The ships and sailors of old Salem

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

Pages from the log of the ship Hercules, 1792, remarkable for the beauty of their draftsmanship in pen and ink. These drawings were made in the log while at sea

The Three Sisters went to Batavia, thence to China where she was sold, and her crew came home in another Salem ship, the Astrea. Young Silsbee studied navigation in his spare time at sea, and gained much profit from the instruction of the captain. His strenuous boyhood seems remote in time when one finds in his memoirs that “while absent on that voyage the present constitution and form of the government of the United States which had been recommended by a convention of delegates from the several states, held in 1787, was adopted by eleven of the then thirteen United States, and went into operation on the fourth day of March, 1789, with George Washington, as President and John Adams as Vice-President of the United States.”

A week after his return from China Nathaniel was setting out with his father in a thirty-ton schooner for a coasting trip to Penobscot, these two with brother William comprising the ship’s company. They made a successful trading voyage, after which the youthful sailor sailed to Virginia as captain’s clerk. He was now seventeen, a tough and seasoned stripling ready to do a man’s work in all weathers. At this age he obtained a second mate’s berth on a brig bound to Madeira. When she returned to Salem he was offered the command of her, considerably in advance of his eighteenth birthday. The death of his mother recalled him to Salem and deferred his promotion.

In the same year, however, we find him captain of a sloop and off to the West Indies with specie and merchandise. The boyish skipper was put to the test, for a succession of furious gales racked his vessel so that she was sinking under his feet, and he “endured such incessant and intense anxiety as prevented my having a single moment of sound sleep for thirteen entire days and nights.” He made a West Indian port, however, and his vessel was declared unseaworthy by a survey of shipmasters and carpenters. “At a somewhat later age,” he confesses and you like him for it, “I should probably have acceded to that decision and abandoned the vessel, but I then determined otherwise, caused some repairs to be made on the vessel, which I knew to be entirely uninsured, invested the funds in West India produce, and proceeded therewith to Norfolk, and thence to Salem where the vessel was considered unfit for another voyage, and where I had the good fortune to be immediately offered by the same owner the charge of a brig and cargo for the West Indies.”

It was after this next voyage that Captain Silsbee, veteran mariner that he was at nineteen, was given the ship Benjamin already mentioned. In those early foreign voyages of one and two years duration, the captain was compelled to turn his hand to meet an infinite variety of emergencies. But he usually fought or blundered a way through with flying colors, impelled by his indomitable confidence in himself and the need of the occasion. This young shipmaster of ours had somehow qualified himself as a rough-and-ready surgeon, or at least he was able to place one successful and difficult operation to his credit. He was already living up to the advice of another New England mariner whose code of conduct was: “Always go straight forward, and if you meet the devil, cut him in two and go between the pieces.” This is how Captain Silsbee rose to the occasion:

“In an intensely cold and severe storm on the first night after leaving home, our cook (a colored man somewhat advanced in age) having preferred his cooking-house on deck to his berth below for a sleeping place, had his feet so badly frozen as to cause gangreen to such an extent as to render amputation of all his toes on both feet absolutely necessary for the preservation of his life. Having neither surgical skill nor surgical instruments on board the ship, the operation was a very unpleasant and hazardous one, so much so that no one on board was willing to undertake the direction of it. I was most reluctantly compelled to assume, with the aid of the second mate, the responsibility of performing the surgical operation with no other instruments than a razor and a pair of scissors, and which, in consequence of the feeble state of the cook’s health required two days to accomplish.

“The cook was very desirous to be landed and left at one of the Cape de Verde Islands, and for that purpose I proceeded to the Island of St. Jago, where I found an English frigate at anchor. Her surgeon came on board our ship at my request and examined the cook’s feet and to my great satisfaction, pronounced the operation well performed, assured me that there remained no doubt of his recovery, and advised me by all means to keep him on board ship under my own care in preference to putting him ashore. With the cook’s approbation I followed the surgeon’s advice and in the course of a few weeks the cook was able to resume his duties, recovered his usual health and made several subsequent voyages.”

After dispatching the business of the cook, the boy skipper proved his ability as a merchant of quick adaptability and sound judgment. While on the passage from the Cape of Good Hope to the Isle of France (Mauritius) he fell in with a French frigate which gave him news of the beginning of war between France and England. When this news reached the Isle of France prices rose by leaps and bounds and the cargo of the Benjamin was promptly sold at a profit that dazzled her commander. As fast as payments were made he turned the paper currency into Spanish dollars. Then for six months an embargo was laid on all foreign vessels in port. Captain Silsbee sat on his quarter deck and refused to worry. During this time in which his ship lay idle, his Spanish dollars increased to three times the value of the paper money for which he had shrewdly exchanged them, while for lack of an outlet the products of the island had not advanced in cost.

He therefore abandoned his plan of keeping on to Calcutta, sold his Spanish dollars, loaded his ship with coffee and spices at the Isle of France, and made a bee line for Salem. He proceeded no farther than the Cape of Good Hope, however, where he scented another opportunity to fatten his owner’s pockets. “I found the prospect of a profitable voyage from thence back to the Isle of France to be such,” said he, “that I could not consistently with what I conceived to be my duty to my employer, (although no such project could have been anticipated by him, and although attended with considerable risk) resist the temptation to undertake it. At that time the Cape of Good Hope was held by the Dutch who had joined England in the then existing war against France, and it so happened that I was the only master of a foreign vessel then in port of whom a bond had not been required not to proceed from thence to a French port.... There being two other Salem vessels in port by which I could send home a part of my cargo, I put on board those vessels such portion of my cargo as I knew would considerably more than pay for the whole cost of my ship and cargo at Salem, sold the residue of the merchandise, and invested the proceeds in a full cargo of wine and other articles which I knew to be in great demand in those islands.”

At the Isle of France the captain sold this cargo for three times its cost, and again loaded for Salem. When he was almost ready to sail, it was reported that another embargo was to be laid forthwith. Hastily putting to sea he was obliged to anchor at Bourbon next day to take on provisions. Here he had a rather mystifying experience which he related thus: