FOOTNOTES:
[1] In 1810 Newburyport merchants owned forty-one ships, forty-nine brigs and fifty schooners, and was the seat of extensive commerce with the East Indies and other ports of the Orient. Twenty-one deep-water sailing ships for foreign trade were built on the Merrimac River in that one year. The fame of Newburyport as a shipbuilding and shipowning port was carried far into the last century and culminated in the building of the Atlantic packet Dreadnought, the fastest and most celebrated sailing ship that ever flew the American flag. She made a passage from New York to Queenstown in nine days and thirteen hours in 1860. Her famous commander, the late Captain Samuel Samuels, wrote of the Dreadnought:
“She was never passed in anything over a four-knot breeze. She was what might be termed a semi-clipper and possessed the merit of being able to bear driving as long as her sails and spars would stand. By the sailors she was called the ‘Wild Boat of the Atlantic,’ while others called her ‘The Flying Dutchman.’”
[2] Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author, chose to insert a “w” in the family name of Hathorne borne by his father.
“The four years had lapsed quietly and quickly by, and Hawthorne, who now adopted the fanciful spelling of his name after his personal whim, was man grown.” (Nathaniel Hawthorne, by George E. Woodberry, in American Men of Letters Series.)
[3] (1799) “Oct. 22. It is proposed by the new marine society, called the East India Marine Society, to make a cabinet. This society has been lately thought of. Captain Gibant first mentioned the plan to me this summer and desired me to give him some plan of articles or a sketch. The first friends of the institution met and chose a committee to compare and digest articles from the sketches given to them. Last week was informed that in the preceding week the members met and signed the articles chosen by the committee.
“Nov. 7. Captain Carnes has presented his curiosities to the new-formed East India Marine Society and they are providing a museum and cabinet.... Rooms were obtained for their meetings and a place for the deposit of books, charts, etc., and in July of the following year glass cases were provided to arrange therein the specimens that had been accumulated.” (Diary of Rev. William Bentley.)
[4] A costly new hall has been recently added to the Museum to contain the Japanese and Chinese collections. This building was the gift of Dr. Charles G. Weld of Boston. Its Japanese floor contains the most complete and valuable ethnological collections, portraying the life of the Japanese people of the feudal age, that exists to-day. Japanese scientists and students have visited Salem in order to examine many objects of this unique collection which are no longer to be found in their own country. Professor Edward S. Morse, director of the Museum, and curator of the Japanese pottery section of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, has sifted and arranged these collections with singular patience, expert knowledge, and brilliantly successful results. The South Sea collections are also unequaled in many important particulars, especially in the field of weapons and ornaments from the Fiji and Marquesas Islands.
[5] History of Essex County.
CHAPTER II
PHILIP ENGLISH AND HIS ERA
(1680-1750)
In the decade from 1685 to 1695 the infant commerce of Salem was fighting for its life. This period was called “the dark time when ye merchants looked for ye vessells with fear and trembling.” Besides the common dangers of the sea, they had to contend with savage Indians who attacked the fishing fleet, with the heavy restrictions imposed by the Royal Acts of Trade, with the witchcraft delusion which turned every man’s hand against his neighbor, and with French privateers which so ravaged the ventures of the Salem traders to the West Indies that the shipping annals of the time are thickly strewn with such incidents as these:
(1690)—“The ketch Fellowship, Captain Robert Glanville, via the Vineyard for Berwick on the Tweed, was taken by two French privateers and carried to Dunkirk.”
(1695)—“The ship Essex of Salem, Captain John Beal, from Bilboa in Spain, had a battle at sea and loses John Samson, boatswain. This man and Thomas Roads, the gunner, had previously contracted that whoever of the two survived the other he should have all the property of the deceased.”
Soon after this the tables were turned by the Salem Packet which captured a French ship off the Banks of Newfoundland. In the same year the ketch Exchange, Captain Thomas Marston, was taken by a French ship off Block Island. She was ransomed for two hundred and fifty pounds and brought into Salem. “The son of the owner was carried to Placentia as a hostage for the payment of the ransom.”
