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The Sweets of Liberty

Horace Lane first went to sea when he was ten years old. By the time he was sixteen he had been pressed into the British Navy, escaped, traveled to the West Indies several times, and witnessed savage racial warfare on the island of Hispaniola. Although he experienced many of the perils of a sailor in the Age of Revolution, he avoided the wild debauchery of the stereotypical sailor ashore. In 1804, after a particularly dangerous voyage smuggling arms and ammunition to blacks in Haiti, his rough-and-tumble shipmates from the Sampson cruised the bars, taverns, and grog shops of the New York waterfront. One night a shipmate took him to the scene of the revelry. Lane remembered that “after turning a few corners, I found myself within the sound of cheerful music.” As they approached the door, Lane hesitated. His companion shamed him into entering by declaring “What…You going to be a sailor, and afraid to go into a dance-house! Oh, you cowardly puke! Come along! What are you standing there for, grinning like a sick monkey on a lee backstay!” Lane could not handle the rebuke. Gathering himself, he mustered enough spunk to enter. No sooner had he crossed the threshold than he was met with “a thick fog of putrified gas, that had been thoroughly through the process of respiration, and seemed glad to make its escape.” The room was packed with the humanity of both sexes and several races. In one corner loomed a huge black man “sweating and sawing away on a violin; his head, feet, and whole body, were in all sorts of motions at the same time.” Next to him was a “tall swarthy female, who was rattling and flourishing a tamboarine with uncommon skill and dexterity.” A half dozen other blacks occupied the middle of the floor, “jumping about, twisting and screwing their joints and ankles as if to scour the floor with their feet.” Everywhere people shouted, “Hurrah for the Sampson!” Among the crowd some were swearing, “some fighting, some singing; some of the soft-hearted females were crying, and others reeling and staggering about the room, with their shoulders naked, and their hair flying in all directions.” Lane was horrified and beat a hasty retreat, proclaiming “Ah!…Is this the recreation of sailors? Let me rather tie a stone to my neck, and jump from the end of the wharf, than associate with such company as this!”¹

1. While on liberty in a port, sailors spent money freely on liquor. Notice the woman in the window, probably a prostitute, and the black man in the background walking in front of the oyster and clam shop. “Sailors Ashore.” From Hawser Martingdale, Tales of the Ocean… (Boston, 1840). New Bedford Whaling Museum.

A few more years, and many more adventures at sea, led to a change of heart. Lane recounts his conversion to hard living. He had agreed to deliver a letter to a young woman who worked at “French Johnny's,” a notorious dance hall on George Street in New York. As he worked his way through the crowd outside, he approached the door blocked by a chain and a guard. After paying the cover charge, Lane stepped into “a spacious room, illuminated with glittering chandeliers hanging in the centre, and lamps all around.” He was awestruck. “Never was there a greater invention contrived to captivate the mind of a young novice.” Three musicians sat on their high seats and there were “about fourteen…damsels, tipped off in fine style, whose sycophantic glances and winning smiles were calculated only to attract attention from such as had little wit, and draw money from their pockets.” Lane admitted that he “was just the man” and declared, “This was felicity indeed.” Lane bought some hot punch, finding that after a while it tasted good. He summarized the rest of the experience in verse:

So I spent my money while it lasted,

Among this idle, gaudy train;

When fair Elysian hopes were blasted,

I shipp'd to sail the swelling main.²

Horace Lane offers us a wonderful view of liberty ashore. He allows us to follow him into the sailor's haunts by evoking a powerful sense of the sounds, sights, and even smells that enticed many young men into a particular mode of life. At first repulsed by the depths to which he sees his comrades of the Sampson have fallen, marked by the racial mixture of the waterfront dive, he is seduced by the light of chandeliers and damsels “tipped off in fine style” at French Johnny's. Lane's saga goes downhill from there, leading to a round of drunken debauchery and criminality, interspersed with adventures spread across the seven seas. Ultimately his is a tale of redemption that condemned the depravity that seemed to accompany liberty ashore.

Others viewed the sailor's liberty differently. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., and Herman Melville knew a great deal about the sea, both having served in the forecastle—where common seamen slept—in the nineteenth century. Dana wrote that “a sailor's liberty is but for a day; yet while it lasts it is perfect.” The tar thus experienced an exuberance of liberty that was denied most others. Released from shipboard discipline, Dana asserted that he was “under no one's eye, and can do whatever, and go wherever, he pleases.” Of his own initial “liberty” Dana exclaimed, “this day, for the first time, I may truly say, in my whole life, I felt the meaning of a term which I had often heard—the sweets of liberty.”³ Melville, in his own sardonic style, reiterated this point and captured the spirit of a world turned upside down when he declared that “all their lives lords may live in listless state; but give the commoners a holiday, and they out-lord the Commodore himself.”⁴

Implicit in the views of both Dana and Melville is a political meaning of the word “liberty” that appears to belie the experience of Horace Lane. For Dana, the sailor's liberty gave him a sense of personal freedom, a release from restraints that bound his life at sea. Melville, whose work speaks more directly to the American democratic soul, has an understanding based on the collective experience of liberty. The sailor's holiday liberates not only the individual, but also the group, and enables the commoners to rule triumphant even if only momentarily. Lane, in contrast, bemoans the liberty ashore, viewing it as both a trap and a release that in many ways defined his very essence as a sailor. Lane sees this liberty as one component of the life of Jack Tar.

To understand the world of the waterfront, we must take a careful look at the sailor's liberty ashore, exploring the widely held image of the jolly tar. Sailors were not a proletariat in the making, nor were they a peculiar brand of patriot. They were real people who often struggled merely to survive. Sailors were a numerous and diverse body of people who shared a common identity. The great variety of men who comprised the waterfront and shipboard workforce, and the fact that many sailors did not fit the stereotype, will be the focus of this chapter.

At sea the sailor worked hard. His life was one of regulation from above and dangers all around. Ashore there was a sudden release. He could drink, curse, carouse, fight, spend money, and generally misbehave. For the sailor ashore there was no future, only the here and now. Although this image was not flattering, sailors were also often described as generous and tenderhearted. More important, the stereotypical sailor represented a culture and value system that challenged the dominant ideals of both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Not only did the sailor ashore reject the traditional hierarchy of pre-revolutionary society, but his behavior represented the antithesis of the rising bourgeois values that became the hallmark of the Age of Revolution. Whether consciously or not, sailors played a role that had profound implications for the waterfront community and workers throughout society.

Drinking was a central part of the sailor's liberty ashore. Minister Andrew Brown's sermon in the 1790s on the dangers of the seafaring life focused as much on intemperance on land as on the perils of the deep. He cautioned that “the spirit of prodigality and wastefulness,” terms he used synonymously with drinking to excess, “has long been regarded as one of the distinguishing characteristics of the seafaring life.” He believed also that drinking “has been sanctioned by custom, and is now almost converted into a professional habit.”⁵ Forty years later, the members of the New-Bedford Port Society recognized “the exuberant joy” a sailor experienced once he came ashore and his eagerness for drinking whetted by the relative abstinence at sea. The New-Bedford Port Society also acknowledged the social pressures felt by a tar, admitting that he drinks “in token of cordiality and good will,” and that “he treats his acquaintance in sign of generosity, or to escape the imputation of meanness.”⁶ After a long voyage, as other sailors busied themselves with calculations of “airy castles,” one man honestly admitted that he would get drunk as soon as he got ashore, declaring, “it is the only pleasure he has in the world, and when he is pretty well in for it, he is as happy as any man in it.”⁷ The centrality of drinking to both the image and the reality of the sailor can be seen in popular depictions. Infused with a spirit of patriotism, and perhaps recognizing that sailors enjoyed the stage, creators of theatrical performances in the 1790s often included songs and portrayals of the American tar. In Songs of the Purse sailor Will Steady sings:

When seated with Sall, all my mesmates around,

Fal de ral de ral de ri do!

