FOOTNOTES:
[24] The edition of 1800 of this popular compendium of knowledge bore on the title page: “A New Geographical, Historical and Commercial Grammar and Present State of the Several Kingdoms of the World. Illustrated with a Correct Set of Maps, Engraved from the Most Recent Observations and Draughts of Geographical Travellers. The Eighteenth Edition Corrected and Considerably enlarged. London. 1800.”
The work contained “Longitude, Latitude, Bearings and Distances of Principal Places from London” as one of its qualifications for use among mariners.
CHAPTER XI
PIONEERS IN DISTANT SEAS
(1775-1817)
The name of Joseph Peabody takes rank with that of Elias Hasket Derby as an American who did much to upbuild the commerce, wealth and prestige of his nation in its younger days. It may sound like an old-fashioned doctrine in this present age of concentration of wealth at the expense of a sturdy and independent citizenship, to assert that such men as Joseph Peabody deserve much more honor for the kind of manhood they helped to foster than for the riches they amassed for themselves. They did not seek to crush competition, to drive out of business the men around them who were ambitious to win a competence on their own merits and to call themselves free citizens of a free country. Those were the days of equal opportunities, which shining fact finds illustration in the career of Joseph Peabody, for example, who, during his career as a ship owner, advanced to the rank of master thirty-five of his fellow townsmen who had entered his employ as cabin boys or seamen. Every one of these shipmasters, “if he had the stuff in him,” became an owner of shipping, a merchant with his own business on shore, an employer who was eager, in his turn, to advance his own masters and mates to positions of independence in which they might work out their own careers.
During the early years of the nineteenth century, Joseph Peabody built and owned eighty-three ships which he freighted on his own account and sent to every corner of the world. The stout square-riggers which flew the Peabody house flag made thirty-eight voyages to Calcutta, seventeen to Canton, thirty-two to Sumatra, forty-seven to St. Petersburg, and thirty to other ports of Europe. To man this noble fleet no fewer than seven thousand seamen signed shipping articles in the counting room of Joseph Peabody. The extent of his commerce is indicated by the amount of duties paid by some of these ships. In 1825 and 1826, the Leander, a small brig of two hundred and twenty-three tons, made two voyages to Canton which paid into the Salem Custom House duties of $86,847, and $92,392 respectively. In 1829, 1830, and 1831, the Sumatra, a ship of less than three hundred tons, came home from China with cargoes, the duties on which amounted to $128,363; $138,480, and $140,761. The five voyages named, and all of them were made in ships no larger than a small two-masted coasting schooner of to-day, paid in duties a total of almost six hundred thousand dollars.
Typical of the ships which won wealth and prestige for Joseph Peabody, was the redoubtable George which was the most successful vessel of her period. For twenty-two years she was in the East India trade, making twenty-one round voyages with such astonishing regularity as to challenge comparison with the schedules of the cargo tramps of to-day. She was only one hundred and ten feet in length, with a beam of twenty-seven feet, but during her staunch career the George paid into the United States Treasury as duties on her imports more than six hundred thousand dollars.
She was built in 1814 by a number of Salem ship carpenters who had been deprived of work by the stagnation of the War of 1812. They intended to launch her as a co-operative privateer, to earn her way by force of arms when peaceable merchantmen were driven from the high seas. But the war ended too soon to permit these enterprising shipwrights to seek British plunder and they sold the George to Joseph Peabody. She sailed for India in 1815, with hardly a man in her company, from quarterdeck to forecastle, more than twenty-one years of age. Every man aboard of her could read and write, and most of the seamen had studied navigation.
Not always did these enterprising and adventurous Salem lads return to their waiting mothers. In the log of the George for a voyage to Calcutta in 1824, the mate has drawn with pencil a tombstone and a weeping willow as a tribute to one Greenleaf Perley, a young seaman who died in that far-off port. The mate was a poet of sorts and beneath the headstone he wrote these lines:
“The youth ambitious sought a sickly clime,
His hopes of profit banished all his fears;
His was the generous wish of love divine,
To sooth a mother’s cares and dry her tears.”
Joseph Peabody began his sea life when a lad in his teens in the hardy school of the Revolutionary privateersmen. He made his first cruise in Elias Hasket Derby’s privateer, Bunker Hill, and his second in the Pilgrim owned by the Cabots of Beverly. A little later he became second officer of a letter of marque ship, the Ranger, owned by Boston and Salem shipping merchants. It was while aboard the Ranger that young Peabody won his title as a fighting seaman. Leaving Salem in the winter of 1781-82, the Ranger carried salt to Richmond, and loaded with flour at Alexandria for Havana. Part of this cargo of flour was from the plantation of George Washington, and the immortal story of the hatchet and the cherry tree must have been known in Cuba even then, for the Spanish merchants expressed a preference for this brand of flour and showed their confidence by receiving it at the marked weight without putting it on the scales.
The Ranger returned to Alexandria for another cargo of flour, and on July 5th, 1782, dropped down the Potomac, ready for sea. Head winds compelled her to anchor near the mouth of the river. At three o’clock of the following night, the seaman on watch ran aft, caught up a speaking trumpet, and shouted down to the sleeping officers in the cabin that two boats were making for the ship. Captain Simmons and Lieutenant Peabody rushed up the companionway, and as they reached the deck, received a volley of musketry from the darkness. Captain Simmons fell, badly wounded, and Peabody ran forward in his night clothes, calling to the crew to get their boarding pikes. He caught up a pike and with a brave and ready seaman named Kent, sprang to the bows and engaged in a hand to hand fight with the boarding party which was already pouring over the rail from the boat alongside.
The Ranger’s crew rallied and held the deck against this invasion until a second boat made fast in another quarter and swept the deck with musket fire. The first officer was in the magazine below, breaking out ammunition, the captain was wounded, and the command of this awkward situation fell upon Lieutenant, or Second Officer Peabody, who was a conspicuous mark in his white nightshirt. He ordered cold shot heaved into the boats to sink them if possible, and one of them was smashed and sunk in short order.
