She embodied the dreams of Captain Randall and of the Samuel Shaw who had gone as supercargo in the Empress of China.

They formed a partnership and were able to find the necessary capital.
This six-hundred-ton ship loomed huge in the ayes of the crowds which visited her.

She was in fact no larger than such four-masted coasting schooners as claw around Hatteras with deck-loads of Georgia pine or fill with coal for down East, and manage it comfortably with seven or eight men for a crew.

The Massachusetts, however, sailed in 411 the old-fashioned state and dignity of a master, four mates, a purser, surgeon, carpenter, gunner, four quartermasters, three midshipmen, a cooper, two cooks, a steward, and fifty seamen.

The second officer was Amasa Delano, a man even more remarkable than the ship, who wandered far and wide and wrote a fascinating book about his voyages, a classic of its kind, the memoirs of an American merchant mariner of a breed long since extinct.
While the Massachusetts was fitting out at Boston, one small annoyance ruffled the auspicious undertaking.