leaving without paying their debts. From his perspective there were “Sundry Vexations incident to business.”70 With an advance from a friendly sea captain, Susan managed to succeed, even if she did not make a fortune. She wrote to her mother two years later that her establishment could accommodate about twenty men at a time. She had invested $2,000 in furniture, bedding, dishes, and other items, and paid $800 a year in rent. If the house were full she could clear four or five dollars a day over her expenses. With any luck she could earn $500 a year. The margin for error was slim. Most of her initial investment had been on credit. If forced to sell, she would be lucky to get half the value for the furniture and goods she bought and would be left with almost nothing.71
A sailor would probably stay with his own family if they lived nearby, but most sailors stopped in so many different ports, or had families at a great distance, that lodging in the boardinghouse became part of the identity of Jack Tar. Horace Lane proclaimed that to be a sailor in a port was to stay at a boardinghouse. Remaining in the cramped quarters of the forecastle was beneath a tar's sense of self-worth. Lane explained that as a young man, “I thought I was a sailor, and should disgrace myself if I did not do as the rest—viz. to go on shore to a boarding house as soon as a ship was made fast, and the sails furled.”72 This sense of identity with occupation and the boarding-house led to distinctions between rank and race in some larger ports. John Remington Congdon, serving as second mate in 1840, went to a Liverpool boardinghouse that catered to men of similar rank. The men serving before the mast—common seamen—went to other boardinghouses, and the black cook went to yet another boardinghouse run by an interracial couple.73 The boardinghouse and the landlord were thus prominent features of the waterfront community and crucial to the portrayal of the stereotypical Jack Tar.
Although boardinghouse keepers remained important in arranging work for sailors, by the 1830s and 1840s, specialized shipping agents opened offices in several cities and even sent runners into the countryside to recruit labor. These middlemen were particularly active in the whaling industry's search for cheap labor. In 1837 Jacob Hazen signed on with a shipping agent in Philadelphia, who sent him to an agent in New York, who in turn arranged for Hazen to join a whaler out of Sag Harbor on Long Island. The charges for the services, room, board, and outfitting came to more than $100.74 Fourteen-year-old Eli P. Baker met the “runners of the ship Mary” in Albany in 1844. The agents brought him to New York and then sent him on to New Bedford and a two-year cruise without ever getting his father's permission.75 J. Ross Browne believed he had been misled by the New York shipping agent who sent him to New Bedford. The agent had told him: “a whaler is a place of refuge for the distressed and persecuted, a school for the dissipated, an asylum for the needy! There's nothing like it. You can see the world; you can see something of life!”76
Recruitment into the navy or on privateers was similar to recruitment of merchant sailors. Occasionally American captains in dire need of men resorted to impressment, a policy generally limited to European powers. Navy recruiters usually set up a rendezvous house, supplied music and entertainment, as well as free drinks and a bonus, to any sailor willing to sign aboard.77 Obviously this system was open to exploitation. William Ray admitted that “nothing but the insanity of Rum, violence, perfidy, artifice, or the most distressing penury, can draw men into a situation, where, instead, of meeting with promised smiles, approbation, reward and honour, they find nothing but frowns, chastisement, contempt, and disgrace.”78 The abuse could go both ways. Men might run away with the advance. Seven of the fifty-seven men Lieutenant William Henry Allen recruited for the Chesapeake in 1807 deserted before he shipped them off.79 Boardinghouse keepers, especially in the nineteenth century, played an important role in the recruiting process. Charles Smith ran up $40.38 in charges with landlord William Fairgreve to be paid out of his advance upon signing with the navy. The detailed list of expenses included two weeks of room and board for $7.00, carting his kit for $0.25, sundry cigars for $1.81, cash loaned for $4.50, and a black silk neckerchief for $1.00; various clothes for his upcoming service in the navy made up most of the rest.80 Recruiting was not always exploitative; men signed on with friends, relatives, and townsmen. Some captains went out of their way to reward men for enlisting or reenlisting. Captain Thomas Truxton of the Constellation offered a beaver hat, a black silk neckerchief, two months' advance pay, and two weeks' shore liberty to his crew in Baltimore to reenlist.81
