The ships and sailors of old Salem

American ships and sailors have almost vanished from the seas that lie beyond their own coasts. The twentieth century has forgotten the era when Yankee topsails, like flying clo...

In the decade from 1685 to 1695 the infant commerce of Salem was fighting for its life. This period was called “the dark time when ye merchants looked for ye vessells with fear...

The pirates of the Spanish Main and the southern coasts of this country have enjoyed almost a monopoly of popular interest in fact and fiction. As early as 1632, however, the Ne...

Privateering has ceased to be a factor in civilized warfare. The swift commerce destroyer as an arm of the naval service has taken the place of the private armed ship which roam...

The United States navy, with its wealth of splendid tradition, has few more commanding figures than Captain Jonathan Haraden, the foremost fighting privateersman of Salem during...

Captain Luther Little made no great figure in the history of his times, but he left in his own words the story of his life at sea which ancient manuscript contributes a full len...

An attempt to portray the seafaring life of our forefathers would be signally incomplete without some account of the misfortunes endured when the American privateersman or man-o...

June 5, 1782. Yesterday was ‘George the Foolish’s’ Birthday. The Shipping and Forts fired Salutes at noon; Cowdry hoisted an English Jack, and a _French_ one under it, and fired...

The first armed resistance to British troops in the American colonies was made at Salem and led by Captain Richard Derby of the third generation of the most notable seafaring fa...

Elias Hasket Derby, the son of Captain Richard Derby, and a brother of Captain John Derby, was the most conspicuous member of this great seafaring family, by reason of his milli...

The name of Joseph Peabody takes rank with that of Elias Hasket Derby as an American who did much to upbuild the commerce, wealth and prestige of his nation in its younger days....

Twentieth century battleships are built at a cost of six or seven millions of dollars with the likelihood of becoming obsolete before they fire a gun in action. It is a task of...

It is commonly assumed that until the memorable visit of Commodore Perry’s squadron in 1853 shattered the ancient isolation of Japan, no American ship had ever been permitted to...

That minute dot on the map of the Pacific known as Guam has appealed to the American people with a certain serio-comic interest as a colonial possession accidentally acquired an...

“Hail to thee, poor little ship, _Mayflower_, of Delft Haven,” wrote Thomas Carlyle, “poor common looking ship, hired by common charter-party for coined dollars—caulked with mer...

Neither myself nor the chief mate of the ship for that voyage (Mr. Charles Derby) had attained the age of twenty-one years when we left home. I was not then twenty years of age,...

Perhaps the finest type of the Salem shipmaster of the age when her seamen were the vikings of American commerce, was Captain Richard Cleveland who wrote as capably as he sailed...

The War of 1812 was a sailors’ war, fought by the United States for “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights.” Americans of this century cannot realize the bitterness of feeling against...

The first American vessel to load pepper on the coast of Sumatra was the Salem schooner _Rajah_ in 1795, and the last ship under the stars and stripes to seek a cargo on that co...

Fifty years ago two English missionaries in the Fijis wrote a book in which they said that the traffic in sandalwood, tortoise-shell and beche-de-mer among those islands “has be...

In December of 1906 died Captain Thomas Fuller, the oldest shipmaster of Salem, in his ninety-fourth year. He was the survivor of an era on the sea that seems to belong with anc...

The career of Frederick Townsend Ward flashes across the later day history of Salem like a meteor. After a youth crowded with astonishing adventure this merchant sailor and sold...

When the Embargo of 1807 was proclaimed as a counter-blow to England’s “unofficial war on American commerce and her wholesale impressment of American seamen,” the house-flags of...