Part 7 (1/2)
Yankee whaling reached its high tide in 1857 when the New Bedford fleet alone numbered 329 sail and those owned in other ports of Buzzard's Bay swelled the total to 426 vessels, besides thirty more hailing from New London and Sag Harbor. In this year the value of the catch was more than ten million dollars. The old custom of sailing on shares or ”lays” instead of wages was never changed. It was win or lose for all hands--now a handsome fortune or again an empty hold and pockets likewise. There was Captain W.T. Walker of New Bedford who, in 1847, bought for a song a s.h.i.+p so old that she was about to be broken up for junk and no insurance broker would look at her. In this rotten relic he s.h.i.+pped a crew and went sailing in the Pacific. Miraculously keeping afloat, this Envoy of his was filled to the hatches with oil and bones, twice running, before she returned to her home port; and she earned $138,450 on a total investment of eight thousand dollars.
The s.h.i.+p Sarah of Nantucket, after a three years' cruise, brought back 3497 barrels of sperm oil which sold for $89,000, and the William Hamilton of New Bedford set another high mark by stowing 4181 barrels of a value of $109,269. The Pioneer of New London, Captain Ebenezer Morgan, was away only a year and stocked a cargo of oil and whalebone which sold for $150,060. Most of the profits of prosperous voyages were taken as the owners' share, and the incomes of the captain and crew were so n.i.g.g.ardly as to make one wonder why they persisted in a calling so perilous, arduous, and poorly paid. During the best years of whaling, when the s.h.i.+ps were averaging $16,000 for a voyage, the master received an eighteenth, or about nine hundred dollars a year. The highly skilled hands, such as the boat-steerers and harpooners, had a lay of only one seventy-fifth, or perhaps a little more than two hundred dollars cash as the reward of a voyage which netted the owner at least fifty per cent on his investment. Occasionally they fared better than this and sometimes worse. The answer to the riddle is that they liked the life and had always the gambling spirit which hopes for a lucky turn of the cards.
The countless episodes of fragile boats smashed to kindling by fighting whales, of the attack renewed with harpoon and lance, of s.h.i.+ps actually rammed and sunk, would fill a volume by themselves and have been stirringly narrated in many a one. Zanzibar and Kamchatka, Tasmania and the Seych.e.l.les knew the lean, sun-dried Yankee whaleman and his motto of a ”dead whale or a stove boat.” The Civil War did not drive him from the seas. The curious fact is that his products commanded higher prices in 1907 than fifty years before, but the number of his s.h.i.+ps rapidly decreased. Whales were becoming scarce, and New England capital preferred other forms of investment. The leisurely old sailing craft was succeeded by the steam whaler, and the explosive bomb slew, instead of the harpoon and lance hurled by the sinewy right arm of a New Bedford man or Cape Verde islander.
Roving whaler and armed East Indiaman, plunging packet s.h.i.+p and stately clipper, they served their appointed days and pa.s.sed on their several courses to become mere memories, as shadowy and unsubstantial as the gleam of their own topsails when seen at twilight. The souls of their sailors have fled to Fiddler's Green, where all dead mariners go. They were of the old merchant marine which contributed something fine and imperishable to the story of the United States. Down the wind, vibrant and deep-throated, comes their own refrain for a requiem:
We're outward bound this very day, Good-bye, fare you well, Good-bye, fare you well.
We're outward bound this very day, Hurrah, my boys, we're outward bound.
CHAPTER X. BOUND COASTWISE
One thinks of the old merchant marine in terms of the clipper s.h.i.+p and distant ports. The coasting trade has been overlooked in song and story; yet, since the year 1859, its fleets have always been larger and more important than the American deep-water commerce nor have decay and misfortune overtaken them. It is a traffic which flourished from the beginning, ingeniously adapting itself to new conditions, unchecked by war, and surviving with splendid vigor, under steam and sail, in this modern era.
The seafaring pioneers won their way from port to port of the tempestuous Atlantic coast in tiny ketches, sloops, and shallops when the voyage of five hundred miles from New England to Virginia was a prolonged and hazardous adventure. Fog and shoals and lee sh.o.r.es beset these coastwise sailors, and s.h.i.+pwrecks were pitifully frequent. In no Hall of Fame will you find the name of Captain Andrew Robinson of Gloucester, but he was nevertheless an ill.u.s.trious benefactor and deserves a place among the most useful Americans. His invention was the Yankee schooner of fore-and-aft rig, and he gave to this type of vessel its name. * Seaworthy, fast, and easily handled, adapted for use in the early eighteenth century when inland transportation was almost impossible, the schooner carried on trade between the colonies and was an important factor in the growth of the fisheries.
