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~ Life at Sea ~

Tyler Norman, 31369127

HIST 490T

December, 2015

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Immediately after J. Ross Browne set sail on his first whaling voyage in 1841, he realized he

had abandoned the enjoyment of civilized life, sacrificed his freedom, and voluntarily brought

hardship and danger upon his own head.1 His boyhood desire to see the world and to be an

adventurer led him to seek employment in the whaling industry. In his book, Etchings of a Whaling

Cruise, published in 1846, he tells the story of his career at sea. His personal narrative has many

striking similarities to the autobiography, Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840 by

American middle-class lawyer, Richard Henry Dana. Both narratives have a common agenda. They

aim to prove that that during the nineteenth century, despite the improvement in worker’s rights

and labour laws that were part of the Industrial Revolution taking place in parts of the United

States, the seafaring industry was isolated in a watery world untouched by the protecting arm of

the law.2 Browne and Dana were optimistic however that by enlightening their audiences with the

unhappy conditions of the class with whom they had spent periods of their life, they would be able

to encourage positive change.3 Neither author was by any means a revolutionary, they were simply

both affected enough by their experience at sea that they had the desire to bring to light the

dangers of the industry, call for stricter regulations, and propose harsher punishment for

mistreatment by superiors. This paper will explore the primary areas of grievance that Browne and

Dana had with the seafaring industry, and shed light on how both authors felt that intense, physical

discipline at the hands of the ship captain, as well as the harsh realities of disease, danger, death,

and hard work defined the life of hardship that was the seafaring industry.

Browne and Dana’s autobiographies were written in the context of the Industrial Revolution

that was taking place in the United States. In the nineteenth century, American commerce was 1 Browne, J. Ross. Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. Cambridge: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1968. 12 Ibid. iv3 Ibid. vii

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beginning to have less of a reliance on the seas, despite the maritime trade being of traditional

importance for regional economies.4 Merchants were more inclined to shift capital from shipping to

manufacturing, and with this movement to industrial production, there came a noticeable rise in

the wage-earning working class.5 With a larger and more enabled working class, the nineteenth

century saw the creation of labour laws and early forms of worker’s rights, as well as a rise in

labour unions. Strikes were becoming more popular as well, and despite only having marginal levels

of success, there is evidence that in the mid-nineteenth century, striking workers were somewhat

capable of achieving better working conditions. For instance, in New Hampshire in 1847 and in

Pennsylvania in 1848, there was implementation of maximum-hours laws that directly resulted

from intense pressure from labour unions and striking workers.6 Although it cannot be claimed that

wage-earners on land were enjoying some sort of massive working class labour revolution, they at

least had modest success; the fact that this progress was confined to land was undoubtedly a major

influence on the agenda of Browne and Dana’s narratives. Their depictions of immense hardships

relating to arbitrary discipline, harsh labour, high threat of death and injury, and unsuitable living

conditions are meant to show that the whaling industry and deep-sea merchant service did not

enjoy the same improved labour laws and worker’s rights that were taking shape on land.

Descriptions of discipline and mistreatment by superiors are prominent throughout Browne

and Dana’s personal narratives. Their inclusion of detailed instances of cruelty sheds light on their

particular experiences, but also shows how both authors had an explicit agenda in their

autobiographies. They meant to prove that the seafaring industry had yet to abandon its traditional

4 Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. 1325 Ibid. 1326 Ibid. 549

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labour practices and remained in isolation from the progress on land. During the Industrial

Revolution in the US, employers began to see use temperance as a means to discipline workers,

and workers themselves felt it was a means of “mutual improvement”.7 In other words, there was a

greater incentive for self-discipline through the nurture of moral qualities.8 Furthermore, ideologies

of free labour were becoming more influential on land, and social control was based more in

“internalized, voluntary restraints rather than on external coercion.”9 The intense, physical, and

arbitrary discipline that was used in the seafaring industry was denounced by people in democratic

