first time, and is recognized as the most convenient, safest and most elegant excursion boat in the waters of Massachusetts. The wharf is now, with three hundred feet of its old timber and pile extension, owned by Charles I. and Henry H. Litchfield of Plymouth who, having fitted it expressly for steamboat purposes, keep it in excellent repair, and have leased it to the Nantasket Steamboat Company. The Pilgrim Society, owning Pilgrim wharf, refrain from leasing it to any competing line, believing that the Nantasket Co. should be encouraged in their efforts to establish a permanent and successful enterprise. CHAPTER IX. Allusion has been made to the embargo and to the Yankee shrewdness which evaded the watchfulness of government officers whose duty it was to prevent departures from port. The following narrative, for the incidents in which I am indebted to Capt. Charles C. Doten, illustrates the shrewdness to which I referred. During the Embargo, Plymouth’s fishing fleet was laid up in the docks, and the owners found themselves cut off from the trade with the West India Islands. The catch of fish from the Grand Banks could not be sold to advantage for want of this market, and after being cured remained stored in the fish houses. England and France then being at war their West India dependencies were subject to blockade, and as a consequence provisions which could be run into the ports of either nationality, commanded high prices. With such a temptation it was not strange that there were found adventurous men in fishing ports to hazard the loading of vessels with dry fish, and disregarding embargo penalties of our own government, surreptitiously depart “for the West Indies and a market.” Plymouth was not lacking in this sort of enterprise, and the writer proposes to sketch one or two of the “run-a-ways,” to show the character of the men of those days who a little later did the country good service as “privateersmen” when the war between the United States and England was fought. Anticipating that these attempts to break the embargo would be made in spite of stringent regulations, orders were given to the customs officers at every port to keep strict watch and prevent vessels from going to sea. Accordingly at Plymouth, Water street was nightly patrolled, and a guard boat well manned, and in charge of Capt. Joseph Bradford, was stationed in Beach channel to intercept any outward bound vessel which might succeed in getting away from the wharves. With these precautions it would seem to have been difficult to evade successfully the minions of the law and run out a cargo of fish in defiance of all the Federal government could do to prevent it, yet it was done.