Читать книгу Liberty on the Waterfront - Paul A. Gilje - Страница 12

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A Sailor Ever Loves to Be in Motion

John Ross Browne should never have gone to sea. He was, after all, a twenty-one-year-old gentleman with some education who had served as a reporter in Washington, D.C. In the summer of 1842 he wanted to see the world, sought to make his fortune, and had a penchant for romantic adventure. With smooth hands and fine clothes, he could not find a berth on a merchant vessel in New York. An advertisement for a landsmen caught his eye, and giving it hardly a thought, he signed with a shipping agent for a whaleship out of New Bedford. He was soon on his way to the southern oceans.

The first day at sea was a sobering introduction. Like most green hands, he quickly became seasick. The mate, however, insisted that everyone must work, and work hard, regardless of his condition. “After a day of horrors” the men were allowed to go below. Conditions did not improve. The forecastle, where sailors slept, “was black and slimy with filth, very small, and as hot as an oven.” Its contents were none too attractive. “It was filled with a compound of foul air, smoke, sea-chests, soap-kegs, greasy pans, tainted meat, Portuguese ruffians, and sea-sick Americans.” Still reeling from his first day on a ship, he found the Portuguese “were smoking, laughing, chattering, and cursing the green hands.” “Groans on one side” contrasted with “yells, oaths, laughter and smoke on the other.” Distressed, Browne thought that this was not “a very pleasant home for the next year or two,” and was soon “sick and sorry enough,” wishing heartily that he was ashore.¹

The voyage only got worse. Browne had barely settled into his berth when a storm struck the vessel. With the bark “staggering along, creaking, groaning, and thumping its way through heavy seas,” all hands were called on deck. Browne had no idea what to do and grabbed the first rope he saw, holding on for dear life. The mate came by screaming, “tumble up aloft, and lay out on the yards!” With the ship leaning at forty-five degrees Browne thought the idea preposterous. When the mate thundered “with the ferocity of a Bengal tiger,” Browne started climbing delicately up the ratlines and found his way out onto the yardarm. There, with the guidance of a more practiced seaman, he hauled in a sail and secured it with a rope. Somehow he survived. But his romantic vision had been shattered. From that moment Browne saw existence aboard ship as a form of slavery with long, hard hours of work, intermittent boredom, and the lash as the ultimate form of coercion. Life, just as that first night, often hung by a thread.²

12. Intended to mock one green hand's fear of heights, this etching also shows seamen at work on a yard of a square-rigged vessel. “Etching of work in rigging.” Francis Barrett, Log of the Ship Edward, 1849–1850. Nantucket Historical Association.

Browne's account offers us a nice antidote to a romantic portrayal of the sailor's life. Many seamen would agree: aboard ship the work was arduous and they were often miserable. Yet there was an attraction. Herman Melville begins Moby Dick with Ishmael on the waterfront, drawn to the sea as an escape. For Melville the sea attracted “crowds of water-gazers” who are “fixed in ocean reveries” and “must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in.” He advised, “Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it.” This magic cast its spell on landsmen, as well as the seasoned sailor like Melville. He believed that, like Narcissus, we see ourselves “in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.”³

Less metaphysical, yet with an equal appreciation for the attractions of the sea, Richard Henry Dana, Jr.'s description of his first days aboard a ship contrast with Browne's experience. (Browne may have written his book with a copy of Dana's Two Years Before the Mast close at hand.) After a long day of work, Dana took a moment to look over the expanse of ocean and proclaim, “I felt for the first time the perfect silence of the sea…. However much I was affected by the beauty of the sea, I could not but remember that I was separating myself from all the social and intellectual enjoyments of life. Yet, strange as it may seem, I did then and afterwards take pleasure in these reflections, hoping by them to prevent my becoming insensible to the value of what I was leaving.”

Dana was shocked out of his daydreaming by orders from the mate and by the coming of a storm. While he, too, struggled up into the rigging for the first time, Dana did not dwell on the negative. He muddled through like Browne, but was up at dawn the next day and wrote “nothing will compare with the early breaking of day upon the wide ocean.” Dana could be almost lyrical: “Notwithstanding all that has been said about the beauty of a ship under full sail, there are very few who have ever seen a ship, literally, under all her sail…light and heavy, and studding-sails, on each side, alow and aloft, she is the most glorious moving object in the world.”⁴

The sea continued to lure more prosaic men as well as great literary talents like Melville and Dana. Some sailors rejected the limits and regularity of work ashore. Others were restless.⁵ Often, beyond the thrill of the sailing vessel's bow cutting through the spray of salt water, men who went to sea sought a certain kind of freedom. On the waterfront a sailor might act out his fantasies and enjoy excesses of liberty; at sea he experienced a different freedom that came from the vast expanses of the ocean and the fact that he had the whole world to explore. Hugh Calhoun copied a poem in his journal on the “Traits of the Sailors Character.” It opened with the following stanza:

A Sailor ever loves to be in motion,

Roaming about, he scarce knows where or why;

He looks upon the dim and shadowy ocean

As his home, abhors the land, even the sky;

