Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution

3. A Sailor Ever Loves to Be in Motion

3 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 A Sailor Ever Loves to Be in Motion • 67 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 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 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. 68 • ASHORE AND AFLOAT copy of Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast close at...