The ancient records of the First Church of Salem contain this quaint entry under date of July 25, 1677:
“The Lord having given a Comission to the Indians to take no less than 13 of the Fishing Ketches of Salem and Captivate the men (though divers of them cleared themselves and came home) it struck a great consternation into all the people here. The Pastor moved on the Lord’s Day, and the whole people readily consented, to keep the Lecture Day following as a fast day; which was accordingly done and the work carried on by the Pastor, Mr. Hale, Mr. Chevers, and Mr. Gerrish, the higher ministers helping in prayer. The Lord was pleased to send in some of the Ketches on the Fast day which was looked on as a gracious smile of Providence. Also there had been 19 wounded men sent into Salem a little while before; also, a ketch with 40 men sent out from Salem as a man-of-war to recover the rest of the Ketches. The Lord give them Good Success.”
In those very early and troublous times the Barbary pirates or Corsairs had begun to vex the New England skippers who boldly crossed the Atlantic in vessels that were much smaller than a modern canal boat or brick barge. These “Sallee rovers” hovered from the Mediterranean to the chops of the English Channel. Many a luckless seaman of Salem was held prisoner in the cities of Algiers while his friends at home endeavored to gather funds for his ransom. It was stated in 1661 that “for a long time previous the commerce of Massachusetts was much annoyed by Barbary Corsairs and that many of its seamen were held in bondage. One Captain Cakebread or Breadcake had two guns to cruise in search of Turkish pirates.” In 1700 Benjamin Alford of Boston and William Bowditch of Salem related that “their friend Robert Carver of the latter port was taken nine years before, a captive into Sally; that contributions had been made for his redemption; that the money was in the hands of a person here; that if they had the disposal of it, they could release Carver.”
The end of the seventeenth century found the wilderness settlement of Salem rapidly expanding into a seaport whose commercial interests were faring to distant oceans. The town had grown along the water’s edge beside which its merchants were beginning to build their spacious and gabled mansions. Their countinghouses overlooked the harbor, and their spyglasses were alert to sweep the distant sea line for the homecoming of their ventures to Virginia, the West Indies and Europe. Their vessels were forty and sixty tons burden, mere cockleshells for deep-water voyaging, but they risked storm and capture while they pushed farther and farther away from Salem as the prospect of profitable trade lured them on.
The sailmaker, the rigger, the ship chandler, and the shipwright had begun to populate the harbor front, and among them swarmed the rough and headlong seamen from Heaven knew where, who shocked the godly Puritans of the older régime. Jack ashore was a bull in a china shop then as now, and history has recorded the lamentable but deserved fate of “one Henry Bull and companions in a vessel in our harbor who derided the Church of Christ and were afterward cast away among savage Indians by whom they were slain.”
Now there came into prominence the first of a long line of illustrious shipping merchants of Salem, Philip English, who makes a commanding figure in the seafaring history of his time. A native of the Isle of Jersey, he came to Salem before 1670. He made voyages in his own vessels, commanded the ketch[6] Speedwell in 1676, and ten years later had so swiftly advanced his fortunes that he built him a mansion house on Essex Street, a solid, square-sided structure with many projecting porches and with upper stories overhanging the street. It stood for a hundred and fifty years, long known as “English’s Great House,” and linked the nineteenth century with the very early chapters of American history. In 1692, Philip English was perhaps the richest man of the New England Colonies, owning twenty-one vessels which traded with Bilboa, Barbados, St. Christopher’s, the Isle of Jersey and the ports of France. He owned a wharf and warehouses, and fourteen buildings in the town.
One of his bills of lading, dated 1707, shows the pious imprint of his generation and the kind of commerce in which he was engaged. It reads in part:
“Shipped by the Grace of God, in good order and well conditioned, by Sam’ll Browne, Phillip English, Capt. Wm. Bowditch, Wm. Pickering, and Sam’ll Wakefield, in and upon the Good sloop called the Mayflower whereof is master under God for this present voyage Jno. Swasey, and now riding at anchor in the harbor of Salem, and by God’s Grace bound for Virginia or Merriland. To say, twenty hogshats of Salt.... In witness whereof the Master or Purser of the said Sloop has affirmed to Two Bills of Lading ... and so God send the Good Sloop to her desired port in Safety. Amen.”
