The Story of the American Merchant Marine

by John Randolph Spears

Still more interesting, though in a different way, were the settlements of the West Indies. The Spaniards had introduced the sugar-cane and negro slavery, an economic combination of the greatest importance to the commerce of the world; for while the Spaniards maintained, as far as possible, a monopoly of their own trade, both slavery and sugar-planting spread all over the islands. Moreover, Spanish exclusiveness was to lead to adventures on the part of some New Englanders.

In 1605 the crew of an English ship took possession of Barbados. On February 17, 1625, an English ship "landed forty English and seven or eight negroes" on the island, and thus began building a colony that was of the utmost importance to New England traders in later years. In 1676 the export of sugar "was capable of employing 400 sail of vessels, averaging 150 tons."

In the meantime (1619), a Dutch privateer had come to Jamestown, Virginia, where "twenty Africans were disembarked," and sold to planters who were to use negro slaves, for many years thereafter, with profit, in the production of tobacco. And slaves, sugar, and tobacco were among the first articles of merchandise to bring profit to the New England ship-owners.

Most interesting of all, however, were the centres of population established upon the New England coast. The English fishermen who came to the coast after the arrival of the Pilgrims, occasionally landed men to remain through the winter in order to trade for furs and procure a supply of provisions—venison, wild fowl, etc.—for the use of the crews of the ships that were to return in the spring.

Of this character was a settlement made at Cape Ann in 1623. The Rev. John White, of Dorchester, England, having become interested in the fishermen, persuaded some merchants to send out people to form a colony. The whole business was badly managed; in 1626 the merchants abandoned the colony, and most of the people returned to England. But one Roger Conant and "a few of the most honest and industrious resolved to stay." They removed, however, to a point on the coast known as Naumkeag, where they made a settlement which they named Salem.

In the meantime White had been working faithfully in England to promote the interests of these men, and in 1628 sixty or seventy emigrants were sent over to join them. In 1629 White and other English Puritans procured a charter for "a colony under the title of The Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay." The settlers who came to America and lived under this charter were the "Puritans" of American history, a fact that seems worth especial mention because a modern mark of intelligence in New England is found in the ability to distinguish between the "Pilgrims" who formed the colony on Plymouth Bay, or the "Old Colony," and the "Puritans" who made the settlements at the head of Massachusetts Bay.

The colonists who came over in 1628 explored the head of the bay, and some of them located where Charlestown now stands. With its dancing waters, its green islands, and its views of the distant blue hills from which the Indians had already called it Massachusetts, the region was enchanting, and the Puritan explorers described it in such glowing colors that 200 more settlers were brought over the next year. The Puritans were the original "boomers" of America.

Among the 200 who arrived in 1629 there were wheelwrights, carpenters, and ship-builders. The ship-builders went up the Mystic River to the place where Medford now stands, and established a shipyard. A considerable number of the emigrants of 1630 joined them. This was the first American shipyard, properly so called.

It is also to be noted that some of these emigrants, under the lead of John Winthrop, located on the peninsula opposite Charlestown, which was distinguished by a three-pointed hill and a "Backbay," where they built a town named Boston.

The French, having a water-road to the far-away regions of the Great Lakes, became wholly absorbed in the fur trade. The Dutch on the Hudson, though less favorably situated, had a western outlet through the Iroquois Indian country, and did a large business in furs. The English on Barbados, having a favorable climate, a fertile soil, and slaves, were preparing to supply all Englishmen with sugar, while the English on the Chesapeake, having facilities similar to those at Barbados, were already astonishing the commercial world with their product of tobacco.