Off the Battery

September 8th was Isaac Webb's eighteenth birthday and on that day the Paragon arrived at Albany. Eckford and his party made their way from there to the west along the Mohawk River in small boats and hired carts all the way to Rome, New York. From there they had to hack their way through the wilderness to their destination at the naval base near the village of Sackett's Harbor.

Upon arrival, some of the carpenters moved into the naval base barracks where they found bunks. Others pitched tents at the shipyard. Eckford and his apprentices moved into a small house and established his headquarters there. Isaac Webb and Stephen Smith shared a bed in an upstairs room.

The winds blew cold on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain that winter and despite the hardships these hardy bands of shipwrights were able to set up shipyards on all three lakes, Ontario, Erie, and Champlain, using whatever materials were available locally and began building their ships.

The first ship that Eckford built on Lake Ontario was the Madison, which his crew completed in only 80 days. Once the shipwrights learned to work with the local materials more efficiently, the work went even faster and future ships were built in just 30 days. The steady number of ships sliding down the ways into Lake Ontario made a big impression upon the British on the other side of the lake and the Lake Ontario theater remained quiet throughout the war.

Likewise, Noah Brown built ships for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry on Lake Erie, and his brother, Adam Brown, built ships for Commodore Thomas Macdonough on Lake Champlain. The efforts of both brothers, along with Henry Eckford, did much to insure American domination of the Lakes throughout the war years. The shipwrights were justly compensated with good pay over the course of this necessary patriotic venture to make up for the hard conditions and received $1.75 a day plus board for their labors.

The welcome news of peace arrived from Europe aboard a ship in New York Harbor on February 11, 1815, and the relieved city went wild in celebration. The shipwrights at Sackett's Harbor eventually heard the news, and soon after packing up all their tools and belongings were on their way back to New York; leaving behind two partially finished hulls on the stocks.

In 1815, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo and sent into exile at St. Helena. John Bull and his wayward former colony settled down to a period of economic adjustment in their mutual maritime affairs.

The American people had endured two hundred years of colonial rule, the Revolutionary War, impressment on the high seas, political restraints, and estrangement of the maritime community by their own leaders, followed by the War of 1812.

Thousands of Americans came away from those experiences with a respect for fast sailing ships that bordered on reverence. The lure of the sea was of the highest calling. At last Americans could sail the seas unmolested by foreign wars and privateers. Those who had served aboard American vessels during those years of conflicts would lead the way to America's economic prosperity in the coming years on the high seas.

The ink was barely dry on the treaty between the United States and England when American sailors entering British ports were awed by the East Indiamen, proud relics of England's ancient monopoly on trade, making ready to sail again. Little did the brightly-dressed British officers standing on their ornate decks realize at the time that the successors of these fast little Yankee ships, less than half the size of the Indiamen, would someday sweep them from the seas.

With a full cargo of English goods in their holds, the first Yankee ships back in America were greeted with the sights of disarray in every harbor from Maine to the Chesapeake of rotting, dismantled and idle vessels. But there were also signs of a battered maritime community springing back to life. Lumber yards opened up and shipbuilding resumed. In a remarkably short time, ships were repaired and brought back into service. The merchant community was anxious to get back to business. Tramp ships sailed from port to port in search of any and all cargoes. Others, known as regular traders, specialized in sailing only between certain ports but at no fixed date.

The fast sailing ships of the early years following the War of 1812 were small, sharp, and of limited cargo capacity. They were uncomfortable with no steerage ventilation, and unsuitable for carrying passengers. These ships were only suitable for "premium" cargoes; oriental luxuries and valuable South American products such as coffee. Most freight went with the slower ships.

Commerce was hampered by tonnage laws that many countries passed as trade barriers, then in effect throughout the world, that forced shipbuilders to build giant floating monstrosities; slow sailing ships that became known as "kettle-bottoms," designed to carry two tons of merchandise while paying duties for one. Besides slowing down ships, tonnage laws slowed down progress in naval design, and while these inefficient wall-sided craft were in service, they cost the world millions of dollars.

The cream of the regular traders was on the North Atlantic run. There were, of course, always delays for no ship would set sail without a full hold and fair weather. This created a constant dilemma for passengers that were growing more intolerable of delays, and was costing merchants money.

The new young nation was going through a very important period of change and growth. The interior was opening up to commerce and along with it the demand for all sorts of goods and luxuries. Trade stimulated and financed the push westward. After staying at home for so long, people now wanted to see more of their own country and to travel abroad. The fortunes of many of America's leading families were now established and growing. Certainly this class of people would not long endure the indignities and discomforts of haphazard ocean travel. Westward emigration had been stifled for years. Growing numbers of Europeans wished now to travel to North America to seek a new life.

Isaac Webb was soon to turn twenty-one and this meant the end of his apprenticeship. He now had a number of options before him as to the course he would take with his career. Eckford, who was highly pleased with the performance of his apprentice over that past four-and-a-half years, told Isaac Webb that he would most certainly be welcome to stay on at Eckford's yard, where he would find security and advancement and all the work he wanted. Isaac, as Eckford pointed out, was also free to choose a position at another shipyard, for those days were the start of boom times with the close of the War of 1812. His third choice was to open up his own yard and that was what Isaac Webb really wanted to do. Isaac's father, Wilse Webb, had scrimped and saved for years and had managed to put away $1,000 to be used to set up a shipyard.

Eckford was sympathetic and supportive to Isaac's wishes, but urged caution for such an independent venture. Instead, Eckford suggested that Isaac go into partnership with his fellow apprentices Stephen Smith and John Dimon. Isaac took this sound advice and the three former apprentices opened up a new yard south of Corlear's Hook, where Montgomery Street ran into Water Street, a site that was farther downtown than the other yards.

Around that same time, Isaac married Phebe, a young woman of a Huguenot family that had moved to New York from New Rochelle. They settled in their first home on Stanton Street, between Cannon and Lewis Streets in a neighborhood where many other shipyard workers lived. It was in this house where their first child, William Henry Webb, was born on Wednesday, June 19, 1816. The name, William, was a family name of one of Wilse Webb's uncles. Henry, his middle name, was chosen to honor Henry Eckford.

Robert Fulton

At that time, Isaac Webb was hard at work constructing the hull of the steamboat Chancellor Livingston, a grand steamer being built for the Hudson River Line that was operated by Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston, his partner. Eckford had designed the steamer and Fulton had approved the design, but Fulton unfortunately died of fever before construction had begun. Eckford had passed on the construction contract to his three former apprentices and was well pleased with their work.

The Chancellor Livingston

The Chancellor Livingston was launched in 1817 and made her maiden voyage up the Hudson River to Albany in eighteen hours, and from that moment was the largest and fastest steamship afloat. She was a handsome steamship for her day with many ocean-going characteristics and represented a major step forward in innovation and design.

That same year, Eckford was offered the position of chief naval constructor at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a tempting offer that Eckford found hard to refuse. But in taking the position, he did not close his own yard. Instead, he divided his time between the two. From then on, the contracts that Eckford took on for his own yard slowed down. But with the contracts that he did take on, he would design the ships, and then subcontract their construction out to Webb, Smith, and Dimon.

In 1819, Henry Eckford received the contract to build the steamship Robert Fulton, the first specifically designed ocean-going, coal-burning steamship with auxiliary sails. It was a most challenging assignment and Eckford called upon his former apprentice, Isaac Webb, to leave his partners, Smith and Dimon, and return to Eckford's yard to supervise the construction of this new type of steamer. Webb did so and went right to work. On May 1819, the Robert Fulton was launched from Eckford's yard, then towed over to the Allaire Works for the installation of her engine that took nearly a year. The first ocean-going steamship ended up costing $130,000 and Henry Eckford ended up as a part owner.

The Robert Fulton sailed on her maiden voyage on April 25, 1820 for Charleston, Havana, and New Orleans, and on to success, just as Henry Eckford intended.

For his next assignment, Henry Eckford took on the contract of the warship Ohio at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Eckford was the "Designer," and Isaac Webb, who followed his employer to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, was the "Master Builder." Over the course of construction, Eckford had made some design modifications which rankled the commandant of the yard. This led to friction between the two and Eckford decided to move on. He returned to his own yard at "Manhattan Island" where he was free to pursue more lucrative opportunities in the private sector. Isaac Webb, although recommended as a successor by Eckford for the position of Chief Naval Contractor, wisely decided to follow Eckford back to his yard. Over the next decade the two men designed and built some remarkable vessels that cemented an outstanding reputation among shipbuilders along the East River waterfront.

