218 EEPOET OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [14] 



sliip bad been absent from London eighteen months, receiving no news 

 of her, and supposing her to be lost, the owners became discouraged 

 and offered her for sale at "Doctor's Commons," the great mart in Lon- 

 don for sales of prizes and for matters relating to commerce. 



Mellish, the great London victualler, who supplied the Government 

 with beef for the army and navy, hearing that the ship was to be 

 sold, determined to purchase her, if some one would share the venture 

 with him. He accordingly called on Mr. Bennett, a blacksmith, who had 

 a shop near Wapping, and said to him, " Let's buy this venture." Ben- 

 nett had by hard work and diligent industry saved a few thousand 

 pounds, and immediately acceded to Mellish's proposition. " All right," 

 said Mr. Bennett ; the sum was fixed which they were willing to pay, 

 and Mr. Mellish departed for Doctor's Commons. He soon returned 

 and informed Mr. Bennett that they had become the successful purchas- 

 ers of the sui^posed lost ship, the price paid being £1,000 ($5,000). In 

 three weeks Mr. Mellish was back again in Bennett's shop, and com- 

 menced to banter upon his or their folly. " Are you sick of your bar- 

 gain'?" said the matter-of-fact mechanic, "and if so, what will you 

 sell out forr' "I will sell for £400," Mellish replied. " I will take, 

 her," said Bennett. The papers were made, Bennett paid down his 

 hard earned guineas, and the " venture " was his, Mr. Mellish going 

 away this time from Mr. Bennett's shop a poorer man by some $500 

 than on his first visit. Three days after this transaction the missing 

 ship anchored at Gravesend with a full cargo of oil, besides seventy 

 thousand seal-skins, and Mr. Bennett, now famous and no longer 

 obliged to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, found himself 

 enormously rich. All of this valuable cargo had been secured at the 

 Crozette Islands, in the Indian Ocean.* 



There were at this time in London two Nantucket men, Eansom 

 Jones and Benjamiu Swift, both men of superior endowments, who had 

 just arrived from Delago Bay on a whaling voyage. The now renowned 

 Mr. Bennett offered to each the command of a ship, and the offer being 

 accepted he empowered them to purchase two Danish sloops of war 

 then about to be sold at Doctor's Commons by the British Government. 

 The ships were bought, and in due time sailed for Madagascar, the Cro- 

 zettes, and Desolation Islands. Jones called his ship the Africa, and 

 Swift named his the Brook Watson,t after a son-in law of Mr. Bennett. 



* A picture of this ship now haugs iu the library of the Nautucket Atheneum. 



t In 1833 Mr. MeUish was the owner of the ship Partridge when she arrived from the 

 Pacific Ocean in command of Capt. Noah Pease Folger, a Nautncket man. The 

 voyage had been a protracted and unsuccessfnl one, and was, of course, unsatisfactory 

 to Mr. Mellish. He denounced Folger upon 'Change, which so irritated Folger that 

 he jirocured a pistol and upon meeting Mellish fired at him, the ball cutting some of 

 the hair from his head and making a slight scratch. Folger was arrested, tried, and 

 sentenced to Newgate for life. An influence was brought to bear upon the King, 

 William IV (who, as Duke of Clarence, when an admiral, had met on the ocean and 

 in port many Nantucket cajitains), for a commutation of his (Folger's) sentence. The 



