Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

Besides the above there were two sloops, the Comet, Capt. Ephraim Paty, and the Coral, Capt. John Battles, Jr., which were quasi packets, running on no special lines, but sailing for any near port to or from which they could find freight. Before railroads were built from Boston to the sea ports of Massachusetts, all kinds of freight to and from those ports were carried necessarily by water. Thus packets were running from Boston to every town of importance on the New England coast. Those to the nearer places were sloops as to Salem, Newburyport, Portsmouth, Barnstable, Plymouth and Provincetown; those to places a little more distant topsail schooners; those to Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, Savannah and Charleston, brigs, and those to Mobile and New Orleans, ships. Plymouth had a very considerable amount of freight to distribute, cotton cloth, nails, anchors, hollow ware, cordage, fish and imported iron, sugar and molasses. When these were sent in small amounts they were sent to Boston by the regular packets, and transhipped to the packets in Boston running on other lines. But if any considerable amount of freight, a gang of rigging for instance for Nantucket, a dozen or two anchors for New Bedford, or twenty hogsheads of molasses for Hartford, or some other port, were wanting transportation, then the Comet and Coral found their opportunity, trusting to chance for more or less of a return cargo for Plymouth or Boston. If they were needed to go to Maine ports they were reasonably sure of a lumber freight home. Indeed, as I remember, these vessels did practically the entire lumber business of the town. Capt. Paty died in California July 24, 1849, and Capt. Battles died in Plymouth March 1, 1872.

There were other packets besides those of Plymouth seen in our waters. There was the Juventa, a Kingston packet, and there were the Duxbury packets Union and Glide, commanded by Capt. Martin Winsor, the Spy, the Jack Downing, Capt. Holmes, the Traveller, Capt. John Alden, and the Reform, so that with the fifteen running to and from the three towns there was rarely a day in suitable weather when more than one did not pass the old square pier. In addition to all the above, the Barnstable packet sloop Henry Clay not only passed within sight, but frequently sought an anchorage in the Cow Yard, or came to the wharves. The distance by stage of Barnstable from Boston induced a large passenger traffic, and she was fitted with a handsome cabin extending to the main hatch, lighted by skylights, and containing ample and luxurious accommodations.

There was one other vessel to whose memory I wish to pay a tribute on account of the pleasant fishing parties on board of her, in which I have participated. Her name was the Rainbow, but whence she came, what her regular business was, and whither she went, I never knew. She was a queer craft, sailing well on the starboard tack, but as dull as a log on the port tack. She would loaf along up Saquish channel with the wind southwest, but after rounding the pier she would come up Beach channel like a race horse. She reminded me of the story of a traveller, who said he saw in South America a race of goats made with two long legs on one side and two short ones on the other, so that they could walk easily round the mountain side. A sailor in the group cried out: “Belay there, Captain, how did them air goats sail on t’other tack?”

CHAPTER VIII.

It is singular that the spirit of invention and enterprise, which New England has displayed in the advance of civilization, should have been apparently indifferent in the development of steam navigation. It is true that her activities have been fully exerted in other directions, and that, as necessity is the mother of invention, the requirements of her manufacturing industries have demanded to the fullest extent the display of her genius. The Hudson River and New York bay seem to have been the theatre in which those early experiments were made, which laid the foundation in this country of successful navigation by steam. In these experiments, as early as 1803, Robert Fulton, assisted by Chancellor R. Livingston, seems to have led the way. In 1804 Col. John Stevens made a trial of a propelling power, consisting of a small engine and a screw. He later attached two screws to the engine, and the identical machine which he used is now owned by the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. It was placed on a new hull in 1844, and made on the Hudson eight miles an hour. In 1806 Robert Fulton built a sidewheel boat one hundred and thirty feet long, propelled by steam, with paddles 15 feet in diameter, and floats with two feet dip, and went to Albany at the rate of five miles an hour. This boat was called the Clermont, the name of the seat on the Hudson of Chancellor Livingston, and in 1808 made regular trips from New York to Albany.

While these operations were going on, causing a complete revolution in the commercial life of the country, New England never saw the smoke of a steamboat. The first boat to enter Massachusetts Bay was the Massachusetts, built in Philadelphia, and designed by its owners, Joseph and John H. Andrews, Wm. Fettyplace, Stephen White, Andrew Watkins and Andrew Bell, to run between Boston and Salem. After a few unsuccessful trips she was sent to Charleston, S. C., and was lost on the passage.

The next steamboat to enter the waters of Massachusetts was the Eagle, which was built in New York and had been for a time in Chesapeake Bay, under command of Capt. Moses Rogers, who was later commander of the steamboat Savannah, the first steam vessel to cross the Atlantic. She came to Plymouth in 1818, commanded by Lemuel Clark. Capt. Clark was either a Plymouth man, or the son of a Plymouth man, and had married in 1817 Lydia Bartlett, daughter of the late Ezra Finney, who lived, as many of my readers will remember, on the westerly corner of Summer and Spring streets. He had a son, William, one of my school and playmates, the father of William Clark, now living on Cushman street, who at one time was the master of the bark Evangeline of Boston. It is probable that Capt. Lemuel Clark was induced by his connection with Plymouth to bring his vessel here, where she must have been an object of great interest to the people of Plymouth and the adjoining towns. She remained here a number of days, having her berth at Carver’s wharf and taking daily excursion parties into the bay. She was eight hours on her passage from Boston, making about five and one-half statute miles per hour. On her return to Boston she ran for a time on the Hingham line, but I have no record of her later history. A picture of her in oil hangs on the walls of Pilgrim Hall, taken from a contemporaneous drawing, and presented, through the good offices of Mr. George P. Cushing, the manager of the Nantasket Steamboat Company, by the artist to the Pilgrim Society, and occupies a frame given by the grandchildren of Capt. Lemuel Clark.