Boundless and beautiful, has naught to please,

Except some clouds, which promise him a breeze.⁶

Another seaman, aboard a tension-ridden whaler with an abusive captain, admitted, “The life of a sailor in its best light is hard and unsocial,” and then confessed that “The Sea, the dark blue sea, has its fascination, and its hails like the abandoned female is overlooked.”⁷ David Bryant noted “light and pleasant weather” in the logbook of the Tartar on February 7, 1816, and then commented that he was “just becoming habituated to the life [at sea] and suppose I could live a year without putting foot to land contentedly.”⁸ Benjamin Morrell, a seaman who worked his way up to captain, recalled how going to sea for the first time in 1812 excited him: “My soul seemed to have escaped from a prison cage…I could now breathe more freely.”⁹

Life at sea was a study in contrasts—offering both unfettered liberty and a peculiar form of bondage. Set against the openness of the ocean and the exhilaration of seeing wind and sail driving a great vessel toward faraway places were the hard labor, the limits of board and plank, and the sailor's lack of control over the voyage. Despite the universal brotherhood of the sea and the male bonding that occurred between shipmates, petty conflicts and hatred built up between human beings forced to live on top of one other. Finally, the almighty power of the quarterdeck was tested by the many means of resistance and assertion of independence exerted from the forecastle. The sea simultaneously represented a passport to freedom and a life akin to slavery.

Being a common seaman was all about work. Ships were moving machines whose various parts needed constant adjustment, repair, and replacement as wind and water assaulted every inch of the vessel. The intensity of work surprised many a green hand. George Little had thought that “sailors must have a fine time, with nothing to do but eat, sleep, and look out.” Before he even left port he was disabused of this notion, as the crew set to “rigging the headpump, washing down the decks and sides of the ship, swabbing,” and countless other tasks.¹⁰ Once at sea the labor continued. Every rope had to be checked and repaired or replaced as needed. The masts and yardarms also had to be maintained, slushed with tar, adjusted, reset, and sometimes replaced. Sails, too, needed persistent tending. Rips and tears occurred in all weather. When a storm struck, if sails were not quickly furled, they could be in tatters or take down a spar or a mast. Even on the balmiest of days, a sail could wear out. The trick was to make repairs before that point. Decks needed to be cleaned. Sailors hauled equipment in and out, as well as up into the rigging and then down again. Leaks needed to be plugged, and pumps manned to disgorge the bilge water. The cargo had to be secured and checked. In short, on every day the entire vessel was expected to be ship shape. If there was no other work to do, the least skilled members of the crew were set to picking oakum. And before returning to port the work intensified as the captain wanted to enter the harbor and present the vessel in a condition that would make him look good. That end was to be obtained by bending the back of every seaman on board. In foreign ports the crew often had to land the cargo and overhaul the entire ship.¹¹

The work depended on the kind of vessel a tar sailed on and his position. Many continued to sail in one capacity only, but sailors often did not remain in one type of service. Melville sailed in merchantmen, whalers, and a man-of-war.¹² Men along the waterfront sought opportunity wherever they could and at times had little choice in the matter. Ashley Bowen labored in the Marblehead fishing fleet, sailed to the West Indies and Europe in merchantmen, went whaling off the Carolina coast, and served in the British navy during the French and Indian War.¹³ Simeon Crowell began his career in the 1790s in fishing, and later voyaged in small vessels that sailed along the coast and larger ships throughout the North Atlantic.¹⁴ Gurdon L. Allyn went to sea in 1809 at age ten in fishing and coastal voyages out of Newport, worked on whalers and sealers, sailed three times around the world, fought in the Civil War as an officer in the navy, and returned to coasting and fishing as an old man.¹⁵ James Fenimore Cooper's friend Ned Myers sailed on ships on most of the seven seas, went whaling, and even fought for the U.S. Navy on the Great Lakes.¹⁶ Not every tar had such varied experiences, and many continued to sail in one capacity only, but it is a mistake to assume that the boundaries between different maritime occupations were any less fluid than the oceans Jack Tar crossed.¹⁷

Labor remained at a premium on American merchantmen, and each type of vessel had certain requirements. During the colonial period there was a drop in the average crew size in the eighteenth century as the threat of piracy lessened and vessels decreased their turnaround time in port. Depending on the voyage, the ratio of tons per man (the standard means of measuring ships) changed from about four to seven tons per man at the beginning of the eighteenth century to seven to ten tons per man to right before the Revolutionary War. These trends accelerated after American independence, in part because changes in design led to larger ships.¹⁸ The relatively higher paying American ships gained a reputation in the nineteenth century for having smaller crews than European vessels of similar construction.¹⁹ Shipowners drove down the ratio between tonnage and crew size, intensifying the amount of work for each crew member. Based on a sample taken from the Baltimore Customs records, the typical ship size in 1786 was about 192 tons with an average crew of just less than thirteen men. Twenty years later the average ship was 289 tons with a crew of eighteen men. This represented a change of about 15 tons per crew member to more than 18 tons per crew member.²⁰ In another thirty years, and with the introduction of many innovations in design and rigging that created the Baltimore Clipper, the average ship was almost 500 tons with a crew of less than sixteen, for a ratio of approximately 31 tons per crew member. Captains on these new vessels, with their sleek hull and vast spread of canvas, took pride in getting as much speed as possible out of every shift of breeze. In addition to the increased maintenance that came from the changes in tonnage-per-man ratio, crews repeatedly had to clamber into the rigging to take in or let out more sail. Changes in man-per-ton ratios appeared in almost all oceangoing vessels, including barks and two-masted brigs.²¹