The glasses shall gingle, the joke shall go round;

With a bumper! then here's to ye boy,

Come lass a buss, my cargoe's joy.

Here Tom be merry, drink about,

If the sea was grog we'd see it out.⁸

Several songs and sea chanteys celebrated the sailor's drinking ashore.⁹ In “Whiskey,” the men proclaimed:

Oh, whiskey is the life of man.

Oh, whiskey, Johnny!

2. Jack Tar took great pride in his dress and his ability to dance and show off. This interior of a tavern has men drinking, a dancing sailor, a black man playing the fiddle, and several women with low-cut dresses in a scene similar to the ones described by Horace Lane. “Sailor's Sword Dance.” From Hawser Martingdale, Tales of the Ocean… (Boston, 1840). New Bedford Whaling Museum.

It always was since time began,

Oh, whiskey for my Johnny!

The nineteenth-century chantey, sung while dragging ropes to hoist upper

topsails, goes on to praise whiskey even though

Oh whiskey made me wear old clothes

And whiskey gave me a broken nose

Oh, whiskey caused me much abuse,

And whiskey put me in the calaboose.

The final stanza calls for a round of grog for every man, “And a bottle full for the chanteyman.”¹⁰ The self-mocking good cheer that underpins this chantey can also be seen in “The Drunken Sailor.” The tars ask, “what shall we do with a drunken sailor?” only to answer, “Chuck him in the longboat till he gets sober.”¹¹ As Samuel Leech, veteran of thirty years at sea put it, seamen viewed drinking as “the acme of sensual bliss.”¹²

Along with excessive drinking, the sailor set himself apart by his language. The waterfront had its own peculiar argot. James Fenimore Cooper's sea novels depict the common seaman's idiom, but Cooper never could offer his reader the sailor's real language—curse, followed by curse, followed by curse.¹³ Samuel Leech proclaimed that sailors “fancy swearing and drinking” were “necessary accomplishments of a genuine man-of-wars-man.”¹⁴ In a sermon offered especially for fishermen in Beverly, Massachusetts, before the spring run of 1804, Reverend Joseph Emerson urged them to trust in God, observe the Sabbath, and avoid swearing. As he stood before the weatherworn faces of the fishermen, he acknowledged that he understood how hard it was for sailors not to use strong oaths.¹⁵ Common seamen prided themselves in swearing. Simeon Crowell admitted that as a young man about twenty in 1796 he took up bad language while in a fishing schooner off the Grand Banks. By the following year, his cursing had become so elaborate that he thought he might have shocked even some of the old salts with his “wicked conversation.” He also had “learned many carnal songs with which” he “diverted the crew at times.” Unfortunately, he did not copy any of these songs into his commonplace book. He did, however, offer a poem, “The Sailor's Folly,” which he wrote in Charleston, South Carolina, on February 13, 1801:

When first the sailor comes on Board

He dams all hands at every word

He thinks to make himself a man

At Every word he gives a dam

But O how shameful must it be

To Sin at Such a great Degree

When he is out of Harbour gone

He swears by god from night to morn

But when the Heavy gale doth Blow

The Ship is tosled to and froe

He crys for Mercy Mercy Lord

Help me now O help me God

But when the storm is gone and past

He swears again in heavy Blast

And still goes on from Sin to Sin

Now owns the god that Rescued him¹⁶

Drinking and cursing ashore were a part of the general carousing that marked the sailor's life on the waterfront. One sailor looked back at his life and proudly pointed to his accomplishments at sea and ashore. Bill Mann had tremendous black whiskers and the “damn-my eyes” look of an old salt. Mann declared that he “had killed more whales, broken more girls' hearts, whipped more men, been drunk oftener, and pushed his way through more perils, frolics, pleasures, pains, and general vicissitudes of fortune than any man in the known world.”¹⁷ Such a sailor was supposedly hell-bent to live it up while ashore. According to J. Ross Browne, “a sailor let loose from a ship is no better than a wild man. He is free; he feels what it is to be free. For a little while, at least, he is no dog to be cursed and ordered about by a ruffianly master. It is like an escape from bondage.”¹⁸ George Jones described the experience of “liberty men” on an American warship in the Mediterranean in 1825: “They go; fall into all manner of dissipation; get drunk; are plundered; sell some of their clothes, for more drink; quarrel with the soldiers; come back with blackened eyes; cut all kinds of antics; become rude and noisy; are thrown into the brig; have the horrors, and then go about their work.”¹⁹

Carousing frequently led to fighting. Often members of a crew, like Horace Lane's shipmates on the Sampson, bonded together, ready to take on all comers. Similarly in 1814, more than one hundred of Stephen Decatur's men from the frigate President were arrested after a fracas at a New York tavern. In this instance there were no serious injuries.²⁰ Other brawlers were not so lucky. In 1812 a group of drunken sailors attempted to gain entry into a New York dance hall but were excluded by the Portuguese owner, who claimed that he was having a private party. Insulted and outnumbered, the sailors left. On their way back to their waterfront boardinghouse, they met some shipmates. With that reinforcement they returned and tried to force their way in. The Portuguese came charging out, swinging their knives and killing one of the sailors. These conflicts occurred countless times in almost every port.²¹

One of the sailor's problems, leading to the drinking, carousing, and even some fighting, was that he often had money jingling in his pocket. After being paid off from a voyage a seamen might have a month's or as much as a year's wages at his fingertips. Even before the voyage, once he signed the articles of agreement, he was usually paid a month's wages. Most tars flouted mainstream values and asserted their liberty by spending that money—that chink—just as quickly as they could. Thomas Gerry, son of politician Elbridge Gerry, wrote home from aboard the frigate Constellation that money was “the life and wife of a sailor,” but was “so scarce, that when we receive it the sum affords us no advantage and is offered to the God of Pleasure for want of a better berth.”²² Further down the social scale the attitude was much the same. On leave from a privateer in France in 1782, Ebenezer Fox spent money “with the improvidence characteristic of sailors.”²³ Ned Myers declared, “As for money, my rule had come to be, to spend it as I got it, and go to sea for more.”²⁴ Captured from an American privateer in 1776, cabin boy Christopher Hawkins found himself forced to serve aboard an English man-of-war for more than a year. Earning a full share of the prize money taken by the enemy of his country, Hawkins joined in the celebrating on a shore leave and quickly spent what he had earned. As Hawkins explained, the sailor's creed was “What I had I got, what I spent I saved, and what I kept I lost.”²⁵ In a similar situation Joshua Penny, an American seaman pressed into the British navy, went on liberty in London sometime around 1800. Later he reminisced, “We went to London, with too much money not to loose a little. I had lived so long without the privilege of spending any thing, that I, too, was a gentleman while my money lasted.” Penny concluded, “No man spends his money more to his own notion than a sailor.”²⁶ Indeed, as they left port, superstitious old salts would toss coins they discovered in their pockets toward the dock to avoid bad luck.²⁷

One positive trait of the spendthrift tar was his generosity. A sailor's song published in 1800 highlighted “honest Bill Bobstay,” who sang like a mermaid and was “the forecastle's pride, the delight of the crew,” but who remained as “poor as a beggar.”

