USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume I > Part 31
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The war, however, exacted a severe toll from maritime Essex County. Hundreds of our seamen languished, and many died, in unspeakably foul British prisons. The blockade was tightened so effectively in the last two years of the war that both our coasting trade and our foreign trade were brought to a standstill. Many merchants
Courtesy of The Essex Institute
East, from No. 25 SALEM-CHESTNUT STREET
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were ruined, and shipbuilding, industry, and husbandry decayed for want of materials and markets. The coming of peace found Salem, Newburyport, and the lesser ports of Essex County with few ships and comparatively little capital to undertake new ventures, while the port of Boston with its many natural advantages, stood ready to absorb their commerce. After a hard fight, Salem, with her world- wide trading connections, was able to retain for some time a fair share of her former commercial activity, but Newburyport and the other towns lapsed into decay.
As it had in maritime commerce, Essex County experienced its greatest prestige in shipbuilding between 1775 and 1815. At a time when New England stood head and shoulders above the rest of the country in shipping and seaborne commerce, Essex County, and par- ticularly the Merrimac Valley, was recognized as the shipbuilding center of New England. The shipwrights of the Merrimac, with the skill and tradition of over one hundred years of shipbuilding, were able to maintain their position despite the rise of the industry at North River, in Marshfield and Scituate, and the rapid strides of the "down-east" builders.
While the Merrimac Valley shipwrights of the Federalist period built vessels for Boston, New York, and even European customers, in addition to supplying the commercial needs of local merchants, the fishermen and shipowners of Salem, Marblehead, Beverly, and Gloucester as a rule preferred home-built vessels. Several noted mas- ter builders had their headquarters at Salem at this time. Enos Briggs, who learned his trade at Pembroke, on the North River, was attracted to Salem by the shipping boom, and constructed at his build- ing place at the head of Derby Wharf a large number of East India- men, including the five hundred and sixty ton ship "Grand Turk," a monster vessel for those days. Ebenezer Mann, who, like Briggs, had come to Salem from the North River, was another noted builder. Retire Becket, whose family had built vessels in Salem for genera- tions, were among the most active of Federalist shipbuilders; the most famous product of Becket's yard was the ship "America," built for the Crowninshields in 1809. Her exploits both as merchantman and as a privateer have been mentioned earlier in this chapter. Barker, Magoun & Company also were building vessels in Salem at this time.
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Little record remains of shipbuilding in the smaller ports of the North Shore. Unquestionably, many fishing vessels were built at Marblehead, Beverly, and Cape Ann. Gloucester, indeed, has the dis- tinction of being the building place of the first schooner, embodying a type of construction and rig that gained great popularity during the eighteenth century and was the ancestor of the trim Gloucester "banker" and the smart schooner yacht of today. Abbot tells an interesting anecdote about the origin of the name "schooner":
"But of all craft the New England schooner had most effect on marine architecture. Built first in Gloucester in 1713, it derived its name from the shout of a bystander as the hull slid from the ways into the water. 'See how she schoons,' he exclaimed. 'A schooner let her be.'""
The schooner was the first successful application of the fore-and- aft rig to a two-masted vessel of considerable length. It was a favorite type in the coasting trade, in fishing, and even in the West India and European commerce in the Federalist period. The build- ers of Cape Ann, Marblehead, and the Merrimac produced more of them than of any other type.
The banks of the lower Merrimac in Federalist days were the scene of a great shipbuilding industry. Haverhill had at least two yards so engaged, and from the Amesbury Ferry to the sea a boatman drifting down river with the ebb tide would only momentarily be unable to see vessels on the stocks in the process of construction. According to Morison's figure, some 1, 115 vessels were constructed on the Merrimac between 1793 and 1815, not including an indefinite number built for outside parties.8 In the year 1810 alone, 12,000 tons of shipping left the ways along the river. In addition to the actual construction of vessels, hundreds of skilled mechanics in New- buryport, Salisbury, and Amesbury were busily engaged in making cordage, sails, blocks, pumps, ironworks, anchors, and other fittings.
The shipbuilding colony along the north bank of the Merrimac at Salisbury Point and the Amesbury Ferry was surpassed in activity
7. Willis J. Abbot : "The Story of Our Merchant Marine," Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1919, p. 13.
8. Samuel E. Morison: "The Maritime History of Massachusetts," Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston and New York, 1922, p. 101.
