American Merchant Ships and Sailors | Page 6

Delaware in 1787. But

perhaps none of these inventions had more homely utility than the New
England schooner, which had its birth and its christening at Gloucester
in 1713. The story of its naming is one of the oldest in our marine
folk-lore.
"See how she schoons!" cried a bystander, coining a verb to describe
the swooping slide of the graceful hull down the ways into the placid
water.
[Illustration: SCHOONER-RIGGED SHARPIE]
"A schooner let her be!" responded the builder, proud of his handiwork,
and ready to seize the opportunity to confer a novel title upon his novel
creation. Though a combination of old elements, the schooner was in
effect a new design. Barks, ketches, snows, and brigantines carried
fore-and-aft rigs in connection with square sails on either mast, but now
for the first time two masts were rigged fore and aft, and the square
sails wholly discarded. The advantages of the new rig were quickly
discovered. Vessels carrying it were found to sail closer to the wind,
were easier to handle in narrow quarters, and--what in the end proved
of prime importance--could be safely manned by smaller crews. With
these advantages the schooner made its way to the front in the shipping
lists. The New England shipyards began building them, almost to the
exclusion of other types. Before their advance brigs, barks, and even
the magnificent full-rigged ship itself gave way, until now a
square-rigged ship is an unusual spectacle on the ocean. The vitality of
the schooner is such that it bids fair to survive both of the crushing
blows dealt to old-fashioned marine architecture--the substitution of
metal for wood, and of steam for sails. To both the schooner adapted
itself. Extending its long, slender hull to carry four, five, and even
seven masts, its builders abandoned the stout oak and pine for molded
iron and later steel plates, and when it appeared that the huge booms,
extending the mighty sails, were difficult for an ordinary crew to
handle, one mast, made like the rest of steel, was transformed into a
smokestack--still bearing sails--a donkey engine was installed in the
hold, and the booms went aloft, or the anchor rose to the peak to the
tune of smoky puffing instead of the rhythmical chanty songs of the

sailors. So the modern schooner, a very leviathan of sailing craft, plows
the seas, electric-lighted, steering by steam, a telephone system
connecting all parts of her hull--everything modern about her except
her name. Not as dignified, graceful, and picturesque as the ship
perhaps--but she lasts, while the ship disappears.
But to return to the colonial shipping. Boston soon became one of the
chief building centers, though indeed wherever men were gathered in a
seashore village ships were built. Winthrop, one of the pioneers in the
industry, writes: "The work was hard to accomplish for want of money,
etc., but our shipwrights were content to take such pay as the country
could make," and indeed in the old account books of the day we can
read of very unusual payments made for labor, as shown, for example,
in a contract for building a ship at Newburyport in 1141, by which the
owners were bound to pay "£300 in cash, £300 by orders on good shops
in Boston; two-thirds money; four hundred pounds by orders up the
river for tim'r and plank, ten bbls. flour, 50 pounds weight of loaf sugar,
one bagg of cotton wool, one hund. bushels of corn in the spring; one
hhd. of Rum, one hundred weight of cheese * * * whole am't of price
for vessel £3000 lawful money."
By 1642 they were building good-sized vessels at Boston, and the year
following was launched the first full-rigged ship, the "Trial," which
went to Malaga, and brought back "wine, fruit, oil, linen and wool,
which was a great advantage to the country, and gave encouragement to
trade." A year earlier there set out the modest forerunner of our present
wholesale spring pilgrimages to Europe. A ship set sail for London
from Boston "with many passengers, men of chief rank in the country,
and great store of beaver. Their adventure was very great, considering
the doubtful estate of affairs of England, but many prayers of the
churches went with them and followed after them."
By 1698 Governor Bellomont was able to say of Boston alone, "I
believe there are more good vessels belonging to the town of Boston
than to all Scotland and Ireland." Thereafter the business rapidly
developed, until in a map of about 1730 there are noted sixteen
shipyards. Rope walks, too, sprung up to furnish rigging, and presently

for these Boston was a centre. Another industry, less commendable,
grew up in this as in other shipping centres. Molasses was one of the
chief staples brought from the West Indies,