The ships and sailors of old Salem

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

FOOTNOTES:

[9] See Captain Luther Little’s story of the Protector’s fight with the Admiral Duff. Chapter VI, Page [109].

[10] (impatient)

CHAPTER V
JONATHAN HARADEN, PRIVATEERSMAN
(1776-1782)

The United States navy, with its wealth of splendid tradition, has few more commanding figures than Captain Jonathan Haraden, the foremost fighting privateersman of Salem during the Revolution, and one of the ablest men that fought in that war, afloat or ashore. His deeds are well-nigh forgotten by his countrymen, yet he captured one thousand cannon in British ships and counted his prizes by the score.

Jonathan Haraden was born in Gloucester, but as a boy was employed by George Cabot of Salem and made his home there for the remainder of his life. He followed the sea from his early youth, and had risen to a command in the merchant service when the Revolution began. The Massachusetts Colony placed two small vessels in commission as State vessels of war, and aboard one of these, the Tyrannicide, Jonathan Haraden was appointed lieutenant. On her first cruise, very early in the war, she fought a king’s cutter from Halifax for New York. The British craft carried a much heavier crew than the Tyrannicide, but the Yankee seamen took her after a brisk engagement in which their gunnery was notably destructive.

Soon after this, Haraden was promoted to the command of this audacious sloop of the formidable name, but he desired greater freedom of action. A Salem merchant ship, the General Pickering, of 180 tons, was fitting out as a letter of marque, and Haraden was offered the command. With a cargo of sugar, fourteen six-pounders and forty-five men and boys he sailed for Bilboa in the spring of 1780. This port of Spain was a popular rendezvous for American privateers, where they were close to the British trade routes. During the voyage across, before his crew had been hammered into shape, Haraden was attacked by a British cutter of twenty guns, but managed to beat her off and proceeded on his way after a two hours’ running fight.

He was a man of superb coolness and audacity and he showed these qualities to advantage while tacking into the Bay of Biscay. At nightfall he sighted a British privateer, the Golden Eagle, considerably larger than the Pickering, and carrying at least eight more guns. Instead of crowding on sail and shifting his course to avoid her, he set after her in the darkness and steered alongside. Before the enemy could decide whether to fight or run away Haraden was roaring through his speaking trumpet:

“What ship is this? An American frigate, Sir. Strike, or I’ll sink you with a broadside.”

The British privateer skipper was bewildered by this startling summons and surrendered without firing a shot. A prizemaster was put on board and at daylight both vessels laid their course for Bilboa. As they drew near the harbor, a sail was sighted making out from the land. All strange sails were under suspicion in that era of sea life, and Captain Haraden made ready to clear his ship for action even before the English captain, taken out of the prize, cheerfully carried him word that he knew the stranger to be the Achilles, a powerful and successful privateer hailing from London, carrying more than forty guns and at least a hundred and fifty men. The description might have been that of a formidable sloop of war rather than a privateer, and the British skipper was at no pains to hide his satisfaction at the plight of the Yankee with her fourteen six-pounders and her handful of men.

At the sight of an enemy thrice his fighting strength, Captain Haraden told the English captain:

“Be that as it may, and you seem sure of your information, I sha’n’t run away from her.”

The wind so held that the Achilles first bore down upon the prize of the Pickering and was able to recapture and put a prize crew aboard before Captain Haraden could fetch with gunshot. With a British lieutenant from the Achilles in command, the prize was ordered to follow her captor. It was evident to the waiting Americans aboard the Pickering that the Achilles intended forcing an engagement, but night was falling and the English privateer bore off as if purposing to convoy her prize beyond harm’s way and postpone pursuit until morning.

The hostile ships had been sighted from Bilboa harbor where the Achilles was well known, and the word swiftly passed through the city that the bold American was holding pluckily to her landfall as if preparing for an attempt to recapture her prize. The wind had died during the late afternoon and by sunset thousands of Spaniards and seamen from the vessels in the harbor had swarmed to crowd the headlands and the water’s edge where they could see the towering Achilles and her smaller foe “like ships upon a painted ocean.” An eye witness, Robert Cowan, said that “the General Pickering in comparison to her antagonist looked like a long boat by the side of a ship.”

Because of lack of wind and the maneuvers of the Achilles, Captain Haraden thought there was no danger of an attack during the night, and he turned in to sleep without more ado, after ordering the officer of the watch to have him called if the Achilles drew nearer. His serene composure had its bracing effect upon the spirits of the men. At dawn the captain was awakened from a sound slumber by the news that the Achilles was bearing down upon them with her crew at quarters. “He calmly rose, went on deck as if it had been some ordinary occasion,” and ordered his ship made ready for action.

We know that he was a man of commanding appearance and an unruffled demeanor; the kind of fighting sailor who liked to have things done handsomely and with due regard for the effect of such matters upon his seamen.

Several of his crew had been transferred to the prize, and were now prisoners to the Achilles. The forty-five defenders being reduced to thirty-odd, Captain Haraden, in an eloquent and persuasive address to the sixty prisoners he had captured in the Golden Eagle, offered large rewards to volunteers who would enlist with the crew of the Pickering. A boatswain and ten men, whose ties of loyalty to the British flag must have been tenuous in the extreme, stepped forward and were assigned to stations with the American crew. Her strength was thus increased to forty-seven men and boys. The captain then made a final tour of the decks, assuring his men that although the Achilles appeared to be superior in force, “he had no doubt they would beat her if they were firm and steady, and did not throw away their fire.” One of his orders to the men with small arms was: “Take particular aim at their white boot tops.”

The kind of sea fighting that won imperishable prestige for American seamen belongs with a vanished era of history. As the gun crews of the General Pickering clustered behind their open ports, they saw to it that water tubs were in place, matches lighted, the crowbars, handspikes and “spung staves” and “rope spunges” placed in order by the guns. Then as they made ready to deliver the first broadside, the orders ran down the crowded low-beamed deck:

“Cast off the tackles and breechings.”

“Seize the breechings.”

“Unstop the touch-hole.”

“Ram home wad and cartridge.”

“Shot the gun-wad.”

“Run out the gun.”

“Lay down handspikes and crows.”

“Point your gun.”

“Fire.”

The Yankee crew could hear the huzzas of the English gunners as the Achilles sought to gain the advantage of position. Captain Haraden had so placed his ship between the land and a line of shoals, that in closing with him the Achilles must receive a raking broadside fire. He knew that if it came to boarding, his little band must be overwhelmed by weight of numbers and he showed superb seamanship in choosing and maintaining a long range engagement.

The Pickering was still deep laden with sugar, and this, together with her small size, made her a difficult target to hull, while the Achilles towered above water like a small frigate. The Americans fired low, while the English broadsides flew high across the decks of the Pickering. This rain of fire killed the British volunteer boatswain aboard the Pickering and wounded eight of the crew early in the fight. Captain Haraden was exposed to these showers of case and round shot, but one of his crew reported that “all the time he was as calm and steady as amid a shower of snowflakes.”

Meanwhile a multitude of spectators, estimated to number at least a hundred thousand, had assembled on shore. The city of Bilboa had turned out en masse to enjoy the rare spectacle of a dashing sea duel fought in the blue amphitheater of the harbor mouth. They crowded into fishing boats, pinnaces, cutters and row boats until from within a short distance of the smoke-shrouded Pickering the gay flotilla stretched to the shore so closely packed that an onlooker described it as a solid bridge of boats, across which a man might have made his way by leaping from one gunwale to another.

