The Old Merchant Marine
by Ralph D. Paine

Chapter IV. The Famous Days of Salem Port

In such compelling circumstances as these, necessity became themother of achievement. There is nothing finer in American historythan the dogged fortitude and high-hearted endeavor with whichthe merchant seamen returned to their work after the Revolutionand sought and found new markets for their wares. It was thenthat Salem played that conspicuous part which was, for ageneration, to overshadow the activities of all other Americanseaports. Six thousand privateersmen had signed articles in hertaverns, as many as the total population of the town, and theyfilled it with a spirit of enterprise and daring. Not for themthe stupid monotony of voyages coastwise if more hazardousventures beckoned and there were havens and islands unvexed bytrade where bold men might win profit and perhaps fight for lifeand cargo.

Now there dwelt in Salem one of the great men of his time, EliasHasket Derby, the first American millionaire, and very much morethan this. He was a shipping merchant with a vision and with thehard-headed sagacity to make his dreams come true. His was anotable seafaring family, to begin with. His father, CaptainRichard Derby, born in 1712, had dispatched his small vessels tothe West Indies and Virginia and with the returns from thesevoyages he had loaded assorted cargoes for Spain and Madeira andhad the proceeds remitted in bills of exchange to London or inwine, salt, fruit, oil, lead, and handkerchiefs to America.Richard Derby’s vessels had eluded or banged away at theprivateers during the French War from 1756 to 1763, mounting fromeight to twelve guns, “with four cannon below decks for closequarters.” Of such a temper was this old sea-dog who led themilitia and defiantly halted General Gage’s regulars at the NorthRiver bridge in Salem, two full months before the skirmish atLexington. Eight of the nineteen cannon which it was proposed toseize from the patriots had been taken from the ships of CaptainRichard Derby and stored in his warehouse for the use of theProvincial Congress.

It was Richard’s son, Captain John Derby, who carried to Englandin the swift schooner Quero the first news of the affair atLexington, ahead of the King’s messenger. A sensational arrival,if ever there was one! This Salem shipmaster, cracking on saillike a proper son of his sire, making the passage in twenty-ninedays and handsomely beating the lubberly Royal Express PacketSukey which left Boston four days sooner, and startling theBritish nation with the tidings which meant the loss of anAmerican empire! A singular coincidence was that this sameCaptain John Derby should have been the first mariner to informthe United States that peace had come, when he arrived fromFrance in 1783 with the message that a treaty had been signed.

Elias Hasket Derby was another son of Richard. When his manifoldenergies were crippled by the war, he diverted his ability andabundant resources into privateering. He was interested in atleast eighty of the privateers out of Salem, invariablysubscribing for such shares as might not be taken up by hisfellow-townsmen. He soon perceived that many of these craft werewretchedly unfit for the purpose and were easily captured orwrecked. It was characteristic of his genius that he shouldestablish shipyards of his own, turn his attention to navalarchitecture, and begin to build a class of vessels vastlysuperior in size, model, and speed to any previously launched inthe colonies. They were designed to meet the small cruiser of theBritish Navy on even terms and were remarkably successful, bothin enriching their owner and in defying the enemy.

At the end of the war Elias Hasket Derby discovered that thesefine ships were too large and costly to ply up and down thecoast. Instead of bewailing his hard lot, he resolved to sendthem to the other side of the globe. At a time when the Britishand the Dutch East India companies insolently claimed a monopolyof the trade of the Orient, when American merchant seamen hadnever ventured beyond the two Atlantics, this was a conceptionwhich made of commerce a surpassing romance and heralded thegolden era of the nation’s life upon the sea.

His Grand Turk of three hundred tons was promptly fitted out fora pioneering voyage as far as the Cape of Good Hope. Salem knewher as “the great ship” and yet her hull was not quite onehundred feet long. Safely Captain Jonathan Ingersoll took her outover the long road, his navigating equipment consisting of a fewerroneous maps and charts, a sextant, and Guthrie’s GeographicalGrammar. In Table Bay he sold his cargo of provisions and thenvisited the coast of Guinea to dispose of his rum for ivory andgold dust but brought not a single slave back, Mr. Derby havingdeclared that “he would rather sink the whole capital employedthan directly or indirectly be concerned in so infamous atrade"--an unusual point of view for a shipping merchant of NewEngland in 1784!

