In 1834 Ezra Weston of Duxbury, or King Cæsar, as he was called, who was reckoned the largest ship owner in the United States next to Wm. Gray of Salem, built the ship Hope of 800 tons, which I remember seeing anchored in the Cow Yard waiting to be towed to Boston to be rigged. She was the largest merchantman ever seen in Boston. In my vacation visits to my grandmother in Boston, where I was in the habit of rambling about the wharves, I remember the largest ships of that time, the Asia, the St. Petersburg and the Akbar, owned by Daniel C. Bacon and others, and none were larger than 400 tons. After the death of Mr. Weston, which occurred August 15, 1842, ship building in Duxbury practically ceased.
So far as the North River is concerned the building of vessels was begun as early as 1678, and the first one there built was launched on the Hanover side of the river, a little above the present bridge on the Plymouth and Boston road. Up to 1889, according to the record of Dr. L. V. Briggs, ten hundred and twenty-five vessels had been built, many of which before the Revolution were owned in England. The largest vessel was a ship of six hundred and fifty tons, and the classes numbered one hundred and one sloops, four hundred and eight schooners, sixty-six brigantines, one hundred and thirty-three brigs, fifty-three barks and two hundred and eight ships. The North River industry gradually declined as the demand for larger vessels than could float in the waters of the river, increased. The records of the ship building industry of the Merrimac river, and those of Medford and East Boston, show where the industry went. The industry on the Merrimac river began at a very early period, it having the advantage of floating its timber from the northern woods directly to the ship yards. Before the Revolution, what were called Jew’s Rafts, were built on the Merrimac for a London Jew named Levi, bolted and fastened with the equipment of a ship, and sent across the ocean. In an English newspaper of 1770 it was announced “that the Newbury,” Capt. Rose, had arrived in the Thames, a raft of timber in the form of a ship, in twenty-six days from Newbury, New England.
No record of vessels built before the Revolution exists, but after the Revolution, up to 1883, about five hundred vessels were built on the Merrimac, and registered in the Custom House at Newburyport. The career of John Currier, Jr., of that city, was a remarkable one. Between 1831 and 1883, he built ninety-two ships, four barks and one schooner, of which the largest measured nineteen hundred and forty-five tons, and the average tonnage of the whole number was nine hundred and fifty-six.
Unfortunately there is no available record of the East Boston and Medford ships, but though the career of Donald McKay was shorter than that of Mr. Currier, it was more remarkable. Knowing something of Mr. McKay’s origin and early life, I may be pardoned for making a special reference to him. He belonged to a family living in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, my mother’s native town, and was engaged there in his trade as ship carpenter. My uncle, Cornelius White, a merchant, and the American Consul in that town, knowing his ability, advised him to go to Boston, and provided him with letters to such persons as he thought would advance his interests. Through these letters to my uncle, Isaac P. Davis, and William Sturgis, he at once secured work in the Charlestown Navy Yard. An entering wedge was enough for a man of genius like him, and the clipper ships which came one after another from his hands, soon placed him at the head of his profession in the country. A few years ago I had an interview in New York with his youngest brother, Nathaniel White McKay, named after another of my uncles, with regard to a steamboat for the Boston and Plymouth line, and I think the steamer Shrewsbury, which ran one season, was chartered through him.
The greatest triumph of Mr. McKay was the ship Great Republic, built at East Boston, three hundred and twenty-five feet long, fifty-three feet wide, and thirty-seven feet deep, with a capacity of four thousand tons. She had four masts, the after one called the spanker mast of a single spar fore and aft rigged. Her main yard was one hundred and twenty feet long, and her suit of sails contained 15,653 yards of canvas. She was partially burned at her dock in New York, and razeed to three decks and three masts.
In 1803 the foreign trade of Plymouth was at the height of its prosperity. In that year it was carried on by seventeen ships, sixteen brigs and forty schooners, and the duties paid into the Plymouth Custom House amounted to nearly one hundred thousand dollars. The above list of vessels shows how much the trade was reduced during the first quarter of the last century. This was due to the embargo act passed Dec. 22, 1807, on the recommendation of President Jefferson, and later to the war of 1812. The embargo act prohibited the departure from United States ports of all but foreign armed vessels with public commissions, or foreign merchant ships in ballast, or with such cargo only as they might have on board when notified of the law. All American vessels engaged in the coasting trade were obliged to give bonds to land their cargo in the United States. This embargo was repealed by a law taking effect March 15, 1809, except so far as it related to France and Great Britain, and their dependencies, and in regard to them also after the next session of Congress. Of course such a law struck a severe blow at the trade on which Plymouth most depended for the support of its people, and at a town meeting held in August, 1808, a petition to the President for a suspension of the embargo, was adopted in which it was stated that “prohibitory laws that subject the citizens to grevious privations and sufferings, the policy of which is at least questionable, and the temptations to the violations of which from the nature of man are almost irresistible, will gradually undermine the morals of society, and introduce a laxity of principle and contempt of the laws more to be deplored than even the useless waste of property.”
