The ships and sailors of old Salem

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

“He answered affirmatively,” wrote Captain Silsbee, “and added, ‘you know it is in my power to take it at my own price.’ I told him he should have every barrel of it at his own price, or even without price, if he would release my ship, that those were the terms, and the only terms on which he could or would have it. The general angrily threatened to take my provisions and make me regret having insulted him. Two days later he sent an order for me to appear before him which I did, when he demanded me to ‘inform him promptly’ where my forty barrels of provisions were, intimating a doubt of my having it, as his officers had not been able to find it. I told the General very frankly that if the ship which I commanded belonged wholly to myself, I might have felt not only willing but highly gratified to convey a part of the Staff of such an army on such an expedition, but that a large part of the ship and the proceeds of a valuable cargo belonged to other persons who had entrusted their property to my charge.... That avowal from me was met by a threat from the General to coerce me not only into a delivery of the provisions, but to the performance of any and every duty which he might assign to me; not only the ship, but likewise her captain, officers and crew had been placed under requisition by the French Republic; a requisition not to be frustrated, he said, by any human being, while a subaltern officer who was present added with enthusiasm, ‘Yes, sir, suppose God had one ship here, and the French wanted it, He must give it.’”

The Salem seafarer gave not an inch, but declared that a release of the ship was the only price which would drag the “salt horse” from its hiding place. On the following day, the General sent word that he was ready to yield to these terms. Napoleon’s veterans could not get along without salt pork, and Captain Silsbee triumphantly dragged his forty barrels into town. His ship was restored to him, the General even promised to pay for the stores, and the hero very rightly summed it up, “I could not but consider that a more beneficial disposal of forty barrels of beef and pork had probably never been made than in this instance.”

During the two years following Nathaniel Silsbee stayed ashore in order to promote his rapidly growing commercial ventures. He became tired of the inactivity of life on land, however, and in 1800 bought part of the ship Herald and loaded her for India with a crew of thirty men and ten guns. His memoranda of that voyage affords a fresh insight into the business methods of a typical Salem shipmaster of the old school. The Herald sailed “with a stock of sixty-three thousand dollars in specie and merchandise, and with credits authorizing drafts on England or the United States for about forty thousand dollars, making together over one hundred thousand dollars, which at that time was considered a very large stock. Of this, as in my previous voyages to India I furnished, besides my interest as owner of one fourth part of the vessel and cargo, five per cent. of the cost of the outward cargo, for which I was to take ten per cent. of the return cargo at the close of the voyage as my compensation for transacting the business thereof.”

The master’s account of that voyage contains some spirited passages. He took with him his other brother, Zachariah, who was now sixteen years old and eager to follow in the elder’s footsteps. He left Calcutta in company with four other American ships with the captains of which he had entered into an agreement to keep company until they should have passed the southern part of Ceylon. Each of these ships carried from eight to twelve guns and sailing in fleet formation they expected to be able to defend themselves against the several French privateers which were known to be cruising in the Bay of Bengal. Of this squadron of American Indiamen Captain Nathaniel Silsbee, now an elderly man of twenty-seven, was designated as the Commodore.

“On the morning of the third day of November,” as he tells it, “two strange sails were discovered a few leagues to windward of us, one of which was soon recognized to be the East India Company’s packet ship Cornwallis of eighteen guns, which had left the river Hoogly at the same time with us. At about eight o’clock, A. M., the other ship stood toward the Cornwallis, soon after which the latter bore down upon us under full sail, commencing at the same time a running fight with the other ship which then displayed French colors. We soon perceived that they were both plying their sweeps very briskly, that the Frenchman’s grape was making great havoc on the Cornwallis, and that the crew of the latter ship had cut away her boats and were throwing overboard their ballast and other articles for the purpose of lightening their ship and thereby facilitating their escape. The sea was perfectly smooth, and the wind very light, so much so that it was quite mid-day before either of the ships was within gunshot. By this time we five American ships were in a close line, our decks cleared of a large stock of poultry, (which with their coops could be seen for a considerable distance around us) and every preparation made to defend ourselves to the extent of our ability. This display of resistance on our part seemed to be quite disregarded by the pursuing ship, and she continued steering directly for my own ship which was in the center of the fleet, until she was fully and fairly within gunshot, when my own guns were first opened upon her, which were instantly followed by those of each and all of the other four ships.

“When the matches were applied to our guns, the French ship was plying her sweeps, and with studding-sails on both sides, coming directly upon us; but when the smoke of our guns, caused by repeated broadsides from each of our ships, had so passed off as to enable us to see her distinctly, she was close upon the wind and going from us. The captain of the Cornwallis which was then within hailing distance, expressed a wish to exchange signals with us, and to keep company while the French ship was in sight. She was known by him to be La Gloire, a privateer of twenty-two nine-pounders and four hundred men. His request was complied with and he having lost all his boats, I went on board his ship where our signals were made known to him and where were the officers of the Cornwallis, who acknowledged the protection which we had afforded them in the most grateful terms. The Cornwallis continued with us two days, in the course of which the privateer approached us several times in the night, but finding that we were awake, hauled off and after the second night we saw no more of her.”

At the close of this voyage, in his twenty-eighth year, Captain Nathaniel Silsbee was able to say that he had “so far advanced his pecuniary means as to feel that another voyage might and probably would enable him to retire from the sea and to change his condition on shore.” He married the daughter of George Crowninshield and began to build up a solid station in life as one of the most promising merchants and citizens of Salem. He had launched his two younger brothers in life and they were masters of fine ships in the India trade “with as fair prospects of success as young men thus situated could hope for.”

He made only one long voyage after he had his own home and fireside, but his interests were weaving to and fro between Salem port and the faraway harbors of the Orient, the South Seas and Europe. The Embargo Acts of 1808 and 1812 occasioned him heavy losses, but these were somewhat repaid by the success of the privateers in which Nathaniel Silsbee is recorded as holding shares.

By 1815, he had risen to such prominence as a representative American merchant that he was named by the United States Government as one of the commissioners to organize the Boston branch of the “Bank of the United States.” He became one of the Massachusetts delegation to Congress, and was a United States Senator from 1826 to 1835, representing his state in company with Daniel Webster.

Dying in 1850, Nathaniel Silsbee left bequeathed to his home town the memory of his own life as a tribute to the sterling worth and splendid Americanism of the old-time shipmasters of Salem. Trader and voyager to the Indies as a captain in his teens, retired with a fortune won from the sea before he was thirty, playing the man in many immensely trying and hazardous situations, this one-time Senator from Massachusetts was a product of the times he lived in.