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only by that of Newburyport, so far as Essex County is concerned. Thousands of tons of shipping left the ways between the Revolution and the War of 1812 on this mile-long bend of the river. Many large . vessels for Boston, Newburyport, and Salem owners were built here; Salisbury yards launched the three hundred and eleven ton ship "Lucia," owned by William Gray, of Salem, in 1795, and Amos Atkin- son's ship "Massachusetts," three hundred forty-four tons, in 1805, while the three hundred and eleven ton ship "Industry" and the three hundred and fifty-seven ton ship "Caledonian" were built in Amesbury in the same years.
The most distinguished shipbuilder on the Merrimac, and prob- ably in New England, during Revolutionary and early Federalist days was William Hackett, of Salisbury Point. The Hacketts had built vessels in Salisbury for at least two generations, and William learned the trade from his father. His vessels were noted for their speed and finish, and during the Revolution his services were in great demand. Among the famous privateers that Hackett designed and built were Nathaniel Tracy's "Intrepid," Captain Howaden's "Tyran- nicide," of Salem, and the "Hercules," of Newburyport, commanded by Captain Moses Brown. Perhaps the greatest honor conferred upon him was his selection, by Congress, as the designer and builder of the frigate "Alliance," one of the first vessels constructed for the American Navy.
The. "Alliance" was built at Salisbury Point, in 1778, in the yard of Daniel Webster, near the mouth of the Powow, under the direction of William and John Hackett. The length of her keel was one hun- dred and twenty-five feet, her gun deck was one hundred and fifty-one feet long, and her extreme beam was thirty-six feet. She carried an armament of thirty-two guns. Her construction, though of the best workmanship, was carried out in record time. She was fitted for the sea in Newburyport late in 1778.
The "Alliance" became the favorite of the navy for beauty and speed; she was by far the best naval vessel built for the government during the Revolution. She is said to have run fifteen knots an hour, with the wind abeam, in a chase in 1782. The "Alliance" did some good service during the Revolution, and was the flagship of John Paul Jones after the sinking of the "Bon Homme Richard." Lafayette thrice crossed the Atlantic in this vessel.
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After the Revolution, Hackett's fame as a naval architect, which the "Alliance" and several privateers of his construction had earned him, brought great demand for his services. Many fine merchant ships were built in his yard at Salisbury Point in the next few years. In 1798, when the citizens of Newburyport, on their own initiative, built the sloop-of-war "Merrimac" for the government, William Hackett, of Salisbury, was engaged to supervise the construction, though the builders, William Cross and Thomas M. Clark, of New- buryport, had no mean reputation as marine architects. Hackett also had a hand in the designing and building of the famous frigate "Essex," built in Salem in 1798. The "Essex," under the command of Captain David Porter, made an historic cruise of the South Pacific during the War of 1812, to protect the American whaling fleet from British letter-of-marque vessels. Captain Porter's narrative of this cruise is one of the best contemporary accounts of maritime adventure that has come down to us. Another noted vessel of Hackett's design was the four hundred ton sloop-of-war "Warren," built for the gov- ernment at Salisbury Point in 1799.
While Hackett was the most outstanding of the Salisbury builders, several others enjoyed a widespread reputation for high grade work. Websters, Morrills, and Lowells built vessels here between the Revo- lution and the War of 1812, and not a few Boston No'westerners were products of their yards. Unfortunately, very little record remains of the Salisbury Point builders and their methods; although numerous Salisbury-built vessels appear on the register of the Newburyport customs house, we know but little as to the identity of the men who designed and constructed them.
While Salisbury Point was the home of the most renowned naval architects of the Revolution and the early Federalist period, New- buryport, some three miles nearer the sea, was the Merrimac's great- est shipbuilding center.9 Among the master builders of Newbury and Newburyport who were active between 1775 and 1815 were Elias Jackman, Orlando Merrill, Rolf Cross, Stephen Cross, William Cross, Jonathan Greenleaf, Thomas Clark, and Captain Woodwell.
9. In those days the town limits of Newburyport extended only part way to Chain Bridge, which connected the south bank of the river with the easterly extremity of Salis- bury Point. The intervening stretch of river bank, where there were several shipyards, was part of the town of Newbury. This section subsequently was annexed to New- buryport. For the sake of convenience, the industry here is treated as an integral part of Newburyport's shipbuilding.