We should not diminish the amount of work aboard earlier vessels, or aboard smaller craft. Coasting vessels, often sloops (one mast) and schooners (two masts) with fore and aft rigging, had fewer but larger sails than square- rigged vessels and were very good at tacking and therefore better able to sail into the wind and in coastal waters.²² If the voyage were especially short, such as between Baltimore and Norfolk, these vessels could range from 10 to 40 tons, with crews of two to three men. With such a tiny crew, distinctions between captain and seaman were slight; everyone had to work nearly constantly.²³ The sloops and schooners that sailed between North American ports or to the West Indies ranged between 40 and 150 tons and had from three to eight men as crew. Small crews left little time for leisure. Like the full-rigged ship the ratio between crew and tonnage increased during the 1750 to 1850 period in these vessels as well.²⁴

The watch system dictated labor rhythms at sea aboard all types of merchant vessels. Technically, sailors served four hours on and four hours off around the clock. A dogwatch in the evening, usually from four to eight, was divided in half with two hours for each watch to shift the time that each watch labored from day to day. In a crew of four, two men on watch saw to the ordinary immediate needs of the vessel. Even in a larger crew of ten, which included the captain, a mate, a cook, and possibly a steward, two or three seamen would be on duty at any given time. Obviously, if the vessel needed any serious alteration of sails, or if a storm struck, the captain called for all hands. The men not on watch duty would thus have their precious few hours of sleep disturbed by a burst of labor often sparked by a rush of adrenaline that came with every emergency.

The length of a voyage varied greatly, depending on the type of vessel and the nature of the trade. A coaster might be at sea for a few hours, or a couple of weeks. Transatlantic trips ran approximately thirty days going east and forty-five days going west.²⁵ Voyages to the West Indies might be shorter, but usually entailed several months away from port. As American commerce reached to South America, Africa, and the Pacific rim, vessels might be away from port for a year or more.

There was thus some predictability in many sailing trips, wind and weather permitting. A ship's papers were supposed to provide a full accounting of the crew signed aboard, and technically all crew members were to be brought back to the end point of the voyage. Likewise the articles of agreement signed by every seaman listed the projected ports of call. Deviation from that route was a violation of contract.²⁶ Sometimes a vessel would make regular runs to the same port or region. Between July 23, 1842, and April 18, 1843, the schooner Gallant Mary made eleven runs between Baltimore and the Caribbean.²⁷ In most instances, the crew would change on each voyage.

Despite efforts to maintain schedules, there was little predictability in a sailor's life. Weather often delayed a return trip. Other factors also came into play. Some captains altered course in search of better markets. If prices were too low in one port, the ship might try another. Even if there was no change in itinerary, if business was slow, turnaround time might increase from a few weeks to a few months or more. Mending damage might also hold up departure, especially if repairs were expensive and parts hard to come by. Changes in international politics, revolutions, wars, new trade restrictions, and pirates all affected voyages.

Sailors themselves, with their own notions of liberty, often cut their time short by leaving a ship. Nathaniel Ames remarked in 1832 that American sailors had no loyalty and signed off and on vessels wherever they might be. Tracing a Cape Cod man, he suggested, might “find him performing one voyage from Boston and the next from New Orleans; to-day carrying plaster from Passamaquoddy to New York and to-morrow in a French whaler off the Falkland Islands.” Ames believed that it is as “impossible to calculate” a sailor's “movements as it would be to predict the direction and extent of the next skip of that most eccentric of all animals, a flea.”²⁸ A seaman took his labor where he thought fit.

Jobs on ships required skilled labor. In responding to the advertisement for landsmen, John Ross Browne was applying for a specific position aboard ship. Sailors on larger vessels fell into three basic categories: able seamen, ordinary seamen, and boys (sometimes referred to as green hands or landsmen, but always, no matter the age, considered boys). On smaller vessels these ratings were less significant, although even on sloops and schooners of under 100 tons some distinctions were made. This hierarchy of skill appeared in crew lists from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Usually the sailor rated himself when he signed the articles of the vessel. An able seaman might sign on as an ordinary seaman if the captain was paying only those wages. A boy or ordinary seaman would almost never claim a higher status unless he was capable of performing the work required. No one wanted to be at sea with a crew of eight, expecting that each watch would have at least one able seaman, only to discover that one of the supposed skilled sailors was incompetent. The whole crew would suffer.