Derby ships were first to go to Mauritius, then called the Isleof France, first at Calcutta, and among the earliest to swing atanchor off Canton. When Elias Hasket Derby decided to invade thisrich East India commerce, he sent his eldest son, Elias Hasket,Jr., to England and the Continent after a course at Harvard. Theyoung man became a linguist and made a thorough study of Englishand French methods of trade. Having laid this foundation for theventure, the son was now sent to India, where he lived for threeyears in the interests of his house, building up a trade almostfabulously profitable.

How fortunes were won in those stirring days may be discernedfrom the record of young Derby’s ventures while in the Orient. In1788 the proceeds of one cargo enabled him to buy a ship and abrigantine in the Isle of France. These two vessels he sent toBombay to load with cotton. Two other ships of his fleet, theAstrea and Light Horse, were filled at Calcutta and Rangoon andordered to Salem. It was found, when the profits of thesetransactions were reckoned, that the little squadron had earned$100,000 above all outlay.

To carry on such a business as this enlisted many men andindustries. While the larger ships were making their distantvoyages, the brigs and schooners were gathering cargoes forthem, crossing to Gothenburg and St. Petersburg for iron, duck,and hemp, to France, Spain, and Madeira for wine and lead, to theFrench West Indies for molasses to be turned into rum, to NewYork, Philadelphia, and Richmond for flour, provisions, andtobacco. These shipments were assembled in the warehouses onDerby Wharf and paid for the teas, coffees, pepper, muslin,silks, and ivory which the ships from the Far East were fetchinghome. In fourteen years the Derby ships made one hundred andtwenty-five voyages to Europe and far eastern ports and out ofthe thirty-five vessels engaged only one was lost at sea.

It was in 1785 when the Grand Turk, on a second voyage, broughtback a cargo of silks, teas, and nankeens from Batavia and China,that “The Independent Chronicle” of London, unconsciouslyhumorous, was moved to affirm that “the Americans have given upall thought of a China trade which can never be carried on toadvantage without some settlement in the East Indies.”

As soon as these new sea-trails had been furrowed by the keels ofElias Hasket Derby, other Salem merchants were quick to follow ina rivalry which left no sea unexplored for virgin markets andwhich ransacked every nook and corner of barbarism which had ashore. Vessels slipped their cables and sailed away by night forsome secret destination with whose savage potentate traderelations had been established. It might be Captain JonathanCarnes who, while at the port of Bencoolen in 1793, heard thatpepper grew wild on the northern coast of Sumatra. He whisperedthe word to the Salem owner, who sent him back in the schoonerRajah with only four guns and ten men. Eighteen months later,Jonathan Carnes returned to Salem with a cargo of pepper in bulk,the first direct importation, and cleared seven hundred per centon the voyage. When he made ready to go again, keeping hisbusiness strictly to himself, other owners tracked him clear toBencoolen, but there he vanished in the Rajah, and his secret withhim, until he reappeared with another precious cargo of pepper.When, at length, he shared this trade with other vessels, itmeant that Salem controlled the pepper market of Sumatra and formany years supplied a large part of the world’s demand.

And so it happened that in the spicy warehouses that overlookedSalem Harbor there came to be stored hemp from Luzon, gum copalfrom Zanzibar, palm oil from Africa, coffee from Arabia, tallowfrom Madagascar, whale oil from the Antarctic, hides and woolfrom the Rio de la Plata, nutmeg and cloves from Malaysia. Suchmerchandise had been bought or bartered for by shipmasters whowere much more than mere navigators. They had to be shrewdmerchants on their own accounts, for the success or failure of avoyage was mostly in their hands. Carefully trained and highlyintelligent men, they attained command in the early twenties andwere able to retire, after a few years more afloat, to own shipsand exchange the quarterdeck for the counting-room, and the cabinfor the solid mansion and lawn on Derby Street. Everyopportunity, indeed, was offered them to advance their ownfortunes. They sailed not for wages but for handsome commissionsand privileges--in the Derby ships, five per cent of a cargooutward bound, two and a half per cent of the freightage home,five per cent profit on goods bought and sold between foreignports, and five per cent of the cargo space for their own use.

