“... Captain Magee and Mr. Perkins—Although I have been a little particular in these orders, I do not mean them as positive; and you have leave to break them in any part where you by calculation think it for my interest, excepting your breaking Acts of Trade which I absolutely forbid. Not having to add anything, I commit you to the Almighty’s protection, and remain your friend and employer,
“Elias Hasket Derby.”
The captain was expected to “break his orders in any part,” if he could drive a better bargain than his employer had been able to foresee at a distance of ten thousand miles from the market. Merchants as well as navigators, the old-time shipmaster found compensation for these arduous responsibilities in the “privileges” which allowed him a liberal amount of cargo space on their own account, as well as a commission on the sales of the freight out and back. His own share of the profits of two or three voyages to the Far East might enable him to buy and ship and freight a vessel for himself. Thereafter, if he were shrewd and venturesome enough, he rose rapidly to independence and after a dozen years of the quarterdeck was ready to step ashore as a merchant with his own counting house and his fleet of stout ships.
In 1793, Captain Jonathan Carnes of Salem was looking for trade along the Sumatra coast. Touching at the port of Bencoolen, he happened to learn that wild pepper might be found along the northwest coast of Sumatra. The Dutch East India Company was not as alert as this solitary Yankee shipmaster, roaming along strange and hostile shores.
Captain Carnes kept his knowledge to himself, completed his voyage to Salem, and there whispered to a merchant, Jonathan Peele, that as soon as possible a secret pepper expedition should be fitted out. Mr. Peele ordered a fast schooner built. She was called the Rajah, and carried four guns and ten men. There was much gossiping speculation about her destination, but Captain Carnes had nothing at all to say. In November, 1795, he cleared for Sumatra and not a soul in Salem except his owner and himself knew whither he was bound. The cargo consisted of brandy, gin, iron, tobacco and dried fish to be bartered for wild pepper.
For eighteen months no word returned from the Rajah, and her mysterious quest. Captain Carnes might have been wrecked on coasts whereof he had no charts, or he might have been slain by hostile natives. But Jonathan Peele, having risked his stake, as Salem merchants were wont to do, busied himself with other affairs and pinned his faith to the proven sagacity and pluck of Jonathan Carnes. At last, a string of signal flags fluttered from the harbor mouth. Jonathan Peele reached for his spyglass, and saw a schooner’s topsails lifting from seaward. The Rajah had come home, and when she let go her anchor in Salem harbor, Captain Jonathan Carnes brought word ashore that he had secured a cargo of wild pepper in bulk which would return a profit of at least seven hundred per cent. of the total cost of vessel and voyage. In other words, this one “adventure” of the Rajah realized what amounted to a comfortable fortune in that generation.
There was great excitement among the other Salem merchants. They forsook their desks to discuss this pepper bonanza, but Captain Jonathan Carnes had nothing to say and Mr. Jonathan Peele was as dumb as a Salem harbor clam. The Rajah was at once refitted for a second Sumatra voyage, and in their eagerness to fathom her dazzling secret, several rival merchants hastily made vessels ready for sea with orders to go to that coast as fast as canvas could carry them and endeavor to find out where Captain Carnes found his wild pepper. They hurried to Bencoolen, but were unsuccessful and had to proceed to India to fill their holds with whatever cargoes came to hand. Meanwhile the Rajah slipped away for a second pepper voyage, and returned with a hundred and fifty thousand pounds of the precious condiment.
There was no hiding this mystery from Salem merchants for long, however, and by the time the Rajah had made three pepper voyages, the rivals were at her heels, bartering with native chieftains and stowing their holds with the wild pepper which long continued to be one of the most profitable articles of the Salem commerce with the Orient. It was a fine romance of trade, this story of Captain Carnes and the Rajah, and characteristic of the men and methods of the time. For half a century a large part of the pepper used in all countries was reshipped from the port of Salem, a trade which flourished until 1850. During the period between the first voyage of Captain Carnes and 1845, the Salem custom house records bore the entries of almost two hundred vessels from the port of Sumatra.
While Sumatra and China and India were being sought by Salem ships, Elias Hasket Derby in 1796 sent his good ship Astrea on a pioneer voyage to Manila. She was the first American vessel to find that port, and was loaded with a rich cargo of sugar, pepper and indigo, on which twenty-four thousand dollars in duties were paid at the Salem Custom House.
To carry on such a business as that controlled by Elias Hasket Derby, enlisted the activities of many men and industries. While his larger ships were making their distant voyages, his brigs and schooners were gathering the future cargoes for the Orient; voyaging to Gothenburg and St. Petersburg for iron, duck and hemp; to France, Spain and Madeira for wine and lead; to the West Indies for rum, and to New York, Philadelphia and Richmond for flour, provisions, iron, and tobacco. These shipments were assembled in the warehouses of Derby wharf, and paid for in the teas, coffee, pepper, muslin, silks and ivory which the ships from the far East were bringing home. In fourteen years Mr. Derby’s ships to the far Eastern ports and Europe made one hundred and twenty-five voyages, and of the thirty-five vessels engaged in this traffic only one was lost at sea.