By permission of the Essex Institute
The Philip English “Great House,” built in 1685 and torn down in 1833. The home of the first great shipping merchant of the colonies
Such voyages as these were risky ventures for the eighteenth century insurance companies, whose courage is to be admired for daring to underwrite these vessels at all. For a voyage of the Lydia from Salem to Madeira in 1761, the premium rate was 11 per cent., and in the following year 14 per cent. was demanded for a voyage to Jamaica. The Three Sisters, bound to Santo Domingo, was compelled to pay 23 per cent. premium, and 14 per cent. for the return voyage. The lowest rate recorded for this era was 8 per cent. on the schooner Friendship of Salem to Quebec in 1760. For a Madeira voyage from Salem to-day the insurance rate would be 1¾ per cent. as compared with 11 per cent. then; to Jamaica 1½ per cent. instead of 14 per cent. in the days when the underwriters had to risk confiscation, violation of the British Navigation Acts, and capture by privateers, or pirates, in addition to the usual dangers of the deep.
Among the biographical sketches in the records of the Salem Marine Society is that of Captain Michael Driver. It is a concise yet crowded narrative and may serve to show why insurance rates were high. “In the year 1759, he commanded the schooner Three Brothers, bound to the West Indies,” runs the account. “He was taken by a privateer under English colors, called the King of Russia, commanded by Captain James Inclicto, of nine guns, and sent into Antigua. Her cargo was value at £550. Finding no redress he came home. He sailed again in the schooner Betsey for Guadaloupe; while on his passage was taken by a French frigate and sent into above port. He ransomed the vessel for four thousand livres and left three hostages and sailed for home November, 1761, and took command of schooner Mary, under a flag of truce, to go and pay the ransom and bring home the hostages.
“He was again captured, contrary to the laws of nations, by the English privateer Revenge, James McDonald, master, sent to New Providence, Bahama. He made protest before the authorities and was set at liberty with vessel and cargo. He pursued his voyage to Cape Francois, redeemed the hostages, and Sept. 6, 1762, was ready to return, but Monsieur Blanch, commanding a French frigate, seized the vessel, took out hostages and crew and put them on board the frigate bound to St. Jago, Cuba. He was detained till December, and vessel returned. Worn out and foodless he was obliged to go to Jamaica for repairs. On his arrival home his case was represented to the Colonial Government and transmitted to Governor Shirley at New Providence, but no redress was made.”
Many of these small vessels with crews of four to six men were lost by shipwreck and now and then one can read between the lines of some scanty chronicle of disaster astonishing romances of maritime suffering and adventure. For example in 1677, “a vessel arrived at Salem which took Captain Ephriam How of New Haven, the survivor of his crew, from a desolate island where eight months he suffered exceedingly from cold and hunger.”
In the seventeenth century Cape Cod was as remote as and even more inaccessible than Europe. A bark of thirty tons burden, Anthony Dike master, was wrecked near the end of the Cape and three of the crew were frozen to death. The two survivors “got some fire and lived there by such food as they had saved for seven weeks until an Indian found them. Dike was of the number who perished.”
Robinson Crusoe could have mastered difficulties no more courageously than the seamen of the ketch Providence, wrecked on a voyage to the West Indies. “Six of her crew were drowned, but the Master, mate and a sailor, who was badly wounded, reached an island half a mile off where they found another of the company. They remained there eight days, living on salt fish and cakes made from a barrel of flour washed ashore. They found a piece of touch wood after four days which the mate had in his chest and a piece of flint with which, having a small knife they struck a fire. They framed a boat with a tarred mainsail and some hoops and then fastened pieces of board to them. With a boat so constructed they sailed ten leagues to Anquila and St. Martins where they were kindly received.”
There was also Captain Jones of the brig Adventure which foundered at sea while coming home from Trinidad. All hands were lost except the skipper, who got astride a wooden or “Quaker” gun which had broken adrift from the harmless battery with which he had hoped to intimidate pirates. “He fought off the sharks with his feet” and clung to his buoyant ordnance until he was picked up and carried into Havana.
In 1759 young Samuel Gardner of Salem, just graduated from Harvard College, made a voyage to Gibraltar with Captain Richard Derby. The lad’s diary[7] contains some interesting references to the warlike hazards of a routine trading voyage, besides revealing, in an attractive way, the ingenuous nature of this nineteen-year-old youngster of the eighteenth century. His daily entries read in part: