A skipper going ashore to drum up trade was a novel spectacle.
Imagine the captain of one of the Atlantic greyhounds prying among
the warehouses on West Street, demanding of the merchants:
"Anything going my way, this trip?" He would scorn to do it. Before
his passengers have passed the custom officers, he is in mufti, and
on his way to his villa on Brooklyn Heights, or to the Lambs Club,
and until the Blue Peter is again at the fore, little he cares for
passengers, mails, or cargo. But the captain of a "coaster" must be
sailor and trader, too. He is expected to navigate a coast, the
latest chart of which is dated somewhere near 1830, and at which the
waves rush in walls of spray, sometimes as high as a three-story
house. He must speak all the known languages of Europe, and all the
unknown tongues of innumerable black brothers. At each port he must
entertain out of his own pocket the agents of all the trading
houses, and, in his head, he must keep the market price, "when laid
down in Liverpool," of mahogany, copra, copal, rubber, palm oil, and
ivory. To see that the agent has not overlooked a few bags of ground
nuts, or a dozen puncheons of oil, he must go on shore and peer into
the compound of each factory, and on board he must keep peace
between the Kroo boys and the black deck passengers, and see that
the white passengers with a temperature of 105, do not drink more
than is good for them. At least, those are a few of the duties the
captains on the ships controlled by Sir Alfred Jones, who is Elder
and Dempster, are expected to perform.
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