tolerantly regarded as unable
to take care of himself. It provokes both a smile and a glow of pride,
therefore, to recall those seasoned striplings and what they did.

No unusual instance was that of Nathaniel Silsbee, later United States
Senator from Massachusetts, who took command of the new ship Benjamin in
the year 1792, laden with a costly cargo from Salem for the Cape of
Good Hope and India, "with such instructions," says he, "as left the
management of the voyage very much to my own discretion. Neither
myself nor the chief mate, Mr. Charles Derby, had attained the age
of twenty-one years when we left home. I was not then twenty." This
reminded him to speak of his own family. Of the three Silsbee brothers,
"each of us obtained the command of vessels and the consignment of their
cargoes before attaining the age of twenty years, viz., myself at the
age of eighteen and a half, my brother William at nineteen and a half,
and my brother Zachariah before he was twenty years old. Each and all of
us left off going to sea before reaching the age of twenty-nine years."

How resourcefully these children of the sea could handle affairs was
shown in this voyage of the Benjamin. While in the Indian Ocean young
Silsbee fell in with a frigate which gave him news of the beginning of
war between England and France. He shifted his course for Mauritius and
there sold the cargo for a dazzling price in paper dollars, which he
turned into Spanish silver. An embargo detained him for six months,
during which this currency increased to three times the value of the
paper money. He gave up the voyage to Calcutta, sold the Spanish dollars
and loaded with coffee and spices for Salem. At the Cape of Good Hope,
however, he discovered that he could earn a pretty penny by sending his
cargo home in other ships and loading the Benjamin again for Mauritius.
When, at length, he arrived in Salem harbor, after nineteen months away,
his enterprises had reaped a hundred per cent for Elias Hasket 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. I