Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1713
Captain John Codman
Source: Other Merchants and Sea Captains of Old Boston, State Street Trust Company, Boston, Mass., 1919.
Captain John Codman was born in Dorchester in 1814, being the oldest son of the Rev. John Codman.
Captain Codman always showed a great fondness for the sea, and as soon as he saw an opportunity he shipped on one of the famous clippers. During the Crimean War he commanded the ship “William Penn,” which was used as an army transport to carry troops from Constantinople to the Crimea, and during the Civil War he was in command of the steamer “Quaker City, which was engaged in carrying stores to Port Royal.
Captain Codman was very fond of riding, and once, when about seventy-five years of age, he rode from New York to Boston in the middle of winter. He had a horse which he called “Grover Cleveland” in order to show his admiration for the President, and he always caused great interest when on the hotel registers he signed his name and underneath it “Grover Cleveland.” He also wrote a number of books and newspaper articles and made many speeches on travel shipping, and tariff. He used to say that “his little Latin and his less Greek had been very useful to him.” “It was like being vaccinated,” he said. “You may not feel it, but it is there all the same and does you a heap of good.” Captain Codman owned a ranch in Idaho and a house at Cohasset, the latter being so near the water that people used to remark that his villa on some boisterous night would undoubtedly go to sea without taking out clearance papers. He gave up the sea for the last thirty years of his life, but still owned a number of ships which were most successful, one of them, the “Morea,” in one year’s time making for him one hundred thousand dollars in tea. He was a graduate of Amherst College. He died at the age of eighty-six.
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