The Story of the American Merchant MarineSpears, John Randolph
History
The Story of the American Merchant Marine
Spears, John Randolph
Merchant marine -- United States
Of this character was a settlement made at Cape Ann in 1623. The Rev. John
White, of Dorchester, England, having become interested in the fishermen,
persuaded some merchants to send out people to form a colony. The whole
business was badly managed; in 1626 the merchants abandoned the colony,
and most of the people returned to England. But one Roger Conant and "a
few of the most honest _and industrious_ resolved to stay." They removed,
however, to a point on the coast known as Naumkeag, where they made a
settlement which they named Salem.
In the meantime White had been working faithfully in England to promote
the interests of these men, and in 1628 sixty or seventy emigrants were
sent over to join them. In 1629 White and other English Puritans procured
a charter for "a colony under the title of The Governor and Company of
Massachusetts Bay." The settlers who came to America and lived under this
charter were the "Puritans" of American history, a fact that seems worth
especial mention because a modern mark of intelligence in New England is
found in the ability to distinguish between the "Pilgrims" who formed the
colony on Plymouth Bay, or the "Old Colony," and the "Puritans" who made
the settlements at the head of Massachusetts Bay.
The colonists who came over in 1628 explored the head of the bay, and some
of them located where Charlestown now stands. With its dancing waters,
its green islands, and its views of the distant blue hills from which the
Indians had already called it Massachusetts, the region was enchanting,
and the Puritan explorers described it in such glowing colors that 200
more settlers were brought over the next year. The Puritans were the
original "boomers" of America.
Among the 200 who arrived in 1629 there were wheelwrights, carpenters, and
ship-builders. The ship-builders went up the Mystic River to the place
where Medford now stands, and established a shipyard. A considerable
number of the emigrants of 1630 joined them. This was the first American
shipyard, properly so called.
It is also to be noted that some of these emigrants, under the lead of
John Winthrop, located on the peninsula opposite Charlestown, which was
distinguished by a three-pointed hill and a "Backbay," where they built
a town named Boston.
The French, having a water-road to the far-away regions of the Great
Lakes, became wholly absorbed in the fur trade. The Dutch on the Hudson,
though less favorably situated, had a western outlet through the Iroquois
Indian country, and did a large business in furs. The English on Barbados,
having a favorable climate, a fertile soil, and slaves, were preparing
to supply all Englishmen with sugar, while the English on the Chesapeake,
having facilities similar to those at Barbados, were already astonishing
the commercial world with their product of tobacco.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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