Captain Haraden was on the defensive. The stake for which he fought was to gain entrance to the port of Bilboa with his cargo and retake his prize, nor did he need to capture the Achilles to win a most signal victory. For two hours the two privateers were at it hammer and tongs, the British ship unable to outmaneuver the Yankee and the latter holding her vantage ground. At length the commander of the Achilles was forced to decide that he must either run away or be sunk where he was. He had been hulled through and through and his rigging was so cut up that it was with steadily increasing difficulty that he was able to avoid a raking from every broadside of his indomitable foe. It is related that he decided to run immediately after a flight of crowbars, with which the guns of the Pickering had been crammed to the muzzles, made hash of his decks and drove his gunners from their stations.

Captain Haraden made sail in chase. He offered his gunners a cash reward if they should be able to carry away a spar and disable the Achilles so that he might draw up alongside the enemy and renew the engagement. His fighting blood was at boiling heat and he no longer thought of making for Bilboa and thanking his lucky stars that he had gotten clear of so ugly a foe. But the Achilles was light, while her mainsail “was large as a ship of the line,” and after a chase of three hours, the General Pickering had been distanced. Captain Haraden sorrowfully put about for Bilboa, and took some small satisfaction in his disappointment by overhauling and retaking the Golden Eagle, the prize which had been the original bone of contention.

The prize had been in sight of the action, during which the captured American prizemaster, master John Carnes, enjoyed an interesting conversation with the British prizemaster from the Achilles who had been placed in charge of the vessel.

Mr. Carnes informed his captor of the fighting strength of the General Pickering. The British prizemaster rubbed his eyes when he saw the little Yankee vessel engage the Achilles and roundly swore that Carnes had lied to him. The latter stuck to his guns, however, and added by way of confirmation:

“If you knew Captain Jonathan Haraden as well as I do, you would not be surprised at this. It is just what I expected, and I think it not impossible, notwithstanding the disparity of force, that the Achilles will at least be beaten off, and I shall have the command of this prize again before night.”

The Spanish populace welcomed Captain Haraden ashore as if he had been the hero of a bull fight. He was carried through the streets at the head of a triumphant procession and later compelled to face veritable broadsides of dinners and public receptions. His battle with the Achilles had been rarely spectacular and theatrical, and at sight of one of his elaborately embroidered waistcoats to-day, displayed in the Essex Institute, one fancies that he may have had the fondness for doing fine things in a fine way which made Nelson pin his medals on his coat before he went into action at Trafalgar.

In a narrative compiled from the stories of those who knew and sailed with this fine figure of a privateersman we are told that “in his person he was tall and comely; his countenance was placid, and his manners and deportment mild. His discipline on board ship was excellent, especially in time of action. Yet in the common concerns of life he was easy almost to a fault. So great was the confidence he inspired that if he but looked at a sail through his glass, and then told the helmsman to steer for her, the observation went round, ‘If she is an enemy, she is ours.’ His great characteristic was the most consummate self-possession on all occasions and in midst of perils, in which if any man equalled, none ever excelled him. His officers and men insisted he was more calm and cool amid the din of battle than at any other time; and the more deadly the strife, the more imminent the peril, the more terrific the scene, the more perfect his self-command and serene intrepidity. In a word he was a hero.”

Large and resonant words of tribute these, written in the long ago, and yet they are no fulsome eulogy of Jonathan Haraden of Salem.

During another voyage from Salem to France as a letter of marque, the Pickering discovered, one morning at daylight, a great English ship of the line looming within cannon shot. The enemy bore down in chase, but did not open fire, expecting to capture the Yankee cockleshell without having to injure her. He was fast overhauling the quarry, and Captain Haraden manned his sweeps. The wind was light and although one ball fired from a bowchaser sheared off three of his sweeps, or heavy oars, he succeeded in rowing away from his pursuer and made his escape. It was not a fight, but the incident goes to show how small by modern standards was the ship in which Jonathan Haraden made his dauntless way, when he could succeed in rowing her out of danger of certain capture.

In his early voyages in the Pickering she was commissioned as a letter of marque, carrying cargoes across the Atlantic, and fetching home provisions and munitions needed in the Colonies, but ready to fight “at the drop of the hat.” She was later equipped with a slightly heavier armament and commissioned as a full-fledged privateer. With his sixteen guns Captain Haraden fought and took in one action no less than three British ships carrying a total number of forty-two guns. He made the briefest possible mention in his log of a victory which in its way was as remarkable as the triumph of the Constitution over the Cyane and the Levant in the second war with England.

It was while cruising as a privateer that the Pickering came in sight of three armed vessels sailing in company from Halifax to New York. This little squadron comprised a brig of fourteen guns, a ship of sixteen guns and a sloop of twelve guns. They presented a formidable array of force, the ship alone appearing to be a match for the Pickering in guns and men as they exchanged signals with each other, formed a line and made ready for action. “Great as was the confidence of the officers and crew in the bravery and judgment of Captain Haraden, they evinced, by their looks, that they thought on this occasion he was going to hazard too much; upon which he told them he had no doubt whatever that if they would do their duty, he would quickly capture the three vessels, and this he did with great ease by going alongside of each of them, one after another.”

This unique feat in the history of privateering actions was largely due to Captain Haraden’s seamanship in that he was able so to handle the Pickering that he fought three successive single ship actions instead of permitting the enemy to concentrate or combine their attack.

Somewhat similar to these tactics was the manner in which he took two privateer sloops while he was cruising off Bermuda. They were uncommonly fast and agile vessels and they annoyed the Yankee skipper by retaking several of his prizes before he could send them free of this molestation. The sloops had no mind to risk an action with Haraden whose vessel they had recognized. So after nightfall he sent down his fore topgallant yard and mast, otherwise disguised the Pickering, and vanished from that part of the seas. A day later he put about and jogged back after the two privateers, putting out drags astern to check his speed. The Pickering appeared to be a plodding merchantman lumbering along a West India course.

Derby Wharf, Salem, Mass., as it appears to-day. Here the East India ships once lay three deep, and these decaying warehouses were filled with the riches of the most remote lands a century ago

As soon as he was sighted by his pestiferous and deluded foes, they set out in chase of him as easy booty. Letting the first sloop come within easy range, Jonathan Haraden stripped the Pickering of the painted canvas screens that had covered her gun ports, let go a murderous broadside and captured the sloop almost as soon as it takes to tell it. Then showing English colors above the Stars and Stripes aboard the Pickering, as if she had been captured, he went after the consort and took her as neatly as he had gathered the other.

Captain Haraden knew how to play the gentleman in this bloody game of war on the ocean. An attractive light is thrown upon his character by an incident which happened during a cruise in the Pickering. He fell in with a humble Yankee trading schooner which had been to the West Indies with lumber and was jogging home with the beggarly proceeds of the voyage. Her skipper signaled Captain Haraden, put out a boat and went aboard the privateer to tell a tale of woe. A little while before he had been overhauled by a British letter of marque schooner which had robbed him of his quadrant, compass and provisions, stripped his craft of much of her riggings, and with a curse and a kick from her captain, left him to drift and starve.

