6. These sketches of matronly women with mopcaps found on the inside cover of the journal by William Henry Allen suggest the maternal images that many sailors took with them to sea. William Henry Allen, Journal of the George Washington (1800). Huntington Library.
For most sailors the ideal of the sacred mother, symbolizing hearth and kin, was an important part of their view of women. Young men new to the sea often pined for their mothers and wished “themselfes to home with their mamys.”23 Midshipman William Henry Allen was so homesick on his first voyage that he drew two pictures of a matronly woman wearing a mopcap—probably his dead mother—in the front of his journal.24 Even the most hardened sailor retained a tender place in his heart for his mother. Samuel Dalton, a salt who had spent years away from home in the navy and merchant marine and who was impressed in British service against his will, saw his mother as representing all that he had lost by his seafaring life. He wrote her in 1809 describing himself as “but a wanderer in the world.” He lamented, “As the day comes it is spent in thoughts that Distract my soul to pieces & wishes for to once more behold my beloved Mother.”25 Joseph Valpey, captured by the British during the War of 1812, extended his sympathies to all older women while emphasizing their maternal role in household service. He wrote a poem extolling the virtues of elderly women—motherlike figures—who nursed the sick and were willing to do work that younger women would not.26
The relationship between the sailor and his mother became an important component of the sentimentalized nineteenth-century literature concerning seamen. The vision of the woman is not sexual, but domestic and maternal. The poem “The Sailor Boy's Mother” appeared in 1822 and recited the tragedy of a widow parting with her son and keeping him in her thoughts, even on a deathbed made more lonely by the sailor boy's absence. The lyrics focus on the mother resigning herself to God's will, laying in bed thinking of “her own darling son, Who wand'ring, had roamed far away on the billow.” She felt great sorrow, “For she thought how her child all wrapped in his shroud, / Might sleep in the waves ere the dawn of to-morrow!” Her mind turned to the youth's happy childhood and how his activity comforted her “As she mourned for the husband who sunk in the ocean!” Then, after thinking of how the boy departed to go to sea,
Twas thus the poor widow then prayed for her child—
Oh! may heaven preserve him far on the billow;
Then gently she sighed and most sweetly she smiled,
As she thought of her orphan—and died on her pillow!27
Recollections of other female relatives could also symbolize sentiments of domesticity—the loving sister and dependent daughter. The image of the sweet and absent sister evoked a domestic ideal of protective and almost maternal role. G. Bayley's poem in a letter to his sister Lavina, penned amid the scurrying of huge cockroaches on a prison ship in Jamaica and interrupted by an overgrown rat jumping onto the table where he was writing, highlights this relationship. “In every season of the varied year / Ive known a sister's love, a sister's care.” Bayley continues with descriptions of peaceful rural scenes, emphasizing their bucolic nature and the presence of his beloved sister.
No birds now meet me with an early song
Lavina—was wont to share
A brother's pleasures and a brother's care
No more thy hand administers relief
Nor soothes my woes nor mitigates my grief.
Bayley sought strength and solace thinking of his sister “seated near some cool transparent brook,” reading, gathering hazelnuts, or in simple conversation with “Her wit engaging and her heart sincere.”28
In contrast, daughters appeared vulnerable and needing protection. One tale of shipwreck, a favorite form of literature among sailors, featured the two beautiful daughters of a ship captain. The daughters are both brave and helpless and are last seen seated with the father, waiting for the sinking ship to break up. Perhaps the father could have made it to safety, as several crew members manage to scamper to shore. Knowing that his daughters could not be saved, he did not even try. Instead, as one witness described it, he braced himself for the end, fighting back “the parental tear which then burst into his eye.”29 This sentimentalized portrait of a father unable to save his daughters was meant to pull on the heartstrings of a maritime readership fully aware of the power of nature and the limits of paternal protection for innocent daughters. It may have also subtly suggested the high cost such paternal care could entail.
When sailors turned their thoughts to their sweethearts or wives they combined both domestic and sexual fantasies. Jack Tar could idolize the woman of his dreams, envisaging a life of familial bliss, while recognizing that his absence created serious difficulties for his shoreside relationships. Although these reflections might be a source of anxiety and remind the sailor of the liberty he has lost by going to sea, they could also be a source of strength for men who not only had to battle the elements, but who also resided in an all-male culture for long periods of time. The temptations confronted by women appeared repeatedly in stories, songs, and stage productions of the loyal sweet-heart awaiting her sailor love's return. Within this context the sweetheart was the true sexual object of the sailor threatened by others. This idealized vision of honest womanhood contrasted with William Widger's subconscious fears. Josiah Cobb reported that while sailor prisoners in Dartmoor during the War of 1812 passed hour after hour spinning yarns for each other, one of the favorite topics was the sweetheart left at home.30 Joseph Valpey noted in his Dartmoor journal that he spent an “afternoon amongst My Friends in talking About the Salem Girls,” and several of the poems he penned centered on his absent love.31 The same concerns appeared in songs and chanteys.32 One tune, found in the journal of Timothy Conner from his incarceration in Forton Prison during the Revolutionary War, highlighted the girlfriend's loyalty.
The song was in response to Polly's wish that the war be over. The sailor declares:
You true hearted women wherever you be Pray
take my advice and be arited [a righted] by me
Be true to your sweethearts and when they come home
Then you'll live as happy as Darby and Jone.33
Sailor songs from the 1790s and early 1800s repeated this theme several times. Henry goes off to sea and his beloved Sally patiently waits for him. Sometimes he returns and they are married. Sometimes he perishes at sea, and forlorn she looks out across the ocean, withers, and dies. Often, the sailor is sustained through all kinds of peril merely by thinking of his sweetheart waiting at home.34 In Charles Dibden's “The Taken,” Jack survives one ordeal after another, comforted by the tobacco box his Nancy provided him. Inside the box cover appear the words “If you loves I as I loves you, no pair so happy as we two.” In the end he returns to his Nancy.35 In the standard version of “The Maid I Left Behind,” the singer remains loyal to his first love even though he travels the world over and sees exotic and rich women in several countries:
‘Mongst all my many ramblings
My heart it still is pure,
The witchery of hundreds
It unchanging did endure;
For amidst the flash of foreign eyes
I never yet could find
One who could my affections wean
From her I left behind.36
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