The ships and sailors of old Salem

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

“Two—”

“Three.”

But he had not said “Four,” when the British colors fluttered down from the yard and the packet ship was his.

When a boat from the Pickering went alongside the prize, the crew “found the blood running from her scuppers, while the deck appeared more like the floor of a slaughter house than the deck of a ship. On the quarterdeck, in an armchair, sat an old gentleman, the Governor of the island from which the packet came. During the whole action he had loaded and fired a heavy blunderbuss, and in the course of the battle had received a ball in his cheek, which, in consequence of the loss of teeth, had passed out through the other cheek without giving a mortal wound.”

A truly splendid “old gentleman” and a hero of the first water!

In the latter part of the war Captain Haraden commanded the Julius Cæsar, and a letter written by an American in Martinique in 1782 to a friend in Salem is evidence that his activities had not diminished:

“Captain Jonathan Haraden, in the letter of marque ship, Julius Cæsar, forty men and fourteen guns, off Bermuda, in sight of two English brigs, one of twenty and the other of sixteen guns, took a schooner which was a prize to one of them, but they both declined to attack him. On the 5th ult., he fell in with two British vessels, being a ship of eighteen guns and a brig of sixteen, both of which he fought five hours and got clear of them. The enemy’s ship was much shattered and so was the Cæsar, but the latter’s men were unharmed. Captain Haraden was subsequently presented with a silver plate by the owners of his ship, as commemorative of his bravery and skill. Before he reached Martinico he had a severe battle with another English vessel which he carried thither with him as a prize.”

Captain Haraden, the man who took a thousand cannon from the British on the high seas, died in Salem in 1803 in his fifty-ninth year. His descendants treasure the massive pieces of plate given him by the owners of the Pickering and the Julius Cæsar, as memorials of one who achieved far more to win the independence of his nation than many a landsman whose military records won him the recognition of his government and a conspicuous place in history.

While the important ports of Boston, New York, and others to the southward were blockaded by squadrons of British war vessels, the Salem privateers managed to slip to sea and spread destruction. It happened on a day of March, in 1781, that two bold English privateers were cruising off Cape Cod, menacing the coastwise trading sloops and schooners bound in and out of Salem and nearby ports. The news was carried ashore by incoming vessels which had been compelled to run for it, and through the streets and along the wharves of Salem went the call for volunteers. The ships Brutus and Neptune were lying in the stream and with astonishing expedition they were armed and made ready for sea as privateers.

One of the enemy’s vessels was taken and brought into Salem only two days after the alarm had been given. Tradition relates that while the two Salem privateers were sailing home in company with their prize, the Brutus was hailed by an English sloop which had been loitering the coast on mischief bent. The Yankee skippers seeking to get their prize into port without risk of losing her in battle, had hoisted English colors. Dusk had deepened into darkness when from the quarterdeck of the British sloop sounded the husky challenge: