, and fifteen out of twenty-five seamen were Massachusetts men. The other petty officer and one seaman were Irish, seven seamen were English, and two doubtful. (MS. Journals, Essex Institute.)
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boys from the valley of the Merrimac and from all southern New Hampshire. Marblehead's sailors were mostly of the tough local breed. Salem drew upon her own population, and all Essex County ; her vessels also include a large number of men from the Middle States and Baltimore.1 Boston's crew lists have been de- stroyed; but most Cape Cod boys seem to have gone there for a start. The youthfulness of them is striking. Most are in their teens and early twenties; seamen over thirty are rare, and over forty almost unknown. The few older men were probably victims of drink, who squandered their wages at the end of each voyage, in classic sailor fashion, and had no other recourse but to reship.
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