He went, tho' his fortune was kind without end.

For money, cried Bill, and them there sort of matters,

For money, cried Bill, and them there sort of matters,

What's the good on't, d'ye see, but to succoar a friend?

The song contrasted Bill with the purser named Nipcheese, known for his “grinding and squeezing” and plundering the crew.²⁸ Sailors often took pity on those less fortunate than themselves. Naval prisoners of war repeatedly raised collections for other mariners forced to serve the British during the Revolutionary War. Captain Charles Ridgley reported that after the survivors of the whaleship Essex arrived in Chile in 1821, having crossed thousands of miles of ocean in an open boat, the crew of the Constellation wanted to devote a month's salary to each of the survivors. Ridgely, however, knowing “that thoughtless liberality which is peculiar to seamen,” limited the contribution of each man to one dollar.²⁹ Writing of his voyage to the Pacific on the American warship Columbia in the 1840s, Charles Nordhoff explained that “there is no more liberal-hearted fellow than a man-of-war's man. His greatest delight is to divide his little stock of worldly goods with some ill-furnished acquaintance.” The sailor “would give away his last shirt and to an utter stranger, and feel happy as a king in doing so.”³⁰ This generosity reflected many sailors' values. One marine serving with the navy in the opening decade of the nineteenth century, for instance, was repulsed by the acquisitive and self-aggrandizement values of Benjamin Franklin. After reading Franklin's autobiography, William Ray complained of “the parsimony of that lightening-tamer” in refusing to buy beer from his London landlady—a savings Franklin proudly highlights—because it disappointed “the woman in the trifling gains which she expected from him.”³¹

Ray's criticism of Franklin suggests that, contrary to the experience of Horace Lane and closer to that of Dana and Melville, liberty ashore meant more than mere license. When sailors wore flamboyant clothes, drank, freely cursed, used their distinctive argot, bucked all authority, and engaged in brawls, they sent a message to the larger society. These seamen rejected two fundamental tenets of society, hierarchy in the eighteenth century and the acquisitive values of the middle class in the nineteenth century. The sailor on liberty ashore during the colonial and early national period was able to turn his back on the mainstream values and assert a type of freedom denied most landbound workers. The sailor's liberty represented a counterculture that had special attraction for the working class and for those on the margins of society; it included a strain of anti-authoritarianism that denied hierarchy ashore, and, in light of the emphasis on fraternity and brotherhood among shipmates, it contained a strong current of egalitarianism.³²

The sailor's liberty enabled many seamen to avoid regular employment and encouraged disdain for the daily routine of land-based workers. Alfred Lorrain wrote that many sailors spoke with envy of farmers as they approached port, declaring that at least a farmer could be with his family in a storm. Resolves to stay on land and not “dip their feet in salt water” again, however, faded within weeks of coming ashore. Soon “the prettiest farm in the country could not hold them, as a general thing,” and the call is “‘Come boys—who's for blue water.'”³³ At one point in his maritime career Samuel Leech was apprenticed to a bootmaker in the hope of breaking from his “wicked mode of life.” He dreaded “the confinement to the shoe-bench,” however, which his “riotous fancy painted as being worse than a prison,” and he rejoined his shipmates to engage in a life of “dissipation and folly.”³⁴ John Elliott had a similar experience, finding “the shoemaker's seat did not furnish him that variety he had so long been accustomed to.”³⁵ William Torrey “determined to abandon the seas” several times, only to find that on shore “time passed tediously.”³⁶ Melville's Ishmael also had disdain for landsmen, who “of week days” were “pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.”³⁷

Locked into a world of authority and deference at sea, sailors enjoyed flaunting social barriers and relationships while at liberty on shore, where they could be “their own lords and masters, and at their own command.” Sailors aped their social betters by playing at being gentlemen. Horse riding was “a favourite amusement with the son of Neptune,” although few sailors displayed much horsemanship. As awkward as he might appear in the saddle, a seaman recognized that the horse had long been the prerogative of the rich and well born.³⁸ Many sailors also rented carriages as soon as they reached terra firma. To the landlubber the sight of a carriage reeling by with a couple of tars and a prostitute on either side may have appeared totally absurd; to the sailor it was the epitome of style.³⁹

To assert a larger meaning for the sailor's acting the “gentleman” while ashore does not mean that the wild and excessive behavior reflected a specific consciousness. For most of the men on the waterfront their goals and gratification were more immediate and reflected simply a reaction to the world around them. And yet the sailor often consciously played up to his own stereotype. Boys learned the peculiar dockside values of the sailor from an early age. Ten-year-old Horace Lane and other young seamen on their first liberty in 1799 mimicked more seasoned sailors. Lane remembered that “monkey like, all that we heard or seen practiced by the sailors, we thought it becoming in us to say and do.” Several of the older boys rented horses and a few carriages and took “each his fancy girl with him, to ride out and recreate at a tavern about three miles in the country.” Seeing this, Lane went to the captain and asked him for some money. Then, with six dollars jingling in his pocket—more than a week's wage for an adult worker—he hired a horse and carriage and toured the countryside.⁴⁰ So ingrained were these values that sailors took liberty on the waterfront to be their right. As Philip Greggs recorded in 1788, once the brig Eagle touched the wharf in Philadelphia, he and the other crew members went ashore “agreeable to the Laws of Nations…in order to refresh themselves.”⁴¹

Although the sailor's liberty allowed the sailor to enjoy excesses of personal freedom, seamen frequently lost their economic freedom. A sailor might enjoy a frolic, participate in rowdyism, and act the part of the jolly tar, yet he quickly spent the earnings from months and even years of labor. By using up his money the sailor left himself open to economic exploitation that curtailed his own freedom in the marketplace, and the freedom of all who lived and toiled on the waterfront. The fast and loose way of life pursued by many while on liberty led to difficulties in supporting a family and maintaining stable relationships. In all, life on the waterfront was often cruel and nasty.⁴²

Despite a belief that he dictated the terms of his own labor, especially into the nineteenth century, the sailor often abdicated even this control over his life. Technically, and this process was stipulated by both British and American statutes, the sailor signed the articles of a ship of his own free will, agreeing to the conditions of employment and the rate of pay.⁴³ But the process of recruiting merchant sailors varied greatly throughout the revolutionary era, depending on circumstances, time, and location.

