Neptune's Needle

New England ship captain and merchant. By the time he was twenty-four [Derby] had sailed to Cadiz in Spain as the captain of the sloop Ranger. He sailed on several voyages to Europe and the West Indies and began buying ships of his own.

At the age of forty-five Derby retired from the sea to manage his burgeoning business. In 1755 he built Derby Wharf and a warehouse in Salem. Two years later he headed a subscription list to pay the town's soldiers arrears of wages from the Fort William Henry expedition. Specializing in supplying the Sugar Islands in the West Indies with New England timber and foodstuffs, Derby lost at least four ships to the French and British for trading illegally with French and Spanish islands during the French and Indian War. He protested the British seizures vigorously but in vain. Despite this, he seems to have done well privateering. In 1759 he bought a farm and in 1761 built a mansion on what is now Derby Street in Salem. He was then Salem's leading merchant.

When hostilities broke out at Lexington and Concord that April, Derby offered his fastest ship, the Quero, commanded by his son John Derby, to take the news to England so the rebels could tell their story before General Thomas Gage's dispatches arrived home.

Derby left most of the business of supplying privateers for the Revolution to his son Elias Hasket Derby, but his approval and financial support were of course required to equip and send out eighty ships that over the course of the war employed 8,000 men, captured 144 British vessels, and constituted half of Salem's privateers. A Derby ship, the Astraea, brought back word to America that peace had been concluded and independence recognized in 1783. Derby barely survived the news. He died that November in Salem.

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Peter Richards