etuous rush nor in anything like
the numbers enrolled by this gray old town whose fame was unique.

For the most part, the records of all these brave ships and the
thousands of men who sailed and sweated and fought in them are dim and
scanty, no more than routine entries in dusty log-books which read like
this: "Filled away in pursuit of a second sail in the N. W. At 4.30 she
hoisted English colors and commenced firing her stern guns. At 5.90 took
in the steering sails, at the same time she fired a broadside. We opened
a fire from our larboard battery and at 5.30 she struck her colors. Got
out the boats and boarded her. She proved to be the British brig Acorn
from Liverpool to Rio Janeiro, mounting fourteen cannon." * But now and
then one finds in these old sea-journals an entry more intimate and
human, such as the complaint of the master of the privateer Scorpion,
cruising in 1778 and never a prize in sight. "This Book I made to keep
the Accounts of my Voyage but God knows beste what that will be, for I
am at this time very Impashent but I hope soon there will be a Change to
ease my Trubled Mind. On this Day I was Chaced by Two Ships of War which
I tuck to be Enemies, but coming on thick Weather I have lost site of
them and so conclude myself escaped which is a small good Fortune in the
midste of my Discouragements." * * A burst of gusty laughter still echoes
along the crowded deck of the letter-of-marque schooner Success, whose
master, Captain Philip Thrash, inserted this diverting comment in his
humdrum record of the day's work: "At one half past 8 discovered a sail
ahead. Tacked ship. At 9 tacked ship again and past just to Leeward of
the Sail which appeared to be a damn'd Comical Boat, by G-d."

* From the manuscript collections of the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.

* * From the manuscript collections of the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.

There are a few figures of the time and place which stand out,
full-length, in vivid colors against a background that satisfies the
desire of romance and thrillingly conveys the spirit of the time and the
place. Such a one was Captain Jonathan Haraden, Salem privateersman, who
captured one thousand British cannon afloat and is worthy to be ranked
as one of the ablest sea-fighters of his generation. He was a merchant
mariner, a master at the outbreak of the Revolution, who had followed
the sea since boyhood. But it was more to his taste to command the Salem
ship Gen