In the most basic manner of finding employment, the sailor, individually or as part of a group, had direct contact with the captain or shipowner and signed the ship's articles stipulating the conditions of employment. In 1762, Louis Pintard, New York merchant and owner of the Catherine, had the five-man crew sign the articles at his house. The men were recruited by either the second mate or one of Pintard's partners.⁴⁴ In 1809, William Peterson and several ex-shipmates in Philadelphia heard of a vessel in need of men. They went up to the captain and signed on together.⁴⁵ In this method, the sailor supposedly had the freedom to bargain for wages, although the labor market may already have set the basic wage. John Willcock walked along the New York docks in late 1783 or 1784 searching for a job. At one brig he was told that the captain wanted a hand, and while waiting for the captain, Willcock helped the crew to heave ballast. Work was scarce at the time, and when the captain appeared Willcock told him he would take whatever wages were offered. The captain assured him that he would not lose for not bargaining and allowed Willcock to join the crew.⁴⁶

Recruiting could also be based on long-standing relationships. Around the turn of the nineteenth century in smaller ports, like Marblehead, Massachusetts, captains of fishing schooners recruited their crews locally from among men they knew and who knew each other.⁴⁷ In this situation relatives, friends, and neighbors formed tight-knit groups, relationships that occurred in merchant vessels as well. In 1762 the Prosperous Polly, out of Providence, Rhode Island, hired William Dunbar in Martinique. Dunbar, it turns out, was also from Providence and had known Captain Waterman for at least two years before he signed on. The crew list suggests that there were other connections on board. The carpenter's last name was also Waterman, and both the mate and the cabin boy shared the name Whipple. One sailor had been born in Ireland, had sailed out of Providence for at least two and a half years, and claimed to have know the captain for a somewhat longer period of time.⁴⁸ As a young man, Nicholas Isaacs fell in with a captain from Mystic, Connecticut, and relied on this gentleman for years afterward for employment.⁴⁹ In 1809, a friend of John Allen's family in Marblehead had an uncle in Portsmouth who needed a few more hands. Allen headed for the New Hampshire port, introduced himself to the captain, and signed on for the voyage.⁵⁰

Parents and guardians sometimes made arrangements for a young man or boy. Simeon Crowell's stepfather insisted that the seventeen-year-old join a fishing schooner on the Grand Banks in 1795.⁵¹ The mother of eleven-year-old Frederick Jordan signed him on the schooner Mercy in the Pocomoke River, Maryland, for a voyage to New York in 1774.⁵² Earlier in the eighteenth century, John Fillmore chafed under his apprenticeship to a Boston carpenter. After many entreaties, his mother relented and allowed him to join a fishing vessel at age nineteen.⁵³ James Jenks's father signed him aboard the Ocean in the opening decade of the nineteenth century upon the promise that Captain Thomas Roach would rein in Jenks's wildness.⁵⁴ And in 1806 James Fenimore Cooper's friends and relatives interceded to make sure that his first voyage as a merchant seaman was relatively safe and under a good captain.⁵⁵

3. This detail of a schooner near the Marblehead docks suggests the way the waterfront appeared in the second half of the eighteenth century. From Ashley Bowen Diary. Peabody Essex Museum.

Although these various forms of recruitment occurred between 1750 and 1850, personal connections may have been more important in the eighteenth than in the nineteenth century. Colonial American social relationships were based on deference and paternalism within a hierarchy. With the rising egalitarianism of the American Revolution, the concept of free labor spread. As commerce expanded and ports grew, the labor force became more anonymous. Since the employer-employee relationship did not depend on previous personal connections and would appear as strictly a business deal, the new labor context should have led to more independent contracts between the sailor and his employer. It did not. Instead, intermediaries like boardinghouse keepers became increasingly important in arranging work. Some boarding-house keepers ran large establishments that could accommodate more than one hundred men, while others merely rented out space to two or three sailors from their sparse living quarters. Often they were ex-sailors themselves, or the wives of men at sea.⁵⁶

During the eighteenth century these men and women loomed large in the lives of sailors both at sea and at port. In 1762, a Frenchman in Port-au-Prince wanting to maintain contact with his landlady gave a letter to a sailor going to New York to deliver to her.⁵⁷ Repeatedly, mariners who were suing for their wages in the 1770s and 1780s had innkeepers (the term “boarding-house keeper” does not appear frequently until after 1800) sign their bonds as surety in their court cases.⁵⁸ Assistance in wage disputes remained central to the boardinghouse keeper's relationship with sailors in the nineteenth century. Around 1800 young Nicholas Isaacs found himself stranded in New York, striving to get back wages. After a lawyer would not take the case, in stepped Mr. Spiliard, a boardinghouse keeper, who said he could get a settlement of $80 (Isaacs claimed he was owed $400). Spiliard was as good as his word, although he then presented Isaacs with a bill for $70.⁵⁹ Several years later, sailors from the ship Union gave Richard Jennings, who ran a New York boardinghouse, power of attorney to collect several hundred dollars in a court case involving an embargo violation.⁶⁰

We know most about the boardinghouses during the nineteenth century, when they became the central clearinghouse for the hiring of seamen, and when they came under attack from reformers.⁶¹ By the opening decade of the nineteenth century, boardinghouse keepers were very important to the waterfront in big ports like New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The more sailors that were needed, the more central the boardinghouse became. Even in smaller, more specialized ports like Providence and New Bedford, the boardinghouse was crucial. In 1807, Captain Elijah Cobb visited sailor boardinghouses in Norfolk, Virginia, paid the advance to the landlords, and took their “obligations to see each sailor on board, at sun-rise.”⁶² The New-Bedford Port Society in 1831 reported that there were twenty-one boarding-houses in the whaling port, each serving between twenty and two hundred patrons. By 1845 there were at least thirty-seven boardinghouses serving hundreds of sailors.⁶³

In the 1820s and 1830s reformers began to portray the boardinghouse keeper as a corrupting influence upon seamen. The relationship between the sailor and his landlord, however, was more complicated and subtle than the reformers thought. Some boardinghouse keepers were not exploitative and offered a sort of home away from home to the sailor. Nathaniel G. Robinson wrote his sister in 1843, describing his young widow boardinghouse keeper in sympathetic terms, proclaiming that she ran “a first rate boarding place” in New London. He made a point to tell his sister that the widow was a Methodist and lived with her mother and two young children.⁶⁴ Susan Gardner (Harose), who prided herself on the domestic and benign nature of her boardinghouse for American seamen in Le Havre, France, explained, “it is a great satisfaction to me to see all of these [sailors who had previously boarded with her] return the same as they would to a Mother's house.”⁶⁵ The boardinghouse keeper passed on mail to friends and relatives.⁶⁶ Sometimes the landlord would act as a bank, holding onto money or possessions while the sailor went on a voyage. The boardinghouse keeper also might aid the tar, even if he had nothing in his pockets or if he fell sick. A shipwrecked Ned Myers hunted up his old Liverpool landlady, and as Myers reported, “the old woman helped me to some clothes, received me well, and seemed sorry for my misfortunes.”⁶⁷ At the Providence Marine Hospital in 1840, one-fourth of all the sailors checked into the facility were brought there by one man, Jesse A. Healy, a boardinghouse keeper.⁶⁸

Even the more unsavory landlords were providing, for a price, what seamen wanted. They greeted the sailor as he came ashore, took his baggage, and offered him lodgings, drink, and whatever other services he required. When the sailor's money ran out, they extended credit until they could arrange for the sailor to sign aboard his next voyage. When the sailor needed anything for his “kit,” or sea chest, they provided it. When the sailor found himself in trouble with the law, they offered bail. While groggily getting his sea legs on his next voyage, many a sailor cursed his boardinghouse keeper as a landshark for taking him for all he was worth; but that sailor eagerly sought the same lodgings when he returned to port.⁶⁹