13. Seamen needed to know how to handle a small boat as well as work on larger vessels. “Shore Party.” New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Each category of seamanship had its skill level. Dana claimed that both able and ordinary seamen were expected to “hand, reef, and steer.” These tasks entailed climbing into the rigging, furling and unfurling the sails, as well as commanding specialized knowledge of a variety of sails and ropes. An able seaman would be distinguished by his handiness with a marlin spike, neatly restoring and mending the rigging with “knots, splices, seizings, coverings, and turnings in.” He must know how to “make a long and short splice in a large rope, fit a block-strap, pass seizings to lower rigging, and make the ordinary knots, in a fair, workmanlike manner.” Ordinary seamen performed some of this work but had not quite mastered all of its elements. Landsmen and boys did the least pleasant and most mundane tasks, like slushing the masts and yards with tar, swabbing the deck, and coiling rope. They also had to go aloft and help in loosening and furling the sails in a subordinate capacity to the ordinary and able seamen.²⁹

Every vessel's captain had total responsibility. The smaller the crew, the smaller the distinction between the captain and the rest of the men serving aboard a vessel. When the crew reached a total of four or five men there would also be a first mate. The captain and the first mate would each take charge of a watch. The first mate was usually responsible for keeping the ship's log, indicating date, conditions, and employment of the crew. Often mates did the most skilled work in the rigging and they had to be tough enough to make a hardened tar jump when they barked an order.³⁰ If the vessel was larger still, over 200 tons with a crew of ten, there was likely to be a first and second mate, each in charge of one watch. A second mate was frequently in an awkward position. He had to serve out orders, yet lacked the authority of his superiors. Too close to the common seamen, he was just beginning his career as an officer. One sailor commented that the second mate is “neither officer or man.”³¹ Larger vessels would have more elaborate hierarchies with a third mate and maybe a boatswain. In addition, specialized crew members might be hired like a ship carpenter and sailmaker. Most often, since knowledge aboard sailing vessels was acquired through experience, the captain and officers had worked their way from the forecastle to the quarterdeck, although personal connections helped one advance.³²

Work on fishing vessels was organized somewhat differently. The distance between captain and crew, as it was on smaller merchantmen, was not as great. If there was fishing to be done, everyone sank their lines and hauled in the catch. Along the New England coast, a fishing boat usually also had a shoreman, whose job was to preserve and process the fish. Work was seasonal, in New England running from March to November. During this time a vessel might return to port three to four times to bring in the catch and refit. Labor came in spasms of intense activity, interspersed with slack moments during which the six- to eight-man crew entertained one another with story and song. Often they passed empty hours drinking.³³

Conditions within the fishing industry of the New England coast experienced many gyrations, as Daniel Vickers explains. During the 1790s and early 1800s, fishing provided a degree of independence and profit for the fisherman. In the closing days of the colonial period and after the 1810s, however, the industry became more confining and under greater control of the merchants in port. Although the work force changed with these conditions, during the middle decades of the nineteenth century fishing became more of a permanent occupation along the New England coast, and the essential outlines of the labor remained the same.³⁴

14. Whaleman John F. Martin drew this picture in his log depicting a crucial moment in capturing and killing a whale. “Whale boat attacking Whale.” John F. Martin, Log of the Ship Lucy Ann, 1841–1844. Kendall Whaling Museum.

Great changes occurred in the whaling industry. At the end of the colonial period, whaling voyages were just beginning to reach further into the Atlantic and last for several months. After a hiatus during the Revolutionary War, whalemen began extending their voyages. With the processing of the whales taking place aboard ship, vessels got larger and the time at sea longer. By the early nineteenth century, whalers had ventured into the Pacific. Eventually ships stayed at sea for three to four years as they scoured the globe for leviathans.

The hierarchy aboard ship became more rigid in whalers in the nineteenth century as the captain ruled over a crew of thirty to forty. Gradations in rank appeared with first, second, and third mates, as well as coopers, carpenters, sailmakers, harpooners, and a variety of seamen's ranks. Landsmen like Browne were at the bottom. Because of the size of the crew, the daily work on the vessel was easier than on a merchantman. Also, since speed was not of the essence and one spot on the whaling ground was as good as another, whalers seldom cracked much sail. Once a pod of whales was spotted, activity reached a fever pitch. Three to four boats were lowered, packed with four to six oarsmen, a boat steerer, and a harpoonist. If the men were lucky enough to fix on to a whale, and survive the ordeal by killing it, they had to drag the carcass back to the ship. The whale was then made fast to the vessel's side, and the blubber cut out and processed in the try works. The labor was messy and dangerous, and the stench was awful. It was not unusual in these circumstances for the crew to work twenty-four hours nonstop.³⁵ One whaleman reported that between hunting and cutting out whales, a crew had only five hours of sleep in fifty.³⁶

Labor aboard a man-of-war differed from labor on a whaler or merchant ship. Despite the large crews (a frigate would have three to four hundred men), the officers saw to it that there was plenty to keep them busy. The structure of work remained the same whether the sailor served in the British or American navy. (American seamen also served in the French, Dutch, Danish, and other navies, but most were in the English-speaking services.) The daily maintenance work only increased as the aim was for total spit and polish. Dragging the holystone—a huge scrubbing stone—over sand and water on the decks every morning represented one aspect of this desire for cleanliness. Clothing, even the hammocks, were expected to be immaculate. Officers took pride in speed, so sails had to be constantly adjusted. Whether in peace or war, guns had to be worked, and the vessel made ready for battle. Impressment or recruitment into the British navy meant an undetermined sentence to this work. The American navy tended to have limited terms of service, in wartime for a specific voyage and in the nineteenth century for a set number of years.³⁷

