144 CAPTAIN ZACHARY G. LAMSON 



were probably all from his own town or its 

 immediate vicinity, men of good Puritan 

 stock and good home training. Some may 

 have been wild and reckless, a few de- 

 praved, but the great majority were clean, 

 honest men of intense virility and laudable 

 ambition. Even on his first voyage the boy 

 was allowed to take a venture, it might be a 

 quintal of fish or a bag of potatoes, but 

 however small, it made him a partner in the 

 voyage and taught him to buy and sell. 

 The boy rose by being always competent 

 to take a higher position, and by the time he 

 was twenty-one 1 he had attained his first 

 ambition and was captain of the vessel. 

 What that meant in those days it is hard 

 for us to understand. He left his home port 

 perhaps with a cargo valued at one hundred 

 thousand dollars, and his instructions from 

 the owner for the voyage might not have 



1 On one of the East India voyages from Salem, the 

 Captain, Nathaniel Silsbee, the first mate, Charles Derby, 

 and the third mate, Richard Cleaveland, were all under 

 twenty years of age. OSGOOD, History of Salem. 