Captain Haraden was very indignant at such wanton and impolite conduct and at once sent his men aboard the schooner to re-rig her, provisioned her cabin and forecastle, loaned the skipper instruments with which to work his passage home and sent him on his way rejoicing. Then having inquired the course of the plundering letter of marque when last seen, he made sail to look for her. He was lucky enough to fall in and capture the offender next day. Captain Haraden dressed himself in his best and, to add dignity to the occasion, summoned the erring British skipper to his cabin and there roundly rebuked and denounced him for his piratical conduct toward a worthless little lumber schooner. He gave his own crew permission to make reprisals, which probably means that they helped themselves to whatever pleased their fancy and kicked and cuffed the offending seamen the length of their deck. Captain Haraden then allowed the letter of marque to resume her voyage. “He would not, even under these circumstances, sink or destroy a ship worthless as a prize and thus ruin a brother sailor.”

Off the Capes of the Delaware, Captain Haraden once captured an English brig of war, although the odds were against him, by “the mere terror of his name.” He afterward told friends ashore how this extraordinary affair occurred. There was a boy on the Pickering, one of the captain’s most ardent adorers, a young hero worshiper, who believed the Pickering capable of taking anything short of a line-of-battle ship. He had been put aboard a prize off the Capes, which prize had been captured, while making port, by the British brig-of-war. The lad was transferred to the brig with his comrades of the prize crew, and was delighted a little later to see the Pickering standing toward them. Being asked why he sang and danced with joy, the boy explained with the most implicit assurance:

“That is my master in that ship, and I shall soon be with him.”

“Your master,” cried the British bos’n, “and who in the devil is he?”

“Why, Captain Haraden. You can’t tell me you never heard of him? He takes everything he goes alongside of, and he will soon have you.”

This unseemly jubilation on an enemy’s deck was reported to the captain of the brig. He summoned the boy aft, and was told the same story with even more emphasis. Presently the Pickering ran close down, and approached the brig to leeward. There was a strong wind and the listed deck of the brig lay exposed to the fire of the privateer. Captain Haraden shouted through his trumpet:

“Haul down your colors, or I will fire into you.”

The captain of the brig-of-war had wasted precious moments, and his vessel was so situated at that moment that her guns could not be worked to leeward because of the seas that swept along her ports. After a futile fire from deck swivels and small arms, she surrendered and next day was anchored off Philadelphia.

One or two more stories and we must needs have done with the exploits of Jonathan Haraden. One of them admirably illustrates the sublime assurance of the man and in an extreme degree that dramatic quality which adorned his deeds. During one of his last voyages in the Pickering he attacked a heavily armed “king’s mail packet,” bound to England from the West Indies. These packets were of the largest type of merchant vessels of that day, usually carrying from fifteen to twenty guns, and complements of from sixty to eighty men. Such a ship was expected to fight hard and was more than a match for most privateers.

The king’s packet was a foe to test Captain Haraden’s mettle and he found her a tough antagonist. They fought four full hours, “or four glasses,” as the log records it, after which Captain Haraden found that he must haul out of the action and repair damages to rigging and hull. He discovered also, that he had used all the powder on board except one charge. It would have been a creditable conclusion of the matter if he had called the action a drawn battle and gone on his way.

It was in his mind, however, to try an immensely audacious plan which could succeed only by means of the most cold-blooded courage on his part. Ramming home his last charge of powder and double shotting the gun, he again ranged alongside his plucky enemy, who was terribly cut up, but still unconquered, and hailed her:

“I will give you five minutes to haul down your colors. If they are not down at the end of that time, I will fire into and sink you, so help me God.”

It was a test of mind, not of armament. The British commander was a brave man who had fought his ship like a hero. But the sight of this infernally indomitable figure on the quarterdeck of the shot-rent Pickering, the thought of being exposed to another broadside at pistol range, the aspect of the blood-stained, half-naked privateersmen grouped at their guns with matches lighted, was too much for him. Captain Haraden stood, watch in hand, calling off the minutes so that his voice could be heard aboard the packet:

“One—”

“Two—”

“Three.”

But he had not said “Four,” when the British colors fluttered down from the yard and the packet ship was his.

When a boat from the Pickering went alongside the prize, the crew “found the blood running from her scuppers, while the deck appeared more like the floor of a slaughter house than the deck of a ship. On the quarterdeck, in an armchair, sat an old gentleman, the Governor of the island from which the packet came. During the whole action he had loaded and fired a heavy blunderbuss, and in the course of the battle had received a ball in his cheek, which, in consequence of the loss of teeth, had passed out through the other cheek without giving a mortal wound.”

A truly splendid “old gentleman” and a hero of the first water!

In the latter part of the war Captain Haraden commanded the Julius Cæsar, and a letter written by an American in Martinique in 1782 to a friend in Salem is evidence that his activities had not diminished:

“Captain Jonathan Haraden, in the letter of marque ship, Julius Cæsar, forty men and fourteen guns, off Bermuda, in sight of two English brigs, one of twenty and the other of sixteen guns, took a schooner which was a prize to one of them, but they both declined to attack him. On the 5th ult., he fell in with two British vessels, being a ship of eighteen guns and a brig of sixteen, both of which he fought five hours and got clear of them. The enemy’s ship was much shattered and so was the Cæsar, but the latter’s men were unharmed. Captain Haraden was subsequently presented with a silver plate by the owners of his ship, as commemorative of his bravery and skill. Before he reached Martinico he had a severe battle with another English vessel which he carried thither with him as a prize.”

Captain Haraden, the man who took a thousand cannon from the British on the high seas, died in Salem in 1803 in his fifty-ninth year. His descendants treasure the massive pieces of plate given him by the owners of the Pickering and the Julius Cæsar, as memorials of one who achieved far more to win the independence of his nation than many a landsman whose military records won him the recognition of his government and a conspicuous place in history.

While the important ports of Boston, New York, and others to the southward were blockaded by squadrons of British war vessels, the Salem privateers managed to slip to sea and spread destruction. It happened on a day of March, in 1781, that two bold English privateers were cruising off Cape Cod, menacing the coastwise trading sloops and schooners bound in and out of Salem and nearby ports. The news was carried ashore by incoming vessels which had been compelled to run for it, and through the streets and along the wharves of Salem went the call for volunteers. The ships Brutus and Neptune were lying in the stream and with astonishing expedition they were armed and made ready for sea as privateers.

One of the enemy’s vessels was taken and brought into Salem only two days after the alarm had been given. Tradition relates that while the two Salem privateers were sailing home in company with their prize, the Brutus was hailed by an English sloop which had been loitering the coast on mischief bent. The Yankee skippers seeking to get their prize into port without risk of losing her in battle, had hoisted English colors. Dusk had deepened into darkness when from the quarterdeck of the British sloop sounded the husky challenge:

“Ship ahoy. What ship is that?”

“The English armed ship Terror,” answered the Salem captain.

“Where are you bound?”

“Just inside the Cape for safety.”

“Safety from what?” asked the guileless Englishman.

“A whole fleet of damned Yankee privateers.”

“Where are they?”

“They bear from the pitch of the Cape, about sou’east by East, four leagues distant.”

