CHAPTER I.

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Transcriber's Note:

General: Varied hyphenation is retained.

In list of Illustrations DeLong is one word; in Table of Contents

it is De Long; in text it is DeLong.

More Transcriber's notes will be found at the end of sections.

AMERICAN MERCHANT SHIPS AND SAILORS

by

WILLIS J. ABBOT

Author of _Naval History of the United States_, _Bluejackets of 1898_,

etc.

Illustrated by RAY BROWN

New York

Dodd, Mead & Company

The Caxton Press

New York

1902

[Illustration]

BOOKS BY WILLIS J. ABBOT

[Illustration]

Naval History of the United States

Blue Jackets of 1898

Battlefields of '61

Battlefields and Campfires

Battlefields and Victory

Preface

In an earlier series of books the present writer told the story of the

high achievements of the men of the United States Navy, from the day of

Paul Jones to that of Dewey, Schley, and Sampson. It is a record Americans

may well regard with pride, for in wars of defense or offense, in wars

just or unjust, the American blue jacket has discharged the duty allotted

to him cheerfully, gallantly, and efficiently.

But there are triumphs to be won by sea and by land greater than those of

war, dangers to be braved, more menacing than the odds of battle. It was a

glorious deed to win the battle of Santiago, but Fulton and Ericsson

influenced the progress of the world more than all the heroes of history.

The daily life of those who go down to the sea in ships is one of constant

battle, and the whaler caught in the ice-pack is in more direful case than

the blockaded cruiser; while the captain of the ocean liner, guiding

through a dense fog his colossal craft freighted with two thousand human

lives, has on his mind a weightier load of responsibility than the admiral

of the fleet.

In all times and ages, the deeds of the men who sail the deep as its

policemen or its soldiery have been sung in praise. It is time for

chronicle of the high courage, the reckless daring, and oftentimes the

noble self-sacrifice of those who use the Seven Seas to extend the markets

of the world, to bring nations nearer together, to advance science, and to

cement the world into one great interdependent whole.

WILLIS JOHN ABBOT.

Ann Arbor, Mich., May 1, 1902.

[Illustration: NEW ENGLAND EARLY TOOK THE LEAD IN BUILDING SHIPS]

List of Illustrations

PAGE

NEW ENGLAND EARLY TOOK THE LEAD IN BUILDING SHIPS _Frontispiece_

THE SHALLOP 2

THE KETCH 5

"THE BROAD ARROW WAS PUT ON ALL WHITE PINES 24 INCHES IN DIAMETER" 7

"THE FARMER-BUILDER TOOK HIS PLACE AT THE HELM" 8

SCHOONER-RIGGED SHARPIE 11

AFTER A BRITISH LIEUTENANT HAD PICKED THE BEST OF HER CREW 18

EARLY TYPE OF SMACK 21

THE SNOW, AN OBSOLETE TYPE 29

THE BUG-EYE 34

A "PINK" 38

"INSTANTLY THE GUN WAS RUN OUT AND DISCHARGED" 42

"THE WATER FRONT OF A GREAT SEAPORT LIKE NEW YORK" 55

AN ARMED CUTTER 57

"THE LOUD LAUGH OFTEN ROSE AT MY EXPENSE" 65

"THE DREADNAUGHT"--NEW YORK AND LIVERPOOL PACKET 69

THERE ARE BUILDING IN AMERICAN YARDS _facing_ 82

"A FAVORITE TRICK OF THE FLEEING SLAVER WAS TO THROW OVER SLAVES" 95

DEALERS WHO CAME ON BOARD WERE THEMSELVES KIDNAPPED _facing_ 98

"THE ROPE WAS PUT AROUND HIS NECK" 103

"BOUND THEM TO THE CHAIN CABLE" 114

"SENDING BOAT AND MEN FLYING INTO THE AIR" 128

"SUDDENLY THE MATE GAVE A HOWL--'STARN ALL!" _facing_ 132

"ROT AT MOLDERING WHARVES" 140

"THERE SHE BLOWS!" 144

"TAKING IT IN HIS JAWS" 146

NEARLY EVERY MAN ON THE QUARTERDECK OF THE "ARGO" WAS KILLED OR

WOUNDED 162

THE PRISON SHIP "JERSEY" 163

IF THEY RETREATED FARTHER HE WOULD BLOW UP THE SHIP _facing_ 176

"I THINK SHE IS A HEAVY SHIP" 179

"STRIVING TO REACH HER DECKS AT EVERY POINT" 186

"THEY FELL DOWN AND DIED AS THEY WALKED" 199

"THE TREACHEROUS KAYAK" 203

THE SHIP WAS CAUGHT IN THE ICE PACK _facing_ 204

ADRIFT ON AN ICE FLOE 206

DE LONG'S MEN DRAGGING THEIR BOATS OVER THE ICE 210

AN ARCTIC HOUSE 224

AN ESQUIMAU 227

THE WOODEN BATEAUX OF THE FUR TRADERS _facing_ 236

"THE RED-MEN SET UPON THEM AND SLEW THEM ALL" 241

ONE OF THE FIRST LAKE SAILORS 243

"TWO BOAT-LOADS OF REDCOATS BOARDED US AND TOOK US PRISONERS" 245

A VANISHING TYPE ON THE LAKES 249

"THE WHALEBACK" 253

FLATBOATS MANNED WITH RIFLEMEN _facing_ 266

"THE EVENING WOULD PASS IN RUDE AND HARMLESS JOLLITY" 271

THE MISSISSIPPI PILOT 286

A DECK LOAD OF COTTON 290

FEEDING THE FURNACE 293

ON THE BANKS 314

"THE BOYS MARKED THEIR FISH BY CUTTING OFF THEIR TAILS" 322

FISHING FROM THE RAIL 328

TRAWLING FROM A DORY 333

STRIKES A SCHOONER AND SHEARS THROUGH HER LIKE A KNIFE _facing_ 334

MINOT'S LEDGE LIGHT 345

WHISTLING BUOY 354

REVENUE CUTTER 360

LAUNCHING A LIFEBOAT THROUGH THE SURF 364

THE EXCITING MOMENT IN THE PILOT'S TRADE _facing_ 366

**Transcriber's notes: Illustrations:

Most quirks were left as written, only changes made listed below.

List reads: "THE LOUD LAUGH OFTEN ROSE AT MY EXPENSE"

Tag reads: "THE LOUD LAUGH ROSE AT MY EXPENSE"

Added missing illustration to list:

AFTER A BRITISH LIEUTENANT HAD PICKED THE BEST OF HER CREW 18

Changed MOULDERING to MOLDERING to match illustration and text

Page 227: Changed Illustration tag "AN ESQUIMAUX" to "AN ESQUIMAU" to fit

text.

Contents

PAGE

CHAPTER I. 1

THE AMERICAN SHIP AND THE AMERICAN SAILOR--NEW ENGLAND'S LEAD ON THE

OCEAN--THE EARLIEST AMERICAN SHIP-BUILDING--HOW THE SHIPYARDS

MULTIPLIED--LAWLESS TIMES ON THE HIGH SEAS--SHIP-BUILDING IN THE FORESTS

AND ON THE FARM--SOME EARLY TYPES--THE COURSE OF MARITIME TRADE--THE FIRST

SCHOONER AND THE FIRST FULL-RIGGED SHIP--JEALOUSY AND ANTAGONISM OF

ENGLAND--THE PEST OF PRIVATEERING--ENCOURAGEMENT FROM CONGRESS--THE GOLDEN

DAYS OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE--FIGHTING CAPTAINS AND TRADING

CAPTAINS--GROUND BETWEEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND--CHECKED BY THE WARS--SEALING

AND WHALING--INTO THE PACIFIC--HOW YANKEE BOYS MOUNTED THE

QUARTER-DECK--SOME STORIES OF EARLY SEAMEN--THE PACKETS AND THEIR EXPLOITS

CHAPTER II. 53

THE TRANSITION FROM SAILS TO STEAM--THE CHANGE IN MARINE ARCHITECTURE--THE

DEPOPULATION OF THE OCEAN--CHANGES IN THE SAILOR'S LOT--FROM WOOD TO

STEEL--THE INVENTION OF THE STEAMBOAT--THE FATE OF FITCH--FULTON'S LONG

STRUGGLES--OPPOSITION OF THE SCIENTISTS--THE "CLERMONT"--THE STEAMBOAT ON

THE OCEAN--ON WESTERN RIVERS--THE TRANSATLANTIC PASSAGE--THE "SAVANNAH"

MAKES THE FIRST CROSSING--ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH LINES--EFFORTS OF

UNITED STATES SHIP-OWNERS TO COMPETE--THE FAMOUS COLLINS LINE--THE

DECADENCE OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE--SIGNS OF ITS REVIVAL--OUR GREAT DOMESTIC

SHIPPING INTEREST--AMERICA'S FUTURE ON THE SEA

CHAPTER III. 89

AN UGLY FEATURE OF EARLY SEAFARING--THE SLAVE TRADE AND ITS

PROMOTERS--PART PLAYED BY EMINENT NEW ENGLANDERS--HOW THE TRADE GREW

UP--THE PIOUS AUSPICES WHICH SURROUNDED THE TRAFFIC--SLAVE-STEALING AND

SABBATH-BREAKING--CONDITIONS OF THE TRADE--SIZE OF THE VESSELS--HOW THE

CAPTIVES WERE TREATED--MUTINIES, MAN-STEALING, AND MURDER--THE REVELATIONS

OF THE ABOLITION SOCIETY--EFFORTS TO BREAK UP THE TRADE--AN AWFUL

RETRIBUTION--ENGLAND LEADS THE WAY--DIFFICULTY OF ENFORCING THE

LAW--AMERICA'S SHAME--THE END OF THE EVIL--THE LAST SLAVER

CHAPTER IV. 121

THE WHALING INDUSTRY--ITS EARLY DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND--KNOWN TO THE

ANCIENTS--SHORE WHALING BEGINNINGS OF THE DEEP-SEA FISHERIES--THE PRIZES

OF WHALING--PIETY OF ITS EARLY PROMOTERS--THE RIGHT WHALE AND THE

CACHALOT--A FLURRY--SOME FIGHTING WHALES--THE "ESSEX" AND THE "ANN

ALEXANDER"--TYPES OF WHALERS--DECADENCE OF THE INDUSTRY--EFFECT OF OUR

NATIONAL WARS--THE EMBARGO--SOME STORIES OF WHALING LIFE

CHAPTER V. 155

THE PRIVATEERS--PART TAKEN BY MERCHANT SAILORS IN BUILDING UP THE

PRIVATEERING SYSTEM--LAWLESS STATE OF THE HIGH SEAS--METHOD OF

DISTRIBUTING PRIVATEERING PROFITS--PICTURESQUE FEATURES OF THE

CALLING--THE GENTLEMEN SAILORS--EFFECTS ON THE REVOLUTIONARY

ARMY--PERILS OF PRIVATEERING--THE OLD JERSEY PRISON SHIP--EXTENT OF

PRIVATEERING--EFFECT ON AMERICAN MARINE ARCHITECTURE--SOME FAMOUS

PRIVATEERS--THE "CHASSEUR," THE "PRINCE DE NEUFCHÁTEL," THE "MAMMOTH"--THE

SYSTEM OF CONVOYS AND THE "RUNNING SHIPS"--A TYPICAL PRIVATEERS'

BATTLE--THE "GENERAL ARMSTRONG" AT FAYAL--SUMMARY OF THE WORK OF THE

PRIVATEERS

CHAPTER VI. 193

THE ARCTIC TRAGEDY--AMERICAN SAILORS IN THE FROZEN DEEP--THE SEARCH FOR

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN--REASONS FOR SEEKING THE NORTH POLE--TESTIMONY OF

SCIENTISTS AND EXPLORERS--PERTINACITY OF POLAR VOYAGERS--DR. KANE AND DR.

HAYES--CHARLES F. HALL, JOURNALIST AND EXPLORER--MIRACULOUS ESCAPE OF HIS

PARTY--THE ILL-FATED "JEANNETTE" EXPEDITION--SUFFERING AND DEATH OF DE

LONG AND HIS COMPANIONS--A PITIFUL DIARY--THE GREELY EXPEDITION--ITS

CAREFUL PLAN AND COMPLETE DISASTER--RESCUE OF THE GREELY SURVIVORS--PEARY,

WELLMAN, AND BALDWIN

CHAPTER VII. 233

THE GREAT LAKES--THEIR SHARE IN THE MARITIME TRAFFIC OF THE UNITED

STATES--THE EARLIEST RECORDED VOYAGERS--INDIANS AND FUR TRADERS--THE PIGMY

CANAL AT THE SAULT STE. MARIE--BEGINNING OF NAVIGATION BY SAILS--DE LA

SALLE AND THE "GRIFFIN"--RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY LAKE SEAMEN--THE LAKES AS

A HIGHWAY FOR WESTWARD EMIGRATION--THE FIRST STEAMBOAT--EFFECT OF MINERAL

DISCOVERIES ON LAKE SUPERIOR--THE ORE-CARRYING FLEET--THE WHALEBACKS--THE

SEAMEN OF THE LAKES--THE GREAT CANAL AT THE "SOO"--THE CHANNEL TO

BUFFALO--BARRED OUT FROM THE OCEAN

CHAPTER VIII. 261

THE MISSISSIPPI AND TRIBUTARY RIVERS--THE CHANGING PHASES OF THEIR

SHIPPING--RIVER NAVIGATION AS A NATION-BUILDING FORCE--THE VALUE OF SMALL

STREAMS--WORK OF THE OHIO COMPANY--AN EARLY PROPELLER--THE FRENCH FIRST ON

THE MISSISSIPPI--THE SPANIARDS AT NEW ORLEANS--EARLY METHODS OF

NAVIGATION--THE FLATBOAT, THE BROADHORN, AND THE KEELBOAT--LIFE OF THE

RIVERMEN--PIRATES AND BUCCANEERS--LAFITTE AND THE BARATARIANS--THE GENESIS

OF THE STEAMBOATS--CAPRICIOUS RIVER--FLUSH TIMES IN NEW ORLEANS--RAPID

MULTIPLICATION OF STEAMBOATS--RECENT FIGURES ON RIVER SHIPPING--COMMODORE

WHIPPLE'S EXPLOIT--THE MEN WHO STEERED THE STEAMBOATS--THEIR TECHNICAL

EDUCATION--THE SHIPS THEY STEERED--FIRES AND EXPLOSIONS--HEROISM OF THE

PILOTS--THE RACES

CHAPTER IX. 303

THE NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES--THEIR PART IN EFFECTING THE SETTLEMENT OF

AMERICA--THEIR RAPID DEVELOPMENT--WIDE EXTENT OF THE TRADE--EFFORT OF LORD

NORTH TO DESTROY IT--THE FISHERMEN IN THE REVOLUTION--EFFORTS TO ENCOURAGE

THE INDUSTRY--ITS PART IN POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY--THE FISHING BANKS--TYPES

OF BOATS--GROWTH OF THE FISHING COMMUNITIES--FARMERS AND SAILORS BY

TURNS--THE EDUCATION OF THE FISHERMEN--METHODS OF TAKING MACKEREL--THE

SEINE AND THE TRAWL--SCANT PROFITS OF THE INDUSTRY--PERILS OF THE

BANKS--SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES--THE FOG AND THE FAST LINERS--THE TRIBUTE

OF HUMAN LIFE

CHAPTER X. 341

THE SAILOR'S SAFEGUARDS--IMPROVEMENTS IN MARINE ARCHITECTURE--THE MAPPING

OF THE SEAS--THE LIGHTHOUSE SYSTEM--BUILDING A LIGHTHOUSE--MINOT'S LEDGE

AND SPECTACLE REEF--LIFE IN A LIGHTHOUSE--LIGHTSHIPS AND OTHER

BEACONS--THE REVENUE MARINE SERVICE--ITS FUNCTION AS A SAFEGUARD TO

SAILORS--ITS WORK IN THE NORTH PACIFIC--THE LIFE-SAVING SERVICE--ITS

RECORD FOR ONE YEAR--ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT--THE PILOTS OF NEW

YORK--THEIR HARDSHIPS AND SLENDER EARNINGS--JACK ASHORE--THE SAILORS' SNUG

HARBOR

**Transcriber Notes on Table of Contents:

Chapter V reads "Effects on the Revolutionary Army";

Chapter on page 155 reads "Effect on the Revolutionary Army";

Chapter VII reads reads "Beginning of Navigation",

Chapter on page 233 reads "Beginnings of Navigation"

American Merchant Ships and Sailors

CHAPTER I.

THE AMERICAN SHIP AND THE AMERICAN SAILOR--NEW ENGLAND'S LEAD ON THE

OCEAN--THE EARLIEST AMERICAN SHIP-BUILDING--HOW THE SHIPYARDS

MULTIPLIED--LAWLESS TIMES ON THE HIGH SEAS--SHIP-BUILDING IN THE FORESTS

AND ON THE FARM--SOME EARLY TYPES--THE COURSE OF MARITIME TRADE--THE FIRST

SCHOONER AND THE FIRST FULL-RIGGED SHIP--JEALOUSY AND ANTAGONISM OF

ENGLAND--THE PEST OF PRIVATEERING--ENCOURAGEMENT FROM CONGRESS--THE GOLDEN

DAYS OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE--FIGHTING CAPTAINS AND TRADING

CAPTAINS--GROUND BETWEEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND--CHECKED BY THE WARS--SEALING

AND WHALING--INTO THE PACIFIC--HOW YANKEE BOYS MOUNTED THE

QUARTER-DECK--SOME STORIES OF EARLY SEAMEN--THE PACKETS AND THEIR

EXPLOITS.

When the Twentieth Century opened, the American sailor was almost extinct.

The nation which, in its early and struggling days, had given to the world

a race of seamen as adventurous as the Norse Vikings had, in the days of

its greatness and prosperity turned its eyes away from the sea and yielded

to other people the mastery of the deep. One living in the past, reading

the newspapers, diaries and record-books of the early days of the

Nineteenth Century, can hardly understand how an occupation which played

so great a part in American life as seafaring could ever be permitted to

decline. The dearest ambition of the American boy of our early national

era was to command a clipper ship--but how many years it has been since

that ambition entered into the mind of young America! In those days the

people of all the young commonwealths from Maryland northward found their

interests vitally allied with maritime adventure. Without railroads, and

with only the most wretched excuses for post-roads, the States were

linked together by the sea; and coastwise traffic early began to employ a

considerable number of craft and men. Three thousand miles of ocean

separated Americans from the market in which they must sell their produce

and buy their luxuries. Immediately upon the settlement of the seaboard

the Colonists themselves took up this trade, building and manning their

own vessels and speedily making their way into every nook and corner of

Europe. We, who have seen, in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century,

the American flag the rarest of all ensigns to be met on the water, must

regard with equal admiration and wonder the zeal for maritime adventure

that made the infant nation of 1800 the second seafaring people in point

of number of vessels, and second to none in energy and enterprise.

[Illustration: THE SHALLOP]

New England early took the lead in building ships and manning them, and

this was but natural since her coasts abounded in harbors; navigable

streams ran through forests of trees fit for the ship-builder's adze; her

soil was hard and obdurate to the cultivator's efforts; and her people had

not, like those who settled the South, been drawn from the agricultural

classes. Moreover, as I shall show in other chapters, the sea itself

thrust upon the New Englanders its riches for them to gather. The

cod-fishery was long pursued within a few miles of Cape Ann, and the New

Englanders had become well habituated to it before the growing scarcity of

the fish compelled them to seek the teeming waters of Newfoundland banks.

The value of the whale was first taught them by great carcasses washed up

on the shore of Cape Cod, and for years this gigantic game was pursued in

open boats within sight of the coast. From neighborhood seafaring such as

this the progress was easy to coasting voyages, and so to Europe and to

Asia.

There is some conflict of historians over the time and place of the

beginning of ship-building in America. The first vessel of which we have

record was the "Virginia," built at the mouth of the Kennebec River in

1608, to carry home a discontented English colony at Stage Island. She was

a two-master of 30 tons burden. The next American vessel recorded was the

Dutch "yacht" "Onrest," built at New York in 1615. Nowadays sailors define

a yacht as a vessel that carries no cargo but food and champagne, but the

"Onrest" was not a yacht of this type. She was of 16 tons burden, and this

small size explains her description.

The first ship built for commercial purposes in New England was "The

Blessing of the Bay," a sturdy little sloop of 60 tons. Fate surely

designed to give a special significance to this venture, for she was owned

by John Winthrop, the first of New England statesmen, and her keel was

laid on the Fourth of July, 1631--a day destined after the lapse of one

hundred and forty-five years to mean much in the world's calendar. Sixty

tons is not an awe-inspiring register. The pleasure yacht of some

millionaire stock-jobber to-day will be ten times that size, while 20,000

tons has come to be an every-day register for an ocean vessel; but our

pleasure-seeking "Corsairs," and our castellated "City of New York" will

never fill so big a place in history as this little sloop, the size of a

river lighter, launched at Mistick, and straightway dispatched to the

trade with the Dutch at New Amsterdam. Long before her time, however, in

1526, the Spanish adventurer, Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, losing on the coast

of Florida a brigantine out of the squadron of three ships which formed

his expedition, built a small craft called a gavarra to replace it.

