The ships and sailors of old Salem

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

If these records of maritime Salem hold any lessons for to-day, if they are worth while as something more than stirring tales of bygone generations, it is because those seafarers achieved success without counting the odds. They were enormously hampered by the policy of England which deliberately endeavored to crush Colonial shipping by means of numberless tonnage, customs, and neutrality regulations. It was a merciless jealousy that sought to confiscate every Yankee merchant vessel and ruin her owners.

There were the risks of the sea, of uncharted, unlighted coasts and reefs and islands, and a plague of ferocious pirates and lawless privateers who haunted the trade routes from the Spanish Main to Madagascar. The vessel lucky enough to escape all these perils might run afoul of another menace in the cruiser or customs officer of the King, and many an American merchantmen, hundreds of them, were seized in their own harbors and carried off before the eyes of their owners who could only stand by in speechless rage and sorrow at the loss of their labor and investment.

Notwithstanding all these grievous handicaps, American ships and sailors prospered and multiplied, nor did they stay at home and whine that they could not compete with the more favored merchant navies of England and the Continent. They took and held their commanding share of the world’s trade because they had to have it. They wanted it earnestly enough to go out and get it.

Whenever the United States shall really desire to regain her proud place among the maritime nations, the minds of her captains of industry will find a way to achieve it and her legislators will solve their share of the problem. And our people will cease paying over to English and German shipowners enough money in freight and passage bills every year to defray the cost of building a Panama Canal.

From log books, sea journals and other manuscripts hitherto unpublished (most of them written during the years between the Revolution and the War of 1812), are herein gathered such narratives as those of the first American voyages to Japan, India, the Philippines, Guam, the Cape of Good Hope, Sumatra, Arabia and the South Seas. These and other records, as written by the seamen who made Salem the most famous port of the New World a century ago, are much more than local annals. They comprise a unique and brilliant chapter of American history and they speak for themselves.

This era, vanished this closed chapter of American achievement which reached its zenith a full century ago, belongs not alone to Salem, but also to the nation. East and west, north and south, runs the love of the stars and stripes, and the desire to do honor to those who have helped win for this flag prestige and respect among other peoples in other climes. The seamen of this old port were traders, it is true, but they lent to commerce an epic quality, and because they steered so many brave ships to ports where no other American topsails had ever gleamed, they deserve to be remembered among those whose work left its imprint far beyond the limits of the town or coast they called home.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER		PAGE
I	A Port of Vanished Fleets.	[3]
II	Philip English and his Era. (1680-1750.)	[21]
III	Some Early Eighteenth Century Pirates. (1670-1725.)	[39]
IV	The Privateersmen of ’76.	[58]
V	Jonathan Haraden, Privateersman. (1776-1782.)	[78]
VI	Captain Luther Little’s Own Story. (1771-1799.)	[98]
VII	The Journal of William Russell. (1776-1783.)	[117]
VIII	The Journal of William Russell (concluded). (1779-1783.)	[134]
IX	Richard Derby and his Son John. (1774-1792.)	[149]
X	Elias Hasket Derby and his Times. (1770-1800.)	[173]
XI	Pioneers in Distant Seas. (1775-1817.)	[197]
XII	The Building of the Essex. (1799.)	[228]
XIII	The First American Voyagers to Japan. (1799-1801.)	[250]
XIV	The First Yankee Ship at Guam. (1801.)	[270]
XV	Nathaniel Bowditch and his “Practical Navigator.” (1802.)	[288]
XVI	The Voyages of Nathaniel Silsbee. (1792-1800.)	[310]
XVII	The Voyages of Richard Cleveland. (1791-1820.)	[329]
XVIII	The Privateers of 1812.	[353]
XIX	The Tragedy of the Friendship. (1831.)	[378]
XX	Early South Sea Voyages. (1832.)	[406]
XXI	The Last Pirates of the Spanish Main. (1832.)	[431]
XXII	General Frederick Townsend Ward. (1859-1862.)	[451]
XXIII	The Ebbing of the Tide.	[482]
	Appendix.	[499]

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Panay, one of the last of the Salem fleet bound out from Boston to Manila twenty-five years ago	[Frontispiece]
	FACING
	PAGE
Custom House document with signature of Nathaniel Hawthorne as surveyor	[6]
Page from the illustrated log of the Eolus	[6]
A corner in the Marine Room of the Peabody Museum	[14]
The Marine Room, Peabody Museum	[14]
Certificate of Membership in the Salem Marine Society	[18]
Title page of the log of Capt Nathaniel Hawthorne	[18]
The Roger Williams house	[24]
The Philip English “Great House”	[30]
A bill of lading of the time of Philip English, dated 1716	[36]
The log of a Salem whaler	[36]
A page from Falconer’s Marine Dictionary (18th Century)	[44]
Agreement by which a Revolutionary privateer seaman sold his share of the booty in advance of his cruise	[66]
Proclamation posted in Salem during the Revolution calling for volunteers aboard Paul Jones’ Ranger	[70]
Schooner Baltic	[76]
Derby Wharf, Salem, Mass., as it appears to-day	[86]
Captain Luther Little	[108]
The East India Marine Society’s hall, now the home of the Peabody Museum	[120]
Page from the records of the East India Marine Society	[120]
The Salem Custom House, built in 1818	[140]
Richard Derby	[152]
“Leslie’s Retreat”	[158]
The Grand Turk, first American ship to pass the Cape of Good Hope	[176]
Nathaniel West	[180]
William Gray	[188]
Elias Hasket Derby	[188]
The Ship Mount Vernon	[192]
Elias Hasket Derby mansion (1790-1816)	[194]
Prince House. Home of Richard Derby. Built about 1750	[194]
Joseph Peabody	[200]
Hon. Jacob Crowninshield	[204]
Benjamin Crowninshield	[208]
Ship Ulysses	[212]
Yacht Cleopatra’s Barge	[212]
Log of the good ship Rubicon	[214]
The frigate Essex	[230]
Broadside ballad published in Salem after the news was received of the loss of the Essex	[248]
Page from the log of the Margaret	[252]
The good ship Franklin	[252]
View of Nagasaki before Japan was opened to commerce	[260]
Salem Harbor as it is to-day	[274]
The old-time sailors used to have their vessels painted on pitchers and punch bowls	[284]
Title page from the journal of the Lydia	[284]
Nathaniel Bowditch, author of “The Practical Navigator”	[294]
Nathaniel Bowditch’s chart of Salem harbor	[304]
Captain Benjamin Carpenter of the Hercules, 1792	[306]
From the log of the Hercules	[308]
Pages from the log of the ship Hercules, 1792	[312]
Captain Nathaniel Silsbee	[318]
Captain Richard Cleveland	[334]
Captain James W. Chever	[358]
The privateer America under full sail	[358]
Captain Holten J. Breed	[370]
The privateer Grand Turk	[370]
An old broadside, relating the incidents of the battle of Qualah Battoo	[380]
The Glide	[390]
The Friendship	[390]
Captain Driver	[408]
Letter to Captain Driver from the “Bounty” Colonists	[408]
Captain Thomas Fuller	[432]
The brig Mexican attacked by pirates, 1832	[432]
Frederick T. Ward	[454]
Captain John Bertram	[486]
Ship Sooloo	[494]