MARBLEHEAD.
"_Launcelot._ Turn up on your right hand at the next turning,
but at the next turning of all on your left; marry, at the very
next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the
Jew's house."--_Merchant of Venice._
Marblehead is a backbone of granite, a vertebra of syenite and porphyry
thrust out into Massachusetts Bay in the direction of Cape Ann, and
hedged about with rocky islets. It is somewhat sheltered from the weight
of north-east storms by the sweep of the cape, which launches itself
right out to sea, and gallantly receives the first bufferings of the
Atlantic. The promontory of Marblehead may once have been a prolongation
of Cape Ann, the whole coast hereabouts looking as if the ocean had
licked out the softer parts, leaving nothing that was digestible behind.
This rock, on which a settlement was begun two hundred and forty odd
years ago, performs its part by making Salem Harbor on one hand, and
another for its own shipping on the east, where an appendage known as
Marblehead Neck[150] is joined to it by a ligature of sand and shingle.
The port is open to the north-east, and vessels are sometimes blown from
their anchorage upon the sand-banks at the head of the harbor, though
the water is generally deep and the shores bold. At the entrance a
light-house is built on the extreme point of the Neck; and on a tongue
of land of the opposite shore is Fort Sewall--a beckoning finger and a
clenched fist.
[Illustration: GREAT HEAD.]
The harbor, as the "Gazetteer" would say, has a general direction from
north-east to south-west. It is a mile and a half long by half a mile
wide, with generally good holding ground, though in places the bottom is
rocky. La Touche Treville lost the _Hermione's_ anchor here in 1780,
when he brought over M. De Lafayette, sent by the king to announce the
speedy arrival of Rochambeau's army.[151] Probably the good news was
first proclaimed in the narrow streets of Marblehead, though it has
hitherto escaped a spirited lyric from some disciple of Mr. Browning.
The geologist will find Marblehead and the adjacent islands an
interesting ground, with some tolerably hard nuts for his hammer. The
westerly shore of the harbor is indented with little coves niched in the
rock, and having each a number, though the Marbleheaders have other
names for them. One or two wharves are fitted in these coves, but I did
not see a vessel unlading or a bale of merchandise there. The flow of
the tide as it sucked around the wooden piles was the only evidence of
life about them.
[Illustration: "THE CHURN."]
The varying formations of these shores go very far to redeem the haggard
landscape. Even the coves differ in the materials with which their walls
are built, feldspar, porphyry, and jasper variegating their rugged
features with pleasing effect. The floor of one of these coves is
littered with fractured rock of a reddish brown, from which it is
locally known as Red Stone Cove. Captain Smith says this coast resembled
Devonshire with its "tinctured veines of divers colors." The Rev. Mr.
Higginson, of Salem, in 1629, speaks of the stone found here as "marble
stone, that we have great rocks of it, and a harbor hard by. Our
plantation is from thence called Marble Harbor." His marble was perhaps
the porphyritic rock which it resembles when wetted by sea moisture.
The beach is the mall of Marblehead. It opens upon Nahant Bay, and is
much exposed to the force of south-east gales. Over this beach a
causeway is built, which from time to time has required extensive
repairs. Under the province, and as late even as 1812, the favorite
method of raising moneys for such purposes was by lottery, duly
authorized. In this way a work of public necessity was relegated to the
public cupidity.
A run over the Neck revealed many points of interest. There are rock
cavities of glassy smoothness, worn by the action of pebbles, chasms
that receive the coming waveband derisively toss it high in air; and
there are precipitous cliffs which the old stone-cutter and lapidary can
never blunt, though he may fret and fume forever at their base. Looking
off to sea, the eye is everywhere intercepted by islands or sunken
ledges belted with surf. They have such names as Satan, Roaring Bull,
Great and Little Misery, Great and Little Haste, Cut-throat Ledge, the
Brimbles, Cat Island, and the like. Each would have a story, if it were
challenged, how it came by its name. The number of these islands is
something surprising. In fact they appear like a system, connecting the
craggy promontory of Marblehead with the cape side. At some time the sea
must have burst through this rocky barrier, carrying all before its
resistless onset. The channels are intricate among these islands, and
must be hit with the nicest precision, or a strong vessel would go to
pieces at the first blow on the sharp rocks.
The Neck is the peculiar domain of a transient population of care-worn
fugitives from the city. The red-roofed cottages were picturesque
objects among the rocks, but bore marks of the disorder in which the
winter had left them. They seemed shivering up there on the ledges,
though it was the seventh day of May, for there had been a light fall of
snow, followed by a searching north-west wind. Not even a curl of smoke
issued from the chimneys to take off the prevailing chilliness. Down at
the harbor side there was an old farmstead with some noble trees I liked
better. On the beach I had trod in Hawthorne's "Foot-prints." I might
here rekindle Longfellow's "Fire of Drift-wood:"
"We sat within the farm-house old,
Whose windows, looking o'er the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold,
An easy entrance night and day.
"Not far away we saw the port,
The strange old-fashioned silent town,
The light-house, the dismantled fort,
The wooden houses quaint and brown."
The light-keeper, whom I found at home, indulged me in a few moments'
chat. He could not account, he said, for the extraordinary predilection
of the Light-house Board for whitewash. Dwelling, covered way, and tower
were each and all besmeared; and the keeper seemed not overconfident
that he might not soon receive an order to put on a coat of it himself.
He did not object to the summer, but in winter his berth was not so
pleasant. I already felt convinced of this. To a question he replied
that Government estimated his services at five hundred dollars per
annum; and he pointedly asked me how he was to support a family on the
stipend? Yet he must keep his light trimmed and burning; for if that
goes out, so does he.
All the light-houses are supplied with lard-oil, which burns without
incrusting the wick of the lamp; but the keeper objected that it was
always chilled in cold weather, and that he usually had to take it into
the dwelling and heat it on the stove before it could be used. A good
deal of moisture collects on the plate-glass windows of the lantern when
the wind is off-shore, but if it be off the land the glass is dry. In
very cold weather, when it becomes coated with frost, the light is
visible but a short distance at sea. To remedy this evil, spirits of
wine are furnished to keepers, but does not wholly remove the
difficulty.
[Illustration: DRYING FISH, LITTLE HARBOR.]
Afterward we spoke of the commerce of Marblehead. The only craft now in
port were five or six ballast-lighters that had wintered in the upper
harbor; with this exception it was deserted. The keeper had been master
of a fishing vessel. I could not help remarking to him on this ominous
state of things.
"I have seen as many as a hundred and twenty vessels lying below us
here, getting ready for a cruise on the Banks," he said.
"And now?"
"Now there are not more than fifteen sail that hail out of here."
"So that fishing, as a business--"
"Is knocked higher than a kite."
Will it ever come down again?
We commiserate the situation of an individual out of business; what
shall we, then, say of a town thrown out of employment? Before the
Revolution, Marblehead was our principal fishing port. When the war came
this industry was broken up for the seven years of the contest. Most of
the men went into the army, one entire regiment being raised here. Many
entered on board privateers or the public armed vessels of the revolted
colonies. At the close of the war, great destitution prevailed by reason
of the losses in men the town had sustained; and as usual a lottery was
resorted to for the benefit of the survivors. The War of 1812 again
drove the Marblehead fishermen from their peaceful calling to man our
little navy. At its close five hundred of her sons were in British
prisons.
Fisheries have often been called the agriculture of the seas. Sir Walter
Raleigh attributed the wealth and power of Holland, not to its commerce
or carrying trade, but to its fisheries. Captain John Smith was of this
opinion; so were Mirabeau and De Witt. Franklin seemed to prefer the
fisheries of America to agriculture; and Edmund Burke paid our fishermen
the noblest panegyric of them all:
"No sea but is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness
to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of
France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ever
carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which
it has been pushed by this recent people--a people who are still, as it
were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of
manhood."[152]
Add to this Napoleon's opinion that the American was the superior of the
English seaman, and national self-complacency may safely rest on two
such eminent authorities.
The light-keeper, who had been on the Banks, informed me that it was
still the custom, when lying to in a heavy blow, to pour oil on the
waves alongside the vessel; and that it was effectual in smoothing the
sea--not a wave breaking within its influence. Dr. Franklin's
experiments are the first I remember to have read of. A single
tea-spoonful, he says, quieted the ruffled surface of near half an acre
of water in a windy day, and rendered it as smooth as a
looking-glass.[153] This man would have triumphed over nature herself.
Without doubt Marblehead owes a large share of her naval renown to her
fishery; to those men who entered the sea-service at the bowsprit, like
the great navigator, Cook, and not at the cabin windows. They gave a
distinctively American character to our little navies of 1776 and 1812.
Southey, while writing his "Life of Nelson," flings down his pen in
despair to say: "What a miserable thing is this loss of a second frigate
to the Americans. It is a cruel stroke; and, though their frigates are
larger ships than ours, must be felt as a disgrace, and in fact is
disgrace. It looks as if there was a dry-rot in our wooden walls. Is it
that this captain also is a youngster hoisted up by interest, or that
the Americans were manned by Englishmen, or that our men do not fight
heartily, or that their men are better than ours?"
One writer calls the fishery "a great nursery of the marine, from whence
a constant supply of men, inured to the perils of the sea, are
constantly ready for the service of their country." Supposing this
doctrine correct, it becomes an interesting question where the sailors
of future navies are to come from? The whale-fishery has been fairly
beaten out of the field by oil-spouting rocks. Why should we brave the
perils of the Arctic circle when by sinking a tube in Pennsylvania we
may strike a fellow of a thousand barrels, and wax rich while asleep?
New London, Nantucket, New Bedford, and Edgartown have answered. The cod
and mackerel fisheries have dwindled into like insignificance, say
Marblehead, Gloucester, and all fishing ports along shore. When these
towns, once so exclusively maritime, found the fishery slipping through
their fingers, they took up shoe-making, and at present you will see
plenty of Crispins, but not many blue-jackets, in Marblehead. Cobbling
is now carried on in the barn-lofts, fish-houses, and cottages. Yet this
change of condition is not met, as in the failing whale-fishery, by a
supply from a different source; fish continues to be as highly esteemed
and in greater request than ever; it is the supply, not the demand, that
is diminishing.
There are some of those larger shoe-factories in the town where hides
are received at the front door, and are delivered at the back, in an
incredibly short time, ready for wear. The young men I saw in long
aprons at the benches had none of the rugged look of their fathers.
Their white arms showed little of the brawn that comes from constant
handling of the oar. The air of the work-shop was stifling, and I gladly
left it, thinking these were hardly the fellows to stand by the guns or
reef-tackles. One old man with whom I conversed bitterly deplored that
shoe-making had killed fishing, and had made the young men, as he
phrased it, "nash," which is what they say of fish that the sun has
spoiled. At the time I was there shoe-making itself was suffering from a
depression of trade, and many of the inhabitants appeared to be in a
state of uncertainty as to their future that, I imagine, may become
chronic. One individual, while lamenting the decline of business,
brightened up as he said, "But I understand they an't much better off at
Beverly."
The decline of the cod-fishery is attributed to the use of trawls, and
to the greed that kills the goose that has laid the golden egg. Formerly
fish were taken with hand-lines only, over the side of the vessel. Then
they began to carry dories, in which the crew sought out the best
places. The men lost in fogs or bad weather while looking for or
visiting their trawls swell the list of casualties year by year. Fitting
out fishing-vessels, instead of being the simple matter it once was, has
become an affair of capital, the trawls for a vessel sometimes costing
fifteen hundred dollars.
Douglass gives some particulars of the fishery, as practiced in his own
and at an earlier day. He says the North Sea cod, and those taken on the
Irish coast were considered better than the American fish, but were
inadequate to the supply. No fish were considered merchantable in
England or Ireland less than eighteen inches long from the first fin to
the beginning of the tail. In Newfoundland they worked their fish "belly
down;" in New England they were worked with their backs downward, to
receive more salt, and add to their weight. The stock-fish of Norway and
Iceland were cured without salt, by hanging them in winter upon sticks
called by the Dutch "stocks"--this may have been the origin of our
dun-fish. The fish made in Marblehead for Spain were known as "Bilboa
drithe," and could be held out horizontally by the tail. Those cured for
the western market were called "Albany drithe," from the fact that
Albany was the head-quarters of that trade.
[Illustration: UNLOADING FISH.]
To quote from Douglass, he says: "In 1746 Marblehead ships off more
dried cod than all the rest of New England besides. Anno 1732 a good
fish year, and in profound peace, Marblehead had about one hundred and
twenty schooners of about fifty tons burden, seven men aboard, and one
man ashore to make the fish, or about one thousand men employed, besides
the seamen who carry the fish to market. Two hundred quintals considered
a fare. In 1747 they have not exceeding seventy schooners, and make five
fares yearly to I. Sables, St. George's Banks, etc."
M. Rochefoucauld Liancourt, who visited New England in 1799, making a
tour of the coast as far as the Penobscot, says at that time the vessels
were usually of seventy tons, and had a master, seven seamen, and a boy.
The owner had a quarter, the dryer on the coast an eighth, and the rest
was shared by the master and seamen, in proportion to the fish they had
taken. Every man took care of his own fish.
As early as 1631 Governor Matthew Cradock established a fishing station
at Marblehead, in charge of Isaac Allerton, whose name appears fifth on
the celebrated compact of the Pilgrims, signed at Cape Cod, November
11th, 1620.[154] Winthrop mentions in his journal that as the _Arabella_
was standing in for Naumkeag, on the 12th of June, 1630, Mr. Allerton
boarded her in a shallop as he was sailing to Pemaquid. Moses Maverick
lived at Marblehead with Allerton, and married his daughter Sarah. In
1635 Allerton conveyed to his son-in-law all the houses, buildings, and
stages he had at Marblehead. In 1638 Moses was licensed to sell a tun of
wine a year.
In Winthrop's "Journal," under the date of 1633, is the following with
reference to this plantation:[155]
"_February_ 1.--Mr. Cradock's house at Marblehead was burnt down about
midnight before, there being then in it Mr. Allerton, and many fishermen
whom he employed that season, who all were preserved by a special
providence of God, with most of his goods therein, by a tailor, who sat
up that night at work in the house, and, hearing a noise, looked out and
saw the house on fire above the oven in the thatch."[156]
While retracing my steps back to town, I pictured the harbor in its day
of prosperity. A hundred sail would have given it a degree of animation
quite marvelous to see. Six hours a hundred sharp prows point up the
harbor, and six they look out to sea. Above the tapering forest of equal
growth are thrust the crossed spars of ships from Cadiz, in Spain.
Innumerable wherries dart about, rowed by two men each; they are
strongly built, for baiting trawls on the banks and in a sea is no
child's play. The cheery cries, rattling of blocks, and universal bustle
aboard the fleet announce the preparations for sailing. At the top of
the flood up go a score of sails, and round go as many windlasses to a
rattling chorus. Anchors are hove short in a trice. The vessels first
under way draw out from among the fleet, clear the mouth of the harbor,
and in a few minutes more are flinging the seas from their bows with
Marblehead Light well under their lee.
I do not know who first discovered Marblehead. The vague idea associates
it with a heap of sterile rocks, inhabited by fishermen speaking an
unintelligible jargon. Though not twenty miles from the New England
metropolis, and notwithstanding its past is interwoven with every page
of our historic times, less is known of it than would seem credible to
the intelligent reader. A faithful chronicle of its fortunes would, no
doubt, be sufficiently curious, though many would, I fear, prefer the
stories of Tyre and Carthage. But Marblehead is unique; there is nothing
like it on this side of the water.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF ANTIQUES.]
