USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume I > Part 30
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4. Samuel E. Morison : "The Maritime History of Massachusetts," William Heine- mann, Ltd., London, 1923, pp. 81, 82.
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Federalist period were seldom comparable to the contemporary pro -. fessional before-the-mast hands, old salts, and sodden waterfront loungers who manned the British merchant marine. In fact, it was not until the fourth and fifth decades of the nineteenth century that the personnel of our ships' crews degenerated into the condition which gave birth to our modern notion of the old-time deep sea sailor.
An outstanding example of the youthful spirit of our merchant marine in the Federalist period was the voyage of the Derby ship "Benjamin," of Salem, 1792-94, Captain Nathaniel Silsbee. Captain Silsbee, who later became United States Senator from Massachusetts, was only nineteen when he took command of the "Benjamin," yet he was a sailor of five years' experience, having been Captain Magee's clerk on the famous Canton voyage of the "Astrea," and commanded two West Indies voyages. Charles Derby, the mate, was twenty, and Richard J. Cleveland, the clerk, was but eighteen.
The twenty-four-year-old second mate was put ashore for insub- ordination. The "Benjamin," with a varied cargo, which included Madeira wine, window glass, mahogany boards, and tobacco, made a well managed, highly successful, and adventurous voyage to the Cape of Good Hope and Ile de France. The highlights of the voyage included the slipping of cables after dark in a gale of wind at Cape Town to escape a British frigate, eluding a French warship by drifting out of Bourbon with the ebb tide, and a few days of sport, hunting and fishing, at Ascension. The voyage of the "Benjamin" and its youthful officers and crew took nineteen months, and brought a profit of nearly five hundred per cent. on the investment.
The growth of Salem's East India trade was remarkable. During the Federalist period American commerce with the Orient was divided between Boston and Salem, leaving little for the other ports. Boston, with her grip on the Northwest Coast, controlled the China trade, but Salem had India, Ceylon, the Dutch East Indies, Manila, Mauritius, both coasts of Africa, and later the South Sea Islands practically to herself, so far as American trade was concerned. Boston vessels sometimes competed at Calcutta, while an occasional Salem ship- master would venture north to Canton. But as a rule the demarka- tion was respected, and the Boston and Salem fleets met off Java Head to sail home together.
The cargoes with which the Salem East Indiamen cleared for the Orient where highly miscellaneous in character, having been collected
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from many places by Salem's coasters and Baltic and West India traders. The outward cargo of the ship "Henry," bound for Mauri- tius, in 1791, was typical of this trade, consisting of pottery, ale, iron, salt fish, soap, gin, hams, flints, whale oil, candles, saddles, bridles, lard, tobacco, chocolate, flour, tables, and desks. As a rule, the cargo was peddled out at various commercial centers along the way, such as Cape Town, Ile de France, Colombo, Madras, and Calcutta, and such merchandise as the supercargo thought would find a market further on was purchased. Thus, several complete turnovers in cargo were sometimes made before sailing for home.
During the Napoleonic wars, Madeira wine was an important and interesting part of Salem's East India trade. It became customary for outbound Salem vessels to exchange a good part of their cargoes at Madeira for wine, which found a good market in Calcutta. It was found, however, that the long voyage in southern waters so improved the flavor of the beverage that a number of pipes of the highest grade were saved for the Salem market. This wine, which had crossed the equator four times, brought a fancy price in New England as "choice old London particular." The voyage of the three hundred twenty- eight ton ship "Herald," of Salem, Nathaniel Silsbee master, was typical of the combined Madeira-East India trade. The "Herald" sailed from Boston in January, 1800, with butter, beef, tobacco, cod- fish, rum, nankeen, French brandy, and specie. Most of the cargo was disposed of at Madeira in return for two hundred sixty pipes of "India market" and twenty of "choice old London particular." The "India market" wine was sold in Madras, and pepper, blue cloth, "camboys" and "Pulicate" handkerchiefs were purchased. At Bom- bay and Calcutta, specie and bills of exchange were used to buy pep- per, sugar, ginger, and India cotton, known by such names as "Col- lipatti Baftas," "Beerboom Guraks," and "Allabad Emerties." The "Herald" then cleared for Salem, with the India goods and the mel- lowing Madeira wine.