Such was the system which persuaded the pick and flower of youngAmerican manhood to choose the sea as the most advantageouscareer possible. There was the Crowninshield family, for example,with five brothers all in command of ships before they were oldenough to vote and at one time all five away from Salem, each inhis own vessel and three of them in the East India trade. “Whenlittle boys,” to quote from the memoirs of BenjaminCrowninshield, “they were all sent to a common school and abouttheir eleventh year began their first particular study whichshould develop them as sailors and ship captains. These boysstudied their navigation as little chaps of twelve years old andwere required to thoroughly master the subject before being sentto sea . . . . As soon as the art of navigation was mastered, theyoungsters were sent to sea, sometimes as common sailors butcommonly as ship’s clerks, in which position they were able tolearn everything about the management of a ship without actuallybeing a common sailor.”

This was the practice in families of solid station and socialrank, for to be a shipmaster was to follow the profession of agentleman. Yet the bright lad who entered by way of theforecastle also played for high stakes. Soon promoted to theberth of mate, he was granted cargo space for his own adventuresin merchandise and a share of the profits. In these days theyouth of twenty-one is likely to be a college undergraduate,rated too callow and unfit to be intrusted with the smallestbusiness responsibilities and tolerantly regarded as unable totake care of himself. It provokes both a smile and a glow ofpride, therefore, to recall those seasoned striplings and whatthey did.

No unusual instance was that of Nathaniel Silsbee, later UnitedStates Senator from Massachusetts, who took command of the newship Benjamin in the year 1792, laden with a costly cargo fromSalem for the Cape of Good Hope and India, “with suchinstructions,” says he, “as left the management of the voyagevery much to my own discretion. Neither myself nor the chiefmate, Mr. Charles Derby, had attained the age of twenty-one yearswhen we left home. I was not then twenty.” This reminded him tospeak of his own family. Of the three Silsbee brothers, “each ofus obtained the command of vessels and the consignment of theircargoes before attaining the age of twenty years, viz., myself atthe age of eighteen and a half, my brother William at nineteenand a half, and my brother Zachariah before he was twenty yearsold. Each and all of us left off going to sea before reaching theage of twenty-nine years.”

How resourcefully these children of the sea could handle affairswas shown in this voyage of the Benjamin. While in the IndianOcean young Silsbee fell in with a frigate which gave him news ofthe beginning of war between England and France. He shifted hiscourse for Mauritius and there sold the cargo for a dazzlingprice in paper dollars, which he turned into Spanish silver. Anembargo detained him for six months, during which this currencyincreased to three times the value of the paper money. He gave upthe voyage to Calcutta, sold the Spanish dollars and loaded withcoffee and spices for Salem. At the Cape of Good Hope, however,he discovered that he could earn a pretty penny by sending hiscargo home in other ships and loading the Benjamin again forMauritius. When, at length, he arrived in Salem harbor, afternineteen months away, his enterprises had reaped a hundred percent for Elias Hasket Derby and his own share was the snug littlefortune of four thousand dollars. Part of this he, of course,invested at sea, and at twenty-two he was part owner of theBetsy, East Indiaman, and on the road to independence.

As second mate in the Benjamin had sailed Richard Cleveland,another matured mariner of nineteen, who crowded into one life anOdyssey of adventure noteworthy even in that era and who had theknack of writing about it with rare skill and spirit. In 1797,when twenty-three years old, he was master of the bark Enterprisebound from Salem to Mocha for coffee. The voyage was abandoned atHavre and he sent the mate home with the ship, deciding to remainabroad and gamble for himself with the chances of the sea. InFrance he bought on credit a “cutter-sloop” of forty-three tons,no larger than the yachts whose owners think it venturesome totake them off soundings in summer cruises. In this little box ofa craft he planned to carry a cargo of merchandise to the Cape ofGood Hope and thence to Mauritius.