“Aye, aye, we’ll look out for them and steer clear,” returned John Bull, and thereupon with a free wind he stood out to sea leaving the Brutus to lay her course without more trouble.

Not all the Salem privateers were successful. In fairness to the foe it should be recorded that one in three, or fifty-four in a total of one hundred and fifty-eight privateers and letter of marque ships were lost by capture during the war. Many of these, however, were scarcely more than decked rowboats armed with one gun and a few muskets. But of the four hundred and forty-five prizes taken by Salem ships, nine-tenths of them reached American ports in safety.

There was a lad who had been captured in a Salem privateer, and forced to enlist in the English navy. He was not of that heroic mold which preferred death to surrender and the hardships of prison life appear to have frightened him into changing his colors. He wrote home to Salem in 1781:

“Honoured Father and Mother:

“I send you these few lines to let you know that I am in good health on board the Hyeane Frigate which I was taken by and I hope I shall be at home in a few months’ time. When I was taken by the Hyeane I was carried to England, where I left the ship and went on board a brig going to New York. There I was prest out of her into the Phœnix, forty-eight gun ship. I remained in her four months and was then taken on board the Hyeane again, where I am still kept. We are lying in Carlisle Bay in Barbadoes. We are now going on an expedition, but will soon be back again when the captain says he will let me come home.”

Alas, the boy who had weakened when it came to the test of his loyalty was not so well pleased with his choice when peace came. In August, 1783, we find him writing to his mother:

“I cannot think of returning home till the people of New England are more reconciled, for I hear they are so inveterate against all who have ever been in the English navy that I can’t tell but their rage may extend to hang me as they do others.”

Another letter of that time, while it does not deal wholly with privateering, views the war from the interesting standpoint of a Loyalist or Tory of Salem who was writing to friends of like sympathies who had also taken refuge in England. It is to be inferred from his somewhat caustic comments about certain nouveaux riche families of the town that the fortunes of privateering had suddenly prospered some, while it had beggared the estate of others.

“Bristol, England, February 10, 1780.

“Perhaps it may amuse you to be made acquainted with a few particulars of our own country and town, that may not have come to your knowledge.... It is a melancholy truth that while some are wallowing in undeserved wealth that plunder and Rapine has thrown into their hands, the wisest and most peaceable, and most deserving, such as you and I know, are now suffering for want, accompanied by many indignities that a licencious and lawless people can pour forth upon them. Those who a few years ago were the meaner people are now by a Strange Revolution become almost the only men in Power, riches and influences; those who on the contrary were leaders in the highest line of life are very glad at this time to be unknown and unnoticed, to escape insult and plunder and the wretched condition of all who are not Violent Adopters of Republican Principles. The Cabots of Beverly, who you know had but five years ago a very moderate share of property are now said to be by far the most wealthy in New England.... Nathan Goodale by an agency concern in Privateers and buying up Shares, counts almost as many pounds as most of his neighbors.”

What may be called the day’s work of the Revolutionary privateers is compactly outlined in the following series of reports from Salem annals. In an unfinished manuscript dealing with privateering the late James Kimball of Salem made this note:

“June 26, 1857. This day saw John W. Osgood, son of John Osgood, who stated that during the war of the Revolution his father was first Lieutenant of the Brig Fame commanded by Samuel Hobbs of Salem, from whence they sailed. When three days out they fell in with a British man-of-war which gave chase to the Privateer which outsailed the man-of-war, who, finding that she was getting away from him, fired a round shot which came on board and killed Captain Hobbs, which was the only injury sustained during the chase.

“Upon the death of Captain Hobbs the crew mutinied, saying the captain was dead, and the cruise was up, refused further duty and insisted upon returning to Salem. Lieutenant Osgood now becoming the captain, persisted in continuing the Cruise, yet with so small a number as remained on his side, found great difficulty in working the Ship. The mutineers stood in fear, but part of the officers stood by Captain Osgood. No one feeling willing to appear at their head, they one day Sent him a Round Robin requiring the return of the Privateer. Captain Osgood still persisted in continuing the cruise.

“When an English Vessell hove in sight he told them that there was a Prize, that they had only to take her and he would soon find others. One of the Crew, to the leader to whom they all looked, replied that he would return to his duty. All the rest followed him, sail was made and they soon came up with the Prize. She proved to be a man-of-war in disguise, with drags out. As soon as this was discovered the Privateer attempted to escape, but she could not and was captured and carried to Halifax.”

Selecting other typical incidents almost at random as they were condensed in newspaper records, these seem to be worthy of notice:

“June 31, 1778. Much interest is made here for the release of Resolved Smith from his captivity. On his way from the West Indies to North Carolina he was taken, and confined on board the prison ship Judith at New York. Describing his situation, he said that he and other sufferers were shut in indiscriminately with the sick, dead and dying. ‘I am now closing the eyes of the last two out of five healthy men that came about three weeks ago with me on board this ship.’”

“July, 1779. The Brig Wild Cat, Captain Daniel Ropes, seventy-five men, fourteen guns, is reported as having taken a schooner belonging to the British navy. The next day, however, he was captured by a frigate and for his activity against the enemy was confined in irons at Halifax. On hearing of his severe treatment, our General Court ordered that an English officer of equal rank be put in close confinement until Captain Ropes is liberated and exchanged.”

“Feb. 13, 1781. Ship Pilgrim, Captain Robinson, reported that on Christmas Day he had a battle with a Spanish Frigate and forced her to retire, and on January 5th engaged a privateer of thirty-three men, twenty-two guns, for three hours and took her. He had nine men killed and two wounded while his opponent had her captain and four more killed and thirteen wounded.”

“March 13, 1781. It is reported that the Brig Montgomery, Captain John Carnes, had engaged a large British cutter, lost his lieutenant and had five wounded. From another account we learn that after a hard fight he succeeded in beating his opponent off.”

“It is reported on the 19th of the same month that the ship Franklin, Captain John Turner, had taken a ship after a fight of forty minutes, having had one killed and one wounded. The prize had two killed and eight wounded.”

“August 26, 1781. The ship Marquis de Lafayette, seventy-five men and sixteen guns, reported as having attacked a brig of thirty-two guns, upwards of two hours, but was obliged to draw off, much damaged, with eight killed and fourteen wounded and leaving the enemy with seventeen killed besides others wounded.”

Privateering was destined to have a powerful influence upon the seafaring fortunes of Salem. Elias Hasket Derby, for example, the first great American shipping merchant and the wealthiest man in the Colonies, found his trading activities ruined by the Revolution. He swung his masterly energy and large resources into equipping privateers. It was his standing offer that after as many shares as possible had been subscribed for in financing any Salem privateer, he would take up the remainder, if more funds were needed. It is claimed that Mr. Derby was interested in sending to sea more than one-half of the one hundred and fifty-eight privateers which hailed from Salem during the Revolution. After the first two years of war he discerned the importance of speed, and that many of the small privateers of his town had been lost or captured because they were unfit for their business. He established his own shipyards, studied naval architecture, and began to build a class of vessels vastly superior in size, model and speed to any previously launched in the Colonies. They were designed to be able to meet a British sloop of war on even terms.

