So in the struggle for a national existence and rights as a nation, the foundations of the maritime power of the United States were laid. The ship-builders and the seamen of the Revolution and the War of 1812 were the forefathers of the men who built and commanded the American clipper ships. After the Revolutionary War the merchants of Salem, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia vied with each other in sending their ships upon distant and hazardous voyages. Notwithstanding the natural difficulties of navigating, what to their captains were unknown seas, and the unnatural obstacles invented by man in the form of obstructive laws, the merchant marine of the United States steadily increased not only in bulk, but what was of far more importance, in the high standard of the men and ships engaged in it. Salem took the lead, with her great merchant, Elias Hasket Derby, who sent his barque _Light Horse_ to St. Petersburg in 1784, and soon after sent the _Grand Turk_ first to the Cape of Good Hope and then to China. In 1789, the _Atlantic_, commanded by his son, Elias Hasket Derby, Jr., was the first ship to hoist the Stars and Stripes at Calcutta and Bombay, and she was soon followed by the _Peggy_, another of the Derby ships, which brought the first cargo of Bombay cotton into Massachusetts Bay. Mr. Derby owned a fleet of forty vessels, and upon his death in 1799 left an estate valued at more than $1,000,000, the largest fortune at that time in America, as well as a name honored for integrity throughout the mercantile world. William Gray, another famous Salem merchant, owned in 1807 fifteen ships, seven barques, thirteen brigs, and one schooner, his fleet representing one quarter of the total tonnage of Salem at that time. Then there were Joseph Peabody, Benjamin Pickman, and Jacob Crowninshield, all ship-owners who contributed to the fame of this beautiful New England seaport.