THE VOYAGES OF NATHANIEL SILSBEE[38]
(1792-1800)
Neither myself nor the chief mate of the ship for that voyage (Mr.
Charles Derby) had attained the age of twenty-one years when we left
home. I was not then twenty years of age, and it was remarked by the
naval officer on taking the ship’s papers from the Custom House that it
was the first instance in which papers had been issued from that office
to a vessel bound to the East Indies, the captain and chief mate of
which were both minors.”
This is what young Nathaniel Silsbee was able to record of the year
1792 when he took command of the new ship _Benjamin_, one hundred and
sixty-one tons, laden with a costly cargo of merchandise and bound out
from Salem for the Cape of Good Hope and India, “with such instructions
as left the management of the voyage very much to my own discretion.”
It was only four years earlier than this that the Salem ship _Atlantic_
had flown the first American flag ever seen in the harbors of Bombay
and Calcutta, and the route to those distant seas was still unfamiliar
to these pioneers who swept round the Cape of Good Hope to explore new
channels of trade on the other side of the world.
In these latter times a nineteen-year-old lad of good family is
probably a college freshman without a shadow of responsibility,
and whose only business care has to do with the allowance provided
by a doting parent. He is a boy, and is ranked as such. When our
forefathers were creating a merchant marine whose achievements form
one of the finest pages of American history, seafaring lads were men
at twenty, ruling their quarterdecks and taming the rude company of
their forecastles by weight of their own merits in brains and pluck and
resourcefulness.
Nathaniel Silsbee, a captain in the India trade at nineteen, was not a
remarkably precocious mariner a century and more ago. He could say of
his own family:
“Connected with the seafaring life of myself and my brothers, there
were some circumstances which do not usually occur in one family. In
the first place each of us commenced that occupation in the capacity of
clerk, myself at the age of fourteen years; my brother William at about
fifteen, and my brother Zachariah at about sixteen and a half years
of age. Each and all of us obtained the command of vessels and the
consignment of their cargoes before attaining the age of twenty years,
viz., myself at the age of eighteen and a half, my brother William at
nineteen and a half, and my brother Zachariah before he was twenty
years old. Each and all of us left off going to sea before reaching
the age of twenty-nine years, viz., myself at twenty-eight and a half;
William at twenty-eight, and Zachariah at twenty-eight and a half
years.”
In other words, these three brothers of Salem had made their fortunes
before they were thirty years old and were ready to stay ashore as
merchants and shipowners, backed by their own capital. A splendid
veteran of their era, Robert Bennet Forbes of Boston pictured his very
similar experience in this manner:
“At this time of my life (1834), at the age of thirty, I had become
gray and imagined myself approaching old age. I had attained the summit
of my ambition. I was what was then thought to be comfortably off
in worldly goods; I had retired from the sea professionally and had
become a merchant; I had contributed something toward the comfort of my
mother; I had paid off large debts contracted in building my ship, and
I began to think more of myself than I ever had done. Looking back to
1824 when I was content in the command of a little ship of 264 tons,
on a salary of six hundred dollars per annum, I conceded that I had
arrived at the acme of my hopes. I had been blessed with success far
beyond my most ardent expectations.
“Beginning in 1817, with a capital consisting of a Testament, a
‘Bowditch,’ quadrant, chest of sea clothes and a mother’s blessing, I
left the paternal mansion full of hope and good resolution, and the
promise of support from my uncles. At the age of sixteen I filled
a man’s place as third mate; at the age of twenty I was promoted
to a command; at the age of twenty-six I commanded my own ship; at
twenty-eight I abandoned the sea as a profession, and at thirty-six was
at the head of the largest American house in China.”
Nathaniel Silsbee, therefore, was in tune with the time he lived
in when at fourteen he embarked on his first voyage, from Salem to
Baltimore as a captain’s clerk in a small schooner. His father had been
an owner of several vessels in the West India trade, but losses at sea
and other commercial misfortunes compelled him to take the boy from
school and launch him in the business of seafaring. Three voyages in
a coaster were followed by several months of idleness during which he
“was uneasy and somewhat impatient” until a chance was offered to ship
as supercargo of the brig _Three Sisters_ bound on one of the first
American voyages around the Cape of Good Hope in the winter of 1788.