These ships took a large number of prizes, but Elias Hasket Derby gradually converted them from privateers to letters of marque, so that they could carry cargoes to distant ports and at the same time defend themselves against the largest class of British privateers. At the beginning of the war he owned seven sloops and schooners. When peace came he had four ships of from three hundred to three hundred and fifty tons, which were very imposing merchant vessels for that time.

It was with these ships, created by the needs of war, that the commerce of Salem began to reach out for ports on the other side of the world. They were the vanguard of the great fleet which through the two generations to follow were to carry the Stars and Stripes around the Seven Seas. Ready to man them was the bold company of privateersmen, schooled in a life of the most hazardous adventure, braced to face all risks in the peaceful war for trade where none of their countrymen had ever dared to seek trade before. While they had been dealing shrewd blows for their country’s cause in war, they had been also in preparation for the dawning age of Salem supremacy on the seas in the rivalries of commerce, pioneers in a brilliant and romantic era which was destined to win unique fame for their port.

CHAPTER VI
CAPTAIN LUTHER LITTLE’S OWN STORY
(1771-1799)

Captain Luther Little made no great figure in the history of his times, but he left in his own words the story of his life at sea which ancient manuscript contributes a full length portrait of the kind of men who lived in the coastwise towns of New England in the eighteenth century. He was not of Salem birth, but he commanded a letter of marque ship out of Salem during the Revolution, which makes it fitting that the manuscript of his narrative should have come into the hands of his grandson, Philip Little, of Salem. This old time seaman’s memoir, as he dictates it in his old age, reflects and makes alive again the day’s work of many a stout-hearted ship’s company of forgotten American heroes.

Born in Marshfield, Massachusetts, in 1756, Luther Little was a sturdy man grown at the beginning of the Revolution and had already spent five years at sea. At the age of fifteen he forsook his father’s farm and shipped on board a coasting sloop plying between Maine and the South Carolina ports. On one of these voyages he was taken ill with a fever and was left ashore in a settlement on the Pimlico River, North Carolina. The planter’s family who cared for the lad through his long and helpless illness were big-hearted and cheery folk, and his description of a “reaping bee,” as enjoyed a hundred and forty years ago, is quaintly diverting.

“When the evening amusements began our host performed on the violin and the young people commenced dancing. I was brought down stairs by one of the daughters and placed on a chair in one corner of the room to witness their sports. They got so merry in the dance that I was unheeded, and they whirled so hard against me as to knock me from my chair. One of the young women caught me in her arms, and carried me to the chamber and laid me on the mat. They held their frolic until midnight and eight or ten of the girls tarried till morning. My mat lay in one corner of the garret, and they were to occupy another on the opposite side. When they came upstairs they commenced performing a jumping match after making preparations for the same by taking off some of their clothes. They performed with much agility, when one of the stranger girls observing me in one corner of the garret exclaimed with much surprise: ‘Who is that?’ The answer was: ‘It’s only a young man belonging to the North that is here sick, and won’t live three days. Never mind him.’”

His sloop having returned, this sixteen-year-old sailor surprised his kind host by gaining sufficient strength to go on board and soon after set sail for Martinique in the West Indies. The Revolutionary Committee of North Carolina had ordered the captain to fetch back a supply of powder and shot. He took aboard this cargo after driving overboard and threatening to blow out the brains of an English lieutenant who had it in mind to make a prize of the sloop while she lay at Martinique.

It was out of the frying pan into the fire, for when the vessel reached the Carolina coast, “the news of our unexpected arrival had been noised abroad,” relates Luther Little, “and the King’s tender lay within a few miles of the bar in wait for us. Twelve pilot boats from Ocrakoke came off to us and informed us that the tender was coming out to take us. We loaded the pilot boats with powder, and the balls, which were in kegs, we hove overboard. By this time the tender made her appearance and ordered us all on board, made a prize of the sloop and ordered her for Norfolk where lay the English fleet. When our pilot and his crew went to take their boat I mingled with them and walked quietly on board without being observed, and set hard at rowing with one of the oars. The captain and the rest of the crew were made prisoners.”

The pilot boat landed young Little at Ocrakoke, where he found that the other pilots who had taken the powder ashore had stolen ten casks of it, scurvy patriots that they were. So the stout-hearted lad of sixteen borrowed an old musket and stood guard all night over the powder kegs. “The next morning,” he tells us, “the pilots finding they could plunder no more of the powder, agreed to carry it up the Pimlico River to the several County Committees for whom it was destined.” Luther Little went with them and saw to it that the powder reached its owners.

One Colonel Simpson offered him a small schooner laden with corn to be delivered down the Pongo River. She had a crew of slaves which the boy skipper loftily rejected and took his little schooner single-handed downstream, making port after a two days’ voyage. While at anchor there came a hurricane which had a most surprising effect on his fortunes. “I shut myself down in the cabin,” said he, “and in the course of the night found the vessel adrift. Not daring to go on deck I waited the result and soon felt the vessel strike. After thumping a while she keeled to one side and remained still. At daylight next morning I ventured on deck and found myself safe on terra firma, in the woods, one half mile from the water, the tide having left me safe among the trees.”

Making his way on foot to the home of the consignee, he reported his arrival, explained the situation and wrote his employer that he had delivered his cargo safe, and that he would find his schooner half a mile in the woods anchored safely among the trees.

The marooned seaman had not to wait long for another berth. On the same day of his escape he saw a sloop beating out of the river and hailed her skipper. A foremast hand was wanted and Little shipped aboard for the West Indies. During the passage they were chased by an English frigate, and ran in under the guns of the Dutch fort at St. Eustatia. Cargo and vessel were sold, and Luther Little transferred himself to another sloop bound for Rhode Island.

“Arriving safe after a passage of eleven days,” he writes, “I took my pack and travelled to Little Compton where I had an uncle. Here I stayed one week, and then marched home on foot, the distance of seventy miles, without one cent in my pocket. I had been absent eleven months.”

A few months later Luther Little shipped on board a letter of marque brig bound to Cadiz. Off Cape Finnesterre a storm piled the vessel on the rocks where she went to pieces. Little was washed over the bows, but caught a trailing rope and hauled himself aboard with a broken leg. While he was in this plight the brig broke in two, and somehow, with the help of his fellow seamen, he was conveyed ashore to a Spanish coast fortification. Thence they were taken by boat to Bellisle. The infant Uncle Sam was not wholly neglectful of his subjects, even though he was in the death-grip of a Revolution, for to the inn at Bellisle there came “a coach with four white horses and Mr. John Baptiste, an officer in the employ of the United States government, to enquire if there were any from off that wreck who needed assistance and wished to go to the hospital.”

Luther Little lay in a hospital at Lisbon from autumn into spring where, he relates: “I was treated with great kindness and attention and although in my midnight dreams the spirits of a kind mother and beloved sisters would often hover around my pillow, still on waking, the thought that I had escaped an early death was ever present to the mind, and I felt that although far from home and friends, I had every reason to be thankful.”

The canny youngster had a shoe with a hollow heel, which hiding place he had prepared before leaving home, and in which he had tucked eight gold dollars with this sagacious reflection:

“Previous to this I had been left among strangers perfectly destitute without money either to assist myself, or to remunerate them for kindness received. I was now leaving home again, the future was covered with a veil which a wise Providence had never permitted human knowledge to rend. I knew not with what this voyage might be fraught—evil or good. I therefore resolved if possible to have something laid up as the old adage expresses, ‘for a wet day.’”

