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THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE
* * * * * *
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
* * * * * *
[Illustration: SOUTH STREET, NEW YORK; FROM MAIDEN LANE, 1834
From a print in the possession of the Lenox Library]
THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE
by
JOHN R. SPEARS
Author of "Story of the New England
Whalers," etc.
Illustrated
New York
The Macmillan Company
1910
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1910,
By The Macmillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1910.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. In the Beginning 1
II. Early Growth 22
III. Evolution of the Smuggler and the Pirate 40
IV. Before the War of the Revolution 59
V. Merchantmen in Battle Array 85
VI. Early Enterprise of the United States Merchant Marine 100
VII. French and Other Spoliations 119
VIII. The British Aggressions 132
IX. The Beginnings of Steam Navigation 150
X. Privateers, Pirates, and Slavers of the Nineteenth Century 177
XI. The Harvest of the Sea before the Civil War 197
XII. The Packet Lines and the Clippers 214
XIII. Deep-water Steamships--Part I 240
XIV. Deep-water Steamships--Part II 258
XV. The Critical Period 277
XVI. During a Half Century of Depression 298
ILLUSTRATIONS
South Street, New York; from Maiden Lane, 1834 _Frontispiece_
PAGE
An Early View of Charleston Harbor 38
Captain Kidd's House at Pearl and Hanover Streets, New
York, 1691 70
Custom House, Salem 100
Elias Hasket Derby 108
An Early Type of Clipper Ship: _Maria_, of New Bedford, built
1782 122
A Virginia Pilot-boat, with a Distant View of Cape Henry, at
the Entrance of the Chesapeake 148
Engines of the _Clermont_ 158
Clipper Ship _Syren_ 220
Captain Samuel Samuels 222
Clipper Ship _Witch of the Wave_ 232
Sailing of _Britannia_, February 3, 1844 254
Four-master _Dirigo_, First Steel Ship built in the United
States 298
Seven-masted Schooner _Thomas Lawson_ 312
A Modern Clipper Ship and a Modern Brig 318
Cunard S. S. _Lusitania_ 334
THE STORY OF THE MERCHANT MARINE
CHAPTER I
IN THE BEGINNING
The first vessel built within the limits of the United States for
commercial uses was a sea-going pinnace of thirty tons named the
_Virginia_. Her keel was laid at the mouth of the Kennebec River,
in Maine, on an unnamed day in the fall of 1607. The story of this
vessel, though brief, is of great interest because, in part, of certain
peculiarities of rig and hull which, in connection with a sea-going
vessel, now seem astounding, but chiefly because it portrays something of
the character of the men who, a little later, laid the foundations of the
American Republic.
The adventure which led to the building of the _Virginia_ grew out
of that wonderful harvest of the sea, the cod fishery on the banks of
Newfoundland. For more than a hundred years before she was built many
fishermen of Europe had been sailing to the Banks in early spring and
returning home each fall. Throughout the sixteenth century there were from
100 to 300 fishing vessels there every year, excepting only those years
when wars raged the hardest. In 1577, for instance, as the records show,
350 vessels sailed for the Banks, gathered their harvest, went ashore
in the bay where St. John, Newfoundland, now stands, cured the catch on
flakes built on the beach, and then sailed for home well satisfied.
Though dimly seen now, those fishermen, as they flocked across the sea in
the spring, form one of the most striking pictures in history. For no one
had ever charted the western limits of that waste of waters. The Banks lay
beyond a belt of the sea famous, or infamous, as the "roaring forties."
And yet in ships so rude that the hulls were sometimes bound with hawsers
to hold them together these men anchored where black fogs shut them in,
where sleet-laden gales were a part of their common life, where bergs
and fields of ice assaulted them, and where irresistible hurricanes from
the unknown wilds beyond came to overwhelm them. To these real dangers
they added others that, though born of the imagination, were still more
terrifying. They saw evil spirits in the storm clouds, and demons came
shrieking in the gales to carry their souls to eternal torment.