Despite the large amount of money apparently passing through their hands, few boardinghouse keepers became very rich. George Gardner adamantly opposed his sister Susan's plan to open a boardinghouse after her sea captain husband died and she was stranded in Europe in 1825. Gardner wrote that it was “the last thing I should recommend” and argued that “it is a slavish business and very unprofitable.” He also confided that he had stayed in many boardinghouses and had seen the “low discomforts” of the keepers, with many people leaving without paying their debts. From his perspective there were “Sundry Vexations incident to business.”⁷⁰ With an advance from a friendly sea captain, Susan managed to succeed, even if she did not make a fortune. She wrote to her mother two years later that her establishment could accommodate about twenty men at a time. She had invested $2,000 in furniture, bedding, dishes, and other items, and paid $800 a year in rent. If the house were full she could clear four or five dollars a day over her expenses. With any luck she could earn $500 a year. The margin for error was slim. Most of her initial investment had been on credit. If forced to sell, she would be lucky to get half the value for the furniture and goods she bought and would be left with almost nothing.⁷¹

A sailor would probably stay with his own family if they lived nearby, but most sailors stopped in so many different ports, or had families at a great distance, that lodging in the boardinghouse became part of the identity of Jack Tar. Horace Lane proclaimed that to be a sailor in a port was to stay at a boardinghouse. Remaining in the cramped quarters of the forecastle was beneath a tar's sense of self-worth. Lane explained that as a young man, “I thought I was a sailor, and should disgrace myself if I did not do as the rest—viz. to go on shore to a boarding house as soon as a ship was made fast, and the sails furled.”⁷² This sense of identity with occupation and the boarding-house led to distinctions between rank and race in some larger ports. John Remington Congdon, serving as second mate in 1840, went to a Liverpool boardinghouse that catered to men of similar rank. The men serving before the mast—common seamen—went to other boardinghouses, and the black cook went to yet another boardinghouse run by an interracial couple.⁷³ The boardinghouse and the landlord were thus prominent features of the waterfront community and crucial to the portrayal of the stereotypical Jack Tar.

Although boardinghouse keepers remained important in arranging work for sailors, by the 1830s and 1840s, specialized shipping agents opened offices in several cities and even sent runners into the countryside to recruit labor. These middlemen were particularly active in the whaling industry's search for cheap labor. In 1837 Jacob Hazen signed on with a shipping agent in Philadelphia, who sent him to an agent in New York, who in turn arranged for Hazen to join a whaler out of Sag Harbor on Long Island. The charges for the services, room, board, and outfitting came to more than $100.⁷⁴ Fourteen-year-old Eli P. Baker met the “runners of the ship Mary” in Albany in 1844. The agents brought him to New York and then sent him on to New Bedford and a two-year cruise without ever getting his father's permission.⁷⁵ J. Ross Browne believed he had been misled by the New York shipping agent who sent him to New Bedford. The agent had told him: “a whaler is a place of refuge for the distressed and persecuted, a school for the dissipated, an asylum for the needy! There's nothing like it. You can see the world; you can see something of life!”⁷⁶

Recruitment into the navy or on privateers was similar to recruitment of merchant sailors. Occasionally American captains in dire need of men resorted to impressment, a policy generally limited to European powers. Navy recruiters usually set up a rendezvous house, supplied music and entertainment, as well as free drinks and a bonus, to any sailor willing to sign aboard.⁷⁷ Obviously this system was open to exploitation. William Ray admitted that “nothing but the insanity of Rum, violence, perfidy, artifice, or the most distressing penury, can draw men into a situation, where, instead, of meeting with promised smiles, approbation, reward and honour, they find nothing but frowns, chastisement, contempt, and disgrace.”⁷⁸ The abuse could go both ways. Men might run away with the advance. Seven of the fifty-seven men Lieutenant William Henry Allen recruited for the Chesapeake in 1807 deserted before he shipped them off.⁷⁹ Boardinghouse keepers, especially in the nineteenth century, played an important role in the recruiting process. Charles Smith ran up $40.38 in charges with landlord William Fairgreve to be paid out of his advance upon signing with the navy. The detailed list of expenses included two weeks of room and board for $7.00, carting his kit for $0.25, sundry cigars for $1.81, cash loaned for $4.50, and a black silk neckerchief for $1.00; various clothes for his upcoming service in the navy made up most of the rest.⁸⁰ Recruiting was not always exploitative; men signed on with friends, relatives, and townsmen. Some captains went out of their way to reward men for enlisting or reenlisting. Captain Thomas Truxton of the Constellation offered a beaver hat, a black silk neckerchief, two months' advance pay, and two weeks' shore liberty to his crew in Baltimore to reenlist.⁸¹

Regardless of the type of vessel or the service he sailed for, the sailor went to sea to earn money. The laws of supply and demand had the greatest impact on what a sailor made. Between 1750 and 1850 monthly wages for common seamen varied from four dollars to fifty dollars. When demand was at its greatest, because of scarcity of labor or risks due to war, common seamen made their best money. If demand decreased, sailors' wages dropped and work became hard to find. A mariner's pay in New York declined by 50 percent in one year as the French and Indian War wound to a close. Wages were also high in Philadelphia during the 1750s and fell dramatically in the 1760s.⁸² Toward the end of the Revolutionary War, John Brice signed aboard the ship Nancy as the first mate for £18 per month. As soon as the preliminary peace had been agreed to, the captain reduced the wages. Brice sued in court, only to discover that the judge agreed with the owners and ordered that Brice should be paid the higher wage until March 3, 1783, upon which he was to be paid “Customary Peace wages” for the completion of the voyage. The wages of an experienced seaman on the same voyage went from £5 to £3 a month (approximately $12.50 to $7.50).⁸³ After the Treaty of Paris of 1783, earnings were low, picking up again during the boom years of the 1790s.⁸⁴ Throughout the period, sailor wages generally stayed in the $8 to $17 range. Local conditions, too, made a difference. While a run from New York to Quebec that began in April 1761 brought seamen, who risked impressment, 110 shillings a month, a trip from Gloucester to Virginia eight months later paid only 45 shillings.⁸⁵ Horace Lane claimed that shortly before the War of 1812 he signed on to a vessel bound for Liverpool at Amelia Island, Florida, for $50 a month, when most American seamen made $12 a month. The captain paid this high wage because the vessel was sailing for Liverpool, where the risk of impressments was great. Skill level also mattered. On many voyages seamen were paid according to experience and ability. A greenhand might be paid half as much as as a seaman who truly knew the ropes, although the differential was usually only a few dollars a month.⁸⁶ Wages could even vary on the same voyage depending on conditions in the ports visited. Daniel Evans and Zebulon York signed aboard the Aeolis in Portsmouth in March 1804 for $16 and $13 respectively. After they ran from the ship in Charleston, South Carolina, two months later, their replacements cost $23 and $16 each.⁸⁷ The brig Mary had signed its crew in Providence in 1819 for wages that varied from $11 to $14 a month. When one of the poorer paid sailors jumped ship in Savannah, the captain had to offer $16 for his replacement.⁸⁸ Certain ports, like New Orleans, were notorious for higher pay differentials, and it was a lucky captain who did not lose most of his crew if local wages were more than in the port of origin.⁸⁹