From that early Fourth of July, for more than two hundred years shipyards

multiplied and prospered along the American coast. The Yankees, with their

racial adaptability, which long made them jacks of all trades and good at

all, combined their shipbuilding with other industries, and to the hurt of

neither. Early in 1632, at Richmond Island, off the coast of Maine, was

built what was probably the first regular packet between England and

America. She carried to the old country lumber, fish, furs, oil, and other

colonial products, and brought back guns, ammunition, and liquor--not a

fortunate exchange. Of course meanwhile English, Dutch, and Spanish ships

were trading to the colonies, and every local essay in shipbuilding meant

competition with old and established ship-yards and ship owners. Yet the

industry throve, not only in the considerable yards established at Boston

and other large towns, but in a small way all along the coast. Special

privileges were extended to ship-builders. They were exempt from military

and other public duties. In 1636 the "Desire," a vessel of 120 tons, was

built at Marblehead, the largest to that time. By 1640 the port records of

European ports begin to show the clearings of American-built vessels.

[Illustration: THE KETCH]

In those days of wooden hulls and tapering masts the forests of New

England were the envy of every European monarch ambitious to develop a

navy. It was a time, too, of greater naval activity than the world had

ever seen--though but trivial in comparison with the present expenditures

of Christian nations for guns and floating steel fortresses. England,

Spain, Holland, and France were struggling for the control of the deep,

and cared little for considerations of humanity, honor, or honesty in the

contest. The tall, straight pines of Maine and New Hampshire were a

precious possession for England in the work of building that fleet whose

sails were yet to whiten the ocean, and whose guns, under Drake and

Rodney, were to destroy successfully the maritime prestige of the Dutch

and the Spaniards. Sometimes a colony, seeking royal favor, would send to

the king a present of these pine timbers, 33 to 35 inches in diameter, and

worth £95 to £115 each. Later the royal mark, the "broad arrow," was put

on all white pines 24 inches in diameter 3 feet from the ground, that they

might be saved for masts. It is, by the way, only about fifteen years

since our own United States Government has disposed of its groves of live

oaks, that for nearly a century were preserved to furnish oaken knees for

navy vessels.

[Illustration: "THE BROAD ARROW WAS PUT ON ALL WHITE PINES 24 INCHES IN

DIAMETER"]

The great number of navigable streams soon led to shipbuilding in the

interior. It was obviously cheaper to build the vessel at the edge of the

forest, where all the material grew ready to hand, and sail the completed

craft to the seaboard, than to first transport the material thither in the

rough. But American resourcefulness before long went even further. As the

forests receded from the banks of the streams before the woodman's axe,

the shipwrights followed. In the depths of the woods, miles perhaps from

water, snows, pinnaces, ketches, and sloops were built. When the heavy

snows of winter had fallen, and the roads were hard and smooth, runners

were laid under the little ships, great teams of oxen--sometimes more than

one hundred yoke--were attached, and the craft dragged down to the river,

to lie there on the ice until the spring thaw came to gently let it down

into its proper element. Many a farmer, too, whose lands sloped down to a

small harbor, or stream, set up by the water side the frame of a vessel,

and worked patiently at it during the winter days when the flinty soil

repelled the plough and farm work was stopped. Stout little craft were

thus put together, and sometimes when the vessel was completed the

farmer-builder took his place at the helm and steered her to the fishing

banks, or took her through Hell Gate to the great and thriving city of New

York. The world has never seen a more amphibious populace.

[Illustration: "THE FARMER-BUILDER TOOK HIS PLACE AT THE HELM"]

The cost of the little vessels of colonial times we learn from old letters

and accounts to have averaged four pounds sterling to the ton. Boston,

Charleston, Salem, Ipswich, Salisbury, and Portsmouth were the chief

building places in Massachusetts; New London in Connecticut, and

Providence in Rhode Island. Vessels of a type not seen to-day made up the

greater part of the New England fleet. The ketch, often referred to in

early annals, was a two-master, sometimes rigged with lanteen sails, but

more often with the foremast square-rigged, like a ship's foremast, and

the mainmast like the mizzen of a modern bark, with a square topsail

surmounting a fore-and-aft mainsail. The foremast was set very much

aft--often nearly amidships. The snow was practically a brig, carrying a

fore-and-aft sail on the mainmast, with a square sail directly above it. A

pink was rigged like a schooner, but without a bowsprit or jib. For the

fisheries a multitude of smaller types were constructed--such as the

lugger, the shallop, the sharpie, the bug-eye, the smack. Some of these

survive to the present day, and in many cases the name has passed into

disuse, while the type itself is now and then to be met with on our

coasts.

The importance of ship-building as a factor in the development of New

England did not rest merely upon the use of ships by the Americans alone.

That was a day when international trade was just beginning to be

understood and pushed, and every people wanted ships to carry their goods

to foreign lands and bring back coveted articles in exchange. The New

England vessel seldom made more than two voyages across the Atlantic

without being snapped up by some purchaser beyond seas. The ordinary

course was for the new craft to load with masts or spars, always in

demand, or with fish; set sail for a promising market, dispose of her

cargo, and take freight for England. There she would be sold, her crew

making their way home in other ships, and her purchase money expended in

articles needed in the colonies. This was the ordinary practice, and with

vessels sold abroad so soon after their completion the shipyards must have

been active to have fitted out, as the records show, a fleet of fully 280

vessels for Massachusetts alone by 1718. Before this time, too, the

American shipwrights had made such progress in the mastery of their craft

that they were building ships for the royal navy. The "Falkland," built at

Portsmouth about 1690, and carrying 54 guns, was the earliest of these,

but after her time corvettes, sloops-of-war, and frigates were launched in

New England yards to fight for the king. It was good preparation for

building those that at a later date should fight against him.

Looking back over the long record of American maritime progress, one

cannot but be impressed with the many and important contributions made by

Americans--native or adopted--to marine architecture. To an American

citizen, John Ericsson, the world owes the screw propeller. Americans sent

the first steamship across the ocean--the "Savannah," in 1819. Americans,

engaged in a fratricidal war, invented the ironclad in the "Monitor" and

the "Merrimac," and, demonstrating the value of iron ships for warfare,

sounded the knell of wooden ships for peaceful trade. An American first

demonstrated the commercial possibilities of the steamboat, and if history

denies to Fulton entire precedence with his "Clermont," in 1807, it may

still be claimed for John Fitch, another American, with his imperfect boat

on the Delaware in 1787. But perhaps none of these inventions had more

homely utility than the New England schooner, which had its birth and its

christening at Gloucester in 1713. The story of its naming is one of the

oldest in our marine folk-lore.

"See how she schoons!" cried a bystander, coining a verb to describe the

swooping slide of the graceful hull down the ways into the placid water.

[Illustration: SCHOONER-RIGGED SHARPIE]

"A schooner let her be!" responded the builder, proud of his handiwork,

and ready to seize the opportunity to confer a novel title upon his novel

creation. Though a combination of old elements, the schooner was in effect

a new design. Barks, ketches, snows, and brigantines carried fore-and-aft

rigs in connection with square sails on either mast, but now for the first

time two masts were rigged fore and aft, and the square sails wholly

discarded. The advantages of the new rig were quickly discovered. Vessels

carrying it were found to sail closer to the wind, were easier to handle

in narrow quarters, and--what in the end proved of prime importance--could

be safely manned by smaller crews. With these advantages the schooner made

its way to the front in the shipping lists. The New England shipyards

began building them, almost to the exclusion of other types. Before their

advance brigs, barks, and even the magnificent full-rigged ship itself

gave way, until now a square-rigged ship is an unusual spectacle on the

ocean. The vitality of the schooner is such that it bids fair to survive

both of the crushing blows dealt to old-fashioned marine architecture--the

substitution of metal for wood, and of steam for sails. To both the

schooner adapted itself. Extending its long, slender hull to carry four,

five, and even seven masts, its builders abandoned the stout oak and pine

for molded iron and later steel plates, and when it appeared that the huge

booms, extending the mighty sails, were difficult for an ordinary crew to

handle, one mast, made like the rest of steel, was transformed into a

smokestack--still bearing sails--a donkey engine was installed in the

hold, and the booms went aloft, or the anchor rose to the peak to the tune

of smoky puffing instead of the rhythmical chanty songs of the sailors. So

the modern schooner, a very leviathan of sailing craft, plows the seas,

electric-lighted, steering by steam, a telephone system connecting all

parts of her hull--everything modern about her except her name. Not as

dignified, graceful, and picturesque as the ship perhaps--but she lasts,

while the ship disappears.

But to return to the colonial shipping. Boston soon became one of the

chief building centers, though indeed wherever men were gathered in a

seashore village ships were built. Winthrop, one of the pioneers in the

industry, writes: "The work was hard to accomplish for want of money,

etc., but our shipwrights were content to take such pay as the country

could make," and indeed in the old account books of the day we can read of

very unusual payments made for labor, as shown, for example, in a contract

for building a ship at Newburyport in 1141, by which the owners were bound

to pay "£300 in cash, £300 by orders on good shops in Boston; two-thirds

money; four hundred pounds by orders up the river for tim'r and plank, ten

bbls. flour, 50 pounds weight of loaf sugar, one bagg of cotton wool, one

hund. bushels of corn in the spring; one hhd. of Rum, one hundred weight

of cheese * * * whole am't of price for vessel £3000 lawful money."

By 1642 they were building good-sized vessels at Boston, and the year

following was launched the first full-rigged ship, the "Trial," which went

to Malaga, and brought back "wine, fruit, oil, linen and wool, which was a

great advantage to the country, and gave encouragement to trade." A year

earlier there set out the modest forerunner of our present wholesale

spring pilgrimages to Europe. A ship set sail for London from Boston "with

many passengers, men of chief rank in the country, and great store of

beaver. Their adventure was very great, considering the doubtful estate of

affairs of England, but many prayers of the churches went with them and

followed after them."

By 1698 Governor Bellomont was able to say of Boston alone, "I believe

there are more good vessels belonging to the town of Boston than to all

Scotland and Ireland." Thereafter the business rapidly developed, until in

a map of about 1730 there are noted sixteen shipyards. Rope walks, too,

sprung up to furnish rigging, and presently for these Boston was a centre.