Even in pleasant weather life was hard. Masters ruled their crews by
torture. To punish an obstinate sailor they wrapped a stout cord around
his forehead and then set it taut until his eyes were popped from
the sockets. The food brought from home spoiled. In the best vessels
the crew slept in leaking, unwarmed forecastles, while in some of the
vessels--those that were but partly decked over--they slept unsheltered.
The brine of the sea covered them with sores called sea boils, and their
hands dripped blood as they hauled in their cod lines.
Consider further that these fishermen came from four nations that were
always at war with each other, either openly or in an underhanded way. And
yet the English, the French, the Spanish, and the Portuguese anchored side
by side on the Banks, built their flakes side by side on the Newfoundland
beach, and when a ship opened her seams as she wallowed in the gale, the
crews of the others within reach eagerly lowered their boats to rescue
the drowning.
In courage, fortitude, sea skill, and resourcefulness those Banks
fishermen had never been surpassed.
This is by no means to say that the fishermen never fought each other.
Good fair fighting was a part of the comfort of life as they saw it. But
the conditions that eliminated the weaklings naturally created in their
minds a standard of justice under which all who survived could work.
Let it be noted now that with all their hardships they were not without
compensating rewards. Good digestion waited on appetite. The life ashore
while curing the catch--a life where venison and wild fowl replaced their
salted meats, and the red people of the region came to visit them--was a
time for jollification. But more important than all else they had leisure
as well as hard work. For having a share in the catch instead of wages,
they obtained enough money, on reaching home, to enable them to pass the
winter beside the hearthstone, where they told tales of adventures that
stirred the blood. So the love of the sea was cultivated and the race was
perpetuated.
Into the midst of these fishermen, as they worked among their flakes upon
the Newfoundland beach, came Sir Humphrey Gilbert, on August 5, 1583,
who was the forerunner of the New England colonists. He told them he had
come to take possession of the country and establish an English colony
there. The fishermen saw that such a settlement would interfere with
their business, but no resistance was made while he erected a monument and
did such other things as the customs of the day required of those taking
possession of a new land. One may fancy they saw in Sir Humphrey a man
of their own sort. For he had crossed the sea in the ten-ton _Squirrel_,
and although she was, as they said, "too small a bark to pass through the
ocean sea at that season of the year," he sailed in her when bound for
home; he would not ask his men to take a risk which he would not share.
And when the storm that overwhelmed him came, he sat down at the stern of
the little bark with a book in his hand, and shouted in a cheerful voice
to the crew of the _Hind_, which was close alongside:--
"We are as near to heaven by sea as by land."
The sailors of Gilbert's expedition have been called "no better than
pirates" (Bancroft), but at worst they were able to cherish the abiding
faith of their master as expressed in those words. The seamen who sailed
(1530) with William Hawkins in that "tall and goodlie ship of his own,"
the _Paul_, to the coasts of Africa and Brazil, and with Drake in the
_Pelican_ in that famous voyage around the world, and with Raleigh's
expedition to the coast of North Carolina, were recruited from among these
fishermen, to whom adventure was as the breath of life. And the men who
did the actual work of building the _Virginia_ were of the same class.
As the reader remembers, the first charter of Virginia as a colony
provided for two colony-planting companies. One, the London Company,
settled its colonists in what is now the State of Virginia, while the
other, the West-of-England or Plymouth Company, was to people the northern
coast. In May, 1607, the Plymouth Company sent two vessels to establish a
fishing colony on what is now the coast of Maine. One of the vessels was
a "fly-boat" called the _Gift of God_. A fly-boat was a flat-bottomed,
shoal-draft vessel handy for exploring inland waters. The other was "a
good ship" named the _Mary and John_. These ships shaped their course to
an island off the coast then well known to the fishermen, and now called
Monhegan, "a round high Ile," where they arrived on August 9. On the 18th
they located their settlement on a peninsula, on the west side of the
mouth of the Kennebec, which was "almost an island." There they erected
dwellings, a storehouse, and a church, with a fort enclosing all. Then
"the carpenters framed a pretty pinnace of about 30 tons, which they
called the _Virginia_, the chief shipwright being one Digby of London."
A plan of the fort as "taken by John Hunt, the VIII day of October in the
yeere of our Lorde 1607," is reproduced in Brown's _Genesis of the United
States_. This chart is important because it shows under the guns of the
fort a small vessel which was, no doubt, the "pretty pinnace" _Virginia_.
While the dimensions of the _Virginia_ were not recorded, we can get a
fair idea of her size from Charnock's _History of Marine Architecture_
(II, 431), where a smack named the _Escape Royal_, in 1660, was of 34 tons
burden and 30 feet 6 inches long by 14 feet 3 inches wide, and 7 feet 9
inches deep. The 30-ton _Virginia_ was not far from these dimensions. She
carried a spritsail and a jib. As the sail spread was insufficient for
driving the vessel in light airs and confined waters, oars were provided.
The hull was partly decked, enough to protect the cargo.
The crew had to be content with an awning when the wind was light. When
the wind was heavy, they had to face the gale, as was the custom on the
Banks. And yet the _Virginia_ was built by men who intended to use her
not only in the fishery and the coasting trade with the Indians, but for
oversea trade as well. It is a matter of record, too, that she made at
least one voyage from England to the Chesapeake, and it is believed that
some of the Kennebec colonists sailed in her upon that voyage.
Curiously enough, however, the Kennebec colony failed somewhat
ingloriously. The winter was long and severe. A fire destroyed the
storehouse and the provisions that had been brought from England. The
unexplored wilderness oppressed them. In fact, while they would face a
hurricane at sea in an open boat, the terrors of the wilderness, though
chiefly of their own imagining, drove them away, and they were hard
pressed at home to find excuses for what they had done.
In the meantime a settlement was made at Jamestown, Virginia. Of the 105
colonists at Jamestown, 48 were described as gentlemen, 12 as laborers,
4 as carpenters, and the others as servants and soldiers. The servants
were white slaves, who were not, however, held for life. The ships with
this oddly assorted colony arrived in the Chesapeake on April 20, 1607.
Of the things done at Jamestown two only need be considered here. They
began creating a merchant marine in 1611 by building a shallop of twelve
or thirteen tons' burden. A Spaniard who visited the colony at that
time noted that the iron used in the boat had been taken from a wreck at
Bermuda--a fact that shows the colonists had not had enough interest in
ship-building to bring iron for that purpose from home.
The truth is the Virginia colonists never had much interest in shipping,
save only as they built many vessels of small size for use in local
transportation on their inland waters. The reason for this condition of
affairs is pointed out in Bruce's _Economic History of Virginia_. The
money crop was, as it is now, in many parts of the State, tobacco. Tobacco
had been introduced into England in 1586. The settlers found the Indians
cultivating it on the James River, but they gave little heed to it until
1612, when John Rolfe, the first American "squaw man," began producing
it partly for his own use and partly because he was trying to find some
product that could be exported to England with profit. Thus Rolfe's garden
was the first American agricultural experiment station. Under cultivation
the leaf produced was of better quality than that obtained from the
Indians, and when a trial shipment was sent to England the success of the
venture was great. Thereupon the colonists became so eager to produce it
that the authorities felt obliged to prohibit the crop unless at least
two acres of grain were grown at the same time by each planter.
The demand for Virginia tobacco increased until the merchants sent their
agents to the colony to buy and pay for the crop long before it was
harvested; they even sent ships to lie there for months before the harvest
in order to have first chance to secure it. Why should the Virginians
build or buy ships under such circumstances?
Now consider some of the conditions surrounding the first New England
settlers. Many fishermen had visited the New England coast before a
settlement was made there. These adventurers found full fares and they
looked upon the coast at a season when it was not "stern."
It was to this coast that the Pilgrims came.