As the trade continued to grow, Salem shipmasters went farther and farther afield toward the original sources of supply, as had the Portuguese and Dutch, in the same waters, centuries before. At first, return ladings of India goods were often taken on at Mauritius, the great French emporium of trade, but presently, with the Napo- leonic wars and the consequent decline of Mauritius, Calcutta became
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the ultimate destination of most Salem traders. Rumors of wild pep- per and other spices in the least known parts of Malay Archipelago first reached Salem about the year 1793. Captain Jonathan Carnes, who had heard the rumors at Berkulen in 1793, left Salem in a fast schooner, for an unknown destination, and "without chart or guide of any kind, he made his way amid the numerous coral reefs, of which navigators have so much dread even at the present day (1835), as far as the port of Analabor."" This voyage, which cost, with expenses, eighteen thousand dollars, netted a profit of seven hundred per cent., and the merchants of Salem were quick to grasp at this new field of opportunity. By 1800, long before the islands had been chartered, the ports of Analabu, Susu, Tally-Pow, Mirger, Labrian, Hagi, and Muckie, and the surrounding waters, were familiar to Salem shipmasters. Through these efforts Salem became the world emporium for pepper; America exported, in 1791, only 492 pounds of pepper, but by 1805 the exports' had increased to the immense figure of 7,559,244 pounds, or seven eighths of the entire Northwest Sumatra crop. The five hundred-ton ship "Eliza," Captain James Cook, brought to Salem over a million pounds of pepper in one voyage.
Other developments of Salem's East India trade included the importation of Banka tin, and the coffee trade with Java and Mocha. Captain Joseph Ropes, of the ship "Recovery," opened the Arabian coffee trade in 1798. The voyage of the Crowninshield ship "America," 1804-05, was a particularly profitable adventure in the coffee trade, and its success was due entirely to the acumen and inde- pendence of the commander, Captain Benjamin Crowninshield. The "America" left Salem with express orders to proceed to Sumatra for pepper, but favorable news of the Arabian coffee market caused the master to break his orders and sail for Mocha. When the ship returned to Salem the price of pepper had fallen and coffee had risen. The owners, George Crowninshield and his sons, who had expected severe losses, were overjoyed to find that Captain Benjamin had dis- obeyed orders.
As Salem vessels explored the remotest corners of the Indian Ocean, and penetrated more deeply into the Pacific, trades too numer-
5. Quoted by Morison, p. 90, from J. N. Reynolds : "Voyage of the 'U. S. Frigate Potomac.' "
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ous to describe were struck upon. Captain Henry Peirce, in a second ship "Astrea," opened the Manila trade in sugar, hemp and indigo. Salem seamen risked the combined dangers of the uncharted coral reefs and the cannibals of the Fiji Islands to gather edible birds' nests and sea-cucumbers, dear to the palates of Chinese mandarins. Along with the tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl available in the islands, these exotic articles were means by which occasional Salem vessels were able to acquire a lading of tea and China goods at Can- ton. The growth of Salem's Oriental commerce, amazing in its com- plexity, went on unhindered until the Embargo Act and the disastrous War of 1812.
While Boston and Salem were recovering and surpassing their provincial mercantile position after the Revolution by exploiting the wealth of the Orient, Newburyport returned to prosperity and acquired additional wealth through a well-balanced combination of shipbuilding, fishing, distilling, and West India and European trad- ing. Between the Revolution and the War of 1812 the population of Newburyport doubled, while in the sixteen years after 1790 her fleet increased in number from one hundred and eighteen to one hundred and seventy-six vessels, and in tonnage from twelve thousand to thirty thousand. The canal around the Pawtucket Falls, between Chelms- ford and Dracut, which was constructed between 1792 and 1796 by a group of Newburyport capitalists called the "Proprietors of the Locks and Canals on Merrimack River," made the town the empo- rium of northern Essex and Middlesex counties, and a large part of southern New Hampshire. Thus, in addition to supplying sufficient materials for shipbuilding in the lower valley the canal made quan- tities of lumber, firewood, and country produce available for export. Newburyport's fishing vessels, which amounted in numbers, though hardly in tonnage, to about one-third of her entire fleet, concentrated on the Labrador and Bay fisheries, and provided a plentiful supply of the old staple export of the West India trade. In 1805, at the height of her prosperity, Newburyport owned forty-one ships, sixty- two brigs, two snows, two barques, and sixty-six schooners, as against the six ships, forty-five brigantines, thirty-nine schooners and twenty- eight sloops of 1790.
The romantic appeal to the imagination in which Salem's foreign trade abounded was to a great extent lacking in that of Newburyport.
