The Old Merchant Marine | Page 8

over plentiful in England after
the Restoration, King James knighted him. He sailed home to Boston,
"a man of strong and sturdy frame," as Hawthorne fancied him, "whose
face had been roughened by northern tempests and blackened by the

burning sun of the West Indies . . . . He wears an immense periwig
flowing down over his shoulders . . . . His red, rough hands which have
done many a good day's work with the hammer and adze are
half-covered by the delicate lace rues at the wrist." But he carried with
him the manners of the forecastle, a man hasty and unlettered but
superbly brave and honest. Even after he had become Governor he
thrashed the captain of the Nonesuch frigate of the royal navy, and used
his fists on the Collector of the Port after cursing him with tremendous
gusto. Such behavior in a Governor was too strenuous, and Sir William
Phips was summoned to England, where he died while waiting his
restoration to office and royal favor. Failing both, he dreamed of still
another treasure voyage, "for it was his purpose, upon his dismission
from his Government once more to have gone upon his old
Fishing-Trade, upon a mighty shelf of rock and banks of sand that lie
where he had informed himself."
CHAPTER II.
THE PRIVATEERS OF '76
The wars of England with France and Spain spread turmoil upon the
high seas during the greater part of the eighteenth century. Yet with an
immense tenacity of purpose, these briny forefathers increased their
trade and multiplied their ships in the face of every manner of adversity.
The surprising fact is that most of them were not driven ashore to earn
their bread. What Daniel Webster said of them at a later day was true
from the beginning: "It is not, sir, by protection and bounties, but by
unwearied exertion, by extreme economy, by that manly and resolute
spirit which relies on itself to protect itself. These causes alone enable
American ships still to keep the element and show the flag of their
country in distant seas."
What was likely to befall a shipmaster in the turbulent eighteenth
century may be inferred from the misfortunes of Captain Michael
Driver of Salem. In 1759 he was in command of the schooner Three
Brothers, bound to the West Indies on his lawful business. Jogging
along with a cargo of fish and lumber, he was taken by a privateer

under British colors and sent into Antigua as a prize. Unable to regain
either his schooner or his two thousand dollar cargo, he sadly took
passage for home. Another owner gave him employment and he set sail
in the schooner Betsy for Guadaloupe. During this voyage, poor man,
he was captured and carried into port by a French privateer. On the
suggestion that he might ransom his vessel on payment of four
thousand livres, he departed for Boston in hope of finding the money,
leaving behind three of his sailors as hostages.
Cash in hand for the ransom, the long-suffering Captain Michael Driver
turned southward again, now in the schooner Mary, and he flew a flag
of truce to indicate his errand. This meant nothing to the ruffian who
commanded the English privateer Revenge. He violently seized the
innocent Mary and sent her into New Providence. Here Captain Driver
made lawful protest before the authorities, and was set at liberty with
vessel and cargo--an act of justice quite unusual in the Admiralty Court
of the Bahamas.
Unmolested, the harassed skipper managed to gain Cape Francois and
rescue his three seamen and his schooner in exchange for the ransom
money. As he was about to depart homeward bound, a French frigate
snatched him and his crew out of their vessel and threw them ashore at
Santiago, where for two months they existed as ragged beachcombers
until by some judicial twist the schooner was returned to them. They
worked her home and presented their long list of grievances to the
colonial Government of Massachusetts, which duly forwarded
them--and that was the end of it. Three years had been spent in this
catalogue of misadventures, and Captain Driver, his owners, and his
men were helpless against such intolerable aggression. They and their
kind were a prey to every scurvy rascal who misused a privateering
commission to fill his own pockets.
Stoutly resolved to sail and trade as they pleased, these undaunted
Americans, nevertheless, increased their business on blue water until
shortly before the Revolution the New England fleet alone numbered
six hundred sail. Its captains felt at home in Surinam and the Canaries.
They trimmed their yards in the reaches of the Mediterranean and the

North Sea or bargained thriftily in the Levant. The whalers of
Nantucket, in their apple-bowed barks, explored and hunted in distant