His wages for that voyage were five dollars a month, and all the
property which his father could furnish as an “adventure” or private
speculation, was six boxes of codfish worth eighteen dollars, “most of
which perished on the outward passage.”
[Illustration: Pages from the log of the ship _Hercules_, 1792,
remarkable for the beauty of their draftsmanship in pen and ink. These
drawings were made in the log while at sea]
The _Three Sisters_ went to Batavia, thence to China where she was
sold, and her crew came home in another Salem ship, the _Astrea_. Young
Silsbee studied navigation in his spare time at sea, and gained much
profit from the instruction of the captain. His strenuous boyhood seems
remote in time when one finds in his memoirs that “while absent on
that voyage the present constitution and form of the government of the
United States which had been recommended by a convention of delegates
from the several states, held in 1787, was adopted by eleven of the
then thirteen United States, and went into operation on the fourth day
of March, 1789, with George Washington, as President and John Adams as
Vice-President of the United States.”
A week after his return from China Nathaniel was setting out with his
father in a thirty-ton schooner for a coasting trip to Penobscot, these
two with brother William comprising the ship’s company. They made a
successful trading voyage, after which the youthful sailor sailed to
Virginia as captain’s clerk. He was now seventeen, a tough and seasoned
stripling ready to do a man’s work in all weathers. At this age he
obtained a second mate’s berth on a brig bound to Madeira. When she
returned to Salem he was offered the command of her, considerably in
advance of his eighteenth birthday. The death of his mother recalled
him to Salem and deferred his promotion.
In the same year, however, we find him captain of a sloop and off to
the West Indies with specie and merchandise. The boyish skipper was
put to the test, for a succession of furious gales racked his vessel
so that she was sinking under his feet, and he “endured such incessant
and intense anxiety as prevented my having a single moment of sound
sleep for thirteen entire days and nights.” He made a West Indian
port, however, and his vessel was declared unseaworthy by a survey of
shipmasters and carpenters. “At a somewhat later age,” he confesses and
you like him for it, “I should probably have acceded to that decision
and abandoned the vessel, but I then determined otherwise, caused
some repairs to be made on the vessel, which I knew to be entirely
uninsured, invested the funds in West India produce, and proceeded
therewith to Norfolk, and thence to Salem where the vessel was
considered unfit for another voyage, and where I had the good fortune
to be immediately offered by the same owner the charge of a brig and
cargo for the West Indies.”
It was after this next voyage that Captain Silsbee, veteran mariner
that he was at nineteen, was given the ship _Benjamin_ already
mentioned. In those early foreign voyages of one and two years
duration, the captain was compelled to turn his hand to meet an
infinite variety of emergencies. But he usually fought or blundered a
way through with flying colors, impelled by his indomitable confidence
in himself and the need of the occasion. This young shipmaster of ours
had somehow qualified himself as a rough-and-ready surgeon, or at least
he was able to place one successful and difficult operation to his
credit. He was already living up to the advice of another New England
mariner whose code of conduct was: “Always go straight forward, and if
you meet the devil, cut him in two and go between the pieces.” This is
how Captain Silsbee rose to the occasion:
“In an intensely cold and severe storm on the first night after
leaving home, our cook (a colored man somewhat advanced in age)
having preferred his cooking-house on deck to his berth below for a
sleeping place, had his feet so badly frozen as to cause gangreen
to such an extent as to render amputation of all his toes on both
feet absolutely necessary for the preservation of his life. Having
neither surgical skill nor surgical instruments on board the ship,
the operation was a very unpleasant and hazardous one, so much so
that no one on board was willing to undertake the direction of it. I
was most reluctantly compelled to assume, with the aid of the second
mate, the responsibility of performing the surgical operation with no
other instruments than a razor and a pair of scissors, and which, in
consequence of the feeble state of the cook’s health required two days
to accomplish.
“The cook was very desirous to be landed and left at one of the Cape
de Verde Islands, and for that purpose I proceeded to the Island of
St. Jago, where I found an English frigate at anchor. Her surgeon came
on board our ship at my request and examined the cook’s feet and to my
great satisfaction, pronounced the operation well performed, assured
me that there remained no doubt of his recovery, and advised me by
all means to keep him on board ship under my own care in preference
to putting him ashore. With the cook’s approbation I followed the
surgeon’s advice and in the course of a few weeks the cook was able
to resume his duties, recovered his usual health and made several
subsequent voyages.”
