British nation with the tidings which meant the loss of an
American empire! A singular coincidence was that this same
Captain John Derby should have been the first mariner to inform
the United States that peace had come, when he arrived from
France in 1783 with the message that a treaty had been signed.

Elias Hasket Derby was another son of Richard. When his manifold
energies were crippled by the war, he diverted his ability and
abundant resources into privateering. He was interested in at
least eighty of the privateers out of Salem, invariably
subscribing for such shares as might not be taken up by his
fellow-townsmen. He soon perceived that many of these craft were
wretchedly unfit for the purpose and were easily captured or
wrecked. It was characteristic of his genius that he should
establish shipyards of his own, turn his attention to naval
architecture, and begin to build a class of vessels vastly
superior in size, model, and speed to any previously launched in
the colonies. They were designed to meet the small cruiser of the
British Navy on even terms and were remarkably successful, both
in enriching their owner and in defying the enemy.

At the end of the war Elias Hasket Derby discovered that these
fine ships were too large and costly to ply up and down the
coast. Instead of bewailing his hard lot, he resolved to send
them to the other side of the globe. At a time when the British
and the Dutch East India companies insolently claimed a monopoly
of the trade of the Orient, when American merchant seamen had
never ventured beyond the two Atlantics, this was a conception
which made of commerce a surpassing romance and heralded the
golden era of the nation's life upon the sea.