The ships and sailors of old Salem

Captain Luther Little made no great figure in the history of his times, but he left in his own words the story of his life at sea which ancient manuscript contributes a full length portrait of the kind of men who lived in the coastwise towns of New England in the eighteenth century. He was not of Salem birth, but he commanded a letter of marque ship out of Salem during the Revolution, which makes it fitting that the manuscript of his narrative should have come into the hands of his grandson, Philip Little, of Salem. This old time seaman’s memoir, as he dictates it in his old age, reflects and makes alive again the day’s work of many a stout-hearted ship’s company of forgotten American heroes.

Born in Marshfield, Massachusetts, in 1756, Luther Little was a sturdy man grown at the beginning of the Revolution and had already spent five years at sea. At the age of fifteen he forsook his father’s farm and shipped on board a coasting sloop plying between Maine and the South Carolina ports. On one of these voyages he was taken ill with a fever and was left ashore in a settlement on the Pimlico River, North Carolina. The planter’s family who cared for the lad through his long and helpless illness were big-hearted and cheery folk, and his description of a “reaping bee,” as enjoyed a hundred and forty years ago, is quaintly diverting.

“When the evening amusements began our host performed on the violin and the young people commenced dancing. I was brought down stairs by one of the daughters and placed on a chair in one corner of the room to witness their sports. They got so merry in the dance that I was unheeded, and they whirled so hard against me as to knock me from my chair. One of the young women caught me in her arms, and carried me to the chamber and laid me on the mat. They held their frolic until midnight and eight or ten of the girls tarried till morning. My mat lay in one corner of the garret, and they were to occupy another on the opposite side. When they came upstairs they commenced performing a jumping match after making preparations for the same by taking off some of their clothes. They performed with much agility, when one of the stranger girls observing me in one corner of the garret exclaimed with much surprise: ‘Who is that?’ The answer was: ‘It’s only a young man belonging to the North that is here sick, and won’t live three days. Never mind him.’”

His sloop having returned, this sixteen-year-old sailor surprised his kind host by gaining sufficient strength to go on board and soon after set sail for Martinique in the West Indies. The Revolutionary Committee of North Carolina had ordered the captain to fetch back a supply of powder and shot. He took aboard this cargo after driving overboard and threatening to blow out the brains of an English lieutenant who had it in mind to make a prize of the sloop while she lay at Martinique.

It was out of the frying pan into the fire, for when the vessel reached the Carolina coast, “the news of our unexpected arrival had been noised abroad,” relates Luther Little, “and the King’s tender lay within a few miles of the bar in wait for us. Twelve pilot boats from Ocrakoke came off to us and informed us that the tender was coming out to take us. We loaded the pilot boats with powder, and the balls, which were in kegs, we hove overboard. By this time the tender made her appearance and ordered us all on board, made a prize of the sloop and ordered her for Norfolk where lay the English fleet. When our pilot and his crew went to take their boat I mingled with them and walked quietly on board without being observed, and set hard at rowing with one of the oars. The captain and the rest of the crew were made prisoners.”

The pilot boat landed young Little at Ocrakoke, where he found that the other pilots who had taken the powder ashore had stolen ten casks of it, scurvy patriots that they were. So the stout-hearted lad of sixteen borrowed an old musket and stood guard all night over the powder kegs. “The next morning,” he tells us, “the pilots finding they could plunder no more of the powder, agreed to carry it up the Pimlico River to the several County Committees for whom it was destined.” Luther Little went with them and saw to it that the powder reached its owners.

One Colonel Simpson offered him a small schooner laden with corn to be delivered down the Pongo River. She had a crew of slaves which the boy skipper loftily rejected and took his little schooner single-handed downstream, making port after a two days’ voyage. While at anchor there came a hurricane which had a most surprising effect on his fortunes. “I shut myself down in the cabin,” said he, “and in the course of the night found the vessel adrift. Not daring to go on deck I waited the result and soon felt the vessel strike. After thumping a while she keeled to one side and remained still. At daylight next morning I ventured on deck and found myself safe on terra firma, in the woods, one half mile from the water, the tide having left me safe among the trees.”