I was struck, on entering the place, with Whitefield's observation when
he asked where the dead were buried; for the great want appears to be
earth. But a further acquaintance revealed more pleasant inclosures of
turf, orchards, and garden-spots than its gaunt crags seemed capable of
sustaining. The town may be said to embrace two very dissimilar
portions, of which the larger appears paralyzed with age, and the other
the outgrowth of a newer and more thriving generation. It is with the
old town I have to do.
I preferred to commit myself to the guidance of the narrow streets, and
drift about wherever they listed. The stranger need not try to settle
his topography beforehand. He would lose his labor. It was only after a
third visit that I began to have some notions of the maze of rocky
lanes, alleys, and courts. Caprice seemed to have governed the location
of a majority of the houses by the water-side, and the streets to have
adjusted themselves to the wooden anarchy; or else the idea forced
itself upon you that the houses must have been stranded here by the
flood, remaining where the subsiding waters left them; for they stand
anywhere and nowhere, in a ravine or atop a cliff, crowding upon and
elbowing each other until no man, it would seem, might know his own. How
one of those ancient mariners rolling heavily homeward after a night's
carouse could have found his own dwelling, is a mystery I do not
undertake to solve.
M. De Chastellux, who had a compliment ready-made for every thing
American, was accosted when in Boston with the remark,
"Marquis, you find a crooked city in Boston?"
"Ah, ver good, ver good," said the chevalier; "it show de _liberte_."
I found Washington Street a good base of operations. A modern dwelling
is rarely met with between this thoroughfare and the water. On State
(formerly King) Street there is but one house less than a century old,
and the frame of that one was being raised the day Washington came to
town. Even he was struck by the antiquated look of the buildings. The
long exemption from fire is little less than miraculous, for a building
of brick or stone is an exception. Old houses, gambrel-roofed,
hip-roofed, and pitch-roofed, with an occasional reminiscence of London
in Milton's day, are ranged on all sides; little altered in a hundred
years, though I should have liked better to have chanced this way when
the porches of some were projecting ten feet into the street. I enjoyed
losing myself among them; for, certes, there is more of the crust of
antiquity about Marblehead than any place of its years in America.
An air of snug and substantial comfort hung about many of the older
houses, and some localities betokened there was an upper as well as a
nether stratum of society in Marblehead. Fine old trees flourished in
secluded neighborhoods, where the brass door-knockers shone with
unwonted lustre. I think my fingers itched to grasp them, so suggestive
were they of feudal times when stranger knight summoned castle-warden by
striking with his sword-hilt on the oaken door. Fancy goes in unbidden
at their portals, and roves among their cramped corridors and best
rooms, peering into closets where choice china is kept, or rummaging
among the curious lumber of the garrets, the accumulations of many
generations. On the whole, the dwellings represent so far as they may a
singular equality of condition. It is only by turning into some court or
by-way that you come unexpectedly upon a mansion having about it some
relics of a former splendor. Though Marblehead has its Billingsgate, I
saw nothing of the squalor of our larger cities; and though it may have
its Rotten Row, I remarked neither lackeys nor showy equipages.
There are few sidewalks in the older quarter. The streets are too
narrow to afford such a luxury, averaging, should say, not more than a
rod in width in the older ones, with barely room for a single vehicle.
The passer-by may, if he pleases, look into the first-floor
sitting-rooms, and see the family gathered at its usual occupations.
Whether it be a greater indiscretion to look in at the windows than to
look out of them, as the matrons and maidens are in the habit of doing
when a stranger is in the neighborhood is a question I willingly remand
to the decision of my readers; yet I confess I found the temptation too
strong to be resisted. In order to protect those houses at the street
corners, a massive stone post is often seen imbedded in the ground; but
to give them a wide berth is impossible, and I looked for business to be
brisk at the wheelwright's shop.
[Illustration: LEE STREET.]
Again, as the street encounters a ledge in its way, one side of it
mounts the acclivity, ten, twenty feet above your head, while the other
keeps the level as before. Such accidental looking-down upon their
neighbors does not, perhaps, argue moral or material pre-eminence; but,
for all that, there may be a shilling side. One thing about these old
houses impressed me pleasantly; though many of them were guiltless of
paint, and on some roofs mosses had begun to creep, and a yellow rust to
cover the clapboards, there were few windows that did not boast a goodly
show of scarlet geraniums, fuchsias, or mignonnette, with ivy clustering
lovingly about the frames, making the dark old casements blossom again,
and glow with a wealth of warm color.
I was too well acquainted with maritime towns to be surprised at finding
fishing-boats, even of a few tons burden, a quarter of a mile from the
water. They might even be said to crop out with remarkable frequency.
Some were covered with boughs, their winter protection; others were
being patched, painted, or calked, preparatory for launching, with an
assiduity and solicitude that can only be appreciated by the owners of
such craft. On the street that skirts the harbor I saw a fisherman just
landed enter his cottage, "paying out," as he went, from a coil of rope,
one end being, I ascertained, fastened to his wherry. I remember to have
seen in Mexico the _vaqueros_, on alighting from their mules, take from
the pommel of their saddles some fathoms of braided hair-rope, called a
lariat, and, on entering a shop or dwelling, uncoil it as they went. The
custom of these Marblehead fishermen seemed no less ingenious.
In a sea-port my instinct is for the water. I have a predilection for
the wharves, and, though I could well enough dispense with their smells,
for their sights and sounds. The cross-ways in Marblehead seem in search
of the harbor as they go wriggling about the ledges. I should say they
had been formed on the ancient foot-paths leading down to the fishing
stages. At the head of one pier, half imbedded in the earth, was an old
honey-combed cannon that looked as if it might have spoken a word in the
dispute with the mother country, but now played the part of a capstan,
and truant boys were casting dirt between its blistered lips. In Red
Stone Cove there lay, stranded and broken in two, a long-boat, brought
years ago from China, perhaps, on the deck of some Indiaman. Its build
was outlandish; so unlike the wherries that were by, yet so like the
craft that swim in the turbid Yang Tse. I took a seat in it, and was
carried to the land of pagodas, opium, and mandarins. Its sheathing of
camphor-wood still exhaled the pungent odor of the aromatic tree. On
either quarter was painted an enormous eye that seemed to follow you
about the strand. In all these voyages some part of the Old World seems
to have drifted westward, and attached itself to the shores of the New.
Here it was a Portuguese from the Tagus, or a Spaniard of Alicante;
elsewhere a Norwegian, Swede, or Finn, grafted on a strange clime and
way of life.
The men I saw about the wharves, in woolen "jumpers" and heavy fishing
boots, had the true "guinea-stamp" of the old Ironsides of the sea. To
see those lumberings fishermen in the streets you would not think they
could be so handy, or tread so lightly in a dory. I saw there an old
foreign-looking seaman, one of those fellows with short, bowed legs,
drooping shoulders, contracted eyelids, and hands dug in their pockets,
who may be met with at all hours of the day and night hulking about the
quays of a shipping town. This man eyed the preparations of amateur
boatmen with the contemptuous curiosity often vouchsafed by such
personages in the small affair of getting a pleasure-boat under way. One
poor fellow, who kept a little shop where he could hear the wash of the
tide on the loose pebbles of the cove, told me he had lost his leg by
the cable getting a turn round it. Though they have a rough outside,
these men have hearts. His skipper, he said, had put about, though it
was a dead loss to him, and sailed a hundred miles to land his mutilated
shipmate.
[Illustration: TUCKER'S WHARF--THE STEPS.]
