War for Independence contained large numbers of men not born in America.115 In a sampling of crew lists from 1803 to 1806 in Providence, Rhode Island, about 10 to 15 percent of crews were foreign born. These men came from many locations, including India, the West Indies, Italy, Portugal, as well as northern Europe.116 Billy G. Smith found the same proportion of foreign seamen in Philadelphia in 1803. In 1807, as much as half of the men serving in the United States Navy in New York were foreigners.117 Melville's New Bedford contained a hodgepodge of denizens from Mediterranean mariners jostling ladies to lascars (natives of India and Southeast Asia) and Malays, to “cannibals” and South Sea islanders like Ishmael's soulmate, Queequeg.118 The New-Bedford Port Society, offering substance to Melville's literary portrait, reported in 1836 that one-third of all the sailors in the busy whaling port were foreigners.119
Blacks were an important component of the waterfront workforce. Horace Lane was struck, and perhaps intimidated, by the African American men and women at the dance hall he visited when he was sixteen. He should not have been surprised. Throughout the Age of Revolution blacks could be found in the dockside neighborhoods of almost every American port. During the colonial period most of these blacks would have been slaves; after 1776 more and more were free. These people worked in and sometimes owned grog shops, oyster stands, and other service-oriented businesses. Many were day laborers and stevedores. Blacks also worked as artisans in maritime trades like ship building, caulking, and sailmaking. A few, such as sailmaker James Forten of Philadelphia, managed to earn a modicum of wealth and respectability.120 Most, including Frederick Douglass, a slave caulker in Baltimore before his escape from bondage and his career as an abolitionist, sought to carve out a niche for themselves through their skill and hard work along the waterfront.121
Douglass, disguised in sailor's garb, was able to travel undetected to the North and his freedom because so many black men signed on as seamen in the merchant marine. The extent and character of the African American component of crews, however, varied over time. During the colonial period it was not unusual to find slaves serving aboard vessels. In some cases an entire crew might be made up of men in bondage. Free blacks also worked aboard ships. After the American Revolution, which created a large pool of free African Americans in both the North and the South, blacks became a significant element of almost every crew. At least one-fourth of Philadelphia's young black males shipped as sailors in the early nineteenth century.122 In crew lists for several cities for the same period, the percentage of berths held by blacks usually hovered around 15 percent, while in some cities, like Providence, the total reached 30 percent. By the 1830s and 1840s, however, the number of African American seamen began to decline as several southern states passed laws discriminating against black seamen, and as racial prejudice intensified in both the North and the South. By the 1840s and 1850s many of the blacks still in the merchant marine were driven from the forecastle and worked as ship's cooks.123
Even among the American-born white seamen there were many differences in background and birthplace. The image of the chiseled New Englander as the embodiment of the American tar does not hold. True enough, many sailors hailed from New England, and in some areas of maritime industry, like the banks fishery that sailed from small ports like Marblehead and Gloucester, Massachusetts, many of the half dozen men crammed into the small schooners came from the same towns and knew each other all too well.124 On long whaling voyages too, the crew might be taken from all over New England and include Native Americans as well as young farm boys eager to earn a stake to establish themselves on shore.125 But the merchant sailing vessels, especially those that sailed from larger ports, contained men from up and down the seaboard. In the colonial New York Admiralty courts, only about half of the American-born men identified came from New York.126 This proportion may have declined in large ports after the Revolutionary War. Less than 10 percent of the mariners in Philadelphia crews in 1803 were born in that city.127 In smaller ports like Salem and Providence, the majority of sailors were locals.128
Many maritime workers traced seafaring roots back for generations. Others left the family farm to seek their fortunes abroad, knowing that they had a sparse patrimony if they stayed at home. A few seamen came from affluent backgrounds and hoped to learn the ropes in the forecastle before they moved to the quarterdeck. A variety of circumstances could lead a man to sign on with a ship. There were even some less ambitious souls—like Melville and Dana—whose education and temperament set them apart from their shipmates. Some sought respite and adventure. Samuel Smith's business plans went sour; he fell into debt and had nowhere else to turn.129 One whaleman who taught school, farmed, and fished in the year before signing on a cruise, saw his stint at sea as yet another in a round of different employments. The forecastle included men from many different classes and backgrounds, as well as nationalities.130
Despite this diversity, sailors generally shared one characteristic: more than half were in their twenties. A ship might contain a boy of ten or twelve, like Horace Lane, who labored as a servant or cabin boy. A serious maritime career did not begin until the late teens. The average age of sailors was about twenty-five. Less than 20 percent of seamen were under twenty, most of these were eighteen or nineteen. By the time a man reached his thirties, he likely either moved on to a new occupation ashore, turned to fishing, labored on the docks, or was lost at sea. Approximately 20 percent continued to ship out into their thirties or forties, some as officers and some merely as “old salts.” Surveys of American prisoners of war held during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 suggest that during hostilities, as job prospects dimmed on the waterfront and the lure of privateering offered the hope of quick rewards, the average age increased slightly.131 Overall, compared to their white shipmates, black seamen were slightly older. In 1803 more than 80 percent of the white seamen and 70 percent of the blacks on crew lists in Providence were under the age of thirty.132 Being a mariner was a young man's game.133
The waterfront workforce, however, included man at various ages. As reported in the reform publication the Mariner's Church in 1818 “there are many old Seamen, who are employed in fitting out vessels, many ship carpenters and others” who crowd the dockside neighborhoods.134 “Old” Mr. Coats, the boatswain of the Beaver, gave up the sea after a China voyage in 1805–1806. He married and became a rigger in New York.135 One master rigger who listed his employees in 1821 stated that they all had once followed the sea but now worked on shore.136 Often these men turned to waterfront labor when shipboard life became too physically demanding for them, or when personal commitments, like providing for a family, convinced them to remain rooted in one community.
The range of shoreside labor was staggering. Many men who served at sea remained near the waterfront as stevedores, riggers, ship carpenters, sailmakers, blockmakers, and coopers. Others set up grog shops or boardinghouses. Some men turned to regular trades a few streets away from the docks as carpenters, shoemakers, and the like. Others went further inland. A few actually became farmers. Indeed, the boundaries between work ashore and work afloat remained fluid. Men who shipped out one month might stay ashore the next month. Many who labored at sea while in their twenties avoided service on the ocean in their thirties. Others shifted back and forth throughout their lives.
4. This certificate includes five waterfront scenes: at top is a view of Salem harbor; one of the smaller pictures shows two men working a sugar press in a warehouse; the other three demonstrate various stages of preparing a vessel for sea. Salem Marine Society Certificate for John B. Knight, January 31, 1839. Peabody Essex Museum.
Sometimes it was a sense of wanderlust, or some mysterious unease like Melville's “growing grim about the mouth” and “damp, drizzly November” in his soul, that limited time on land.137 At least twice during his teens Horace Lane attempted to wean himself from a sailor's life. Before his arms-running voyage in 1804 he spent two years ashore learning a trade, and in 1805 he tried blacksmithing for a while. Yet Lane complained that “There was a constant restless anxiety for something—I