Peabody then mustered his crew against the boarding party from the other boat, and drove them overboard. After the Ranger’s decks had been cleared in fierce and bloody fashion and the fight was won, it was found that one of her crew was dead, three wounded, the captain badly hurt, and although Peabody had not known it in the heat of action, he had stopped two musket balls and bore the marks of a third. One of the very able seamen of the Ranger had seen a boarder about to fire point-blank at Peabody and with a sweep of his cutlass he cut off the hand that held the pistol. For this service Peabody made the seaman a life-long pensioner, showing that his heart was in the right place in more ways than one.
Joseph Peabody
The Ranger carried twenty men and seven guns at this time, and the enemy attempted to carry the ship with sixty men in two barges, their loss being more than forty in killed and wounded. They were later ascertained to be a band of Tories who had infested the bay of the mouth of the Potomac for some time, and had captured a brig of ten guns and thirty men a few days before this. The Ranger sailed up to Alexandria to refit and land her wounded, and the merchants of the town presented the ship with a silver mounted boarding-pike in token of their admiring gratitude for her stout defense. This trophy became the property of Joseph Peabody and was highly prized as an adornment of his Salem mansion in later years.
When the Ranger went to sea again, Thomas Perkins of Salem, her first officer, was given the command and Peabody sailed with him as chief mate. Thus began a friendship which later became a business partnership in which Perkins amassed a large fortune of his own. Peabody sailed as a shipmaster for a Salem firm for several years after peace came, and at length bought a schooner, the Three Friends, in which he traded to the West Indies and Europe. The story of his career thereafter was one of successful speculation in ships and cargoes and of a growing fleet of deep-water vessels until his death in 1844, a venerable man of large public spirit, and shining integrity, a pillar of his state and town, whose fortune had been won in the golden age of American enterprise in remote seas.
William Gray completed the triumvirate of Salem ship owners of surpassing sagacity and success, his name being rightfully linked with those of Elias Hasket Derby and Joseph Peabody. He served his apprenticeship in the counting room of Richard Derby and was one of the earliest American shipping merchants to seek the trade of Canton and the ports of the East Indies. In 1807 he owned fifteen ships, seven barks, thirteen brigs, and one schooner, or one-fourth of the tonnage of the port. He became the lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth and left a princely fortune as the product of his farsighted industry.
For the information of those unfamiliar with the records of that epoch on the seas, the rapidity with which these lords of maritime trade acquired their fleets and the capital needed to freight and man them, it may be worth while to give a concrete example of the profits to be won in those ventures of large risks and larger stakes. A letter written from the great shipping house of the Messrs. Perkins in Boston to their agents in Canton in 1814, goes to show that the operations of the captains of industry of the days of Derby and Gray and Peabody would have been respected by the capitalists of this twentieth century. Here is the kind of Arabian Night’s Entertainment in the way of dazzling rewards which these old-time merchants planned to reap:
“To Messers. Perkins and Co.
Canton, Jan. 1, 1814.
“You say a cargo laid at Canton would bring three for one in South America, and your copper would give two prices back. Thus, $30,000 laid out in China would give you $90,000 in South America, one half of which laid out in copper would give one hundred per cent, or $90,000, making $135,000 for $30,000.
“60,000 pounds of indigo even at 80 cents, $48,000; 120 tons of sugar at $60, or $7,200, and cotton or some other light freight, say skin tea, $20,000, in all $75,000, would be worth $400,000 here, and not employ the profits of the voyage to South America. Manila sugar is worth $400 or $500 per ton here, clear of duty. The ship should be flying light, her bottom in good order, the greatest vigilance used on the voyage and make any port north of New York.
“(signed) Thomas H. Perkins and James Perkins.”
It was the heyday of opportunity for youth. Robert Bennet Forbes, by way of example, was the nephew of this Thomas Perkins of Boston, and likewise became a wealthy merchant and ship owner. Young Forbes went to sea before the mast as a boy of thirteen. He has told how his mother equipped him with a supply of thread, needles, buttons, etc., in his ditty-bag, also some well-darned socks, a Testament, a bottle of lavender water, one of essence of peppermint, a small box of broken sugar and a barrel of apples. “She wanted to give me a pillow and some sheets and pillow cases,” he writes, “but I scorned the idea, having been told that sailors never used them, but usually slept with a stick of wood with the bark on for a pillow. My good mother who had been at sea herself and fully realized the dangers and temptations to which I should be exposed, felt that there could be but one more severe trial for her, and that was to put me in my grave. My uncle contributed a letter full of excellent advice, recommending me to fit myself to be a good captain and promising to keep me in mind. William Sturgiss, who had much experience of the sea, took an interest in me and gave me this advice:
“‘Always go straight forward, and if you meet the Devil cut him in two and go between the pieces; if any one imposes on you, tell him to whistle against a northwester and to bottle up moonshine.’”
Forbes was 15 years old when Mr. Cushing, of the firm’s shipping house in Canton, wrote to Thomas H. Perkins in Boston:
“I have omitted in my letters per Nautilus, mentioning our young friend Bennet Forbes, recommending his being promoted to be an officer on the return of the Canton packet. He is without exception the finest lad I have ever known, and has already the stability of a man of thirty. During the stay of the ship I have had him in the office and have found him as useful as if he had been regularly brought up in the business; he has profited so much by the little intercourse he has had with the Chinese that he is now more competent to transact business than one half of the supercargoes sent out.”