Northeastern American society as a slave like, coercive method of controlling workers.10 To them, it

that was a “relic of barbarism.”11 Browne spends a great deal of his autobiography touching on the

barbaric acts that were undertaken in the seafaring industry by going into lengthy description

about the relationship between captain and crew. It is clear to Browne that “from the time he

leaves port, he is beyond the sphere of human rights: he is a slave till he returns.”12 He stresses the

tyranny of captains, and their tendency to flog the crew for insignificant offenses, smothering their

dignity and not allowing them any sort of ability to challenge the authority of their “superior”. Dana

shares a similar sentiment, stating that in the merchant service, jack tars were slaves aboard ships,

and that, similar to what Browne claims, captains had unlimited power.13 Any opposition to the

captain’s power was wrong and was commonly met with harsh discipline.

7 Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. 1898 Ibid. 4539 Glenn, Myra C. "The Naval Reform Campaign Against Flogging: A Case Study in Changing Attitudes Toward Corporal Punishment, 1830-1850." 42010 Ibid. 42011 Ibid. 42012 Browne, J. Ross. Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. 50513 Dana Jr., Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. New York: Modern Library, 2005. 81 + 296

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It is clear from similar explicit descriptions of brutal instances of disciplinary action in

Browne and Dana’s books that both authors felt life in the seafaring industry was defined by a

general culture of hardship. Browne describes the nature of his captain as a man with a “sharp,

harsh voice with a vulgar, nasal twang, and in such a manner as plainly betokened that he

considered us all slaves of the lowest cast, unworthy of the least respect, and himself our august

master.”14 Furthermore, Browne is insistent that the captain regularly threatened flogging as a

punishment for any sort of misbehaviour. For example, Browne’s shipmate was brutally flogged for

refusing to work due to intense sunstroke. Browne describes him as barely having the strength to

leave the forecastle; however, the captain, in Browne’s eyes, showed no mercy and made the

victim fully aware that he was in charge. In the process of being severely disciplined, the victim

pleaded,

"Don't choke me, captain; don't choke me!" "Yes, I'll choke the stubbornness out of you; I'll choke obedience into you!" roared the captain, shaking him by the throat. "Great God! You’ll kill me," groaned the man, nearly black in the face. "Do your duty, then." "I will, sir, I will. Don't kill me." "Go aft, then, and act as steward till I think proper to get one in your place; and remember, if you show any more of your stubbornness, I'll flog it out of you with a rope's end."15

The treatment was meant to intimidate and humiliate, and the captain ruthlessly exerted his

authority over a man who was debilitated by intense illness. These sort of occurrences prompted

Browne to personify a demon as the ship’s captain. Much of his writing includes terrifying instances

of the captain’s cruelty, describing him as being “pale with rage” and foaming at the mouth.16

Browne assures his audience that his experiences with a tyrannical captain was not a picture of

14 Browne, J. Ross. Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. 2315 Ibid. 32-3316 Browne, J. Ross. Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. 266

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extremity; rather, his experience was ordinary in the whaling industry.17 Historian Paul Gilje

supports Browne’s position, by indicating that merchantmen and whalers were never free from the

captain’s tyranny, and the captains use physical force to terrorize the crew, “threatening to kill the

men if they so much as raised their arm in self-defence.18

Dana endured a similar experience of intense physical discipline while aboard the Pilgrim.

He notes that it was sparked by arbitrary rage on the part of the captain. The victim was not even

sure why he was being flogged. The captain exclaimed,

“I flog you for your interference – for asking questions… nobody shall open his mouth aboard this vessel, but myself… if you want to know what I flog you for, I’ll tell you. It’s because I like to do it!-because I like to do it! - It suits me! That’s what I do it for… Don’t call on Jesus Christ, he can’t help you. Call on Captain Thompson. He’s the man! He can help you! Jesus Christ can’t help you know.”19

Browne and Dana’s experiences are highly similar, and provide an illustration of hardship felt by

sailors at the hand of the ship’s captain. Both authors’ examples are meant to indicate that this was

the nature of the seafaring industry; there existed virtually no freedom for dissent, and the

authority of the captain was absolute. In both cases, intense discipline was exerted despite a

pleading victim, and it was certainly a public spectacle. The captain had the unchecked ability to

reduce a man to having to beg for mercy in front of his crewmates. Discipline was thus employed to

intimidate; it was the captain’s way of keeping order.