Another industry, less commendable, grew up in this as in other shipping

centres. Molasses was one of the chief staples brought from the West

Indies, and it came in quantities far in excess of any possible demand

from the colonial sweet tooth. But it could be made into rum, and in those

days rum was held an innocent beverage, dispensed like water at all formal

gatherings, and used as a matter of course in the harvest fields, the

shop, and on the deck at sea. Moreover, it had been found to have a

special value as currency on the west coast of Africa. The negro savages

manifested a more than civilized taste for it, and were ready to sell

their enemies or their friends, their sons, fathers, wives, or daughters

into slavery in exchange for the fiery fluid. So all New England set to

turning the good molasses into fiery rum, and while the slave trade throve

abroad the rum trade prospered at home.

Of course the rapid advance of the colonies in shipbuilding and in

maritime trade was not regarded in England with unqualified pride. The

theory of that day--and one not yet wholly abandoned--was that a colony

was a mine, to be worked for the sole benefit of the mother country. It

was to buy its goods in no other market. It was to use the ships of the

home government alone for its trade across seas. It must not presume to

manufacture for itself articles which merchants at home desired to sell.

England early strove to impress such trade regulations upon the American

colonies, and succeeded in embarrassing and handicapping them seriously,

although evasions of the navigation laws were notorious, and were winked

at by the officers of the crown. The restrictions were sufficiently

burdensome, however, to make the ship-owners and sailors of 1770 among

those most ready and eager for the revolt against the king.

The close of the Revolution found American shipping in a reasonably

prosperous condition. It is true that the peaceful vocation of the seamen

had been interrupted, all access to British ports denied them, and their

voyages to Continental markets had for six years been attended by the

ever-present risk of capture and condemnation. But on the other hand, the

war had opened the way for privateering, and out of the ports of

Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut the privateers swarmed like

swallows from a chimney at dawn. To the adventurous and not

over-scrupulous men who followed it, privateering was a congenial

pursuit--so much so, unhappily, that when the war ended, and a treaty

robbed their calling of its guise of lawfulness, too many of them still

continued it, braving the penalties of piracy for the sake of its gains.

But during the period of the Revolution privateering did the struggling

young nation two services--it sorely harassed the enemy, and it kept alive

the seafaring zeal and skill of the New Englanders.

For a time it seemed that not all this zeal and skill could replace the

maritime interests where they were when the Revolution began. For most

people in the colonies independence meant a broader scope of activity--to

the shipowner and sailor it meant new and serious limitations. England was

still engaged in the effort to monopolize ocean traffic by the operation

of tariffs and navigation laws. New England having become a foreign

nation, her ships were denied admittance to the ports of the British West

Indies, with which for years a nourishing trade had been conducted.

Lumber, corn, fish, live stock, and farm produce had been sent to the

islands, and coffee, sugar, cotton, rum, and indigo brought back. This

commerce, which had come to equal £3,500,000 a year, was shut off by the

British after American independence, despite the protest of Pitt, who saw

clearly that the West Indians would suffer even more than the Americans.

Time showed his wisdom. Terrible sufferings came upon the West Indies for

lack of the supplies they had been accustomed to import, and between 1780

and 1787 as many as 15,000 slaves perished from starvation.

Another cause held the American merchant marine in check for several years

succeeding the declaration of peace. If there be one interest which must

have behind it a well-organized, coherent national government, able to

protect it and to enforce its rights in foreign lands, it is the shipping

interest. But American ships, after the Treaty of Paris, hailed from

thirteen independent but puny States. They had behind them the shadow of a

confederacy, but no substance. The flags they carried were not only not

respected in foreign countries--they were not known. Moreover, the States

were jealous of each other, possessing no true community of interest, and

each seeking advantage at the expense of its neighbors. They were already

beginning to adopt among themselves the very tactics of harassing and

crippling navigation laws which caused the protest against Great Britain.

This "Critical Period of American History," as Professor Fiske calls it,

was indeed a critical period for American shipping.

The new government, formed under the Constitution, was prompt to recognize

the demands of the shipping interests upon the country. In the very first

measure adopted by Congress steps were taken to encourage American

shipping by differential duties levied on goods imported in American and

foreign vessels. Moreover, in the tonnage duties imposed by Congress an

advantage of almost 50 per cent. was given ships built in the United

States and owned abroad. Under this stimulus the shipping interests

throve, despite hostile legislation in England, and the disordered state

of the high seas, where French and British privateers were only a little

less predatory than Algierian corsairs or avowed pirates. It was at this

early day that Yankee skippers began making those long voyages that are

hardly paralleled to-day when steamships hold to a single route like a

trolley car between two towns. The East Indies was a favorite trading

point. Carrying a cargo suited to the needs of perhaps a dozen different

peoples, the vessel would put out from Boston or Newport, put in at

Madeira perhaps, or at some West Indian port, dispose of part of its

cargo, and proceed, stopping again and again on its way, and exchanging

its goods for money or for articles thought to be more salable in the East

Indies. Arrived there, all would be sold, and a cargo of tea, coffee,

silks, spices, nankeen cloth, sugar, and other products of the country

taken on. If these goods did not prove salable at home the ship would make

yet another voyage and dispose of them at Hamburg or some other

Continental port. In 1785 a Baltimore ship showed the Stars and Stripes in

the Canton River, China. In 1788 the ship "Atlantic," of Salem, visited

Bombay and Calcutta. The effect of being barred from British ports was

not, as the British had expected, to put an abrupt end to American

maritime enterprise. It only sent our hardy seamen on longer voyages, only

brought our merchants into touch with the commerce of the most distant

lands. Industry, like men, sometimes thrives upon obstacles.

[Illustration: "AFTER A BRITISH LIEUTENANT HAD PICKED THE BEST OF HER

CREW"]

For twenty-five years succeeding the adoption of the Constitution the

maritime interest--both shipbuilding and shipowning--thrived more,

perhaps, than any other gainful industry pursued by the Americans. Yet it

was a time when every imaginable device was employed to keep our people

out of the ocean-carrying trade. The British regulations, which denied us

access to their ports, were imitated by the French. The Napoleonic wars

came on, and the belligerents bombarded each other with orders in council

and decrees that fell short of their mark, but did havoc among neutral

merchantmen. To the ordinary perils of the deep the danger of

capture--lawful or unlawful--by cruiser or privateer, was always to be

added. The British were still enforcing their so-called "right of search,"

and many an American ship was left short-handed far out at sea, after a

British naval lieutenant had picked the best of her crew on the pretense

that they were British subjects. The superficial differences between an

American and an Englishman not being as great as those between an albino

and a Congo black, it is not surprising that the boarding officer should

occasionally make mistakes--particularly when his ship was in need of

smart, active sailors. Indeed, in those years the civilized--by which at

that period was meant the warlike--nations were all seeking sailors.

Dutch, Spanish, French, and English were eager for men to man their

fighting ships; hired them when they could, and stole them when they must.

It was the time of the press gang, and the day when sailors carried as a

regular part of their kit an outfit of women's clothing in which to escape

if the word were passed that "the press is hot to-night." The United

States had never to resort to impressment to fill its navy ships'

companies, a fact perhaps due chiefly to the small size of its navy in

comparison with the seafaring population it had to draw from.

As for the American merchant marine, it was full of British seamen. Beyond

doubt inducements were offered them at every American port to desert and

ship under the Stars and Stripes. In the winter of 1801 every British ship

visiting New York lost the greater part of its crew. At Norfolk the entire

crew of a British merchantman deserted to an American sloop-of-war. A

lively trade was done in forged papers of American citizenship, and the

British naval officer who gave a boat-load of bluejackets shore leave at

New York was liable to find them all Americans when their leave was up.

Other nations looked covetously upon our great body of able-bodied seamen,

born within sound of the swash of the surf, nurtured in the fisheries,

able to build, to rig, or to navigate a ship. They were fighting sailors,

too, though serving only in the merchant marine. In those days the men

that went down to the sea in ships had to be prepared to fight other

antagonists than Neptune and Æolus. All the ships went armed. It is

curious to read in old annals of the number of cannon carried by small

merchantmen. We find the "Prudent Sarah" mounting 10 guns; the "Olive

Branch," belied her peaceful name with 3, while the pink "Friendship"

carried 8. These years, too, were the privateers' harvest time. During the

Revolution the ships owned by one Newburyport merchant took 23,360 tons of

shipping and 225 men, the prizes with their cargoes selling for

$3,950,000. But of the size and the profits of the privateering business

more will be said in the chapter devoted to that subject. It is enough to

note here that it made the American merchantman essentially a fighting

man.

The growth of American shipping during the years 1794-1810 is almost

incredible in face of the obstacles put in its path by hostile enactments

and the perils of the war. In 1794 United States ships, aggregating

438,863 tons, breasted the waves, carrying fish and staves to the West

Indies, bringing back spices, rum, cocoa, and coffee. Sometimes they went

from the West Indies to the Canaries, and thence to the west coast of

Africa, where very valuable and very pitiful cargoes of human beings,

whose black skins were thought to justify their treatment as dumb beasts

of burden, were shipped. Again the East Indies opened markets for buying

and selling both. But England and almost the whole of Western Europe were

closed.

It is not possible to understand the situation in which the American

sailor and shipowner of that day was placed, without some knowledge of the

navigation laws and belligerent orders by which the trade was vexed. In

1793 the Napoleonic wars began, to continue with slight interruptions

until 1815. France and England were the chief contestants, and between

them American shipping was sorely harried. The French at first seemed to

extend to the enterprising Americans a boon of incalculable value to the

maritime interest, for the National Convention promulgated a decree giving

to neutral ships--practically to American ships, for they were the bulk of

the neutral shipping--the rights of French ships. Overjoyed by this sudden

opening of a rich market long closed, the Yankee barks and brigs slipped

out of the New England harbors in schools, while the shipyards rung with

the blows of the hammers, and the forest resounded with the shouts of the

woodsmen getting out ship-timbers. The ocean pathway to the French West

Indies was flecked with sails, and the harbors of St. Kitts, Guadaloupe,

and Martinique were crowded. But this bustling trade was short-lived. The

argosies that set forth on their peaceful errand were shattered by enemies

more dreaded than wind or sea. Many a ship reached the port eagerly sought

only to rot there; many a merchant was beggared, nor knew what had

befallen his hopeful venture until some belated consular report told of

its condemnation in some French or English admiralty court.