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Several of these men were, like Hackett, members of families which had been associated with shipbuilding for generations; the Crosses and Woodwells, in particular, had been noted builders during most of the eighteenth century.
In addition to the hundreds of all but forgotten merchantmen of all sizes and descriptions which were built here both for local and outside parties, and to the many privateering vessels already alluded to, Newburyport saw the launching of several famous ships of war in this period. During the Revolution Newburyport shipyards launched two vessels for the new American Navy : the frigates "Han- cock" and "Boston." The "Boston," a twenty-gun frigate, was built by Stephen and Rolf Cross and Jonathan Greenleaf, in 1779, while the "Hancock," probably the first vessel built at the order of the Continental Congress, left the ways in September, 1776. The con- struction and the exploits of the Newburyport-built sloop-of-war "Merrimac" have already been described. Among the best of the warships built for the navy during the War of 1812, and, incidentally, the only large naval vessel built on the Merrimac for this conflict, was the sloop-of-war "Wasp." The "Wasp" was built near Moggaridge's Point, in 1813-14, by Orlando B. Merrill, who succeeded William Hackett as the premier shipbuilder and designer on the Merrimac. She was fitted for the sea early in 1814, and, typical of the social custom of the day in Newburyport, on Friday evening, February IS, shortly before her departure, her officers gave a ball on board for which the socially élite of the town turned out in a body.
The career of the "Wasp" was short but glorious, a credit to her designer and builder as well as to her officers and crew. She carried the war into British waters in the summer of 1814, cruising the Eng- lish Channel and attacking enemy merchantmen almost within sight of their home ports. Before her disappearance, in September, 1814, an unsolved mystery of the sea, the "Wasp" captured thirteen British merchant vessels. She is thought to have sunk, with all on board, after a naval engagement, but there seems to be no definite proof of this theory.
Orlando Merrill had other claims to distinction as a marine archi- tect in addition to his connection with the building of the "Wasp." Of all the shipbuilders of the Merrimac since the industry first com- menced on the river, Merrill did most to revolutionize the technique
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of construction and design. His greatest contribution came in 1794, when he introduced the lift or water-line model-a device that Mori- son characterized as "probably the greatest invention in the technique of naval architecture between the days of Drake and the days of Ericsson."10 The dimensions of the vessel to be constructed were, by this method, determined by measuring the "lifts" of the model with a foot rule. The water-line model, incidentally, gave rise to a custom, reminders of which can still be found in the garrets of old houses in the port towns; when the vessel was completed, the model was cut in half, stem to stern, one-half remaining in the builder's shop and the other going to the owner.
The vessels built in Essex County yards during the Federalist period were not greatly different in size and rig and design from those of provincial days. Though the tendency was toward larger ships, very few over five hundred tons burthen were built in New England; even for the Canton and East India trades, vessels from three hun- dred to four hundred tons were considered amply large, while the average in foreign commerce was considerably smaller. Larger craft were being built at this time in Philadelphia and in Europe, and there is no doubt but that Essex County builders could have done likewise. Yankee merchants, however, preferred not to venture too much in any one ship, and the type of commerce generally engaged in by them was better suited for vessels of only medium size.
Even though the demand for speed occasioned by the Revolution had resulted in more graceful lines, the general form of New England built vessels was much the same in Federalist days as it had been before the Revolution. The usual product of Essex County ship- yards, as in the rest of New England, was a chunky, wall-sided vessel, bluff-bowed, and in accordance with the eighteenth century notion that "ships require a spreading body at the water's edge, both afore and abaft, to support them from being plunged too deep into the sea."11 The illusion of sharp bows given by some contemporary pictures was due to the ornamental cutwater of ancient tradition. Besides the cut- water, the Federalist vessels were embellished by numerous other ornaments, including carved "quick work" about the bows and "gin-
10. Samuel E. Morison: "The Maritime History of Massachusetts," Wm. Hein- mann, London. 1923. p. 102.
II. "The Maritime History of Massachusetts," p. 99, quoted from William Hutchin- son, "Treatise on Practical Seamanship," Liverpool, 1777.
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gerbread work" on the stern. These vessels, with their varied and contrasting coloring, such as an orange waist against blue topsides, and their few, large sails, gave a distinctly quaint appearance; they were, in style, nearly as closely related to the ships of Columbus as to the sharp, sheer clipper ships of the mid-nineteenth century. That Essex County builders could, at that time, build faster, more grace- ful vessels when the need arose is unquestioned, for they accomplished this with the frigate "Alliance," the privateer "Decatur," and several others, but to combine speed with carrying capacity was the accom- plishment of a later generation.
