Mistah Christiad!
This week’s review comes from Brier Island, Nova Scotia. By an extraordinary coincidence this is both the boyhood home of Joshua Slocum (first man to complete a solo circumnavigation of the globe in 1895), AND the place where, last week, I discovered mildewed and dog-eared editions of the works that I review now: Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years before the Mast, and Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall’s Men against the Sea. If you get a distinct whiff of salt air from these circumstances, be not alarmed.
Dana’s Two Years before the Mast is based on his own personal diary of his voyage (1835 – 36) on a merchant ship south from Boston, around Cape Horn (pre-panama canal) and thence northwards,
along the sparsely settled coast of California. Dana was a student at Harvard University when failing eyesight and poor health convinced him that he needed a change of scene and way of life. Not one for half measures, he signed up as a common seaman on the brig Pilgrim, and he was off.
Fortuitously, Dana’s wonderful gift for language allowed him to convey what had never been conveyed before— the life of a common seaman from up close. For modern equivalents, think Hunter S. Thomson or George Plimpton and their brand of direct, you-are-there journalism. The difference is that Dana’s character is always in the background. He records his elation as he overcomes his first days of seasickness, as he masters complex rigging manoeuvres, as he finds a new way of “frisbeeing” cowhides, but overall he is deferential— he realizes that what he is relating has its own inherent fascination. We learn of the complexities involved in running a merchantman. We appreciate the maritime culture that arose within the ships, which were, effectively, workhorses of trade, colonization, and protoglobalization. We discover the subtle social constraints that govern the interactions of the Captain and crew members of different stations. Wannabe chief mate? Rock and a hard place! Go too easy on the crew, they will take advantage of you and perhaps put the ship at risk. Go too hard, they will lose their willingness to work, and, again, put the ship at risk. In either case, you lose the respect of the Captain and stand to be roundly abused and demoted. To flog or not to flog? Now THAT’S a question ....
Men against the Sea is the middle volume in a trilogy by Nordhoff and Hall, the sequel to Mutiny on the Bounty; prequel to Pitcairn’s Island. The Bounty story is well known; Captain Bligh was in charge of an expedition to test the viability of bringing breadfruit from Tahiti to the Caribbean for cultivation as a source of food. Bligh was extremely authoritarian and seemed to care significantly more for the breadfruit than for his sailors. The entire trilogy was based on meticulous research of admiralty records, ship logs, articles, and personal interviews with descendents. In this middle volume the authors provide a vivid recreation of the voyage of Captain Bligh and his loyal crewmen (18 souls) who, in May of 1789, were cut adrift on a 23-foot launch by the mutineers on the Bounty. Relying on Bligh’s logbooks, the authors provide an account that rivals Dana’s in its realism and immediacy. Abandoned near the Friendly Islands (Tonga), Bligh and his crew discover that the seriously over-laden launch is no match for heavy seas. There is a sail, but any rough weather puts the crew in a frantic race to see if they can bail fast enough to avoid sinking. With scant provisions—and no firearms—they are obliged to run a gauntlet of hostile island tribes. Provisioning frequently results in a headlong race against long war canoes manned by seriously disgruntled natives. One crewmember—the only one lost on the voyage—is brained in one such encounter. They traverse 3,618 miles—from the Island of “Tofoo” through the “Feejee” islands over New Holland (Australia) to finally, on the brink of death, reach the Dutch settlement at Timor.
These works provoke interesting questions for the modern reader—about authority, discipline, dedication, toughness. As Dana shows, a Captain’s authority on board ship is absolute. He can do anything that he deems in the best interests of the ship, the owners, or himself. And Captains become Captains through a very rigorous process of selection. Fully rigged ships simply cannot survive under incompetent hands. A ship in a storm is like a machine gone berserk; all hands must work together in perfect concert to assure survival. There is no time for “collaborative” muddling to a clear understanding of what should be done, no “democratic” deliberations over a decision, and, certainly, no sick days or burn-out provisions. The Captain of the Pilgrim is an arbitrary, selfish “s.o.b.” but Dana never once questions the value or necessity of his absolute authority. Captain Bligh so oppresses his crew that they mutiny, yet through his rare quality of will, his knowledge of the sea, his capacity to lead, he sees his loyal men through a seemingly impossible experience.
A significant appeal of these works is in the detail—the marble-like smoothness of a sail stretched taught by the wind, the fluorescent trails left by dolphins at ship side, the desolation of sunrise over a gray, inhospitable sea, the beating of bare, frozen hands against frozen sails to restore feeling.
Two Years before the Mast has been made into a movie which is not worth viewing. The book is available in Lennoxville Library. Nordhoff and Hall’s works are widely available through interlibrary loan.
—Stephen Sheeran