Elijah Cobb

“ There was no worse pest hole on earth than the West Coast and its slave ports, no area so indelibly stained with man’s inhumanity to man. A land of treacherous surf and steaming jungle, of tawny beaches and sluggish rivers, the infamies of centuries cursed the names of Goree and Gambia, the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra, Calabar, Anamaboe, and the Congo. ”

“ His ship had to be released and indemnity paid him for detention and loss of cargo. After six weeks of wrangling with minor officials, he resolved to go to Paris and seek satisfaction. A stubborn mariner who shoved obstacles aside, behold him making this dangerous journey with an official courier, for armament loaded pistols and a blunderbuss, in a carriage that was “musquet shot proof” and driving like Jehu night and day, without a wink of sleep all the way from Brest, more than six hundred miles. ”

“ I had attained the object of 10 months contention with the french government—I had on hand, a fine voyage for my employers—but the great deficulty now was; how I should git the property out of France. There was a special law, against exporting specie from the country,—exchanges were not to be obtained, in which my confidence coul’d be placed; my vessell gone, so that, investing in goods, was out of the question,—and 40,000 crowns in my sleeping chamber, brought there publickly, at noon day. ”

“ Several other American vessels were with him at Prince’s Island, their captains ill or dead of fever, his own ship rotten with it. What they called fumigation was crude and ineffectual. They suffered grimly. It was all in the day’s work, and they could only commit themselves “to a mercifull just God who always acts for the good of his Creaturs, & happy would it be for us; if we could always bow with humble submission to His righteous dispensations.” ”

“ Congress had formally declared war, on June 18, while Captain Cobb was in the midst of his transactions. And when he sailed from Cadiz for Boston, on July 5, “he never felt himself saffer, on account of enemies on the high seas.” Peacefully he jogged across the Atlantic, as far as the Grand Bank, when he was overhauled by a British armed schooner. The subsequent proceedings must upset the conventional notions of the sea warfare of bygone days. All British seamen are presumed to have been ruffianly and outrageous persons. ”

“ The most lucrative traffic was in New England rum, muskets, and gunpowder, but Captain Cobb makes no mention of these as in his invoice, and it is fair to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not that it would have discredited him in the reputable circles of Boston or Brewster. A man could be a deacon and still peddle Medford rum to the benighted Africans.
Captain Cobb stocked his ship with the customary trade goods, gaudy cotton prints, tobacco, beads and brass pots, bandana hankerchiefs, flour and meal, salt beef, pork, and fish, candles, tinware, and crockery. ”

“ American shipping was ground between two millstones. All was fair in war. British and French cruisers seized our ships for engaging in trade which our own interpretation of international [Pg 7] law held to be perfectly legitimate. More than a hundred American vessels were taken by France in 1793 on pretext of trading with England or her colonies.
Captain Cobb could find no reason why his voyage to Spain should be molested and he was too stiff-necked to submit without protest. ”

“ A hideous cry and the head of Robespierre is shorn from his shoulders.
And how does Captain Cobb describe this gigantic episode? [Pg 9] As if he were making an entry in a ship’s log. “Before I left the country; I saw Robertspeirs head taken off, by the same Machine—But to return to my induvidual, and embarised affairs....” This was characteristic of the New England breed of seafarers. They are exasperating at times. They saw so much and told so little. The wonders of the world left them unmoved. ”

“ It could not be better done by the practised hand of a novelist. His father, the master of a brig, dying at sea, left a young widow with six small children in poverty on a forlorn Cape Cod farm. [Pg 3] The family could not be kept together. “Some of us, must leave the perternal dwelling & seek subsistance among strangers—my Bror., being the elder, was tried first, but wou’d not stay, & came home crying—I was then, in my 6th year, & altho” too young to earn my living, a place was offered me, & I left my dear Mother, for that subsistance among strangers which she could not procure for me.” ”