Patuxent. The Captain decided to follow his advice, for he thought he might almost as well return without a vessel as without a cargo. When they reached the port, the Captain had every thing his own way, for no vessel had been there for more than six months, and they had not a pound of sugar, or a drop of rum or molasses in the place. He did so well with his half cargo, that he got in exchange a full cargo of tobacco. Every part of the vessel was crammed, even to the cabin and the sailors' beds. She arrived at Bear Haven in August, 1701, and I had been so perfectly successful with the fishery, that I had a cargo ready for her to take in; but the tobacco was obliged to be first taken to London to be discharged. I wrote to my partners most urgently to use all possible dispatch and send her back to me for the fish.
On the 3d day of August, 1701, my wife was brought to bed of our youngest child Elizabeth. On that day we had most remarkable success in fishing. Our new slated house was not yet quite finished, and we were living in one end of the herring house, which was so full with the immense quantity taken, that every place was piled up with them, even to the very door of the chamber in which my wife was confined.
We cured this season more than two hundred thousand herrings; we pressed enough to fill two hundred hogsheads, and we also put up two hundred barrels of pickled herrings. Besides this, we had twelve tierces of salmon, seven or eight hundred dried codfish, and two thousand dried flukes, altogether worth about £1200. I was in daily and hourly expectation of the arrival of the Goodwill. I wrote and wrote again to my partners to make haste and send her. in order that she might take the first cargo of the season to Leghorn, and being first in the market would give us a large profit.