Of the well-known story of the Pilgrims it seems necessary to recall
here, first of all, the fact that they were Englishmen who had lived for
several years among the Dutch, a people who described themselves upon
their coinage as a nation whose "way is on the sea." More than a thousand
ships were built every year in Holland where the Pilgrims were sojourning,
and everybody lived in a seafaring atmosphere. Though a distinct people,
the Pilgrims necessarily absorbed, as one may say, something of the Dutch
aptitude for trade and sea life. Thus, when ready to migrate to America,
they were able to secure the capital they needed for the venture from
merchants who were acquainted with the success that had attended the
fishing voyages to the coast.
It is worth noting, too, that Captain Thomas Jones, of the _Mayflower_,
had fished in Greenland waters, and that Mate Robert Coppin was carried
as the pilot of the ship because he had been on the parts of the coast to
which the expedition was bound. The Pilgrims intended to settle somewhere
near the Hudson River, but on November 11, 1620, the _Mayflower_ was
found at anchor under Cape Cod. While lying there a number of the company
came to think that a settlement there would serve their purpose well, and
the reasons given in support of this proposition are of interest because
they show what business ideas animated these Pilgrims. The location, they
said, "afforded a good harbor for boats." It was "a place of profitable
fishing." "The master and his mate and others experienced in fishing"
preferred it to the Greenland fishery where whaling made large profits.
Moreover, the situation was "healthy, secure and defensible." While the
desire for "freedom to worship God" was perhaps uppermost in their talk,
as it was in their writings, the Pilgrims were "intensely practical in
applying their theories of Providence and Divine control to the immediate
business in hand," as Weeden says, in his _Economic History of New
England_.
After settling at Plymouth, as the reader remembers, life was hard during
the first years. But the poetic rhapsodies about the "stern and rock-bound
coast" do not convey an accurate idea of the agricultural possibilities
of the region. Some of the farm lands of eastern Massachusetts are among
the most prolific and profitable in the nation. The average yield of
Indian corn per acre in Massachusetts in 1907 (see Year Book, Department
of Agriculture) was exceeded only by that of Maine (another part of the
"stern and rock-bound coast") and that of the irrigated lands of Arizona.
Arizona averaged 37.5 bushels per acre, Maine 37, and Massachusetts 36.
Consider, too, that it was in April, "while the birds sang in the woods
most pleasantly," that Squanto and Hobomoc, red neighbors, taught these
Englishmen how to fertilize the fields with fish, and to plant corn in
fields that the Indians had cleared. And corn, produced on these fields,
formed the first cargo of the first American sea-trader of which we have
a definite record.
Through various causes not necessary to enumerate the Pilgrims got on
so poorly that it was not until 1624 that they began ship-building. The
prosperity that came to them in that year was due to success in fishing.
They took enough cod to freight a ship for England. The profit on the cod
was so much beyond the immediate need of the people that they launched
"two very good and strong shallops (which after did them greate service)."
As it happened, in the year following the building of these shallops
the Pilgrims produced such an abundant crop of corn that they had some
to sell. Accordingly they loaded a shallop with it, and sent it, under
Winslow, to the Kennebec, where he traded it for 700 pounds of beaver
skins.
A year later a more important, or at any rate a more profitable, voyage
was made. Some English merchants who had maintained a trading-post on
Monhegan Island sent word down the beach that they were going to abandon
it and would sell the remainder of their goods at a bargain. Although
in the years that had passed the Pilgrims had, at times, come so near to
starvation that men had been seen to stagger in the street because they
were faint with hunger, they had persisted. They had caught and sold fish.
They had produced forest products and corn for sale. They had traded with
the Indians for furs. They had traded with the fishermen who came over
from England, and they had made a profit on every deal--they had not lived
in Holland for nothing. When a bargain in trade goods on Monhegan Island
was offered, they had capital to make a purchase, and going there with
a shallop they secured stuff worth £400. Then, on finding at the mouth
of the Kennebec some other goods that had been taken from a French ship
wrecked on that coast, they bought an additional £100 worth, which was all
their boat would hold, as one may suppose. For as soon as they reached
Plymouth Bay they cut their shallop in two and lengthened her, so that
when another opportunity was offered to buy goods at a bargain she would
have a larger capacity.
