Chapter V

Finding it difficult to define the ownership of vessels engaged in commerce, with which other counting houses on Water street were at various times within my memory associated, I shall subjoin a list as accurate as I have been able to make it, of all vessels except those engaged in the cod fishery hailing from Plymouth since about the year 1828. Those vessels in the list engaged in whaling will be referred to more particularly in a narrative of the whaling industry, while it was carried on in Plymouth. Those vessels engaged in the cod fishery, which only occasionally engaged in commercial pursuits, are not included in the list, but will be spoken of in a separate chapter. Packets and coasters and smacks are included in the list, but the packets will be further considered under their own head.

SHIPS.

Arbella
Granada
Hampden
Harvest
Iconium
Isaac Allerton
Levant
Massasoit
Mayflower
Persian
Sydney
Thracian
Tyrian

BARKS.

Abagun
Brontes
Charles Bartlett
Chilton
Condor
Crusoe
Edward Cohen
Fortune
Laura
Liberia
Mary and Martha
Osprey
Plymouth
Triton
Victor
Volant

BRIGS.

Attila
Aurora
Autumn
Chase
Cobden
Cybelle
Cyclops
Daniel Webster
Eurotas
Ganges
Garnet
Hannah
Isabella
James Monroe
Janus
Jennie Cushman
John Fehrman
Junius
Levant
Lucy
Maria
Massasoit
Maze
Miles Standish
Minerva
Oceanus
Old Colony
Plymouth
Plymouth Rock
Reindeer
Rhine
Rollins
Santiago
Sarah Abigail
Waverly
William
William Davis
Violet
Yeoman
Young America
Washington

SCHOONERS.

Anna D. Price
Atalanta
Capitol
Eliza Jane
Emma T. Story
Emma Winsor
Exchange
Fearless
Glide
Grace Russell
Independence
Janus
J. H. Racey
John Eliot
J. R. Atwood
John Randolph
Leader
Louisa Sears
M. R. Shepard
Maracaibo
Mary
Mary Allerton
Mary Eliza
Mary Holbrook
Martha May
Mercury
New York
Rainbow
Sarah Burton
Sarah E. Hyde
Sarah Elizabeth
Shave
Speedwell
Vesper
Wm. G. Eadie
Wm. Wilson

PINKIES.

Charles Augusta
George
Industry
Independence

SLOOPS.

Actress
Argo
Belus
Betsey
Comet
Coral
Eagle
Emerald
Falcon
Harriet
Hector
J. W. Crawford
Pennsylvania
Planet
Polly
Russell
Sally Curtis
Spartan
Splendid
Susan
Thetis
Wave

The four following ships, Granada, Hampden, Massasoit and Sydney in the above list were managed by Capt. John Russell, who bought or built them with the aid of contributions from Sydney Bartlett, William Perkins, William Thomas, Thomas Davis of Boston, and Thomas Russell of Plymouth. I think the Massasoit was the only one of the four built in Plymouth, and she was lost on Point Allerton on her return from a Calcutta voyage in February, 1843. A Mr. Holbrook of Dorchester, either passenger or supercargo, was lost. The negro cook calling himself Professor Steamburg, some years afterwards opened a barber’s shop in the Danforth building at the corner of North street, having been attracted here by the name of the town to which the ship belonged on which he was wrecked.

Exclusive of the packets and smacks, some of which were also built in Plymouth, a large majority of the vessels in the above list were launched in Plymouth yards. There were building yards in Plymouth as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century, one of which was at the foot of Middle street, and another on the site of the electric plant at the foot of Leyden street. The last must have been a well known and much used yard, and was situated on the northerly shore of the Mill pond, which was then an arm or cove of the harbor, with a broad entrance which was later traversed by the causeway and bridge existing today. At the beginning of the Revolution John Peck, a naval constructor, was sent to Plymouth to design and build two vessels of war, which were named Belisarius and Mercury, the latter being put in the command of the noted Capt. Simeon Sampson. It is probable that in early days, when only vessels of light draft of water were required, building yards were located on shores in close proximity to the woods, from which with short hauls building materials could be obtained. Thus the ship building industries of the south shore of Massachusetts Bay were established and continued active until the exigencies of commerce demanded larger vessels, and the construction of railroads and the transport by water rendered it easy to supply with timber the yards of East Boston and Medford and Newburyport. I have no conclusive record to guide me, but I am inclined to think that up to the time of the civil war as many vessels were built in Plymouth and Kingston and Duxbury, and on the North River as in all the remainder of New England.

Some indication of the extent of the building of vessels in Duxbury may be seen in the following record of the industry in that town from 1826 to 1831, inclusive. In 1826 thirteen square rigged vessels, and three schooners were built; in 1827, seven square rigged and one schooner; in 1828, two ships, three brigs and five schooners; in 1829, two ships, six brigs and two schooners; in 1830, one ship, two brigs and eight schooners, and in 1831, four ships, three brigs and eight schooners.