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The latter town engaged in the more prosaic, though highly profit- able, triangular commerce with the West Indies and the Baltic. As Newburyport's West India and Baltic trade was generally carried on, though there were numerous variations, cargoes of miscellaneous New England produce, with the possible addition of Russia goods, such as linen, which promised to find a better market in Havana than in Boston, were shipped to the West Indies, where they were exchanged for sugar, molasses, and other West India goods. These, in turn, were carried to the Baltic, where they were readily salable, particularly in Russia. Return cargoes were picked up around the Baltic, and brought to Newburyport, where they were in great demand for shipbuilding. "Russia goods," as they were then known, included canvas, duck, hemp, and Russian and Swedish iron, all of which were then essential to the shipbuilding industry of the Mer- rimac Valley. In addition, fine household linen and other luxury goods were brought to Newburyport by West India-Baltic traders. "Lord" Timothy Dexter's seemingly insane venture of sending warm- ing pans and woolen mittens to the West Indies can be accounted for, in reality, by his sound knowledge of the triangular trade as well as by his bizarre sense of humor, for the warming pans were useful as ladles for molasses, while the mittens were readily sold to a ship- master about to clear for the Baltic, where the cold winters made them a highly desirable commodity.
It is interesting to note that Newburyport's foreign commerce was primarily designed to supplement her local industries and fish- eries, and the agriculture and lumbering of her hinterland, while that of Salem, almost commerce for commerce's sake, served New Eng- land as a whole, and, in some lines, the entire Western World. When Newburyport vessels brought sugar and molasses, it was to supply her distilleries with raw material and the population of the Merrimac Valley with articles of household consumption. Outbound cargoes for the West Indies provided a market for the excess production of the fisheries, forests, and farms. Russia goods, as has been stated above, were necessary to the building, fitting out, and rigging of vessels.
While Salem and Newburyport flourished during the Federalist period, the smaller ports met with varying fortunes. Marblehead perhaps suffered more by the Revolution and the years of depression
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following than any other Essex County town. Before the war she had had a large foreign commerce in addition to her unsurpassed fishing fleet. By 1785 Salem had absorbed most of her trade. Such leading merchants as "King" Hooper and Benjamin Marston had espoused the Tory cause, and the Ornes, Lees, Pedricks, and Gerrys had removed to the larger commercial centers. With capital fled, and merchant fleet gone, Marblehead was, in 1790, little more than a fishing port, though an important one. During the next twenty years, however, she was able to win back part of her foreign commerce. Her larger schooners made winter voyages to the West Indies and South- ern Europe laden with dried and salted fish. In 1792 Marblehead had three entries from Europe; in 1805 she had twenty-nine. In 1806 the one hundred and eighty-seven ton brigantine "Orient," Edmund Bray master, arrived from Calcutta with East India goods, the first and almost the only Marblehead venture in Oriental trade. Notwithstanding these attempts to regain her former position, Mar- blehead did not prosper in the Federalist period. Her population increased only very slightly between 1790 and 1810.
Beverly fared somewhat better than Marblehead at this time. Although previously a fishing port, her leading merchants, the Cabots, Thorndikes, and Lees acquired wealth and power as rapidly, and by similar means as their counterparts in Salem and Newburyport. It is difficult, however, to get much definite information about her foreign commerce, for Salem absorbed Beverly in 1789 as a place of registry and entry.
Gloucester, in spite of a temporary decline in her fisheries, was thriving and prosperous at this time. As early as 1790 her trade had recovered sufficiently from the post-war depression for her to possess a merchant fleet of four ships, nine brigs, and twenty-three schooners. During this period Gloucester was able practically to monopolize the profitable commerce in fish and molasses with Surinam; it is said that Gloucester vessels were better known in Dutch Guiana than those of any other American port. The wealthy shipowners of Gloucester, the Sargents, Parsonses, and Pearces, lived on a scale of elegance com- parable to that of the merchants of Newburyport and Salem. Glouces- ter confined herself principally to the West India and European trades, and her only East India venture, the voyage of the ship "Win- throp and Mary," ended in disaster in 1800.
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Ipswich was already well on the down grade as a seaport, her period of greatest activity having been reached before the Revolu- tion. Vessels were at this time becoming somewhat larger, and the length of winding, narrow river and the dangerous harbor bar made commerce seek other ports. But in spite of these difficulties, and because of the strength of tradition, Ipswich still maintained a fleet of bankers and West India traders.