[Illustration: EARLY TYPE OF SMACK]

For England met France's hospitality with a new stroke at American

interests. The trade was not neutral, she said. France had been forced to

her concession by war. Her people were starving because the vigilance of

British cruisers had driven French cruisers from the seas, and no food

could be imported. To permit Americans to purvey food for the French

colonies would clearly be to undo the good work of the British navy.

Obviously food was contraband of war. So all English men-of-war were

ordered to seize French goods on whatever ship found; to confiscate

cargoes of wheat, corn, or fish bound for French ports as contraband, and

particularly to board all American merchantmen and scrutinize the crews

for English-born sailors. The latter injunction was obeyed with peculiar

zeal, so that the State Department had evidence that at one time, in 1806,

there were as many as 6000 American seamen serving unwillingly in the

British navy.

France, meanwhile, sought retaliation upon England at the expense of the

Americans. The United States, said the French government, is a sovereign

nation. If it does not protect its vessels against unwarrantable British

aggressions it is because the Americans are secretly in league with the

British. France recognizes no difference between its foes. So it is

ordered that any American vessel which submitted to visitation and search

from an English vessel, or paid dues in a British port, ceased to be

neutral, and became subject to capture by the French. The effect of these

orders and decrees was simply that any American ship which fell in with an

English or French man-of-war or privateer, or was forced by stress of

weather to seek shelter in an English or French port, was lost to her

owners. The times were rude, evidence was easy to manufacture, captains

were rapacious, admiralty judges were complaisant, and American commerce

was rich prey. The French West Indies fell an easy spoil to the British,

and at Martinique and Basseterre American merchantmen were caught in the

harbor. Their crews were impressed, their cargoes, not yet discharged,

seized, the vessels themselves wantonly destroyed or libelled as prizes.

Nor were passengers exempt from the rigors of search and plunder. The

records of the State Department and the rude newspapers of the time are

full of the complaints of shipowners, passengers, and shipping merchants.

The robbery was prodigious in its amount, the indignity put upon the

nation unspeakable. And yet the least complaint came from those who

suffered most. The New England seaport towns were filled with idle seamen,

their harbors with pinks, schooners, and brigs, lying lazily at anchor.

The sailors, with the philosophy of men long accustomed to submit

themselves to nature's moods and the vagaries of breezes, cursed British

and French impartially, and joined in the general depression and idleness

of the towns and counties dependent on their activity.

It was about this period (1794) that the American navy was begun; though,

curiously enough, its foundation was not the outcome of either British or

French depredations, but of the piracies of the Algerians. That fierce and

predatory people had for long years held the Mediterranean as a sort of a

private lake into which no nation might send its ships without paying

tribute. With singular cowardice, all the European peoples had acquiesced

in this conception save England alone. The English were feared by the

Algerians, and an English pass--which tradition says the illiterate

Corsairs identified by measuring its enscrolled border, instead of by

reading--protected any vessel carrying it. American ships, however, were

peculiarly the prey of the Algerians, and many an American sailor was sold

by them into slavery until Decatur and Rodgers in 1805 thrashed the

piratical states of North Africa into recognition of American power. In

1794, however, the Americans were not eager for war, and diplomats strove

to arrange a treaty which would protect American shipping, while Congress

prudently ordered the beginning of six frigates, work to be stopped if

peace should be made with the Dey. The treaty--not one very honorable to

us--was indeed made some months later, and the frigates long remained

unfinished.

It has been the fashion of late years to sneer at our second war with

England as unnecessary and inconclusive. But no one who studies the

records of the life, industry, and material interests of our people during

the years between the adoption of the Constitution and the outbreak of

that war can fail to wonder that it did not come sooner, and that it was

not a war with France as well as England. For our people were then

essentially a maritime people. Their greatest single manufacturing

industry was ship-building. The fisheries--whale, herring, and

cod--employed thousands of their men and supported more than one

considerable town. The markets for their products lay beyond seas, and for

their commerce an undisputed right to the peaceful passage of the ocean

was necessary. Yet England and France, prosecuting their own quarrel,

fairly ground American shipping as between two millstones. Our sailors

were pressed, our ships seized, their cargoes stolen, under hollow forms

of law. The high seas were treated as though they were the hunting

preserves of these nations and American ships were quail and rabbits. The

London "Naval Chronicle" at that time, and for long after, bore at the

head of its columns the boastful lines:

"The sea and waves are Britain's broad domain,

And not a sail but by permission spreads."

And France, while vigorously denying the maxim in so far as it related to

British domination, was not able to see that the ocean could be no one

nation's domain, but must belong equally to all. It was the time when the

French were eloquently discoursing of the rights of man; but they did not

appear to regard the peaceful navigation of the ocean as one of those

rights; they were preaching of the virtues of the American republic, but

their rulers issued orders and decrees that nearly brought the two

governments to the point of actual war. But the very fact that France and

England were almost equally arrogant and aggressive delayed the formal

declaration of hostilities. Within the United States two political

parties--the Federalists and the Republicans--were struggling for mastery.

The one defended, though half-heartedly, the British, and demanded drastic

action against the French spoliators. The other denounced British

insolence and extolled our ancient allies and brothers in republicanism,

the French. While the politicians quarreled the British stole our sailors

and the French stole our ships. In 1798 our, then infant, navy gave bold

resistance to the French ships, and for a time a quasi-war was waged on

the ocean, in which the frigates "Constitution" and "Constellation" laid

the foundation for that fame which they were to finally achieve in the war

with Great Britain in 1812. No actual war with France grew out of her

aggressions. The Republicans came into power in the United States, and by

diplomacy averted an actual conflict. But the American shipping interests

suffered sadly meanwhile. The money finally paid by France as indemnity

for her unwarranted spoliations lay long undivided in the United States

Treasury, and the easy-going labor of urging and adjudicating French

spoliation claims furnished employment to some generations of politicians

after the despoiled seamen and shipowners had gone down into their graves.

In 1800 the whole number of American ships in foreign and coasting trades

and the fisheries had reached a tonnage of 972,492. The growth was

constant, despite the handicap resulting from the European wars. Indeed,

it is probable that those wars stimulated American shipping more than the

restrictive decrees growing out of them retarded it, for they at least

kept England and France (with her allies) out of the active encouragement

of maritime enterprise. But the vessels of that day were mere pigmies, and

the extent of the trade carried on in them would at this time seem

trifling. The gross exports and imports of the United States in 1800 were

about $75,000,000 each. The vessels that carried them were of about 250

tons each, the largest attaining 400 tons. An irregular traffic was

carried on along the coast, and it was 1801 before the first sloop was

built to ply regularly on the Hudson between New York and Albany. She was

of 100 tons, and carried passengers only. Sometimes the trip occupied a

week, and the owner of the sloop established an innovation by supplying

beds, provisions, and wines for his passengers. Between Boston and New

York communication was still irregular, passengers waiting for cargoes.

But small as this maritime interest now seems, more money was invested in

it, and it occupied more men, than any other American industry, save only

agriculture.

To this period belong such shipowners as William Gray, of Boston, who in

1809, though he had sixty great square-rigged ships in commission,

nevertheless heartily approved of the embargo with which President

Jefferson vainly strove to combat the outrages of France and England.

Though the commerce of those days was world-wide, its methods--particularly

on the bookkeeping side--were primitive. "A good captain," said

Merchant Gray, "will sail with a load of fish to the West

Indies, hang up a stocking in the cabin on arriving, put therein hard

dollars as he sells fish, and pay out when he buys rum, molasses, and

sugar, and hand in the stocking on his return in full of all accounts."

The West Indies, though a neighboring market, were far from monopolizing

the attention of the New England shipping merchants. Ginseng and cash were

sent to China for silks and tea, the voyage each way, around the

tempestuous Horn, occupying six months. In 1785 the publication of the

journals of the renowned explorer, Captain Cook, directed the ever-alert

minds of the New Englanders to the great herds of seal and sea-otters on

the northwestern coast of the United States, and vessels were soon faring

thither in pursuit of fur-bearing animals, then plentiful, but now bidding

fair to become as rare as the sperm-whale. A typical expedition of this

sort was that of the ship "Columbia," Captain Kendrick, and the sloop

"Washington," Captain Gray, which sailed September 30, 1787, bound to the

northwest coast and China. The merchant who saw his ships drop down the

bay bound on such a voyage said farewell to them for a long time--perhaps

forever. Years must pass before he could know whether the money he had

invested, the cargo he had adventured, the stout ships he had dispatched,

were to add to his fortune or to be at last a total loss. Perhaps for

months he might be going about the wharves and coffee-houses, esteeming

himself a man of substance and so held by all his neighbors, while in fact

his all lay whitening in the surf on some far-distant Pacific atoll. So it

was almost three years before news came back to Boston of these two ships;

but then it was glorious, for then the "Federalist," of New York, came

into port, bringing tidings that at Canton she had met the "Columbia," and

had been told of the discovery by that vessel of the great river in Oregon

to which her name had been given. Thus Oregon and Washington were given to

the infant Union, the latter perhaps taking its name from the little sloop

of 90 tons which accompanied the "Columbia" on her voyage. Six months

later the two vessels reached Boston, and were greeted with salutes of

cannon from the forts. They were the first American vessels to

circumnavigate the globe. It is pleasant to note that a voyage which was

so full of advantage to the nation was profitable to the owners.

Thereafter an active trade was done with miscellaneous goods to the

northwest Indians, skins and furs thence to the Chinese, and teas home. A

typical outbound cargo in this trade was that of the "Atakualpa" in 1800.

The vessel was of 218 tons, mounted eight guns, and was freighted with

broadcloth, flannel, blankets, powder, muskets, watches, tools, beads, and

looking-glasses. How great were the proportions that this trade speedily

assumed may be judged from the fact that between June, 1800, and January,

1803, there were imported into China, in American vessels, 34,357

sea-otter skins worth on an average $18 to $20 each. Over a million

sealskins were imported. In this trade were employed 80 ships and 9 brigs

and schooners, more than half of them from Boston.

[Illustration: THE SNOW, AN OBSOLETE TYPE]

Indeed, by the last decade of the eighteenth century Boston had become the

chief shipping port of the United States. In 1790 the arrivals from abroad

at that port were 60 ships, 7 snows, 159 brigs, 170 schooners, 59 sloops,

besides coasters estimated to number 1,220 sail. In the _Independent

Chronicle_, of October 27, 1791, appears the item: "Upwards of seventy

sail of vessels sailed from this port on Monday last, for all parts of the

world." A descriptive sketch, written in 1794 and printed in the

Massachusetts Historical Society collections, says of the appearance of

the water front at that time:

"There are eighty wharves and quays, chiefly on the east side of the town.