* It is said that as the odd two-master slid gracefully into the water, a spectator exclaimed: ”See how she sc.o.o.ns!” ”Aye,” answered Captain Robinson, ”a SCHOONER let her be!” This launching took place in 1718 or 1714.
Before the Revolution the first New England schooners were beating up to the Grand Bank of Newfoundland after cod and halibut. They were of no more than fifty tons' burden, too small for their task but manned by fishermen of surpa.s.sing hardihood. Marblehead was then the foremost fis.h.i.+ng port with two hundred brigs and schooners on the offsh.o.r.e banks.
But to Gloucester belongs the glory of sending the first schooner to the Grand Bank. * From these two rock-bound harbors went thousands of trained seamen to man the privateers and the s.h.i.+ps of the Continental navy, slinging their hammocks on the gun-decks beside the whalemen of Nantucket. These fishermen and coastwise sailors fought on the land as well and followed the drums of Was.h.i.+ngton's armies until the final scene at Yorktown. Gloucester and Marblehead were filled with widows and orphans, and half their men-folk were dead or missing.
* Marvin's ”American Merchant Marine,” p. 287.
The fis.h.i.+ng-trade soon prospered again, and the men of the old ports tenaciously clung to the sea even when the great migration flowed westward to people the wilderness and found a new American empire.
They were fishermen from father to son, bound together in an intimate community of interests, a race of pure native or English stock, deserving this tribute which was paid to them in Congress: ”Every person on board our fis.h.i.+ng vessels has an interest in common with his a.s.sociates; their reward depends upon their industry and enterprise.
Much caution is observed in the selection of the crews of our fis.h.i.+ng vessels; it often happens that every individual is connected by blood and the strongest ties of friends.h.i.+p; our fishermen are remarkable for their sobriety and good conduct, and they rank with the most skillful navigators.”
Fis.h.i.+ng and the coastwise merchant trade were closely linked. Schooners loaded dried cod as well as lumber for southern ports and carried back naval stores and other southern products. Well-to-do fishermen owned trading vessels and sent out their ventures, the sailors s.h.i.+fting from one forecastle to the other. With a taste for an easier life than the stormy, freezing Banks, the young Gloucesterman would sign on for a voyage to Pernambuco or Havana and so be fired with ambition to become a mate or master and take to deep water after a while. In this way was maintained a school of seamans.h.i.+p which furnished the most intelligent and efficient officers of the merchant marine. For generations they were mostly recruited from the old fis.h.i.+ng and s.h.i.+pping ports of New England until the term ”Yankee s.h.i.+pmaster” had a meaning peculiarly its own.
Seafaring has undergone so many revolutionary changes and old days and ways are so nearly obliterated that it is singular to find the sailing vessel still employed in great numbers, even though the gasolene motor is being installed to kick her along in spells of calm weather. The Gloucester fis.h.i.+ng schooner, perfect of her type, stanch, fleet, and powerful, still drives homeward from the Banks under a tall press of canvas, and her crew still divide the earnings, share and share, as did their forefathers a hundred and fifty years ago. But the old New England strain of blood no longer predominates, and Portuguese, Scandinavians, and Nova Scotia ”Bluenoses” bunk with the lads of Gloucester stock. Yet they are alike for courage, hardihood, and mastery of the sea, and the traditions of the calling are undimmed.
There was a time before the Civil War when Congress jealously protected the fisheries by means of a bounty system and legislation aimed against our Canadian neighbors. The fis.h.i.+ng fleets were regarded as a source of national wealth and the nursery of prime seamen for the navy and merchant marine. In 1858 the bounty system was abandoned, however, and the fishermen were left to s.h.i.+ft for themselves, earning small profits at peril of their lives and preferring to follow the sea because they knew no other profession. In spite of this loss of a.s.sistance from the Government, the tonnage engaged in deep-sea fisheries was never so great as in the second year of the Civil War. Four years later the industry had shrunk one-half; and it has never recovered its early importance *
* In 1882, the tonnage amounted to 193,459; in 1866, to 89,336.