Salem already displayed the peculiar talent for maritime
adventure which was to make her the most illustrious port of the
New World. The first of her line of shipping merchants was Philip
English, who was sailing his own ketch Speedwell in 1676 and so
rapidly advanced his fortunes that in a few years he was the
richest man on the coast, with twenty-one vessels which traded
coastwise with Virginia and offshore with Bilbao, Barbados, St.
Christopher's, and France. Very devout were his bills of lading,
flavored in this manner: "Twenty hogsheads of salt, shipped by
the Grace of God in the good sloop called the Mayflower . . . .
and by God's Grace bound to Virginia or Merriland."

No less devout were the merchants who ordered their skippers to
cross to the coast of Guinea and fill the hold with negroes to be
sold in the West Indies before returning with sugar and molasses
to Boston or Rhode Island. The slave-trade flourished from the
very birth of commerce in Puritan New England and its golden
gains and exotic voyages allured high-hearted lads from farm and
counter. In 1640 the ship Desire, built at Marblehead, returned
from the West Indies and "brought some cotton and tobacco and
negroes, etc. from thence." Earlier than this the Dutch of
Manhattan had employed black labor, and it was provided that the
Incorporated West India Company should "allot to each Patroon
twelve black men and women out of the Prizes in which Negroes
should be found."

It was in the South, however, that this kind of labor was most
needed and, as the trade increased, Virginia and the Carolinas
became the most lucrative markets. Newport and Bristol drove a
roaring traffic in "rum and niggers," with a hundred sail to be