When Luther was discharged from the Spanish hospital eleven other luckless American seamen who had been cast on their beam ends were set adrift with him. The shoe with the hollow heel held the only cash in the party who undertook an overland journey of three hundred miles to the nearest seaport whence they might expect to find passage home. While spending the night at a port called St. Ubes there came ashore the captain and lieutenant of an English privateer. These were very courteous foemen, for the captain told how he had been made prisoner by a Yankee crew, carried into Salem, and treated so exceedingly well that he was very grateful. Thereupon he ordered his lieutenant to go off to the privateer and fetch a dozen of pickled neats’ tongues which he gave the stranded pilgrims to put in their packs. He also turned over to them a Portuguese pilot to escort them through the desolate and hostile country in which their journey lay. With the Portuguese, the neats’ tongues, and wine in leather bottles, paid for from the hollow heel, the American tars trudged along, sleeping on the ground and in shepherds’ sheds until they reached the boundary between Spain and Portugal.

“The Spanish and English were at war,” relates Luther Little, “and the stable in which we slept was surrounded by Spaniards who swore we were English and they would take us prisoners. In vain the landlord of the nearby tavern expostulated with them, saying we were Americans in distress traveling to Faro. They still persisted in forcing the door. The pilot told them that we were desperate men armed to the teeth and at length they disappeared.”

They were among a set of accomplished thieves, for next day they bought some mackerel and stowed it in their packs from which it was artfully stolen by the very lad who had sold it to them. The pilot cheered them with tales of highway robbery and murder as they fared on, indicating with eloquent gestures sundry stones which marked the burial places of slain travelers. They were once attacked by a gang of brigands who stole their mule and slender store of baggage, but the seamen rallied with such headlong energy that the robbers took to the bushes.

Reaching the port of Faro, they found a good-hearted mate of a Portuguese brig who gave them a ham, four dozen biscuit and a part of a cheese. The French Consul also befriended them, and supplied a boat to take them to a port called Iammont. Although the ingenuous Luther Little explains their next adventure as pacific, it is not unfair to presume that his company committed a mild-mannered kind of piracy. However, he tells the tale in this fashion:

“We reached the mouth of the Iammont River next morning. Here we met a Spanish shallop coming out, bound to Cadiz, loaded with small fish and manned with six men. The Captain was very old. We shifted on board this shallop and sailed toward Cadiz with a fair wind. When night approached the Spanish captain having no compass, steered by a star; at ten the clouds came over and the stars were shut in, the wind blowing fresh. The Spaniards fell on their knees, imploring the aid of their saints. Directly the captain concluded to go on shore, and took his cask of oil to break the surf, and bore away toward the shore. We being the strongest party (eleven to six), hauled the shallop onto her course and obliged the old Spaniard to take the helm, it still continuing very thick. At one that morning we struck on the Porpoise Rocks at the mouth of Cadiz Bay; we shipped two seas which filled the boat. With our hats we bailed out water, fish and all, directly made Cadiz light, and ran in near the wall of the city. The sentry from the wall told us to come no nearer, whereupon the old captain hauled down sails and let go his anchor. At daylight I paid one Spanish dollar apiece passage money and we left the boat.

“We went to the gate of the city and sat down on some ship timber. One of our men was then two days sick with a fever. When the gate was opened we marched in, two of us carrying the sick man. A little way inside we met a Spaniard who spoke English. He invited us to his house, and gave us a breakfast of coffee and fish, and told us we were welcome to remain there until we could find a passage home.”

Next day Luther Little as spokesman waited upon John Jay, United States Minister to the Court of Madrid, who had come to Cadiz with his wife in the Confederacy frigate. Minister Jay put the sick man in a hospital while the others sought chances to work their way home. They found in the harbor an English brig which had captured an American ship and was then in her turn retaken by the Yankee crew who had risen upon the prize crew. According to Luther Little this Yankee mate, Morgan by name, was a first-class fighting man, for he had sailed the brig into Cadiz, flying the Stars and Stripes, with only a boy or two to help him. She carried twelve guns and needed a heavy crew to risk the passage home to Cape Ann.

Reinforced by the captain and crew of another American vessel which had been taken by an English frigate, Luther Little’s party sought Minister Jay and explained the situation. They could work their passage in the brig, but they had no provisions. Would he help them? Mr. Jay made this singular compact, that he would give them provisions if they would sign a document promising to pay for the stores at the Navy Yard in Boston, or to serve aboard a Continental ship until the debt was worked out. All hands signed this paper by which they put themselves in pawn to serve their country’s flag, and the brig sailed from Cadiz.

After thirty days they were on George’s Bank where they lay becalmed while an English privateer swept down toward them with sweeps out. A commander was chosen by vote, decks cleared for action, and two guns shifted over to the side toward the privateer. “The captain ordered his crew to quarters. When the privateer came up to us we gave her a broadside; she fired upon us, then dropped astern and came up on the larboard side,” so Little describes it. “As soon as the guns would bear upon her we gave her another broadside. They returned the same. The privateer schooner giving up the contest, dropped astern and made off, we giving her three cheers.”

Without mishap the brig arrived off Cape Ann, and continued on to Boston. There Luther Little obtained money from friends and paid off his share of the debt to the Navy Board. He was the only one of the eleven of his party who redeemed themselves, however, the others going aboard Continental cruisers as stipulated by the shrewd Minister Jay who, in this fashion, secured almost a dozen lusty seamen for the navy.

“Once more I reached home entirely destitute,” comments Luther Little, who tarried on his father’s farm a few weeks, and then once more “bade home and those dear to me, adieu.” This was in the year 1780. He entered on board the United States ship Protector, of twenty-six guns and 230 men, as midshipman and prizemaster. Her commander was John Foster Williams, and her first lieutenant, George Little, was a brother of our hero. Their names deserve remembrance, for the Protector fought one of the most heroic and desperate engagements of the Revolution of which Midshipman Little shall tell you in his own words:

“We lay off in Nantasket Roads making ready for a six months’ cruise, and put to sea early in April of 1780. Our course was directed eastward, keeping along the coast till we got off Mount Desert, most of the time in a dense fog, without encountering friend or foe. On the morning of June ninth, the fog began to clear away, and the man at the masthead gave notice that he discovered a ship to the windward of us. We perceived her to be a large ship under English colors, standing down before the wind for us. We were on the leeward side.

“As she came down upon us she appeared to be as large as a seventy-four. The captain and lieutenant were looking at her through their glasses, and after consulting decided that she was not an English frigate but a large king’s packet ship, and the sooner we got alongside of her the better. The boatswain was ordered to pipe all hands to quarters, and clear the ship for action. Hammocks were brought up and stuffed into the nettings, decks wet and sanded, matches lighted and burning, bulkheads hooked up.