American commerce of the period was experiencing phenomenal growth. Thousands of emigrants were arriving on our shores swelling the populations of the coastal cities, particularly New York. The Northwest Territories and the Louisiana Purchase were opened up to settlers, who soon began to export their agricultural surplus, and in return the demand for imports soon became insatiable, particularly the demand for tea, porcelain, and silks from the Orient. American packet ships were increasingly entering into this trade and giving British ships a run for their money.

The fur trade in the Pacific Northwest was spurred on to secure sea otter furs to trade with the Chinese for tea. Yankee ships since post-Revolutionary times made the voyage around the Horn in ever-increasing numbers for furs. By the 1820s, a profitable trade in cowhides had developed along the California coast.

Cotton plantations in the South were sending ever-increasing shipments of cotton by sailing packets up to New York, and from there by cargo sloops on to the mills of eastern Massachusetts, or on to other packets to transport across the Atlantic to Liverpool for the English mills.

The South and Central American trades were opening up to enterprising Yankee merchants and shipbuilders. Wars for independence were going on all over the South American continent in a determined effort to break away from Spain and Portugal, and ships were needed for emerging navies. The growing American taste for coffee spurred on the building of a new swift sailing breed of vessels designed specifically for this trade.

Over the following decade, many of the merchant houses engaged in these trades grew rich and powerful. Such firms as Grinnell, Minturn and Co., Goodhue and Co., A. A. Low and Bros., N. L. and G. Griswold, and G. G. and S. Howland--the firm that became Howland and Aspinwall after 1832. All of these firms and others had their own fleets of ships that they ordered primarily from the East River shipyards.

The Black Ball Line

The Black Ball Line was founded in 1817. This group of American merchants owned and operated their own fleet of sailing packets, purchased from various shipbuilders, that sailed between New York and Liverpool on regular sailing dates, the first and fifteenth of every month.

The South Street steamboat wharf bustled with unusual excitement on the cold, windy morning of January 5, 1818. Whirling gusts of biting snow, while perhaps annoying, hardly kept those scurrying about the James Monroe from their appointed tasks and last minute errands. The owners of the Black Ball Line and their subordinates busily looked after every last-minute detail that demanded their attention. Captain James Watkinson glanced at his watch and judged that all was proceeding along to plan. The James Monroe would sail with the tide.

One after another the eight paying passengers began arriving and were showed their tiny quarters. The letter bag was already aboard.

The James Monroe was a well-sparred vessel of less than 400 tons. She was 100 feet long and was all spruced up from a recent painting. Her new canvas blended in with the falling snow.

Onlookers gathered to bid farewell to passengers and crew, others to see if the James Monroe would actually sail in a snow storm. Some were there to jeer; not believing that a packet ship would actually sail at a predetermined time to a predestined English or European port, whether or not her hold was full.

Church bells chimed out the hour of departure and soon the last dispatches were placed aboard. The tide turned and Captain Watkinson gave the word. Sailors sprang to life and cast off the gaskets as the topsails were mastheaded. Lines were hauled in as the James Monroe slid out past the wharf into the East River while passengers and spectators cheered. Sailors hoisted up smartly the fore topmast staysail and hauled the sheet to windward. Her cannons rang out a smart parting salute as the first liner sailed past the cheering crowds down the East River and out to sea, just like her proud far-sighted owners, who had been advertising the first "regular sailing" in the Commercial Advertiser since the October 24, 1817 newspaper edition said she would.

Meanwhile, another Black Ball ship was leaving Liverpool on the east-west run.

Some of the older New York merchants shook their heads as they watched from their counting-room windows not knowing what to make of all the fuss. They chose to wait and see. They were a conservative crowd set in their ways of doing things, and besides they were busy.

But the owners of the Black Ball Line and many of the younger South Street merchants saw in this ship moving down the East River a symbolic response to a growing need that they rightly perceived was making itself felt in the country at the time. Fixed dates of departure to predetermined ports made good business sense. Before the advent of the Black Ball Line, fixed dates of departure were advertised, but there were always delays. Ships frequently sailed first to other ports to pick up additional cargo for the transatlantic passage, and that made passengers unruly.

The Black Ball Line owners, secure in their own vision of a prosperous maritime future, cared not what their competitors thought. Eventually this fixed sailing date strategy, they hoped, would give them an edge on their rivals.

