Master Mariner

THE LIFE AND VOYAGES OF

AMASA DELANO

Captain Amasa Delano, 1763-1823



BY
JAMES B. CONNOLLY

1943

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CHAPTER XXIII

Blockade Running

THE Peacock slid through the blockading warships off Boston, ran safely down the Atlantic coast and into Martinique, discharged part of her cargo, sailed for Bilbao in Spain, and there sold what was left of her salt cod. Then it was away 'way Boston, with a stop-in at Virginia, where she was to take on a consignment of tobacco.

Cornwallis had surrendered to Washington at Yorktown before this, but the war was still on, and the blockading British warships were still a menace. Off the Virginia capes two British frigates caught sight of the Peacock and put after her, one being to windward and the other to leeward of her. The Peacock squeezed between them, ran past the capes and into the safe waters of Chesapeake Bay.

The Peacock found the privateer brig Iris of Salem in sanctuary before her. The two crews kept each other company. When the word came that the blockade was loosening up, the two brigs ventured out together. They ran the Bay and out past Cape Henry, by which time they thought they were safe away. But not so; the same two frigates hove into view, this time, both to windward. The wind being northerly, a head wind for the two brigs, they wore around and scooted back into Chesapeake Bay. The big frigates thereupon took position outside and waited for the little fellows to try poking their bowsprits past the capes again.

The Peacock kept on going till she made Fredericksburg in Virginia, on the river Rappahannock. Winter came, a severe winter. The river iced up, and while his ship lay frozen in Amasa employed his off watch time in walking the countryside and verifying for himself the tales he had heard of the wartime destruction of property.' He decided that war might be a great adventure for the armed men in the field, but not for the unarmed people who got in the way of an invading army.

The ice loosened, and along came the word that the blockade had also loosened. The Peacock sailed into the Bay and there met with the Iris and the brig Thomas of Boston. The three brigs sailed out of the Bay in company. Some optimist must have passed the cheerful word about the loosened blockade. Outside Cape Henry the two British warships hove into view again, and they gave chase, but this time they were both southward of the Cape, and to leeward. They couldn't fetch by the Cape against the high head wind. They gave up the chase, and the three brigs shaped their course for home.

Two days later the three brigs were overtaken by a hurricane. The Peacock and the Thomas rode it out, but not the iris. She foundered and went down with all hands. A blue day for the crew of the Peacock when they got the word of the Iris; but that was the way of the sea at times.

The war ended, and ships could sail the high seas again without hindrance; that is, such of them as hadn't been captured or driven from those same high seas. Officers' billets in foreign commerce were scarce, that commerce being well gone; but new ships were in demand for the retaking of that commerce, so Amasa took up shipbuilding again. He worked under his father, and he worked for himself. As a master builder, he made a reputation for good workmanship and speed in getting a ship on and off the ways. There he was again, making a good shore living for himself; but all the while he was looking seaward, sniffing salt air, aching to get back to the sea.

Amasa had a maternal uncle, Joseph Drew, who owned vessels. He was fond of Amasa and had been watching him come along. When he thought Amasa equal to it, he put him in command of one of his schooners in the West India trade.

On Amasa's return from this West India voyage, a successful voyage, John Gray of Boston offered him command of a brig for a voyage to the West Indies. Amasa took her and made a voyage of profit to Mr. Gray, but not to the entire satisfaction of Mr. Gray. He had instructed young Captain Delano to purchase West India goods of such and such quality for the home market. Amasa had bought goods of the quality ordered, but he thought it a better venture to invest his own money in goods of a higher quality. Some of his crew had followed Amasa's lead, and the venture worked out to their profit. Owner Gray did not relish a captain of his trading independently, and himself not sharing in the profits. He demanded part of the profits of Amasa and his crew. Amasa said no to that. Himself and his crew had risked their own money, not Mr. Gray's--the profits therefore were all theirs. Mr. Gray and Amasa parted company.

The parting with Mr. Gray did not grieve Amasa. Other owners were looking for competent shipmasters, and by now he considered himself such a one. Yes sir.

In his early days at school he had not been a studious boy. Sailing boats in summer and tracking game in winter were more pleasing pursuits; but after his return from that Rhode Island campaign, being then still in his early teens, he began to make use of his spare time for serious study. He applied himself particularly to navigation. The mastery of a vessel came easy to him when the chance came, as it should with his ancestry and early seafaring; but the mathematics of navigation had him knitting his brows. However, he got on with it, and the day came when he could say to an owner in full confidence that he was now equal to taking a ship safely to any port in any quarter of the globe under any conditions.