Making his way on foot to the home of the consignee, he reported his arrival, explained the situation and wrote his employer that he had delivered his cargo safe, and that he would find his schooner half a mile in the woods anchored safely among the trees.

The marooned seaman had not to wait long for another berth. On the same day of his escape he saw a sloop beating out of the river and hailed her skipper. A foremast hand was wanted and Little shipped aboard for the West Indies. During the passage they were chased by an English frigate, and ran in under the guns of the Dutch fort at St. Eustatia. Cargo and vessel were sold, and Luther Little transferred himself to another sloop bound for Rhode Island.

“Arriving safe after a passage of eleven days,” he writes, “I took my pack and travelled to Little Compton where I had an uncle. Here I stayed one week, and then marched home on foot, the distance of seventy miles, without one cent in my pocket. I had been absent eleven months.”

A few months later Luther Little shipped on board a letter of marque brig bound to Cadiz. Off Cape Finnesterre a storm piled the vessel on the rocks where she went to pieces. Little was washed over the bows, but caught a trailing rope and hauled himself aboard with a broken leg. While he was in this plight the brig broke in two, and somehow, with the help of his fellow seamen, he was conveyed ashore to a Spanish coast fortification. Thence they were taken by boat to Bellisle. The infant Uncle Sam was not wholly neglectful of his subjects, even though he was in the death-grip of a Revolution, for to the inn at Bellisle there came “a coach with four white horses and Mr. John Baptiste, an officer in the employ of the United States government, to enquire if there were any from off that wreck who needed assistance and wished to go to the hospital.”

Luther Little lay in a hospital at Lisbon from autumn into spring where, he relates: “I was treated with great kindness and attention and although in my midnight dreams the spirits of a kind mother and beloved sisters would often hover around my pillow, still on waking, the thought that I had escaped an early death was ever present to the mind, and I felt that although far from home and friends, I had every reason to be thankful.”

The canny youngster had a shoe with a hollow heel, which hiding place he had prepared before leaving home, and in which he had tucked eight gold dollars with this sagacious reflection:

“Previous to this I had been left among strangers perfectly destitute without money either to assist myself, or to remunerate them for kindness received. I was now leaving home again, the future was covered with a veil which a wise Providence had never permitted human knowledge to rend. I knew not with what this voyage might be fraught—evil or good. I therefore resolved if possible to have something laid up as the old adage expresses, ‘for a wet day.’”

When Luther was discharged from the Spanish hospital eleven other luckless American seamen who had been cast on their beam ends were set adrift with him. The shoe with the hollow heel held the only cash in the party who undertook an overland journey of three hundred miles to the nearest seaport whence they might expect to find passage home. While spending the night at a port called St. Ubes there came ashore the captain and lieutenant of an English privateer. These were very courteous foemen, for the captain told how he had been made prisoner by a Yankee crew, carried into Salem, and treated so exceedingly well that he was very grateful. Thereupon he ordered his lieutenant to go off to the privateer and fetch a dozen of pickled neats’ tongues which he gave the stranded pilgrims to put in their packs. He also turned over to them a Portuguese pilot to escort them through the desolate and hostile country in which their journey lay. With the Portuguese, the neats’ tongues, and wine in leather bottles, paid for from the hollow heel, the American tars trudged along, sleeping on the ground and in shepherds’ sheds until they reached the boundary between Spain and Portugal.

“The Spanish and English were at war,” relates Luther Little, “and the stable in which we slept was surrounded by Spaniards who swore we were English and they would take us prisoners. In vain the landlord of the nearby tavern expostulated with them, saying we were Americans in distress traveling to Faro. They still persisted in forcing the door. The pilot told them that we were desperate men armed to the teeth and at length they disappeared.”

They were among a set of accomplished thieves, for next day they bought some mackerel and stowed it in their packs from which it was artfully stolen by the very lad who had sold it to them. The pilot cheered them with tales of highway robbery and murder as they fared on, indicating with eloquent gestures sundry stones which marked the burial places of slain travelers. They were once attacked by a gang of brigands who stole their mule and slender store of baggage, but the seamen rallied with such headlong energy that the robbers took to the bushes.

