“Having (by a vigorous defence) repulsed the Enemy from your Bulk-heads, and cutting up your Deck, it may be necessary to make a Sally to compleat your Victory; but by the Way, the young Master must use great caution before he Sally out, lest he be drawn into some Strategem to his Ruin; therefore for a Ship of but few hands it is not a Mark of Cowardice to keep the Close-Quarters so long as the Enemy is on board; and if his Men retire out of your Ship, fire into him through your Look-holes and Ports till he calls for Quarter. And if it should ever come to that, you must proceed Warily (unless you out Number him in Men) and send but a few of your Hands into his Ship while the others are ready with all their Small-arms and Cannon charged; and if they submit patiently disarm and put them down below, where there is no Powder or Weapons; but plunder not, lest your men quarrel about Trifles or be too intent in searching for Money, and thereby give the Enemy an opportunity to destroy you; and if you take the Prize (when you come into an harbor) let everything be equally shared among the Men, the Master only reserving to himself the Affections of his Men by his Generosity which with the Honour of the Victory to a brave Mind is equivalent to all the rest....”
“It is presumed that the Sally will be most Advantageous if made out of the Round-house, because having cleared the Poop, you will have no Enemy at your back; wherefore let all but two or more, according to your Number, step up into the Round-house, bringing with them all or most of the Musquets and Pistols there, leaving only the Blunderbusses. Let all the Small-Arms in the Quarters be charged, and the Cannon that flank the Decks and out of the Bulk-heads, traversing those in the Round-house, pointing towards the mizzenmast to gaul the Enemy in case of a retreat. All things being thus prepared, let a Powder-chest be sprung upon the Poop, and four Hand Granadoes tost out of the Ports, filled with Flower and fuzees of a long duration, then let the Door be opened, and in the Confusion make your Sally at once, half advancing forward and the other facing about to clear the Poop; when this is done, let them have an eye to the Chains. At the Round-house Door let two men be left to stand by the Port-cullis, each having a brace of Pistols to secure a Retreat; let then those in the Forecastle never shoot right aft, after the Sally is made, unless parallel with the Main Deck. The rest must be left to Judgment.”
Try to imagine, if you please, advice of such tenor as this compiled for the use of the captains of the transatlantic liners or cargo “tramps” of to-day, and you will be able to comprehend in some slight measure how vast has been the change in the conditions of the business of the sea, and what hazards our American forefathers faced to win their bread on quarterdeck and in forecastle. Nor were such desperate engagements as are outlined in this ancient “Seaman’s Vade-Mecum” at all infrequent. “Round-houses” and “great cabbins” were defended with “musquets,” “javalins,” “Half-pikes” and cutlasses, and “hand-granadoes” in many a hand-to-hand conflict with sea raiders before the crew of the bluff-blowed, high-popped Yankee West Indiaman had to “beat off the boarders” or make a dashing “Sally” or “capitulate for Good Quarter at the last Extremity.”
Of such, then, were the privateersmen who flocked down the wharves and among the tavern “rendezvous” of Salem as soon as the owners of the waiting vessels had obtained their commissions from the Continental Congress, and issued the call for volunteers. Mingled with the hardy seamen who had learned their trade in Salem vessels were the sons of wealthy shipping merchants of the best blood of the town and county who embarked as “gentlemen volunteers,” eager for glory and plunder, and a chance to avenge the wrongs they and their kinfolk had suffered under British trade laws and at the hands of British press gangs.
The foregoing extracts from the “Seaman’s Vade-Mecum” show how singularly fixed the language of the sea has remained through the greater part of two centuries. With a few slight differences, the terms in use then are commonly employed to-day. It is therefore probable that if you could have been on old Derby Wharf in the year of 1776, the talk of the busy, sun-browned men and boys around you would have sounded by no means archaic. The wharf still stretches a long arm into the harbor and its tumbling warehouses, timbered with great hewn beams, were standing during the Revolution. Then they were filled with cannon, small arms, rigging and ships’ stores as fast as they could be hauled hither. Fancy needs only to picture this landlocked harbor alive with square-rigged vessels, tall sloops and topsail schooners, their sides checkered with gun-ports, to bring to life the Salem of the privateersman of one hundred and forty years ago.
Shipmasters had no sooner signaled their homecoming with deep freights of logwood, molasses or sugar than they received orders to discharge with all speed and clear their decks for mounting batteries and slinging the hammocks of a hundred waiting privateersmen. The guns and men once aboard, the crews were drilling night and day while they waited the chance to slip to sea. Their armament included carronades, “Long Toms” and “long six” or “long nine” pounders, sufficient muskets, blunderbusses, pistols, cutlasses, tomahawks, boarding pikes, hand grenades, round shot, grape, canister, and double-headed shot.
When larger vessels were not available tiny sloops with twenty or thirty men and boys mounted one or two old guns and put to sea to “capture a Britisher” and very likely be taken themselves by the first English ship of war that sighted them. The prize money was counted before it was caught, and seamen made a business of selling their shares in advance, preferring the bird in the bush, as shown by the following bill of sale:
“Beverly, ye 7th, 1776.
“Know all men by these presents, that I the subscriber, in consideration of the sum of sixteen dollars to me in hand paid by Mr. John Waters, in part for ½ share of all the Prizes that may be taken during the cruize of the Privateer Sloop called the Revenge, whereof Benjamin Dean is commissioned Commander, and for the further consideration of twenty-four dollars more to be paid at the end of the whole cruize of the said Sloop; and these certify that I the subscriber have sold, bargained and conveyed unto the said John Waters, or his order, the one half share of my whole share of all the prizes that may be taken during the whole cruize of said Sloop. Witness my hand,
“P. H. Brockhorn.”