Ship Ulysses—This painting shows a jury rudder about to be put in place at sea, in 1806. So ingenious was the display of seamanship in the rigging of this emergency rudder that her commander, Capt. Wm. Mugford was awarded a medal by the American Philosophical Society
Yacht Cleopatra’s Barge, 191 tons, built in Salem, 1816, shows the “herring-bone” design painted in bright colors on side of the yacht
The Cleopatra’s Barge returned to Salem in triumph, but Captain George Crowninshield died on board while making ready for a second voyage abroad. She was sold and converted into a merchantman, made a voyage to Rio, then rounded the Horn, and at the Sandwich Islands was sold to King Kamehameha to be used as a royal yacht. Only a year later her native crew put her on a reef and the career of the Cleopatra’s Barge was ended in this picturesque but inglorious fashion.
In reading the old-time stories of the sea, one is apt to forget that wives and sweethearts were left at home to wait and yearn for their loved ones, for these logs and journals deal with the day’s work of strong men as they fought and sailed and traded in many seas. Few letters which they sent home have been preserved. It is therefore the more appealing and even touching to find in a fragment of the log of the ship Rubicon, the expression of such sentiment as most of these seamen must have felt during the lonely watches in midocean. It is a curious document, this log, written by a shipmaster whose name cannot be found in the bundle of tattered sheets rescued from the rubbish of an old Salem garret.
On the fly leaf is scrawled:
“Boston, May the 11th, 1816. Took a pilot on board the Ship Rubicon and sailed from Charlestown. 12th of May at 3 P. M. came to an anchor above the Castle, the wind S.E.”
The ship was bound from Boston to St. Petersburg, and after he had been a week at sea, her master began to write at the bottom of the pages of his log certain intimately personal sentiments which he sought to conceal in a crude cipher of his own devising. The first of these entries reads as follows as the captain set it down, letter by letter:
“L nb wvzi druv what hszoo R dirgv go uroo gsrh hsvvg R droo gvoo blf gszg R ollp blfi ovgvih levi zmw levi zmw drhs nv rm blf zinh yfg R dzng rm kzgrvmxv gsrmprmt lm Z szkb nvvgrmt——R zn dvoo.”