To turn from the ships and commerce of Federalist days to the maritime developments after the War of 1812 is to observe great changes in the economic life of Essex County. It is a story, by and large, of maritime decay and industrial awakening. Even without the embargo and the War of 1812, as has been intimated before, the importance of the seaborne commerce of Essex County was doomed to eventual decline by fundamental economic changes. The war marked the beginning of the industrial revolution in New Eng- land. Textile mills rose on every good natural water power site in Essex County during the two decades after the war, and the manu- facture of shoes expanded to an amazing degree. Several leading mercantile families, such as the Lowells and Jacksons, of Newbury- port, turned from trade to manufacture. Tariffs, which were raised to protect the "infant industries," brought great changes in our for- eign trade; imports of India cottons, English woolens, Russia duck and canvas, and iron from the Baltic were reduced to a minimum. Although duties were kept low on such exotic products as sugar and Oriental goods, the mainstays of the traditional commerce with Europe were taken away. The growth of manufacturing, of course, originated new forms of trade, and stimulated others, but Boston was ever ready and able to secure the advantages of these commercial developments for herself. The coming of the railroads only com- pleted, in making Essex County commercially tributary to Boston, what the construction of the Middlesex Canal, from the Merrimac to the Mystic, had begun.
The decay of the maritime commerce of Newburyport was a direct consequence of all these factors. The mainstay of her commerce, the triangular trade with the West Indies and the Baltic, was cut from under her by rising tariff and by domestic manufacturing. Now that
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the shipbuilders of the Merrimac Valley could be supplied with sail- cloth from the mills of Lowell, with iron from Pennsylvania, and with Manila hemp brought from the Orient in Salem and Boston bottoms, the nice balance of Newburyport's industrial and commercial activi- ties was destroyed. What remained of her fleet had to content itself principally with coasting and desultory West India voyages. Profes- sor Morison describes the plight of Newburyport and the smaller ports of Essex County as follows :
"'Newburyport has withered under the influence of Bos- ton,' wrote Caleb Cushing, in 1825. Her population declined from 7,634 in 1810 to 6,375 in 1830. The Middlesex Canal, by tapping the Merrimac River at Chelmsford, diverted from Newburyport the lumber and produce of southern New Hamp- shire. Portland, Boothbay, and Bangor, in the thriving State of Maine, were exporting their lumber and fish direct, under- mining her West India trade. Gloucester absorbed a large proportion of her fisheries, and those of Ipswich as well. Deep slumber rested upon Newburyport. William Lloyd Garrison, the inspired printer's devil, tried to arouse her with a new journal, the 'Free Press.' High Street rubbed its eyes and rolled over, mumbling 'Jacobin!' Then Garrison followed the white sails to Boston.
"Marblehead made a brave and partially successful effort to revive her Baltic, South American and West Indian trade after the war. In August and September, 1821, she had three entries from St. Petersburg, two from Brazil, and two from Martinique; all of them schooners and briganteens from seventy-five to one hundred tons burthen. But by 1840 her most successful merchants, such as Robert Chamblett Hooper, had moved to Boston; and the rest put away their money into fishing schooners and shoe shops. Lucy Larcom has excited our pity for Hannah at a Window Binding Shoes in Marble- head, awaiting the return of fisherman Ben. Cold statistics, however, place Hannah among eleven hundred Marblehead- ers producing annually over a million pairs of shoes, worth twice the average catch of the fishing fleet. Clearly, there were no economic grounds for Hannah's loneliness."12
12. Samuel E. Morison : "Maritime History of Massachusetts," William Heine- mann, Ltd., London, 1923, pp. 210-17.
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Salem was as hard hit by embargo and war as any other port, her fleet declining from one hundred and eighty-two sail in 1807 to but fifty-seven in 1815. There was, also, a trend of capital to the larger commercial centers; William Gray, Salem's most successful merchant of the Federalist period, changed his base of operations to Boston in 1808, and was followed in the next twenty years by numer- ous others. By 1820, however, Salem's trade had revived to some extent, although her fleet never reached its former size. Unlike New- buryport, a good part of Salem's Federalist commerce was left undis- turbed by the rising protective tariffs. There was still a market for pepper and other Oriental goods, and several Salem merchants con- tinued to make large profits in this trade.