The Crowninshield family of Salem earned very unusual distinction on salt water and a national fame as men of affairs and statecraft. There were six brothers of them, born of a seafaring father and grandfather, and this stalwart half dozen Crowninshields one and all, went to sea as boys. One died of fever at Guadaloupe at the age of fourteen while captain’s clerk of a Salem ship. The five surviving brothers commanded ships before they were old enough to vote, and at one time the five were absent from Salem, each in his own vessel, and three of them in the East India trade.
“When little boys they were all sent to a common school and about their eleventh year began their first particular study which should develop them as sailors and ship captains. These boys studied their navigation as little chaps of twelve years old and were required to thoroughly master the subject before being sent to sea. It was common in those days to pursue their studies by much writing out of problems, and boys kept their books until full. Several such are among our family records and are interesting in the extreme, beautifully written, without blots or dog’s ears, and all the problems of navigation as practised then, are drawn out in a neat and in many cases a remarkably handsome manner. The designing of vessels was also studied and the general principles of construction mastered.
“As soon as the theory of navigation was mastered, the youngsters were sent to sea, sometimes as common sailors, but commonly as ship’s clerks, in which position they were enabled to learn everything about the management of a ship without actually being a common sailor.”[25]
Hon. Jacob Crowninshield
This method of nautical education was of course open only to those of considerable influence who wished to fit their sons to become merchants as well as shipmasters. It seems to have been remarkably efficient in training the five Crowninshields. One of these shipmasters, Benjamin W., became Secretary of the Navy under Jefferson, and United States Congressman, while another brother, Jacob, was a Congressman from 1803 to 1805 and had the honor of declining a seat in Jefferson’s Cabinet. Jacob Crowninshield, however, earned a more popular kind of fame by bringing home from India in 1796, the first live elephant ever seen in America. It is probable that words would be wholly inadequate to describe the sensation created by this distinguished animal when led through the streets of Salem, with a thousand children clamoring their awe and jubilation.[26] It is recorded that this unique and historical elephant was sold for ten thousand dollars.
The eldest of these brothers, Captain George Crowninshield, who served his years at sea, from forecastle to cabin, and then retired ashore to become a shipping merchant, was the patriotic son of Salem who chartered the brig Henry, manned her with a crew of shipmasters and sailed to Halifax to bring home the bodies of Lawrence and Ludlow after the defeat of the Chesapeake by the Shannon. Those who knew him have handed down a vivid description of his unusual personality. He was robust and daring beyond the ordinary, and a great dandy in his small clothes and Hessian boots with gold tassels. “His coat was wonderful in cloth, pattern, trimmings and buttons, and his waistcoat was a work of art. He wore a pigtail and on top of all a bell-crowned beaver hat, not what is called a beaver to-day, but made of beaver skin, shaggy like a terrier dog.”
Captain George has the distinction of being the first American yacht owner. As early as 1801 he had built in Salem a sloop called the Jefferson in which he cruised for several years. She was turned into a privateer in the War of 1812. While the Jefferson was beyond doubt the first vessel built for pleasure in this country, and the first yacht that ever flew the Stars and Stripes, her fame is overshadowed by that of the renowned Cleopatra’s Barge, the second yacht owned by Captain Crowninshield, and the first of her nation to cruise in foreign waters. The Cleopatra’s Barge was a nine-days’ wonder from Salem to the Mediterranean, and was in many ways one of the most remarkable vessels ever launched.
Her owner found himself at forty-nine years in the prime of his adventurous energy with his occupation gone. The shipping firm founded by his father had been dissolved, and this member of the house fell heir to much wealth and leisure. Passionately fond of the sea and sailors he determined to build the finest vessel ever dreamed of by a sober-minded American, and to cruise and live aboard her for the remainder of his days. There were no other yachts to pattern after, wherefore the Cleopatra’s Barge was modeled and rigged after the fashion of a smart privateer, or sloop-of-war.
When she was launched in Salem harbor in 1817, at least a thousand curious people visited her every day she lay in port. Her fittings were gorgeous for her time, what with Oriental draperies, plate glass mirrors, sideboards, and plate. She was eighty-seven feet long, and in dimensions almost the counterpart of the famous sloop Mayflower of modern times. When she was ready for sea, this yacht had cost her owner fifty thousand dollars. She was rigged as a brigantine, and carried a mighty press of sail, studding-sails on the fore-yards, sky-sail, “ring-tail,” “water-sail,” and other handkerchiefs now unknown.
With that bold individuality of taste responsible for the yellow curricle in which Captain George was wont to dazzle Salem, when he drove through the streets, he painted his yacht in different colors and patterns along her two sides. To starboard she showed a hull of horizontal stripes laid on in most of the colors of the rainbow. To port she was a curious “herring-bone” pattern of brilliant hues. Her stern was wide and pierced with little cabin windows.
With his cousin Benjamin as skipper, and a friend, Samuel Curwen Ward, the owner sailed for the Mediterranean on what was destined to be a triumphant voyage. He had prepared himself with no fewer than three hundred letters of introduction to eminent civil, military and naval persons of Italy, Spain and other countries. The cook of the Cleopatra’s Barge was a master of his craft, the stock of wine was choice and abundant, and if ever an open-handed yachtsman sailed the deep it was this Salem pioneer of them all.
The vessel was the sensation of the hour in every port. Her journal recorded that an average of more than three thousand visitors came aboard on every pleasant day while she was in foreign ports, and that in Barcelona eight thousand people came off to inspect her in one day. Wherever possible the owner chartered a band of music or devised other entertainment for his guests. His yacht was more than a pleasure barge, for he had the pleasure of beating the crack frigate United States in a run from Carthagena to Port Mahone, and on the way to Genoa she logged thirteen knots for twelve hours on end.
It was at Genoa that an Italian astronomer of considerable distinction, Baron von Zack, paid a visit on board and several years later recorded his impressions of the Cleopatra’s Barge in a volume, written in French, and published in Genoa in 1820.