Browne and Dana’s extensive depictions of shipboard discipline serve as an indication that

both authors favoured changes to the industry-wide lack of legal redress for captains who

17 Ibid. 50618 Gilje, Paul A. Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution. Philadelphia, PA: U of Pennsylvania, 2004. 8319 Dana Jr., Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. 113-114

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committed overly-abusive acts.20 They both equated the current conditions to be similar to slavery.

Browne took a more extreme position than Dana, and believed that it was necessary to completely

abolish the tyrannical and barbarous practice of flogging, in any form and under any

circumstance.21 It was Browne’s belief that with proper regulations, “a large proportion of the

crimes committed on the high seas might be prevented.”22 Dana, while believing that some form of

physical discipline was necessary to maintain order, felt rather strongly that there needed to be

punishment for captains who abused their power.23 It is clear from Browne and Dana’s portrayal of

arbitrary disciplinary action, that they wanted their audience to understand that seamen in general

were an oppressed class of people, occupying a separate labour space unchecked by modern law

and forgotten by justice and humanity.24

Browne and Dana both describe experiences with disease, death, daily labour, and

unsatisfactory provisions as a way to prove that hardship characterized the seafaring industry.

Illness and disease was common aboard ships, and Browne spends a great deal talking about how a

friend aboard the Styx suffered from intense sun-stroke early on in the voyage. He claims that even

after his friend returned home to the United States, “the effects of the sun-stroke still remained,

and he again fell sick, and continued throughout the winter in a state of great prostration of mind

and body.”25 More serious and often fatal diseases and illnesses like scurvy, smallpox, typhus,

20 Glenn, Myra C. "The Naval Reform Campaign Against Flogging: A Case Study in Changing Attitudes Toward Corporal Punishment, 1830-1850." 42421 Browne, J. Ross. Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. v22 Ibid. 50323 Glenn, Myra C. "The Naval Reform Campaign Against Flogging: A Case Study in Changing Attitudes Toward Corporal Punishment, 1830-1850." 42424 Ibid. 50125 Glenn, Myra C. "The Naval Reform Campaign Against Flogging: A Case Study in Changing Attitudes Toward Corporal Punishment, 1830-1850." 486

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tuberculosis, and yellow fever, plagued the seafaring industry.26 Disease was a major cause of death

on land as well, especially in increasingly urbanized industrial centres. However, there is evidence

that in the nineteenth century in Northeastern America there was at least the presence of a

medical profession and a growth in disease awareness and prevention techniques.27 For seafarers

on the other hand, the captain was the only thing resembling a doctor, being able to do little more

than set broken bones and care for infection.28 He had no ability to prevent the immense danger

and possible devastation to the crew that was often realized by visiting disease-ridden ports in

unfamiliar territory.29 Although this reality was far more daunting for merchant ships than whalers

(considering that whalers made port less often), if a disease made it on board, the occupation of

the ship was irrelevant because the tight sleeping quarters and confinement of the crew to small

spaces was common to all deep-sea vessels and made disease difficult to contain. A whale captain

in 1839, for example, claimed he was down twelve men as a result of a smallpox outbreak on

board.30 Losing crew numbers this size could easily put the entire vessel in jeopardy. Browne wants

his audience to know that even with the high risk of disease that seafarers were faced with, there

was little sympathy for the sick, and weakness was something that was not condoned by captains

or fellow crewmen.31 Sailors would suffer through pain or illness just to maintain a manly

appearance, and because they were given no alternative but to work.

