for the solid mansion and lawn on Derby Street. Every
opportunity, indeed, was offered them to advance their own
fortunes. They sailed not for wages but for handsome commissions
and privileges--in the Derby ships, five per cent of a cargo
outward bound, two and a half per cent of the freightage home,
five per cent profit on goods bought and sold between foreign
ports, and five per cent of the cargo space for their own use.

Such was the system which persuaded the pick and flower of young
American manhood to choose the sea as the most advantageous
career possible. There was the Crowninshield family, for example,
with five brothers all in command of ships before they were old
enough to vote and at one time all five away from Salem, each in
his own vessel and three of them in the East India trade. "When
little boys," to quote from the memoirs of Benjamin
Crowninshield, "they were all sent to a common school and about
their eleventh year began their first particular study which
should develop them as sailors and ship captains. These boys
studied their navigation as little chaps of twelve years old and
were required to thoroughly master the subject before being sent
to sea . . . . As soon as the art of navigation was mastered, the
youngsters were sent to sea, sometimes as common sailors but
commonly as ship's clerks, in which position they were able to
learn everything about the management of a ship without actually
being a common sailor."

This was the practice in families of solid station and social
rank, for to be a shipmaster was to follow the profession of a
gentleman. Yet the bright lad who entered by way of the
forecastle also played for high stakes. Soon promoted to the