| "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.
THE SNOW, AN OBSOLETE TYPE
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.
THE BUG-EYE
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.
A "PINK"
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 atempt 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.
"In order to meet and frustrate the design of the enemy, the mate of the ship had one of the quarter-deck guns loaded with grape and canister shot; he then ordered all the ports on this quarter to be shut, so that the gun could not be seen; and thus were both parties prepared when the privateer came boldly up within a few yards of the ship's lee quarter. The captain, with a threatening flourish of his sword, cried out with a loud voice, in broken English: 'Strike, you damned rascal, or I will put you all to death.' At this moment a diminutive-looking man on board the 'Louisa,' with a musket, took deliberate aim through one of the waist ports, and shot him dead. Instantly the gun was run out and discharged upon the foe with deadly effect, so that the remaining few on board the privateer, amazed and astounded, were glad to give up the conflict and get off the best way they could.
"Soon after this a breeze sprung up, so that they could work their great guns to some purpose. I never shall forget the moment when I saw the Star-Spangled Banner blow out and wave gracefully in the wind, through the smoke. I also at the same moment saw with pleasure the three gunboats sailing and rowing away toward the land to make their escape. When the ship drew near the port, all the boats from the American shipping voluntarily went to assist in bringing her to anchor. She proved to be the letter-of-marque ship 'Louisa,' of Philadelphia.
"I went with our captain on board of her, and we there learned that, with the exception of the captain, not a man had been killed or wounded. The ship was terribly cut up and crippled in her sails and rigging—lifts and braces shot away; her stern was literally riddled like a grater, and both large and small shot, in great numbers, had entered her hull and were sticking to her sides. How the officers and crew escaped unhurt is almost impossible to conceive. The poor captain was immediately taken on shore, but only survived his wound a few days. He had a public funeral, and was followed to the grave by all the Americans in Gibraltar, and very many of the officers of the garrison and inhabitants of the town.
"INSTANTLY THE GUN WAS RUN OUT AND DISCHARGED"
"INSTANTLY THE GUN WAS RUN OUT AND DISCHARGED"
"The ship had a rich cargo of coffee, sugar, and India goods on board, and I believe was bound for Leghorn. The gunboats belonged to Algeciras and fought under French colors, but were probably manned by the debased of all nations. I can form no idea how many were killed or wounded on board the gunboats, but from the great number of men on board, and from the length of the action, there must have been great slaughter. Neither can I say positively how long the engagement lasted; but I should think at least from three to four hours. To the chief mate too much credit can not be given for saving the ship after the captain was shot."
This action occurred in 1800, and the assailants fought under French colors, though the United States were at peace with France. It was fought within easy eyesight of Gibraltar, and therefore in British waters; but no effort was made by the British men-of-war—always plentiful there—to maintain the neutrality of the port. For sailors to be robbed or murdered, or to fight with desperation to avert robbery and murder, was then only a commonplace of the sea. Men from the safety of the adjoining shore only looked on in calm curiosity, as nowadays men look on indifferently to see the powerful freebooter of the not less troubled business sea rob, impoverish, and perhaps drive down to untimely death others who only ask to be permitted to make their little voyages unvexed by corsairs.
From a little book of memoirs of Captain Richard J. Cleveland, the curious observer can learn what it was to belong to a seafaring family in the golden days of American shipping. His was a Salem stock. His father, in 1756, when but sixteen years old, was captured by a British press-gang in the streets of Boston, and served for years in the British navy. For this compulsory servitude he exacted full compensation in later years by building and commanding divers privateers to prey upon the commerce of England. His three sons all became sailors, taking to the water like young ducks. A characteristic note of the cosmopolitanism of the young New Englander of that day is sounded in the most matter-of-fact fashion by young Cleveland in a letter from Havre: "I can't help loving home, though I think a young man ought to be at home in any part of the globe." And at home everywhere Captain Cleveland certainly was. All his life was spent in wandering over the Seven Seas, in ships of every size, from a 25-ton cutter to a 400-ton Indiaman. In those days of navigation laws, blockades, hostile cruisers, hungry privateers, and bloodthirsty pirates, the smaller craft was often the better, for it was wiser to brave nature's moods in a cockle-shell than to attract men's notice in a great ship. Captain Cleveland's voyages from Havre to the Cape of Good Hope, in a 45-ton cutter; from Calcutta to the Isle of France, in a 25-ton sloop; and Captain Coggeshall's voyage around Cape Horn in an unseaworthy pilot-boat are typical exploits of Yankee seamanship. We see the same spirit manifested occasionally nowadays when some New Englander crosses the ocean in a dory, or circumnavigates the world alone in a 30-foot sloop. But these adventures are apt to end ignominiously in a dime museum.