“How does it happen that the Commanders of French vessels, with thirty-four schools of Hydrography established in the Kingdom, either know not, or do not wish to know, how to calculate the longitude of their vessels by Lunar distances, while even the cooks and negroes of American vessels understand it?
“I will now relate what I once witnessed on board an American vessel, the Cleopatra’s Barge, which arrived in the month of July, 1817, at the port of Genoa from Salem, one of the handsomest Towns in the State of Massachusetts, U. S. A., Lat. 42° 35′ 20″ N., Long. 73° 9′ 30″ W. All the city crowded to see this magnificent palace of Neptune; more than 20,000 persons had visited this superb floating palace, and were astonished at its beauty, luxury and magnificence. I went among others. The owner was on board; he was a gentleman of fortune of Salem, who had amassed great riches during the late war with Great Britain. He was brother to the Secretary of the Navy of the United States.
“This elegant vessel was built for his own amusement, after his own ideas, upon a plan and model new in very many respects, and was considered the swiftest sailer in America. He had traveled or sailed for his pleasure in this costly jewel (bijou) that appeared more the model of a cabinet of curiosities than a real vessel. He had left America in this charming shell (coquille) for the purpose of visiting Europe and making the tour of the Mediterranean & had already touched at the ports of Spain, France, Italy, the Archipelago, Dardanelles, coasts of Asia, Africa, etc. We have since heard of the death of this gentleman, a short time after his return to Salem. His name was George Crowninshield—he was of German origin—his ancestor was a Saxon officer who, having the misfortune to kill his adversary in a duel, sought refuge in America. The captain of this beautiful vessel was a lively old gentleman, a cousin to Mr. Crowninshield—his son, a young man, was also on board. I shall not here enter into detail concerning the remarkable construction of this vessel, still less her splendor—the public journals have already noticed them.
Benjamin Crowninshield
“In making some enquiries respecting my friends and correspondents in Philadelphia and Boston, among others I mentioned Dr. Bowditch. ‘He is the friend of our family, and our neighbor in Salem,’ replied the old Captain. ‘My son, whom you see there, was his pupil; it is properly he, and not myself, that navigates this vessel; question him and see if he has profited by his instructions.’
“I observed to this young man, ‘you have had so excellent a teacher in Hydrography that you cannot fail of being well acquainted with the science. In making Gibralter what was the error in your longitude?’ The young man replied, ‘Six miles.’ ‘Your calculations were then very correct; how did you keep your ship’s accounts?’ ‘By chronometers and by Lunar observations.’ ‘You then can ascertain your Longitude by Lunar distances?’
“Here my young captain appearing to be offended with my question, replied with some warmth, ‘What! I know how to calculate Lunar distances! Our cook can do that!’ ‘Your cook!’ Here Mr. Crowninshield and the old Captain assured me, that the cook on board could calculate Longitude quite well; that his taste for it frequently led him to do it. ‘That is he,’ said the young man, pointing to a Negro in the after part of the vessel, with a white apron about his waist, a fowl in one hand, and a carving knife in the other.
‘Come here, John,’ said the old Captain to him, ‘this gentleman is surprised that you understand Lunar observations. Answer his questions.’ I asked, ‘By what method do you calculate Lunar distances?’ The cook answered, ‘It is immaterial—I use some time the method of Maskelyne, Lyons, or Bowditch, but I prefer that of Dunthorne, as I am more accustomed to it.’ I could hardly express my surprise at hearing that black-face answer in such a manner, with a bloody fowl and carving knife in his hands.
“‘Go,’ said Mr. Crowninshield, ‘lay aside your fowl and bring your books and journal and show your calculations to the gentleman.’ The cook returned with his books under his arms, consisting of Bowditch’s Practical Navigator, Maskelyne’s Requisite Tables, Hutton’s Logarithms and the Nautical Almanack, abridged from the Greenwich Edition. I saw all the calculations this Negro had made on his passage, of Latitude, Longitude, Apparent Time, etc. He replied to all my questions with admirable precision, not merely in the phrases of a cook, but in correct nautical language.
“This cook had sailed as cabin-boy with Captain Cook in his last voyage round the world and was acquainted with several facts relative to the assassination of the celebrated navigator at Owhyhee, February, 1779. ‘The greatest part of the seamen on board the Barge,’ said Mr. Crowninshield, ‘can use the sextant and make nautical calculations.’
“Indeed Mr. Crowninshield had with him many instructors. At Genoa he had taken one acquainted with Italian—he had also on board an instructor in the French language, a young man who had lost his fingers in the Russian campaign. What instruction! what order! what correctness! what magnificence was to be observed in this Barge; I could relate many more interesting particulars concerning this true Barque of Cleopatra.”
The editor of the Diario di Roma newspaper of Rome considered the Cleopatra’s Barge worthy of a eulogistic notice, a translation of which was printed in the Essex Register of October 11, 1817:
“Soon after the visit of the fleet, there anchored in our port a schooner from America, of a most beautiful construction, elegantly found, very light, and formed for fast sailing, and armed like our light armed vessels. It was named the Cleopatra, belonging to a very rich traveller, George Crowninshield, of Salem, who constructed her for his own use, and for the voyages he had undertaken in company with Captain Benjamin Crowninshield, his cousin. Besides the extreme neatness of everything about the vessel to fit her for sea, her accommodations were surprising and wonderful. Below was a hall of uncommon extent, in which the luxury of taste, the riches and elegance of the furniture, the harmony of the drapery, and of all the ornaments, inspired pleasure and gallantry. The apartment of the stern was equally rich and interesting. Five convenient bed chambers displayed with that same elegance, were at the service of the Captain, with an apartment for the plate of every kind, with which it was filled. Near was another apartment which admitted all the offices of a kitchen, and in it was a pump with three tubes which passed through the vessel, to supply water from the sea, or discharge what they pleased, with the greatest ease.