His crew included two men, a black cook, and a brace of boys whowere hastily shipped at Havre. “Fortunately they were all so muchin debt as not to want any time to spend their advance, but wereready at the instant, and with this motley crew, (who, for aughtI knew, were robbers or pirates) I put to sea.” The only sailorof the lot was a Nantucket lad who was made mate and had to betaught the rudiments of navigation while at sea. Of the others hehad this to say, in his lighthearted manner:

“The first of my fore-mast hands is a great, surly, crabbed,raw-boned, ignorant Prussian who is so timid aloft that the matehas frequently been obliged to do his duty there. I believe himto be more of a soldier than a sailor, though he has oftenassured me that he has been a boatswain’s mate of a DutchIndiaman, which I do not believe as he hardly knows how to puttwo ends of a rope together .... My cook . . . a good-naturednegro and a tolerable cook, so unused to a vessel that in thesmoothest weather he cannot walk fore and aft without holdingonto something with both hands. This fear proceeds from the factthat he is so tall and slim that if he should get a cant it mightbe fatal to him. I did not think America could furnish such aspecimen of the negro race . . . nor did I ever see such asimpleton. It is impossible to teach him anything and . . . hecan hardly tell the main-halliards from the mainstay.

“Next is an English boy of seventeen years old, who from havinglately had the small-pox is feeble and almost blind, a miserableobject, but pity for his misfortunes induces me to make his dutyas easy as possible. Finally I have a little ugly French boy, thevery image of a baboon, who from having served for some time ondifferent privateers has all the tricks of a veteran man-of-war’sman, though only thirteen years old, and by having been in anEnglish prison, has learned enough of the language to be aproficient in swearing.”

With these human scrapings for a ship’s company, the cutterCaroline was three months on her solitary way as far as the Capeof Good Hope, where the inhabitants “could not disguise theirastonishment at the size of the vessel, the boyish appearance ofthe master and mate, and the queer and unique characters of thetwo men and boy who composed the crew.” The English officialsthought it strange indeed, suspecting some scheme of French spiesor smuggled dispatches, but Richard Cleveland’s petition to theGovernor, Lord McCartney, ingenuously patterned after certainletters addressed to noblemen as found in an old magazine aboardhis vessel, won the day for him and he was permitted to sell thecutter and her cargo, having changed his mind about proceedingfarther.

Taking passage to Batavia, he looked about for another venturebut found nothing to his liking and wandered on to Canton, wherehe was attracted by the prospect of a voyage to the northwestcoast of America to buy furs from the Indians. In a cutter nolarger than the Caroline he risked all his cash and credit,stocking her with $20,000 worth of assorted merchandise forbarter, and put out across the Pacific, “having on boardtwenty-one persons, consisting, except two Americans, of English,Irish, Swedes and French, but principally the first, who wererunaways from the men-of-war and Indiamen, and two from a BotanyBay ship who had made their escape, for we were obliged to takesuch as we could get, served to complete a list of asaccomplished villains as ever disgraced any country.”

After a month of weary, drenching hardship off the China coast,this crew of cutthroats mutinied. With a loyal handful, includingthe black cook, Cleveland locked up the provisions, mounted twofour-pounders on the quarterdeck, rammed them full of grape-shot,and fetched up the flint-lock muskets and pistols from the cabin.The mutineers were then informed that if they poked their headsabove the hatches he would blow them overboard. Losing enthusiasmand weakened by hunger, they asked to be set ashore; so theskipper marooned the lot. For two days the cutter lay offshorewhile a truce was argued, the upshot being that four of therascals gave in and the others were left behind.

Fifty days more of it and, washed by icy seas, racked andstorm-beaten, the vessel made Norfolk Sound. So small was thecrew, so imminent the danger that the Indians might take her byboarding, that screens of hides were rigged along the bulwarks tohide the deck from view. Stranded and getting clear, warding offattacks, Captain Richard Cleveland stayed two months on thewilderness coast of Oregon, trading one musket for eight primesea-otter skins until there was no more room below. Sixtythousand dollars was the value of the venture when he sailed forChina by way of the Sandwich Islands, forty thousand of profit,and he was twenty-five years old with the zest for rovingundiminished.

