15. Although somewhat fanciful, this portrayal of a forecastle gives some sense of the crowded conditions and varied relationships aboard ship. “Life in the Forecastle.” J. Ross Browne, Etchings of a Whaling Cruise (New York, 1846).
There was seldom enough food, and its quality often left something to be desired. The experienced tar tapped his hard biscuit before eating and watched the insects clamor to the surface to check on the disturbance. Meals consisted of salt beef or pork, duff, and lobscouse (a shipboard stew of meat, vegetables, and potatoes). Merchantmen had a cook who lived separately from the crew; in the nineteenth century African Americans increasingly held the position. This individual, despite the complaints of his fellow seamen, was expected to have some skill in handling the ship's stores if not in the culinary arts. His wage was often higher than the average seaman's. In the forecastle the men ate out of a common pot, called a kid, much to the chagrin of one green hand who described the forecastle's table manners as “hacking here and there, not unlike savages.”40 Sailors of all stripes sought to supplement their fare whenever they could through fishing or purchasing fresh vegetables and fruits while in port. The main beverage was water, provided in barrels on deck. Unless the vessel was put on short rations, sailors were welcome to use a dipper and quench their thirst whenever they felt the need. Coffee became increasingly important to sailors in the nineteenth century. Most sailors also made sure that they had their share of the daily grog.
The grog helped break the monotony of the routine. Long voyages or being becalmed could wear nerves thin. One log keeper commented, “there is such sameness & the same tegious [tedious] recurrence to Nautical observations that I am obliged to drive off the Hypocondriac, which hovers about me.” Repeated cloudiness and rain could also be depressing. The same sailor wrote:
The darkened sky how thick it lowers
Troubled with storms & big with showers
No cheerful gleam of light appears
But nature pours forth all her tears.
He then added, “Long passage dark Gloomy weather very unpropitious, the Blue Devils hover round.”41 Shipboard existence could be tiresome and arduous. On a transatlantic voyage, one sailor complained, “slave like life this going to sea, completely imprisoned, [and] knocked about too and fro.”42 The humdrum of the trackless, endless sea and repetitive work plagued whalers when no whales were in sight. Browne reminded his readers that “every body who has ever read of the sea” was aware of the “monotony of a long passage.” On the “clumsy barque,” Browne explained, “time hung very heavily on our hands.”43
Although familiar with tedium, a sailor knew that the sea was a dangerous place. Men died at sea. Dangling from the yardarm during his first storm, a green hand like Browne had better hang on for dear life. Even experienced seamen toppled from aloft in fair weather. Ebenezer Clinton described how twenty-nine-year-old John Nichols slipped off the yardarm a few weeks after leaving Boston. The crew made “Every Exertion to save him,” to no avail. “The poor soul Swam after the Ship a large time.” Realizing his efforts were in vain, he lifted his hat and “twirled it over his head and threw it from him and gave up the ghost.” Logbooks and journals report repeatedly of men taking such falls. Crashing onto the deck meant at the least serious injury. Sometimes sailors were lucky and the fall was cushioned by a wind-filled sail. Or they landed in the sea and could swim long enough to be saved, but many sailors could not swim a stroke. Even the deck and below held ample opportunity for accidents. Shifting cargo, broken equipment falling from aloft, a mishandled tool, back-breaking labor, an unexpected lurch of the sea, all held the potential for injury or death.44
A storm only intensified the danger, as the entire vessel could disappear without a trace. During one storm in September 1846, sixty-three men from the Marblehead fishing fleet drowned.45 In 1815 the Wasp set sail into the Atlantic, never be heard from again.46 Hurricanes left ships without masts, cast on their beam-ends, or at the bottom of the ocean. The schooner Dispatch Packet left Salem's Derby Wharf in September 1820 and arrived in Martinique twenty-eight days later. The voyage was uneventful, and after another month the Dispatch Packet headed back to New England. The ship never made it to Salem. For twenty-nine days “sea mountains” engulfed the schooner, throwing the vessel on its beam-ends, smashing its cabin, and sweeping away the masts. The men ran short of food, and had only rainwater to drink. After ninety-eight days at sea the schooner limped back to the West Indies and was condemned and sold as a wreck.47 Anyone who braved Cape Horn knew that he put his life at risk in the stormy waters south of Tierra del Fuego. Tales about hair-raising experiences with wind and weather became staples for many sailors.48
The terrors of the sea went beyond drowning and sinking in a storm. Sailors left in a disabled vessel or who piled into a longboat after their ship went down sometimes faced harrowing ordeals. In 1765 the Peggy was sailing back to New York from the Azores when a storm left the ship a floating hulk. As the Peggy drifted for days, provisions ran out and the crew resorted to cannibalism before they were rescued.49 The greatest saga of this kind was the story of the whaleship Essex. On November 20, 1820, an irate whale rammed the Essex, stove in her sides, and sent the ship to the bottom of the Pacific. Twenty men were left with three whaleboats. Having taken some provisions and water from the vessel, the crew embarked on a journey of epic proportions. Wrongly fearing cannibals on the nearest islands, the Marquesas about 800 miles to the windward, the whaleboats beat their way south and then east to reach the coast of South America—a trip of more than 4,500 miles. One boat and its crew were lost, three men voluntarily remained on a deserted island, and only six starved men were picked up at the end of their oddysey. To survive, these men had to eat the dead bodies of their shipmates. Worse, one boat crew drew lots to see who would be killed to provide sustenance for the others.50 Even if a ship was not wrecked, lack of wind or contrary winds could also spell disaster. When a ship's water or provisions gave out, the crew faced an agonizing death. Short provisions might lead to scurvy or malnourishment, crippling a man for life, or cause accidents a healthy man might avoid.
Sickness and disease also created problems and could be fatal. The captain usually served as something of a doctor on all except naval vessels, which would usually have a doctor on board. He might have to pull a tooth, care for infection, or set a broken bone. Visiting a disease ridden-port could devastate a crew. The yellow fever epidemics that racked American ports in the 1790s and early 1800s came from ships from the West Indies. Mortality was especially high along the waterfront.51 At sea the consequences of contagion could be catastrophic. With few extra hands on most ships, a disease like yellow fever or malaria, could leave a crew on a merchantman so short-handed that it might put the entire vessel in jeopardy. Yellow fever swept through one vessel in the West Indies, killing the captain and four others in August 1802.52 A whale captain reported that he lost one man and had twelve others down on account of smallpox in 1839.53 The close quarters aboard a warship spread disease rapidly. More than one hundred men fell ill after the frigate Columbia left China in 1839.54 One reason that the British resorted to impressment so often in the West Indies was that the unhealthy climate so decimated the navy that captains desperately needed more manpower to sail and fight on their ships.
For many sailors the camaraderie at sea offered solace in the face of adversity. Special bonds developed between men who ate together, stood frozen watch together, reefed sail together, listened to one another's yarns, and lived within and opposed the same authoritarian structure. Each tar knew the dangers he confronted from the elements as well as from pirates and foreign predators.
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., relished the life of the forecastle and viewed it as a release from the supervision of the officers. He believed that “No man can be a sailor, or know what sailors are, unless he has lived in the forecastle with them—turned in and out with them, and eaten of their dish and drank of their cup.”55 The sense of community and shared experiences was very important to sailors and fostered equality