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 General Pickering of 180 tons which was fitted out
under a letter of marque in the spring of 1780. She carried
fourteen six-pounders and forty-five men and boys, nothing very
formidable, when Captain Haraden sailed for Bilbao with a cargo