He next appeared in Calcutta, buying a twenty-five-ton pilot boatunder the Danish flag for a fling at Mauritius and a speculationin prizes brought in by French privateers. Finding none in port,he loaded seven thousand bags of coffee in a ship for Copenhagenand conveyed as a passenger a kindred spirit, young NathanielShaler, whom he took into partnership. At Hamburg these twobought a fast brig, the Lelia Byrd, to try their fortune on thewest coast of South America, and recruited a third partner, aboyish Polish nobleman, Count de Rousillon, who had been an aideto Kosciusko. Three seafaring musketeers, true gentlemen rovers,all under thirty, sailing out to beard the viceroys of Spain!

From Valparaiso, where other American ships were detained androbbed, they adroitly escaped and steered north to Mexico andCalifornia. At San Diego they fought their way out of the harbor,silencing the Spanish fort with their six guns. Then to Cantonwith furs, and Richard Cleveland went home at thirty years of ageafter seven years’ absence and voyaging twice around the world,having wrested success from almost every imaginable danger andobstacle, with $70,000 to make him a rich man in his own town. Hewas neither more nor less than an American sailor of the kindthat made the old merchant marine magnificent.

It was true romance, also, when the first American shipmastersset foot in mysterious Japan, a half century before Perry’ssquadron shattered the immemorial isolation of the land of theShoguns and the Samurai. Only the Dutch had been permitted tohold any foreign intercourse whatever with this hermit nation andfor two centuries they had maintained their singular commercialmonopoly at a price measured in terms of the deepest degradationof dignity and respect. The few Dutch merchants suffered toreside in Japan were restricted to a small island in Nagasakiharbor, leaving it only once in four years when the Resident, orchief agent, journeyed to Yeddo to offer gifts and most humbleobeisance to the Shogun, “creeping forward on his hands and feet,and falling on his knees, bowed his head to the ground, andretired again in absolute silence, crawling exactly like a crab,"said one of these pilgrims who added: “We may not keep Sundays orfast days, or allow our spiritual hymns or prayers to be heard;never mention the name of Christ. Besides these things, we haveto submit to other insulting imputations which are always painfulto a noble heart. The reason which impels the Dutch to bear allthese sufferings so patiently is simply the love of gain.”

In return for these humiliations the Dutch East India Company waspermitted to send one or two ships a year from Batavia to Japanand to export copper, silk, gold, camphor, porcelain, bronze, andrare woods. The American ship Franklin arrived at Batavia in 1799and Captain James Devereux of Salem learned that a charter wasoffered for one of these annual voyages. After a deal of Yankeedickering with the hard-headed Dutchmen, a bargain was struck andthe Franklin sailed for Nagasaki with cloves, chintz, sugar, tin,black pepper, sapan wood, and elephants’ teeth. The instructionswere elaborate and punctilious, salutes to be fired right andleft, nine guns for the Emperor’s guard while passing in,thirteen guns at the anchorage; all books on board to be sealedup in a cask, Bibles in particular, and turned over to theJapanese officials, all firearms sent ashore, ship dressed withcolors whenever the “Commissaries of the Chief” graciously cameaboard, and a carpet on deck for them to sit upon.

Two years later, the Margaret of Salem made the same sort of avoyage, and in both instances the supercargoes, one of whomhappened to be a younger brother of Captain Richard Cleveland,wrote journals of the extraordinary episode. For these marinersalone was the curtain lifted which concealed the feudal Japanfrom the eyes of the civilized world. Alert and curious, theseYankee traders explored the narrow streets of Nagasaki, visitedtemples, were handsomely entertained by officers and merchants,and exchanged their wares in the marketplace. They were as muchat home, no doubt, as when buying piculs of pepper from a rajahof Qualah Battoo, or dining with an elderly mandarin of CochinChina. It was not too much to say that “the profuse stores ofknowledge brought by every ship’s crew, together with unheard ofcuriosities from every savage shore, gave the community of Salema rare alertness of intellect.”