How did Marblehead look in the olden time? Its early history is allied
with that of Salem, of which it formed a part until 1648. Francis
Higginson, who came over in 1629, says, in that year, "There are in all
of us, both old and new planters, about three hundred, whereof two
hundred of them are settled at Nehumkek, now called Salem; and the rest
have planted themselves at Masathulets Bay, beginning to build a town
there which wee do call Cherton or Charles Town." His New England's
"Plantation" is curious reading. I have observed in my researches that
these old divines are often fond of drawing the long bow, a failing of
which Higginson, one of the earliest, seems conscious when he asks in
his exordium, "Shall such a man as I lye? No, verily!"
William Wood, describing the place in 1633, says of it: "Marvil Head is
a place which lyeth 4 miles full south from Salem, and is a very
convenient place for a plantation, especially for such as will set upon
the trade of fishing. There was made here a ship's loading of fish the
last year, where still stand the stages and drying scaffolds." In 1635,
the court order that "there shal be a Plantacion at Marblehead."
[Illustration: GREGORY STREET.]
John Josselyn looked in here in 1663. "Marvil, or Marblehead," he says,
is "a small harbour, the shore rockie, on which the town is built,
consisting of a few scattered houses; here they have stages for
fishermen, orchards, and gardens half a mile within land, good pastures,
and arable land."
It had now begun to emerge from the insignificance of a fishing village,
and to assume a place among the number of maritime towns. In 1696 a
French spy makes report: "Marvalet est compose de 100 ou 120 maisons
pescheurs ou il peut entrer de gros vaisseaux."
In 1707-'8 Marblehead was represented to the Lords of Trade as a
smuggling port for Boston, for which it also furnished pilots. A few
years earlier (1704) Quelch, the pirate, had been apprehended there,
after having scattered his gold right and left. But it was not until an
order had come from the Governor and Council at Boston that he was
arrested, nor had there been a province law against piracy until within
a few years.[157] Seven of Quelch's gang were taken by Major Stephen
Sewall; and the inhabitants of Marblehead were required to bring in the
gold coin, melted down, and silver plate they had not been unwilling to
receive.
It was, no doubt, owing to the lawless habits introduced that the
character of the sea-faring population partook of a certain
wildness--such as good Parson Barnard inveighs against--manifesting
itself in every-day transactions, and infusing into the men an
adventurous and reckless spirit which fitted them in a measure for deeds
of daring, and gave to the old sea-port no small portion of the
notoriety it enjoys.
Mr. Barnard speaks of the earlier class of fishermen as a rude,
swearing, fighting, and drunken crew. The Rev. Mr. Whitwell, in his
discourse on the disasters of 1770, does not give them a better
character. "No wonder," he says, "the children of such parents imitate
their vices, and, when they return from their voyages, have learned to
curse and damn their younger brothers." He continues to pour balm into
their wounds in this wise: "We hope we shall hear no more cursing or
profaneness from your mouths.... Instead of spending your time in those
unmanly games which disgrace our children in the streets, we trust you
will be seriously concerned for the salvation of your souls."
Austin, in his "Life of Elbridge Gerry," speaks of the fishermen as a
sober and industrious class; but the testimony of local historians is
wholly opposed to his assertion.[158] They passed their winters in a
round of reckless dissipation, or until the arrival of the fishing
season set half the town afloat again. It was then left in the hands of
the women, the elders, and a few merchants. There is much in the annals
of such a community to furnish materials for history, or, on a lesser
scale, hints for romance. Captain Goelet, who was here in 1750,
estimated the town to contain about four hundred and fifty houses.
"They were," he said, "all wood and clapboarded, the generality
miserable buildings, mostly close in with the rocks, with rocky
foundations very Cragy and Crasey. The whole towne is built
upon a rock, which is heigh and steep to the water. The harbour
is sheltered by an island, which runs along parallel to it and
brakes off the sea. Vessells may ride here very safe; there is
a path or way downe to the warf, which is but small, and on
which is a large Ware House where they land their fish, etc.
From this heigh Cliffty shore it took its name. I saw abt 5
topsail vessels and abt 10 schooners or sloops in the harbour;
they had then abt 70 sail schooners a-fishing, with about 600
men and Boys imployd in the fishery: they take vast quantitys
Cod, which they cure heere. Saw several thousand flakes then
cureing. The place is noted for Children, and Nouriches the
most of any place for its bigness in North America; it's said
the chief cause is attributed to their feeding on Cod's heads,
etc., which is their Principall Dish. The greatest distaste a
person has to this place is the stench of the fish, the whole
air seems tainted with it. It may in short be said it's a Dirty
Erregular, Stincking place.'"[159]
The fortunes of the place were now greatly altered. The obscure fishing
village had become a bustling port, with rich cargoes from Spain and the
Antilles lying within its rock-bound shores. Ships were being built in
the coves, and substantial mansions were going up in the streets--in
whose cellars, as I have heard, were kegs of hard dollars, salted down,
as one might say, like the staple of Marblehead.
John Adams, then a young lawyer on the circuit, enters in his diary,
under date of 1766, the brief impression of a first visit to Marblehead:
"14, _Thursday_.--In the morning rode a single horse, in
company with Mrs. Cranch and Mrs. Adams, in a chaise to
Marblehead. The road from Salem to Marblehead, four miles, is
pleasant indeed (so I found it). The grass plats and fields are
delightful, but Marblehead differs from Salem. The streets are
narrow and rugged and dirty, but there are some very grand
buildings."
As John Adams saw it so does the stranger of to-day, ignoring such
modern improvements as railway, gas-works, telegraph, and factories, and
sticking closely to the skirts of the old town.
I should say Marblehead might still assert its title to the number of
children it "nourishes." Certainly they seemed out of all proportion to
the adult population. Instinct guides them to the water from their
birth, and they may be seen paddling about the harbor in stray wherries
or clambering up the rigging of some collier, in emulation of their
elders. Even their talk has a salty flavor. I recollect an instance,
which must lose by the relation. A young scape-grace having incurred the
maternal displeasure, and then taken to his heels to escape
chastisement, the good-wife gave chase, brandishing a broomstick aloft,
and breathing vengeance on her unnatural offspring. Having the wind fair
and a heavy spread of petticoat, she was rapidly gaining on the
youngster, when a comrade, who was watching the progress of the race
with a critical eye, bawled out, "Try her on the wind, Bill; try her _on
the wind_."
A sailor on shore is not unlike Napoleon's dismounted dragoon: he is
emphatically a fish out of water. One talked of "making his horse fast;"
another complained that his neckerchief was "tew taut;" and a third
could not understand which way to move a boat until his companion called
out, "Haul to the west'ard, can't ye?"
If not insular, your genuine Marbleheader is the next thing to it. The
rest of the world is merged with him into a place to sell his fish and
buy his salt. Even Salem, Beverly, and the parts adjacent draw but
little on his sympathy or his fellowship: in short, they are not
Marblehead. During the Native American excitement of 18--, the
Marbleheaders entered into the movement with enthusiasm. A caucus being
assembled to nominate town officers, one old fisherman came into the
town hall in his baize apron, just as he had got out of his dory. He
glanced over the list of officers with an approving grunt at each name
until he came to that of Squire Fabens. Now Squire Fabens, though a
Salem man born, had lived a score of years in Marblehead, had married,
and held office there. Turning wrathfully to the person who had given
him the ticket, the fisherman tore it in pieces, exclaiming as he did
so, "D'ye call that a Native American ticket? Why, there's Squire Fabens
on it; he an't a Marbleheader!"
Though it is true there are few instances of the fatal straight line in
Marblehead, those who are native there are far from appreciating the
impression its narrow and crooked ways make on the stranger. They, at
any rate, appeared to find their way without the difficulty I at first
experienced. I asked one I met if I was in the right route to the depot.
"Go straight ahead," was his injunction, a direction nothing but a
round-shot from Fort Sewall could have followed. But I should add that
Marblehead is not a labyrinth, any more than it is a field for
missionary work: it has churches, banks, schools, a newspaper, and even
a debating society; and it has thoroughfares that may be traversed
without a guide.