The first Black Ball liners were not specially built ships superior in size and accommodations. They were "regular traders" of less than 400 tons and had been in the transatlantic trade for years. One of the first Black Ball liners was the 384-ton Pacific that had been built prior to the War of 1812. Aside from their fixed sailing dates, they did not offer superior service or accommodations to other liners on the North Atlantic run. Some of these other packets were larger and more comfortable than the early Black Ball liners.

Still, they were considered superior to the British and French packets of the day that carried the important mail and dispatches to American ports. The packet service from England was considered most unsatisfactory, for the small British vessels always stopped at either Bermuda or Nova Scotia when traveling in both directions. A westward crossing usually took at least two months and a three-month voyage was not uncommon.

American merchants shook their heads and decided that this situation could not be tolerated for long. The demand now was for faster sailing ships of greater comfort and cargo capacity.

The captains of those early packets, many of them men of the War of 1812, had come away from that war with a cocksure attitude that they could outfight and outsail anything afloat. And so they set about proving their mettle, carrying sail to the point of disaster on the North Atlantic run. These captains were superb seamen and navigators who of necessity had to be able to endure the great challenges of the sea. They had to be men of great physical endurance and robust health to handle the many challenges of command. Sometimes their duties kept them on deck day and night battling through stormy seas. They had to keep their wits about them to handle every situation, and with their strong presence assure the passengers and crew that they were firmly in control. The ship was each captain's responsibility.

To the first-class passengers, the captain was a gracious host who charmed distinguished gentlemen and ladies at the dinner table. Courteous and polite, yet strong and hearty, he would never be mistaken for anything but a gentleman himself.

The captain also had to be a stern disciplinarian with the crew, often composed of desperate characters. Few American seamen at that time sailed with the North Atlantic packets. They preferred the less harsh coastal and China trades. In their place, rough and hardy men known as "packet rats," a sorry breed of scoundrels and derelicts mostly out of British and continental jails, sailed before the mast. To these desperate men, comforts and luxuries were few and they would sail to hell if necessary.

Forced to go aloft in the yards in the fiercest of winter storms, they climbed the ratlines and the frozen footropes out to the ends of frozen spars to furl and reef sleet-covered sails. Frigid blasts of wind froze their bloody battered fingers as they battled with the stubborn sails. Still, many of them made their way down the ice-covered stays to the deck rather than take advantage of the ratlines, a dangerous custom among cocksure packet rats who dared to press their luck. Many a packet rat lost his footing and grip aloft in the frozen swaying rigging and fell to a certain death in the stormy seas.

Packet mates would berate the crew for their moral failings. Those mates with religious convictions would proselytize the packet rats for the good of their troubled souls. Religion hardly helped. Sometimes the mates had to resort to "belaying pin soup" and "handspike hash" to enforce discipline amongst mutinous and lazy members of the crew.

The early packets resembled floating barnyards on the high seas. The fore deck was home to cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, and goats, a real Noah's Ark known as the old ship farm. In the bottom of the securely lashed longboat were pens for sheep, goats, and pigs. Above were ducks and geese and higher up in the cock loft were coops of chickens and other fowl. Lashed above the main hatch was the all important cow house, for without cows there would be no milk on long voyages. The cows were well looked after and chewed their cud in sweet content, for they would eventually see green pastures again for a short time while the ship was in port.

The pigs and the goats had the run of the deck and actually developed good sea legs. They thrived on eating the galley garbage, wood shavings, old newspapers, etc. However, it was not a good idea for pigs and sheep to be together at feeding time, for after a few weeks at sea, pigs were known to develop a taste for mutton.

The James Monroe and her three sister ships, the Amity, Courier, and Pacific, were all about 400 tons. Soon, other ships joined the line; some of them 500 tons register. Joining the Black Ball "Downhill" races across the North Atlantic to Liverpool were New York, Eagle, Orbit, Nestor, James Cropper, William Thompson, Albion, Canada, Britannia, and Columbia.

"Downhill" was the sailor slang term for the faster passage from America to Europe. The westward "uphill" passage had to sail against the prevailing winds and currents.

Nobody tried to compete against the Black Ball Line for the first few years, but by 1821 everybody wanted a line. On the first and the sixteenth of every month a Black Ball liner sailed to Liverpool. Those dates became the European mail days throughout the United States.

Other cities wanted lines of their own. In 1821 Thomas Cope of Philadelphia started a successful line of Liverpool packets.

