FOOTNOTES:
[38] Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, Vol. XXXV, Jan., 1889. Biographical Notes: By Nathaniel Silsbee. (A paper written by him, “for the perusal of his family,” between 1836 and 1850, and from which most of the material for this chapter was obtained.)
CHAPTER XVII
THE VOYAGES OF CAPTAIN RICHARD CLEVELAND
(1791-1820)
Perhaps the finest type of the Salem shipmaster of the age when her seamen were the vikings of American commerce, was Captain Richard Cleveland who wrote as capably as he sailed and fought and whose own record of his voyages inspired the London Literary Examiner to comment in 1842:[39]
“Few things in De Foe, Dana, or any other truth teller are more characteristic than Mr. Cleveland’s account of his voyage from Havre to the Cape of Good Hope. Surely never before was there such an Indiaman and with such a cargo and such a crew.”
Captain Cleveland was born in 1773 and he reached manhood and the height of his career of the most romantic adventure when Salem commerce was also at the zenith of its prosperity. He was the eldest son of a father worthy to have such a son, Captain Stephen Cleveland, whose life at sea began when at the age of sixteen he was kidnapped by a British press gang in the streets of Boston, in 1756. This redoubtable sire served for several years on board a British frigate, was promoted to the rank of midshipman and fought the French fleet off the Channel ports. He had returned to live in Salem when the Revolution began and became active in fitting out privateers to harry the British flag which he hated most heartily for having been compelled to serve under it. He built the Pilgrim brig which alone captured more than fifty British prizes and was one of the fastest armed ships sent out of Salem. From the Continental Congress he received a commission only a month after the Declaration of Independence to command the brig Despatch[40] in a voyage to Bordeaux after military stores and guns for the patriotic forces. His was the first government vessel to fly the new American flag in a harbor of Europe and he returned in safety with a cargo which greatly helped the struggling cause in his country in the early days of the war.
His son, Richard, hero of this narrative, followed the sea as a matter of course, being an ambitious Salem lad as well as the son of his father. At the age of fourteen he entered the counting house of Elias Hasket Derby, as told in a previous chapter. He learned the mercantile side of a seafaring life and with the other lads in the employ of that famous old house, risked his little savings as “adventures” in the vessels which were sailing to the Far East. His education, beyond the counting house, was limited to a few years in the public schools of Salem before he had much more than passed into his teens. Yet this Richard Cleveland, mariner, by virtue of his native ability and the influences of the times that bred him, made himself a man of the most liberal education, in the finest sense of the phrase, and in addition to this, he could lay claim to more genuine culture than most college university graduates of to-day.
He was only eighteen when his father thought him old enough to go to sea. As captain’s clerk, he sailed his first voyage with Captain Nathaniel Silsbee, and became second mate before the ship returned to Salem. This was the East Indiaman whose captain was not twenty years old; the chief mate, nineteen; and Richard Cleveland, second mate, at the same age. These rosy-cheeked lads carried the Herald to the Cape of Good Hope, thence into the Indian Ocean when warring powers and their privateers menaced every neutral vessel. Well might Richard Cleveland write of this remarkable beginning of his sea life:
“The voyage, thus happily accomplished, may be regarded, when taken in all its bearings, as a very remarkable one; first, from the extreme youth of all to whom its management had been entrusted; secondly, from the foresight, ingenuity, and adroitness manifested in averting and escaping dangers; in perceiving advantages and turning them to the best account; and thirdly from the great success attending this judicious management, as demonstrated by the fact of returning to the owner four or five times the amount of the original capital. Mr. Derby used to call us his boys, and boast of our achievements, and well might he do so, for it is not probable that the annals of the world can furnish another example of an enterprise, of such magnitude, requiring the exercise of so much judgment and skill, being conducted by so young a man, (Nathaniel Silsbee), aided only by still younger advisers, and accomplished with the most entire success.”
In 1797, at the age of twenty-three, Richard Cleveland was in command of the bark Enterprise of Salem, bound for Mocha after a cargo of coffee. He had to abandon this plan, however, after reaching Havre, and his ship was ordered home. Her young master had no mind to lose the profits which he had hoped to reap from this venture, wherefore he decided to remain abroad, to send the ship home in command of the mate, and not to go back to Salem until he had played for high stakes with the fortunes of the sea. Thus began a series of voyages and adventures which were to take him around the globe through seven long years before he should see home and friends again. At Havre he bought on two years’ credit, a “cutter-sloop” of only forty-three tons, in size no larger than the yachts whose owners think it venturesome to take them beyond the sheltered reaches of Long Island Sound on summer cruises.