berth of mate, he was granted cargo space for his own adventures
in merchandise and a share of the profits. In these days the
youth of twenty-one is likely to be a college undergraduate,
rated too callow and unfit to be intrusted with the smallest
business responsibilities and 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