the finest traditions, successors of the privateersmen of 1812.
The forecastles, however, were filled with English, Irish, and
Scandinavians. American lads shunned these ships and, in fact,
the ambitious youngster of the coastwise towns began to cease
following the sea almost a century ago. It is sometimes forgotten
that the period during which the best American manhood sought a
maritime career lay between the Revolution and the War of 1812.
Thereafter the story became more and more one of American ships
and less of American sailors, excepting on the quarter-deck.

In later years the Yankee crews were to be found in the ports
where the old customs survived, the long trading voyage, the
community of interest in cabin and forecastle, all friends and
neighbors together, with opportunities for profit and
advancement. Such an instance was that of the Salem ship George,
built at Salem in 1814 and owned by the great merchant, Joseph
Peabody. For twenty-two years she sailed in the East India trade,
making twenty-one round voyages, with an astonishing regularity
which would be creditable for a modern cargo tramp. Her sailors
were native-born, seldom more than twenty-one years old, and most
of them were studying navigation. Forty-five of them became
shipmasters, twenty of them chief mates, and six second mates.
This reliable George was, in short, a nautical training-school of
the best kind and any young seaman with the right stuff in him
was sure of advancement.

Seven thousand sailors signed articles in the counting-room of
Joseph Peabody and went to sea in his eighty ships which flew the
house-flag in Calcutta, Canton, Sumatra, and the ports of Europe
until 1844. These were mostly New England boys who followed in