In 1834 Ezra Weston of Duxbury, or King Cæsar, as he was called, who was reckoned the largest ship owner in the United States next to Wm. Gray of Salem, built the ship Hope of 800 tons, which I remember seeing anchored in the Cow Yard waiting to be towed to Boston to be rigged. She was the largest merchantman ever seen in Boston. In my vacation visits to my grandmother in Boston, where I was in the habit of rambling about the wharves, I remember the largest ships of that time, the Asia, the St. Petersburg and the Akbar, owned by Daniel C. Bacon and others, and none were larger than 400 tons. After the death of Mr. Weston, which occurred August 15, 1842, ship building in Duxbury practically ceased.

So far as the North River is concerned the building of vessels was begun as early as 1678, and the first one there built was launched on the Hanover side of the river, a little above the present bridge on the Plymouth and Boston road. Up to 1889, according to the record of Dr. L. V. Briggs, ten hundred and twenty-five vessels had been built, many of which before the Revolution were owned in England. The largest vessel was a ship of six hundred and fifty tons, and the classes numbered one hundred and one sloops, four hundred and eight schooners, sixty-six brigantines, one hundred and thirty-three brigs, fifty-three barks and two hundred and eight ships. The North River industry gradually declined as the demand for larger vessels than could float in the waters of the river, increased. The records of the ship building industry of the Merrimac river, and those of Medford and East Boston, show where the industry went. The industry on the Merrimac river began at a very early period, it having the advantage of floating its timber from the northern woods directly to the ship yards. Before the Revolution, what were called Jew’s Rafts, were built on the Merrimac for a London Jew named Levi, bolted and fastened with the equipment of a ship, and sent across the ocean. In an English newspaper of 1770 it was announced “that the Newbury,” Capt. Rose, had arrived in the Thames, a raft of timber in the form of a ship, in twenty-six days from Newbury, New England.

No record of vessels built before the Revolution exists, but after the Revolution, up to 1883, about five hundred vessels were built on the Merrimac, and registered in the Custom House at Newburyport. The career of John Currier, Jr., of that city, was a remarkable one. Between 1831 and 1883, he built ninety-two ships, four barks and one schooner, of which the largest measured nineteen hundred and forty-five tons, and the average tonnage of the whole number was nine hundred and fifty-six.

Unfortunately there is no available record of the East Boston and Medford ships, but though the career of Donald McKay was shorter than that of Mr. Currier, it was more remarkable. Knowing something of Mr. McKay’s origin and early life, I may be pardoned for making a special reference to him. He belonged to a family living in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, my mother’s native town, and was engaged there in his trade as ship carpenter. My uncle, Cornelius White, a merchant, and the American Consul in that town, knowing his ability, advised him to go to Boston, and provided him with letters to such persons as he thought would advance his interests. Through these letters to my uncle, Isaac P. Davis, and William Sturgis, he at once secured work in the Charlestown Navy Yard. An entering wedge was enough for a man of genius like him, and the clipper ships which came one after another from his hands, soon placed him at the head of his profession in the country. A few years ago I had an interview in New York with his youngest brother, Nathaniel White McKay, named after another of my uncles, with regard to a steamboat for the Boston and Plymouth line, and I think the steamer Shrewsbury, which ran one season, was chartered through him.

The greatest triumph of Mr. McKay was the ship Great Republic, built at East Boston, three hundred and twenty-five feet long, fifty-three feet wide, and thirty-seven feet deep, with a capacity of four thousand tons. She had four masts, the after one called the spanker mast of a single spar fore and aft rigged. Her main yard was one hundred and twenty feet long, and her suit of sails contained 15,653 yards of canvas. She was partially burned at her dock in New York, and razeed to three decks and three masts.

In 1803 the foreign trade of Plymouth was at the height of its prosperity. In that year it was carried on by seventeen ships, sixteen brigs and forty schooners, and the duties paid into the Plymouth Custom House amounted to nearly one hundred thousand dollars. The above list of vessels shows how much the trade was reduced during the first quarter of the last century. This was due to the embargo act passed Dec. 22, 1807, on the recommendation of President Jefferson, and later to the war of 1812. The embargo act prohibited the departure from United States ports of all but foreign armed vessels with public commissions, or foreign merchant ships in ballast, or with such cargo only as they might have on board when notified of the law. All American vessels engaged in the coasting trade were obliged to give bonds to land their cargo in the United States. This embargo was repealed by a law taking effect March 15, 1809, except so far as it related to France and Great Britain, and their dependencies, and in regard to them also after the next session of Congress. Of course such a law struck a severe blow at the trade on which Plymouth most depended for the support of its people, and at a town meeting held in August, 1808, a petition to the President for a suspension of the embargo, was adopted in which it was stated that “prohibitory laws that subject the citizens to grevious privations and sufferings, the policy of which is at least questionable, and the temptations to the violations of which from the nature of man are almost irresistible, will gradually undermine the morals of society, and introduce a laxity of principle and contempt of the laws more to be deplored than even the useless waste of property.”