South Street merchants launched competing lines to race against the Black Ball Line. The first competitor was the Red Star Line with the Panther, Meteor, Hercules and the second Manhattan.

Then came the Grinell, Minturn & Co.'s Swallow Tail Line. Napoleon, Silas Richards, George, and York joined the packet fleet. Grinell, Minturn & Co. started up their London Line in 1823 with the Brighton, Columbia, Cortes, and Corinthian.

John Griswold's competing London Line offered up the Sovereign, President, Cambria, Hudson, and the second Ontario.

In Le Havre, Belgium, Francis Depaw founded a packet line with Stephania, Montana, Henry IV, Helen Mar, Louis Phillippe, and Silvia de Grasse. Two other packet lines were established as well.

"Downhill" passages for the first ten years averaged 23 days while the westward "uphill" passages averaged 40 days. Early records were set by the Black Baller Canada with a 15-day, 8-hour Liverpool passage and 36-day passage back to New York.

A record-breaking passage was all-important to the merchants of the various lines, and the racing across the North Atlantic was fast and furious. Night and day captains would lay on all the sail they could to catch the winds through calm and stormy sea right up to the point of disaster. From the time they cast off from the South Street wharf to the time they arrived at the Liverpool pier-head on the Mersey River, the race was on.

All this continued expansion of trade made for busy and prosperous times for the growing shipyards along the East River. Christian Bergh had reopened his former yard and had taken on the younger Jacob A. Westervelt as an assistant. Adam and Noah Brown opened up their yard as well. In 1817, Adam Brown died and five years later, after going on alone for a time, Noah turned his yard over to his nephew, David Brown, whom he had adopted and raised as a son. David Brown asked Jacob A. Bell, formally an Eckford apprentice, to join with him in partnership and this shipyard would become known throughout the maritime world as Brown and Bell. Noah Brown did not retire totally from the scene until 1833 and over the intervening years built a few ships under his own name. Christian Bergh also retired in 1833 and turned his yard over to his young assistant Jacob Westervelt.

The Smith and Dimon Montgomery Street shipyard was north of the Brown and Bell yard until 1822, when Smith and Dimon moved their adjoining yard farther uptown to a larger site. Isaac Webb then decided to set up his own yard at the vacated Montgomery Street location. For the next three years his yard was known as Isaac Webb and Company. At this location, Isaac Webb built the notable China packets Superior in 1822, a ship of 575 tons, and the 642-ton Splendid in 1823; two very large packets for that time. He also built the coastal packet Silas Richards, as well as the hull of the steamboat Oliver Ellsworth.

Henry Eckford also kept Isaac Webb busy with the subcontracting and building of the fast 121-foot corvette, Hercules, that Eckford designed and was said to display many "pre-clipper" innovative design characteristics that would be incorporated in later Isaac Webb ships.

Howard Chapelle, in his "The Search for Speed Under Sail," had this to say about the Hercules:

[Hercules] had very little sheer, a straight keel with some drag, a curved raking stem rabbet, and a slightly raking post. She had a round tuck with upper and lower transoms. Her midsection was formed with very rising, straight floor, high round bilge, and marked tumble home. The entrance was convex and moderately sharp; the run was very long and fine; the buttock at the quarterbeam became straight a short distance forward of its intersection with the load line.

The government of New Grenada (Colombia) purchased the Hercules and renamed her Bolivar in honor of Simon Bolivar, the popular revolutionary general of South America. Other newly independent South American countries turned to Eckford for warships. In 1825, the governments of Brazil, Chile, Peru, and New Grenada all placed orders, and this resulted in the building of four identical 44-gun frigates. Eckford's shipyard was so busy now that he felt compelled to make a new arrangement with Isaac Webb to leave his own Montgomery Street yard and to manage Eckford's yard.

Eckford now exclusively designed ships, tended to his other business affairs, and brought in his half-brother, John Allen, along with a Mr. Blossom as an investor. Allen was a shipbuilder, but remained mostly a silent partner leaving Isaac Webb to manage the yard as he saw fit. The new reorganized company started out as Webb, Allen, and Blossom. The following year Blossom died and from then on the yard was known as Webb and Allen.

In 1824, the monopoly charter that Robert Livingston possessed as to the limited number of steamboats that could be built in the New York shipyards and engage in interstate commerce, was declared unconstitutional by Chief Justice John Marshall of the Supreme Court. Livingston's company went out of business and merchants and shipping companies began placing orders for steamboats with the New York shipyards.

