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

1. The Sweets of Liberty

1 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 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. The Sweets of Liberty • 5 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 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...