Another merchant of Philip English’s time wrote in 1700 of the foreign commerce of Salem:
“Dry Merchantable codfish for the Markets of Spain and Portugal and the Straits. Refuse fish, lumber, horses and provisions for the West Indies. Returns made directly hence to England are sugar, molasses, cotton, wool and logwood for which we depend on the West Indies. Our own produce, a considerable quantity of whale and fish oil, whalebone, furs, deer, elk and bear skins are annually sent to England. We have much Shipping here and freights are low.”
The Roger Williams house, built before 1635. Tradition asserts that preliminary examinations of those accused of witchcraft in 1692 were held here.
(This photograph was made before a drug store was built in front of the house, and shows an old “town pump”)
To Virginia the clumsy, little sloops and ketches of Philip English carried “Molasses, Rum, Salt, Cider, Mackerel, Wooden Bowls, Platters, Pails, Kegs, Muscavado Sugar, and Codfish and brought back to Salem Wheat, Pork, Tobacco, Furs, Hides, old Pewter, Old Iron, Brass, Copper, Indian Corn and English Goods.” The craft which crossed the Atlantic and made the West Indies in safety to pile up wealth for Philip English were no larger than those sloops and schooners which ply up and down the Hudson River to-day. Their masters made their way without sextant or “Practical Navigator,” and as an old writer has described in a somewhat exaggerated vein:
“Their skippers kept their reckoning with chalk on a shingle, which they stowed away in the binnacle; and by way of observation they held up a hand to the sun. When they got him over four fingers they knew they were straight for Hole-in-the-Wall; three fingers gave them their course to the Double-headed Shop Key and two carried them down to Barbados.”
The witchcraft frenzy invaded even the stately home of Philip English, the greatest shipowner of early Salem. His wife, a proud and aristocratic lady, was “cried against,” examined and committed to prison in Salem. It is said that she was considered haughty and overbearing in her manner toward the poor, and that her husband’s staunch adherence to the Church of England had something to do with her plight. At any rate, Mary English was arrested in her bedchamber and refused to rise, wherefore “guards were placed around the house and in the morning she attended the devotions of her family, kissed her children with great composure, proposed her plan for their education, took leave of them and then told the officer she was ready to die.” Alas, poor woman, she had reason to be “persuaded that accusation was equal to condemnation.” She lay in prison six weeks where “her firmness was memorable. But being visited by a fond husband, her husband was also accused and confined in prison.” The intercession of friends and the plea that the prison was overcrowded caused their removal to Arnold’s jail in Boston until the time of trial. It brings to mind certain episodes of the French Reign of Terror to learn that they were taken to Boston on the same day with Giles Corey, George Jacobs, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, and Bridget Bishop, all of whom perished except Philip and Mary English. Both would have been executed had they not escaped death by flight from the Boston jail and seeking refuge in New York.
In his diary, under date of May 21, 1793, Rev. William Bentley, of Salem, pastor of the East Church from 1783 to 1819, wrote of the witchcraft persecution of this notable shipping merchant and his wife:
“May 21st, 1793. Substance of Madam Susannah Harthorne’s account of her grandfather English, etc. Mr. English was a Jerseyman, came young to America and lived with Mr. W. Hollingsworth, whose only child he married. He owned above twenty sail of vessels. His wife had the best education of her times. Wrote with great ease, and has left a specimen of her needlework in her infancy or youth. She had already owned her Covenant and was baptised with her children and now intended to be received at the Communion on the next Lord’s Day. On Saturday night she was cried out upon. The Officers, High Sheriff, and Deputy with attendants came at eleven at night. When the servant came up Mr. English imagined it was upon business, not having had the least notice of the suspicions respecting his wife. They were to bed together in the western chamber of their new house raised in 1690, and had a large family of servants.