Although disease was the most prominent cause of death that sailors faced, Browne assures

his audience that seafarers constantly faced a multitude of other dangers.32 He describes in detail

26 Gilje, Paul A. Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution. 11827 Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. 470-47428 Gilje, Paul A. Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution. 8029 Ibid. 8030 Ibid. 8031 Browne, J. Ross. Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. 4132 Ibid. 505

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the risk of being in small boats on the open sea going after whales, claiming that, “it is often

difficult to get the boat in a favourable position, and a slight error of judgement, or a want of skill in

the officer, may occasion the loss of the whole boat’s crew.”33 Even tangles or knots in the whale

lines could endanger everyone on board. Browne and Dana’s clearly want their audiences to

understand that despite death being so common in the seafaring industry, by no means did men

feel a lack of grief when one of their crewmates perished. They both provide examples describing

the emotional response of losing a fellow sailor. Browne talks of the quickness and unexpectedness

of having a man knocked overboard. Despite the constant pressure to be composed and exert a

masculine attitude while aboard ship, Browne describes the experience of losing his crewmate at

sea, by revealing that, “it is only at sea that the death of a comrade can be felt with all its

poignancy; and that you must know, even if you have never experienced it; for you may readily

imagine what it is to lose your best friend, when his place cannot be supplied.” Browne indicates

that in the whaling industry, death could happen quickly. Dana describes George Ballmer’s death, a

young English sailor, who was “going aloft to fit a strap round the main top-mast head…he fell from

the starboard futtock shrouds, and not knowing how to swim, and being heavily dressed… he

probably sank immediately.”34 His experience of grieving mirrors Browne’s when he says that,

Death is at all times solemn, but never so much so as at sea. A man dies on shore; his body remains with his friends, and ‘the mourners go about the streets;’ but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost, there is a suddenness in the event, and a difficult in realizing it, which give to it an air of awful mystery;… at sea, the man is near you – at your side – you hear his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows his loss.35

33 Ibid. 5334 Dana Jr., Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. 39-4035 Ibid. 40

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These long descriptions of the added solemnness that death at sea entails that indicate that both

Browne and Dana’s objective in their personal narratives was to highlight the excessive hardships

of seafaring life.

Unfavourable standards of living are described in both Browne and Dana’s books, especially

in terms of the typical poor quality of provisions. Both authors take exception to the rather abysmal

food and drink with which they were provided aboard long voyages. They both pontificate at great

length about their experience. Browne describes one of his first meals aboard the Styx;

For breakfast we had an abominable compound of water, some molasses, and something dignified by the name of coffee, with hard biscuit and watery potatoes; for dinner pork, salt beef, and potatoes; and for supper, a repetition of the biscuit and potatoes, with boiled weeds and molasses as a substitute for tea and sugar.36

He could not fathom how the experienced Portuguese sailors were able to devour their meals with

such relish, as he found the notion of eating such food revolting.37 He made it clear that as men

began to become excessively hungry, their appetite became more and more difficult to ignore;

consequently, almost any kind of food appeared palatable. He claimed that with a good appetite,

he ate “whale-flesh at sea with as much relish as [he] ever at roast-beef ashore.38 Browne certainly

saw this as a primary example of seafaring hardship. Dana identifies a major problem for sailors

when he describes that when at sea, being away from port for extended periods of time meant a

lack or even a complete elimination of fresh provisions. In his experience, “the captain had stopped

[their] rice, so that [they] had nothing but salt beef and salt pork throughout the week, with the

exception of a very small duff on Sunday.”39 Even this situation was favourable to the common

36 Browne, J. Ross. Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. 2937 Ibid. 2838 Browne, J. Ross. Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. 6339 Dana Jr., Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. 56

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reality that when fresh provisions fully ran out, sailors were left with no choice but to consumer

rancid food, often infested with maggots. Gilje indicates that “the experienced tar tapped his hard

biscuit before eating and watched the insects clamor to the surface to check on the disturbance.”40

While labour unions in America were striking for worker’s rights and shorter work days,

