The Record-setting Philadelphia Mariner

“John Ashmead, Philadelphia mariner, had the unique distinction of performing one hundred voyages in a long, exciting, useful life. The accomplishment was never exceeded, and, perhaps, never equaled in the era of sailing ships,” according to “The John Ashmead Story, 1738-1818,” by William Bell Clark (Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Jan 1958).

This advertisement for freight and passage aboard Ashmead’s ship, Mercury, appeared in the September 19, 1765, issue of the Pennsylvania Journal. On Ashmead’s return from Cork on January 31, 1766, he shared news that “the people of Ireland are highly pleased at the opposition the Stamp Act meets with in America.” By contrast, Clark points out that when Ashmead returned four months later from a voyage to the West Indies, he reported that “they had Advice of the Repeal of the Stamp Act at Barbados, but the Inhabitants did not shew the least Sign of rejoicing there on that glorious Occasion.”