The great man of Marblehead in the colonial day was Colonel Jeremiah
Lee, whose still elegant mansion is to be seen there. Unlike many of the
gentry of his time, Colonel Lee was a thorough-going patriot. He was,
with Orne and Gerry, a delegate to the first and second Provincial
Congresses of 1774. When the famous Revolutionary Committee of Safety
and Supplies was formed, he became and continued a member until his
death in May, 1775. Colonel Lee was with the committee on the day before
the battle of Lexington, and with Gerry and Orne remained to pass the
night at the Black Horse tavern in Menotomy, now Arlington. When the
British advance reached this house it was surrounded, the half-dressed
patriots having barely time to escape to a neighboring corn-field, where
they threw themselves upon the ground until the search was over. From
the exposure incident to this adventure Lee got his death. His townsmen
treasure his memory as one of the men who formed the Revolution, braved
its dangers, and accepted its responsibilities. Colonel Lee was a stanch
churchman, which makes his adhesion to the patriot side the more
remarkable.
[Illustration: LEE HOUSE.]
There is nothing about the exterior of the Lee mansion to attract the
stranger's attention, though it cost the colonel, when furnished, ten
thousand pounds sterling. As was customary, its offices were on one side
and its stables on the other, with a court-yard paved with
beach-pebble, in which the date of the house, 1768,[160] may be traced.
Entrance was gained on front and side over massive freestone steps, that
show the print of time to have pressed more heavily than human feet. The
house, long since deserted by the family, is now occupied as a bank.
On entering the mansion of the Lees the visitor is struck with the
expansive area of the hall, which is six paces broad, and of
corresponding depth. Age has imparted a rich coloring to the mahogany
wainscot and casing of the staircase. The balusters are curiously carved
in many different patterns; the walls are still hung with their original
paper, in panels representing Roman or Grecian ruins, with trophies of
arms, or implements of agriculture or of the chase between. One panel
represented a sea-fight of Blake and Van Tromp's day. Some of them have
been permanently disfigured by the use of the hall, at one time, as a
fish-market. In a corner, a trap-door led to the old merchant's
wine-cellar, which he thus kept under his own eye. It was after a visit
to some such mansion that Daniel Webster asked, "Did those old fellows
go to bed in a coach-and-four?"
The rooms opening at the right and left of the hall are worthy of it,
especially the first named, which is wainscoted from floor to ceiling,
and enriched with elaborate carving. Over the fire-place of this room
was formerly a portrait of Esther before Ahasuerus, beautifully painted
on a panel. There is an upper hall of ample size, from which open
sleeping apartments with pictured tiles, recessed windows, and panes
that were the wonder of the town, in which none so large had been seen.
Would I had been here when the old colonel's slaves kept the antique
brasses brightly polished, and stout logs crackled and snapped in the
fire-places, in the day of coffin-clocks, French mirrors, and massive
old plate, when the bowl of arrack-punch stood on the sideboard, and
Copley's portraits of master and mistress graced the walls.[161] The
painter has introduced the colonel in a brown velvet coat laced with
gold, and full-bottomed wig. He was short in stature and rather portly,
with an open face, thin nostril, and fine, intelligent eye. The head is
slightly thrown back, a device of the artist to add height to the
figure. Madam Lee is in a satin over-dress, with a pelisse of ermine
negligently cast about her bare shoulders. She looks a stately dame,
with her black eyes and self-possessed air, or as if she might have kept
the colonel's house, slaves included, in perfect order.[162]
When General Washington was making his triumphal tour of the Eastern
States, in 1789, he came to Marblehead. It was, he says, "four miles
out of the way; but I wanted to see it." And so he turned aside to ride
through its rocky lanes, and look into the faces of the men who had
followed him from Cambridge to Trenton, and from Trenton to Yorktown.
How the sight of their chief must have warmed the hearts of those
veterans! He jotted down in his diary very briefly what he saw and heard
in Marblehead: "About 5000 souls are said to be in this place, which has
the appearance of antiquity; the houses are old; the streets dirty; and
the common people not very clean. Before we entered the town we were met
and attended by a com'e, till we were handed over to the Selectmen, who
conducted us, saluted by artillery, into the town to the house of a Mrs.
Lee, where there was a cold collation prepared; after partaking of
which, we visited the harbor, etc." Lafayette, Monroe, and Jackson have
been entertained in the same house.
[Illustration: TOWN HOUSE AND SQUARE.]
When the Revolutionary junto wished to organize its artillery, William
Raymond Lee was summoned to Cambridge to command one of the companies.
He was nephew to the old colonel, valiantly taking up the cause where
his uncle had laid it down. Afterward he served in Glover's regiment,
passing through all the grades from captain to colonel. Another nephew
was that John Lee who, while in command of a privateer belonging to the
Tracys, with a battery, part of iron and partly of wooden guns, captured
a rich vessel of superior force in the bay. Both the colonel's fighting
nephews were of Manchester, on Cape Ann.
Threading my way onward, I came upon the old Town-house, the Faneuil
Hall of Marblehead, in which much treason was hatched when George III.
was king. The Whigs of Old Essex have often been heard there when grave
questions were to be discussed, and the jarring atoms of society have
oft been summoned greeting,
"To grand parading of town-meeting."
In the old Town-house Judge Story went to school and was fitted for
college; the substantial dwelling in which he was born being nearly
opposite, with its best parlor become an apothecary's, under the sign of
Goodwin. This house was the dwelling of Dr. Elisha Story, of
Revolutionary memory, and the birthplace of his son, the eminent jurist.
The physicians of Dr. Story's time usually furnished their own
medicines. In cocked hat and suit of rusty black, with saddle-bags and
countenance severe, they were marked men in town or village. Since my
visit to Marblehead the last of Dr. Story's eighteen children, Miss
Caroline Story, died at the age of eighty-five. The chief-justice, her
brother, was one of the most lovable of men, and was never, I believe,
ashamed of the slight savor of the dialect that betrayed him native and
to the manner born.
The Episcopal church in Marblehead is one of its old landmarks,
concurring fully, so far as outward appearance goes, in the prevailing
mouldiness. It is not remarkable in any way except as an oddity in wood,
with a square tower of very modest height surmounting a broad and
sloping roof. At a distance it is scarcely to be distinguished in the
wooden chaos rising on all sides; its front was masked by buildings, so
that the entrance-door could only be reached by a winding path. The
parish has at length cleared its ancient glebe of intruders, and the old
church is no longer jostled by its dissenting neighbors. Immediately
adjoining is a little church-yard, in which repose the ashes of former
worshipers who loved these old walls, and would lie in their shadow.
[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S, MARBLEHEAD.]
St. Michael's, as originally built, must have been an antique gem.
According to the account given me by the rector, it had seven gables,
topped by a tower, from which sprung a shapely spire, with another on
the north and one on the south side. The form of the building was a
square, with entrances on the south and west. The aisles crossed each
other at right angles; the ceiling, supported by oaken columns, was in
the form of a St. Andrew's cross. The present barren area of pine
shingles was built above the old roof, which it extinguished
effectually. Cotton Mather--he did not allude to the Church of
England--styled the New England churches golden candlesticks, set up to
illuminate the country; but what would he have said had he lived to see
the Puritan Thanksgiving and Fast gradually superseded by Christmas and
by Easter?
The interior of the old church well repays a visit. Its antiquities are
guarded as scrupulously as the old faith has been. Suspended from the
ceiling is a chandelier, a wonderful affair in brass, the gift of a
merchant of Bristol, England. The little pulpit, successor to an earlier
one of wine-glass pattern, belongs to an era before the introduction of
costly woods. Above the altar is the Decalogue, in the ancient
lettering, done in England in 1714. Manifestly St. Michael's clings to
its relics with greater affection than did that parish in the Old
Country, which offered its second-hand Ten Commandments for sale, as it
was going to buy new ones. In the organ-loft is a diminutive instrument,
going as far back as the day of Snetzler. Notwithstanding the
disappearance of the cross from its pinnacle, and of the royal emblems
from their place (save the mark!) above the Decalogue, St. Michael's
remains to-day an interesting memorial of Anglican worship in the
colonies. It was the third church in Massachusetts, and the fourth in
all New England, those of Boston, Newbury, and Newport alone having
preceded it.