The President replied that “he would with great willingness have executed the wish of the inhabitants of Plymouth had the Berlin and Milan decrees, and the British orders in Council, which endangered the safety of neutral ships been repealed, but while the edicts remain, Congress alone can suspend the embargo.”

During the fifteen months of the continuance of the embargo, many of the business men of Plymouth were seriously crippled, and to some who survived its effects, the war which followed it, brought absolute ruin. During the war the wharves were crowded with vessels with their topmasts housed, and canvas bags, which received the name of Madison night caps, covered the hounds of their rigging. It is not to be supposed that yankee shrewdness entirely failed to evade the watchfulness of government officers, whose duty it was to prevent departures from port. Some of the vessels were already loaded with cargoes of fish for the West Indies when the war embargo began, and those which succeeded in the darkness of some stormy night in quietly setting up their rigging, and bending their sails, and getting to sea, found ready markets for their fish at from fifteen to twenty dollars per quintal.

I will close this chapter with a list of the captains of all vessels excepting those engaged in the cod fishery, who have served within my recollection.

Benjamin Nye Adams
George N. Adams
Thomas Appling
Anthony Atwood
Edward B. Atwood
Thomas Atwood
Thomas Atwood
Otis Baker
Wm. W. Baker
Bradford Barnes
James Barnes
Zacheus Barnes
Amasa Bartlett
Andrew Bartlett
Cornelius Bartlett
Flavel Bartlett
Frederick Bartlett
Isaac Bartlett
James Bartlett
Josiah Bartlett
Thomas Bartlett
Truman Bartlett
Truman Bartlett, Jr.
Wm. Bartlett
Wm. Bartlett
John Battles
Edward W. Bradford
Lemuel Bradford
Samuel Briggs
Chandler Burgess
John Burgess
Lewis Burgess
Wm. W. Burgess
Winslow Burgess
Horatio G. Cameron
John Carlton
Nath’l Carver
Wm. Carver
Daniel D. Churchill
Sylvanus Churchill
James M. Clark
Nath. Clark
Wm. Clark
Wm. Clark
George Collingwood
Joseph Cooper
James Cornish
Thomas E. Cornish
Nathaniel Covington
Robert Cowen
Dexter H. Craig
Ichabod Davie
Solomon Davie
Wm. Davie
Francis B. Davis
Samuel Doten
Samuel H. Doten
Simeon Dike
John Faunce
Elkanah Finney
Henry Gibbs
John Gooding
Albert G. Goodwin
Ezra S. Goodwin
Nath’l Goodwin
Ezra Harlow
Wm. O. Harris
Nathan Haskins
Gideon Holbrook
Albert Holmes
John F. Holmes
Kendall Holmes
Michael Holmes
Peter Holmes
Samuel D. Holmes
Truman C. Holmes
Wm. Holmes
Winslow Holmes
James Howard
Robert Hutchinson
Daniel Jackson
Daniel L. Jackson
Robert King
Thomas King
Clark Johnson
Wm. Langford
Phineas Leach
Augustus H. Lucas
Wm. Morton
Wm. Mullins
Thomas Nicolson
Wm. Nightingale
Grant C. Parsons
John Parsons
Ephraim Paty
John Paty
Gideon Perkins
Ebenezer Pierce
Ignatius Pierce
Ignatius Pierce, Jr.
Gideon V. Pool
Richard Pope
Calvin Ripley
Luther Ripley
Frederick Robbins
Isaac M. Robbins
Lewis Robbins
Nathan B. Robbins
Samuel Robbins
Richard Rogers
Samuel Rogers
Wm. Rogers
John Ross
Wm. Ross
John Russell
Merrick Rider
Marston Sampson
Amasa C. Sears
Benj. W. Sears
Hiram B. Sears
Thomas B. Sears
George Simmons
George Simmons, Jr.
Wm. D. Simmons
Nath’l Spooner
Nath’l Spooner
Wm. Swift
John Sylvester
Wm. Sylvester
Gamaliel Thomas
Thomas Torrey
Thomas Tribble
Eleazer S. Turner
Lothrop Turner
Wm. Wall
Charles H. Weston
Francis H. Weston
Harvey Weston
Gideon C. White
Henry Whiting
Henry Whiting, Jr.
Winslow Whiting
George Wood
George Weston