Of these the most distinguished is Boston pier, or the Long Wharf, which

extends from the bottom of State Street 1,743 feet into the harbor. Here

the principal navigation of the town is carried on; vessels of all burdens

load and unload; and the London ships generally discharge their

cargoes.... The harbor of Boston is at this date crowded with vessels. It

is reckoned that not less than 450 sail of ships, brigs, schooners,

sloops, and small craft are now in this port."

New York and Baltimore, in a large way; Salem, Hull, Portsmouth, New

London, New Bedford, New Haven, and a host of smaller seaports, in a

lesser degree, joined in this prosperous industry. It was the great

interest of the United States, and so continued, though with

interruptions, for more than half a century, influencing the thought, the

legislation, and the literature of our people. When Daniel Webster,

himself a son of a seafaring State, sought to awaken his countrymen to the

peril into which the nation was drifting through sectional dissensions and

avowed antagonism to the national authority, he chose as the opening

metaphor of his reply to Hayne the description of a ship, drifting

rudderless and helpless on the trackless ocean, exposed to perils both

known and unknown. The orator knew his audience. To all New England the

picture had the vivacity of life. The metaphors of the sea were on every

tongue. The story is a familiar one of the Boston clergyman who, in one of

his discourses, described a poor, sinful soul drifting toward shipwreck so

vividly that a sailor in the audience, carried away by the preacher's

imaginative skill, cried out: "Let go your best bower anchor, or you're

lost." In another church, which had its pulpit set at the side instead of

at the end, as customary, a sailor remarked critically: "I don't like this

craft; it has its rudder amidships."

At this time, and, indeed, for perhaps fifty years thereafter, the sea was

a favorite career, not only for American boys with their way to make in

the world, but for the sons of wealthy men as well. That classic of New

England seamanship, "Two Years Before the Mast," was not written until the

middle of the nineteenth century, and its author went to sea, not in

search of wealth, but of health. But before the time of Richard Henry

Dana, many a young man of good family and education--a Harvard graduate

like him, perhaps--bade farewell to a home of comfort and refinement and

made his berth in a smoky, fetid forecastle to learn the sailor's calling.

The sons of the great shipping merchants almost invariably made a few

voyages--oftenest as supercargoes, perhaps, but not infrequently as common

seamen. In time special quarters, midway between the cabin and the

forecastle, were provided for these apprentices, who were known as the

"ship's cousins." They did the work of the seamen before the mast, but

were regarded as brevet officers. There was at that time less to engage

the activities and arouse the ambitions of youth than now, and the sea

offered the most promising career. Moreover, the trading methods involved,

and the relations of the captain or other officers to the owners, were

such as to spur ambition and promise profit. The merchant was then

greatly dependent on his captain, who must judge markets, buy and sell,

and shape his course without direction from home. So the custom arose of

giving the captain--and sometimes other officers--an opportunity to carry

goods of their own in the ship, or to share the owner's adventure. In the

whaling and fishery business we shall see that an almost pure communism

prevailed. These conditions attracted to the maritime calling men of an

enterprising and ambitious nature--men to whom the conditions to-day of

mere wage servitude, fixed routes, and constant dependence upon the cabled

or telegraphed orders of the owner would be intolerable. Profits were

heavy, and the men who earned them were afforded opportunities to share

them. Ships were multiplying fast, and no really lively and alert seaman

need stay long in the forecastle. Often they became full-fledged captains

and part owners at the age of twenty-one, or even earlier, for boys went

to sea at ages when the youngsters of equally prosperous families in these

days would scarcely have passed from the care of a nurse to that of a

tutor. Thomas T. Forbes, for example, shipped before the mast at the age

of thirteen; was commander of the "Levant" at twenty; and was lost in the

Canton River before he was thirty. He was of a family great in the history

of New England shipping for a hundred years. Nathaniel Silsbee, afterwards

United States Senator from Massachusetts, was master of a ship in the East

India trade before he was twenty-one; while John P. Cushing at the age of

sixteen was the sole--and highly successful--representative in China of a

large Boston house. William Sturges, afterwards the head of a great

world-wide trading house, shipped at seventeen, was a captain and manager

in the China trade at nineteen, and at twenty-nine left the quarter-deck

with a competence to establish his firm, which at one time controlled half

the trade between the United States and China. A score of such successes

might be recounted.

But the fee which these Yankee boys paid for introduction into their

calling was a heavy one. Dana's description of life in the forecastle,

written in 1840, holds good for the conditions prevailing for forty years

before and forty after he penned it. The greeting which his captain gave

to the crew of the brig "Pilgrim" was repeated, with little variation, on

a thousand quarter-decks:

"Now, my men, we have begun a long voyage. If we get along well together

we shall have a comfortable time; if we don't, we shall hay hell afloat.

All you have to do is to obey your orders and do your duty like men--then

you will fare well enough; if you don't, you will fare hard enough, I can

tell you. If we pull together you will find me a clever fellow; if we

don't, you will find me a bloody rascal. That's all I've got to say. Go

below the larboard watch."

But the note of roughness and blackguardism was not always sounded on

American ships. We find, in looking over old memoirs, that more than one

vessel was known as a "religious ship"--though, indeed, the very fact that

few were thus noted speaks volumes for the paganism of the mass. But the

shipowners of Puritan New England not infrequently laid stress on the

moral character of the men shipped. Nathaniel Ames, a Harvard graduate who

shipped before the mast, records that on his first vessel men seeking

berths even in the forecastle were ordered to bring certificates of good

character from the clergyman whose church they had last attended. Beyond

doubt, however, this was a most unusual requirement. More often the

majority of the crew were rough, illiterate fellows, often enticed into

shipping while under the influence of liquor, and almost always coming

aboard at the last moment, much the worse for long debauches. The men of a

better sort who occasionally found themselves unluckily shipped with such

a crew, have left on record many curious stories of the way in which

sailors, utterly unable to walk on shore or on deck for intoxication,

would, at the word of command, spring into the rigging, clamber up the

shrouds, shake out reefs, and perform the most difficult duties aloft.

[Illustration: THE BUG-EYE]

Most of the things which go to make the sailor's lot at least tolerable

nowadays, were at that time unknown. A smoky lamp swung on gimbals

half-lighted the forecastle--an apartment which, in a craft of scant 400

tons, did not afford commodious quarters for a crew of perhaps a score,

with their sea chests and bags. The condition of the fetid hole at the

beginning of the voyage, with four or five apprentices or green hands

deathly sick, the hardened seamen puffing out clouds of tobacco smoke, and

perhaps all redolent of rum, was enough to disenchant the most ardent

lover of the sea. The food, bad enough in all ages of seafaring, was, in

the early days of our merchant marine, too often barely fit to keep life

in men's bodies. The unceasing round of salt pork, stale beef, "duff,"

"lobscouse," doubtful coffee sweetened with molasses, and water, stale,

lukewarm, and tasting vilely of the hogshead in which it had been stored,

required sturdy appetites to make it even tolerable. Even in later days

Frank T. Bullen was able to write: "I have often seen the men break up a

couple of biscuits into a pot of coffee for their breakfast, and after

letting it stand a minute or two, skim off the accumulated scum of vermin

from the top--maggots, weevils, etc--to the extent of a couple of

tablespoonsful, before they could shovel the mess into their craving

stomachs."

It may be justly doubted whether history has ever known a race of men so

hardy, so self-reliant, so adaptable to the most complex situations, so

determined to compel success, and so resigned in the presence of

inevitable failure, as the early American sea captains. Their lives were

spent in a ceaseless conflict with the forces of nature and of men. They

had to deal with a mutinous crew one day and with a typhoon the next. If

by skillful seamanship a piratical schooner was avoided in the reaches of

the Spanish Main, the resources of diplomacy would be taxed the next day

to persuade some English or French colonial governor not to seize the

cargo that had escaped the pirates. The captain must be a seaman, a

sea-soldier, a sea-lawyer, and a sea-merchant, shut off from his

principals by space which no electric current then annihilated. He must

study markets, sell his cargo at the most profitable point, buy what his

prophetic vision suggested would sell profitably, and sell half a dozen

intermediate cargoes before returning, and even dispose of the vessel

herself, if gain would result. His experience was almost as much

commercial as nautical, and many of the shipping merchants who formed the

aristocracy of old New York and Boston, mounted from the forecastle to the

cabin, thence to the counting-room.

In a paper on the maritime trade of Salem, the Rev. George Bachelor tells

of the conditions of this early seafaring, the sort of men engaged in it,

and the stimulus it offered to all their faculties:

"After a century of comparative quiet, the citizens of the

little town were suddenly dispersed to every part of the

Oriental world, and to every nook of barbarism which had a

market and a shore. The borders of the commercial world received

sudden enlargement, and the boundaries of the intellectual world

underwent similar expansion. The reward of enterprise might be

the discovery of an island in which wild pepper enough to load a

ship might be had almost for the asking, or of forests where

precious gems had no commercial value, or spice islands

unvisited and unvexed by civilization. Every ship-master and

every mariner returning on a richly loaded ship was the

custodian of valuable information. In those days crews were made

up of Salem boys, every one of whom expected to become an East

Indian merchant. When a captain was asked at Manila how he

contrived to find his way in the teeth of a northeast monsoon by

mere dead reckoning, he replied that he had a crew of twelve

men, any one of whom could take and work a lunar observation as

well, for all practical purposes, as Sir Isaac Newton himself.

"When, in 1816, George Coggeshall coasted the Mediterranean in

the 'Cleopatra's Barge,' a magnificent yacht of 197 tons, which

excited the wonder even of the Genoese, the black cook, who had

once sailed with Bowditch, was found to be as competent to keep

a ship's reckoning as any of the officers.

"Rival merchants sometimes drove the work of preparation night

and day, when virgin markets had favors to be won, and ships

which set out for unknown ports were watched when they slipped

their cables and sailed away by night, and dogged for months on

the high seas, in the hopes of discovering a secret, well kept

by the owner and crew. Every man on board was allowed a certain

space for his own little venture. People in other pursuits, not

excepting the owner's minister, entrusted their savings to the

supercargo, and watched eagerly the result of their adventure.

This great mental activity, the profuse stores of knowledge

brought by every ship's crew, and distributed, together with

India shawls, blue china, and unheard-of curiosities from every

savage shore, gave the community a rare alertness of intellect."

The spirit in which young fellows, scarcely attained to years of maturity,

met and overcame the dangers of the deep is vividly depicted in Captain

George Coggeshall's narrative of his first face-to-face encounter with

death. He was in the schooner "Industry," off the Island of Teneriffe,

during a heavy gale.