The names of famous people are perpetuated in the place of their birth
in many ways. I noticed in Marblehead the streets bore the names of
Selman, Tucker, Glover, etc. Academies, public halls, and engine-houses
keep their memory green, or will do so until the era of snobbery ingulfs
the place, and pulls the old signs down. Its future, I apprehend, is to
become a summer resort. When that period of intermittent prosperity
shall have set in in full tide, it will be difficult, if not impossible,
to preserve the peculiar quaintness which now makes Marblehead the
embodiment of the old New England life.
[Illustration: ELBRIDGE GERRY.]
Elbridge Gerry was born in Marblehead. He was of middle stature, thin,
of courteous, old-school manners, and gentlemanly address. He has the
name of a strong partisan, and of standing godfather to the
geographical monstrosity called the Gerrymander, which has added a word
to our political vocabulary.[163] A more effective party caricature has
never appeared in America. It is admitted it has given its author a
notoriety that has somewhat obscured eminent public service, and made
his name a by-word for political chicanery.
[Illustration: THE GERRYMANDER.]
Those who believe the worst phases of political controversy have been
reserved to our own time would do well to read the history of the
administrations of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, whom we are
accustomed to name with reverence as the fathers of the republic, yet
who, while in office, were the objects of as much personal malignity and
abuse as their successors have received. Mr. Gerry was invited to take a
seat in the Massachusetts Convention when the constitution of 1787 was
under consideration, in order that that body might have the benefit of
his conceded sagacity and knowledge of affairs. He opposed the adoption
of the constitution before the Convention. At heart Mr. Gerry was an
undoubted patriot. Once, when he believed himself dying, he remarked
that if he had but one day to live it should be devoted to his country.
Elbridge Gerry was destined for the practice of medicine, but engaged in
mercantile pursuits instead; having acquired a competency at the time of
the beginning of the Revolution, he was free to take part in the
struggle. He held many important offices, and his public career, full of
the incidents of stirring times, was marked also by some eccentricities.
Mr. Gerry, as early as November, 1775, introduced a bill into the
Provincial Congress for the fitting-out of armed vessels by
Massachusetts. In the direction of inaugurating warfare with England at
sea, he was, without doubt, the pioneer.
[Illustration: "OLD NORTH" CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.]
The number of naval heroes whom Marblehead may claim as her own is
something surprising. There were John Selman and Nicholas Broughton, who
sailed in two armed schooners from Beverly, as early as October, 1775,
with instructions from Washington to intercept, if possible, some of the
enemy's vessels in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Failing in this object,
they landed at St. John's, now Prince Edward Island, captured the fort,
and brought off a number of provincial dignitaries of rank. Washington,
who wanted powder, and not prisoners, was not well pleased with the
result of this expedition, as he held it impolitic then to embroil the
revolted colonies with Canada. Much was expected of the hereditary
antipathy of the French Canadians for their English rulers, but in this
respect the general's policy was founded in a mistaken judgment of those
people.
Commodore Manly, to whom John Adams says the first British flag was
struck, was either native born, or came in very early life to
Marblehead. He was placed in command of the first cruiser that sailed
with a regular commission from Washington, in 1775, signalizing his
advent in the bay in the _Lee_--a schooner mounting only four guns--by
the capture of a British vessel laden with military stores, of the
utmost value to the Americans besieging Boston. When this windfall was
reported to Congress, the members believed Divine Providence had
interposed in their favor. Our officers declared their wants could not
have been better supplied if they had themselves sent a schedule of
military stores to Woolwich Arsenal. So apprehensive was the general
that his prize might slip through his fingers, that all the carts to be
obtained in the vicinity of Cape Ann were impressed, in order to bring
the cargo to camp. Manly died in Boston, in 1793, in circumstances
nearly allied to destitution. He was, says one who knew him well, "a
handy, hearty, honest, benevolent, blunt man, with more courage than
good conduct."
[Illustration: SAMUEL TUCKER.]
Another of these old sea-dogs was Commodore Samuel Tucker, the son of a
ship-master. The old house in which he was born was standing on Rowland
Hill. (I do not know that he of Surrey Chapel had any thing to do with
the name in Marblehead.) It was before the door of this house that
Tucker, in his shirt-sleeves, was chopping wood one evening, just at
dusk, when a finely mounted officer clattered down the street. Seeing
Tucker, the officer asked if he could inform him where the Honorable
Samuel Tucker resided. Tucker, astonished at the question, answered in
the negative, saying, "There is no such man lives here; there is no
other Sam Tucker in this town but myself." At this reply, the officer
raised his beaver, and, bowing low, presented him a commission in the
navy.
Tucker, in 1778, was taking John Adams to France in the old frigate
_Boston_,[164] when he fell in with an enemy. While clearing his decks
for action he espied Mr. Adams, musket in hand, among the marines.
Laying a hand on the commissioner's shoulder, Tucker said to him, "I am
commanded by the Continental Congress to carry you safely to Europe, and
I will do it," at the same time conducting him below.
The brave Captain Mugford, whose exploit in capturing a vessel laden
with powder in Boston Harbor, in May, 1776, proved of inestimable
value, was also an inhabitant of Marblehead. Like Selman and Broughton,
he had been a captain in the famous Marblehead regiment, and his crew
were volunteers from it. The year previous, Mugford, with others, had
been impressed on board a British vessel, the _Lively_, then stationed
at Marblehead. Mugford's wife, on hearing what had befallen her husband,
went off to the frigate and interceded with the captain for his release,
alleging that they were just married, and that he was her sole
dependence for support. The Englishman, very generously, restored
Mugford his liberty.
The Trevetts, father and son, were little less distinguished than any
already named, adding to the high renown of Marblehead, both in the Old
War and in the later contest with England.
[Illustration: GENERAL GLOVER.]
Glover and his regiment conferred lasting honor on this old town by the
sea. As soon as it had been determined to fit out armed vessels,
Washington intrusted the details to Glover, and ordered the regiment to
Beverly, where these amphibians first equipped and then manned the
privateers. The regiment signalized itself at Long Island and at
Trenton, and ought to have a monument on the highest point of land in
Marblehead, with the names of its heroes inscribed in bronze. General
Glover was long an invalid from the effects of disease contracted in the
army, dying in 1797.[165] He had been a shoe-maker, and is, I imagine,
the person referred to in the following extract from the memoirs of
Madame Riedesel:
"Some of the generals who accompanied us were shoe-makers; and upon
their halting days they made boots for our officers, and also mended
nicely the shoes of our soldiers. One of our officers had worn his boots
entirely into shreds. He saw that an American general had on a good
pair, and said to him, jestingly, 'I will gladly give you a guinea for
them.' Immediately the general alighted from his horse, took the guinea,
gave up his boots, and put on the badly-worn ones of the officer, and
again mounted his horse." General Glover's house is still standing on
Glover Square. I made, as every body must make, in Marblehead, a
pilgrimage to Oakum Bay, a classic precinct, and to the humble abode of
Benjamin Ireson, whom Whittier has made immortal. Questionless the poet
has done more to make Marblehead known than all the historians and
magazine-writers put together, though the notoriety is little relished
there. The facts were sufficiently dramatic as they existed; but Mr.
Whittier has taken a poet's license, and arranged them to his fancy. Old
Flood Ireson suffered in the flesh, and his memory has been pilloried in
verse for a crime he did not commit. Nevertheless, I doubt that the
people of Marblehead forget that Pegasus has wings, and can no more
amble at the historian's slow place than he can thrive on bran and
water.