Reaching the port of Faro, they found a good-hearted mate of a Portuguese brig who gave them a ham, four dozen biscuit and a part of a cheese. The French Consul also befriended them, and supplied a boat to take them to a port called Iammont. Although the ingenuous Luther Little explains their next adventure as pacific, it is not unfair to presume that his company committed a mild-mannered kind of piracy. However, he tells the tale in this fashion:

“We reached the mouth of the Iammont River next morning. Here we met a Spanish shallop coming out, bound to Cadiz, loaded with small fish and manned with six men. The Captain was very old. We shifted on board this shallop and sailed toward Cadiz with a fair wind. When night approached the Spanish captain having no compass, steered by a star; at ten the clouds came over and the stars were shut in, the wind blowing fresh. The Spaniards fell on their knees, imploring the aid of their saints. Directly the captain concluded to go on shore, and took his cask of oil to break the surf, and bore away toward the shore. We being the strongest party (eleven to six), hauled the shallop onto her course and obliged the old Spaniard to take the helm, it still continuing very thick. At one that morning we struck on the Porpoise Rocks at the mouth of Cadiz Bay; we shipped two seas which filled the boat. With our hats we bailed out water, fish and all, directly made Cadiz light, and ran in near the wall of the city. The sentry from the wall told us to come no nearer, whereupon the old captain hauled down sails and let go his anchor. At daylight I paid one Spanish dollar apiece passage money and we left the boat.

“We went to the gate of the city and sat down on some ship timber. One of our men was then two days sick with a fever. When the gate was opened we marched in, two of us carrying the sick man. A little way inside we met a Spaniard who spoke English. He invited us to his house, and gave us a breakfast of coffee and fish, and told us we were welcome to remain there until we could find a passage home.”

Next day Luther Little as spokesman waited upon John Jay, United States Minister to the Court of Madrid, who had come to Cadiz with his wife in the Confederacy frigate. Minister Jay put the sick man in a hospital while the others sought chances to work their way home. They found in the harbor an English brig which had captured an American ship and was then in her turn retaken by the Yankee crew who had risen upon the prize crew. According to Luther Little this Yankee mate, Morgan by name, was a first-class fighting man, for he had sailed the brig into Cadiz, flying the Stars and Stripes, with only a boy or two to help him. She carried twelve guns and needed a heavy crew to risk the passage home to Cape Ann.

Reinforced by the captain and crew of another American vessel which had been taken by an English frigate, Luther Little’s party sought Minister Jay and explained the situation. They could work their passage in the brig, but they had no provisions. Would he help them? Mr. Jay made this singular compact, that he would give them provisions if they would sign a document promising to pay for the stores at the Navy Yard in Boston, or to serve aboard a Continental ship until the debt was worked out. All hands signed this paper by which they put themselves in pawn to serve their country’s flag, and the brig sailed from Cadiz.

After thirty days they were on George’s Bank where they lay becalmed while an English privateer swept down toward them with sweeps out. A commander was chosen by vote, decks cleared for action, and two guns shifted over to the side toward the privateer. “The captain ordered his crew to quarters. When the privateer came up to us we gave her a broadside; she fired upon us, then dropped astern and came up on the larboard side,” so Little describes it. “As soon as the guns would bear upon her we gave her another broadside. They returned the same. The privateer schooner giving up the contest, dropped astern and made off, we giving her three cheers.”

Without mishap the brig arrived off Cape Ann, and continued on to Boston. There Luther Little obtained money from friends and paid off his share of the debt to the Navy Board. He was the only one of the eleven of his party who redeemed themselves, however, the others going aboard Continental cruisers as stipulated by the shrewd Minister Jay who, in this fashion, secured almost a dozen lusty seamen for the navy.

