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 theSampsoncruised the bars, taverns, and grog shops of the New...

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 brigPhoenix. 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 waterfront, where he quickly became frustrated by the inability of “his...

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...

John Blatchford told a fantastic story. He had signed aboard the Continental shipHancockas a fifteen-year-old cabin boy in June 1777. He returned to his home on Cape Ann as a grown man sometime after the Treaty of Paris of 1783. In between he had served under six flags and had traveled half way around the world. During the American Revolution Blatchford paid a heavy price for his fighting for the revolutionary cause, sacrificing his freedom for years at a time. He also learned an important lesson: as a poor sailor buffeted about by capricious winds, sometimes it was...

James Durand almost mutinied. He believed that there was a contradiction between a “government which boasts of liberty” and the autocracy of the quarterdeck. He complained bitterly of the midshipmen, no more than mere boys, who ordered grown men around with verbal abuse. And he declared that “no monarch in the world is more absolute than the Captain of a Man-of War.” He believed that flogging was an outrage “on human nature,” especially because a man might be punished “for a crime no more serious than spitting on the quarter deck.”¹ When an injustice took place on the frigateConstitution...

Samuel Leech knew the horror of naval warfare. When he was fourteen years old he served as a powder boy attached to the fifth gun of the main deck of the HMSMacedonian. On October 25, 1812, his sleek frigate was pounded by the American frigateUnited Statesin the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Although the ships were rated similarly, it was not an even match; theUnited Statesbroadside contained 786 pounds of metal to 546 pounds for theMacedonian; theUnited Stateshad 478 men aboard, theMacedonianhad 301. In the ninety-minute contest more than one-third of the British...

The Reverend Henry Chase cared about sailors. He began his missionary work on New York’s waterfront in 1820, serving the newly opened Mariner’s Church on Roosevelt Street. He also labored up and down the rough-hewn streets of the Fourth and Seventh Wards, visiting families, holding prayer meetings, talking to sailors. Chase’s was a personal crusade. He felt “gratified and animated” in his efforts. He reported that “The solicitude of sailors and their families to be visited—their eagerness to receive tracts—to be instructed—to be prayed with—and the inquiry ‘What shall I do to be saved’” rendered these...

Herman Melville was a sailor. His reasons for seeking work at sea were complex: part necessity, part tradition, and part wanderlust. Born the scion of two distinguished families, he grew up in affluence. After he reached adolescence the family’s fortunes took a turn for the worse. His father, Allan Melville, had made one poor investment after another, having borrowed against his own and his wife’s inheritance. Allan died when Herman was twelve, leaving little but debts to his wife and children. This poverty limited young Herman’s education. For the next seven years he held a variety of jobs as a...