It is not many years since Ireson was alive, broken in spirit under the
obloquy of his hideous ride. Later in life he followed shore-fishing,
and was once blown off to sea, where he was providentially picked up by
a coaster bound to some Eastern port. I do not think he could have
declared his right name, for sailors are superstitious folk, and he
would have been accounted a Jonah in any ship that sailed these seas.
His wherry having been cut adrift, was found, and Old Flood Ireson was
believed to have gone to the bottom of the bay, when, to the genuine
astonishment of his townsmen, he appeared one day plodding wearily along
the streets. Some charitable souls gave him another wherry, but the boys
followed the old man about as he cried his fish with their cruel shouts
of,
"I, Flood Ireson, for leaving a wrack,
Was blowed out to sea, and couldn't get back."
There is book authority for the terrible aspect of the vengeance of the
fish-wives of Marblehead, so picturesquely portrayed in the poet's
lines. Increase Mather, in a letter to Mr. Cotton, 23d of Fifth month,
1677, mentions an instance of rage against two Eastern Indians, then
prisoners at Marblehead: "Sabbath-day was sennight, the women at
Marblehead, _as they came out of the meeting-house_, fell upon two
Indians that were brought in as captives, and, in a tumultuous way, very
barbarously murdered them. Doubtless, if the Indians hear of it, the
captives among them will be served accordingly." This episode recalls
the rage of the fish-women of Paris during the Reign of Terror, those
unsexed and pitiless viragos of La Halle.
I could discover little of the old Marblehead dialect, once so
distinctive that even the better class were not free from it. It is true
a few old people still retain in their conversation the savor of it; but
it is dying out. Your true Marbleheader would say, "barn in a burn" for
"born in a barn." His speech was thick and guttural; only an occasional
word falling familiarly on the unaccustomed ear. All the world over he
was known so soon as he opened his mouth. The idiom may have been the
outgrowth of the place, or perchance a reminiscence of the speech of
old-time fishermen, grounded, as I apprehend, more in the long custom of
an illiterate people than any supposed relationship with our English
mother-tongue. Whittier was acquainted with the jargon, and the question
is open to the philologist.
There is a legend about the cove near Ireson's of a "screeching woman"
done to death by pirates a century and a half or more past--a shadowy
memorial of the fact of their presence here so long ago. They brought
her on shore from their ship, and murdered her. On each anniversary of
her death, says the legend, the town was thrilled to its marrow by the
unearthly outcries of the pirates' victim. Many believed the story,
while not a few had heard the screams. Chief-justice Story was among
those who asserted that they had listened to those midnight cries of
fear.
[Illustration: FORT SEWALL.]
Passing over the causeway and under the gate-way of Fort Sewall, said to
have been named from Chief-justice Stephen Sewall,[166] who once taught
school in Marblehead, I entered the spacious parade, on which a full
regiment might easily be formed. The fort was built about 1742, and
until what was so long known as "the late war" with England, remained
substantially in its original picturesque condition. A very old man,
whom I encountered on my way hither, bemoaned the demolition of the old
work, which had been pulled to pieces and made more destructive during
the Great Civil War. The walls were originally of rough stone, little
capable of withstanding the projectiles of modern artillery. There is
another fort on the summit of a rocky eminence that overlooks the
approach to the Neck, built also during the Rebellion. When I visited
it, the earthen walls of one face had fallen in the ditch, where the
remainder of the work bid fair, at no distant day, to follow. There is
still remaining in the town the quaint little powder-house built in
1755, with a roof like the cup of an acorn.
Seated under the muzzle of one of the big guns of Fort Sewall that
pointed seaward, I could descry Baker's Isle with its brace of lights,
and the narrow strait through which the _Abigail_ sailed in 1628, with
Endicott and the founders of Salem on board. Two years later the
_Arabella_ "came to an anchor a little within the island." Winthrop
tells us how the storm-tossed voyagers went upon the land at Cape Ann,
and regaled themselves with store of strawberries. Boston was settled.
The little colony gave its left hand to Salem, and its right to
Plymouth. It waxed strong, and no power has prevailed against it.
[Illustration: POWDER-HOUSE, 1755.]
Little Harbor, north-west of the fort, is the reputed site of the first
settlement at Marblehead. On Gerry's Island, which lies close under the
shore, was the house of the first regularly ordained minister; the
cellar and pebble-paved yard were, not long ago, identified. Near by, on
the main-land, is the supposed site of the "Fountain Inn," which, like
the "Earl of Halifax," has its romance of a noble gentleman taken in the
toils of a pretty wench.[167] Sir Charles Frankland, collector of his
Majesty's customs, visits Marblehead, and becomes enamored of the
handmaid of the inn, Agnes Surriage. He makes her his mistress, but at
length, having saved his life during the great earthquake at Lisbon, she
receives the reward of love and heroism at the altar as the baronet's
wedded wife. Arthur Sandeyn, who was the first publican in Marblehead,
was allowed to keep an ordinary there in 1640. The port was fortified
after some fashion as early as 1643-44.
I had pointed out to me the spot where the _Constitution_ dropped anchor
when chased in here by two British frigates in April, 1814. They
threatened for a time to fetch her out again; but as Stewart laid the
old invincible with her grim broadside to the entrance of the port, and
the fort prepared to receive them in a becoming manner, they prudently
hauled off. The battle between the _Chesapeake_ and _Shannon_ was also
visible from the high shores here, an eye-witness, then in a
fishing-boat off in the bay, relating that nothing was to be seen except
the two ships enveloped in a thick smoke, and nothing to be heard but
the roar of the guns. When the smoke drifted to leeward, and the
cannonade was over, the British ensign was seen waving above the Stars
and Stripes.
Poor, chivalric, ill-starred Lawrence! He had given a challenge to the
commander of the _Bonne Citoyen_, and durst not decline one.[168] At the
_Shannon's_ invitation, he put to sea with an unlucky ship, and a
mutinous crew fresh from the grog-shops and brothels of Ann Street. He
besought them in burning words to show themselves worthy the name of
American sailors. They replied with sullen murmurs. One wretch, a
Portuguese named Joseph Antonio, came forward as their spokesman. His
appearance was singularly fantastic. He wore a checked shirt, a laced
jacket, rings in his ears, and a bandana handkerchief about his head.
Laying his hand on his breast, he made a profound inclination to his
captain as he said:
"Pardon me, sir, but fair play be one jewel all over the world, and we
no touchee the specie for our last cruise with Capitaine Evans. The
Congress is ver' munificent; they keep our piasters in treasury, and pay
us grape and canister. Good fashion in Portuguee ship, when take rich
prize is not pay _poco a poco_, but break bulk and share out dollar on
drum-head of capstan."[169]
[Illustration: JAMES LAWRENCE.]
Already wounded in the leg, Lawrence was struck by a grape-shot on the
medal he wore in honor of his former victory. His words, as he was borne
from the deck, have become a watchword in our navy.[170] Samuel
Livermore, of Boston, who accompanied Lawrence on this cruise out of
personal regard, attempted to avenge him. His shot missed Captain Broke.
Lawrence hearing from below the firing cease, sent his surgeon to tell
his officers to fight on. "The colors shall wave while I live!" he
constantly repeated. He was only thirty-four; sixteen years of his life
had been passed in his country's service. His figure was tall and
commanding, and in battle he was the incarnation of a warrior.
When Mr. Croker read the statement of the action in the House of
Commons, the members from all parts interrupted him with loud and
continued cheering. Perhaps a greater compliment to American valor could
not have been paid than this. The capture of a single ship of any nation
had never before called forth such a triumphant outburst.