“The Officers came in soon after the servant who so alarmed Mr. English that with difficulty he found his cloathes which he could not put on without help. The Officers came into the chamber, following the servant, and opening the curtains read the Mittimus. She was then ordered to rise but absolutely refused. Her husband continued walking the chamber all night, but the Officers contented themselves with a guard upon the House till morning. In the morning they required of her to rise, but she refused to rise before her usual hour. After breakfast with her husband and children, and seeing all the servants, of whom there were twenty in the House, she concluded to go with the officers and she was conducted to the Cat and Wheel, a public house east of the present Centre Meeting House on the opposite side of the way. Six weeks she was confined in the front chamber, in which she received the visits of her husband three times a day and as the floor was single she kept a journal of the examinations held below which she constantly sent to Boston.
“After six weeks her husband was accused, and their friends obtained that they should be sent on to Boston till their Trial should come on. In Arnold’s custody they had bail and liberty of the town, only lodging in the Gaol. The Rev. Moody and Williard of Boston visited them and invited them to the public worship on the day before they were to return to Salem for Trial. Their text was that they that are persecuted in one city, let them flee to another. After Meeting the Ministers visited them at the Gaol, and asked them whether they took notice of the discourse, and told them their danger and urged them to escape since so many had suffered. Mr. English replied, ‘God will not permit them to touch me.’ Mrs. English said: ‘Do you not think the sufferers innocent?’ He (Moody) said ‘Yes.’ She then added, ‘Why may we not suffer also?’ The Ministers then told him if he would not carry his wife away they would.
“The gentlemen of the town took care to provide at midnight a conveyance, encouraged by the Governor, Gaoler, etc., and Mr. and Mrs. English with their eldest child and daughter, were conveyed away, and the Governor gave letters to Governor Fletcher of New York who came out and received them, accompanied by twenty private gentlemen, and carried them to his house.
“They remained twelve months in the city. While there they heard of the wants of the poor in Salem and sent a vessel of corn for their relief, a bushel for each child. Great advantages were proposed to detain them at New York, but the attachment of the wife to Salem was not lost by all her sufferings, and she urged a return. They were received with joy upon their return and the Town had a thanksgiving on the occasion. Noyes, the prosecutor, dined with him on that day in his own house.”
That a man of such solid station should have so narrowly escaped death in the witchcraft fury indicates that no class was spared. While his sturdy seamen were fiddling and drinking in the taverns of the Salem waterfront, or making sail to the roaring chorus of old-time chanties, their employer, a prince of commerce for his time, was dreading a miserable death for himself and that high-spirited dame, his wife, on Gallows Hill, at the hands of the stern-faced young sheriff of Salem.
Philip English returned to Salem after the frenzy had passed and rounded out a shipping career of fifty years, living until 1736. His instructions to one of his captains may help to picture the American commerce of two centuries ago. In 1722 he wrote to “Mr. John Tauzel”:
“Sir, you being appointed Master of my sloop Sarah, now Riding in ye Harbor of Salem, and Ready to Saile, my Order is to you that you take ye first opportunity of wind and Weather to Saile and make ye best of yr. way for Barbadoes or Leew’d Island, and there Enter and Clear yr vessel and Deliver yr Cargo according to Orders and Bill of Lading and Make Saile of my twelve Hogsh’d of fish to my best advantage, and make Returne in yr Vessel or any other for Salem in such Goods as you shall see best, and if you see Cause to take a freight to any port or hire her I lieve it with your Best Conduct, Managem’t or Care for my best advantage. So please God to give you a prosperous voyage, I remain yr Friend and Owner.
“Philip English.”
England had become already jealous of the flourishing maritime commerce of the Colonies and was devising one restrictive Act of Parliament after another to hamper what was viewed as a dangerous rivalry. In 1668, Sir Joshua Child, once chairman of the East India Company, delivered himself of this choleric and short-sighted opinion:
“Of all the American plantations His Majesty has none so apt for the building of ships as New England, nor none comparably so qualified for the breeding of seamen, not only by reason of the natural industry of the people, but principally by reason of their cod and mackerel fisheries, and in my opinion there is nothing more prejudicial and in prospect more dangerous to any mother kingdom than the increase of shipping in her colonies, plantations or provinces.”
