The Old Merchant Marine: A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors

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Yale University Press, 1919 - 214 páginas

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Página 21 - Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
Página 98 - Let the American ships enter your ports. Seize them afterward. You shall deliver the cargoes to me and I will take them in part payment of the Prussian war debt." Similar orders were executed wherever his mailed fist reached, the pretext being reprisal for the Non-Intercourse Act. More than two hundred American vessels were lost to their owners, a ten-million-dollar robbery for which France paid an indemnity of five millions after twenty years. It was the grand climax of the exploitation which American...
Página 107 - The year of 1812 was indeed but a little distance from the resplendent modern 117 era of the Atlantic packet and the Cape Horn clipper. Already these Yankee deep-water ships could be recognized afar by their lofty spars and snowy clouds of cotton duck beneath which the slender hull was a thin black line. Far up to the gleaming royals they carried sail in winds so strong that the lumbering English East Indiamen were hove to or snugged down to reefed topsails. It was not recklessness but better seamanship....
Página 89 - The loss of seamen, unnoticed, would be followed by other losses in a long train. If we have no seamen, our ships will be useless, consequently our ship timber, iron, and hemp; our...
Página 48 - It is not probable that the American States will have a very free trade in the Mediterranean. It will not be to the interest of any of the great maritime powers to protect them from the Barbary States. If they know their interests, they will not encourage the Americans to be carriers. That the Barbary States are advantageous to maritime powers is certain. If they are suppressed, the little States of Italy would have much more of the carrying trade.
Página 55 - ... Salem. Notwithstanding the disappointment in the principal object of the voyage, and the consequent determination to go to the coast of Guinea, his resolution not to endeavor to retrieve it by purchasing slaves, did the captain great honor, and reflected equal credit upon his owner, who, he assured me, would rather sink the whole capital employed than directly or indirectly be concerned in so infamous a trade.
Página 97 - September, 1805, that fifty American ships had been condemned in England and as many more in the British West Indies. This was a trifling disaster, however, compared with the huge calamity which befell when Napoleon entered Berlin as a conqueror and proclaimed his paper blockade of the British Isles. There was no French navy to enforce it, but American vessels dared not sail for England lest they be snapped up by French privateers. The British Government savagely retaliated with further prohibitions,...
Página 92 - Liberty of your Country. Step forth and give your assistance in building the frigate to oppose French insolence and piracy. Let every man in possession of a white oak tree be ambitious to be foremost in hurrying down the timber to Salem where the noble structure is to be fabricated to maintain your rights upon the seas and make the name of America respected among the nations of the world. Your largest and longest trees are wanted, and the arms of them for knees and rising timber.
Página 63 - Derby and his own share was the snug little fortune of four thousand dollars. Part of this he, of course, invested at sea, and at twenty-two he was part owner of the Betsy, East Indiaman, and on the road to independence. As second mate in the Benjamin had sailed Richard Cleveland, another matured mariner of nineteen, who crowded into one life an Odyssey of adventure noteworthy even in that era and who had the knack of writing about it with rare skill and spirit. In 1797, when twenty-three years old,...
Página 16 - ... frame, whose face has 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 coat has a wide embroidery of golden foliage, and his waistcoat likewise is all flowered over and bedizened with gold. 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 ruffles at his wrists.

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