When the Grand Turk made her first voyage to the Cape of Good Hope in 1784, commanded by Captain Jonathan Ingersoll, the scanty navigating equipment of his time is said to have consisted of “a few erroneous maps and charts, a sextant and a Guthrie’s Grammar.”[24] The Grand Turk made her passage in safety and while she lay in Table Bay, Major Samuel Shaw, an American returning from Canton, sent a boat aboard for Captain Ingersoll and later wrote of this Salem venture:
“The object was to sell, rum, cheese, salt, provisions and chocolate, loaf sugar, butter, etc., the proceeds of which in money with a quantity of ginseng, and some cash brought with him, Captain Ingersoll intended to invest in Bohea tea; but as the ships bound to Europe are not allowed to break bulk on the way, he was disappointed in his expectations of procuring that article and sold his ginseng for two-thirds of a Spanish dollar a pound, which is twenty per cent. better than the silver money of the Cape. He intended remaining a short time to purchase fine teas in the private trade allowed the officers on board India ships, and then to sail to the coast of Guinea, to dispose of his rum, etc., for ivory and gold dust; thence without taking a single slave to proceed to the West Indies and purchase sugar and cotton, with which he would return to Salem. Notwithstanding the disappointment in the principal object of the voyage and the consequent determination to go to the coast of Guinea, his resolution not to endeavor to retrieve it by purchasing slaves did the captain great honor, and reflected equal credit upon his employers, who, he assured me, would rather sink the whole capital employed than directly or indirectly be concerned in so infamous a trade.”
The Grand Turk returned by way of the West Indies where the sales of his cargo enabled her captain to load two ships for Salem. He sent the Grand Turk home in charge of the mate and returned in the Atlantic. During the voyage Captain Ingersoll rescued the master and mate of an English schooner, the Amity, whose crew had mutinied while off the Spanish Main. The two officers had been cast adrift in a small boat to perish. This was the first act in a unique drama of maritime coincidence.
After the castaways had reached Salem, Captain Duncanson, the English master of the Amity, was the guest of Mr. Elias Hasket Derby while he waited for word from his owners and an opportunity to return to his home across the Atlantic. He spent much of his time on the water front as a matter of course, and used to stand at a window of Mr. Derby’s counting house idly staring at the harbor.
One day while sweeping the seaward horizon with the office spyglass, the forlorn British skipper let fly an oath of the most profound amazement. He dropped the glass, rubbed his eyes, chewed his beard and stared again. A schooner was making across the bar, and presently she stood clear of the islands at the harbor mouth and slipped toward an anchorage well inside.
There was no mistaking her at this range. It was the Amity, his own schooner which had been taken from him in the West Indies, from which he and his mate had been cast adrift by the piratical seamen. Captain Duncanson hurried into Mr. Derby’s private office as fast as his legs could carry him. By some incredible twist of fate the captors of the Amity had sailed her straight to her captain.
Mr. Derby was a man of the greatest promptitude and one of his anchored brigs was instantly manned with a heavy crew, two deck guns slung aboard, and with Captain Duncanson striding the quarterdeck, the brig stood down to take the Amity. It was Captain Duncanson who led the boarders, and the mutineers were soon overpowered and fetched back to Salem jail in irons. The grateful skipper and his mate signed a crew in Salem, and took the Amity to sea, a vessel restored to her own by so marvelous an event that it would be laughed out of court as material for fiction.
In November, 1785, the Grand Turk was cleared, in command of Captain Ebenezer West for the Isle of France, but her owner had it in his mind, and so instructed his captain, to continue the voyage to Batavia and China. In June of 1787, she returned to Salem with a cargo of teas, silks, and nankeens; a notable voyage in seas when the American flag was almost unknown. Her successful commerce with Canton lent a slightly humorous flavor to the comment of the Independent Chronicle of London, dated July 29, 1785:
“The Americans have given up all thought of a China trade which can never be carried on to advantage without some settlement in the East Indies.”
Captain Ebenezer West who took the Grand Turk to the Orient on this voyage was a member of so admirable a family of American seamen and shipmasters that the records of the three brothers as written down in the official records of the Salem Marine Society deserves a place in this chapter.