“In the ordinary course of commercial education, in New England, boys are transferred from school to the merchant’s desk at the age of fourteen or fifteen. When I had reached my fourteenth year it was my good fortune to be received in the counting house of Elias Hasket Derby of Salem, a merchant who may justly be termed the father of American commerce to India, one whose enterprise and commercial sagacity were unequalled in his day. To him our country is indebted for opening the valuable trade to Calcutta, before whose fortress his was to be the first vessel to display the American flag; and following up the business, he had reaped golden harvests before other merchants came in for a share of them. The first American ships seen at the Cape of Good Hope and the Isle of France belonged to him. His were the first American ships which carried cargoes of cotton from Bombay to China, and among the first ships which made a direct voyage to China and back was one owned by him. Without possessing a scientific knowledge of the construction and sparring of ships, Mr. Derby seemed to have an intuitive faculty in judging of models and proportions, and his experiments in several instances for the attainment of swiftness in sailing were crowned with success unsurpassed in this or any other country.
“He built several ships for the India trade immediately in the vicinity of the counting house, which afforded me an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the building, sparring and rigging of ships. The conversations to which I listened relating to the countries then newly visited by Americans, the excitement on the return of an adventure from them and the great profits which were made, always manifest from my own little adventures, tended to stimulate the desire in me of visiting those countries, and of sharing more largely in the advantages they presented.”
The Grand Turk, “the great ship,” as she was called in Salem, was less than one hundred feet long, yet she was the first of that noble fleet which inspired a Salem historian, Rev. George Bachelor, to write in an admirable tribute to the town in which his life was passed:
“After a century of comparative quiet, the citizens of this little town were suddenly dispersed to every part of the Oriental world and to every nook of barbarism which had a market and a shore.... The reward of enterprise might be the discovery of an island in which wild pepper enough to load a ship might be had almost for the asking, or of forests where precious gums had no commercial value, or spice islands unvexed and unvisited by civilization. Every shipmaster and every mariner returning on a richly loaded ship was the owner of valuable knowledge.
“Rival merchants sometimes drove the work of preparation night and day when virgin markets had favors to be won, and ships which set out for unknown ports were watched when they slipped their cables and sailed away by night, and dogged for months on the high seas in the hope of discovering the secret well kept by owner and crew. Every man on board was allowed a certain space for a little venture. People in other pursuits, not excepting the merchant’s minister, intrusted their savings to the supercargo, and watched eagerly the results of their ventures. This great mental activity, and profuse stores of knowledge brought by every ship’s crew, and distributed, together with India shawls, blue china, and unheard of curiosities from every savage shore, gave the community a rare alertness of intellect.”
It was the spirit as is herein indicated that achieved its finest flower in such merchants as Elias Hasket Derby. When his ships took their departure from the Massachusetts coast they vanished beyond his ken for one or two years. His captains were intrusted with the disposal of the cargo to the best advantage. There was no sending orders by mail or cable. It was this continual sense of facing unknown hazards, of gambling with the sea and hostile, undiscovered shores that prompted those old shipmasters to inscribe on the title pages of their log books:
“A Journal of an Intended Voyage by God’s Assistance ... Cape Ann bore W.N.W. from whence I take my departure. So God send the good ship to her Desired Port in Safety. Amen.”
From a painting made by a Chinese artist at Canton, 1786
The Grand Turk, first American ship to touch at the Cape of Good Hope