she carried away her foretopmast, which was replaced at sea.
All of these shipyards were below Grand Street, on the East River. Samuel Ackley's yard was at the foot of Pelham Street, and here the Manhattan, of six hundred tons, was built for the China and East India trade. She was regarded as a monster of the deep, and when she sailed upon her first voyage in 1796, it took nearly all the deep water seamen in the port to man her. Henry Eckford opened a shipyard at the foot of Clinton Street in 1802. From this yard he launched, in 1803, John Jacob Astor's famous ship Beaver, of four hundred and twenty-seven tons. It was on board this ship that Captain Augustus De Peyster made his first voyage as a boy before the mast. Subsequently he commanded her, and upon retiring from the sea in 1845 he became the Governor of the Sailors' Snug Harbor at Staten Island. The Beaver once made the homeward run from Canton to Bermuda in seventy-five days. Christian Bergh began shipbuilding in 1804 with the ship North America, of four hundred tons, built for the Atlantic trade, and the brig Gipsey, of three hundred tons, a very sharp vessel for those days. She was dismasted off the Cape of Good Hope upon her first voyage to Batavia, and afterwards foundered in a heavy squall, all hands being lost. The Trident, of three hundred and fifty tons, was built by Adam and Noah Brown in 1805, and the Triton, of three hundred and fifty tons, by Charles Brown during the same year, both for the China and India trade. John Floyd began ship-building in 1807, and launched the Carmelite,