This selfish view-point sought not only to prevent American shipowners from conducting a direct trade with Europe but tried also to cripple the prosperous commerce between the Colonies and the West Indies. The narrow-minded politicians who sacrificed both the Colonies and the Mother country could not kill American shipping even by the most ingenious restrictive acts, and the hardy merchants of New England violated or evaded these unjust edicts after the manner indicated in the following letter of instructions given to Captain Richard Derby of Salem, for a voyage to the West Indies as master and part owner of the schooner Volante in 1741:
“If you should go among the French endeavour to get salt at St. Martins, but if you should fall so low as Statia, and any Frenchman should make you a good Offer with good security, or by making your Vessel a Dutch bottom, or by any other means practicable in order to your getting among ye Frenchmen, embrace it. Among whom if you should ever arrive, be sure to give strict orders amongst your men not to sell the least trifle unto them on any terms, lest they should make your Vessel liable to a seizure. Also secure a permit so as for you to trade there next voyage, which you may undoubtedly do through your factor or by a little greasing some others. Also make a proper Protest at any port you stop at.”
This means that if needs be, Captain Derby is to procure a Dutch registry and make the Volante a Dutch vessel for the time being, and thus not subject to the British Navigation Acts. It was easy to buy such registries for temporary use and to masquerade under English, French, Spanish or Dutch colors, if a “little greasing” was applied to the customs officers in the West Indies.
On the margin of Captain Derby’s sailing orders is scrawled the following memorandum:
“Capt. Derby: If you trade at Barbadoes buy me a negroe boy about siventeen years old, which if you do, advise Mr. Clarke of yt so he may not send one.
(Signed)
Benj. Gerrish, Jr.”
By permission of the Essex Institute
The Philip English “Great House,” built in 1685 and torn down in 1833. The home of the first great shipping merchant of the colonies
Such voyages as these were risky ventures for the eighteenth century insurance companies, whose courage is to be admired for daring to underwrite these vessels at all. For a voyage of the Lydia from Salem to Madeira in 1761, the premium rate was 11 per cent., and in the following year 14 per cent. was demanded for a voyage to Jamaica. The Three Sisters, bound to Santo Domingo, was compelled to pay 23 per cent. premium, and 14 per cent. for the return voyage. The lowest rate recorded for this era was 8 per cent. on the schooner Friendship of Salem to Quebec in 1760. For a Madeira voyage from Salem to-day the insurance rate would be 1¾ per cent. as compared with 11 per cent. then; to Jamaica 1½ per cent. instead of 14 per cent. in the days when the underwriters had to risk confiscation, violation of the British Navigation Acts, and capture by privateers, or pirates, in addition to the usual dangers of the deep.
Among the biographical sketches in the records of the Salem Marine Society is that of Captain Michael Driver. It is a concise yet crowded narrative and may serve to show why insurance rates were high. “In the year 1759, he commanded the schooner Three Brothers, bound to the West Indies,” runs the account. “He was taken by a privateer under English colors, called the King of Russia, commanded by Captain James Inclicto, of nine guns, and sent into Antigua. Her cargo was value at £550. Finding no redress he came home. He sailed again in the schooner Betsey for Guadaloupe; while on his passage was taken by a French frigate and sent into above port. He ransomed the vessel for four thousand livres and left three hostages and sailed for home November, 1761, and took command of schooner Mary, under a flag of truce, to go and pay the ransom and bring home the hostages.