The great Federalist prosperity of Salem and Newburyport, and, to a lesser degree, of Beverly and Gloucester, had important and lasting effects on the social and political history of Essex County. The Federalist party dominated both local and national affairs for the greater part of two decades, and Federalism was led for the most part by the wealthy merchant class of the port towns of New Eng- land. Boston, of course, was the headquarters, but Essex County and the "Essex Junto" were very powerful in the conduct of the Federalist party. Such Essex County merchant-aristocrats as Tristram Dalton, of Newburyport, and George Cabot, of Beverly and Boston, were typical of the class of men sent by Massachusetts to the Senate. Mer- chant domination of local affairs was fully as complete as it had been in the generation before the Revolution. The shipwrights, artisans, seamen, and shopkeepers of the seaport towns accorded to the mer- chants all the deference to which their high rank entitled them, and even the shipmasters, the very top of the "middle class," looked to them definitely as social superiors.
The merchants of Essex County in Federalist days lived in grand style. A drive along Chestnut Street in Salem, which superseded Derby Street as the fashionable residential section about 1800, or along High Street in Newburyport, can give some insight into the taste and scale of living of these merchant-shipowners. Large, square, hip-roofed houses of brick or wood, of noble simplicity of exterior, still predominate. Samuel McIntire, Salem's leading architect, and the nameless shipwrights and designers of Newburyport, contributed a lasting record of Federalist grandeur in brick and wood.
As to the social life in the Essex County port towns, Newbury- port seems to have led in elegance and taste. According to Morison : "Newburyport boasted a society inferior to that of no other town on the continent. Most of the leading families were but one generation removed from the plough or the forecastle; but they had acquired
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wealth before the Revolution, and conducted social matters with the grace and dignity of an old régime. When Governor Gore, in 1809, made a state visit to Newburyport, where he had once studied law, he came in coach and four with outriders, uniformed aides, and a cavalry escort; and when the town fathers informed his ancient bene- factress, Madam Atkins, that His Excellency would honor her with a call, the spokesman delivered his message on his knees at the good lady's feet. We read of weekly balls and routs, of wedding coaches drawn by six white horses with liveried footmen, in this town of less than eight thousand inhabitants. When personal property was assessed, several Newburyport merchants reported from one thou- sand to twelve hundred gallons of wine in their cellars."6
Life in Salem, among the wealthy merchant-shipowners, was somewhat similar to that of Newburyport. But most of the Salem merchants had made their fortunes themselves; few important Salem families had been well-to-do before the Revolution. Hence, some of the culture and Old World social grace of Newburyport was lacking among the rougher and less well-educated Salem merchants, most of whom had, in their youth, gone to sea as common sailors.
As the Federalist period drew to a close, troubles developed which finally resulted in war and the final destruction of a large part of our maritime commerce. During the early years of the Napoleonic wars, Essex County vessels had traded with contestants on both sides. Even in the early years of the war both the French and the British inter- fered with our neutral trade, and by 1798 we were practically in a state of war with France. The sloop-of-war "Merrimac" and the frigate "Essex" were built in Newburyport and Salem for the govern- ment, on local initiative, and actively attacked French privateers and merchant shipping. The "Merrimac" was particularly effective, tak- ing, among other prizes, the brig "Brillante," sixteen guns, and the "Magiciene," the "Phenix," and "Le Bonaparte," all vessels of four- teen guns. American merchantmen were equipped with letters-of- marque and armed to repel French privateers. The trouble with the French, however, died down, and no serious difficulties arose until the British tried to enforce the blockade in a final attempt to choke Napo- leon. The resulting seizure of American vessels and impressment of
6. Samuel E. Morison : "The Maritime History of Massachusetts," Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston and New York, 1922, pp. 152-53.
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American seamen is a familiar story. The subsequent enactment of Jefferson's Embargo Law paralyzed Essex County shipping from its passage in December, 1807, until March, 1809, when it was repealed. Salem and Newburyport necessarily lapsed into almost complete inac- tivity. A newspaper poet in Newburyport, in 1808, varied the popu- lar resentment in the following jingle :
"Our ships all in motion once whitened the ocean, They sailed and returned with a cargo; Now doomed to decay, they have fallen a prey To Jefferson-worms-and embargo."
The embargo marked the "beginning of the end" of Essex County as an important factor in American maritime commerce. Although Salem and Newburyport made a quick recovery after the repeal of the act, and continued prosperous until the outbreak of the War of 1812, it was ordained by changing economic forces that their shipping should eventually be absorbed by the larger and faster grow- ing port of Boston-of which more will be said later. In 1810, how- ever, only a year after the repeal of the Embargo Act, Newburyport alone owned a fleet of forty-one ships, forty-nine brigs, four barques, and fifty schooners; without "Mr. Madison's" disastrous war, Salem, Newburyport, Gloucester, and Marblehead might have continued for years as important centers of maritime commerce.
