The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-07-21
SALEM PEPPER SHIPS.
How Commerce in This Spice Was
 Built Up a Century Ago.

aware os the decay of American ship ping than quaint old Salem. Mass. Sa- 1 lem never was a large city. In 1850 it
 had a population of only twenty thou sand. Yet in 1907 it could boast of two hundred and fifty-tW0 vessels engaged
 in the deep sea trade, probably the largest fleet owned by a community of
 it's size in the world. But in the year 1900 this city, which had for nearly a | century been better known in the ports of the Orient than Boston or New York, had not a single vessel registered for deep sea commerce. The last arrival at Salem from a South American port was on March 21, 1877. The last entry of a vessel from beyond the Cape of Good Hope was on May 1, 1870, when the bark Glide came home from Zanzibar The year 1861 saw the end of Salem's once great trade in Para rubber. The Australia, in 1860, was the last Salem ship to visit the coast of Sumatra,
 where for more than half century an extensive and profitable pepper trade | had been carried on.
 The story of the origin of this trade
 reads like a romance. From the year 109 Portuguese vessels had brought pepper from Sumatra, the cradle of the Malay race, on return trips from their ceaseless search for the fabulous Isla d'Oura, where it was supposed vargoes
 of gold bars and nuggets could be
 picked up along the beach. By the
 close of the sixteenth century the Dutch and English joined in the quest,
 and in 1921 the French, carried away
 by glowing accounts of the importance
 of the trade, sent a fleet to Sumatra
 with magnificent presents for the Sul-
 tan of Acheen. u..
 In the next century a new claimant
 for share in the trade appeared. To a Salem captain belongs the credit of
 opening to American enterprise the profitable Sumatra pepper business.
 In 179S Captain Jonathan Carnes sailed from Salem in schooner for the East
 Indies. While in Bencoolen, a port on
 the coast of Sumatra, he heard of the
 pepper trade, at the time confined prin- cipally to Padang. He sailed for this point without knowledge of the course
 and through waters dangerous for nav
 igation. He found that little pepper
 was actually raised at Padang, but that
 It was brought there in small quanti- ties from points further north by the
 natives in their proas. He succeeded in
 obtaining cargo and sailed for home, but was wrecked in the West Indies and lost vessel and cargo. But he
 found his way back to Salem and told
 the owners what he nd discovered. A
 brig of one hundred and twenty tons,
 the Rajah, was built secretly and in
 17g4 Carnes started again for Sumatra with the first, vessel that sailed from
 this country for sumatra. pepper.
 On this trip Captain carnes visited
 the northern ports of, the island, and, without charts or guide of any kind,
 made his way through coral reefs
 which are the dread of navigators to
 this day. But this time he brought his
 cargo safely into Salem. There was lively excitement in town when the 1 character of the cargo was known, and
 the ingenious Yankee intellect wrestled
 with the problem of how many years 1t
 would take the inhabitants of the eoun- try to exhaust such a vast supply of
 pepper. The owners of the Rajah,
 however, were busy figuring the profits,
 for Nhis cargo which cost eighteen thou
 sand dollars, was sold for one hundred and forty-four thousand dollars, or a
 croft of seven hundred per cent. Where
 the cargo was found was kept hecret. But in time vessels were fitted out at Salem and Beverly for Bencoolen,
 where it was understood Carnes first heard about Sumatra pepper. These efforts were without avail, for the jeal-
 ousy of the European colonists had
 been awakened and they had begun to fear the rivalry of these ventursome, 1 pushing Yankees No charts or sailing | directions of the coast north of Padang | could be found. Lurid accounts of the ' dangers of the voyage were spread
 abroad to frighten new adventurers, but by the first of the nineteenth cen tury many ships turned their prows to- ward Sumatra for @ share in this lu- 1 crative trade.
 In November, 1902, Captain Joseph
 Ropes, in the ship Recovery, located Padang and obtained a cargo of pepper Two years later the Putnam sailed
 from Salem for the same port and met
 with success. And during that year at
 least thirty American vessels made
 voyages to sumatra for pepper Boom towns" sprung up along the Sumatra | coast, bearing such picturesque names
 as Analaboo, Soo'Soo Hangar and
 North Tally Pow.
 A ship from Salem, the Recovery, | Captain Joseph Ropes, was the first
 American vessel to enter the harbor of
 Mocha, on the coast of Arabia, just in-
 side the Red Sea, and opened the com-
 merce in that pungent berry which
 forms so valuable a part of the bever-
 age of the American breakfast table.
 From Salem also sailed the first Amer ican ship to open commerce with Hin-
 doostan, Java and Japan. It's vessels
 were the first from this continent in the Fiji Islands, Madagascar, New Hol- land and New Zealand. They were among the first on the west coast of Africa and in South America. From Salem, too. sailed the first American. vessel to round the Cape of Good Hope, and the first ship to carry the American dacr throIIpI tha Strait of Mapaltan A