Often, the wage was only a part of the sailor's compensation. Private ventures—the ability to use some of the cargo space for their own purposes—frequently came into play. On both the voyage to Quebec from New York, and the poorer paid trip from Gloucester to Virginia in 1761, common seamen were granted their own “venture.” Sometimes the articles signed by a sailor stipulated this right in detail; frequently it was merely assumed. Aboard the Susanna and Ann in 1762, which was running smuggled goods into New York, each sailor had ventures of two barrels of sugar worth £8 a barrel.⁹⁰ When a shipowner questioned one sailor about loading two casks of his own goods in Port-au-Prince in 1762, the sailor retorted that he “conceives every foremast man has a Right by Law to put on board” a private venture and that the shipowner would not have questioned the sailor's right to a venture in New York.⁹¹ The contract for wages for a passage to the East Indies in 1831 included a quarter-ton privilege, which meant the sailor could ship five hundred pounds of goods as cargo.⁹² In the early 1800s James Durand brought five hundred pounds of coffee to the United States for which he received $125.⁹³ Men like the Hammond brothers, who sailed in the 1820s and 1830s, constantly sent valued goods to their families to sell and for home consumption.⁹⁴

As with everything else at sea, private ventures were based upon the vessel's hierarchy. Aboard the Dolphin in 1764 the master received 110 bushels, the mate 46 bushels, three men 36 bushels, and one man 27 bushels as their privilege.⁹⁵ Sometimes a ship's officers had the right to a portion of the cargo space and the crew would not.⁹⁶ This privilege could be so lucrative that although it was possible for the captain's monthly wage to be lower than the mate's and even the crew's, he could become wealthy and, if he were lucky and well connected, a merchant in his own right.⁹⁷ The greater the captain's investment of in the voyage, however, the greater was his responsibility for the commercial aspect of the voyage. Similarly, the private venture for the common seaman benefited both the merchant and sailor by cementing everyone's interest in the successful outcome of the enterprise.

The same principle of shared risk and shared profit underwrote most fishing and whaling voyages as well. Throughout this period fishermen were not paid a daily wage; instead they obtained a percentage of the catch. Fishermen in the 1790s in Marblehead, for example, signed written contracts binding them to a specific crew during the season. The owner of the vessel would be given two to two and a half shares. The captain would get only a little more than a full share. A shoreman who dried and processed the fish would get a full share, and the remainder of the eight shares would be divided among the crew based on the amount of fish caught by each individual. Apprentices in the five- to six-man crew might get a half share or nothing at all, except knowledge of the business for future voyages.⁹⁸

Whaling articles also divided the haul into shares, only they were much more elaborate, with a wide range of shares given out based upon previous experience and job category. Each rank or rating would be given a different lay, or share of the money earned from the whales caught. Aboard the whaleship Columbia on a voyage from 1846 to 1850, the first mate signed for a 1/28 lay, second mate 1/40, third mate 1/60, two coopers for 1/70 each, two steersmen and an assistant cooper for 1/75 each, another steersmen for 1/80, the cook for 1/120, the steward for 1/130, two seamen for 1/140, another seaman for 1/150, and seven seamen for 1/160.⁹⁹ In the late eighteenth century, the lays for seamen would have been larger. The whaling industry changed between 1750 to 1850; voyages stretched from a few months to several years, and the pay and working conditions declined.¹⁰⁰

Privateers operated similarly. In fact, the lucrative opportunities in times of war drew men into this service. Aboard the privateer sloop Comet during the Revolutionary War, the captain received five shares, the first lieutenant three shares, the second lieutenant, gunner, boatswain, and steward two shares each, the armorer one and one half shares, seventeen crew members one share each, and two boys one half share each. This could add up to significant money. One prize—a captured ship—could bring in £30,000. Half the money would go to the owners, the rest would be divided among the crew.¹⁰¹ The Yankee privateer during the War of 1812 made seven successful voyages out of Bristol, Rhode Island. On the first, which lasted three months, each share paid $700, while the second voyage netted $338.40 a share.¹⁰²

Naval vessels also offered prize money in addition to a basic wage that was often minimal. In the eighteenth century the British navy paid twenty-four shillings per month for an able seaman. The Continental navy did not offer much more during the Revolutionary War. By the nineteenth century, the American navy paid about two dollars a month less than the merchant service. The prize money, however, could add up to hundreds of additional dollars. During the Quasi War with France, Elijah Shaw, who served as a ship carpenter on the frigate Constellation, earned $320 in prize money in addition to $300 in wages.¹⁰³

Shaw's earnings, at a time when a common laborer received a dollar a day, might seem like a small fortune. Somehow, few seamen ever seemed to get much ahead. A sailor had to work a month before he caught up with the advance paid on his signing the articles, and that money was usually quickly placed in the hands of a boardinghouse keeper. Expenses frequently ate away at earnings. After almost fourteen months at sea, Amos Towne was worse off than when he started the voyage. Between advances he received after he first signed on, and at various ports in Europe and the East Indies, as well as charges for clothes, tobacco, and board while ashore, Towne had to sign unto another vessel owned by John Carrington shortly after he returned to Providence in 1824 to erase the debt that he had accumulated while working on the ship Franklin.¹⁰⁴ Whalers and privateers too had previous commitments for the lays and shares. The typical earnings of the crew of the whaler Gratitude was $269.37 for a two-and-a-half-year voyage. Almost every man who earned this amount, however, was actually paid less than $100 because of advances and debts incurred before departure.¹⁰⁵ On some voyages the deductions stripped the sailor of almost all his earnings. Three years after exclaiming that he liked “whaling very well” and “the best of anything I have ever tried,” James Webb reported to his mother that “I made nothing by the voyage—the owners claimed all when I got home.”¹⁰⁶ Privateers might sell their shares, or a portion thereof, before they even left port.¹⁰⁷ Men in the navy also spent advances, incurred debts, or, like Shaw with his earnings, invested their small wealth poorly. On the positive side, payment of the sailor's wage had first priority if a shipowner went bankrupt and a few men managed to use their money to start life anew on shore.¹⁰⁸

Not every sailor conformed to the stereotype by drinking, cursing, carousing, fighting, misbehaving, and spending to excess while on leave. Sailors with strong shoreside attachment were often more careful with their money. Some went to sea only to build up a bankroll that could be used to establish themselves in an occupation on shore. During wartime, men expected and sometimes achieved quick rewards through privateering. In peacetime the process took longer. Whaling offered an opportunity to accumulate capital. A successful whaling cruise in the nineteenth century might last two or three years, while the sailor's lay—his share in the profits—could amount to a small fortune of several hundred dollars. Even aboard regular merchant vessels, wages could add up if properly managed and saved. Amos Towne may have ended a fourteen-month cruise in debt to the shipowner, but others on the same voyage were paid seventy or eighty dollars in cash as they signed off.¹⁰⁹ Many men also hoped to make their careers at sea. Captains and other officers aboard ship came largely from the ranks of common sailors; at sea, knowledge and ability counted above all else.¹¹⁰

Who were the men who served as sailors and labored on the waterfront? Answering the questions is no easy task. During the period covered by this study there were many changes in English-speaking North America. A set of British colonies confined to trade with the West Indies and Europe, became an independent nation whose ships plied every ocean and whose seaman visited countless foreign ports. The dimensions of this huge workforce are staggering. Estimates of the number of colonial Americans working as seamen are hard to derive; English and American trade were so intertwined as to make distinctions almost impossible to detail. Thousands of seamen came in and out of colonial ports before the Revolutionary War. Naval warfare and privateers brought many more men to seek their fortunes at sea. Tens of thousands of men fought on the ocean waves from 1775 to 1783. In 1791 Thomas Jefferson estimated that there were also 20,000 men employed as merchant sailors or as fishermen.¹¹¹ That number increased dramatically in the expansion of trade that began in the 1790s. By 1818, a group of merchants and captains seeking to establish a mariners' church estimated that 15,000 to 16,000 seamen sailed through the port of New York each year.¹¹² The Board of Directors of the Boston Seamen's Friend Society reported 103,000 seamen in the United States in 1835.¹¹³ By 1850 there may have been well over 100,000 American seamen and countless others laboring along the docks.

