AMarblehead Seaman from the War of 1812 by Louis Arthur Norton
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rdinary sailors fought in the American navy during the War of 1812, but most published tales are about the conflict's warships and its heroic officers. Little has been written about the seamen who fought onboard these vessels and their sometimes-hardscrabble lives. The following is the story of but one. First serried in 1629 as a Salem plantation, Marblehead, Massachusetts, was
a fishing community built on a neck of land, a granite peninsula. The town was separately incorporated in 1649. Originally called "Massebequash," the Naumkkeag name for a nearby river, it was quasiAnglicized to "Marvell Head" and "Marble Harbor" because early settlers mistook its ledges for marble. The name evolved into Marblehead, a village with a good natural northeast-facing harbor. In 1669 a Marbleheader noted, "Our ancestors came not
here for religion. Their main end was to catch fish .... Fish is the only great stapple which the Country produceth for forraine parts and is so benefitiall for making returns for what we need." 1 By 1744 the town was the homeport of ninety vessels largely engaged in fishing and marketing split-salted cod-a product with a long shelf life, inexpensive, easy to store, and in great demand. 2 Its first settlers came mostly from southwestern England, such as Cornwall and the channel islands of Guernsey and Jersey, to which they can trace their distinct dialect of clipped short words and dropped "h's," and developed their own unique local vernacular. Thus "Thrasher" became "Trash," "Orne" became "Horne," and "Crowninshield" became "Grounsel." "Jor of ile" meant to jaw awhile or engage in conversation, but in Marblehead it usually meant to argue. A leftover or piece of something was a "grummet" and a grumpy person was said to be "grouty." 3 Marblehead fishermen followed m their fathers ' footsteps and acquired the necessary seamanship at an early age. In the early years of the settlement, they used small sailing and rowing shallops and foreand-aft rigged apple-bowed "heeltapper" schooners. In 1765 Marblehead's population was the sixth-largest in the thirteen colonies, largely because of its fishing fleet and its maritime support industries. In town, long ropewalks and sail lofts supplied cordage and sails, while skilled carpenters made ships' blocks. Blacksmiths hammered out hardware for the rigging and hulls, and others supplied countless necessities for the fishing and shipping fleets sailing from Massachusetts's North Shore. The town's economy peaked just before the Revolutionary War, during which it provided or financed many of the privateer vessels that seized bounty from British merchant ships in the Atlantic. (left) Massachusetts, 1811. Marblehead boys were raised in a seafaring community and many went to sea as youths in fishing vessels and in merchant trading ships. In wartime, these seamen, already trained in the ways of the ship, made up the backbone of the fledging American navy and privateering fleet.
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SEA HISTORY 146, SPRING 2014