molasses import and rum trade. Next,
their pepper and coffee trade in Sumatra
prospered until the war of 1812. When
President Jefferson announced a trade
embargo on English products, both the Port
of Salem and the
Crowninshields’
business came
to an end. This
embargo in the
earlier years of
English piracy of
the family’s ships
fostered Frank’s
lasting hatred of the
British.
By the end of
the war of 1812,
the Crowninshield
fortunes had been
solidifi ed and
would provide
succeeding
generations with
a wealthy lifestyle.
Growing up, Frank spent winters in his
parents’ Boston house, designed by H. H.
Richardson, and summers in Peach’s Point.
He graduated from Saint Paul’s School,
attended Harvard College
and worked for a bank.
Then, in 1898, he joined
Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough
Riders during the Spanish-
American War in Cuba.
Soon he returned home to
Marblehead to recuperate
from typhoid fever. There
he met Louise and in
barely six months they
were married.
Although their marriage
was happy and long, he
and his wife produced
no children. Perhaps his
pride in his family, as well
as an awareness of being
the last of his lineage, led
him to privately publish
books about his family,
such as the “Letters of Mary Boardman
Crowninshield, 1815 –1816,” printed in 1905;
Benjamin W. Crowninshield’s “A Private
Journal: 1856–1858,” about his father‘s
junior and senior years at Harvard college,
published in 1941; and a logbook of his
boat, called “the log of Cleopatra‘s Barge II,
1928–1942,” published in 1948.
Inheriting his ancestors’ love of the sea,
Frank grew up
sailing and racing
in Marblehead. In a
1907 competition
he was skipper of
the Spokane, when
the Americans
outsailed the king
of Spain at the
Bilbao races. In
1927 he bought a
classic two-masted
schooner, built in
1917 by Nathaniel
Herreshoff,
and named it
Cleopatra‘s Barge
II in honor of
his great-greatuncle,
George
Frank and Louise
Crowninshield with
unidentifi ed girl.
Crowninshield Jr.’s, earlier 19th century
sailboat, Cleopatra‘s Barge.
Built in 1816, this fi rst American oceangoing
pleasure yacht, which cost $100,000,
was an 83-foot-long
hermaphrodite brig with
two decks, weighing 192
tons. Gaily colored with
bright enamel colors and
an incredible amount of
gold guilt paint, it had
a beautifully appointed
interior with Salem
furniture and decorative
arts, including a four-poster
bed in the master cabin.
This fl oating palace was
built solely for pleasure
and for Transatlantic trips
to Europe. For the fi rst
trip, George toured the
Mediterranean and docked
in ports such as Barcelona
and Genoa, with crowds of
supposedly 20,000 people
visiting the boat at dockside. But, after barely
six months abroad, he returned to Salem in
1817 and died at the age of 51.
Frank and his dogs.