The first and perhaps the most important characteristic of this workforce was its diversity. Men of many nationalities could be found on the waterfront. Perhaps there was less variety before 1776 because of legal limitations on crew nationality dictated by the Navigation Acts. The seamen who offered depositions before His Majesty's Vice Admiralty Court in New York were born in England, Ireland, Scotland, the Channel Islands, Germany, and Scandinavia.¹¹⁴ After independence, and as the American merchant marine expanded, the international mix became more pronounced. Many of the privateers and vessels commissioned during the War for Independence contained large numbers of men not born in America.¹¹⁵ In a sampling of crew lists from 1803 to 1806 in Providence, Rhode Island, about 10 to 15 percent of crews were foreign born. These men came from many locations, including India, the West Indies, Italy, Portugal, as well as northern Europe.¹¹⁶ Billy G. Smith found the same proportion of foreign seamen in Philadelphia in 1803. In 1807, as much as half of the men serving in the United States Navy in New York were foreigners.¹¹⁷ Melville's New Bedford contained a hodgepodge of denizens from Mediterranean mariners jostling ladies to lascars (natives of India and Southeast Asia) and Malays, to “cannibals” and South Sea islanders like Ishmael's soulmate, Queequeg.¹¹⁸ The New-Bedford Port Society, offering substance to Melville's literary portrait, reported in 1836 that one-third of all the sailors in the busy whaling port were foreigners.¹¹⁹

Blacks were an important component of the waterfront workforce. Horace Lane was struck, and perhaps intimidated, by the African American men and women at the dance hall he visited when he was sixteen. He should not have been surprised. Throughout the Age of Revolution blacks could be found in the dockside neighborhoods of almost every American port. During the colonial period most of these blacks would have been slaves; after 1776 more and more were free. These people worked in and sometimes owned grog shops, oyster stands, and other service-oriented businesses. Many were day laborers and stevedores. Blacks also worked as artisans in maritime trades like ship building, caulking, and sailmaking. A few, such as sailmaker James Forten of Philadelphia, managed to earn a modicum of wealth and respectability.¹²⁰ Most, including Frederick Douglass, a slave caulker in Baltimore before his escape from bondage and his career as an abolitionist, sought to carve out a niche for themselves through their skill and hard work along the waterfront.¹²¹

Douglass, disguised in sailor's garb, was able to travel undetected to the North and his freedom because so many black men signed on as seamen in the merchant marine. The extent and character of the African American component of crews, however, varied over time. During the colonial period it was not unusual to find slaves serving aboard vessels. In some cases an entire crew might be made up of men in bondage. Free blacks also worked aboard ships. After the American Revolution, which created a large pool of free African Americans in both the North and the South, blacks became a significant element of almost every crew. At least one-fourth of Philadelphia's young black males shipped as sailors in the early nineteenth century.¹²² In crew lists for several cities for the same period, the percentage of berths held by blacks usually hovered around 15 percent, while in some cities, like Providence, the total reached 30 percent. By the 1830s and 1840s, however, the number of African American seamen began to decline as several southern states passed laws discriminating against black seamen, and as racial prejudice intensified in both the North and the South. By the 1840s and 1850s many of the blacks still in the merchant marine were driven from the forecastle and worked as ship's cooks.¹²³

Even among the American-born white seamen there were many differences in background and birthplace. The image of the chiseled New Englander as the embodiment of the American tar does not hold. True enough, many sailors hailed from New England, and in some areas of maritime industry, like the banks fishery that sailed from small ports like Marblehead and Gloucester, Massachusetts, many of the half dozen men crammed into the small schooners came from the same towns and knew each other all too well.¹²⁴ On long whaling voyages too, the crew might be taken from all over New England and include Native Americans as well as young farm boys eager to earn a stake to establish themselves on shore.¹²⁵ But the merchant sailing vessels, especially those that sailed from larger ports, contained men from up and down the seaboard. In the colonial New York Admiralty courts, only about half of the American-born men identified came from New York.¹²⁶ This proportion may have declined in large ports after the Revolutionary War. Less than 10 percent of the mariners in Philadelphia crews in 1803 were born in that city.¹²⁷ In smaller ports like Salem and Providence, the majority of sailors were locals.¹²⁸

Many maritime workers traced seafaring roots back for generations. Others left the family farm to seek their fortunes abroad, knowing that they had a sparse patrimony if they stayed at home. A few seamen came from affluent backgrounds and hoped to learn the ropes in the forecastle before they moved to the quarterdeck. A variety of circumstances could lead a man to sign on with a ship. There were even some less ambitious souls—like Melville and Dana—whose education and temperament set them apart from their shipmates. Some sought respite and adventure. Samuel Smith's business plans went sour; he fell into debt and had nowhere else to turn.¹²⁹ One whaleman who taught school, farmed, and fished in the year before signing on a cruise, saw his stint at sea as yet another in a round of different employments. The forecastle included men from many different classes and backgrounds, as well as nationalities.¹³⁰

Despite this diversity, sailors generally shared one characteristic: more than half were in their twenties. A ship might contain a boy of ten or twelve, like Horace Lane, who labored as a servant or cabin boy. A serious maritime career did not begin until the late teens. The average age of sailors was about twenty-five. Less than 20 percent of seamen were under twenty, most of these were eighteen or nineteen. By the time a man reached his thirties, he likely either moved on to a new occupation ashore, turned to fishing, labored on the docks, or was lost at sea. Approximately 20 percent continued to ship out into their thirties or forties, some as officers and some merely as “old salts.” Surveys of American prisoners of war held during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 suggest that during hostilities, as job prospects dimmed on the waterfront and the lure of privateering offered the hope of quick rewards, the average age increased slightly.¹³¹ Overall, compared to their white shipmates, black seamen were slightly older. In 1803 more than 80 percent of the white seamen and 70 percent of the blacks on crew lists in Providence were under the age of thirty.¹³² Being a mariner was a young man's game.¹³³

The waterfront workforce, however, included man at various ages. As reported in the reform publication the Mariner's Church in 1818 “there are many old Seamen, who are employed in fitting out vessels, many ship carpenters and others” who crowd the dockside neighborhoods.¹³⁴ “Old” Mr. Coats, the boatswain of the Beaver, gave up the sea after a China voyage in 1805–1806. He married and became a rigger in New York.¹³⁵ One master rigger who listed his employees in 1821 stated that they all had once followed the sea but now worked on shore.¹³⁶ Often these men turned to waterfront labor when shipboard life became too physically demanding for them, or when personal commitments, like providing for a family, convinced them to remain rooted in one community.