“Once more I reached home entirely destitute,” comments Luther Little, who tarried on his father’s farm a few weeks, and then once more “bade home and those dear to me, adieu.” This was in the year 1780. He entered on board the United States ship Protector, of twenty-six guns and 230 men, as midshipman and prizemaster. Her commander was John Foster Williams, and her first lieutenant, George Little, was a brother of our hero. Their names deserve remembrance, for the Protector fought one of the most heroic and desperate engagements of the Revolution of which Midshipman Little shall tell you in his own words:

“We lay off in Nantasket Roads making ready for a six months’ cruise, and put to sea early in April of 1780. Our course was directed eastward, keeping along the coast till we got off Mount Desert, most of the time in a dense fog, without encountering friend or foe. On the morning of June ninth, the fog began to clear away, and the man at the masthead gave notice that he discovered a ship to the windward of us. We perceived her to be a large ship under English colors, standing down before the wind for us. We were on the leeward side.

“As she came down upon us she appeared to be as large as a seventy-four. The captain and lieutenant were looking at her through their glasses, and after consulting decided that she was not an English frigate but a large king’s packet ship, and the sooner we got alongside of her the better. The boatswain was ordered to pipe all hands to quarters, and clear the ship for action. Hammocks were brought up and stuffed into the nettings, decks wet and sanded, matches lighted and burning, bulkheads hooked up.

“We were not deceived respecting her size. It afterwards proved she was of eleven hundred tons burden, a Company ship which had cruised in the West Indies for some time and then took a cargo of sugar and tobacco at St. Kitts bound to London. She carried thirty-six twelve-pounders upon the gun deck, and was furnished with two hundred and fifty men, and was called the Admiral Duff, Richard Strange, master. We were to the leeward of her and standing to the northward under cruising sail. She came down near us, and aimed to pass us and go ahead. After passing by to the leeward she hove to under fighting colors. We were all this time under English colors and observed her preparing for action. Very soon I heard the sailing master call for his trumpet:

“‘Let fall the foresail, sheet home the main topgallant sail.’

“We steered down across her stern, and hauled up under her lee quarter. At the same time we were breeching our guns aft to bring her to bear. Our first lieutenant possessed a very powerful voice; he hailed the ship from the gang-board and enquired:

“‘What ship is that?’

“He was answered ‘The Admiral Duff.’

“‘Where are you from and where bound?’

“‘From a cruise bound to London,’ they answered, and then enquired: ‘What ship is that?’

“We gave no answer. The captain ordered a broadside given, and colors changed at the first flash of a gun, and as the thirteen stripes took the place of the English ensign they gave us three cheers and fired a broadside. They partly shot over us, their ship being so much higher than ours, cutting away some of our rigging. The action commenced within pistol shot and now began a regular battle, broadside to broadside.

“After we had engaged one half hour there came in a cannon ball through the side and killed Mr. Scollay, one of our midshipmen. He commanded the fourth twelve-pounder from the stern, I commanded the third. The ball took him in the head. His brains flew upon my gun and into my face. The man at my gun who rammed down the charge was a stout Irishman. Immediately on the death of Mr. Scollay he stripped himself of his shirt and exclaimed:

“‘An’ faith, if they kill me they shall tuck no rags into my insides.’

“The action continued about an hour when all the topmen on board the enemy’s ship were killed by our marines, who were seventy in number, all Americans. Our marines also killed the man at the wheel, caused the ship to come down upon us, and her cat-head stove in our quarter-gallery.

“We lashed their jib-boom to our main-shrouds, and our marines from the quarterdeck firing into their port holes kept them from charging. We were ordered from our quarters to board, but before we were able the lashings broke. We were ordered back to quarters to charge our guns when the other ship shooting alongside of us, the yards nearly locked. We gave her a broadside which cut away her mizzen mast and made great havoc among them. We perceived her sinking, at the same time saw that her main topgallant sail was on fire, which ran down the rigging and caught a hogshead of cartridges under the quarterdeck and blew it up.

