Nautical Newburyport: A History of Captains, Clipper Ships and the Coast Guard

station.

INTRODUCTION

THE BIRTH OF A

MARITIME COMMUNITY

Newburyport is a scenic coastal community north of Boston with a dynamic maritime history. It is small—today’s population is just 17,800—but it has been mighty. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was one of the most productive shipbuilding centers in New England. It supported scores of shipyards, and it sent hundreds of vessels to sea. Those who did not go into maritime trade often chose to fish the Atlantic, and early crews caught tons of cod, haddock, mackerel and even the occasional giant tuna. When the colonies were seeking independence, this community was among the most patriotic on the Atlantic coast. Newburyport sent privateers to fight the British during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

Later, it built cutters, including the Massachusetts, to collect customs revenues, and as a result, it has been recognized as the birthplace of the Coast Guard. One of the nation’s first fighting ships, the Merrimac, was built here in 1798. When times were good, it was a center of trade with Great Britain and France. Captains guided packet ships across the Atlantic. Also, they developed productive routes to the West Indies, and involvement in the rum trade helped make the community rich. One period of prosperity was between 1783 and 1807, and many mansions on historic High Street were built during this golden time.

Larger vessels would travel as far as India and China to develop trade.

Newburyport’s remarkable success was achieved despite the circumstance that it had one of the narrowest, shallowest and most tumultuous harbor entries on the East Coast. Competing port communities like Portsmouth, Salem and Boston featured wide entrances and deep water that permitted the largest of ships to enter and exit, laden with trade goods.

The Joshua Bates traveled the globe, and captains had to be extremely competent to get from port to port. Newburyport Archival Center of the Newburyport Public Library.

But Newburyport’s entrance was only several hundred yards wide, and sandbars often hampered the travel of the largest ships. Also, the community is on the Merrimack River, and when the fast-moving current met an incoming tide, the harbor was very difficult to navigate.

Prevailing west winds also provided challenges to ships trying to enter before the age of steam. Perhaps because mariners here faced a narrow harbor, shallow water, a surging river and strong tidal action, they had to be motivated to prosper here, and they were. From the late eighteenth century through much of the nineteenth, this small but tenacious community was a national leader in shipbuilding, patriotic defense, vigorous international trade and blue-water fishing. Today, it remains a maritime community. Close to two thousand pleasure boats are registered in Newburyport and nearby Salisbury each summer. Hundreds of day-trippers or month-long leisure yachtsmen who tie up also enjoy the harbor and the community.

But Newburyport still keeps its eye on history. In May 2016, it hosted the 170-foot-long ship El Galeon, a Spanish vessel that acts as a bilingual floating museum; in 2012, it welcomed the Bounty on one of that vessel’s last calls before sinking in the stormy Atlantic several months later. Newburyport is a maritime community today, but it took some political maneuvering to formally achieve that distinction. It was originally a section of the town of Newbury. As was the case with many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century colonial towns, Newbury’s original territory was huge by today’s standards—it encompassed what today is Newbury, West Newbury and Newburyport. In 1764, a section of Newbury called Waterside—today’s Newburyport—was emerging as a community of traders and mariners. Many boatyards lined the Merrimack River.

Newburyport still welcomes ships of sail. Here is the Spanish replica El Galeon in 2016. Courtesy Newburyport Maritime Society.

But Newbury was primarily agricultural, and friction between the communities arose. Those in Newbury planted, harvested and took crops to local market. Those in Newburyport built ships, visited exotic ports and developed a robust trade that made many families rich. In 1764, leaders from both areas were ready for a change. This was the epoch leading up to the Revolutionary War. Men were taking sides on not only local politics but also the harrowing prospect of fighting a war with England.

Though the wealthy merchant class made money from building and trading with the British, Newburyporters generally backed the colonists. There was much confusion and many false alarms of hostilities in the mid-1770s, in part because communication was so rudimentary. The historian Joshua Coffin relates that the 1774 Ipswich scare put fear into the minds of many Newburyporters. His anecdote has its lighter side, however:

The Merrimac, built in 1798. The construction of this ship typified local patriotism. Builders produced the vessel for the new national government so it could start building a navy. Newburyport Archival Center of the Newburyport Public Library.

Locals heard that British soldiers were marauding in Ipswich, a nearby community to the south. Many sought rides out of town. But some had to run.…A woman took up a cat, which had crept unnoticed into a cradle, and carried it a long distance, not discovering her mistake until she sat down on the steps of the Belleville meetinghouse to nurse the supposed child—and to her horror she realized that she had taken the cat and not the babe.