Regardless of the type of vessel or the service he sailed for, the sailor went to sea to earn money. The laws of supply and demand had the greatest impact on what a sailor made. Between 1750 and 1850 monthly wages for common seamen varied from four dollars to fifty dollars. When demand was at its greatest, because of scarcity of labor or risks due to war, common seamen made their best money. If demand decreased, sailors' wages dropped and work became hard to find. A mariner's pay in New York declined by 50 percent in one year as the French and Indian War wound to a close. Wages were also high in Philadelphia during the 1750s and fell dramatically in the 1760s.82 Toward the end of the Revolutionary War, John Brice signed aboard the ship Nancy as the first mate for £18 per month. As soon as the preliminary peace had been agreed to, the captain reduced the wages. Brice sued in court, only to discover that the judge agreed with the owners and ordered that Brice should be paid the higher wage until March 3, 1783, upon which he was to be paid “Customary Peace wages” for the completion of the voyage. The wages of an experienced seaman on the same voyage went from £5 to £3 a month (approximately $12.50 to $7.50).83 After the Treaty of Paris of 1783, earnings were low, picking up again during the boom years of the 1790s.84 Throughout the period, sailor wages generally stayed in the $8 to $17 range. Local conditions, too, made a difference. While a run from New York to Quebec that began in April 1761 brought seamen, who risked impressment, 110 shillings a month, a trip from Gloucester to Virginia eight months later paid only 45 shillings.85 Horace Lane claimed that shortly before the War of 1812 he signed on to a vessel bound for Liverpool at Amelia Island, Florida, for $50 a month, when most American seamen made $12 a month. The captain paid this high wage because the vessel was sailing for Liverpool, where the risk of impressments was great. Skill level also mattered. On many voyages seamen were paid according to experience and ability. A greenhand might be paid half as much as as a seaman who truly knew the ropes, although the differential was usually only a few dollars a month.86 Wages could even vary on the same voyage depending on conditions in the ports visited. Daniel Evans and Zebulon York signed aboard the Aeolis in Portsmouth in March 1804 for $16 and $13 respectively. After they ran from the ship in Charleston, South Carolina, two months later, their replacements cost $23 and $16 each.87 The brig Mary had signed its crew in Providence in 1819 for wages that varied from $11 to $14 a month. When one of the poorer paid sailors jumped ship in Savannah, the captain had to offer $16 for his replacement.88 Certain ports, like New Orleans, were notorious for higher pay differentials, and it was a lucky captain who did not lose most of his crew if local wages were more than in the port of origin.89
Often, the wage was only a part of the sailor's compensation. Private ventures—the ability to use some of the cargo space for their own purposes—frequently came into play. On both the voyage to Quebec from New York, and the poorer paid trip from Gloucester to Virginia in 1761, common seamen were granted their own “venture.” Sometimes the articles signed by a sailor stipulated this right in detail; frequently it was merely assumed. Aboard the Susanna and Ann in 1762, which was running smuggled goods into New York, each sailor had ventures of two barrels of sugar worth £8 a barrel.90 When a shipowner questioned one sailor about loading two casks of his own goods in Port-au-Prince in 1762, the sailor retorted that he “conceives every foremast man has a Right by Law to put on board” a private venture and that the shipowner would not have questioned the sailor's right to a venture in New York.91 The contract for wages for a passage to the East Indies in 1831 included a quarter-ton privilege, which meant the sailor could ship five hundred pounds of goods as cargo.92 In the early 1800s James Durand brought five hundred pounds of coffee to the United States for which he received $125.93 Men like the Hammond brothers, who sailed in the 1820s and 1830s, constantly sent valued goods to their families to sell and for home consumption.94
