Elijah Cobb, loading a return cargo of wines and dried fruit at Malaga, in 1806, learned that England forbade such a voyage. He decided to take a sporting chance of slipping by the English cruisers in the “Gut of Gibralter.” The wind failing him at the wrong time, he obtained his clearance papers by bribing an official. In the opinion of Elijah Cobb there was more than one way to skin a cat. The intolerable aggressions aimed at American commerce, including the impressment of seamen, had caused President Thomas Jefferson to use the embargo as a weapon in reprisal. If he could not protect American ships and sailors on the high seas, he could, at least, he thought, save them by keeping them at home. Maritime New England had been reluctant to accept an embargo policy. Josiah Quincy had begged Congress to remember that the ocean could not be abandoned by his people “of whom thousands would rather see a boat-hook than all the sheep-crooks in the world.” However, the first Embargo Bill was passed in December of 1807, forbidding the departure of American vessels for any foreign port. The results were futile and disastrous. Ports filled with dismantled ships, counting-houses deserted, grass growing in the waterside streets failed to affect perfidious Albion. Nevertheless, the embargo was tried again in the spring of 1812. Captain Cobb was loading flour at Alexandria, Virginia, for a European voyage when the news of another embargo came like a blow from a clear sky. Hard-bitten New Englander, he had refused to heed the warnings. His own Massachusetts Legislature had denounced such Acts of Congress as unconstitutional, and a hundred towns had adopted resolutions of protest. However, Mr. Madison’s latest embargo was a condition and not a theory, so Elijah Cobb made haste to get to sea before the officials could lawfully stop him. He had twenty-four hours of grace. A gale of wind was blowing, so violent that the ship was almost torn away from the wharf. Here was the efficient shipmaster in action--a hundred tons of stone ballast to be landed, three thousand barrels of flour to be stowed in the hold and secured, provisions, wood, and water to be taken aboard, a crew to be found and signed on, and the vessel cleared at the custom house. Elijah Cobb turned the trick without bluster or confusion. It was the kind of thing he could do extremely well. His portrait is that of a man very resolute and composed, not much humor in the straight mouth and steadfast eye, a good deal of the Puritan afloat. In his sedate way he must have enjoyed what he called “running away from the Embargo.”