“We were not deceived respecting her size. It afterwards proved she was of eleven hundred tons burden, a Company ship which had cruised in the West Indies for some time and then took a cargo of sugar and tobacco at St. Kitts bound to London. She carried thirty-six twelve-pounders upon the gun deck, and was furnished with two hundred and fifty men, and was called the Admiral Duff, Richard Strange, master. We were to the leeward of her and standing to the northward under cruising sail. She came down near us, and aimed to pass us and go ahead. After passing by to the leeward she hove to under fighting colors. We were all this time under English colors and observed her preparing for action. Very soon I heard the sailing master call for his trumpet:

“‘Let fall the foresail, sheet home the main topgallant sail.’

“We steered down across her stern, and hauled up under her lee quarter. At the same time we were breeching our guns aft to bring her to bear. Our first lieutenant possessed a very powerful voice; he hailed the ship from the gang-board and enquired:

“‘What ship is that?’

“He was answered ‘The Admiral Duff.’

“‘Where are you from and where bound?’

“‘From a cruise bound to London,’ they answered, and then enquired: ‘What ship is that?’

“We gave no answer. The captain ordered a broadside given, and colors changed at the first flash of a gun, and as the thirteen stripes took the place of the English ensign they gave us three cheers and fired a broadside. They partly shot over us, their ship being so much higher than ours, cutting away some of our rigging. The action commenced within pistol shot and now began a regular battle, broadside to broadside.

“After we had engaged one half hour there came in a cannon ball through the side and killed Mr. Scollay, one of our midshipmen. He commanded the fourth twelve-pounder from the stern, I commanded the third. The ball took him in the head. His brains flew upon my gun and into my face. The man at my gun who rammed down the charge was a stout Irishman. Immediately on the death of Mr. Scollay he stripped himself of his shirt and exclaimed:

“‘An’ faith, if they kill me they shall tuck no rags into my insides.’

“The action continued about an hour when all the topmen on board the enemy’s ship were killed by our marines, who were seventy in number, all Americans. Our marines also killed the man at the wheel, caused the ship to come down upon us, and her cat-head stove in our quarter-gallery.

“We lashed their jib-boom to our main-shrouds, and our marines from the quarterdeck firing into their port holes kept them from charging. We were ordered from our quarters to board, but before we were able the lashings broke. We were ordered back to quarters to charge our guns when the other ship shooting alongside of us, the yards nearly locked. We gave her a broadside which cut away her mizzen mast and made great havoc among them. We perceived her sinking, at the same time saw that her main topgallant sail was on fire, which ran down the rigging and caught a hogshead of cartridges under the quarterdeck and blew it up.

“At this time from one of their forward guns there came into the port where I commanded a charge of grape shot. With three of them I was wounded, one between my neck bone and windpipe, one through my jaw lodging in the roof of my mouth, and taking off a piece of my tongue, the third through the upper lip, taking away part of the lip and all of my upper teeth. I was immediately taken to the cockpit, to the surgeon. My gun was fired only once afterward; I had fired nineteen times. I lay unattended to, being considered mortally wounded and was past by that the wounds of those more likely to live might be dressed. I was perfectly sensible and heard the surgeon’s remark:

“‘Let Little lay. Attend to the others first. He will die.’

Captain Luther Little

(The scars and disfigurement left by wounds received in the action with the Admiral Duff have been faithfully reproduced by the painter)

“Perceiving me motion to him he came to me and began to wash off the blood, and dress my wound. After dressing the lip and jaw he was turning from me. I put my hand to my neck, and he returned and examined my neck, pronouncing it the deepest wound of the three. I bled profusely, the surgeon said two gallons.

“By this time the enemy’s ship was sunk and nothing was to be seen of her. She went down on fire with colours flying. Our boats were injured by the shots and our carpenters were repairing them in order to pull out and pick up the men of the English that were afloat. They succeeded in getting fifty-five, one half wounded and scalded.

“The first lieutenant told me that such was their pride when on the brink of a watery grave, that they fought like demons, preferring death with the rest of their comrades rather than captivity, and that it was with much difficulty that many of them were forced into the boats. Our surgeon amputated limbs from five of the prisoners, and attended them as if they had been of our own crew. One of the fifty-five was then sick with the West Indies fever and had floated out of his hammock between decks. The weather was excessively warm and in less than ten days sixty of our men had taken the epidemic.

“The Admiral Duff had two American captains, with their crews, on board as prisoners. These (the captains) were among the fifty-five saved by our boats. One of them told Captain Williams that he was with Captain Strange when our vessel hove in sight, that he asked him what he thought of her, and told him he thought her one of the Continental frigates. Captain Strange thought not, but he wished she might be; at any rate were she only a Salem privateer she would be a clever little prize to take home with him. During the battle while Captain Williams was walking the quarterdeck a shot from the enemy took his speaking trumpet from his hand, but he picked it up and with great calmness continued his orders.[11]

“We sailed for the coast of Nova Scotia near to Halifax. After cruising there about a week we discovered a large ship steering for us, and soon discovered her to be an English frigate. We hove about and ran from her, our men being sick, we did not dare to engage her. This was at four o’clock in the afternoon. The frigate gained on us fast. When she came up near us we fired four stern chasers, and kept firing. When she got near our stern she luffed and gave us a broadside which did no other damage save lodging one shot in the mainmast and cutting away some rigging. We made a running fight until dark, the enemy choosing not to come alongside. In the evening she left us and hauled her wind to the southward and we for the north.”

The captain of the Protector needed wood and water and so set sail for the Maine coast where he landed his invalids, converting a farmer’s barn into a temporary hospital with the surgeon’s mate in charge. While the cruiser lay in harbor Luther Little’s sense of humor would not permit this incident to go unforgotten:

“Among our crew was a fellow half Indian and half negro who coveted a fatted calf belonging to a farmer on the shore. His evil genius persuaded him to pilfer the same, but he could find only one man willing to assist him. Cramps, which was the negro’s name, took a boat one evening and went on shore to commit the depredation. He secured the victim and returned to the ship without discovery. He arrived under the ship’s bows and called for his partner in crime to lower the rope to hoist the booty on board, but his fellow conspirator had dodged below and it so happened that the first lieutenant was on deck. Cramps, thinking it was his co-worker in iniquity, hailed him in a low voice, asking him to do as he had agreed and that damned quick.

“The lieutenant, thinking that something out of the way was going on, obeyed the summons. Cramps fixed the noose around the calf’s neck, and cried:

“‘Pull away, blast your eyes. My back is almost broke carrying the crittur so far on the land. Give us your strength on the water.’

“The lieutenant obeyed, and Cramps, boosting in the rear, the victim was soon brought on deck. Cramps jumped on board and found both himself and the calf in possession of the lieutenant. Next morning the thief was ordered to shoulder the calf and march to the farmer and ask forgiveness, and take the reward of his sins which was fifty lashes.”

So seriously had Midshipman Little been raked with the three grape shot that he was sent home to recover his strength, and he did not rejoin the Protector until her second cruise five months later. After taking several prizes between the New England coast and the West Indies, she sailed for Charleston. One afternoon a sail was sighted to the leeward. “We wore around,” says the narrative, “and made sail in chase, found we gained fast upon her and at sunset we could see her hull. When night shut in we lost sight of her. There came over us a heavy cloud with squalls of thunder and lightning and by the flashes we discovered the ship which had altered her course. We hauled our wind in chase and were soon alongside. The next flash of lightning convinced us she was of English colours. We hailed her. She answered ‘from Charleston bound to Jamaica,’ and inquired where we were from. The first lieutenant shouted back:

“‘The Alliance, United States frigate.’