It was a Salem bark, the Lydia, that first displayed the Americanflag to the natives of Guam in 1801. She was chartered by theSpanish government of Manila to carry to the Marianne Islands, asthose dots on the chart of the Pacific were then called, the newGovernor, his family, his suite, and his luggage. First MateWilliam Haswell kept a diary in a most conscientious fashion, andhere and there one gleans an item with a humor of its own. “Nowhaving to pass through dangerous straits,” he observes, “we wentto work to make boarding nettings and to get our arms in the bestorder, but had we been attacked we should have been taken withease. Between Panay and Negros all the passengers were in thegreatest confusion for fear of being taken and put to death inthe dark and not have time to say their prayers.”

The decks were in confusion most of the time, what with theGovernor, his lady, three children, two servant girls and twelvemen servants, a friar and his servant, a judge and two servants,not to mention some small hogs, two sheep, an ox, and a goat tofeed the passengers who were too dainty for sea provender. Thefriar was an interesting character. A great pity that the worthymate of the Lydia should not have been more explicit! Itintrigues the reader of his manuscript diary to be told that “theFriar was praying night and day but it would not bring a fairwind. His behavior was so bad that we were forced to send him toCoventry, or in other words, no one would speak to him.”

The Spanish governors of Guam had in operation an economic systemwhich compelled the admiration of this thrifty Yankee mate. Thenatives wore very few clothes, he concluded, because the Governorwas the only shopkeeper and he insisted on a profit of at leasteight hundred per cent. There was a native militia regiment of athousand men who were paid ten dollars a year. With this cashthey bought Bengal goods, cottons, Chinese pans, pots, knives,and hoes at the Governor’s store, so that “all this money neverleft the Governor’s hands. It was fetched to him by the galleonsin passing, and when he was relieved he carried it with him toManila, often to the amount of eighty or ninety thousanddollars.” A glimpse of high finance without a flaw!

There is pathos, simple and moving, in the stories of shipwreckand stranding on hostile or desert coasts. These disasters werefar more frequent then than now, because navigation was partlyguesswork and ships were very small. Among these tragedies wasthat of the Commerce, bound from Boston to Bombay in 1793. Thecaptain lost his bearings and thought he was off Malabar when theship piled up on the beach in the night. The nearest port wasMuscat and the crew took to the boats in the hope of reaching it.Stormy weather drove them ashore where armed Arabs on camelsstripped them of clothes and stores and left them to die amongthe sand dunes.

On foot they trudged day after day in the direction of Muscat,and how they suffered and what they endured was told by one ofthe survivors, young Daniel Saunders. Soon they began to drop outand die in their tracks in the manner of “Benjamin Williams,William Leghorn, and Thomas Barnard whose bodies were exposednaked to the scorching sun and finding their strength and spiritsquite exhausted they lay down expecting nothing but death forrelief.” The next to be left behind was Mr. Robert Williams,merchant and part owner, “and we therefore with reluctanceabandoned him to the mercy of God, suffering ourselves all thehorrors that fill the mind at the approach of death.” Near thebeach and a forlorn little oasis, they stumbled across CharlesLapham, who had become separated from them. He had been withoutwater for five days “and after many efforts he got upon his feetand endeavored to walk. Seeing him in so wretched a condition Icould not but sympathize enough with him in his torments to goback with him” toward water two miles away, “which both my othercompanions refused to do. Accordingly they walked forward while Iwent back a considerable distance with Lapham until, his strengthfailing him, he suddenly fell on the ground, nor was he able torise again or even speak to me. Finding it vain to stay with him,I covered him with sprays and leaves which I tore from anadjacent tree, it being the last friendly office I could do him.”