Browne and Dana’s autobiographies indicate the reality of the strictly enforced work schedules that

existed in the seafaring industry. During long periods of time when there was relative inactivity in

terms of actually hunting whales (whalers), or making port to trade (merchants), shipboard duties

were still in full effect, and created a repetitive life for sailors. Browne describes in detail the

monotony of the long passage. Before they reached the western whaling ground, they had to tend

to ship duties such as stowing away loose casks, clearing rubbish, washing the decks, and

conducting watches. The work expected was extensive and grueling, considering that it terms of

profit, it made sense to have as small a crew as possible and to delegate the many duties amongst

them. Both whalers and merchantmen were forced to spend time at the wheel and the mast head

every day.41 Dana described the monotony simply as being an unvarying repetition of daily duties.42

The importance of recognizing this is because it signifies again that both Browne and Dana had an

agenda to prove. They wanted to show by describing the realities of shipboard labour, that during

the Industrial Revolution that brought increased productivity and efficiency on land, seafarers

remained a class of wage-earning labourers who were constantly at work; in Browne’s case,

sleeping little more than 2-5 hours a day and working upwards of 15.43

40 Gilje, Paul A. Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution. 60 41 Browne, J. Ross. Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. 19242 Dana Jr., Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. 2143 Browne, J. Ross. Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. 192

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Browne’s autobiography shows very clearly how his feelings transitioned from excitement

about adventures to a strong desire to expose that whaling was a slave like industry, and that “at

best, the life of a whaleman [was] fraught with dangers and hardship.”44 At the beginning of his

narrative, he talks to his comrade, W ----- , about enthusiastic dreams of traveling the world and

getting rich.45 In his conclusion, he finds brotherhood with the same comrade, not as a result of a

long life of career enjoyment, or a fulfillment of the dreams of adventure that they both had during

their youth; rather, they found a bond through shared hardships.46 To Browne and Dana, they

believed that the ship was no place for a “thin-skinned” man.47Although it is impossible to know

completely how Dana and Browne’s tolerance to life at sea was in comparison to other sailors, their

opinions indicate that they felt that the seafaring industry was in dire need of reform. To them, it

was isolated as an industry that was still plagued with intense discipline, harsh labour conditions,

incredible threat of death and injury, and living conditions unsuitable to any free man.

This paper has shown through examination of the autobiographies of J. Ross Browne and

Richard Henry Dana Jr., that both authors had a decisive agenda to prove. They shared a common

belief that seafaring identity was defined by a culture of harsh discipline, excruciating labour,

immense danger, and constant risk of death and disease. Both Browne and Dana illustrate and

expose through their experiences the injustice that the common seafarer had to endure, and show

that any man aboard a ship in the nineteenth century was sorely lacking in his ability to exercise

any amount of independent freedom over the tyrannical rule of the ship’s captain. Browne lauds

Dana’s work as being a “faithful and graphic delineation of life in the merchant service,” helping to

44 Ibid. 50445 Ibid. 2146 Ibid. 49547 Dana Jr., Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. 295

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“expose the real hardships” encountered by sailors.48 The same spirit is embodied in Browne’s

narrative, and it is his goal to be equally as influential in his explanation of the nature of the

whaling industry. Neither account can be considered a voice for the entire seafaring industry, but

the way both authors describe life at sea as being fraught with hardship indicates that in their

perspectives, the seafaring industry was isolated as a paternalistic industry untouched by modern

progressive reform.

Sources:

Browne, J. Ross. Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. Cambridge: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1968.

Dana Jr., Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. New

York: Modern Library, 2005.

Gilje, Paul A. Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution.

Philadelphia, PA: U of Pennsylvania, 2004.

48 Browne, J. Ross. Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. v13

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Glenn, Myra C. "The Naval Reform Campaign Against Flogging: A Case Study in Changing Attitudes

Toward Corporal Punishment, 1830-1850." American Quarterly 35.4 (1983): 408- 25. Web.

Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. New

York: Oxford UP, 2007.

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