ECONOMIC SOCIAL 131 



at the height of its prosperity, employed 

 five or six hundred 1 hands. 



The character of the seamen employed 

 in the American merchant marine was 

 exceptional. In no other part of the world 

 were they drawn from the same class in 

 society. In the New England coast towns 

 the well-to-do family of that day and few 

 were poor strove hard and pinched to 

 send at least one boy to college, another 

 they placed in the counting room of some 

 merchant, and the rest they sent to sea. 

 These boys might be compared to the mid- 

 shipmen in the English navy, in distinction 

 from the English sailors. They had all the 

 dogged courage, the pride of race and sea 

 instinct of their English progenitors, but 

 they had in addition a quickness of intellect 



1 The "Neptune," 350 tons, owned in New Haven, 

 sailed from New York in 1796 to the South Pacific. She 

 killed and took the pelts of 80,000 seals, selling them in 

 Canton for $280,000. She brought back a full cargo from 

 Canton, reaching New Haven at the end of three years, 

 having made probably the most profitable cruise to that 

 date. New Haven Hist. Society Papers, vol. 4, p. 2. 