After dispatching the business of the cook, the boy skipper proved
his ability as a merchant of quick adaptability and sound judgment.
While on the passage from the Cape of Good Hope to the Isle of France
(Mauritius) he fell in with a French frigate which gave him news of the
beginning of war between France and England. When this news reached the
Isle of France prices rose by leaps and bounds and the cargo of the
Benjamin was promptly sold at a profit that dazzled her commander. As
fast as payments were made he turned the paper currency into Spanish
dollars. Then for six months an embargo was laid on all foreign vessels
in port. Captain Silsbee sat on his quarter deck and refused to worry.
During this time in which his ship lay idle, his Spanish dollars
increased to three times the value of the paper money for which he had
shrewdly exchanged them, while for lack of an outlet the products of
the island had not advanced in cost.
He therefore abandoned his plan of keeping on to Calcutta, sold his
Spanish dollars, loaded his ship with coffee and spices at the Isle of
France, and made a bee line for Salem. He proceeded no farther than
the Cape of Good Hope, however, where he scented another opportunity
to fatten his owner’s pockets. “I found the prospect of a profitable
voyage from thence back to the Isle of France to be such,” said he,
“that I could not consistently with what I conceived to be my duty to
my employer, (although no such project could have been anticipated
by him, and although attended with considerable risk) resist the
temptation to undertake it. At that time the Cape of Good Hope was held
by the Dutch who had joined England in the then existing war against
France, and it so happened that I was the only master of a foreign
vessel then in port of whom a bond had not been required not to proceed
from thence to a French port.... There being two other Salem vessels
in port by which I could send home a part of my cargo, I put on board
those vessels such portion of my cargo as I knew would considerably
more than pay for the whole cost of my ship and cargo at Salem, sold
the residue of the merchandise, and invested the proceeds in a full
cargo of wine and other articles which I knew to be in great demand in
those islands.”
At the Isle of France the captain sold this cargo for three times its
cost, and again loaded for Salem. When he was almost ready to sail, it
was reported that another embargo was to be laid forthwith. Hastily
putting to sea he was obliged to anchor at Bourbon next day to take on
provisions. Here he had a rather mystifying experience which he related
thus:
“Just as I was about stepping from the wharf into my boat the French
Governor of the island ordered me to his presence, which order I
obeyed with strong apprehensions that some restraint was to be put upon
me. On meeting the Governor he asked me, ‘How long do you contemplate
staying in Bourbon?’ My answer was, ‘Not more than a day or two.’
‘Can’t you leave here to-night?’ he asked. I replied, ‘If you wish it.’
He then added, ‘As you had the politeness to call on me this morning,
and as I should be sorry to see you injured, hearken to my advice and
leave here to-night if possible.’ He cautioned me to secrecy, and I was
in my boat and on board my ship as soon as possible after leaving him.
There was a war-brig at anchor in a harbor a little to windward of my
own vessel; toward midnight I had the anchor hove up without noise,
and let the ship adrift without making any sail until by the darkness
of the night we had lost sight of the war-brig, when we made all sail
directly from the land. At daylight the war-brig was sent in pursuit of
us, under a press of sail but fortunately could not overtake us, and
toward night gave up the chase.”
The _Benjamin_ arrived at Salem after a voyage of nineteen months.
Nathaniel Silsbee had earned for his employer, Elias Hasket Derby, a
net profit of more than one hundred per cent. upon the cost of the ship
and cargo. The captain was given five per cent. of the outward, and ten
per cent. of the value of the return cargo, as his share for the voyage
besides his wages, and he landed in Salem with four thousand dollars as
his perquisites, “which placed me in a condition to gratify the most
anxious and at that time almost the only wish of my heart, which was to
increase and secure the comforts of my mother, sisters and brothers.”
And one of his first acts was to purchase the house and land formerly
owned by his father, at a cost of fifteen hundred dollars and placed
the whole of it at his mother’s disposal.