Privateers were less demanding in terms of work. Like a regular warship they would have large crews, as they had to be prepared to fight. A small schooner, for example, might have one hundred men. These vessels varied greatly in discipline. Some privateers were as spotless as a navy ship, but most fell short of that goal. Privateers had detailed duty lists, exercised their great guns, and called men to their battle stations regularly. Speed was also essential for a privateer, whether to chase down its prey or to escape the guns of a more heavily armed opponent. All privateersmen understood this and worked to make sure that the vessel could operate at its top speed.³⁸

Living conditions aboard every type of vessel were cramped and without privacy. The forecastle of a merchantman might be twelve feet long, and almost as wide at its greatest breadth but tapered off toward the bow. A whaler's forecastle might be slightly larger to accommodate greater numbers. This confined space was the sailor's “dining and dressing room, bedchamber and parlor.” The furniture was spartan. The beds were little more than planked bunks with maybe a threadbare mattress, a blanket as cover, and a canvas bag stuffed with dunnage as a pillow. Sea chests made do as tables, and bunks served as chairs. Light came from a candle or old lamp. The toilet was in the “head” or the very front of the vessel. Warships had more space devoted to housing, owing to the number of men required by privateers and the navy. Sailors slept in hammocks swung tightly on the gun deck, next to and on top of one another. During the day, hammocks were folded and stowed along the ship's sides, providing added protection in a battle. The crew divided into messes of four to eight, prepared food and ate together (hence the term “messmate” to describe a relationship even closer than shipmate). Whether in a merchantman or a man-of-war, little if anything could be kept from the prying eyes of one's shipmates. Even journals were considered fair game for anyone who could read. Many a cruel joke was played on the green hand who strove to keep anything private from the rest of the crew.³⁹

15. Although somewhat fanciful, this portrayal of a forecastle gives some sense of the crowded conditions and varied relationships aboard ship. “Life in the Forecastle.” J. Ross Browne, Etchings of a Whaling Cruise (New York, 1846).

There was seldom enough food, and its quality often left something to be desired. The experienced tar tapped his hard biscuit before eating and watched the insects clamor to the surface to check on the disturbance. Meals consisted of salt beef or pork, duff, and lobscouse (a shipboard stew of meat, vegetables, and potatoes). Merchantmen had a cook who lived separately from the crew; in the nineteenth century African Americans increasingly held the position. This individual, despite the complaints of his fellow seamen, was expected to have some skill in handling the ship's stores if not in the culinary arts. His wage was often higher than the average seaman's. In the forecastle the men ate out of a common pot, called a kid, much to the chagrin of one green hand who described the forecastle's table manners as “hacking here and there, not unlike savages.”⁴⁰ Sailors of all stripes sought to supplement their fare whenever they could through fishing or purchasing fresh vegetables and fruits while in port. The main beverage was water, provided in barrels on deck. Unless the vessel was put on short rations, sailors were welcome to use a dipper and quench their thirst whenever they felt the need. Coffee became increasingly important to sailors in the nineteenth century. Most sailors also made sure that they had their share of the daily grog.

The grog helped break the monotony of the routine. Long voyages or being becalmed could wear nerves thin. One log keeper commented, “there is such sameness & the same tegious [tedious] recurrence to Nautical observations that I am obliged to drive off the Hypocondriac, which hovers about me.” Repeated cloudiness and rain could also be depressing. The same sailor wrote:

The darkened sky how thick it lowers

Troubled with storms & big with showers

No cheerful gleam of light appears

But nature pours forth all her tears.

He then added, “Long passage dark Gloomy weather very unpropitious, the Blue Devils hover round.”⁴¹ Shipboard existence could be tiresome and arduous. On a transatlantic voyage, one sailor complained, “slave like life this going to sea, completely imprisoned, [and] knocked about too and fro.”⁴² The humdrum of the trackless, endless sea and repetitive work plagued whalers when no whales were in sight. Browne reminded his readers that “every body who has ever read of the sea” was aware of the “monotony of a long passage.” On the “clumsy barque,” Browne explained, “time hung very heavily on our hands.”⁴³

Although familiar with tedium, a sailor knew that the sea was a dangerous place. Men died at sea. Dangling from the yardarm during his first storm, a green hand like Browne had better hang on for dear life. Even experienced seamen toppled from aloft in fair weather. Ebenezer Clinton described how twenty-nine-year-old John Nichols slipped off the yardarm a few weeks after leaving Boston. The crew made “Every Exertion to save him,” to no avail. “The poor soul Swam after the Ship a large time.” Realizing his efforts were in vain, he lifted his hat and “twirled it over his head and threw it from him and gave up the ghost.” Logbooks and journals report repeatedly of men taking such falls. Crashing onto the deck meant at the least serious injury. Sometimes sailors were lucky and the fall was cushioned by a wind-filled sail. Or they landed in the sea and could swim long enough to be saved, but many sailors could not swim a stroke. Even the deck and below held ample opportunity for accidents. Shifting cargo, broken equipment falling from aloft, a mishandled tool, back-breaking labor, an unexpected lurch of the sea, all held the potential for injury or death.⁴⁴