There is no record of the visit of any other steamboat to Plymouth until the advent of the General Lafayette, in 1828. She was built in New York in 1824, and bought in Boston by James Bartlett, Jr., James Spooner and Jacob Covington, with the view of establishing a steamboat line between Plymouth and Boston. According to her enrolment in the Plymouth Custom House, issued September 16, 1828, her name was General Lafayette, with one deck, two masts, 82 feet, 7 inches long, 6 feet, 1 inch deep, and measured 92 54-95 tons. For her better accommodation the owners of the boat bought Jackson’s wharf at the foot of North street, and contracted with Jacob and Abner S. Taylor to build at the end of the wharf an extension nine hundred feet long and twenty-eight feet wide with a T at the end projecting northwesterly one hundred feet square. The extension built of piles and timber and plank was not completed until the autumn of 1828. In the meantime the Lafayette ran through the summer of that year from Hedge’s wharf, leaving Plymouth at hours when the tide served, and leaving Boston at hours which on her arrival would enable her to reach her dock. Of course her fuel was wood, and she made the passage in five hours, making about eight and one-half statute miles per hour. The point reached by the wharf was that point on what was called the Town Guzzle, where at mean low tide there were four or five feet of water. With that depth of water a small steamboat like the General Lafayette could reach the extreme end of the wharf at all times of tide. The Town Guzzle was a circuitous one. It left Broad channel at its extreme southwesterly end, and running southwesterly five or six hundred feet, it made an easy curve; thence running northwesterly about eight hundred feet, and thence with another easy curve running southwesterly about four hundred feet to a point reached by the wharf. It was perhaps forty feet wide, and with sufficient water beyond that width for the dip of paddle wheels, at any time except within an hour of low water, there was rarely any detention. Steamboats of moderate length found little difficulty in rounding the curves, but those of greater length found it anything but easy work. I remember once the steamboat Connecticut left the wharf at near low tide, with a spring line from her bow to the wharf to twitch her round the curve, and as the line tautened, it snapped, the hither end coming back like a whip lash and tripping up, without serious injury, about a dozen persons standing near the cap log. I learned the lesson then and there to always stand at a distance from a spring line.

In the angle where the T joined the main wharf, there was a flight of substantial steps, where boats at all times could land, drawing not over two feet of water. This was a great convenience, enabling Sam Burgess, with his fish for the market, lobster boats from the Gurnet, and the Island and Saquish boats, to land without regard to the stage of the tide. Many a householder with his mouth made up for a fish dinner has sat by the hour together at the head of those steps, waiting for Sam. In those days, too, the only purveyor of lobsters was Joseph Burgess, the keeper of the light, and as regular as the day he would appear with his lobsters and wearing his red thrum cap, would wheel his barrow full about the town. There was no talk then of short lobsters, nor of extravagant prices, for nine pence, or twelve and a half cents in the currency of the time, would buy a three or four pound lobster. The scarcity and small size of this delicious shell fish in our day have not been satisfactorily explained. I am inclined to think that the cause is not to be found in the excessive amount of their catch, but in the appearance on our shores, and the increasing numbers, of the tautog, which not only exhausts the food, which the lobster feeds upon, but also feeds on the lobster itself. In my early boyhood, if I am not mistaken, the tautog was an unknown fish north of Cape Cod. The sandy shores of Barnstable county formed an effectual barrier to its northern migration. I think that about 1830 Capt. Josiah Sturgis, commander of the Revenue Cutter Hamilton, brought some live tautog round the Cape and dropped them in Plymouth Bay. A very few years afterwards the first tautog was caught off Manomet, and one or two years later several were caught off the Gurnet, while now they are found all along the shores of Massachusetts and Maine. To this new fish, in my judgment, may fairly be attributed the gradual disappearance of a food fish which was once abundant and cheap.

Returning now to the Lafayette, it can only be said that her career was a short one. Under the command of Capt. Truman C. Holmes, with Seth Morton as steward, she ran through the seasons of 1828 and 1829, the latter year making her berth at Long wharf, or steamboat wharf, as for many years it was called, and then was laid up in Tribble’s Dock, or building yard, as it was called, north of the wharf to die. Her upperworks were removed, and her engine taken out, and my only recollection of the vessel is of a dismantled hulk with her planking stripped off, and her timbers fastened to the keel, standing otherwise unsupported, just visible at high tide above the surface of the water. The only incident of her service, which I remember, was an attempt with a party of excursionists, of which my mother was one, to go to Boston and return the same day. Night came without her return, and about midnight my mother reached home, having ridden from Scituate, where the steamboat had put in out of wood. Capt. Holmes, her commander, took command in 1830 of the new packet sloop Atalanta, and served with her several years until she was altered to a schooner, and placed under command first of Sylvanus Churchill, and then of Samuel H. Doten. He died March 14, 1880, eighty-five years of age.