On the word being passed along the Boston water front that young Captain Delano was for going a longer voyage than to the West Indies, he was offered command of the ship Jane for a voyage to St. Ubes (Setúbal) in Portugal and way ports. Amasa wasn't strong for the Jane's owner, but here was a real foreign voyage as a captain, and the Jane was a full-rigged ship. He took the Jane, put in to Cork and London as per owner's instructions, and thence to St. Ubes.

Amasa's owner, a man trying to do business on insufficient capital, was counting on the young, driving Captain Delano to carry him along. Added to that he was a thrifty soul who was not for letting go his money easily--what money he had. Arrived in St. Ubes, Amasa asked the ship's supercargo, who represented the owner, for funds to pay the port charges. He hadn't the cash, he said, to pay the port charges. Nor the cash for a cargo home. Amasa applied to the owner's agents in St. Ubes, and their answer was that, having no owner's funds on deposit, they must decline to advance the cash for the purchase of a cargo.

Now it wasn't the custom of American captains of those sailing ship days to lay to anchor for months in a foreign port and wait for advices from an owner at home. Nor were they, lacking advices, sailing home with an empty hold. No, no. Amasa went to Lisbon and applied to the firm of John Bulkley and Son for funds to pay for a cargo of salt. The immense quantities of salt being used in the codfish export trade of New England ports made salt a salable commodity for any Boston ship owner. The Bulkleys supplied the funds; Amasa drew bills for the same, and then sent word to his owner by several Boston-bound vessels sailing for America of the bills drawn.

Amasa sailed for home, deep laden with salt. Now it was wintertime, and a vessel laden with salt in bulk has to watch out crossing the North Atlantic in winter weather. If she be hove down, unless that salt fills her jam up to the hatch covers, she will stay hove down. And if she takes to leaking when hove down, it is a flag of distress in her lower rigging and wait for rescue or the crew take to the boats. Even if she stays up she will be plunging herself into heavy seas rather than lifting to them. Atop of that in the case of the Jane, her owner, being the pinchbeck sort, had not kept her in condition to face continuous heavy weather.

Off Cape Cod the Jane was overtaken by one of those blinding, gale-swept, thick o' snow northeasterlies that come roaring down so frequently off the New England winter coast. There was the far-reaching shoal water of Cape Cod under Amasa's lee; and there he was, trying to beat his way to good water with a weak old hooker under him. He couldn't make her do it, and onto the Cape Cod sands she piled herself. And there she stayed. Amasa and his crew took to the boats, and after a hard battle they made through the surf to the beach. But ship and cargo were a total loss. That was three days after Christmas 1788, and Amasa was twenty-five years old.

There was a blow to a young captain--losing his ship. And she a full-rigged ship. Another blow was waiting for him ashore. His owner let the bills he drew in Lisbon go to protest, saying that he had never given an order to Captain Delano to take on that cargo of salt, or any cargo, and therefore Captain Delano was liable for the debt incurred. Why, he hadn't even had advices of the purchase, which was true, Amasa, the driving young skipper, having arrived home, even after being wrecked, before the vessels which had sailed before him with his letters of advice to his owner.

Now it wasn't maritime practice for an owner not to back up his captain who took it on himself to ship a cargo for a homebound voyage from a foreign port. Owners given to that sort of procedure ended up by finding no capable captains willing to sign up with them.

Amasa's action was done wholly in the owner's interest; that his ship was wrecked should make no difference. The ethics of foreign trade were with Amasa, but the law for the owner. Amasa went broke before that case was settled.

In this distressful period, some merchants of Boston offered Amasa a contract to salvage and condition an abandoned wreck. The vessel had been long lying under water, and her lower hull was deeply embedded in the mud. Amasa, desperately eager to recoup his finances, took the contract to raise the sunken hull and make her fit for sea again.

The outcome of that venture was another blow between wind and water. He labored long and resolutely to make a profit for his employers and himself, but the wrecked vessel was beyond salvage. Wrecking firms before him had given it up, which he being out to sea did not know. He pretty nearly wrecked his physical and mental health to salvage the vessel, but his employers took no account of that. They bore down on the unsophisticated young Captain Delano, and the young captain came away from the job in the firm belief that the world held no justice for him.

For some time after that experience, Amasa was for keeping clear of having anything to do with vessel owners. He would build vessels for owners, yes; but never again would he sail for one. No sir. He went back to the shipbuilding in his father's yard.

But the ancestral influence, the ancient sea strain, was too strong. Those early Delanos or Dilanos--spelled either way it is a Genoese sailor name--had much salt in their blood. Great sailormen, those Genoese, the tops in their day. Amasa took to sniffing the salt air again; and then came the gossip of the great ship abuilding for Major Shaw and the foreign commerce; and as already related, young Captain Delano went to sea again.

And now to return to the time that Amasa was back home from that second South Sea sealing voyage.