“At this time from one of their forward guns there came into the port where I commanded a charge of grape shot. With three of them I was wounded, one between my neck bone and windpipe, one through my jaw lodging in the roof of my mouth, and taking off a piece of my tongue, the third through the upper lip, taking away part of the lip and all of my upper teeth. I was immediately taken to the cockpit, to the surgeon. My gun was fired only once afterward; I had fired nineteen times. I lay unattended to, being considered mortally wounded and was past by that the wounds of those more likely to live might be dressed. I was perfectly sensible and heard the surgeon’s remark:

“‘Let Little lay. Attend to the others first. He will die.’

“Perceiving me motion to him he came to me and began to wash off the blood, and dress my wound. After dressing the lip and jaw he was turning from me. I put my hand to my neck, and he returned and examined my neck, pronouncing it the deepest wound of the three. I bled profusely, the surgeon said two gallons.

“By this time the enemy’s ship was sunk and nothing was to be seen of her. She went down on fire with colours flying. Our boats were injured by the shots and our carpenters were repairing them in order to pull out and pick up the men of the English that were afloat. They succeeded in getting fifty-five, one half wounded and scalded.

“The first lieutenant told me that such was their pride when on the brink of a watery grave, that they fought like demons, preferring death with the rest of their comrades rather than captivity, and that it was with much difficulty that many of them were forced into the boats. Our surgeon amputated limbs from five of the prisoners, and attended them as if they had been of our own crew. One of the fifty-five was then sick with the West Indies fever and had floated out of his hammock between decks. The weather was excessively warm and in less than ten days sixty of our men had taken the epidemic.

“The Admiral Duff had two American captains, with their crews, on board as prisoners. These (the captains) were among the fifty-five saved by our boats. One of them told Captain Williams that he was with Captain Strange when our vessel hove in sight, that he asked him what he thought of her, and told him he thought her one of the Continental frigates. Captain Strange thought not, but he wished she might be; at any rate were she only a Salem privateer she would be a clever little prize to take home with him. During the battle while Captain Williams was walking the quarterdeck a shot from the enemy took his speaking trumpet from his hand, but he picked it up and with great calmness continued his orders.[11]

“We sailed for the coast of Nova Scotia near to Halifax. After cruising there about a week we discovered a large ship steering for us, and soon discovered her to be an English frigate. We hove about and ran from her, our men being sick, we did not dare to engage her. This was at four o’clock in the afternoon. The frigate gained on us fast. When she came up near us we fired four stern chasers, and kept firing. When she got near our stern she luffed and gave us a broadside which did no other damage save lodging one shot in the mainmast and cutting away some rigging. We made a running fight until dark, the enemy choosing not to come alongside. In the evening she left us and hauled her wind to the southward and we for the north.”

The captain of the Protector needed wood and water and so set sail for the Maine coast where he landed his invalids, converting a farmer’s barn into a temporary hospital with the surgeon’s mate in charge. While the cruiser lay in harbor Luther Little’s sense of humor would not permit this incident to go unforgotten:

“Among our crew was a fellow half Indian and half negro who coveted a fatted calf belonging to a farmer on the shore. His evil genius persuaded him to pilfer the same, but he could find only one man willing to assist him. Cramps, which was the negro’s name, took a boat one evening and went on shore to commit the depredation. He secured the victim and returned to the ship without discovery. He arrived under the ship’s bows and called for his partner in crime to lower the rope to hoist the booty on board, but his fellow conspirator had dodged below and it so happened that the first lieutenant was on deck. Cramps, thinking it was his co-worker in iniquity, hailed him in a low voice, asking him to do as he had agreed and that damned quick.

“The lieutenant, thinking that something out of the way was going on, obeyed the summons. Cramps fixed the noose around the calf’s neck, and cried:

“‘Pull away, blast your eyes. My back is almost broke carrying the crittur so far on the land. Give us your strength on the water.’

“The lieutenant obeyed, and Cramps, boosting in the rear, the victim was soon brought on deck. Cramps jumped on board and found both himself and the calf in possession of the lieutenant. Next morning the thief was ordered to shoulder the calf and march to the farmer and ask forgiveness, and take the reward of his sins which was fifty lashes.”