Eight living skeletons left of eighteen strong seamen totteredinto Muscat and were cared for by the English consul. DanielSaunders worked his passage to England, was picked up by apress-gang, escaped, and so returned to Salem. It was the fate ofJuba Hill, the black cook from Boston, to be detained among theArabs as a slave. It is worth noting that a black sea-cookfigured in many of these tales of daring and disaster, and amongthem was the heroic and amazing figure of one Peter Jackson whobelonged in the brig Ceres. While running down the river fromCalcutta she was thrown on her beam ends and Peter, perhapsdumping garbage over the rail, took a header. Among the thingstossed to him as he floated away was a sail-boom on which he wasswiftly carried out of sight by the turbid current. All on boardconcluded that Peter Jackson had been eaten by sharks orcrocodiles and it was so reported when they arrived home. Anadministrator was appointed for his goods and chattels and he wasofficially deceased in the eyes of the law. A year or so laterthis unconquerable sea-cook appeared in the streets of Salem,grinning a welcome to former shipmates who fled from him interror as a ghostly visitation. He had floated twelve hours onhis sail-boom, it seemed, fighting off the sharks with his feet;and finally drifting ashore. “He had hard work to do away withthe impressions of being dead,” runs the old account, “butsucceeded and was allowed the rights and privileges of theliving.”

The community of interests in these voyages of long ago includednot only the ship’s company but also the townspeople, even theboys and girls, who entrusted their little private speculationsor “adventures” to the captain. It was a custom which flourishedwell into the nineteenth century. These memoranda are sprinkledthrough the account books of the East Indiamen out of Salem andBoston. It might be Miss Harriet Elkins who requested the masterof the Messenger “please to purchase at Calcutta two net beadswith draperies; if at Batavia or any spice market, nutmegs ormace; or if at Canton, two Canton shawls of the enclosed colorsat $5 per shawl. Enclosed is $10.”

Again, it might be Mr. John R. Tucker who ventured in the sameship one hundred Spanish dollars to be invested in coffee andsugar, or Captain Nathaniel West who risked in the Astrea fifteenboxes of spermaceti candles and a pipe of Teneriffe wine. It isinteresting to discover what was done with Mr. Tucker’s hundredSpanish dollars, as invested for him by the skipper of theMessenger at Batavia and duly accounted for. Ten bags of coffeewere bought for $83.30, the extra expenses of duty, boat-hire,and sacking bringing the total outlay to $90.19. The coffee wassold at Antwerp on the way home for $183.75, and Mr. Tucker’shandsome profit on the adventure was therefore $93.56, or morethan one hundred per cent.

It was all a grand adventure, in fact, and the word was aptlychosen to fit this ocean trade. The merchant freighted his shipand sent her out to vanish from his ken for months and months ofwaiting, with the greater part of his savings, perhaps, in goodsand specie beneath her hatches. No cable messages kept him intouch with her nor were there frequent letters from the master.Not until her signal was displayed by the fluttering flags of theheadland station at the harbor mouth could he know whether he hadgained or lost a fortune. The spirit of such merchants wasadmirably typified in the last venture of Elias Hasket Derby in1798, when unofficial war existed between the United States andFrance.

American ships were everywhere seeking refuge from the privateersunder the tricolor, which fairly ran amuck in the routes oftrade. For this reason it meant a rich reward to land a cargoabroad. The ship Mount Vernon, commanded by Captain Elias HasketDerby, Jr., was laden with sugar and coffee for Mediterraneanports, and was prepared for trouble, with twenty guns mounted andfifty men to handle them. A smart ship and a powerful one, sheraced across to Cape Saint Vincent in sixteen days, which wasclipper speed. She ran into a French fleet of sixty sail,exchanged broadsides with the nearest, and showed her stern tothe others.

“We arrived at 12 o’clock [wrote Captain Derby from Gibraltar]popping at Frenchmen all the forenoon. At 10 A.M. off AlgecirasPoint we were seriously attacked by a large latineer who had onboard more than one hundred men. He came so near our broadside asto allow our six-pound grape to do execution handsomely. We thenbore away and gave him our stern guns in a cool and deliberatemanner, doing apparently great execution. Our bars having cut hissails considerably, he was thrown into confusion, struck both hisensign and his pennant. I was then puzzled to know what to dowith so many men; our ship was running large with all hersteering sails out, so that we could not immediately bring her tothe wind, and we were directly off Algeciras Point from whence Ihad reason to fear she might receive assistance, and my portGibraltar in full view. These were circumstances that induced meto give up the gratification of bringing him in. It was, however,a satisfaction to flog the rascal in full view of the Englishfleet who were to leeward.”

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