“The rich and distinguished owner had with him beside his family servants, several linguists, persons of high talent in music, and an excellent painter. Everything to amuse makes a part of the daily entertainment. The owner and Captain were affable, pleasing and civil, and gave full evidence of the talents, the industry and the good taste of their nation, which yields to none in good sense and true civility. The above travellers having complied with the usual rules of the city, upon receiving a particular invitation, he visited the Cleopatra in company with many persons of distinction, and partook of an elegant collation.”
The Salem Gazette of Sept. 26, 1817, contained the following “extract of a letter from a gentleman on board the Cleopatra’s Barge”:
“Barcelona, June 8.
“You have undoubtedly heard of our movements in the Mediterranean; indeed you must have heard of us, from every place at which we have touched—for the Cleopatra’s Barge is more celebrated abroad than at home. Even the Moors of Tangier visited us tho’ they abhor the Christians. At Gibralter the Englishmen were astonished. In Malaga, Carthagena and this place the Spaniards have been thunderstruck. For these four days past the whole of this great city has been in an uproar. They begin to crowd on board at daylight, and continue to press upon us till night. This morning the Mole was so crowded with people waiting to come on board, that we have been obliged to get under weigh, and stand out of the Mole, yet the boats, with men, women and children, are rowing after us. Thus it has been in every place we have visited. In Port Mahon we were visited by all the officers of our squadron.”
Further tidings were conveyed to the admiring townspeople of Salem by means of an article in the Essex Register under date of Oct. 25th:
“Having noticed the attention paid to the American barge Cleopatra, at Rome, we could not refuse the pleasure of assuring our friends that Capt. G. Crowninshield had been equally successful in arresting attention in France. The following is an extract from a Letter dated at Marseilles, 14th July, 1817, from a person long residing in France: ‘Capt. G. Crowninshield left this port in the beginning of this month, for Toulon and Italy. During his stay here, thousands of both sexes were on board of his beautiful Vessel. Every day it was like a continual procession. It gave me the utmost pleasure, as the universal opinion was that no vessel could compare with this Vessel. I felt proud that such a splendid specimen of what could be done in the United States was thus exhibited in Europe. We consider it as an act of patriotism. The Vessel was admired. The exquisite taste in her apartments greatly astonished the French for their amour propre had inclined them to believe that only in France the true gout was known.’”
Ship Ulysses—This painting shows a jury rudder about to be put in place at sea, in 1806. So ingenious was the display of seamanship in the rigging of this emergency rudder that her commander, Capt. Wm. Mugford was awarded a medal by the American Philosophical Society
Yacht Cleopatra’s Barge, 191 tons, built in Salem, 1816, shows the “herring-bone” design painted in bright colors on side of the yacht
The Cleopatra’s Barge returned to Salem in triumph, but Captain George Crowninshield died on board while making ready for a second voyage abroad. She was sold and converted into a merchantman, made a voyage to Rio, then rounded the Horn, and at the Sandwich Islands was sold to King Kamehameha to be used as a royal yacht. Only a year later her native crew put her on a reef and the career of the Cleopatra’s Barge was ended in this picturesque but inglorious fashion.
In reading the old-time stories of the sea, one is apt to forget that wives and sweethearts were left at home to wait and yearn for their loved ones, for these logs and journals deal with the day’s work of strong men as they fought and sailed and traded in many seas. Few letters which they sent home have been preserved. It is therefore the more appealing and even touching to find in a fragment of the log of the ship Rubicon, the expression of such sentiment as most of these seamen must have felt during the lonely watches in midocean. It is a curious document, this log, written by a shipmaster whose name cannot be found in the bundle of tattered sheets rescued from the rubbish of an old Salem garret.
On the fly leaf is scrawled:
“Boston, May the 11th, 1816. Took a pilot on board the Ship Rubicon and sailed from Charlestown. 12th of May at 3 P. M. came to an anchor above the Castle, the wind S.E.”
The ship was bound from Boston to St. Petersburg, and after he had been a week at sea, her master began to write at the bottom of the pages of his log certain intimately personal sentiments which he sought to conceal in a crude cipher of his own devising. The first of these entries reads as follows as the captain set it down, letter by letter:
“L nb wvzi druv what hszoo R dirgv go uroo gsrh hsvvg R droo gvoo blf gszg R ollp blfi ovgvih levi zmw levi zmw drhs nv rm blf zinh yfg R dzng rm kzgrvmxv gsrmprmt lm Z szkb nvvgrmt——R zn dvoo.”
It is not easy to fathom why the captain of the good ship Rubicon should have chosen to make such entries as this in the log. This much is clear, however, that he longed to say what was in his heart and he wished to keep it safe from prying eyes. He left no key to his cipher, but his code was almost childish in its simplicity, and was promptly unraveled by the finder of the manuscript, David Mason Little of Salem. The old shipmaster reversed the alphabet, setting down “Z” for “A,” “Y” for “B,” and so on, or for convenience in working it out, the letters may be placed as follows:
| A—Z | N—M |
| B—Y | O—L |
| C—X | P—K |
| D—W | Q—J |
| E—V | R—I |
| F—U | S—H |
| G—T | T—G |
| H—S | U—F |
| I—R | V—E |
| J—Q | W—D |
| K—P | X—C |
| L—O | Y—B |
| M—N | Z—A |
Reading from the top of the column, the letters of the reversed alphabet are to be substituted for the letters standing opposite them in their normal order. The passage already quoted therefore translates itself as follows:
“O, Dear Wife, what shall I write to fill this sheet. I will tell you that I look your letters over and over and wish me in your arms, but I wait in patience, thinking on a happy meeting. I am well.”
Log of the good ship Rubicon, showing the captain’s cipher at the bottom of the page
Other messages which this sailor wrote from his heart and confided to his cipher in the log of the Rubicon read in this wise:
“My Heart within me (is) ashes. I want to see my loving Wife and press her to my bosom. But, O, my days are gone and past no more to return forever.”