Being now twenty-one years old, and with a capital of two thousand
dollars to risk as an “adventure” of his own account, Captain Silsbee
took the _Benjamin_ to Amsterdam, bound for India, with a cargo double
the value of his first venture in her. He carried with him as clerk
his brother William, aged fifteen, and furnished him with a sum of
money as an “adventure” for his own account. Again the Isle of France
lured him from the path to the Indies, and he sold his cargo there for
“enormously high prices.” The young merchant navigator was so rapidly
finding himself that he loaded his own ship and sent her home in
command of her mate and then bought at the Isle of France another ship
of four hundred tons for ten thousand dollars out of his employer’s
funds. She was a new vessel, the prize of a French privateer and proved
a good investment. Loading her with coffee and cotton and shipping a
new crew he sailed for Salem in the wake of the _Benjamin_.
This homeward voyage was varied by an episode of such frequent
occurrence in that era that it was commonplace. “A short time before
our arrival in Boston,” Captain Silsbee related, “we were for two days
in company with and a few miles from a schooner which we suspected
to be a privateer watching for a favorable opportunity to attack us.
Having on board the ship six guns and twenty-five men, I was determined
to resist, as far as practicable the attack of any small vessel. On the
afternoon of the second day that this vessel had been dogging us, she
bore down upon us with the apparent intention of executing what we had
supposed to be her purpose, which we were, as I imagined, prepared to
meet. But on calling the crew to quarters, I was informed by one of my
officers that there were four or five seamen who were unwilling thus to
expose themselves, alleging that they had neither engaged nor expected
to fight.
[Illustration: Captain Nathaniel Silsbee]
“On hearing this, all hands being on deck, I ordered every passage-way
which led below deck to be securely fastened; then calling to me such
of the crew as had not engaged to fight, I immediately sent them up
the shrouds to repair the ratlin _and to perform other duties
which they had engaged to do_, in the most exposed part of the ship.
Finding themselves thus exposed to greater danger than their shipmates,
they requested, before the schooner had come in gunshot of us, to be
recalled from their situation and allowed to participate in the defense
of the ship, which request was granted. All our six guns were placed on
one side of the ship, and we succeeded by a simultaneous discharge of
the whole of them, as soon as the schooner had approached within reach
of their contents, in causing her to haul off, and hasten from us.”
Captain Silsbee was handling his employers’ ventures so shrewdly that
his own shares in the cargoes was amounting to what seemed to him a
small fortune. At twenty-two years of age, in 1795, he was able to
purchase one-fourth part of a new ship called the _Betsy_. In this
vessel as commander he sailed to Madras, Malaysia and Calcutta and
returned after an absence of seventeen months. While at Madras he was a
witness of and an actor in an incident of the kind which directly led
to the second war between America and Great Britain, a collision at
that time only sixteen years away. He tells it in these words, which
clearly portray the lawless impressment of American seamen which was in
operation on every sea.
“I received a note early one morning from my chief mate that one of my
sailors, Edward Hulen, a fellow townsman whom I had known from boyhood,
had been impressed and taken on board of a British frigate then lying
in port. Receiving this intelligence I immediately went on board my
ship and having there learned all the facts in the case, preceded to
the frigate, where I found Hulen and in his presence was informed
by the first lieutenant of the frigate that he had taken Hulen from
my ship under a peremptory order from his commander to ‘visit every
American ship in port and take from each of them one or more of their
seamen.’ With that information I returned to the shore and called upon
Captain Cook, who commanded the frigate, and sought first by all the
persuasive means that I was capable of using and ultimately by threats
to appeal to the Government of the place to obtain Hulen’s release, but
in vain. I then, with the aid of the senior partner of one of the first
commercial houses of the place, sought the interference and assistance
of the civil authorities of Madras, but without success, it being a
case in which they said they could not interfere.
“In the course of the day I went again to the frigate and in the
presence of the lieutenant, tendered to Hulen the amount of his wages,
of which he requested me to give him only ten dollars and to take
the residue to his mother in Salem, on hearing which the lieutenant
expressed his perfect conviction that Hulen was an American citizen,
accompanied by a strong assurance that if it was in his power to
release him he should not suffer another moment’s detention, adding at
the same time that he doubted if this or any other circumstance would
induce Captain Cook to permit his return to my ship.
“It remained for me only to recommend Hulen to that protection of
the lieutenant which a good seaman deserves, and to submit to the
high-handed insult thus offered to the flag of my country which I had
no means of either preventing or resisting, beyond the expression of
my opinion to Captain Cook in the presence of his officers, and in
terms dictated by the excited state of my feelings. After several years
detention in the British Navy and after the Peace of Amiens, Hulen
returned to Salem and lived to perform services on board privateers
armed in Salem in the late war between this country and England.”
