“60,000 pounds of indigo even at 80 cents, $48,000; 120 tons of sugar at $60, or $7,200, and cotton or some other light freight, say skin tea, $20,000, in all $75,000, would be worth $400,000 here, and not employ the profits of the voyage to South America. Manila sugar is worth $400 or $500 per ton here, clear of duty. The ship should be flying light, her bottom in good order, the greatest vigilance used on the voyage and make any port north of New York.
“(signed) Thomas H. Perkins and James Perkins.”
It was the heyday of opportunity for youth. Robert Bennet Forbes, by way of example, was the nephew of this Thomas Perkins of Boston, and likewise became a wealthy merchant and ship owner. Young Forbes went to sea before the mast as a boy of thirteen. He has told how his mother equipped him with a supply of thread, needles, buttons, etc., in his ditty-bag, also some well-darned socks, a Testament, a bottle of lavender water, one of essence of peppermint, a small box of broken sugar and a barrel of apples. “She wanted to give me a pillow and some sheets and pillow cases,” he writes, “but I scorned the idea, having been told that sailors never used them, but usually slept with a stick of wood with the bark on for a pillow. My good mother who had been at sea herself and fully realized the dangers and temptations to which I should be exposed, felt that there could be but one more severe trial for her, and that was to put me in my grave. My uncle contributed a letter full of excellent advice, recommending me to fit myself to be a good captain and promising to keep me in mind. William Sturgiss, who had much experience of the sea, took an interest in me and gave me this advice:
“‘Always go straight forward, and if you meet the Devil cut him in two and go between the pieces; if any one imposes on you, tell him to whistle against a northwester and to bottle up moonshine.’”
Forbes was 15 years old when Mr. Cushing, of the firm’s shipping house in Canton, wrote to Thomas H. Perkins in Boston:
“I have omitted in my letters per Nautilus, mentioning our young friend Bennet Forbes, recommending his being promoted to be an officer on the return of the Canton packet. He is without exception the finest lad I have ever known, and has already the stability of a man of thirty. During the stay of the ship I have had him in the office and have found him as useful as if he had been regularly brought up in the business; he has profited so much by the little intercourse he has had with the Chinese that he is now more competent to transact business than one half of the supercargoes sent out.”
The Crowninshield family of Salem earned very unusual distinction on salt water and a national fame as men of affairs and statecraft. There were six brothers of them, born of a seafaring father and grandfather, and this stalwart half dozen Crowninshields one and all, went to sea as boys. One died of fever at Guadaloupe at the age of fourteen while captain’s clerk of a Salem ship. The five surviving brothers commanded ships before they were old enough to vote, and at one time the five were absent from Salem, each in his own vessel, and three of them in the East India trade.
“When little boys they were all sent to a common school and about their eleventh year began their first particular study which should develop them as sailors and ship captains. These boys studied their navigation as little chaps of twelve years old and were required to thoroughly master the subject before being sent to sea. It was common in those days to pursue their studies by much writing out of problems, and boys kept their books until full. Several such are among our family records and are interesting in the extreme, beautifully written, without blots or dog’s ears, and all the problems of navigation as practised then, are drawn out in a neat and in many cases a remarkably handsome manner. The designing of vessels was also studied and the general principles of construction mastered.
“As soon as the theory of navigation was mastered, the youngsters were sent to sea, sometimes as common sailors, but commonly as ship’s clerks, in which position they were enabled to learn everything about the management of a ship without actually being a common sailor.”[25]