A devastating fire broke out at the Brown and Bell shipyard in the early hours of March 14, 1824, that destroyed most of the yard along with two large nearly completed steamboat hulls on the stocks. The fire also destroyed a small building on Eckford's neighboring yard along with some choice valuable lumber. The rest of Eckford's yard was untouched. Still, it was a wake up call to Henry Eckford and the other shipbuilders in the neighborhood to do something about the precarious situation that they all faced whenever a serious fire broke out in the shipyards.

They formed their own private fire-fighting company and dubbed it "Live Oak, Number 44," and their steam engine was manned by the company with their own men from the various yards who all came running with the ringing of the gong to pull the engine to the fire. The company was located across from the Brown and Bell Shipyard on North Street. Isaac Webb and his young son William were both members of the fire company and young William would run along side the engine as his father pulled it to the fire.

In 1825, the Webb and Allen shipyard was busy building one of the Latin American corvettes. Eckford and Webb subcontracted the others out to other shipyards; one to Christian Bergh, and the other two to shipyards in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Word of mouth concerning these splendid vessels spurred on other orders. The Greek government wanted two of them. Christian Bergh was subcontracted to build the Hope and the Webb and Allen yard built the Liberator. The Hope was delivered. Then the Greek government's British allies swung the naval battle against the Turks at Navarino in 1827. So the Greeks canceled the order for the Liberator. The American government ended up purchasing her off the stocks and renamed her the Hudson.

The mid-1820s were prosperous times for the Webb and Allen shipyard and the yard was free of the labor strife and strikes that were occurring in other yards along the East River at that time. The main reason for this was the fact, by all accounts, that Isaac Webb was a man with a friendly nature and was well-liked by all the men in the yard that worked for him. Particularly admirable was the way in which he would take young apprentices under his wing and teach them the "mystery" of becoming a ship's mechanic.

The Indenturing of Donald McKay

Donald McKay

This was the legacy and the lure that persuaded Donald McKay to leave his homeland. But first he would have to bide his time and sign on as a day laborer until such time as he proved his worth and caught the eye of his employer. It did not take long before Isaac Webb took notice of the tall young Nova Scotian.

In order to learn the shipwright trade thoroughly, he would have to serve an apprenticeship. On March 24, 1827, Donald McKay became "indentured" to Isaac Webb. The terms of the apprentice "indentureship" follows:

This Indenture Witnesseth, That Donald McKay, now aged sixteen years, five months and twenty days, and with the consent of Hugh McKay, his father, hath put himself, and by these presents doth voluntarily and of his own free will and accord put himself, apprentice to Isaac Webb, of the City of New York, ship-carpenter, to learn the art, trade and mystery of a ship-carpenter, and after the manner of an apprentice to serve from the day of the date hereof, for and during and until the full end and term of four years, six months and eleven days next ensuing; during all of which time the said apprentice his master faithfully shall serve, his secrets keep, his lawful commands everywhere readily obey: he shall do no damage to his said master, nor see it done by others without telling or giving notice thereof to his said master, he shall not waste his master's goods, nor lend them unlawfully to any: he shall not contract matrimony within the said term: at cards, dice, or any other unlawful game he shall not play, whereby his said master may have damage; with his own goods nor the goods of others without license from his said master he shall neither buy nor sell; he shall not absent himself day nor night from his master's service without his leave; nor haunt ale-houses, taverns, dance-houses or playhouses; but in all things behave himself as a faithful apprentice ought to do during the said term. And the said master shall use the utmost of his endeavors to teach, or cause to be taught or instructed, the said apprentice in the trade or mystery of a ship-carpenter, and the said master shall pay to the said apprentice the sum of two dollars and fifty cents weekly for each and every week he shall faithfully serve him during the said term. And shall also pay to him, the said apprentice, the sum of forty dollars per year, payable quarterly, for each and every of the said years, which is in lieu of meat, drink, washing, lodging, clothing, and other necessaries. And for the true performance of all and singular the covenants and agreements aforesaid, the said parties bind themselves each unto the other firmly by these presents.

In witness thereof, the parties to these Presents have hereunto set their hands and seals the 24th day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven.

ISAAC WEBB

DONALD MCKAY

HUGH MCKAY

Next: Donald McKay's Apprenticeship

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