Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Paul Cuffe, a Pequot Indian, During Thirty Years Spent at Sea, and in Travelling in Foreign Lands

VERNON: PRINTED BY HORACE N. BILL, 1839.
NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF PAUL CUFFE,
A descendant of an Indian family, which formerly resided in the eastern part of Connecticut and constituted a part of that fierce and warlike tribe of Indians called Pequots, of whose exploits in the early Wars of New-England, the reader may become acquainted by perusing Trumbull's History of the Indian Wars.
The subject of this narrative was born in the town of Westport, in the State of Massachusetts. His father, Paul Cuffe, was a sea-faring man, and had the command of a number of merchant vessels. It was with him that I made my first voyage, when a boy twelve years old. This was in the year 1808. On the morning of a pleasant day in the month of May, of that year, we hoisted sail and stood out for sea. There were 16 hands on board. This was new business to me, and with the novelty attending a sea voyage I was highly pleased. Nothing uncommon attended this voyage, which was made to Passamaquaddy, for Plaster of Paris. We made this voyage down in about 10 days. After loading our vessel, which took two weeks, we again set sail for Wilmington, in Delaware, at which port we safely arrived in 16 days, discharged our freight, took in ballast and 300 bushels of apples, and sailed for Savannah, in Georgia, where we arrived without any accident to mar the pleasure of the voyage, in about twenty days, where we again discharged our freight and reloaded our vessel with Cotton, Rice and Logwood. Here we lay three months in making preparation for sea again. From this place we made out into the broad Atlantic with all sails fluttering in the balmy breeze, and all hands full of hope and buoyant with expectation. This was a long, tedious voyage, as the reader will readily imagine when I inform him that we sailed a great number of days in a northward direction, until we made the Grand Banks; then we steered away for the northern coast of Scotland, which we reached in about fifty days. Thence we continued our course around the Orknies into the Northern Sea, and made the entrance to the Baltic through what is called the Sleeve; thence along the coast of Copenhagen northward to Gottenburgh, a flourishing town in West Gothland in Sweden. Here we lay six weeks, sold our lading, and took in a load of iron, steel and hemp. From thence we sailed for Elsinore, a seaport of Denmark, where we took in a number of passengers for Philadelphia, at which place we arrived after a long passage, sometime in the month of September, 1809. During this voyage we had much rough weather; so much so, that we were compelled to throw overboard fifty tons of iron while on the Grand Banks. During this gale we lost our fore-top-mast, jib-boom and long boat.