A storm only intensified the danger, as the entire vessel could disappear without a trace. During one storm in September 1846, sixty-three men from the Marblehead fishing fleet drowned.⁴⁵ In 1815 the Wasp set sail into the Atlantic, never be heard from again.⁴⁶ Hurricanes left ships without masts, cast on their beam-ends, or at the bottom of the ocean. The schooner Dispatch Packet left Salem's Derby Wharf in September 1820 and arrived in Martinique twenty-eight days later. The voyage was uneventful, and after another month the Dispatch Packet headed back to New England. The ship never made it to Salem. For twenty-nine days “sea mountains” engulfed the schooner, throwing the vessel on its beam-ends, smashing its cabin, and sweeping away the masts. The men ran short of food, and had only rainwater to drink. After ninety-eight days at sea the schooner limped back to the West Indies and was condemned and sold as a wreck.⁴⁷ Anyone who braved Cape Horn knew that he put his life at risk in the stormy waters south of Tierra del Fuego. Tales about hair-raising experiences with wind and weather became staples for many sailors.⁴⁸

The terrors of the sea went beyond drowning and sinking in a storm. Sailors left in a disabled vessel or who piled into a longboat after their ship went down sometimes faced harrowing ordeals. In 1765 the Peggy was sailing back to New York from the Azores when a storm left the ship a floating hulk. As the Peggy drifted for days, provisions ran out and the crew resorted to cannibalism before they were rescued.⁴⁹ The greatest saga of this kind was the story of the whaleship Essex. On November 20, 1820, an irate whale rammed the Essex, stove in her sides, and sent the ship to the bottom of the Pacific. Twenty men were left with three whaleboats. Having taken some provisions and water from the vessel, the crew embarked on a journey of epic proportions. Wrongly fearing cannibals on the nearest islands, the Marquesas about 800 miles to the windward, the whaleboats beat their way south and then east to reach the coast of South America—a trip of more than 4,500 miles. One boat and its crew were lost, three men voluntarily remained on a deserted island, and only six starved men were picked up at the end of their oddysey. To survive, these men had to eat the dead bodies of their shipmates. Worse, one boat crew drew lots to see who would be killed to provide sustenance for the others.⁵⁰ Even if a ship was not wrecked, lack of wind or contrary winds could also spell disaster. When a ship's water or provisions gave out, the crew faced an agonizing death. Short provisions might lead to scurvy or malnourishment, crippling a man for life, or cause accidents a healthy man might avoid.

Sickness and disease also created problems and could be fatal. The captain usually served as something of a doctor on all except naval vessels, which would usually have a doctor on board. He might have to pull a tooth, care for infection, or set a broken bone. Visiting a disease ridden-port could devastate a crew. The yellow fever epidemics that racked American ports in the 1790s and early 1800s came from ships from the West Indies. Mortality was especially high along the waterfront.⁵¹ At sea the consequences of contagion could be catastrophic. With few extra hands on most ships, a disease like yellow fever or malaria, could leave a crew on a merchantman so short-handed that it might put the entire vessel in jeopardy. Yellow fever swept through one vessel in the West Indies, killing the captain and four others in August 1802.⁵² A whale captain reported that he lost one man and had twelve others down on account of smallpox in 1839.⁵³ The close quarters aboard a warship spread disease rapidly. More than one hundred men fell ill after the frigate Columbia left China in 1839.⁵⁴ One reason that the British resorted to impressment so often in the West Indies was that the unhealthy climate so decimated the navy that captains desperately needed more manpower to sail and fight on their ships.

For many sailors the camaraderie at sea offered solace in the face of adversity. Special bonds developed between men who ate together, stood frozen watch together, reefed sail together, listened to one another's yarns, and lived within and opposed the same authoritarian structure. Each tar knew the dangers he confronted from the elements as well as from pirates and foreign predators.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., relished the life of the forecastle and viewed it as a release from the supervision of the officers. He believed that “No man can be a sailor, or know what sailors are, unless he has lived in the forecastle with them—turned in and out with them, and eaten of their dish and drank of their cup.”⁵⁵ The sense of community and shared experiences was very important to sailors and fostered equality before the mast. Although young Joseph Ward had been outraged by the eating habits of his shipmates, he quickly accommodated himself. Before the short voyage to Liverpool was over (they made soundings in seventeen days), he thoroughly identified with his fellow sailors. His constant complaints about the oppressive officers suggests that the sailors shared a resentment of those who commanded them.⁵⁶

Other factors, however, also played an important role in bringing the forecastle together. Seasickness, experienced by nearly every green hand and by many an old sailor at the beginning of the voyage, served almost as a rite of passage for many. As both Dana and Browne could attest, seasickness did not elicit any sympathy, but it could form an odd bond between men who experienced this physical upheaval that marked the transition from landlubber to seaman.⁵⁷

Work also molded a group identity. Sailors relied upon one another whether they hung precariously from a yardarm, labored on deck, or worked in the hold. The everyday experience aboard ship reminded every sailor of his dependence on his shipmates. Facing a crisis, whether storms or some unidentified warship on the horizon, the mutual dependence became even more apparent.

One daily symbol of the experience of group identity was the sea chantey. These songs reflected the group rhythms of work on a sailing ship to such a degree that specialized chanteys with particular beats were applied to different types of work. One man would sing the verse, following the general outlines of a well known chantey while fully capable of adding embellishments of his own, and the rest of the crew would chime in with the refrain. The hauling, tugging, or pushing would be tied to specific points in the chantey. There were chanteys for working the brake windless, capstan, halyards, sheets, and a wide variety of other tasks aboard ship.⁵⁸

Whatever leisure time there was at sea obviously had to be spent with shipmates. On many vessels, Sunday was a day of slack work by common custom. Jack Tars would then take out their sea chests, rearrange their few possessions, mend and wash clothes, and spend time with each other without the immediate supervision of the officers. The dogwatch, too, was a period of relative ease. At these times tars shared stories or sang popular ballads. Men of the sea prized their ability to tell tales, holding their audience spellbound and stretching the truth past the point of credibility. Journals and books about the sea, especially in the nineteenth century, abound with examples of these yarns. Similarly, a sailor who could sing twenty or thirty verses of some well-known tune was held in high esteem. As Samuel Leech explained, sailors survived by singing songs, listening to “tough forecastle yarns,” and telling jokes “with sufficient point to call out roars of laughter.”⁵⁹ Such moments helped to cast the bonds that created the fraternity of the forecastle.

The forecastle, however, was not always united. In Herman Melville's fictionalized account of his first experience at sea, a mean-spirited sailor named Jackson bullied the entire crew.⁶⁰ John Larkin jumped ship from a whaler in the 1840s because of the ill treatment he received at the hands of the crew.⁶¹ At times these hostilities could erupt into violence. Young Benjamin Seamans broke his leg in a scuffle with shipmate Levi Hall in 1798.⁶² The second mate of the Charlotte who stepped between two fighting men was accidently stabbed.⁶³ Aboard the whaleship Vesper, the blacksmith's mate stole a knife from one sailor. The two men began to argue, throwing the ship into an uproar. The captain interceded and told the men to take off their shirts so they could fight it out; the captain would make sure they would have “fair play.”⁶⁴ William Silver wrote in his journal in 1834 that “to day there was a recurrence of those broils which this voyage has been witness to too many of them for the benefit of those concerned or the credit of the officers.”⁶⁵ Ship's carpenter Samuel Furgerson complained on a long Pacific voyage that “The People disputing on account of their stealing bread from each other.” Furgerson later exclaimed, as he fretted over shortages on board, that there were “Dry times,” since “warm weather and Short Allowance of water with Salt Beef makes bad Neighbors.”⁶⁶ One sailor commented that, although fighting was forbidden on naval vessels, men regularly settled arguments with their fists.⁶⁷

Tensions between different nationalities in a crew added to the misery of some sailors. Captain Samuel Tucker reported tension between the French and American crew members of the ship Boston in 1778.⁶⁸ Such animosities were not unusual for the multi-ethnic warships of the American navy. Similar problems occurred in merchantmen and whalers. On a voyage aboard the Governor Thorp from England to Boston, tension arose between the British seamen and American officers. After the captain manhandled one of the British sailors, the man complained, “that is the way you do in American ships.”To which the captain replied, “Yes, you son of a bitch, I'll murder you.” The captain then took the man into the cabin for a lashing.⁶⁹ While J. Ross Browne found much to admire in his American shipmates, he thought the foreigners were intolerable and objected to the idea of sharing living quarters with blacks. After he did not join a work stoppage protesting the captain's refusal to grant the men liberty in port, the Portuguese sailors wanted to drive him out of the forecastle. Isolated and hated by both captain and crew, Browne had to leave the ship.⁷⁰ Conflict occurred repeatedly between the African American steward on the Charles Phelps and members of the crew. Silas Fitch, who noted these problems in his log, revealed his own bias by confessing that the steward was “the frowardest and sasyest darkey that I have ever saw.”⁷¹

If relationships within the forecastle, running from amiable fraternity to armed hostility, were important to every sailor, cooperation between the forecastle and the quarterdeck—between the common seamen and the captain— was essential to the smooth functioning of the vessel. Technically the captain's power at sea was supreme. In signing the articles of a ship—the contract that established pay scale and regulations during the voyage—the sailor abdicated control over his person. The sailor not only agreed to work the ship but also consented to the discipline established by the captain and his officers. Nathaniel Ames described the captain as a “discretionary bashaw” who “enjoys the reality in its most exquisite form, the power of punishing, after which all ‘having authority' so greedily aspire.”⁷² More than one observer compared the sailors' lot to that of black slaves.⁷³ Like the slave, sailors could be whipped as punishment. Discipline in the navy was most severe. In just six months the captain ordered men whipped almost ninety times aboard the frigate Congress in 1846.⁷⁴ Even on board merchantmen and whalers, captains used corporal punishment to keep sailors in line.⁷⁵ Captains also relied on physical force to terrorize a crew, beating, cursing, and threatening to kill the men if they so much as raised their arm in self-defense. Nathaniel Sexton Morgan reported numerous incidents of his captain pouncing upon seamen, especially the Kanaka (Hawaiian) natives and Portuguese, using “the worst and most profane language I have ever heard from mortal lips.”⁷⁶ William McNally observed, “I know of no situation in which men can be placed where they can be rendered so completely miserable as on board of a ship, if the officers are disposed to make them so.” If the captain did not want to redress grievances, the “vessel becomes a perfect hell, the law has left no alternative for the crew but to suffer his caprice, whims, and tyranny in silence for a long voyage, or else do a deed that will bring them to the scaffold, or haunt them to their grave.”⁷⁷ As one old salt explained to a novice sailor, there was no ground between duty and mutiny. “All that you are ordered to do is duty,” whether the captain was wrong or right, and “All that you refuse to do is mutiny.”⁷⁸

