Sailors commanded thrice the wages of laborers ashore.

Shipyards were increasing and the builders could build as large and swift East Indiamen as those of which Boston and Salem boasted.
Philadelphia had her Stephen Girard, whose wealth was earned in ships, a man most remarkable and eccentric, whose career was one of the great maritime romances.

Though his father was a prosperous merchant of Bordeaux engaged in the West India trade, he was shifting for himself as a cabin-boy on his father's ships when only fourteen years old.

With no schooling, barely able to read and write, this urchin sailed between Bordeaux and the French West Indies for nine years, until he gained the rank of first mate.

At the age of twenty-six he entered the port of Philadelphia in command of a sloop which had narrowly escaped capture by British frigates.