The bell which summoned the operatives of the first cotton mill to their work really sounded the death knell of the shipping industry. The man whose maritime ventures had been most profitable was quick to recognize the fact. James De Wolf was the first of Bristolians to transfer his capital from ships to factories. With the building of mills agriculture began to decline though for more than half a century onions and other vegetables continued to be exported to the West India Islands. The erection of the great buildings of the National Rubber Company completed the transformation of the town.
Very different is the place from the old Puritan town of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; very different indeed from the Bristol of sixty years ago. Sixty years ago the Puritan traditions still dominated. This fact was especially evident on Sunday. That day was observed with the strictness of the old Puritan Sabbath. Worldly amusements were frowned upon. Every one was expected to go to church in the morning, and a very large proportion of the population attended a second religious service in the afternoon or evening. If golf had been known no one would have ventured to play it. Social ostracism would have followed any attempt at a match game of ball. The only foreign element was the Irish. Very nearly all the Irish had been born on “the old sod.” Today the Irish element is almost the dominant one and the descendants of the first immigrants are as thoroughly American in their ideals and sentiments as are those who trace their ancestry to the Founders of 1680. Sixty years ago there were perhaps a dozen names upon the tax lists that were not derived from the British Isles. No foreign tongue except the Spanish of the frequent Cuban visitors was heard upon the streets. Today the Italian language is everywhere heard and Italian names fill the pages of the directory. With the Italians have come also Canadian French and Portuguese. Walking over the “Common” one day not long ago I passed three groups of men and boys and heard from them not one word of English. One group was Italian, another French, the third Portuguese.
In the olden days the business was transacted along the wharves on Thames Street. That street was crowded with drays loaded with the products of every land, while sailors of all nations lounged about the water front. Today a sailor is a rare sight. The commerce has vanished and not a vessel of any size hails from the port. Even the pronunciation of the name of the street by the water has been changed and most of the dwellers upon that thoroughfare do not know that they are living upon the “Tems” street of our fathers. By day even in summer the streets of the town are almost empty, except for the visitors, and half the people are at work in the factories. But there is immense life in the place yet. The population is increasing by leaps and bounds and the wealth per capita is increasing in the same way. When the great mill wheels cease to turn, a hurrying throng of operatives crowds the highways. Although they are now for the most part alien in speech and thought, their children, born in the old colonial port, will grow up imbued with the spirit of the place and will be Americans, Americans without the hyphen. The old seafaring spirit still exists, though mightily transformed. No longer do Bristol sails whiten far distant seas, no longer do the argosies bring into the harbor the products of India, the silks of China and Japan. From the port today go forth vessels of a very different type. They lack the capacious holds of the olden days but they carry sails larger than any the old captains ever dreamed of. Their business is not to carry merchandise; they sail forth from Narragansett Bay to lead the yachting fleets of the world.
PART I
SIMEON POTTER AND THE PRINCE CHARLES OF LORRAINE
1—SIMEON POTTER
Most famous among the names of the old sea captains of Bristol is that of Simeon Potter. For almost half a century Potter was the most conspicuous figure in the town in which he was born. He was also one of the influential men in the Colony and State of Rhode Island for a large part of that time.
Simeon Potter was born in Bristol in the year 1720. His father was not a man of fortune and the boy’s education was almost entirely neglected. His letters, even in advanced age, are those of an illiterate man who, apparently, had never attempted to remedy the deficiencies of his youth. Perhaps this is not to be wondered at. He went forth from Bristol an humble sailor lad whose only possessions were a sound body and an imperious will. After a comparatively few years spent upon the ocean he returned to his native town with a purse overflowing with riches, a man to be looked up to for the rest of his life.
His wealth was acquired in “privateering,” and tales of his captures upon the sea, and especially of his wild marauding descents upon foreign coasts, were familiar as household words to the ears of the Bristolians of three-quarters of a century ago. Those tales lost nothing in the telling and in them Potter came to be endowed with attributes he never possessed. This was especially the case with his stature. Like Charlemagne he continued to grow taller with each fifty years after his death. He came in time to be pictured as a giant in size and strength, a man whose success was largely due to the might of his arm, and not to any especial mental ability. It was not until the narrative which follows had been brought to light that we were able to see him as he really was, a slight man. Possibly his great wealth rather than an overpowering personality may have been the cause of his large influence. His fortune was estimated at a quarter of a million dollars, which was an enormous sum for those days.
He plunged gladly into the conflicts of the turbulent age, and by a happy chance came forth from them all without serious injury. When wars ceased his restless energy forced him into constant litigations; he seemed never to be happy unless he had some legal contest on his hands. His intense pride had much to do with this. Like many self-made men he could brook no opposition; he exacted from his townsmen the deference invariably rendered by seamen to the quarter-deck, and never forgot that his success was due to his own unaided efforts. Very soon after the Prince Charles had returned from the raid upon Oyapoc it was visited by some officers from a British man-of-war then lying in the harbor of Newport. They were greatly pleased with the trim, man-o’-war appearance of the privateer and expressed their approbation of its commander. Unfortunately they did so with a patronizing condescension that was exceedingly galling to the young captain. When at last one of them ventured to ask “why he did not apply to his Majesty for a commission as the king would undoubtedly give him a larger and better ship” he could no longer contain himself. “When I wish for a better ship I will not ask his Majesty for one, I will build one myself,” he said, and, turning on his heel, left the Englishman wondering what he could have said that seemed so offensive.
Potter left the sea and came back to Bristol to live just after the town had been transferred from Massachusetts to Rhode Island. He was first chosen to represent the town in the General Assembly in 1752, and from that time until the Revolution, when he had become an Assistant, an office corresponding to that of a Senator today, his voice was continually heard in the colonial councils. After the war had really begun his zeal (though not his pugnacity) seems to have waned and he ceased to take an active part in the affairs of either town or State. Possibly the larger ability, the increasing influence and the more striking personality of his townsman, Governor William Bradford, may have had something to do with Potter’s retirement from participation in public life.