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American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot

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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 NEUFCHATEL," 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 L95 to L115 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.

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