"Captain K. told me I had better go below, and that he would keep an

outlook and take a little tea biscuit on deck. I had entered the cabin,

when I felt a terrible shock. I ran to the companion-way, when I saw a

ship athwart our bows. At that moment our foremast went by the board,

carrying with it our main topmast. In an instant the two vessels

separated, and we were left a perfect wreck. The ship showed a light for a

few moments and then disappeared, leaving us to our fate. When we came to

examine our situation, we found our bowsprit gone close to the

knight-heads." An investigation showed that the collision had left the

"Industry" in a grievous state, while the gale, ever increasing, blew

directly on shore. But the sailors fought sturdily for life. "To retard

the schooner's drift, we kept the wreck of the foremast, bowsprit, sails,

spars, etc., fast by the bowsprit shrouds and other ropes, so that we

drifted to leeward but about two miles the hour. To secure the mainmast

was now the first object. I therefore took with me one of the best of the

crew, and carried the end of a rope cable with us up to the mainmast

head, and clenched it round the mast, while it was badly springing. We

then took the cable to the windlass and hove taut, and thus effectually

secured the mast.... We were then drifting directly on shore, where the

cliffs were rocky, abrupt, and almost perpendicular, and were perhaps

almost 1,000 feet high. At each blast of lightning we could see the surf

break, whilst we heard the awful roar of the sea dashing and breaking

against the rocks and caverns of this iron-bound island.

[Illustration: A "PINK"]

"When I went below I found the captain in the act of going to bed; and as

near as I can recollect, the following dialogue took place:

"'Well, Captain K., what shall we do next? We have now about six hours to

pass before daylight; and, according to my calculation, we have only about

three hours more drift. Still, before that time there may, perhaps, be

some favorable change.'

"He replied: 'Mr. C., we have done all we can, and can do nothing more. I

am resigned to my fate, and think nothing can save us.'

"I replied: 'Perhaps you are right; still, I am resolved to struggle to

the last. I am too young to die; I am only twenty-one years of age, and

have a widowed mother, three brothers, and a sister looking to me for

support and sympathy. No, sir, I will struggle and persevere to the last.'

"'Ah,' said he, 'what can you do? Our boat will not live five minutes in

the surf, and you have no other resource.'

"'I will take the boat,' said I, 'and when she fills I will cling to a

spar. I will not die until my strength is exhausted and I can breathe no

longer.' Here the conversation ended, when the captain covered his head

with a blanket. I then wrote the substance of our misfortune in the

log-book, and also a letter to my mother; rolled them up in a piece of

tarred canvas; and, assisted by the carpenter, put the package into a

tight keg, thinking that this might probably be thrown on shore, and thus

our friends might perhaps know of our end."

Men who face Death thus sturdily are apt to overcome him. The gale

lessened, the ship was patched up, the craven captain resumed command, and

in two weeks' time the "Industry" sailed, sorely battered, into Santa

Cruz, to find that she had been given up as lost, and her officers and

crew "were looked upon as so many men risen from the dead." Young

Coggeshall lived to follow the sea until gray-haired and weather-beaten,

to die in his bed at last, and to tell the story of his eighty voyages in

two volumes of memoirs, now growing very rare. Before he was sixteen he

had made the voyage to Cadiz--a port now moldering, but which once was one

of the great portals for the commerce of the world. In his second voyage,

while lying in the harbor of Gibraltar, he witnessed one of the almost

every-day dangers to which American sailors of that time were exposed:

"While we were lying in this port, one morning at daylight we

heard firing at a distance. I took a spy-glass, and from aloft

could clearly see three gunboats engaged with a large ship. It

was a fine, clear morning, with scarcely wind enough to ruffle

the glass-like surface of the water. During the first hour or

two of this engagement the gunboats had an immense advantage;

being propelled both by sails and oars, they were enabled to

choose their own position. While the ship lay becalmed and

unmanageable they poured grape and canister shot into her stern

and bows like hailstones. At this time the ship's crew could not

bring a single gun to bear upon them, and all they could do was

to use their small arms through the ports and over the rails.

Fortunately for the crew, the ship had thick and high bulwarks,

which protected them from the fire of the enemy, so that while

they were hid and screened by the boarding cloths, they could

use their small arms to great advantage. At this stage of the

action, while the captain, with his speaking-trumpet under his

left arm, was endeavoring to bring one of his big guns to bear

on one of the gunboats, a grapeshot passed through the port and

trumpet and entered his chest near his shoulder-blade. The chief

mate carried him below and laid him upon a mattress on the cabin

floor. For a moment it seemed to dampen the ardor of the men;

but it was but for an instant. The chief mate (I think his name

was Randall), a gallant young man from Nantucket, then took the

command, rallied, and encouraged the men to continue the action

with renewed obstinacy and vigor. At this time a lateen-rigged

vessel, the largest of the three privateers, was preparing to

make a desperate attempt to board the ship on the larboard

quarter, and, with nearly all his men on the forecastle and long

bowsprit, were ready to take the final leap.

"In order to meet and frustrate the design of the enemy, the

mate of the ship had one of the quarter-deck guns loaded with

grape and canister shot; he then ordered all the ports on this

quarter to be shut, so that the gun could not be seen; and thus

were both parties prepared when the privateer came boldly up

within a few yards of the ship's lee quarter. The captain, with

a threatening flourish of his sword, cried out with a loud

voice, in broken English: 'Strike, you damned rascal, or I will

put you all to death.' At this moment a diminutive-looking man

on board the 'Louisa,' with a musket, took deliberate aim

through one of the waist ports, and shot him dead. Instantly the

gun was run out and discharged upon the foe with deadly effect,

so that the remaining few on board the privateer, amazed and

astounded, were glad to give up the conflict and get off the

best way they could.

"Soon after this a breeze sprung up, so that they could work

their great guns to some purpose. I never shall forget the

moment when I saw the Star-Spangled Banner blow out and wave

gracefully in the wind, through the smoke. I also at the same

moment saw with pleasure the three gunboats sailing and rowing

away toward the land to make their escape. When the ship drew

near the port, all the boats from the American shipping

voluntarily went to assist in bringing her to anchor. She proved

to be the letter-of-marque ship 'Louisa,' of Philadelphia.

"I went with our captain on board of her, and we there learned

that, with the exception of the captain, not a man had been

killed or wounded. The ship was terribly cut up and crippled in

her sails and rigging--lifts and braces shot away; her stern was

literally riddled like a grater, and both large and small shot,

in great numbers, had entered her hull and were sticking to her

sides. How the officers and crew escaped unhurt is almost

impossible to conceive. The poor captain was immediately taken

on shore, but only survived his wound a few days. He had a

public funeral, and was followed to the grave by all the

Americans in Gibraltar, and very many of the officers of the

garrison and inhabitants of the town.

[Illustration: "INSTANTLY THE GUN WAS RUN OUT AND DISCHARGED"]

"The ship had a rich cargo of coffee, sugar, and India goods on

board, and I believe was bound for Leghorn. The gunboats

belonged to Algeciras and fought under French colors, but were

probably manned by the debased of all nations. I can form no

idea how many were killed or wounded on board the gunboats, but

from the great number of men on board, and from the length of

the action, there must have been great slaughter. Neither can I

say positively how long the engagement lasted; but I should

think at least from three to four hours. To the chief mate too

much credit can not be given for saving the ship after the

captain was shot."

This action occurred in 1800, and the assailants fought under French

colors, though the United States were at peace with France. It was fought

within easy eyesight of Gibraltar, and therefore in British waters; but no

effort was made by the British men-of-war--always plentiful there--to

maintain the neutrality of the port. For sailors to be robbed or murdered,

or to fight with desperation to avert robbery and murder, was then only a

commonplace of the sea. Men from the safety of the adjoining shore only

looked on in calm curiosity, as nowadays men look on indifferently to see

the powerful freebooter of the not less troubled business sea rob,

impoverish, and perhaps drive down to untimely death others who only ask

to be permitted to make their little voyages unvexed by corsairs.

From a little book of memoirs of Captain Richard J. Cleveland, the curious

observer can learn what it was to belong to a seafaring family in the

golden days of American shipping. His was a Salem stock. His father, in

1756, when but sixteen years old, was captured by a British press-gang in

the streets of Boston, and served for years in the British navy. For this

compulsory servitude he exacted full compensation in later years by

building and commanding divers privateers to prey upon the commerce of

England. His three sons all became sailors, taking to the water like young

ducks. A characteristic note of the cosmopolitanism of the young New

Englander of that day is sounded in the most matter-of-fact fashion by

young Cleveland in a letter from Havre: "I can't help loving home, though

I think a young man ought to be at home in any part of the globe." And at

home everywhere Captain Cleveland certainly was. All his life was spent in

wandering over the Seven Seas, in ships of every size, from a 25-ton

cutter to a 400-ton Indiaman. In those days of navigation laws, blockades,

hostile cruisers, hungry privateers, and bloodthirsty pirates, the smaller

craft was often the better, for it was wiser to brave nature's moods in a

cockle-shell than to attract men's notice in a great ship. Captain

Cleveland's voyages from Havre to the Cape of Good Hope, in a 45-ton

cutter; from Calcutta to the Isle of France, in a 25-ton sloop; and

Captain Coggeshall's voyage around Cape Horn in an unseaworthy pilot-boat

are typical exploits of Yankee seamanship. We see the same spirit

manifested occasionally nowadays when some New Englander crosses the ocean

in a dory, or circumnavigates the world alone in a 30-foot sloop. But

these adventures are apt to end ignominiously in a dime museum.

A noted sailor in his time was Captain Benjamin I. Trask, master of many

ships, ruler of many deeps, who died in harness in 1871, and for whom the

flags on the shipping in New York Bay were set at half-mast. An

appreciative writer, Mr. George W. Sheldon, in _Harper's Magazine_, tells

this story to show what manner of man he was; it was on the ship

"Saratoga," from Havre to New York, with a crew among whom were several

recently liberated French convicts:

"The first day out the new crew were very troublesome, owing in

part, doubtless, to the absence of the mate, who was ill in bed

and who died after a few hours. Suddenly the second mate, son of

the commander, heard his father call out, 'Take hold of the

wheel,' and going forward, saw him holding a sailor at arm's

length. The mutineer was soon lodged in the cockpit; but all

hands--the watch below and the watch on deck--came aft as if

obeying a signal, with threatening faces and clenched fists. The

captain, methodical and cool, ordered his son to run a line

across the deck between him and the rebellious crew, and to arm

the steward and the third mate.