“He was again captured, contrary to the laws of nations, by the English privateer Revenge, James McDonald, master, sent to New Providence, Bahama. He made protest before the authorities and was set at liberty with vessel and cargo. He pursued his voyage to Cape Francois, redeemed the hostages, and Sept. 6, 1762, was ready to return, but Monsieur Blanch, commanding a French frigate, seized the vessel, took out hostages and crew and put them on board the frigate bound to St. Jago, Cuba. He was detained till December, and vessel returned. Worn out and foodless he was obliged to go to Jamaica for repairs. On his arrival home his case was represented to the Colonial Government and transmitted to Governor Shirley at New Providence, but no redress was made.”
Many of these small vessels with crews of four to six men were lost by shipwreck and now and then one can read between the lines of some scanty chronicle of disaster astonishing romances of maritime suffering and adventure. For example in 1677, “a vessel arrived at Salem which took Captain Ephriam How of New Haven, the survivor of his crew, from a desolate island where eight months he suffered exceedingly from cold and hunger.”
In the seventeenth century Cape Cod was as remote as and even more inaccessible than Europe. A bark of thirty tons burden, Anthony Dike master, was wrecked near the end of the Cape and three of the crew were frozen to death. The two survivors “got some fire and lived there by such food as they had saved for seven weeks until an Indian found them. Dike was of the number who perished.”
Robinson Crusoe could have mastered difficulties no more courageously than the seamen of the ketch Providence, wrecked on a voyage to the West Indies. “Six of her crew were drowned, but the Master, mate and a sailor, who was badly wounded, reached an island half a mile off where they found another of the company. They remained there eight days, living on salt fish and cakes made from a barrel of flour washed ashore. They found a piece of touch wood after four days which the mate had in his chest and a piece of flint with which, having a small knife they struck a fire. They framed a boat with a tarred mainsail and some hoops and then fastened pieces of board to them. With a boat so constructed they sailed ten leagues to Anquila and St. Martins where they were kindly received.”
There was also Captain Jones of the brig Adventure which foundered at sea while coming home from Trinidad. All hands were lost except the skipper, who got astride a wooden or “Quaker” gun which had broken adrift from the harmless battery with which he had hoped to intimidate pirates. “He fought off the sharks with his feet” and clung to his buoyant ordnance until he was picked up and carried into Havana.
In 1759 young Samuel Gardner of Salem, just graduated from Harvard College, made a voyage to Gibraltar with Captain Richard Derby. The lad’s diary[7] contains some interesting references to the warlike hazards of a routine trading voyage, besides revealing, in an attractive way, the ingenuous nature of this nineteen-year-old youngster of the eighteenth century. His daily entries read in part:
1759. Oct. 19—Sailed from Salem. Very sick.
20—I prodigious sick, no comfort at all.
21—I remain very sick, the first Sabbath I have spent from Church this long time. Little Sleep this Night.
24—A little better contented, but a Sailor’s life is a poor life.
31—Fair pleasant weather, if it was always so, a sea life would be tolerable.
... Nov. 11—This makes the fourth Sunday I have been out. Read Dr. Beveridge’s “Serious Thoughts.”
12—Saw a sail standing to S.W. I am quartered at the aftermost gun and its opposite with Captain Clifford. We fired a shot at her and she hoisted Dutch colors.
13—I have entertained myself with a Romance, viz., “The History of the Parish Girl.”
14—Quite pleasant. Here we may behold the Works of God in the Mighty Deep. Happy he who beholds aright.
15—Between 2 and 3 this morning we saw two sail which chased us, the ship fired 3 shots at us which we returned. They came up with us by reason of a breeze which she took before we did. She proved to be the ship Cornwall from Bristol.
21—Bishop Beveridge employed my time.
23—We now begin to approach to land. May we have a good sight of it. At eight o’clock two Teriffa (Barbary) boats came out after us, they fired at us which we returned as merrily. They were glad to get away as well as they could. We stood after one, but it is almost impossible to come up with the piratical dogs.
28—Gibraltar—Went on shore. Saw the soldiers in the Garrison exercise. They had a cruel fellow for an officer for he whipt them barbarously.... After dinner we went out and saw the poor soldiers lickt again.
