ternal commerce, the protection of a naval force is indispensable."

The official record of the tonnage of the American merchant marine engaged in foreign carrying in the fifteen years from 1816 to 1830, inclusive, shows rather violent fluctuations. The sharp fall from 1817 to 1818 is due, in large part, to the striking off the list by customs collectors of a certain number of vessels missing since the war.

CHAPTER X

A NEW-WORLD VENICE

Salem and her Adventurous Commerce - Always a Shipbuilding and Shipowning Town - Active in the Revolution - First Voyage to Cape of Good Hope - On to India and China, Oceanica and the Philippines Salem Ships in Africa and South America - No Ports unvisited, no Seas unexplored - Shipowners and Merchants Both in One-The Frigate "Essex". - Salem Privateers of 1812 Hawthorne and the Old Custom House -Trade and Fleet now but a Memory

SET in the northerly bight of Massachusetts Bay, midway between the sentinel-islands of Boston Harbor and the granite cliffs of Cape Ann, there is a little, old gray town, whose annals speak more eloquently than those of any other port on this continent of the enterprise, the sagacity, and the triumphs of the golden age of the American merchant marine.

Almost half a century ago, when the United States had launched in a single twelvemonth (1854) three hundred and thirty-four ships and barks for foreign voyaging, and our deep-sea merchant tonnage of two and a half millions was scattered over all the navigable waters of the globe, a great London journal,1 in an ungrudging eulogy of the merchants and sailors of the republic, said: "We owe a cordial admiration of the spirit of American commerce in its adventurous aspects. To watch it is to witness some of the finest romance of our time." It was in old Salem "well named the city of peace from its civilizing com

1 The "London Daily News."

merce that this spirit found its highest and noblest embodiment, a spirit which reminded this English writer of "Venice and the old Hanse towns." And there is poetic fitness in the comparison. Indeed, in one sense Salem's career was even more remarkable than that of the famous old ports of Europe, for the trade which gave her world-fame and made her merchants princes was the work of a very small but an exceedingly bold and vigorous population. Salem never was one of the large cities of America. She had in 1850 only twenty thousand inhabitants. She has always been overshadowed by her greater neighbor, Boston, fifteen miles away away to the

southwest.

No study of the life and especially of the romance of the American merchant marine would be complete without a consideration of the extraordinary part borne in it by this most characteristic coast town of Puritan New England. Salem won and held her unique fame because the pioneer instinct was strong in her people. Her ships sailed where no other ships dared to go. They anchored where no one else dreamed of looking for trade. The first American vessel to the Cape of Good Hope hailed from Salem; the first to open commerce with Hindostan, Java, Sumatra, and, through the Dutch, with Japan. If not the earliest, Salem ships were almost the earliest on the west coast of Africa, where they were long masters of the situation. They were first in the Fiji Islands, first in Madagascar, first in New Holland and New Zealand, and among the first in South America.

The Puritan colonists of Winthrop and Endicott had scarcely settled on the peninsula between the North and South rivers before their minds turned to foreign adventure. As early as 1640 they were engaged in trade with the sugar islands to the southward. Their first West Indiaman was the one-hundred-and-twenty-ton " Desire," Captain William Pierce, which brought home cotton, tobacco,

and negroes from the Bahamas and salt from Tortugas.1 As to the outward cargo, it seems to have been composed just as were many cargoes which for two centuries followed, for Winthrop's shrewd comment says of it that “dry fish and strong liquors are the only commodities for those ports." In 1664 an historian records of Salem: "In this town are some very rich merchants." From the West Indies Salem's trade extended naturally to Europe. In 1640 advices are received that "the 'Desire' of this place has made a passage to Gravesend, Eng., in twenty-three days." This would have been a fast voyage for a Yankee clipper two hundred years afterward. Indeed, it is not always equalled in these times of steam. It is stated that the swift" Desire" was built at New England's now-famous yachting station of Marblehead,—an interesting suggestion for students of heredity.

"Dry

In 1700 Salem's commerce was thus described: merchantable codfish for the markets of Spain, Portugal, and the Straits. Refuse fish, lumber, horses, and provisions for the West Indies. Returns made directly to England are sugar, molasses, cotton wool, logwood, and Brasiletto wood, for which we depend on the West Indies. Our own produce, a considerable quantity of whale and fish oil, whalebone, furs, deer, elk, and bear skins, are annually sent to England. We have much shipping here and freights are low." These early ships, of course, were small craft, very far from elaborate or expensive. West India commerce was carried on in vessels of less than one hundred tons; European trade, in vessels of from one hundred to three hundred tons. In 1768 Salem had 7,913 tons of shipping; in 1771, 9,223 tons. Soon after came the Revolution, and for a while, of course, Salem's merchant tonnage ceased to grow. But the temper of the town was ardent for the patriot cause, and Salem citizens, headed by Elias Hasket Derby, the most famous and successful mer

1 "Annals of Salem," by Joseph B. Felt.

chant of his time, fitted out one hundred and fifty-eight armed vessels to cruise against the enemy, a larger number of craft than the regular Continental navy contained from the beginning to the end of the war.

In 1791 Salem's shipping comprised only 9,031 tons, or no greater fleet than the town owned twenty years earlier. But under the favorable legislation of the new Federal government, the golden age of Salem's commerce was dawning. Between 1791 and 1800 the town's merchant tonnage increased to 24,682, and in 1807, when the embargo fell upon and stifled our deep-sea trade, Salem possessed 1 252 vessels of 43,570 tons,- undoubtedly the greatest fleet owned by a community of like size in America, and probably in all the world.

Before even the merchants of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, the far-seeing and courageous men of Salem spread their canvas to the first winds of peace. In June, 1784, Elias Hasket Derby sent his bark "Light Horse" to St. Petersburg with sugar, thus opening a lucrative traffic with remote North Europe. Derby followed this with an adventure bolder still. He despatched his ship "Grand Turk," of three hundred tons, Captain Jonathan Ingersoll, on a voyage to the Cape of Good Hope. The "Grand Turk " was a smart ship, a celebrated privateer of the Revolution. New England rum formed part of her outward cargo, as it did of many other vessels "bound foreign" in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By way of variety Captain Ingersoll brought home a freight of West India rum from Grenada where he touched on his return from the Cape. He sent the "Grand Turk" to Salem under another master, and sailed himself in the "Atlantic."

His homeward passage furnished a strange instance of the vicissitudes of the life of those old seamen. One day, far out on the deep, a boat was sighted. Captain Ingersoll promptly stood down toward it and picked up the

1 From a list of Salem property returned to the General Court.