“I beg leave to recommend Mr. Rufus Low of Cape Ann for Sailing Master of the Essex. He has served as captain of a merchant ship for several years and has made several voyages to India and sustains a good reputation. His principal inducement for soliciting this appointment is the injuries he has sustained by the French.”
The crew of the Essex, officers and men, numbered two hundred and fifty when she went to sea. It was a ship’s company of Americans of the English strain who had become native to the soil and cherished as hearty a hatred for the mother country as they did the most patriotic ardor for their new republic. There were only two “Macs” and one “O’” on the ship’s muster rolls, and men and boys were almost without exception of seafaring New England stock. In a letter of instructions to Captain Preble, the Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Stoddard, wrote of the proposed complement of the Essex:
“Sixty able bodied seamen, seventy-three ordinary seamen, thirty boys, fifty marines including officers. Able seamen $17 per month, ordinary seamen and boys $5 to $17.”
Captain Preble was greatly pleased with the behavior of the frigate in her first “trying out” run from Salem to Newport. He wrote from sea to Joseph Waters:
“The Essex is a good sea boat and sails remarkably fast. She went eleven miles per hour with topgallant sails set and within six points of the wind.”
He also wrote the Secretary of the Navy after leaving Newport:
“I have the honor to acquaint you that the Essex in coming out of the harbor sailed much faster than the Congress, and is, I think, in every respect a fine frigate.”
Nor was this admiration limited to her own officers, for from the Cape of Good Hope, on her first deep-water cruise, Captain Preble wrote home:
“The Essex is much admired for the beauty of her construction by the officers of the British Navy.”
In company with the frigate Congress the Essex sailed in January, 1800, for Batavia to convoy home a fleet of American merchantmen. Six days out the Congress was dismasted in a storm which the Essex weathered without damage and proceeded alone as the first American war vessel to double the Cape of Good Hope. Ten months later she reached the United States with her merchantmen. The Essex had not the good fortune to engage the enemy, for a treaty of peace with France was signed in February, 1801.