“Our men were all at quarters and lanterns burning at every port. Our captain told him to haul down his colours, and heave to. There was no answer. We fired three twelve pounders. He called out and said he had struck. Captain Williams asked why he did not shorten sail and heave to. He replied that his men had gone below and would not come up. Our barge was lowered, a prize crew and master put on board and we took possession of the ship. She proved to be of eight hundred tons burden, with three decks fore and aft carrying twenty-four nine-pounders and manned with eighty men. We ordered her for Boston where she arrived safe.”

This handsome capture was achieved by an audacious “bluff,” but this cruise of the Protector was fated to have a less fortunate ending. A few days later another prize was taken and, lucky for Luther Little, he was put aboard as prizemaster. While he was waiting in company with the Protector for his orders to proceed, the cruiser sighted another sail and made off in chase. Prizemaster Little tried to follow her until night shut down, and then as she showed no lights he gave up the pursuit and shaped his course for Nantucket. At daylight next morning, the mate who was standing his watch on deck, went below to inform Skipper Little that two large ships were to the leeward. The latter climbed aloft with his glass and made them out to be British frigates in chase of the Protector. They took no notice of the prize a mile to windward of them but pelted hard after the Yankee war ship and when last seen she was in the gravest danger of capture.

Luther Little cracked on sail for Boston with his prize and upon arriving called upon Governor John Hancock and told him in what a perilous situation he had left the Protector. Ten days later the news came that the cruiser had been taken by the Roebuck and Mayday frigates and carried into New York.

Luther Little, having escaped with the skin of his teeth, forsook the service of the United States and like many another stout seaman decided to try his fortune privateering. Captain William Orme, a Salem merchant, offered him the berth of lieutenant aboard the letter of marque brig Jupiter. She was a formidable vessel, carrying twenty guns and a hundred and fifty men. From Salem, that wasp’s nest of Revolutionary privateersmen, the Jupiter sailed for the West Indies. Captain Orme went in his ship, but while he was a successful shipping merchant, he was not quite a dashing enough comrade for so seasoned a sea-dog as this young Luther Little. To the windward of Turk’s Island they sighted a large schooner which showed no colors.

“Our boatswain and gunner had been prisoners a short time before in Jamaica,” says Lieutenant Little, “and they told Captain Orme that she was the Lyon schooner, bearing eighteen guns. Our boatswain piped all hands to quarters and we prepared for action. Captain Orme, not being acquainted with a warlike ship, told me I must take the command, advising me to run from her. I told him in thus doing we should surely be taken. I ordered the men in the tops to take in the studding-sails. We then ran down close to her, luffed, and gave her a broadside, which shot away both of her topmasts. She then bore away and made sail and ran from us, we in chase. We continued thus for three hours, then came alongside. I hailed and told them to shorten sail or I’d sink them on the spot. Our barge was lowered and I boarded her; all this time she had no colours set. I hailed our ship and told Captain Orme I thought her a clear prize, and bade the men prepare to board her. But the captain hailed for the boat to return. I obeyed and told him she had a good many men and several guns. The captain said he would have nothing to do with her, as he feared they might rise upon us. Much to my reluctance we left her.”

After having thirty men of the crew violently ill at one time in the fever-stricken harbor of Port au Prince, the letter of marque Jupiter was freighted with sugar and coffee and set out for Salem. Dodging two English frigates cruising for prizes in the Crooked Island passage, she passed a small island upon which some kind of signal appeared to be hoisted.

“I was in my hammock quite unwell,” relates Lieutenant Little of the Jupiter. “The captain sent for me on deck and asked me if I thought a vessel had been cast away on the island. After spying attentively with my glasses, I told him it was no doubt a wreck, and that I could discover men on the island, that probably they were in distress. I advised him to send a boat and take them off. He said the boat should not go unless I went in her. I told him I was too sick, to send Mr. Leach, our mate. He would not listen to me. I went. We landed at the leeward of the island, and walked toward the wreck, when ten men came towards us. They were the captain and crew of the unfortunate vessel. They were much moved at seeing us, said they were driven ashore on the island and had been there ten days without a drop of water. By this time Captain Orme had hove a signal for our return, there being a frigate in chase. Going to the ship the wrecked captain, who was an old man named Peter Trott, asked me where our vessel was from. I told him we were bound to Salem, and he was quite relieved, fearing we were an English man-of-war. We came alongside and the boat was hoisted up and every sail set, the frigate in chase. She gained upon us and at dark was about a league astern. The clouds were thick and I told the captain we were nearly in their power, our only chance being to square away and run to the leeward across the Passage, it being so thick that they could not discover us with their night glasses. We lay to until we thought the frigate had passed, made sail toward morning, and fetched through the Passage.”

After this voyage Luther Little became captain of a large brig which had a roundhouse and was steered by a wheel which was uncommon for merchantmen in those days. He had one terrific winter passage home from the West Indies, fetched up off the Massachusetts coast with every man of his crew but one helplessly frozen, and his vessel half full of water. With his one lone seaman he was blown off to sea, and at length ran his waterlogged craft ashore on the Maine coast. Nothing daunted, he worked her down to Boston, after being frozen up and adrift in ice, and sending ashore for men to help him pump out his hold.

“Here at this era of my life, the wheel of fortune turned,” he makes comment. “The last seventeen years had been spent mostly on the wide waters. I had passed through scenes at which the heart shrinks as memory recalls them; but now the scene changed. Ill luck was ended.”

Thereafter Captain Luther Little continued in the West India trade until he had made twenty-four successful voyages, “always bringing back every man, even to cook and boy.” After this he shifted to the commerce with Russia, making six yearly voyages to St. Petersburg at a time when the American flag was almost unknown in that port.

“During one of these voyages,” he recounts, “when off Norway in a cold snow storm lying to, a man on the main yard handling the mainsail fell overboard, went under the vessel, and came up on the lee side. I was then on the quarterdeck, caught a hen coop, and threw it into the ocean. He succeeded in getting hold of it. I then ordered topsails hove aback, and to cut away the lashings of the yawl. The man not being in sight I ordered the boat to pull to windward. They succeeded in taking him and brought him on board. He was alive though unable to speak or stand. I had him taken into the cabin, and by rubbing and giving him something hot, he was soon restored to duty. I asked him what he thought his fate would be when overboard. He said that he tried the hen coop lying to and found that would not answer. Then he thought he would try it scudding, and ‘sir,’ he answered, ‘if you had not sent your boat just as you did, I should have borne away for the coast of Norway.’”

When his sea life ended at the age of forty-one, Captain Luther Little could say with a very worthy pride:

“In all my West India and Russian voyaging I never lost a man, never carried away a spar, nor lost a boat or anchor.”

In 1799, before the opening of the nineteenth century, this sturdy Yankee seaman, Luther Little, was ready to retire to his ancestral farm in Marshfield where his great-grandfather had hewn a home in the wilderness. In the prime of his vigor and capacity, having lived a dozen lives afloat, he was content to spend forty-odd years more as a New England farmer. And in his eighty-fifth year this old-fashioned American sailor and patriot still sunny and resolute, was able to sit down and describe the hazards through which he had passed just as they are here told.