So seriously had Midshipman Little been raked with the three grape shot that he was sent home to recover his strength, and he did not rejoin the Protector until her second cruise five months later. After taking several prizes between the New England coast and the West Indies, she sailed for Charleston. One afternoon a sail was sighted to the leeward. “We wore around,” says the narrative, “and made sail in chase, found we gained fast upon her and at sunset we could see her hull. When night shut in we lost sight of her. There came over us a heavy cloud with squalls of thunder and lightning and by the flashes we discovered the ship which had altered her course. We hauled our wind in chase and were soon alongside. The next flash of lightning convinced us she was of English colours. We hailed her. She answered ‘from Charleston bound to Jamaica,’ and inquired where we were from. The first lieutenant shouted back:

“‘The Alliance, United States frigate.’

“Our men were all at quarters and lanterns burning at every port. Our captain told him to haul down his colours, and heave to. There was no answer. We fired three twelve pounders. He called out and said he had struck. Captain Williams asked why he did not shorten sail and heave to. He replied that his men had gone below and would not come up. Our barge was lowered, a prize crew and master put on board and we took possession of the ship. She proved to be of eight hundred tons burden, with three decks fore and aft carrying twenty-four nine-pounders and manned with eighty men. We ordered her for Boston where she arrived safe.”

This handsome capture was achieved by an audacious “bluff,” but this cruise of the Protector was fated to have a less fortunate ending. A few days later another prize was taken and, lucky for Luther Little, he was put aboard as prizemaster. While he was waiting in company with the Protector for his orders to proceed, the cruiser sighted another sail and made off in chase. Prizemaster Little tried to follow her until night shut down, and then as she showed no lights he gave up the pursuit and shaped his course for Nantucket. At daylight next morning, the mate who was standing his watch on deck, went below to inform Skipper Little that two large ships were to the leeward. The latter climbed aloft with his glass and made them out to be British frigates in chase of the Protector. They took no notice of the prize a mile to windward of them but pelted hard after the Yankee war ship and when last seen she was in the gravest danger of capture.

Luther Little cracked on sail for Boston with his prize and upon arriving called upon Governor John Hancock and told him in what a perilous situation he had left the Protector. Ten days later the news came that the cruiser had been taken by the Roebuck and Mayday frigates and carried into New York.

Luther Little, having escaped with the skin of his teeth, forsook the service of the United States and like many another stout seaman decided to try his fortune privateering. Captain William Orme, a Salem merchant, offered him the berth of lieutenant aboard the letter of marque brig Jupiter. She was a formidable vessel, carrying twenty guns and a hundred and fifty men. From Salem, that wasp’s nest of Revolutionary privateersmen, the Jupiter sailed for the West Indies. Captain Orme went in his ship, but while he was a successful shipping merchant, he was not quite a dashing enough comrade for so seasoned a sea-dog as this young Luther Little. To the windward of Turk’s Island they sighted a large schooner which showed no colors.

“Our boatswain and gunner had been prisoners a short time before in Jamaica,” says Lieutenant Little, “and they told Captain Orme that she was the Lyon schooner, bearing eighteen guns. Our boatswain piped all hands to quarters and we prepared for action. Captain Orme, not being acquainted with a warlike ship, told me I must take the command, advising me to run from her. I told him in thus doing we should surely be taken. I ordered the men in the tops to take in the studding-sails. We then ran down close to her, luffed, and gave her a broadside, which shot away both of her topmasts. She then bore away and made sail and ran from us, we in chase. We continued thus for three hours, then came alongside. I hailed and told them to shorten sail or I’d sink them on the spot. Our barge was lowered and I boarded her; all this time she had no colours set. I hailed our ship and told Captain Orme I thought her a clear prize, and bade the men prepare to board her. But the captain hailed for the boat to return. I obeyed and told him she had a good many men and several guns. The captain said he would have nothing to do with her, as he feared they might rise upon us. Much to my reluctance we left her.”