The extraordinary hazards of maritime commerce in the last years of the
eighteenth century are emphasized in the story of the voyages made by
Captain Silsbee to the Mediterranean in his next ship, the _Portland_,
of which he owned one third. In the winter of 1797, he sailed from
Boston with “brother William” as second mate, and stopping at Cadiz,
learned of the decrees of the French government which made liable to
condemnation every vessel of whatever nation, on board of which might
be found any articles of the production or manufacture of Great Britain
or any of its territories. While these decrees greatly increased the
risk of capture in the Mediterranean, they also vastly enhanced the
prices of Colonial merchandise. It seemed a commercial gamble worth the
risk and Nathaniel Silsbee determined to make for Genoa or Leghorn.
First, however, he erased from his nautical instruments the name of
their English maker, put on shore a quantity of English coke from the
cook’s galley, and weeded out everything else which could be considered
as having a British pedigree.
He was no more than five days from Cadiz when a French privateer brig
from Marseilles captured and carried the _Portland_ into Malaga. The
harbor was filled with American and other foreign vessels all flying
the French flag, a depressing picture for the Salem crew. Every one of
the vessels with their cargoes was condemned by the French, except the
good ship _Portland_, Nathaniel Silsbee, master. His escape was due to
his own bulldog persistence and resolute bearing in this grave crisis
of his fortunes.
After anchoring at Malaga no boat was allowed to approach his ship, nor
was he allowed to go ashore or to communicate with anyone until a day
had passed. Then he was taken ashore, under guard of a squad of French
soldiers, to the office of the French consul. The owner and commander
of the privateer were present, and, single-handed, the American
shipmaster was questioned in the most minute manner regarding every
article of merchandise on board his vessel. Where were they produced?
How and by whom imported into the United States? How came they into
the possession of the owners of his ship? In his recollection of this
extraordinary interview Captain Silsbee stated:
“And I was commanded by that mighty man, for at that time the French
consul held the Spanish authorities of the place in as much subjection
as he did the humblest domestic, to answer each and all his lengthy and
precise interrogatories in ‘five words....’
“After the examination was closed the record of it was placed with the
ship’s papers on the shelves of the consular office with similar papers
appertaining to thirty or forty other vessels then under sequestration.
At about eleven o’clock at night I was informed that I might return to
my ship in charge of the same guard which brought me ashore. I then
asked the Consul when I might expect his decision upon my case. He
said the decision must be ‘in turn,’ and that as there were many cases
before mine, which would require possibly two or three months, but
certainly not less than one month, mine could not be decided short of
that time.... After some disputation upon that point I told the Consul
that I would not leave his office, unless taken from thence by force,
until his decision was made. Toward midnight the Consul and his clerk,
together with the owner and officer of the privateer, went out of the
office, leaving me there in charge of two porters and a watchman with
whom I remained during that night, and saw nothing more of the Consul
until about 9 o’clock in the morning. He expressed some surprise at
finding me there, and asked if I could give him a written order to
my officers directing them and the crew to assist in unclosing such
parts of the cargo as would enable a survey which he would immediately
appoint.”
The Yankee skipper cheerfully complied with this encouraging request,
but stood by his guns in the consular office, nor did he budge until
after a siege of twenty-four hours. He then deserted his post only to
seek a notary under guard and enter a formal protest. Late in this
second day the French consul reported that the survey showed every
article of the cargo to be a production of British colonies, and
therefore damned beyond repeal. Silsbee ingenuously replied that he had
expected such a verdict but that along with other false statements,
he begged leave to ask whether _mace_ was considered the product of a
British colony? This appeared to stagger the Consul, and Silsbee sought
his bench and prepared to spend another night in the office. At nine
o’clock in the evening the harassed Consul capitulated, handed the
ship’s papers to the master and told him to take his ship and go to the
devil with her, or anywhere else he pleased.