“True, undivided and sincere love united with its own object is one of the most happy Passions that possesses the human heart.”
“Joanna, this day brings to my mind grateful reflections.
“This is the day that numbers thirty years of my Dear’s life. O, that I could lay in her arms to-night and recount the days that have passed away in youthful love and pleasure.”
“The seed is sown, it springs up and grows to maturity, then drops its seed and dies away, while the young shoot comes up and takes its place. And so it is with Man that is born to die.”
Now and then a sea tragedy is so related in these old log books that the heart is touched with a genuine sympathy for the victim, as if he were more than a name, as if he were a friend or a neighbor. It is almost certain that no one alive to-day has ever heard of Aaron Lufkin, able seaman, who sailed from Calcutta for the Cape of Good Hope in the year 1799. The ship’s clerk, William Cleveland of Salem, who kept a journal of the voyage, wrote of this sailor in such a way that you will be able to see him for what he was, and will perhaps wish no better epitaph for yourself:
“Aaron Lufkin, one of the most active of our seamen held out till he was scarcely able to walk, but as this appeared to be fatigue, his case was not particularly observed by the Captain nor officers. When he first complained he said he had been unwell for some days but that there were so few on duty he would stand it out. Unfortunately his zeal for his duty cost him his life, for on the 17th of April he died after lingering in torment for several days. He was often out of his head and continually on the fly when no person was attending him, and constantly talking of his father, mother and sisters, which shewed how fond he was of them. Indeed his little purchases in Calcutta for his sisters were a sufficient proof. He was the only son of a respectable tradesman in the town of Freeport (Maine) and the brother of eight or nine sisters, all of which were younger than himself, though he was but twenty years old.”
The death of an able seaman, under such peaceful circumstances as these, was a matter of no importance except to his kindred and his shipmates. It is significant of the spirit and singularly dramatic activity of those times that the loss of a whole ship’s company might be given not so much space in the chronicles of the town as the foregoing tribute to poor Aaron Lufkin. Indeed “Felt’s Annals of Salem” is fairly crowded with appalling tragedies, told in a few bald lines, of which the following are quoted as examples of condensed narration:
“News is received here that Captain Joseph Orne in the ship Essex had arrived at Mocha, with $60,000 to purchase coffee, and that Mahomet Ikle, commander of an armed ship, persuaded him to trade at Hadidido, and to take on board 30 of his Arabs to help navigate her thither while his vessel kept her company; that on the approach of night, and at a concerted signal, the Arabs attacked the crew of the Essex, and Ikle laid his ship alongside, and that the result was the slaughter of Captain Orne, and all his men, except a Dutch boy named John Hermann Poll. The Essex was plundered and burnt. The headless corpse of Capt. Orne and the mutilated remains of a merchant floated on shore and were decently buried. It was soon after ascertained that the faithless Mahomet was a notorious pirate of that country. He kept the lad whose life he had spared, as a slave until 1812, when Death kindly freed him from his cruel bondage.”
On the 13th of November, 1807, “the ship Marquis de Somereulas[27] arrives hither from Cronstadt and Elsinore. She brings in eleven men, a woman called Joanna Evans, and her child, which were picked up Oct. 28th in a long-boat. The rest being eight in number, were rescued at the same time on board a ship from Philadelphia. They had been in the boat six days, during which seven of their company died of starvation. The living, in order to sustain themselves, fed upon the dead. They were the remains of one hundred and ten souls on board an English transport which was waterlogged and then blew up and foundered. The captain and some of his men, being in a small boat, by some means or other separated from those in the long boat and were never afterwards heard of. After the sad story of these shipwrecked sufferers was generally known among our citizens, they experienced from them the most kindly sympathy and substantial aid to the amount of between two and three hundred dollars.”
A more cheerful story, and one which may be called an old-fashioned sea yarn, was told with much detail by a writer in the Salem Evening Journal in 1855, who had received it at first hand from a shipmate of the hero. In 1808, when England was nominally at peace with the United States, but molesting her commerce and impressing her seamen with the most pernicious energy, the bark Active, of Salem, arrived at Martha’s Vineyard and Captain Richardson reported that “while on his course for Europe he was captured by an English letter-of-marque, whose commander put seven men on board with Captain Richardson and three of his crew, the rest of his men being taken from him and the bark ordered to Nevis. When near that port the Americans seized upon the arms of the English, confined them in irons, and put away for home where Captain Richardson afterwards arrived in safety.”
“A few years ago,” narrates the loquacious contributor to the Salem Evening Journal of 1855, “the writer heard from one who was on board the barque Active on the above mentioned voyage a somewhat amusing account of one of the crew, who came down from New Hampshire, when she was about ready to sail, and not being able to find any work on shore, shipped with Capt. Richardson and went to sea. As a matter of course, our country friend, as far as regarded nautical phrases and the ‘ropes’ generally, was extremely verdant. To use his own words, he ‘didn’t really know t’other from which.’” Capt. Richardson knew all this beforehand, but he also knew that our Yankee friend was a tall, stout, and very smart young man and so he did not hesitate at all about taking him on board his vessel. The chief mate, however, not being so well aware of Peleg’s verdancy as the Captain, and observing that he stood with his hands in his pockets gazing curiously around the ship, whilst the rest of the crew were engaged in getting the anchor secured, addressed him thus:
“‘Who are you?’
“‘Peleg Sampson, from away up in Moultonboro, State of New Hampshire. I say, it’s a dernation mighty curious place this, ain’t it?’
“Rather surprised at the familiar manner of our Yankee friend, the mate replied:
“‘I guess you’ll find it curious enough before the voyage is up. Lay forward there and help cat that anchor.’