A noted sailor in his time was Captain Benjamin I. Trask, master of many ships, ruler of many deeps, who died in harness in 1871, and for whom the flags on the shipping in New York Bay were set at half-mast. An appreciative writer, Mr. George W. Sheldon, in Harper's Magazine, tells this story to show what manner of man he was; it was on the ship "Saratoga," from Havre to New York, with a crew among whom were several recently liberated French convicts:
"The first day out the new crew were very troublesome, owing in part, doubtless, to the absence of the mate, who was ill in bed and who died after a few hours. Suddenly the second mate, son of the commander, heard his father call out, 'Take hold of the wheel,' and going forward, saw him holding a sailor at arm's length. The mutineer was soon lodged in the cockpit; but all hands—the watch below and the watch on deck—came aft as if obeying a signal, with threatening faces and clenched fists. The captain, methodical and cool, ordered his son to run a line across the deck between him and the rebellious crew, and to arm the steward and the third mate.
"'Now go forward and get to work', he said to the gang, who immediately made a demonstration to break the line. 'The first man who passes that rope,' added the captain, 'I will shoot. I am going to call you one by one; if two come at a time I will shoot both.'
"The first to come forward was a big fellow in a red shirt. He had hesitated to advance when called; but the 'I will give you one more invitation, sir,' of the captain furnished him with the requisite resolution. So large were his wrists that ordinary shackles were too small to go around them, and ankle-shackles took their place. Escorted by the second and third mates to the cabin, he was made to lie flat on his stomach, while staples were driven through the chains of his handcuffs to pin him down. After eighteen of the mutineers had been similarly treated, the captain himself withdrew to the cabin and lay on a sofa, telling the second mate to call him in an hour. The next minute he was asleep with the stapled ruffians all around him."
As the ocean routes became more clearly defined, and the limitations and character of international trade more systematized, there sprung up a new type of American ship-master. The older type—and the more romantic—was the man who took his ship from Boston or New York, not knowing how many ports he might enter nor in how many markets he might have to chaffer before his return. But in time there came to be regular trade routes, over which ships went and came with almost the regularity of the great steamships on the Atlantic ferry to-day. Early in the nineteenth century the movement of both freight and passengers between New York or Boston on this side and London and Liverpool on the other began to demand regular sailings on announced days, and so the era of the American packet-ship began. Then, too, the trade with China grew to such great proportions that some of the finest fortunes America knew in the days before the "trust magnate" and the "multimillionaire"—were founded upon it. The clipper-built ship, designed to bring home the cargoes of tea in season to catch the early market, was the outcome of this trade. Adventures were still for the old-time trading captain who wandered about from port to port with miscellaneous cargoes; but the new aristocracy of the sea trod the deck of the packets and the clippers. Their ships were built all along the New England coast; but builders on the shores of Chesapeake Bay soon began to struggle for preëminence in this style of naval architecture. Thus, even in the days of wooden ships, the center of the ship-building industry began to move toward that point where it now seems definitely located. By 1815 the name "Baltimore clipper" was taken all over the world to signify the highest type of merchant vessel that man's skill could design. It was a Baltimore ship which first, in 1785, displayed the American flag in the Canton River and brought thence the first cargo of silks and teas. Thereafter, until the decline of American shipping, the Baltimore clippers led in the Chinese trade. These clippers in model were the outcome of forty years of effort to evade hostile cruisers, privateers, and pirates on the lawless seas. To be swift, inconspicuous, quick in maneuvering, and to offer a small target to the guns of the enemy, were the fundamental considerations involved in their design. Mr. Henry Hall, who, as special agent for the United States census, made in 1880 an inquiry into the history of ship-building in the United States, says in his report:
"A permanent impression has been made upon the form and rig of American vessels by forty years of war and interference. It was during that period that the shapes and fashions that prevail to-day were substantially attained. The old high poop-decks and quarter galleries disappeared with the lateen and the lug-sails on brigs, barks, and ships; the sharp stem was permanently abandoned; the curving home of the stem above the house poles went out of vogue, and vessels became longer in proportion to beam. The round bottoms were much in use, but the tendency toward a straight rise of the floor from the keel to a point half-way to the outer width of the ship became marked and popular. Hollow water-lines fore and aft were introduced; the forefoot of the hull ceased to be cut away so much, and the swell of the sides became less marked; the bows became somewhat sharper and were often made flaring above the water, and the square sprit-sail below the bowsprit was given up. American ship-builders had not yet learned to give their vessels much sheer, however, and in a majority of them the sheer line was almost straight from stem to stern; nor had they learned to divide the topsail into an upper and lower sail, and American vessels were distinguished by their short lower mast and the immense hoist of the topsail. The broadest beam was still at two-fifths the length of the hull. Hemp rigging, with broad channels and immense tops to the masts, was still retained; but the general arrangement and cut of the head, stay, square, and spanker sails at present in fashion were reached. The schooner rig had also become thoroughly popularized, especially for small vessels requiring speed; and the fast vessels of the day were the brigs and schooners, which were made long and sharp on the floor and low in the water, with considerable rake to the masts."
Such is the technical description of the changes which years of peril and of war wrought in the model of the American sailing ship. How the vessel herself, under full sail, looked when seen through the eyes of one who was a sailor, with the education of a writer and the temperament of a poet, is well told in these lines from "Two Years Before the Mast":
"Notwithstanding all that has been said about the beauty of a ship under full sail, there are very few who have ever seen a ship literally under all her sail. A ship never has all her sail upon her except when she has a light, steady breeze very nearly, but not quite, dead aft, and so regular that it can be trusted and is likely to last for some time. Then, with all her sails, light and heavy, and studding-sails on each side alow and aloft, she is the most glorious moving object in the world. Such a sight very few, even some who have been at sea a good deal, have ever beheld; for from the deck of your own vessel you can not see her as you would a separate object.
"One night, while we were in the tropics, I went out to the end of the flying jib-boom upon some duty; and, having finished it, turned around and lay over the boom for a long time, admiring the beauty of the sight before me. Being so far out from the deck, I could look at the ship as at a separate vessel; and there rose up from the water, supported only by the small black hull, a pyramid of canvas spreading far out beyond the hull and towering up almost, as it seemed in the indistinct night, into the clouds. The sea was as still as an inland lake; the light trade-wind was gently and steadily breathing from astern; the dark-blue sky was studded with the tropical stars; there was no sound but the rippling of the water under the stem; and the sails were spread out wide and high—the two lower studding-sails stretching on either side far beyond the deck; the topmost studding-sails like wings to the topsails; the topgallant studding-sails spreading fearlessly out above them; still higher the two royal studding-sails, looking like two kites flying from the same string; and highest of all the little sky-sail, the apex of the pyramid, seeming actually to touch the stars and to be out of reach of human hand. So quiet, too, was the sea, and so steady the breeze, that if these sails had been sculptured marble they could not have been more motionless—not a ripple on the surface of the canvas; not even a quivering of the extreme edges of the sail, so perfectly were they distended by the breeze. I was so lost in the sight that I forgot the presence of the man who came out with me, until he said (for he, too, rough old man-of-war's man that he was, had been gazing at the show), half to himself, still looking at the marble sails: 'How quietly they do their work!'"