She was distraught that she had left her child to the pitiless swords of the British regulars.

It was not until an Ipswich resident rode north to inform them that the British were not attacking that the skittish Newburyporters breathed more easily. The infant was not skewered. Still, the water-siders wanted to have their own town government, evidently reinforcing the old saw that all politics is local. They petitioned leaders in Boston. It was physically much smaller than today, encompassing what is now the downtown and some of the surrounding land. Historian Coffin wrote:

Their grievances were numerous…for there had grown a deep-rooted jealousy between these different sections of the town, and mutual suspicions of each other annually widened the breadth between them, insomuch that if the waterside people proposed any measure in town meeting, it was pretty sure of rejection by the farming population.…The impossibility of their continuing to act harmoniously together was obvious.

Newbury Port, as it was initially known (some in town petitioned to name it Portland, but their effort failed), was a prosperous community, and after the separation, it began to flourish. After 1764, the number of shipyards grew rapidly. Wooden vessels were constructed for merchant companies, many in England. Also, smaller craft were built for the fishing industry. Shipbuilding was a major endeavor, and the industry employed many carpenters, blacksmiths, caulkers, riggers and rope makers. One hesitates to say that there was full employment at the time, but records show that dozens of enterprises employed hundreds. Historian Mrs. E. Vale Smith wrote, Two years after the incorporation of the town, an individual counted 72 vessels under construction. Shipbuilders supplied merchants in London with ships and filled orders for lumber from thick forests upriver.

Newburyport Harbor on a quiet day. Ships from all over the world arrived and departed. Newburyport Archival Center of the Newburyport Public Library.

Principal customers for Merrimack-built ships were the British, who paid for them with British manufactured goods and the produce of the British West Indies, wrote Mrs. Smith in 1854. This, in turn, gave employment to retail traders here. Transportation improved in the late eighteenth century, putting Newburyport on the retail route between New York, Boston and Portland. Several ferries were active, including one at the base of today’s State Street. This ferry carried the Portsmouth Flying Stage Coach between Portsmouth and Boston. The fact that Newburyport was on the main line between major cities enhanced its standing even though its minimal physical size destined it to fall behind Boston, Salem and other coastal communities.

In the late eighteenth century, local merchants created strong trading ties with merchants in the West Indies. In fact, the thriving commerce with the West Indies was a key reason for tension and eventually a revolutionary war. The British wanted to tax the lucrative trade revenues that emanated from ports like that of Newburyport. Considering both local politics and international events, the decade from its separation in 1764 to the Declaration of Independence was a tumultuous period for this community.

Newburyporters involved in maritime commerce were resolved to oppose the British taxes and held many meetings to outline a defense strategy if war came to the Merrimack. It is said that Newburyport had a tea party of trashing taxable tea from England before the Boston Tea Party. Protection districts were set up within Newburyport in 1775 should the British attack the community. For securing the river itself, a plan was put forth to block the British should they come up the river. Municipal leaders launched a strategy to sink vertical piers into the channel. The piers blocked only part of the river. But town officials made sure local mariners were stationed at the river’s mouth when friendly craft arrived so the good newcomers could be advised to avoid the obstructions.

War was in the air and on the water.

Newburyport provided privateers during the war years, but historians say that they were ill-matched when they met the larger vessels of the British navy. Records show that the first privateer fitted out in the United States sailed from Newburyport and was owned by Nathaniel Tracy, a wealthy merchant whose family home later became the public library on State Street. From 1775 to 1783, Mr. Tracy was the principal owner of 110 merchant vessels.…Of this total, only 13 were left at the end of the war, all the rest were taken by the enemy or lost, according to records cited by historian John J. Courier. But the Tracy fleet took many enemy ships as well.

Ship owner Nathaniel Tracy was a Patriot during the Revolutionary War, but he lost scores of vessels to the British. Museum of Old Newbury.

The Tracys were nearly ruined. Such a loss of private property suggests that leading Newburyport ship owners and merchants were not only patriotic but also determined that the colonies emerge with their own government—and a future. Newburyport sent many soldiers to fight with the revolutionaries and raised thousands of pounds to help the cause. Because of its port and its very active cadre of captains, crews, merchants and craftsmen, the independent Newburyport emerged as one of the most prominent coastal communities during the revolution.

From this era, the city claims the originating ties to the U.S. Coast Guard. Yard owners built ships for the revenue service and for the nascent U.S. Navy. The roots of the Coast Guard are traced to the fact that the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service was established in this community