voyage and yield fortunes. Crew
after crew was sacrificed to this frenzied rush for money, but nothing
was thought of it. Again, there were examples of almost incredible
temerity. In his biography of Peter Charndon Brooks, one of the
principal merchants of the day, and his father-in-law, Edward Everett
tells of a ship sailing from Calcutta to Boston with a youth of nineteen
in command. Why or how this boy was placed in charge is not explained.
This juvenile captain had nothing in the way of a chart on board except
a small map of the world in Guthrie's Geography. He made the trip
successfully. Later, when he became a rich Boston banker, the tale of
this feat was one of the proud annals of his life and, if true,
deservedly so.[47]

Whitney's notable invention of the cotton gin in 1793 had given a
stupendous impetus to cotton growing in the Southern States. As the
shipowners were chiefly centered in New England the export of this
staple vastly increased their trade and fortunes. It might be thought,
parenthetically, that Whitney himself should have made a surpassing
fortune from an invention which brought millions of dollars to planters
and traders. But his inventive ability and perseverance, at least in his
creation of the cotton gin, brought him little more than a multitude of
infringements upon his patent, refusals to pay him, and vexatious and
expensive litigation to sustain his rights.[48] In despair, he turned,
in 1808, to the manufacture in New Haven of fire-arms for the
Government, and from this business managed to get a fortune. From the
Canton and Calcutta trade Thomas Handasyd Perkins, a Boston shipper,
extracted a fortune of $2,000,000. His ships made thirty voyages around
the world. This merchant peer lived to the venerable age of 90; when he
passed away in 1854 his fortune, although intact, had shrunken to modest
proportions compared with a few others which had sprung up. James Lloyd,
a partner of Perkins', likewise profited; in 1808 he was elected a
United States Senator and later reelected.

William Gray, described as "one of the most successful of American
merchants," and as one who was considered and taxed in Salem "as one of
the wealthiest men in the place, where there were several of the largest
fortunes that could be found in the United States," owned, in his
heyday, more than sixty sail of vessels. Some scant details are
obtainable as to the career and personality of this moneyed colossus of
his day