After having thirty men of the crew violently ill at one time in the fever-stricken harbor of Port au Prince, the letter of marque Jupiter was freighted with sugar and coffee and set out for Salem. Dodging two English frigates cruising for prizes in the Crooked Island passage, she passed a small island upon which some kind of signal appeared to be hoisted.

“I was in my hammock quite unwell,” relates Lieutenant Little of the Jupiter. “The captain sent for me on deck and asked me if I thought a vessel had been cast away on the island. After spying attentively with my glasses, I told him it was no doubt a wreck, and that I could discover men on the island, that probably they were in distress. I advised him to send a boat and take them off. He said the boat should not go unless I went in her. I told him I was too sick, to send Mr. Leach, our mate. He would not listen to me. I went. We landed at the leeward of the island, and walked toward the wreck, when ten men came towards us. They were the captain and crew of the unfortunate vessel. They were much moved at seeing us, said they were driven ashore on the island and had been there ten days without a drop of water. By this time Captain Orme had hove a signal for our return, there being a frigate in chase. Going to the ship the wrecked captain, who was an old man named Peter Trott, asked me where our vessel was from. I told him we were bound to Salem, and he was quite relieved, fearing we were an English man-of-war. We came alongside and the boat was hoisted up and every sail set, the frigate in chase. She gained upon us and at dark was about a league astern. The clouds were thick and I told the captain we were nearly in their power, our only chance being to square away and run to the leeward across the Passage, it being so thick that they could not discover us with their night glasses. We lay to until we thought the frigate had passed, made sail toward morning, and fetched through the Passage.”

After this voyage Luther Little became captain of a large brig which had a roundhouse and was steered by a wheel which was uncommon for merchantmen in those days. He had one terrific winter passage home from the West Indies, fetched up off the Massachusetts coast with every man of his crew but one helplessly frozen, and his vessel half full of water. With his one lone seaman he was blown off to sea, and at length ran his waterlogged craft ashore on the Maine coast. Nothing daunted, he worked her down to Boston, after being frozen up and adrift in ice, and sending ashore for men to help him pump out his hold.

“Here at this era of my life, the wheel of fortune turned,” he makes comment. “The last seventeen years had been spent mostly on the wide waters. I had passed through scenes at which the heart shrinks as memory recalls them; but now the scene changed. Ill luck was ended.”

Thereafter Captain Luther Little continued in the West India trade until he had made twenty-four successful voyages, “always bringing back every man, even to cook and boy.” After this he shifted to the commerce with Russia, making six yearly voyages to St. Petersburg at a time when the American flag was almost unknown in that port.

“During one of these voyages,” he recounts, “when off Norway in a cold snow storm lying to, a man on the main yard handling the mainsail fell overboard, went under the vessel, and came up on the lee side. I was then on the quarterdeck, caught a hen coop, and threw it into the ocean. He succeeded in getting hold of it. I then ordered topsails hove aback, and to cut away the lashings of the yawl. The man not being in sight I ordered the boat to pull to windward. They succeeded in taking him and brought him on board. He was alive though unable to speak or stand. I had him taken into the cabin, and by rubbing and giving him something hot, he was soon restored to duty. I asked him what he thought his fate would be when overboard. He said that he tried the hen coop lying to and found that would not answer. Then he thought he would try it scudding, and ‘sir,’ he answered, ‘if you had not sent your boat just as you did, I should have borne away for the coast of Norway.’”

When his sea life ended at the age of forty-one, Captain Luther Little could say with a very worthy pride:

“In all my West India and Russian voyaging I never lost a man, never carried away a spar, nor lost a boat or anchor.”

In 1799, before the opening of the nineteenth century, this sturdy Yankee seaman, Luther Little, was ready to retire to his ancestral farm in Marshfield where his great-grandfather had hewn a home in the wilderness. In the prime of his vigor and capacity, having lived a dozen lives afloat, he was content to spend forty-odd years more as a New England farmer. And in his eighty-fifth year this old-fashioned American sailor and patriot still sunny and resolute, was able to sit down and describe the hazards through which he had passed just as they are here told.