Recall, now, a number of events occurring in America before, and at about
the time of, the first voyages of the Pilgrim shallops. Henry Hudson had
sailed in the _Half Moon_ up the river that bears his name (September,
1609), and the Dutch, after building a few fur-buying posts in that
country, had begun a permanent settlement on the lower end of Manhattan
Island (1623). Adrien Block, a Dutch explorer, had built a "yacht" on
Manhattan Island (during the winter of 1614-1615), that was used later in
the coasting trade. At New Amsterdam the Dutch built many small boats for
gathering furs on the Hudson, and they repaired ships coming to the port
when there was need. But as late as October 10, 1658, J. Aldrichs wrote
a letter from that town saying, in connection with a "galliot" that was
needed for local use (N. Y. C. docs. II, 51):--
"We are not yet in condition to build such a craft here."
At a still earlier date the French had made a permanent settlement in
Canada. In the long story of the French in America it is of interest to
note first that the Bretons and Basques had been among the pioneers on
the Newfoundland fishing banks. It is not difficult to believe that the
Basques were there before Cabot's time.
Of the French explorers we need to recall but one, Samuel de Champlain,
"young, ardent, yet ripe in experience, a skilled seaman and a practiced
soldier," who had been leading a strenuous life in the West Indies. In
1603 he made a voyage to the St. Lawrence River. In 1604 he helped to make
a settlement on the St. Croix River, where he remained until the next
year. When a badly needed relief ship came in 1605, he explored the New
England coast down around Cape Cod.
In 1608 Champlain built a trading-post where Quebec now stands, and in
1616 there were two real home-builders there, a farmer named Louis Hebert
and Champlain himself. In 1626 the population numbered 105, all told. It
is not unlikely that the French ship, from which the Pilgrims obtained
enough cheap goods to fill their shallop, in their second voyage to the
Maine coast, had been wrecked while on a voyage to Quebec. The seafaring
merchants of New England inevitably took much interest in the development
of this colony from a rival nation.
Still more interesting, though in a different way, were the settlements
of the West Indies. The Spaniards had introduced the sugar-cane and
negro slavery, an economic combination of the greatest importance to
the commerce of the world; for while the Spaniards maintained, as far as
possible, a monopoly of their own trade, both slavery and sugar-planting
spread all over the islands. Moreover, Spanish exclusiveness was to lead
to adventures on the part of some New Englanders.
In 1605 the crew of an English ship took possession of Barbados. On
February 17, 1625, an English ship "landed forty English and seven or
eight negroes" on the island, and thus began building a colony that was of
the utmost importance to New England traders in later years. In 1676 the
export of sugar "was capable of employing 400 sail of vessels, averaging
150 tons."
In the meantime (1619), a Dutch privateer had come to Jamestown, Virginia,
where "twenty Africans were disembarked," and sold to planters who were
to use negro slaves, for many years thereafter, with profit, in the
production of tobacco. And slaves, sugar, and tobacco were among the first
articles of merchandise to bring profit to the New England ship-owners.
Most interesting of all, however, were the centres of population
established upon the New England coast. The English fishermen who came to
the coast after the arrival of the Pilgrims, occasionally landed men to
remain through the winter in order to trade for furs and procure a supply
of provisions--venison, wild fowl, etc.--for the use of the crews of the
ships that were to return in the spring.
Of this character was a settlement made at Cape Ann in 1623. The Rev. John
White, of Dorchester, England, having become interested in the fishermen,
persuaded some merchants to send out people to form a colony. The whole
business was badly managed; in 1626 the merchants abandoned the colony,
and most of the people returned to England. But one Roger Conant and "a
few of the most honest _and industrious_ resolved to stay." They removed,
however, to a point on the coast known as Naumkeag, where they made a
settlement which they named Salem.
In the meantime White had been working faithfully in England to promote
the interests of these men, and in 1628 sixty or seventy emigrants were
sent over to join them. In 1629 White and other English Puritans procured
a charter for "a colony under the title of The Governor and Company of
Massachusetts Bay." The settlers who came to America and lived under this
charter were the "Puritans" of American history, a fact that seems worth
especial mention because a modern mark of intelligence in New England is
found in the ability to distinguish between the "Pilgrims" who formed the
colony on Plymouth Bay, or the "Old Colony," and the "Puritans" who made
the settlements at the head of Massachusetts Bay.
