Antiques.(Salem, Massachusetts)

 
[T]he Countrie of the Massachusets, which is the Paradise of all those 
parts: for, heere [New England] are many Iles all planted with come; 
groves, mulberries, salvage gardens, and good harbors ... and so well 
inhabited with a goodly, strong and well proportioned people, besides 
the greatnesse of the Timber growing on them, the greatnesse of the fish 
and the moderate temper of the ayre.... I would rather live here then 
anywhere. 
Captain John Smith, A Description of New England, 1616 

America's maritime heritage began with the settlers who came to New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Until the traumatic Atlantic crossing, few of them had had any experience with the sea. But New England's hilly land and thin, stony soil was difficult to cultivate while the seacoast offered broad natural harbors and fertile offshore islands, and there were seemingly endless forests and an abundance of timber for masts and shipbuilding.

Unlike other sections of colonial America, where large ports such as New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston came to dominate the commerce of huge areas, New England was a land of many small seaports (as well as larger ones like Boston and Newport), which developed special commercial activities of their own and maintained their character long after their economic importance had waned. Among these was the Puritan settlement at Salem--named after the Old Testament "city of peace"--which began in 1626 as a frontier outpost, the original settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Although John Winthrop soon established the colony's capital a few miles south in Boston, Salem went on to become a bustling cosmopolitan port with a substantial hinterland and numerous overseas trading spheres. One observer characterized the town's great merchants as "distinguished by a lively imagination.... Their enterprises are sudden, bold, and sometimes rash. A general spirit of adventure prevails here."

Salem's growth, like that of many New England ports, occurred in the half-century following the American Revolution. Wharves and ...