Ship Sooloo, Capt. Charles H. Allen, Jr., bound for San Francisco, June 1, 1861
Every shipmaster had as good a chance as any other to win a fortune. Independence, self-reliance, initiative and ambition were fostered. It was clean-handed competition, aggressive, but with a fair chance for all. Whether it was the Atlantic daring to show American colors to the East India Company in Calcutta in 1788, or the Endeavor, with Captain David Elwell on her quarterdeck making the first passage of an American ship through the Straits of Magellan in 1824, or the Margaret at anchor in Nagasaki harbor half a century before another American vessel visited a port of Japan, these adventurers of commerce were red-blooded frontiersmen of blue water, as truly and thoroughly American in spirit and ambition as the strong men who pushed into the western wilderness to carve out new empire for their countrymen.
Judged by the standards of this age, these seamen had their faults. They saw no great wrong in taking cargoes of New England rum to poison the black tribes of Africa, and the schooner Sally and Polly of Salem was winging it to Senegal as early as 1789. Rum, gunpowder and tobacco outbound, hides, palm oil, gold dust and ivory homeward, were staples of a busy commerce until late into the last century. But the pioneering trade to the Orient, which was the glory of the port, was free from the stain of debasing the natives for gain.
Salem is proud of its past, but mightily interested in its present. Its population is four times as great as when it was the foremost foreign seaport of the United States and its activities have veered into manufacturing channels. But as has happened to many other New England cities of the purest American pedigree, a flood of immigration from Europe and Canada has swept into Salem to swarm in its mills and factories. Along the harbor front the fine old square mansions from which the lords of the shipping gazed down at their teeming wharves are tenanted by toilers of many alien nations. But the stately, pillared Custom House, alas, no more than a memorial of vanished greatness, stands at the head of Derby Wharf to remind the passer-by, not only of its immortal surveyor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, but also of an age of which the civic seal of Salem bears witness in its motto, “Divitis Indiae usque ad ultimum sinum” (To the farthest port of the rich East.)
FOOTNOTES:
[49] “July 1, 1833. Nearly half our commercial capital is employed in other ports. During the past year there sailed from Salem 14 ships, 10 of them for India, 2 on whaling voyages to the Pacific; 5 barks, 4 of which for India; 94 brigs, 14 of them for India; and 23 schooners. Fourteen ships, 6 barks, 27 brigs and 6 schooners belonging to this place sailed from other ports on foreign voyages.” (Felt’s Annals of Salem.)
[50] Captain John H. Eagleston took the brigantine Mary and Ellen out to California two months ahead of the Eliza, in October, 1848, loading with a general cargo to sell to the gold-seekers. While at San Francisco in June, 1849, he met the Eliza, and later wrote, in an account of the voyage:
“On board the Eliza there were quite a number of passengers. Several of these remaining in San Francisco, pitched their tent in Happy Valley where Mr. Jonathan Nichols, stored as he was with fun and song, assisted by his social and free-hearted companions, made their quarters at all times inviting and pleasant. I was often with them, and under the beautiful evening sky, the echoes of good singing pleased the squatters that composed the little beehive villages which dotted the valley, especially ‘The Washbowl on my Knee,’ which was the usual wind-up.”
[51] Coastwise schooners and vessels from the Canadian provinces.