“Whilst the mate stepped on the forecastle for the purpose of superintending this necessary operation, Peleg began to search all around the deck with a minuteness that would have done honor to an experienced gold-hunter. After he had been for a few minutes thus engaged, he followed the mate to the forecastle deck and said:
“‘I say, mister, I cack’late there ain’t any of them critters here.’
“‘What critters? You d—n land-lubber,’ said the mate.
“‘Cats,’ returned Peleg, with an innocent gravity of tone and manner, which made the sailors turn from their work and gaze, open-mouthed, upon their verdant shipmate.
“‘Who the —— said anything about cats?’ asked the mate.
“‘Why you, you tarnal goslin,’ returned Peleg somewhat tartly. ‘Didn’t you tell me to help cat the anchor, and before I could do that ere, hadn’t I got to find the animal to do it with, hey, what?’
“On hearing this reply to the mate’s question, the old salts burst out in a loud, uproarious guffaw, in which the chief officer most heartily joined, as he had by this time become most fully aware that Peleg was nothing more nor less than a ‘green hand.’
“About a week afterwards, when the Active had got well out to sea, and Peleg had recovered from a severe fit of seasickness so as to be able to be about the decks, the mate, being in want of an article from aloft, said to Peleg:
“‘Go up in the main-top there, and bring down a slush bucket that’s made fast to the topmast rigging.’
“‘What, up these rope-ladders do you want me to go?’ asked Peleg, with a scared look at the main-rigging.
“‘Yes,’ returned the mate, ‘and be spry about it, too.’
“‘Can’t do any such business,’ returned Peleg, in a very decided tone of voice. ‘Why don’t you tell me to run overboard. I should jest as soon think on’t, really. Now I’m ready to pull and haul, or wrestle, back to back, Indian hug, or any way you like, fight the darnation Englishers till I’m knocked down, or do anything I kin do, but as to going up them darnation littleish rope-ladders, I can’t think of it nohow.’
“Thinking it would be as well not to urge the matter farther at that time, the mate sent another hand for the slush bucket, and thus the affair ended. Afterwards, however, as we learned from the same authority, Peleg became one of the smartest sailors on board the vessel, and in the affair of retaking the ship from English, did most excellent and efficient service.”
In Felt’s Annals of Salem, it is related under date of February 21, 1802, “the ships Ulysses, Captain James Cook; Brutus, Captain William Brown, owned by the Messrs. Crowninshield; and the Valusia, Captain Samuel Cook, belonging to Israel Williams and others sailed for Europe (on the same day). Though when they departed the weather was remarkably pleasant for the season, in a few hours a snowstorm commenced. After using every exertion to clear Cape Cod the tempest forced them the next day upon its perilous shore. The most sad of all in this threefold catastrophe was the loss of life in the Brutus. One hand was killed by the fore-yard prior to the ship striking; another was drowned while attempting to reach the shore, and the commander with six men perished with the cold after they had landed, while anxiously seeking some shelter for their wet, chilled, and exhausted bodies.”
“(1819) July 16. A few days since one of our sailors was exceedingly frightened by meeting in the street what he really believed to be the ghost of a shipmate. This person was Peter Jackson, whose worth as a cook was no less because he had a black skin. He had belonged to the brig Ceres. As she was coming down the river from Calcutta, she was thrown on her beam ends and Peter fell overboard. Among the things thrown to him was a sail-boom on which he was carried away from the vessel by the rapid current. Of course all on board concluded that he was drowned or eaten by crocodiles, and so they reported when reaching home. Administration had been taken on his goods and chattels and he was dead in the eye of the law. But after floating twelve hours he was cast ashore and as soon as possible hastened homeward. Notwithstanding he had hard work to do away with the impression of his being dead, he succeeded and was allowed the rights and privileges of the living.”
While Newport and Bristol, of all the New England ports, did the most roaring trade in slaves and rum with the west coast of Africa, Salem appears to have had comparatively few dealings with this kind of commerce. Slavers were fitted out and owned in Salem, but they were an inconsiderable part of the shipping activity, and almost the only records left to portray this darker side of seafaring America in the olden times are fragmentary references such as those already quoted and these which follow. There has been preserved a singularly pitiful letter from a Salem boy to his mother at home. It reads:
“Cayenne, April 23, 1789.
“Honour’d Parent:
“I take this Opportunity to write Unto you to let you know of a very bad accident that Happen’d on our late passage from Cape Mount, on the Coast of Africa, bound to Cayenne. We sailed from Cape Mount the 13th of March with 36 Slaves on bord. The 26th day of March the Slaves Rised upon us. At half-past seven, my Sire and Hands being foreward Except the Man at the helm, and myself, three of the Slaves took Possession of the Caben, and two upon the Quarter Deck. Them in the Caben took Possession of the fier Arms, and them on the quarter Deck with the Ax and Cutlash and Other Weapons. Them in the Caben handed up Pistels to them on the quarter Deck.
“One of them fired and killed my Honoured Sire, and still we strove for to subdue them, and then we got on the Quarter Deck and killed two of them. One that was in the Caben was Comeing out at the Caben Windows in order to get on Deck, and we discovered him and Knock’d him overbord. Two being in the Caben we confined the Caben Doors so that they should not kill us.
“Then three men went foreward and got the three that was down their and brought them aft. And their being a Doctor on board, a Passenger that could Speak the Tongue, he sent one of the boys down and Brought up some of the fier Arms and Powder. And then we cal’d them up and one came up, and he Cal’d the other and he Came up. We put them In Irons and Chained them and then the Doctor Dres’d the People’s Wounds, they being Slightly Wounded. Then it was one o’clock.
“They buried my Honoured Parent, he was buried as decent as he could be at Sea, the 16th of this Month. I scalt myself with hot Chocolate but now I am abel to walk about again. So I remain in good Health and hope to find you the Same and all my Sisters and Brothers and all that Inquires after Me. We have sold part of the Slaves and I hope to be home soon. So I Remain your Most Dutiful Son,
“Wm. Fairfield.
“Addressed to Mrs. Rebecca Fairfield,
Salem, New England.”
Under date of May 29, 1789, Doctor Bentley wrote in his diary:
“On Wednesday went to Boston and returned on Friday. News of the death of Captain William Fairfield who commanded the Schooner which sailed in Captain Joseph White’s employ in the African Slave Trade. He was killed by the Negroes on board.”
This following letter of instructions to one of the few Salem captains in the slave trade was written in 1785, under date of November 12th:
“Our brig of which you have the command, being cleared at the office, and being in every other respect complete for sea, our orders are that you embrace the first fair wind and make the best of your way to the Coast of Africa and there invest your cargo in slaves. As slaves, like other articles when brought to market, generally appear to the best advantage, therefore too critical an inspection cannot be paid to them before purchase; to see that no dangerous distemper is lurking about them, to attend particularly to their age, to their countenance, to the strength of their limbs, and as far as possible to the goodness or badness of their constitutions, etc., will be very considerable objects.
“Male or female slaves, whether full grown, or not, we cannot particularly instruct you about, and on this head shall only observe that prime male slaves generally sell best in any market. No people require more kind and tender treatment to exhilarate their spirits than the Africans, and while on the one hand you are attentive to this, remember that, on the other hand, too much circumspection cannot be observed by yourself and people to prevent their taking advantage of such treatment by insurrection and so forth. When you consider that on the health of your slaves almost your whole voyage depends, you will particularly attend to smoking your vessel, washing her with vinegar, to the clarifying your water with lime or brimstone, and to cleanliness among your own people as well as among the slaves.”
These singularly humane instructions are more or less typical of the conduct of the slave trade from New England during the eighteenth century when pious owners expressed the hope that “under the blessing of God” they might obtain full cargoes of negroes. The ships were roomy, comparatively comfortable quarters were provided, and every effort made to prevent losses by disease and shortage of water and provisions. It was not until the nations combined to drive the traffic from the high seas that slavers were built for speed, crammed to the hatches with tortured negroes and hard-driven for the West Indies and Liverpool and Charleston through the unspeakable horrors of the Middle Passage.
Salem records are not proud of even the small share of the town in this kind of commerce, and most of the family papers which dealt with slave trading have been purposely destroyed. It is true also that public sentiment opposed the traffic at an earlier date than in such other New England ports as Bristol and Newport. Slaves captured in British privateers during the Revolution were not permitted to be sold as property, but were treated as prisoners of war. The refusal of Elias Hasket Derby to let his ship Grand Turk take slaves aboard on her first voyage to the Gold Coast was an unusual proceeding for a shipping merchant of that time. Nor according to Doctor Bentley was the slave trade in the best repute among the people of the place.
While Salem commerce was rising in a flood tide of enterprising achievement in the conquest of remote and mysterious markets on the other side of the globe, and the wounds left by the Revolution were scarcely healed, her ships began to bring home new tales of outrage at the hands of British, French and Spanish privateers and men-of-war. There was peace only in name. In 1790, or only seven years after the end of the Revolution, seamen were bitterly complaining of seizures and impressments by English ships, and the war with France was clouding the American horizon. The Algerine pirates also had renewed their informal activities against American shipping, and the shipmasters of Salem found themselves between several kinds of devils and the deep sea wherever they laid their courses.
The history of the sea holds few more extraordinary stories than that related of a Salem sailor and cherished in the maritime chronicles of the town.
“On the 14th of August, 1785, a French vessel from Martinique, bound to Bordeaux came up with the body of a man floating at some fifty rods distance. The captain ordered four men into the boat to pick it up. When brought on board, to the great surprise of the crew, the supposed dead body breathed. Half an hour afterwards the man opened his eyes and exclaimed: ‘O God, where am I?’ On taking off his clothes to put him to bed it was discovered that he had on a cork jacket and trousers. It was afterwards ascertained that he had sailed from Salem in a brig bound to Madrid. The brig was attacked by Sallee pirates and captured. This sailor, pretending to be lame, was neglected by the Moors who had captured him. About 11 o’clock at night, having put on his cork apparatus, he let himself down from the forechains into the water unperceived. He swam about two days when he being quite exhausted, his senses left him, in which state he was discovered by the men from the Frigate. On his arrival at Bordeaux he was presented by the Chamber of Commerce with a purse of 300 crowns.”
On February 10th, 1795, the following appeal was posted in the streets of Salem:
“For the purpose of taking into consideration the unhappy situation of the unfortunate prisoners at Algiers, and to devise some Method for carrying into effect a General Collection for their Relief on Thursday, the 19th day of the present Month!
“The Meeting is called by the desire of the Reverend Clergy and other Respectable Citizens of this Town who wish to have some System formed that will meet the Acceptance of the Inhabitants previous to the Day of Contribution.
“The truly deplorable fate of these miserable captives loudly calls for your Commiseration, and the Fervent Prayers they have addressed to you from their Gloomy Prisons ought to soften the most Adamantine Heart. They intreat you in the most Impassioned Language not to leave them to dispair, but as Prisoners of Hope, let those of them who still survive the Plague, Pestilence, and Famine, anticipate the day that shall relieve them from the Cruel scourge of an Infidel, and restore them to the Arms of their long-bereaved Friends and Country.
“It is hoped that the Humane and Benevolent will attend that Charity may not be defeated of her intended Sacrifice in the auspicious Festival, when the New World shall all be assembled, and the United States shall offer her tribute of Praise and Thanksgiving at the Altars of God.”[28]
An item of the date of February 16th, 1794, records that “information is received that Edward Harwood, mate, James Peas and Samuel Henry of Salem, lately returned from Algerine captivity were apportioned shares of a benefit previously taken for such sufferers at the Boston Theatre.”