American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot

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"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.

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