"'Now go forward and get to work', he said to the gang, who

immediately made a demonstration to break the line. 'The first

man who passes that rope,' added the captain, 'I will shoot. I

am going to call you one by one; if two come at a time I will

shoot both.'

"The first to come forward was a big fellow in a red shirt. He

had hesitated to advance when called; but the 'I will give you

one more invitation, sir,' of the captain furnished him with the

requisite resolution. So large were his wrists that ordinary

shackles were too small to go around them, and ankle-shackles

took their place. Escorted by the second and third mates to the

cabin, he was made to lie flat on his stomach, while staples

were driven through the chains of his handcuffs to pin him down.

After eighteen of the mutineers had been similarly treated, the

captain himself withdrew to the cabin and lay on a sofa, telling

the second mate to call him in an hour. The next minute he was

asleep with the stapled ruffians all around him."

As the ocean routes became more clearly defined, and the limitations and

character of international trade more systematized, there sprung up a new

type of American ship-master. The older type--and the more romantic--was

the man who took his ship from Boston or New York, not knowing how many

ports he might enter nor in how many markets he might have to chaffer

before his return. But in time there came to be regular trade routes, over

which ships went and came with almost the regularity of the great

steamships on the Atlantic ferry to-day. Early in the nineteenth century

the movement of both freight and passengers between New York or Boston on

this side and London and Liverpool on the other began to demand regular

sailings on announced days, and so the era of the American packet-ship

began. Then, too, the trade with China grew to such great proportions that

some of the finest fortunes America knew in the days before the "trust

magnate" and the "multimillionaire"--were founded upon it. The

clipper-built ship, designed to bring home the cargoes of tea in season to

catch the early market, was the outcome of this trade. Adventures were

still for the old-time trading captain who wandered about from port to

port with miscellaneous cargoes; but the new aristocracy of the sea trod

the deck of the packets and the clippers. Their ships were built all along

the New England coast; but builders on the shores of Chesapeake Bay soon

began to struggle for preëminence in this style of naval architecture.

Thus, even in the days of wooden ships, the center of the ship-building

industry began to move toward that point where it now seems definitely

located. By 1815 the name "Baltimore clipper" was taken all over the world

to signify the highest type of merchant vessel that man's skill could

design. It was a Baltimore ship which first, in 1785, displayed the

American flag in the Canton River and brought thence the first cargo of

silks and teas. Thereafter, until the decline of American shipping, the

Baltimore clippers led in the Chinese trade. These clippers in model were

the outcome of forty years of effort to evade hostile cruisers,

privateers, and pirates on the lawless seas. To be swift, inconspicuous,

quick in maneuvering, and to offer a small target to the guns of the

enemy, were the fundamental considerations involved in their design. Mr.

Henry Hall, who, as special agent for the United States census, made in

1880 an inquiry into the history of ship-building in the United States,

says in his report:

"A permanent impression has been made upon the form and rig of

American vessels by forty years of war and interference. It was

during that period that the shapes and fashions that prevail

to-day were substantially attained. The old high poop-decks and

quarter galleries disappeared with the lateen and the lug-sails

on brigs, barks, and ships; the sharp stem was permanently

abandoned; the curving home of the stem above the house poles

went out of vogue, and vessels became longer in proportion to

beam. The round bottoms were much in use, but the tendency

toward a straight rise of the floor from the keel to a point

half-way to the outer width of the ship became marked and

popular. Hollow water-lines fore and aft were introduced; the

forefoot of the hull ceased to be cut away so much, and the

swell of the sides became less marked; the bows became somewhat

sharper and were often made flaring above the water, and the

square sprit-sail below the bowsprit was given up. American

ship-builders had not yet learned to give their vessels much

sheer, however, and in a majority of them the sheer line was

almost straight from stem to stern; nor had they learned to

divide the topsail into an upper and lower sail, and American

vessels were distinguished by their short lower mast and the

immense hoist of the topsail. The broadest beam was still at

two-fifths the length of the hull. Hemp rigging, with broad

channels and immense tops to the masts, was still retained; but

the general arrangement and cut of the head, stay, square, and

spanker sails at present in fashion were reached. The schooner

rig had also become thoroughly popularized, especially for small

vessels requiring speed; and the fast vessels of the day were

the brigs and schooners, which were made long and sharp on the

floor and low in the water, with considerable rake to the

masts."

Such is the technical description of the changes which years of peril and

of war wrought in the model of the American sailing ship. How the vessel

herself, under full sail, looked when seen through the eyes of one who was

a sailor, with the education of a writer and the temperament of a poet, is

well told in these lines from "Two Years Before the Mast":

"Notwithstanding all that has been said about the beauty of a

ship under full sail, there are very few who have ever seen a

ship literally under all her sail. A ship never has all her sail

upon her except when she has a light, steady breeze very nearly,

but not quite, dead aft, and so regular that it can be trusted

and is likely to last for some time. Then, with all her sails,

light and heavy, and studding-sails on each side alow and aloft,

she is the most glorious moving object in the world. Such a

sight very few, even some who have been at sea a good deal, have

ever beheld; for from the deck of your own vessel you can not

see her as you would a separate object.

"One night, while we were in the tropics, I went out to the end

of the flying jib-boom upon some duty; and, having finished it,

turned around and lay over the boom for a long time, admiring

the beauty of the sight before me. Being so far out from the

deck, I could look at the ship as at a separate vessel; and

there rose up from the water, supported only by the small black

hull, a pyramid of canvas spreading far out beyond the hull and

towering up almost, as it seemed in the indistinct night, into

the clouds. The sea was as still as an inland lake; the light

trade-wind was gently and steadily breathing from astern; the

dark-blue sky was studded with the tropical stars; there was no

sound but the rippling of the water under the stem; and the

sails were spread out wide and high--the two lower

studding-sails stretching on either side far beyond the deck;

the topmost studding-sails like wings to the topsails; the

topgallant studding-sails spreading fearlessly out above them;

still higher the two royal studding-sails, looking like two

kites flying from the same string; and highest of all the little

sky-sail, the apex of the pyramid, seeming actually to touch the

stars and to be out of reach of human hand. So quiet, too, was

the sea, and so steady the breeze, that if these sails had been

sculptured marble they could not have been more motionless--not

a ripple on the surface of the canvas; not even a quivering of

the extreme edges of the sail, so perfectly were they distended

by the breeze. I was so lost in the sight that I forgot the

presence of the man who came out with me, until he said (for he,

too, rough old man-of-war's man that he was, had been gazing at

the show), half to himself, still looking at the marble sails:

'How quietly they do their work!'"

The building of packet ships began in 1814, when some semblance of peace

and order appeared upon the ocean, and continued until almost the time of

the Civil War, when steamships had already begun to cut away the business

of the old packets, and the Confederate cruisers were not needed to

complete the work. But in their day these were grand examples of marine

architecture. The first of the American transatlantic lines was the Black

Ball line, so called from the black sphere on the white pennant which its

ships displayed. This line was founded in 1815, by Isaac Wright & Company,

with four ships sailing the first of every month, and making the outward

run in about twenty-three days, the homeward voyage in about forty. These

records were often beaten by ships of this and other lines. From thirteen

to fifteen days to Liverpool was not an unknown record, but was rare

enough to cause comment.

It was in this era that the increase in the size of ships began--an

increase which is still going on without any sign of check. Before the War

of 1812 men circumnavigated the world in vessels that would look small now

carrying brick on the Tappan Zee. The performances of our frigates in 1812

first called the attention of builders to the possibilities of the bigger

ship. The early packets were ships of from 400 to 500 tons each. As

business grew larger ones were built--stout ships of 900 to 1100 tons,

double-decked, with a poop-deck aft and a top-gallant forecastle forward.

The first three-decker was the "Guy Mannering," 1419 tons, built in 1849

by William H. Webb, of New York, who later founded the college and home

for ship-builders that stands on the wooded hills north of the Harlem

River. In 1841, Clark & Sewall, of Bath, Me.--an historic house--built the

"Rappahannock," 179.6 feet long, with a tonnage of 1133 tons. For a time

she was thought to be as much of a "white elephant" as the "Great Eastern"

afterwards proved to be. People flocked to study her lines on the ways and

see her launched. They said only a Rothschild could afford to own her, and

indeed when she appeared in the Mississippi--being built for the cotton

trade--freights to Liverpool instantly fell off. But thereafter the size

of ships--both packet and clippers--steadily and rapidly increased.

Glancing down the long table of ships and their records prepared for the

United States census, we find such notations as these.

Ship "Flying Cloud," built 1851; tonnage 1782; 374 miles in one day; from

New York to San Francisco in 89 days 18 hours; in one day she made 433-1/2

miles, but reducing this to exactly 24 hours, she made 427-1/2 miles.

Ship "Comet," built 1851; tonnage 1836; beautiful model and good ship;

made 332 knots in 24 hours, and 1512 knots in 120 consecutive hours.

"Sovereign of the Seas," built 1852; tonnage 2421; ran 6,245 miles in 22

days; 436 miles in one day; for four days her average was 398 miles.

"Lightning," built 1854; tonnage 2084; ran 436 miles in 24 hours, drawing

22 feet; from England to Calcutta with troops, in 87 days, beating other

sailing vessels by from 16 to 40 days; from Boston to Liverpool in 13 days

20 hours.

"James Baines," built 1854, tonnage 2515; from Boston to Liverpool in 12

days 6 hours.

Three of these ships came from the historic yards of Donald McKay, at New

York, one of the most famous of American ship-builders. The figures show

the steady gain in size and speed that characterized the work of American

ship-builders in those days. Then the United States was in truth a

maritime nation. Every boy knew the sizes and records of the great ships,

and each magnificent clipper had its eager partisans. Foreign trade was

active. Merchants made great profit on cargoes from China, and speed was a

prime element in the value of a ship. In 1840 the discovery of gold in

California added a new demand for ocean shipping; the voyage around the

Horn, already common enough for whalemen and men engaged in Asiatic trade,

was taken by tens of thousands of adventurers. Then came the news of gold

in Australia, and again demands were clamorous for more swift American

ships. All nations of Europe were buyers at our shipyards, and our

builders began seriously to consider whether the supply of timber would

hold out. The yards of Maine and Massachusetts sent far afield for white

oak knees and pine planking. Southern forests were drawn upon, and even

the stately pines of Puget Sound were felled to make masts for a Yankee

ship.

**Transcriber's notes:

Page 4: Removed extraneous ' after "Corsairs"

Page 41: changed atempt to attempt