Although he had been forty hours without sleep, the happy victor
hastened to make ready for sea and escape from Napoleon’s clutches
as soon as ever he could. Head winds baffled him, however, and while
waiting at anchor he called to see the American consul whom he had not
been permitted to visit or send for during his detention. So astonished
was the representative of our infant republic that he refused to
accept the word of the captain until he had seen the French consul in
confirmation. It seemed preposterous that this Salem younker could have
slipped out of the trap while a dozen or more American ships had been
waiting for weeks and months doomed to condemnation. The Frenchman
privately admitted that “the apparent determination of this terrible
fellow not to leave his office until his case was decided, had not been
without some effect on the time and character of his decision.”
It was out of the frying pan into the fire, for soon after reaching
Genoa, a French army entered that port, declared an embargo, and
began to fit out one fleet of the expedition which was to carry
Napoleon’s legions to Egypt. The Generals in charge hired such vessels
as they could and requisitioned such others as they wanted to use as
transports. The _Portland_ being the best and most comfortably fitted
ship at Genoa, was selected, without the consent of her captain, for
the transport of the Staff of the Army. Captain Silsbee failed to
appreciate this honor, and after trying in vain to effect a release,
decided to try to bribe his way clear. He had carried from home
sufficient salt beef and pork for an India voyage, and he accidentally
learned that the Bonaparte expedition was in great need of salted meat
for the transports.
With sound strategy, Captain Silsbee had forty barrels of “salt horse”
conveyed by night to a secure hiding place several miles beyond the
outskirts of the city. Then he called upon the French General and asked
him if he did not want to buy some provisions for the fleet.
“He answered affirmatively,” wrote Captain Silsbee, “and added, ‘you
know it is in my power to take it at my own price.’ I told him he
should have every barrel of it at his own price, or even without
price, if he would release my ship, that those were the terms, and the
only terms on which he could or would have it. The general angrily
threatened to take my provisions and make me regret having insulted
him. Two days later he sent an order for me to appear before him which
I did, when he demanded me to ‘inform him promptly’ where my forty
barrels of provisions were, intimating a doubt of my having it, as his
officers had not been able to find it. I told the General very frankly
that if the ship which I commanded belonged wholly to myself, I might
have felt not only willing but highly gratified to convey a part of
the Staff of such an army on such an expedition, but that a large part
of the ship and the proceeds of a valuable cargo belonged to other
persons who had entrusted their property to my charge.... That avowal
from me was met by a threat from the General to coerce me not only into
a delivery of the provisions, but to the performance of any and every
duty which he might assign to me; not only the ship, but likewise
her captain, officers and crew had been placed under requisition by
the French Republic; a requisition not to be frustrated, he said, by
any human being, while a subaltern officer who was present added with
enthusiasm, ‘Yes, sir, suppose God had one ship here, and the French
wanted it, He must give it.’”
The Salem seafarer gave not an inch, but declared that a release of
the ship was the only price which would drag the “salt horse” from
its hiding place. On the following day, the General sent word that he
was ready to yield to these terms. Napoleon’s veterans could not get
along without salt pork, and Captain Silsbee triumphantly dragged his
forty barrels into town. His ship was restored to him, the General even
promised to pay for the stores, and the hero very rightly summed it
up, “I could not but consider that a more beneficial disposal of forty
barrels of beef and pork had probably never been made than in this
instance.”
During the two years following Nathaniel Silsbee stayed ashore in order
to promote his rapidly growing commercial ventures. He became tired of
the inactivity of life on land, however, and in 1800 bought part of the
ship _Herald_ and loaded her for India with a crew of thirty men and
ten guns. His memoranda of that voyage affords a fresh insight into the
business methods of a typical Salem shipmaster of the old school. The
_Herald_ sailed “with a stock of sixty-three thousand dollars in specie
and merchandise, and with credits authorizing drafts on England or the
United States for about forty thousand dollars, making together over
one hundred thousand dollars, which at that time was considered a very
large stock. Of this, as in my previous voyages to India I furnished,
besides my interest as owner of one fourth part of the vessel and
cargo, five per cent. of the cost of the outward cargo, for which I was
to take ten per cent. of the return cargo at the close of the voyage as
my compensation for transacting the business thereof.”