Life aboard ships was more complex than this simple dichotomy between mutiny and duty suggests. While in many instances the autocracy of the quarterdeck limited some aspects of the sailor's liberty aboard ship, the relationship between quarterdeck and forecastle was more often under constant negotiation.

16. Seamen aboard all types of vessels were subject to corporal punishment. “Flogging.” Joseph Bogart, Log of the Bark Samuel and Thomas, August 16, 1847. Kendall Whaling Museum.

At sea there was supposed to be a clear hierarchy, with the captain on top, followed by his officers, followed in turn by the common seamen. The chain of command could breakdown at several points. In some instances aboard merchantmen a captain might find his authority undercut by the owners of the vessel. The seamen aboard the Catherine in 1762 could never quite figure out what position the mysterious Mr. Jerboe filled on the voyage. Sometimes he served as a seaman, sometimes as a master, sometimes as an owner, sometimes as a supercargo, sometimes as boatswain—making the sailors “look like Negroes, and as if they did not know their duty.” He even meddled with the cooking. The crew did not appreciate this confusion. One called him “a sneaking sort of a fellow that an englishman would have nothing to do with.” To confuse matters further, Jerboe took the starboard berth in the cabin, which was usually reserved for the captain, while the ship's master contented himself with the larboard or port berth.⁷⁹ Aboard the Thomas Russell on a voyage to the Pacific Northwest in 1798 and 1799, the presence of a supercargo and a well-connected clerk created ambiguous lines of authority. Perhaps knowing who paid the bills, the officers sided against the captain. No overt conflict erupted, but throughout the voyage the captain didnot receive the accustomed level of respect and was often the butt of jokes and snide comments.⁸⁰

As on the Thomas Russell, the captain sometimes found himself at odds with his officers. On a voyage from the Far East, Sargent S. Day thought that his first and second mates were inept and made “a damn'd humbug of everything” and could not wait to get rid of them. Day pleaded with the wind, “Blow my sweet breeze Blow & Deliver me from Two pieces of Trash not fit to take care of Hogs much more to have charge of a Ship Deck.”⁸¹ Whaling captain Charles G. Arthur apparently had continual problems with his officers aboard the Zenas Coffin on a voyage in the late 1840s. He reported to the owners that he had to discharge the third mate “for the benefit of all concerned.” Arthur wrote a year and half later that he had discharged the first and second mate as well, declaring that he had done so “for the sake of having any kind of regularity and order on ship board.” He explained further, “I have struggled all the voyage to make things as they should be but as I find out even before we left home there was as to say a combination entered into for them always to be right and I right if I agreed with them.”⁸² Another whaling captain confronted open disobedience by officers and crew, when, contrary to everybody's interest, they refused to lower the boats in pursuit of whales. In this situation the captain had to give ground.⁸³ Even John Paul Jones had tactical disagreements with his first lieutenant, Thomas Simpson, and repeated problems with Pierre Landais who, as a subordinate in command of the Alliance during the battle between the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis, failed to come to Jones's assistance.⁸⁴

Officers, too, sometimes wrangled with one another. As a mate, Sargent S. Day also found his subalterns incompetent. While the crew refitted the rigging at sea, Day remained on the deck and sent the second mate aloft to direct the men. From Day's point of view the whole job was bungled. He confided to his log that the mast was finally painted, although the second mate allowed the men to make “a long lumber job of it.”There were other problems. Eventually everything got straightened out, “but a worse time I never see in getting up spars[.] No head aloft & nothing done right—for my part I am sick of such second mates & damn'd foolish work.”⁸⁵ Samuel Chase complained that he had some “secret enemies” aboard the whaleship Arab and declared that there was “a traitorous wretch trying to black my character with the master of the ship.”⁸⁶ Common seamen often paid for this type of backbiting. A mean-spirited first mate could easily take advantage of his authority by keeping the second mate and his watch on deck for longer than the usual four hours.⁸⁷

The most crucial conflicts at sea, however, were between the forecastle and the quarterdeck. To prevent the captain from pushing the crew too hard, seamen ran away, organized work slow downs, and grumbled and showed disrespect. Occasionally, work stopped and blows exchanged. In extreme cases, the crew resorted to mutiny and piracy. The mere idea of these rare extreme violent acts affected shipboard behavior.⁸⁸