The range of shoreside labor was staggering. Many men who served at sea remained near the waterfront as stevedores, riggers, ship carpenters, sailmakers, blockmakers, and coopers. Others set up grog shops or boardinghouses. Some men turned to regular trades a few streets away from the docks as carpenters, shoemakers, and the like. Others went further inland. A few actually became farmers. Indeed, the boundaries between work ashore and work afloat remained fluid. Men who shipped out one month might stay ashore the next month. Many who labored at sea while in their twenties avoided service on the ocean in their thirties. Others shifted back and forth throughout their lives.

4. This certificate includes five waterfront scenes: at top is a view of Salem harbor; one of the smaller pictures shows two men working a sugar press in a warehouse; the other three demonstrate various stages of preparing a vessel for sea. Salem Marine Society Certificate for John B. Knight, January 31, 1839. Peabody Essex Museum.

Sometimes it was a sense of wanderlust, or some mysterious unease like Melville's “growing grim about the mouth” and “damp, drizzly November” in his soul, that limited time on land.¹³⁷ At least twice during his teens Horace Lane attempted to wean himself from a sailor's life. Before his arms-running voyage in 1804 he spent two years ashore learning a trade, and in 1805 he tried blacksmithing for a while. Yet Lane complained that “There was a constant restless anxiety for something—I could not tell what.” Intermittently thereafter he attempted to extend his stays on shore through labor as well as criminal activity.¹³⁸

More often it was economic circumstances that compelled men to sign on for another voyage. To avoid going to sea, Samuel Leech worked on the docks loading and unloading ships. He found this “an uncertain employment,” however, and reenlisted in the American navy.¹³⁹ In 1822 Joseph Oliver struggled to find work on the waterfront but could not. He had a sick wife and reported that he often went to bed at night without anything to eat. Confronted with this desperate situation, he thought that his only solution was to go to sea to earn some money.¹⁴⁰ Thomas Gregory was a junior officer on a privateer during the War of 1812. The end of that conflict found him stranded on the docks, without steady employment ashore. As he lacked basic navigational skills he signed as a common seaman, a step he philosophically dismissed by declaring that he will just have to “fart like a Jack.”¹⁴¹

Many men thus passed easily from work on the waterfront to work aboard ships. French Canadian Joseph Baker arrived in New York City in 1799 and labored for a while making staves. After his partner ran off with his money, he went to Philadelphia, where he signed aboard an English vessel bound for Jamaica, hoping to make big wages as a ship carpenter there.¹⁴² Nicholas Isaacs described how, after several years as a sailor during his teens, he sought work in New York City as a cooper making buckets. After about six months the other men complained that he was too young to be working as a journeyman, so he moved to another shop. Problems arose at this employer, and once again he went back to the sea.¹⁴³ Stephen Gray came from a family with strong maritime roots in Rhode Island; his mother's father was a ship captain and five maternal uncles died at sea. At age sixteen he “had a strong inclination to go to sea” and sailed to Cape Breton, but “had a rather unpleasant voyage.” Gray tried seafaring two more times, with the same results, before apprenticing as a carpenter. Once he became a journeyman he signed aboard a vessel to New Orleans. From there he worked his way overland back to Rhode Island as a carpenter. The imprint of his years at sea was indelible; he continued to spice his diary with nautical terms and reported the comings and goings of local shipping for the rest of his life.¹⁴⁴

Most seamen sought shorebound employment more toward the end, rather than the beginning or middle, of their careers. Ashley Bowen had worked intermittently ashore for more than twenty years as a seafarer before becoming a full-time rigger at age thirty-five.¹⁴⁵ Samuel Leech eventually broke away from the sea, and even the waterfront, and established himself as a shopkeeper in New England. Simeon Crowell started his sea career on fishing schooners on the Grand Banks, turned to sailing on coastal traders, and traveled at times to the West Indies. He became a mate and then a captain, and ended up settling in Barnstable and serving as inspector and deputy collector of the port.¹⁴⁶ The Hammond family of Rochester, Massachusetts, offers us further insight into how and why seamen sought shorebound employment. Bezeal Shaw, the oldest boy, had already gone to sea by 1818. He told his younger brother LeBaron not to follow him in his occupation. But LeBaron's options were not great—digging ditches with Irish laborers or going to sea. By 1830, four Hammonds were sailing out of the port of New York. Sometimes they served as mates; often they sailed as common seamen. LeBaron worked for a while on Mississippi steamboats, but by 1841 he had married and established a grocery in New York City. Two other brothers also gave up their maritime careers: Bezeal Shaw became a trader in New Orleans, Andrew a carpenter in New York. Like LeBaron they may have done so when they married and in an effort to settle down. If they needed a reminder of the dangers of continuing to serve as a seaman, they could think of their brother Timothy, who died of an illness contracted while at sea.¹⁴⁷

Others remained more closely wedded to the sea all their lives while changing their nautical employment. Nicholas Isaacs filled many berths in his twenty years before the mast. He sailed in merchantmen throughout the Atlantic, fished the Grand Banks, fought aboard American privateers during the War of 1812, and had even been impressed into the British navy. About 1815 he moved to New York, got married, and thereafter worked the local fishing grounds and sold his catch to the city's markets.¹⁴⁸ After John Hoxse completed his apprenticeship at age twenty-one, he signed aboard a ship to serve as its carpenter. Within a few years he lost his arm in the battle between the Constellation and the French frigate La Vengeance. Thereafter he tried to earn a living running a grocery but failed. For two years he supplied wood locally to Newport, Rhode Island, before that work proved too physically taxing for him. Although he signed aboard a sealer for the South Atlantic, he was never paid any wages for his two-year voyage. Finally he settled in as a fisherman off the coast of Rhode Island.¹⁴⁹

Some tars never left the forecastle. Crew lists throughout the period reveal men in their forties, and even a handful in their fifties. Luke Snow was forty when he served as a mariner aboard the Halifax Packet out of New York in 1760. In 1803 the Charlotte from Providence had a fifty-four-year-old on board. And in 1843 the Rival of Calais, also of Providence, had a fifty-year-old sailor.¹⁵⁰ Black sailors were more likely to continue as foremast men than white sailors. Many of the white men who stayed at sea became officers. According to Providence crew lists, almost every white man who remained a mariner moved up in rank.¹⁵¹ The same was true of Salem seafarers in the eighteenth century.¹⁵² Although this trend probably persisted throughout the Age of Revolution, in most locations some older whites served out their days in the forecastle. Moreover, as shown by the Hammond brothers, entry into the officer ranks was not necessarily permanent.

5. This sketch of a man in typical sailor garb on a dock was found in a journal, interspersed with handwriting exercises. Journal of William Alfred Allen (ca. 1840). New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Seamen pursued a variety of options depending upon their opportunities—or lack of opportunities. Coming from a great many backgrounds, and heading in different directions with their lives, the men who populated the waterfront and labored before the mast defy any grand characterization. And yet, despite men who saved money, moved up the ranks, returned to a land-based life, the popular image of the hell-raising, spendthrift tar persists.

The expression of liberty that dominated the waterfront revolved around a freedom of action, in contrast to the property-bound definitions that preoccupied the age. While sailors worked to acquire money—an aim that would meet the approval of their landbound critics—the tar's concern with immediate gratification and rapid disposal of his wages implied a lack of respect for property that frightened those more concerned with the accumulation of wealth. For men who were disenfranchised and whose grasp on property was fleeting and tentative, the sailor's liberty ashore had a distinct appeal. The ideal of sailor liberty, however, fell somewhat short of reality. Excesses of liberty on shore led directly to the loss of economic and personal freedom.