The President replied that “he would with great willingness have executed the wish of the inhabitants of Plymouth had the Berlin and Milan decrees, and the British orders in Council, which endangered the safety of neutral ships been repealed, but while the edicts remain, Congress alone can suspend the embargo.”
During the fifteen months of the continuance of the embargo, many of the business men of Plymouth were seriously crippled, and to some who survived its effects, the war which followed it, brought absolute ruin. During the war the wharves were crowded with vessels with their topmasts housed, and canvas bags, which received the name of Madison night caps, covered the hounds of their rigging. It is not to be supposed that yankee shrewdness entirely failed to evade the watchfulness of government officers, whose duty it was to prevent departures from port. Some of the vessels were already loaded with cargoes of fish for the West Indies when the war embargo began, and those which succeeded in the darkness of some stormy night in quietly setting up their rigging, and bending their sails, and getting to sea, found ready markets for their fish at from fifteen to twenty dollars per quintal.
I will close this chapter with a list of the captains of all vessels excepting those engaged in the cod fishery, who have served within my recollection.
| Benjamin Nye Adams | Michael Holmes |
| George N. Adams | Peter Holmes |
| Thomas Appling | Samuel D. Holmes |
| Anthony Atwood | Truman C. Holmes |
| Edward B. Atwood | Wm. Holmes |
| Thomas Atwood | Winslow Holmes |
| Thomas Atwood | James Howard |
| Otis Baker | Robert Hutchinson |
| Wm. W. Baker | Daniel Jackson |
| Bradford Barnes | Daniel L. Jackson |
| James Barnes | Robert King |
| Zacheus Barnes | Thomas King |
| Amasa Bartlett | Clark Johnson |
| Andrew Bartlett | Wm. Langford |
| Cornelius Bartlett | Phineas Leach |
| Flavel Bartlett | Augustus H. Lucas |
| Frederick Bartlett | Wm. Morton |
| Isaac Bartlett | Wm. Mullins |
| James Bartlett | Thomas Nicolson |
| Josiah Bartlett | Wm. Nightingale |
| Thomas Bartlett | Grant C. Parsons |
| Truman Bartlett | John Parsons |
| Truman Bartlett, Jr. | Ephraim Paty |
| Wm. Bartlett | John Paty |
| Wm. Bartlett | Gideon Perkins |
| John Battles | Ebenezer Pierce |
| Edward W. Bradford | Ignatius Pierce |
| Lemuel Bradford | Ignatius Pierce, Jr. |
| Samuel Briggs | Gideon V. Pool |
| Chandler Burgess | Richard Pope |
| John Burgess | Calvin Ripley |
| Lewis Burgess | Luther Ripley |
| Wm. W. Burgess | Frederick Robbins |
| Winslow Burgess | Isaac M. Robbins |
| Horatio G. Cameron | Lewis Robbins |
| John Carlton | Nathan B. Robbins |
| Nath’l Carver | Samuel Robbins |
| Wm. Carver | Richard Rogers |
| Daniel D. Churchill | Samuel Rogers |
| Sylvanus Churchill | Wm. Rogers |
| James M. Clark | John Ross |
| Nath. Clark | Wm. Ross |
| Wm. Clark | John Russell |
| Wm. Clark | Merrick Rider |
| George Collingwood | Marston Sampson |
| Joseph Cooper | Amasa C. Sears |
| James Cornish | Benj. W. Sears |
| Thomas E. Cornish | Hiram B. Sears |
| Nathaniel Covington | Thomas B. Sears |
| Robert Cowen | George Simmons |
| Dexter H. Craig | George Simmons, Jr. |
| Ichabod Davie | Wm. D. Simmons |
| Solomon Davie | Nath’l Spooner |
| Wm. Davie | Nath’l Spooner |
| Francis B. Davis | Wm. Swift |
| Samuel Doten | John Sylvester |
| Samuel H. Doten | Wm. Sylvester |
| Simeon Dike | Gamaliel Thomas |
| John Faunce | Thomas Torrey |
| Elkanah Finney | Thomas Tribble |
| Henry Gibbs | Eleazer S. Turner |
| John Gooding | Lothrop Turner |
| Albert G. Goodwin | Wm. Wall |
| Ezra S. Goodwin | Charles H. Weston |
| Nath’l Goodwin | Francis H. Weston |
| Ezra Harlow | Harvey Weston |
| Wm. O. Harris | Gideon C. White |
| Nathan Haskins | Henry Whiting |
| Gideon Holbrook | Henry Whiting, Jr. |
| Albert Holmes | Winslow Whiting |
| John F. Holmes | George Wood |
| Kendall Holmes | George Weston |