The Rise and Fall of America's Richest Seaport: Salem, Massachusetts

Salem, Massachusetts, was once more than a New England port town. In 1807 its Custom House collected about $1.15 million in import duties, roughly 7 percent of the entire federal budget, through one wooden building in a town of barely 13,000 people. It began with risks like Captain Jonathan Carnes's 1795 voyage on the small schooner Rajah, which left Salem with brandy, gin, iron and tobacco and returned from Sumatra with a full cargo of black pepper, netting about 700 percent. Merchants such as Elias Hasket Derby bet their own capital on that trade. But the fortune that made Salem the richest counter in the country rested on vessels small enough to vanish in one bad week, against an ocean that paid nobody back for losing. The harbor lived on what its ships brought home, and it had nothing else to fall back on. Today Salem is larger than it was in its golden age. The 2020 census counted 44,480 people. The fortune is gone, and so is the commercial harbor. The last big industrial use of the waterfront ended when the coal plant closed in 2014. This is the story of how Derby's ships, the pepper voyages and a single Custom House built a fortune, and how the end of the trade left an empty wharf where a golden age once stood. A full history documentary about Salem, Massachusetts, from the pepper voyages of the 1790s to the closing of the harbor's coal plant in 2014. Copyright & Fair Use Disclaimer • This video is a non-commercial, educational history documentary created for commentary, criticism and research. • Some archival photos and footage are used under the principles of Fair Use (Section 107, U.S. Copyright Act) for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.