The ships and sailors of old Salem

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

“Just as I was about stepping from the wharf into my boat the French Governor of the island ordered me to his presence, which order I obeyed with strong apprehensions that some restraint was to be put upon me. On meeting the Governor he asked me, ‘How long do you contemplate staying in Bourbon?’ My answer was, ‘Not more than a day or two.’ ‘Can’t you leave here to-night?’ he asked. I replied, ‘If you wish it.’ He then added, ‘As you had the politeness to call on me this morning, and as I should be sorry to see you injured, hearken to my advice and leave here to-night if possible.’ He cautioned me to secrecy, and I was in my boat and on board my ship as soon as possible after leaving him. There was a war-brig at anchor in a harbor a little to windward of my own vessel; toward midnight I had the anchor hove up without noise, and let the ship adrift without making any sail until by the darkness of the night we had lost sight of the war-brig, when we made all sail directly from the land. At daylight the war-brig was sent in pursuit of us, under a press of sail but fortunately could not overtake us, and toward night gave up the chase.”

The Benjamin arrived at Salem after a voyage of nineteen months. Nathaniel Silsbee had earned for his employer, Elias Hasket Derby, a net profit of more than one hundred per cent. upon the cost of the ship and cargo. The captain was given five per cent. of the outward, and ten per cent. of the value of the return cargo, as his share for the voyage besides his wages, and he landed in Salem with four thousand dollars as his perquisites, “which placed me in a condition to gratify the most anxious and at that time almost the only wish of my heart, which was to increase and secure the comforts of my mother, sisters and brothers.” And one of his first acts was to purchase the house and land formerly owned by his father, at a cost of fifteen hundred dollars and placed the whole of it at his mother’s disposal.

Being now twenty-one years old, and with a capital of two thousand dollars to risk as an “adventure” of his own account, Captain Silsbee took the Benjamin to Amsterdam, bound for India, with a cargo double the value of his first venture in her. He carried with him as clerk his brother William, aged fifteen, and furnished him with a sum of money as an “adventure” for his own account. Again the Isle of France lured him from the path to the Indies, and he sold his cargo there for “enormously high prices.” The young merchant navigator was so rapidly finding himself that he loaded his own ship and sent her home in command of her mate and then bought at the Isle of France another ship of four hundred tons for ten thousand dollars out of his employer’s funds. She was a new vessel, the prize of a French privateer and proved a good investment. Loading her with coffee and cotton and shipping a new crew he sailed for Salem in the wake of the Benjamin.

This homeward voyage was varied by an episode of such frequent occurrence in that era that it was commonplace. “A short time before our arrival in Boston,” Captain Silsbee related, “we were for two days in company with and a few miles from a schooner which we suspected to be a privateer watching for a favorable opportunity to attack us. Having on board the ship six guns and twenty-five men, I was determined to resist, as far as practicable the attack of any small vessel. On the afternoon of the second day that this vessel had been dogging us, she bore down upon us with the apparent intention of executing what we had supposed to be her purpose, which we were, as I imagined, prepared to meet. But on calling the crew to quarters, I was informed by one of my officers that there were four or five seamen who were unwilling thus to expose themselves, alleging that they had neither engaged nor expected to fight.

Captain Nathaniel Silsbee

“On hearing this, all hands being on deck, I ordered every passage-way which led below deck to be securely fastened; then calling to me such of the crew as had not engaged to fight, I immediately sent them up the shrouds to repair the ratlin and to perform other duties which they had engaged to do, in the most exposed part of the ship. Finding themselves thus exposed to greater danger than their shipmates, they requested, before the schooner had come in gunshot of us, to be recalled from their situation and allowed to participate in the defense of the ship, which request was granted. All our six guns were placed on one side of the ship, and we succeeded by a simultaneous discharge of the whole of them, as soon as the schooner had approached within reach of their contents, in causing her to haul off, and hasten from us.”

Captain Silsbee was handling his employers’ ventures so shrewdly that his own shares in the cargoes was amounting to what seemed to him a small fortune. At twenty-two years of age, in 1795, he was able to purchase one-fourth part of a new ship called the Betsy. In this vessel as commander he sailed to Madras, Malaysia and Calcutta and returned after an absence of seventeen months. While at Madras he was a witness of and an actor in an incident of the kind which directly led to the second war between America and Great Britain, a collision at that time only sixteen years away. He tells it in these words, which clearly portray the lawless impressment of American seamen which was in operation on every sea.

“I received a note early one morning from my chief mate that one of my sailors, Edward Hulen, a fellow townsman whom I had known from boyhood, had been impressed and taken on board of a British frigate then lying in port. Receiving this intelligence I immediately went on board my ship and having there learned all the facts in the case, preceded to the frigate, where I found Hulen and in his presence was informed by the first lieutenant of the frigate that he had taken Hulen from my ship under a peremptory order from his commander to ‘visit every American ship in port and take from each of them one or more of their seamen.’ With that information I returned to the shore and called upon Captain Cook, who commanded the frigate, and sought first by all the persuasive means that I was capable of using and ultimately by threats to appeal to the Government of the place to obtain Hulen’s release, but in vain. I then, with the aid of the senior partner of one of the first commercial houses of the place, sought the interference and assistance of the civil authorities of Madras, but without success, it being a case in which they said they could not interfere.

“In the course of the day I went again to the frigate and in the presence of the lieutenant, tendered to Hulen the amount of his wages, of which he requested me to give him only ten dollars and to take the residue to his mother in Salem, on hearing which the lieutenant expressed his perfect conviction that Hulen was an American citizen, accompanied by a strong assurance that if it was in his power to release him he should not suffer another moment’s detention, adding at the same time that he doubted if this or any other circumstance would induce Captain Cook to permit his return to my ship.