The building of packet ships began in 1814, when some semblance of peace and order appeared upon the ocean, and continued until almost the time of the Civil War, when steamships had already begun to cut away the business of the old packets, and the Confederate cruisers were not needed to complete the work. But in their day these were grand examples of marine architecture. The first of the American transatlantic lines was the Black Ball line, so called from the black sphere on the white pennant which its ships displayed. This line was founded in 1815, by Isaac Wright & Company, with four ships sailing the first of every month, and making the outward run in about twenty-three days, the homeward voyage in about forty. These records were often beaten by ships of this and other lines. From thirteen to fifteen days to Liverpool was not an unknown record, but was rare enough to cause comment.
It was in this era that the increase in the size of ships began—an increase which is still going on without any sign of check. Before the War of 1812 men circumnavigated the world in vessels that would look small now carrying brick on the Tappan Zee. The performances of our frigates in 1812 first called the attention of builders to the possibilities of the bigger ship. The early packets were ships of from 400 to 500 tons each. As business grew larger ones were built—stout ships of 900 to 1100 tons, double-decked, with a poop-deck aft and a top-gallant forecastle forward. The first three-decker was the "Guy Mannering," 1419 tons, built in 1849 by William H. Webb, of New York, who later founded the college and home for ship-builders that stands on the wooded hills north of the Harlem River. In 1841, Clark & Sewall, of Bath, Me.—an historic house—built the "Rappahannock," 179.6 feet long, with a tonnage of 1133 tons. For a time she was thought to be as much of a "white elephant" as the "Great Eastern" afterwards proved to be. People flocked to study her lines on the ways and see her launched. They said only a Rothschild could afford to own her, and indeed when she appeared in the Mississippi—being built for the cotton trade—freights to Liverpool instantly fell off. But thereafter the size of ships—both packet and clippers—steadily and rapidly increased. Glancing down the long table of ships and their records prepared for the United States census, we find such notations as these.
Ship "Flying Cloud," built 1851; tonnage 1782; 374 miles in one day; from New York to San Francisco in 89 days 18 hours; in one day she made 433-1/2 miles, but reducing this to exactly 24 hours, she made 427-1/2 miles.
Ship "Comet," built 1851; tonnage 1836; beautiful model and good ship; made 332 knots in 24 hours, and 1512 knots in 120 consecutive hours.
"Sovereign of the Seas," built 1852; tonnage 2421; ran 6,245 miles in 22 days; 436 miles in one day; for four days her average was 398 miles.
"Lightning," built 1854; tonnage 2084; ran 436 miles in 24 hours, drawing 22 feet; from England to Calcutta with troops, in 87 days, beating other sailing vessels by from 16 to 40 days; from Boston to Liverpool in 13 days 20 hours.
"James Baines," built 1854, tonnage 2515; from Boston to Liverpool in 12 days 6 hours.
Three of these ships came from the historic yards of Donald McKay, at New York, one of the most famous of American ship-builders. The figures show the steady gain in size and speed that characterized the work of American ship-builders in those days. Then the United States was in truth a maritime nation. Every boy knew the sizes and records of the great ships, and each magnificent clipper had its eager partisans. Foreign trade was active. Merchants made great profit on cargoes from China, and speed was a prime element in the value of a ship. In 1840 the discovery of gold in California added a new demand for ocean shipping; the voyage around the Horn, already common enough for whalemen and men engaged in Asiatic trade, was taken by tens of thousands of adventurers. Then came the news of gold in Australia, and again demands were clamorous for more swift American ships. All nations of Europe were buyers at our shipyards, and our builders began seriously to consider whether the supply of timber would hold out. The yards of Maine and Massachusetts sent far afield for white oak knees and pine planking. Southern forests were drawn upon, and even the stately pines of Puget Sound were felled to make masts for a Yankee ship.