In that month of September, 1783, the news reached London that Dr. Franklin and his associates in Paris, after two years of negotiation, had signed the definitive treaty which completed the independence of the United States.  Franklin had been in the habit of predicting that as soon as America had become an independent nation, the best blood in Europe, and some of the finest fortunes, would hasten to seek a career or an asylum in the New World.  Perhaps he would have hardly recognized the emigration of this poor German youth as part of the fulfilment of his prophecy.  Nevertheless, the news of the conclusion of the treaty had no sooner reached England than young Astor, then twenty years old, began to prepare for his departure for the “New Land,” and in November he embarked for Baltimore.  He paid five of his guineas for a passage in the steerage, which entitled him to sailors’ fare of salt beef and biscuit.  He invested part of his remaining capital in seven flutes, and carried the rest, about five pounds sterling, in the form of money.

America gave a cold welcome to the young emigrant.  The winter of 1783-4 was one of the celebrated severe winters on both sides of the ocean.  November gales and December storms wreaked all their fury upon the ship, retarding its progress so long that January arrived before she had reached Chesapeake Bay.  Floating ice filled the bay as far as the eye could reach, and a January storm drove the ship among the masses with such force, that she was in danger of being broken to pieces.  It was on one of those days of peril and consternation, that young Astor appeared on deck in his best clothes, and on being asked the reason of this strange proceeding, said that if he escaped with life he should save his best clothes, and if he lost it his clothes would be of no further use to him.  Tradition further reports that he, a steerage passenger, ventured one day to come upon the quarter-deck, when the captain roughly ordered him forward.  Tradition adds that that very captain, twenty years after, commanded a ship owned by the steerage passenger.  When the ship was within a day’s sail of her port the wind died away, the cold increased, and the next morning beheld the vessel hard and fast in a sea of ice.  For two whole months she remained immovable.  Provisions gave out.  The passengers were only relieved when the ice extended to the shore, and became strong enough to afford communication with other ships and with the coasts of the bay.  Some of the passengers made their way to the shore, and travelled by land to their homes; but this resource was not within the means of our young adventurer, and he was obliged to stick to the ship.