The oldest burial-ground in Marblehead is on the summit and slopes of
the highest of its rocky eminences. Here, also, the settlers raised the
frame of their primitive church; some part of which, I was told, has
since been translated into a more secular edifice. At the head of a
little pond, where a clump of dwarfish willows has become rooted, is a
sheltered nook, in which are the oldest stones now to be seen. This was
probably the choice spot of the whole field, but it now wears the same
air of neglect common to all these old cemeteries. A stone of 1690 with
the name of "Mr. Christopher Latimore, about 70 years," was the oldest I
discovered.
As I picked my way among the thick-set head-stones, for there was no
path, and I always avoid treading on a grave, I came upon a grave-digger
busily employed, with whom I held a few moments' parley. The man,
already up to his waistband in the pit, seemed chiefly concerned lest he
should not be able to go much farther before coming to the ledge, which,
even in the hollow places, you are sure of finding at no great depth. On
one side of the grave was a heap of yellow mould, smelling of the earth
earthy, and on the other side a lesser one of human bones, that the
spade had once more brought above ground.
[Illustration: GLIMPSE OF THE SEAMEN'S MONUMENT AND OLD BURIAL-GROUND.]
After observing that he should be lucky to get down six feet, the
workman told me the grave was destined to receive the remains of an old
lady of ninety-four, recently deceased, who, as if fearful her rest
might be less quiet in the midst of a generation to which she did not
belong, had begged she might be buried here among her old friends and
neighbors. Although interments had long been interdicted in the
overcrowded ground, her prayer was granted. An examination of the
inscriptions confirmed what I had heard relative to the longevity of the
inhabitants of Marblehead, of which the grave-digger also recounted more
instances than I am able to remember.
I asked him what was done with the bones I saw lying there, adding to
the heap a fragment or two that had fallen unnoticed from his spade.
"Why, you see, I bury them underneath the grave I am digging, before the
folks get here. We often find such bones on the surface, where they have
been left after filling up a grave," was his reply. This did not appear
surprising, for those I saw were nearly the color of the earth itself.
Seeing my look directed with a sort of fascination toward these relics
of frail mortality, the man, evidently misconstruing my thought, took up
an arm-bone with playful familiarity, and observed, "You should have
seen the thigh-bone I found under the old Episcopal Church! I could have
knocked a man down with it easy. These," he said, throwing the bone upon
the heap, with a gesture of contempt, "are mere rotten things." Who
would be put to bed with that man's shovel!
On a grassy knoll, on the brow of the hill, is a marble monument erected
by the Marblehead Charitable Seamen's Society, in memory of its members
deceased on shore and at sea. On one face are the names of those who
have died on shore, and on the east those lost at sea, from the
society's institution in 1831 to the year 1848. On the north are the
names of sixty-five men and boys lost in the memorable gale of September
19th, 1846. This number comprised forty-three heads of families; as many
widows, and one hundred and fifty-five fatherless children, were left to
mourn the fatality.
The grave-digger told me that brave Captain Mugford had been buried on
this hill, but the spot was now unknown. I could well believe it, for
never had I seen so many graves with nothing more than a shapeless
boulder at the head and foot to mark them. Many stones were broken and
defaced, and I saw the fragments of one unearthed while standing by.
There is no material so durable as the old blue slate, whereon you may
often read an inscription cut two hundred years ago, while those on
freestone and marble need renewing every fifty years. General Glover's
tomb here is inscribed:
Erected with filial respect
to
The Memory of
The HON. JOHN GLOVER, ESQUIRE,
Brigadier General in the late Continental Army.
Died January 30th, 1797,
Aged 64.
Many of the old graves were covered with freshly springing
"life-everlasting," beautifully symbolizing the rest of such as sleep in
the faith. From the Seamen's Monument, at the foot of which some wooden
benches are placed, is seen a broad horizon, dotted with white sails. I
never knew a sailor who did not wish to be buried as near as possible to
the sea, though never in it. "Don't throw me overboard, Hardy," was
Nelson's dying request. There are clumps of lone graves on the verge of
some headland all over New England, and one old grave-yard on Stage
Island, in Maine, has been wholly washed away.
[Illustration: LONE GRAVES.]
In allusion to the loss of life caused by disasters to the fishing
fleets from time to time, an old man with whom I talked thought it was
not greater than would occur through the ordinary chances of a life on
shore. It is wonderful how a sea-faring population come to associate the
idea of safety with the sea. Earthquakes, conflagrations, falling
buildings, and like accidents are more dreaded than hurricanes, squalls,
or a lee-shore.
By an estimate taken from the _Essex Gazette_, of January 2d, 1770, it
appears that in the two preceding years Marblehead lost twenty-three
sail of vessels, with their crews, numbering one hundred and sixty-two
souls, without taking into account those who were lost from vessels on
their return. There were few families that did not mourn a relative, and
some of the older inhabitants remember to have heard their elders speak
of it with a shudder.
[Illustration: "SITTING, STITCHING IN A MOURNFUL MUSE."]
These are the annals that doubtless suggested Miss Larcom's "Hannah
Binding Shoes," and the long, lingering, yet fruitless watching for
those who never come back. The last shake of the hand, the last kiss,
and the last flashing of the white sail are much like the farewell on
the day of battle.
FOOTNOTES:
[150] Captain Goelet calls it an island.
[151] Treville was the man thought most worthy by Napoleon to lead his
fleet in the long-meditated descent on England.
[152] "Address to the Electors of Bristol."
[153] "Philosophical Transactions," vol. lxiv., part ii.
[154] A headland of Boston Harbor is named for him, Point Allerton.
[155] "Moses Maverick testifieth that in the yeare 1640 or 41 the toune
of Salem granted unto the inhabitants of Marblehead the land we now
injoy, with one of Salem, to act with us, wh acordingly was acordingly
attended unto the yeare 1648, in which yeare Marblehead was confirmed a
toune, and to that time yt never knew or understood he desented from
what was acted in layeing out land or stinting the Comons, and have
beene accounted a Toune, and payd dutyes accordingly as it hath been
required. Taken vpon oath; 19: 1mo 73/4.
"(Original Document.) WM. HATHORNE, _Affit._ Vera Copia, taken the 25 of
May, 1674, by me, Robert Ford, Cleric."
[156] Relics of Indian occupation have been found in Marblehead at
various times. There is a shell heap on the Wyman Farm, on the line of
the Eastern Railway, quite near the farm-house.
[157] A bill against piracy was ordered to be brought in March 1st,
1686; March 4th the bill passed.
[158] The first mention of Marblehead in the colony records I have seen
is of two men fined there for being drunk, in the year 1633.
[159] "New England Historical and Genealogical Register," 1870, p. 57.
[160] I have seen the date of 1766 assigned for its building.
[161] Think of Copley painting these two canvases, eight feet long by
five wide, and in his best manner, for L25!
[162] These portraits are now in possession of Colonel William Raymond
Lee, of Boston.
[163] It is not settled who is entitled to the authorship of the word
"Gerrymander," for which a number of claimants have appeared. The map of
Essex, which gave rise to the caricature, was drawn by Nathan Hale, who
edited the _Boston Weekly Messenger_, in which the political deformity
first appeared.
[164] The old frigate _Boston_ was captured at Charleston in 1780 by the
British. In 1804 Tom Moore went over to England in her, she being then
commanded by Captain J. E. Douglas.
[165] William P. Upham, of Salem, has written a memoir of Glover.
[166] Son of Major Stephen, of Newbury.
[167] See "Old Landmarks of Boston," pp. 162, 163.
[168] It has been erroneously stated that Bainbridge accompanied
Lawrence to the pier and tried to dissuade him from engaging the
_Shannon_. They had not met for several days.
[169] This fact was established by Geoffrey Crayon (Washington Irving)
in one of his philippics against Great Britain, of which he so slyly
concealed the authorship in the preface to his "Sketch Book."
[170] "Don't give up the ship."
[Illustration: THE HOE, ENGLISH PLYMOUTH.]