The colonists who came over in 1628 explored the head of the bay, and some
of them located where Charlestown now stands. With its dancing waters,
its green islands, and its views of the distant blue hills from which the
Indians had already called it Massachusetts, the region was enchanting,
and the Puritan explorers described it in such glowing colors that 200
more settlers were brought over the next year. The Puritans were the
original "boomers" of America.
Among the 200 who arrived in 1629 there were wheelwrights, carpenters, and
ship-builders. The ship-builders went up the Mystic River to the place
where Medford now stands, and established a shipyard. A considerable
number of the emigrants of 1630 joined them. This was the first American
shipyard, properly so called.
It is also to be noted that some of these emigrants, under the lead of
John Winthrop, located on the peninsula opposite Charlestown, which was
distinguished by a three-pointed hill and a "Backbay," where they built
a town named Boston.
The French, having a water-road to the far-away regions of the Great
Lakes, became wholly absorbed in the fur trade. The Dutch on the Hudson,
though less favorably situated, had a western outlet through the Iroquois
Indian country, and did a large business in furs. The English on Barbados,
having a favorable climate, a fertile soil, and slaves, were preparing
to supply all Englishmen with sugar, while the English on the Chesapeake,
having facilities similar to those at Barbados, were already astonishing
the commercial world with their product of tobacco.
The New Englanders had no considerable back country from which they could
draw furs; they had no water route to the interior, and at that time they
were unable to produce any crop from the soil for which a good market
could be found in Europe. But what they lacked in these respects they made
up by hard work in the development of such resources as their country
afforded. The histories of New England are full of tales of privation
and suffering endured during the first years of their existence, and
the stories are all true. But as soon as those settlers had learned how
to supplement their prayers for daily bread by well-directed efforts to
secure it, hunger fled. They then saw that the waters laving their feet
were inviting them to go afloat to seek fortune in the uttermost parts of
the earth, and they accepted the invitation.
On July 4, 1631 (the fact that it was on July 4 has attracted the
attention of more than one New Englander as a "beautiful coincidence"),
the ship-builders on the Mystic launched their first sea-going vessel.
"The bark, being of thirty tons," was named the _Blessing of the Bay_.
Her owner, Governor John Winthrop, recorded his reason for building her:--
"The general fear of want of foreign commodities, now that our money was
gone, set us on work to provide shipping of our own."
That statement was characteristic of the people as well as of Winthrop.
A "want"--any want--"set them on work" to provide for themselves.
The _Blessing of the Bay_ was not a "bark" according to modern
nomenclature. She was a vessel of one mast, and much like the vessel built
by the less persistent people in the earlier settlement at the mouth of
the Kennebec. On August 31 she "went on a voyage to eastward," to trade
with the Indians, beyond a doubt, and to pick up such business as might
be offered by the few settlers and the fishermen to be found along shore.
The fishing and trading station which "fishmongers in London" had built
on the Piscataqua, at which no planting was done, was probably the most
important point visited.
Another incident of this year, 1631, is of almost as much interest as
the launch of the _Blessing of the Bay_. One John Winter established a
shipyard on Richmond Island, off Cape Elizabeth (near the site of the
modern Portland), Maine. Some time in December Winter began to build there
a ship for merchants in Plymouth, England. As already noted, other ships
had been built in America by Europeans for European use, but Winter's work
may be called the beginning of the American business of building ships
for export.
Three facts about Winter's shipyard may be correlated. In 1638 sixty men
were at work in it. During the year a 300-ton ship brought a cargo of
wines and liquors to the island. "It was a sporadic" settlement, and it
"dwindled away."
