Liberty on the Waterfront. Paul A. Gilje

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      2

      The Maid I Left Behind Me

      William Widger lay imprisoned by the enemies of his country. This sailor in the American Revolution had tried his luck as a privateer aboard the brig Phoenix. His luck ran short, and the British captured him and sent him to Old Mill Prison in England. Confined by walls and guards, he turned his thoughts to his home in Marblehead. He had a dream that reflected the concerns of many sailors far from home as they thought of the women in their lives. Widger's dream brought him to the Marblehead water-front, where he quickly became frustrated by the inability of “his Giting home” since he stood on one “Side of the weay” and soldiers stood sentry on the other side. As in any dream, he somehow managed to proceed and met an acquaintance, “Georg Tucker,” at the end of “Bowden's Lain.” Tucker “Stouped and Shock hands with me and Said he Was Glad to See me.” Then Tucker unloaded a bombshell and congratulated Widger on his wife just delivering a baby boy.

      Startled, Widger asserted, “it was a dam'd Lye” and that “it was imposable for I had been Gone tow years and leatter.” Again, dreamlike, Widger СКАЧАТЬ