only overcome at
the solicitations of his mother. The mother of Marion, in like manner,
strove to dissuade her son from this early inclination. She did not
succeed, however, and when scarcely sixteen, he embarked in a small
vessel for the West Indies. The particulars of this voyage, with the
exception of the mode in which it terminated, have eluded our inquiry.
We have looked for the details in vain. The name of the vessel, the
captain, the port she sailed from, have equally escaped our search. To
the wanton destruction of private and public records by the British,
together with the heedless improvidence of heads of families in the
South, we owe this poverty of historical resource. The voyage must have
been taken somewhere about the year 1747-8. At that period there were
perils of the sea to which the mariner is not often exposed at the
present day. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico, in particular, were
covered with pirates. The rich produce of New Spain, the West Indies,
and the Southern Colonies of the English, were rare temptations. The
privateers of Spain and France, a sort of legalized pirates, hung about
the ports of Carolina, frequently subjecting them to a condition of
blockade, and sometimes to forced contributions. In the occasional
absence of the British armed vessels appointed for the protection of
these ports, the more enterprising and spirited among their citizens
frequently fitted out their own cruisers, drawing them, for this
purpose, from the merchant service; manning them in person, and
requiting themselves for their losses of merchandise by the occasional
capture of some richly laden galleon from New Spain. No doubt the
imagination of young Marion was fired by hearing of these exploits.
The sensation produced in the community, by the injuries done to its
commerce, in all probability gave the direction to his already excited
and restless disposition. It does not appear, however, that Marion's
first and only voyage was made in an armed vessel. Such, we may well
suppose, would have been his desire; but the period when he set forth to
procure service upon the seas, may not have been auspicious. He may have
reached the seaport a moment too soon or too late, and the opportunities
of this kind were necessarily infrequent in a small and frontier city,
whose commerce lay mostly in the hands of strangers. His small size
and puny appearance must have operated very much against his hopes of
obtaining employment in