The master’s account of that voyage contains some spirited passages. He
took with him his other brother, Zachariah, who was now sixteen years
old and eager to follow in the elder’s footsteps. He left Calcutta in
company with four other American ships with the captains of which he
had entered into an agreement to keep company until they should have
passed the southern part of Ceylon. Each of these ships carried from
eight to twelve guns and sailing in fleet formation they expected to
be able to defend themselves against the several French privateers
which were known to be cruising in the Bay of Bengal. Of this squadron
of American Indiamen Captain Nathaniel Silsbee, now an elderly man of
twenty-seven, was designated as the Commodore.
“On the morning of the third day of November,” as he tells it, “two
strange sails were discovered a few leagues to windward of us, one of
which was soon recognized to be the East India Company’s packet ship
_Cornwallis_ of eighteen guns, which had left the river Hoogly at the
same time with us. At about eight o’clock, A. M., the other ship stood
toward the _Cornwallis_, soon after which the latter bore down upon us
under full sail, commencing at the same time a running fight with the
other ship which then displayed French colors. We soon perceived that
they were both plying their sweeps very briskly, that the Frenchman’s
grape was making great havoc on the _Cornwallis_, and that the crew
of the latter ship had cut away her boats and were throwing overboard
their ballast and other articles for the purpose of lightening their
ship and thereby facilitating their escape. The sea was perfectly
smooth, and the wind very light, so much so that it was quite mid-day
before either of the ships was within gunshot. By this time we five
American ships were in a close line, our decks cleared of a large stock
of poultry, (which with their coops could be seen for a considerable
distance around us) and every preparation made to defend ourselves
to the extent of our ability. This display of resistance on our part
seemed to be quite disregarded by the pursuing ship, and she continued
steering directly for my own ship which was in the center of the fleet,
until she was fully and fairly within gunshot, when my own guns were
first opened upon her, which were instantly followed by those of each
and all of the other four ships.
“When the matches were applied to our guns, the French ship was plying
her sweeps, and with studding-sails on both sides, coming directly
upon us; but when the smoke of our guns, caused by repeated broadsides
from each of our ships, had so passed off as to enable us to see her
distinctly, she was close upon the wind and going from us. The captain
of the Cornwallis which was then within hailing distance, expressed
a wish to exchange signals with us, and to keep company while the
French ship was in sight. She was known by him to be _La Gloire_, a
privateer of twenty-two nine-pounders and four hundred men. His request
was complied with and he having lost all his boats, I went on board
his ship where our signals were made known to him and where were the
officers of the _Cornwallis_, who acknowledged the protection which
we had afforded them in the most grateful terms. The _Cornwallis_
continued with us two days, in the course of which the privateer
approached us several times in the night, but finding that we were
awake, hauled off and after the second night we saw no more of her.”
At the close of this voyage, in his twenty-eighth year, Captain
Nathaniel Silsbee was able to say that he had “so far advanced his
pecuniary means as to feel that another voyage might and probably
would enable him to retire from the sea and to change his condition on
shore.” He married the daughter of George Crowninshield and began to
build up a solid station in life as one of the most promising merchants
and citizens of Salem. He had launched his two younger brothers in life
and they were masters of fine ships in the India trade “with as fair
prospects of success as young men thus situated could hope for.”
He made only one long voyage after he had his own home and fireside,
but his interests were weaving to and fro between Salem port and the
faraway harbors of the Orient, the South Seas and Europe. The Embargo
Acts of 1808 and 1812 occasioned him heavy losses, but these were
somewhat repaid by the success of the privateers in which Nathaniel
Silsbee is recorded as holding shares.
By 1815, he had risen to such prominence as a representative American
merchant that he was named by the United States Government as one
of the commissioners to organize the Boston branch of the “Bank of
the United States.” He became one of the Massachusetts delegation
to Congress, and was a United States Senator from 1826 to 1835,
representing his state in company with Daniel Webster.
Dying in 1850, Nathaniel Silsbee left bequeathed to his home town the
memory of his own life as a tribute to the sterling worth and splendid
Americanism of the old-time shipmasters of Salem. Trader and voyager to
the Indies as a captain in his teens, retired with a fortune won from
the sea before he was thirty, playing the man in many immensely trying
and hazardous situations, this one-time Senator from Massachusetts was
a product of the times he lived in.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, Vol. XXXV, Jan.,
1889. _Biographical Notes_: By _Nathaniel Silsbee_. (A paper written by
him, “for the perusal of his family,” between 1836 and 1850, and from
which most of the material for this chapter was obtained.)