The War of 1812 was a bitter pill for the merchants of Essex County to swallow. The old Federalist party had lost its national influence as early as 1807, and was hard put to it to defend itself even in Massachusetts against the democracy of the inland counties. Fed- eralism rose in its last stand against the embargo and the war, and failing, acted the part of a disgruntled politician in refusing to support the war, and in threatening secession at the Hartford convention in 1814. The war itself was disastrous to American commerce, while the privateering that had made the Revolution a period of great activ- ity in the ports of Essex County was less heartily entered into in this unpopular conflict.
Although the merchants of Salem and Newburyport were, as a group, loath to prosecute the war, enough capital was available in these towns to fit out a fair number of privateersmen, some of which did good service in harassing British commerce. Then, too, Marble-
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head, more democratic than her neighbors, favored the war, and in spite of her comparative poverty was able to send a goodly number of privateers to sea. Salem fitted only forty-one privateering vessels during the war-not a good showing in comparison with the ninety odd which Newburyport had sent out during the Revolution, but not bad when Boston's contribution of but thirty-one is considered.
Several Essex County privateers achieved lasting fame during the War of 1812 for the valor and cunning of their officers and crews, for their speed, and for their financial success. Among these were the brig "Grand Turk" and the Crowninshield ship "America," both of Salem. The "Grand Turk," a Maine-built vessel, was considered the fastest sailer in the Salem fleet. A beautiful portrait of this ship, done by Antoine Roux, the famous marine artist, is to be seen at the Peabody Museum in Salem. The "America," however, was the most successful of the Salem privateers. She was built by Retire Becket, a master builder of Salem, in 1809, and before the war acquired a repu- tation as a merchantman. With the declaration of war, the "America" was entirely refitted. Her hull was razed from four hundred and seventy-three to three hundred and thirty-one tons burthen in the interest of speed, and an enormous rig was provided. The spread of her sail at its widest point, port to starboard, was one hundred and four feet, and her bowsprit, including jibboom and flying jibboom, was one hundred and seven feet in length. When these dimensions are compared with the one hundred and eight foot length and thirty foot breadth of the hull, their great size can be appreciated fully. The "America" showed bursts of speed of thirteen knots, extremely fast for those days, carried one hundred and fifty men, and was armed with twenty-four guns. She captured in all twenty-six prizes, which brought more than one million dollars. Some idea of how profitable this pri- vateering venture was to the owners, the officers, and the crew can be realized when the usual way of conducting such voyages is considered ; customarily, the owners paid all the expenses and received half the net proceeds of the prizes, while the remainder was divided among the officers and crew, according to rank. A common seaman who served on the "America" during her entire privateering career would have received in the vicinity of three thousand dollars in prize money.
Newburyport, like Salem, was the home port of several famous privateers which did good service during the War of 1812. Fore-
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most, perhaps, among Newburyport privateering vessels was the fourteen-gun Salisbury-built brig "Decatur." The "Decatur" was com- manded by Newburyport's most famous privateering captain, William Nichols, and carried about one hundred and sixty men. On her first voyage, from the fourth of August to September 23, 1812, she cap- tured many British merchant vessels, including one ship, one barque, and seven brigs. Her second voyage started auspiciously, with the capture of three prizes in quick succession, among which was the ship "Neptune," with an extremely valuable cargo. The capture of the "Decatur" by the frigate "Surprise," thirty-eight guns, on January 17, 1813, brought an end to her brilliant career. Captain Nichols was made a prisoner and confined at the Barbados, where he was treated barbarously by his British captors until his release in an exchange of prisoners. Nichols at once returned to Newburyport, where he was given command of the three hundred and fifty ton brig "Harpy," which carried fourteen guns and one hundred men. The "Harpy" was among the very fastest of Essex County's privateering fleet. She was Baltimore built, of the famous "Baltimore clipper" design, and during her career in privateering she was noted for her great spread of canvas and the extreme rake of her masts. One of the outstand- ing captures of her first voyage was that of the packet-ship "Princess Elizabeth." Nichols took from this vessel $10,000 in specie, a quan- tity of valuable wine, and several cannon. During this voyage the "Harpy's" prizes included two British transports from which Nichols took sixty-five prisoners, among whom were several army officers, including a major-general. In spite of the treatment he himself had received at the hands of the British, Captain Nichols' gentlemanly conduct toward his prisoners-of-war brought unstinted praise in later years from Englishmen who had at one time or another been forced to accept his hospitality. The prizes taken during this cruise brought about $ 500,000 to the owners, officers and crew of the "Harpy." Her next voyage, in the winter of 1814-15, was nearly as successful, seven prizes being taken.
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