... Dec. 10—Benj. Moses, a Jew, was on board. I had some discourse with him about his religion.... Poor creature, he errs greatly. I endeavored to set him right, but he said for a conclusion that his Father and Grandfather were Jews and if they were gone to Hell he would go there, too, by choice, which I exposed as a great piece of Folly and Stupidity. In the morning we heard a firing and looked out in the Gut and there was a snow attacked by 3 of the piratical Teriffa boats. Two cutters in the Government service soon got under sail, 3 men-of-war that lay in the Roads manned their barges and sent them out as did a Privateer. We could now perceive her (the snow) to have struck, but they soon retook her. She had only four swivels and 6 or 8 men.... They got some prisoners (of the pirates) but how many I cannot learn, which it is to be hoped will meet with their just reward which I think would be nothing short of hanging.... Just at dusk came on board of us two Gentlemen, one of which is an Officer on board a man-of-war, the other belongs to the Granada in the King’s Service. The former (our people say) was in the skirmish in some of the barges. He could have given us a relation of it, but we, not knowing of it, prevented what would have been very agreeable to me.... It is now between 9 and 10 o’clock at night which is the latest I have set up since I left Salem.”
This Samuel Gardner was a typical Salem boy of his time, well brought up, sent to college, and eager to go to sea and experience adventures such as his elders had described. Of a kindred spirit in the very human quality of the documents he left for us was Francis Boardman, a seaman, who rose to a considerable position as a Salem merchant. His ancient log books contain between their battered and discolored canvas covers the records of his voyages between 1767 and 1774. Among the earliest are the logs of the ship Vaughan in which Francis Boardman sailed as mate. He kept the log and having a bent for scribbling on whatever blank paper his quill could find, he filled the fly-leaves of these sea journals with more interesting material than the routine entries of wind, weather and ship’s daily business. Scrawled on one ragged leaf in what appears to be the preliminary draft of a letter:
“Dear Polly—thes lines comes with My Love to you. Hoping thes will find you in as good Health as they Leave me at this Time, Blessed be God for so Great a Massey (mercy).”
Young Francis Boardman was equipped with epistolary ammunition for all weathers and conditions, it would seem, for in another log of a hundred and fifty years ago, he carefully wrote on a leaf opposite his personal expense account:
“Madam:
“Your Late Behavour towards me, you are sensible cannot have escaped my Ear. I must own you was once the person of whom I could Not have formed such an Opinion. For my part, at present I freely forgive you and only blame myself for putting so much confidence in a person so undeserving. I have now conquered my pashun so much (though I must confess at first it was with great difficulty), that I never think of you, nor I believe never shall without despising the Name of a person who dared to use me in so ungrateful a manner. I shall now conclude myself, though badley used, not your Enemy.”
It may be fairly suspected that Francis Boardman owned a copy of some early “Complete Letter Writer,” for on another page he begins but does not finish. “A Letter from One Sister to Another to Enquire of Health.” Also he takes pains several times to draft these dutiful but far from newsy lines:
“Honored Father and Mother—Thes lines comes with my Deuty to you. Hoping They will find you in as good Health as they Leave me at this Time. Blessed be God for so Great a Massey—Honored Father and Mother.”
In a log labeled “From London Toward Cadiz, Spain, in the good ship Vaughan, Benj. Davis, Master, 1767,” Francis Boardman became mightily busy with his quill and the season being spring, he began to scrawl poetry between the leaves which were covered with such dry entries as “Modt. Gales and fair weather. Set the jibb. Bent topmast stay sail.” One of these pages of verse begins in this fashion:
“One Morning, one Morning in May,
The fields were adorning with Costlay Array.
I Chanced for To hear as I walked By a Grove
A Shepyard Laymenting for the Loss of his Love.”
