The Chesapeake 221 



ilized society. In the denunciatory accounts of them by 

 their fellow citizens, that one may find, not all vessel 

 owners were attacked. They seemed to have had knowl- 

 edge only of the number of trips made by their cap- 

 tains. Some of the captains also are said to have been 

 honest and law-abiding, " but it is an unfortunate fact," 

 we read, " that such form a very small minority." 



It may be gathered from the reports, that captains of 

 dredging vessels were forced by the demands of vessel 

 owners to disregard the oyster laws. They were re- 

 quired to deliver oysters within a limited time. That 

 meant that they must take them from the most con- 

 venient localities, and that they must dredge day or night 

 in all kinds of weather. It meant that crews were to 

 be driven without mercy, and that no one should be al- 

 lowed to have any rights in the bay. Such a system re- 

 sulted in the selection of as merciless a band of pirates to 

 captain most of the vessels of the oyster fleet, as ever 

 ruled a deck on the high seas. 



The cruel treatment of crews on these vessels has al- 

 ways been a frequent subject of comment, and yet there 

 were ways of getting them together. In the majority of 

 cases, when a ship-owner or a captain desired a crew of 

 seven or eight men, he simply placed an order for them 

 with a shipping agent. This person, on making a round 

 of the saloons and dives near the " basin " in Baltimore, 

 was usually able to round up a sufficient number of men, 

 often irresponsible from drink, and these he delivered 

 on deck at about two dollars a head. The only qualifica- 

 tion in the acceptance of a hand was evident muscular 

 ability — when muscles should be under control — to turn 

 the crank of a windlass. Crews of this sort — vagrants, 

 thieves, and murderers — declared in an account by a na- 



