Insights from my first couple of weeks

I will confess, I was not a maritime history enthusiast before this internship. My interests mostly have to do with the environment and sustainability. This does prompt me, however, to try to connect everything to them. The Friendship of Salem highlights the origin of our goods, the long distances they travel and, exploitative power and labor systems behind our commodities. Things considered luxuries years ago are so commonplace today that we take them for granted. Almost every time I cook, I remember the here is where I learned that pepper was worth its weight in gold. Similarly, my daily scoop of brown sugar in my morning coffee reminds me of the Triangle Trade that this ship was a part of. This vessel is symbolic of the story of globalism and underscores the deeply unjust labor practices that continue to be perpetuated today. It highlights the beginning of consequent centuries of resource extraction. The dwindling trade in this area in the 1800s because shallow waters were no longer compatible for increasingly larger ships points to the eventual emergence of the cargo ships that we have today. There is an irrevocable interconnectedness between this history and our present-day catastrophic levels of carbon emissions tied to the global trade economy. So much more can be said about this, but we don’t want to spiral on this blog post.