But the most moving and ambitious relic of the poetic taste of this long vanished Yankee seaman is a ballad preserved in the same log of the Vaughan. Its spelling is as filled with fresh surprises as its sentiment is profoundly tragic. It runs as follows:
| 1 | “In Gosport[8] of Late there a Damsil Did Dwell, |
| for Wit and for Beuty Did she maney Exsel. | |
| 2 | A Young man he Corted hir to be his Dear |
| And By his Trade was a Ship Carpentir. | |
| 3 | he ses “My Dear Molly if you will agrea |
| And Will then Conscent for to Marey me | |
| 4 | Your Love it will Eas me of Sorro and Care |
| If you will But Marey a ship Carpentir.” | |
| 5 | With blushes mor Charming then Roses in June, |
| She ans’red (“) Sweet William for to Wed I am to young. | |
| 6 | Young Men thay are fickle and so Very Vain, |
| If a Maid she is Kind thay will quickly Disdane. | |
| 7 | the Most Beutyfullyst Woman that ever was Born, |
| When a man has insnared hir, hir Beuty he scorns. (”) | |
| 8 | (He) (“) O, My Dear Molly, what Makes you Say so? |
| Thi Beuty is the Haven to wich I will go. | |
| 9 | If you Will consent for the Church for to Stear |
| there I will Cast anchor and stay with my Dear. | |
| 10 | I ne’re Shall be Cloyedd with the Charms of thy Love, |
| this Love is as True as the tru Turtle Dove. | |
| 11 | All that I do Crave is to marey my Dear |
| And arter we are maried no Dangers we will fear. (”) | |
| 12 | (She) “The Life of a Virgen, Sweet William, I Prize |
| for marrying Brings Trouble and sorro Like-wise. (”) | |
| 13 | But all was in Vane tho His Sute she did Denie, |
| yet he did Purswade hir for Love to Comeply. | |
| 14 | And by his Cunneng hir Hart Did Betray |
| and with Too lude Desire he led hir Astray. | |
| 15 | This Past on a while and at Length you will hear, |
| the King wanted Sailors and to Sea he must Stear. | |
| 16 | This Greved the fare Damsil allmost to the Hart |
| To think of Hir True Love so soon she must Part. | |
| 17 | She ses (“) my Dear Will as you go to sea |
| Remember the Vows that you made unto me. (”) | |
| 18 | With the Kindest Expresens he to hir Did Say |
| (“) I will marey my Molly air I go away. | |
| 19 | That means to-morrow to me you will Come. |
| then we will be maried and our Love Carried on. (”) | |
| 20 | With the Kindest Embraces they Parted that Nite |
| She went for to meet him next Morning by Lite. | |
| 21 | he ses (“) my Dear Charmer, you must go with me |
| Before we are married a friend for to see. (”) | |
| 22 | he Led hir thru Groves and Valleys so deep |
| That this fare Damsil Began for to Weep. | |
| 23 | She ses (“) My Dear William, you Lead me Astray |
| on Purpos my innocent Life to be BeTray. (”) | |
| 24 | (He) (“) Those are true Words and none can you save, (”) |
| for all this hole Nite I have Been digging your grave.” | |
| 25 | A Spade Standing By and a Grave thare she See, |
| (She) (“) O, Must this Grave Be a Bride Bed to Me? (”) |
A bill of lading of the time of Philip English, dated 1716
The log of a Salem whaler, showing how he recorded the number of whales he took
In 1774 we find Francis Boardman as captain of the sloop Adventure, evidently making his first voyage as master. He was bound for the West Indies, and while off the port of St. Pierre in Martinique he penned these gloomy remarks in his log:
“This Morning I Drempt that 2 of my upper teeth and one Lower Dropt out and another Next the Lower one wore away as thin as a wafer and Sundry other fritful Dreams. What will be the Event of it I can’t tell.”
Other superstitions seem to have vexed his mind, for in the same log he wrote as follows:
“this Blot I found the 17th. I can’t tell but Something Very bad is going to Hapen to me this Voyage. I am afeard but God onley Noes What may hapen on board the Sloop Adventure—the first Voyage of being Master.”
Sailing “From Guardalopa Toward Boston,” Captain Francis Boardman made this final entry in his log:
“The End of this Voyage for wich I am Very thankfull on Acct. of a Grate Deal of Truble by a bad mate. His name is William Robson of Salem. He was Drunk most Part of the Voyage.”