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The Diaries of Obed Macy Nantucket Merchant and Historian by Edouard A. Stackpole (continued from October, 1978) IT IS QUICKLY apparent when reading Obed Macy's journals that, although his interests were well rounded, his business as a whaling merchant kept him constantly alert in matters relating to the sea and the progress of Nantucket's major industry. In November, 1799, he noted that the whaleship Hector, which had sailed in 1797, had returned from a successful voyage under Captain Benjamin Worth "from the Coast of Peru". A few days later the ship Trial, under Captain Simeon Starbuck, arrived from the Pacific "full of oil", having also been gone two years. Concern was expressed for the ship Hope, Captain Giles. On November 25, 1799, Macy wrote: "A long spell of moderate weather about this time. We have had but very little frost, and no snow, which is much in favor of the whole Inhabitation, but more especially to the poor who would hardly be able to get their wood & provisions was it otherwise. Wood is $5.50 per cord; Flour $11." The first snow of the winter season fell on November 30, when he noted: "Cold, blustery weather, with squalls of hail and snow." On December 3, a vessel bound for Baltimore from Boston struck on Tuckernuck Shoal, lost her rudder, one anchor and cable, and driven by a northwest wind came over the bar and went ashore in the Chord of the Bay. "On the last account the vessel has not bilged and the cargo is being taken out," he observed. On December 10, Obed Macy sailed for Bedford to attend the Quarterly Meeting of the Society of Friends, leaving at 11 o'clock in the evening and arriving at Bedford at 7 o'clock the next morning. Four days later, he started home, but when the packet came in sight of Woods Hole, the wind came around dead ahead and they were forced to return. The passage took from 9 o'clock in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. On December 15th, the next morning, the packet sailed at 6 in the morning, and after a fine passage, "the weather more like summer than winter, we arrived home between 2 and 3 in the afternoon."
