The Story of the American Merchant Marine. John Randolph Spears
two barrels to a third of the whole product. In the chase the first harpoon that held its place claimed the whale. It was provided "5ly, that no whael shall be needlessly or fouellishly lansed behind ye vitall." The most important fact here is that at first the men who killed a whale shared equally. Later, when the men of superior skill claimed shares in proportion to the work they did, the "lay" system was evolved. The captain of a ship received from 1 barrel in 17 to 1 in 25; in recent years still more. Mates had from 1 in 30 to 1 in 50. The men who threw the harpoon had 1 in 75, say, while foremast men had still less, even down to 1 in 200 for a green hand. No better system for encouraging men to do as well as they could has ever been devised.
Of similar importance was the custom then prevailing of allowing the crews of merchant ships to carry a "private venture." When Skipper Cornell's Ewoutsen, in a Dutch cruiser, captured four New England ketches "in the neighborhood of Blocx Island," Captain Richard Hollingworth, commanding of one of the four, declared that he was "freighted on account of Wharton and Company, merchants of Boston, with 47 tubs of tobacco; Item, 6 tubs of tobacco for Mathew Cartwright and 13 tubs for himself and crew … in all 66 tubs, with eight hides." The crew owned nearly a fifth of the cargo. (N. Y. C. docs. II, 662.) Seamen before the mast as well as officers took from port, in stated quantities, any commodities which they supposed they could sell to advantage in any of the ports to which the ship was bound. Here or there these goods were exchanged for others, which were again traded at other ports, or carried home to be sold. Wages were not so very low for common sailors, even by modern standards. They received on an average £2 10s. per month. Mates had, say, £3 10s., and captains £4 10s., and, rarely, £6 a month. On top of this the private venture was carried free, and the shrewd sailormen often made much more on the private venture than from wages. It is a matter of much importance.
The sailor, having a direct interest in the voyage, made haste to shorten sail when a squall threatened to carry away the masts; he worked with all his might whenever any danger threatened, because she carried his merchandise. More important still is the fact that the custom made merchants of the men, and that is to say, it made them self-respecting and ambitious. There were instances where the crew received no wages whatever; the owner, master, and men were all adventurers together.
There is no more instructive comparison in the history of the nation than that between these early-day merchants of the forecastle and the driven brutes before the mast in the clippers of a later day.
Consider now the influence of the poverty of the builder upon the character of the ship. Capital was so scarce that a man worth £4000 was called wealthy. Ships were built where scarcely a shilling in currency changed hands. The workmen were paid with goods. Where neighbors united to build a vessel, they traded produce of fishery field, or forest to the merchant for such iron, sails, and cordage as they needed, or they gave him a share in the vessel. The merchant traded the produce of the fisheries or forest in Europe for the outfit he gave to the builders. By hard labor and severe economy only were these vessels sent afloat. It was the European fashion of the day to build ships with enormous cabins piled high at the stern end, and to ornament the superstructures with carvings and paints. The New Englanders, having no capital to spare, had to forego the pleasure of ornamenting their ships with decorated superstructures; they were obliged to consider efficiency only. They did not know it at the time, but the fact was that this enforced economy led to an advance in the art of ship-building. On navigating the ships without superstructures, it was seen that the tall cabins had made the ships top-heavy, and had served to strain instead of strengthen the hulls. Moreover, the huge pile of timber had held the ship back in any winds but the fairest. Ships without superstructures were stronger, of greater capacity, swifter and handier.
Then there were the geographical influences which affected the model and rigs of ships. Whether in fishing or coasting voyages, the American ship must be prepared to meet winds from any point of the compass on every day she was out of port. The prevailing winds were westerly, but there was neither trade wind nor monsoon. The ship must therefore be rigged to force her way ahead against adverse winds. For such winds the spritsails, lugs, and others, where the cloth was stretched fore and aft, rather than to yards hung square across the masts, were more convenient. The schooner was a natural evolution of the coasting conditions.
The waters of the harbors were shallow. In England deep-water ports had favored deep hulls, but the American designer who wished to increase the capacity of a hull had to make it wider instead of deeper. Wide beam gave greater stability; a wide ship could carry wide sails and yet "stand up like a church" in a heavy wind. Of course stout masts were needed for wide sails, but the forests were full of enormous pines that could be had, at first, for the cutting. Wide hulls of shoal draft, with wide sails spread upon stout spars, made speedy ships, a fact that even now is not as well understood as it should be. The speedy ships invited their masters to "carry on"—to keep their sails spread full breadth while the gale increased to a weight that would "take the sticks out of" vessels of inferior design. The swift ship, well driven, soon brought fame as well as additional profit to crew and owners, and the pride in the ship which was thus developed led all who were in any way connected with her to look for still further improvements.
The short distances between harbors also had some influence upon the forms of ships. For one thing, short passages favored small vessels with small crews. The greater the number of vessels, the greater the number of captains accustomed to responsibility, a matter of no small importance in its effect upon the formation of the sea habit among a people. Then the short passage naturally led the crew into taking chances; they would risk a growing gale in a short run. Once out of port in "dirty weather," the manifest dangers set all hands thinking of improved ways of shortening sail in an emergency, and of improved shapes of hull and cut of canvas to help a vessel to "claw off" a lee shore. The men who worked in the shipyard building for themselves, and then went afloat, were particularly observant at such times. One of the most common statements to be found in the stories of perils at sea, as related by American shipmasters of other days, is this: "Every dollar I owned in the world was in that ship, and" for that reason every hardship was endured and every effort made to bring her to port.
In 1624 the Pilgrims exported their first cargo of fish. Boston sent its first cargo away in 1633. The owners of these fish had to pay three or four pounds a ton freight; and an agent in England, who charged a good commission for doing so, found a customer to buy them. The New Englanders saw that the vessel carrying the cargo made a profit for her owner. They saw, too, that an agent in a foreign country across the water would never have quite the interest in selling to advantage that they themselves would have if they were there to sell. In short, if the fish business were to be handled in the most profitable way possible, they must carry the cargo in their own ship direct to the consumer. Hugh Peter preached this doctrine with emphasis, beyond doubt, for it was he who led in building the 300-ton ship at Salem. From catching fish to carrying them to the oversea market was a short passage quickly made. With this in mind, consider the brief story of the voyage of the good ship Trial, Captain Thomas Coytemore, made after the fishing business was well in hand.
The Trial, as noted, was the ship built in Boston when the people there were stirred to emulation by the work of Hugh Peter in Salem. Loaded with fish and pipe-staves, she sailed away to Fayal (1642). Fayal was chosen because the people there had religious views leading them to eat fish instead of flesh on many days of the year, and they were wine-makers who used many casks every year. The Trial found the market at Fayal "extraordinary good," and Captain Coytemore exchanged the fish and staves for wine, sugar, etc., which he carried to St. Christopher's, in the West Indies. There he traded wine for cotton, tobacco, and some iron which the people had taken from a ship that had been wrecked on the coast, and was then visible, though so far under water that the wreckers had abandoned all work upon it. As the New Englanders were exceedingly anxious to get all kinds of iron things used about a ship, Captain Coytemore must needs have a look at the wreck, and after due examination, he determined to try to recover more of the wreckage. Slinging a "diving tub" (doubtless a good stout cask, well weighted, and with the open end down), above the hulk, he got into it, and having been lowered to the sunken deck, made shift to hook good stout grapnels to the valuable things lying within reach.