Joseph Peabody was another Salem sailor whose fame was to outlast the Revolution and grow greater in the succeeding days of hard-won peace. In those following days of peaceful, or at least semi-peaceful trading adventure, Peabody owned, first and last, 83 ships which he freighted himself. In his time he shipped 7000 seamen and promoted 45 men from cabin boys to captains. In Salem ships these cabin-boy captains, often striplings of nineteen or twenty, sailed the seven seas, opened new ports to commerce, conquering the prejudice of potentates, matched their wits and wisdom against those of skilled merchants of the Orient and brought back princely profit to the ship owners of Salem and in part to themselves, for often captain and crew alike shared in the profits they helped to make. In those days the Chinese called the Yankees "the new people," for they first heard of them when Salem ships visited their ports, and the list of new lands first visited by American ships from Salem is a long one.
It was in November, 1785, that the Grand Turk, belonging to Elias Derby and commanded by Ebenezer West, cleared for Canton, China, the