Winthrop's _Blessing of the Bay_ appears to have been the first New
England vessel to open trade with the Dutch on Manhattan Island. She went
there in 1633, perhaps sooner. In 1627 the Dutch had invited "friendly
commercial relations" with the Pilgrims by sending the governor of the
colony "a rundlet of sugar and two Holland Cheeses," with a letter in
which they offered to "accommodate"--to give credit. But the Pilgrims
were shy because the Dutch had been trading with the Connecticut Indians,
a region claimed by the English; the Dutch had come even to the head of
Buzzard's Bay, where the Pilgrims were maintaining a post for the fur
trade. However, in September, 1627, the Dutch sent Isaac de Rasieres with
a small trial cargo in the "barque Nassau" to see what he could do, and
he proved a worthy forerunner of the great race of American commercial
travellers. For he carried soldiers and trumpeters along, not to fight,
but to do honor to the occasion by means of salutes and blaring music; and
he chose these men from among the residents of New Amsterdam who had known
some of the Pilgrims in Holland. Indeed, some of them were related to
the Pilgrims. Naturally, after "the joyful meeting of kindred as well as
friends," and after much fine talk and the display of goods,--especially
of "wampum,"--De Rasieres made what he called "the beginning of a
profitable trade."
Wampum (bits of sea-shell) was the coin of the red men. The chief mint of
the continent was on Long Island. All red men, at that time, were much
more anxious to get wampum than the silver coin of the white man. The
Pilgrims were glad to buy the wampum because the Indians of New England
had but little, and were eager to get it.
It was no doubt to secure a supply of wampum and such West India products
as sugar and salt, in which the Dutch traded, that Winthrop sent his
_Blessing of the Bay_ to Manhattan Island.
Certain details of the earlier voyages should now prove interesting. For
instance, Winthrop's vessel was at first engaged in trading on her owner's
account. She was not a freighter, looking for cargo to carry at a price
per ton, but a floating store, so to say, carrying merchandise for sale
or exchange. The distinction between the freighter and the ship trading
on owners' account is to be kept in mind.
After the New Englanders had spread to Connecticut there is a record of
the employment of the _Blessing of the Bay_ as a freighter. She carried
goods from Massachusetts Bay to Connecticut at 30_s._ per ton.
In 1629 the freight rate between England and Massachusetts Bay was £3 per
ton. Passengers were carried at £5 each, and horses at £10 each. The goods
rate increased after a time.
That the oversea rates were remunerative is manifest from the increase in
the number of ships finding employment in the trade. In 1635 the Secretary
to the Admiralty learned that forty ships were regularly employed in the
trade, of which "six sail of ships, at least" belonged to the Americans.
The profits in the trade on owners' account were also recorded. In 1636
Thomas Mayhew and John Winthrop, Jr., as partners, sent a vessel to the
Bermudas, then called the Summer Islands, where she sold corn and pork
and bought oranges, lemons, and potatoes. Perhaps that was the first
importation of Bermuda potatoes. The profit on the venture was "twenty od
pounds."
The _Richmond_, a 30-ton vessel, built by Winter at Richmond Island,
Maine, carried 6000 pipe-staves from the island to England, where they
were sold at a profit of a little over £25 per thousand.
An idea of the profits on some of the voyages "eastward" to trade with
the Indians can be had from the records of the Pilgrims, who, with their
shallops, became experts in that line. Between 1631 and 1636, inclusive,
the Pilgrims bought and shipped 12,150 pounds of beaver skins and 1156
of otter. "Ye parcells of beaver came to little less than 10,000 li.
[pounds]. And ye otter skins would pay all ye charges," as Governor
Bradford wrote. As otter skins sold for from 14 to 15_s._ a pound, "ye
charges" in a business that gave a profit of "little less than £10,000"
did not exceed £867. And this profit was made, although the Pilgrims had
to buy some of their trade goods on credit and pay 40 per cent interest
per annum on the sum thus borrowed.
It was at this period of the history of the American merchant marine that
Captain Thomas Wiggin, an observing shipmaster from Bristol, England,
wrote a letter about the New Englanders, in which he said:--
"The English, numbering about two thousand, _and generally most
industrious_, have done more in three years than others in seven times
that space, and at a tenth of the expense."