Joseph Peabody was the most successful of the Salem merchants of the three decades following the War of 1812. Peabody owned numerous vessels during his long career as an East India merchant. His two hundred twenty-three ton brig "Leander," built in Salem in 1821, in her twenty-three years of service made twenty-six foreign voyages, including visits to Europe, Asia Minor, Africa, and the Far East. His ship "George" sailed so regularly between Salem and Calcutta, making twenty-one round voyages in all, that she became known in the maritime world as the "Salem Frigate." The "George," a vessel of three hundred and twenty-eight tons, built for privateering in 1814, was an exceptionally fast sailer for those days, making Salem from the Cape of Good Hope in 1831 in the remarkable time of forty- one days.
For many years after the War of 1812, Salem continued to pioneer in the waters beyond the Cape of Good Hope, besides clinging reso- lutely to many of her former 'Oriental specialties, such as the North- west Sumatra pepper trade. A Salem adventure which opened Cochin-China to American commerce, recorded in "The History of a Voyage in the China Sea," by Lieutenant John White, U. S. N., was the voyage of the brig "Franklin," which sailed up-river to Saigon in 1819. Salem vessels pushed to the remotest corners of the South Seas, at great hazard; five of the men of the brig "Charles Doggett," William Driver master, were murdered by Fiji Islanders in 1833, and in the same month Mr. Knight, of Salem, mate of the "Friendship," was the victim of a Malay kreese at Quallah-Battoo. Trepang, the stewed sea-cucumber which Salem vessels still supplied
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to the Chinese mandarins, was procured in the Islands to the value of $30,000 annually. Sandalwood also lured Salem mariners to far away places in the Pacific.
During the fifty years after the War of 1812, Salem traders of relatively small means concentrated particularly upon commerce with the West Coast of Africa; from 1832 to 1864 there were 558 arrivals from that part of the world. Gunpowder, tobacco, rum, and assorted trinkets were taken to Sierra Leone, and the Guinea, Liberian, Ivory, and Gold Coasts, in small schooners and brigs, and bartered for ivory, camphor wood, palm oil, peanuts, and gold dust. It is possible, though not recorded, that some Essex County West African traders of this time dabbled in the slave trade as well. The commerce with Africa was not confined to Salem among Essex County towns, for, in addition to West India and coastwise voyages, the rem- nants of the merchant fleets of Newburyport and Marblehead also participated in this trade.
In the early 'thirties small traders of Salem were calling at Mada- gascar and Zanzibar, off the East Africa coast. Through the coop- eration of Sultan Seyyid Said, which the wily Salem shipmasters were able to gain, they monopolized the export of copal, an important ingredient of varnish. This trade, incidentally, was the basis of an interesting local industry; between 1845 and 1861 about 1,500,000 pounds of copal passed through the shop of Jonathan Whipple, who had discovered a cheap way of cleaning this substance.
Salem's South American trade was brisk for many years after the War of 1812. The tanneries of Danvers and the rapidly expand- ing manufacture of shoes in Essex County provided a good market for Argentine hides, while the introduction of gum "rubbers" from · Para, by Captain Benjamin Upton, in 1824, made Salem the center of the Brazilian rubber trade until about the year 1845, by which time New York had absorbed most of her commerce with South America.
By the middle 'forties, in spite of her tenacious struggle to main- tain her maritime trade, Salem had joined Newburyport in commercial decay and somnolence. Ships came and went from time to time, causing mild interest among the loungers of the all but deserted water- front. Now and then a lumber schooner from Maine or Nova Scotia, a coal vessel from Norfolk or Philadelphia, a hide ship from the
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Argentine, or a brig in the West Africa trade would slip into Salem harbor, to rub moss from the rotting piling of Derby Wharf. Very infrequently, particularly after the Civil War, an East Indiaman hailing from Salem would make a long deferred visit to her home port. Joseph Peabody had died in 1844, the last Salem man to make a fortune in the East India trade, although a small and ever-dwindling number of firms continued to prosecute this once most remunerative branch of commerce. Salem East Indiamen of the 'fifties and later picked up and delivered their cargoes in Boston, New York, or Phila- delphia, for. Salem had ceased to be a market for India goods. The final chapter of Salem's East India trade was written in 1893, when the "Mindoro," the last square-rigger of the ancient firm of Silsbee, Stone & Pickman, was sold to become a coal barge.
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