And so it happened that in the spicy warehouses that overlooked
Salem Harbor there came to be stored hemp from Luzon, gum copal
from Zanzibar, palm oil from Africa, coffee from Arabia, tallow
from Madagascar, whale oil from the Antarctic, hides and wool
from the Rio de la Plata, nutmeg and cloves from Malaysia. Such
merchandise had been bought or bartered for by shipmasters who
were much more than mere navigators. They had to be shrewd
merchants on their own accounts, for the success or failure of a
voyage was mostly in their hands. Carefully trained and highly
intelligent men, they attained command in the early twenties and
were able to retire, after a few years more afloat, to own ships
and exchange the quarterdeck for the counting-room, and the cabin
for the solid mansion and lawn on Derby Street. Every
opportunity, indeed, was offered them to advance their own
fortunes. They sailed not for wages but for handsome commissions
and privileges--in the Derby ships, five per cent of a cargo
outward bound, two and a half per cent of the freightage home,
five per cent profit on goods bought and sold between foreign
ports, and five per cent of the cargo space for their own use.
Such was the system which persuaded the pick and flower of young
American manhood to choose the sea as the most advantageous
career possible.
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