Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
Congress, and was a most eloquent appeal to the humane sentiment of the
country. As an evidence of the good it did, a law was passed soon after
the book appeared abolishing flogging in the Navy absolutely, without
substituting any other mode of punishment in its stead; and this was
exactly in accord with Melville’s appeal.”
“I do not think that I remember Melville at all,” Franklin goes on to
say; “occasionally will flash across my memory a maintop-man flitting
across about the starboard gangway with a white jacket on, but there
is not much reality in the picture which it presents to my mind. In
his book he speaks of a certain seaman, Jack Chase, who was Captain
of the maintop, of whom I have a very distinct recollection. He was
about as fine a specimen of seaman as I have ever seen in all my
cruising. He was not only that, but he was a man of intelligence, and
a born leader. His top-mates adored him, although he kept them up to
the mark, and made every man do his share of work. Melville has given
him considerable space in his book, and seems to have had intense
admiration for him. He mentions also a number of officers whom it is
not difficult to recognise. The Commanding Officer, who had a very red
face, he called Captain Claret; a small but very energetic Midshipman,
who made himself felt and heard about the decks, he called Mr. Pert;
the Gunner was ‘Old Combustibles.’ He gives no names, but to any one
who served in the Frigate _United States_ it was easy to recognise
the men by their sobriquets. Melville certainly did a grand work in
bringing his ability as a writer and his experience as a seaman to bear
upon the important matter--I mean corporal punishment--which had been
the subject of so much discussion in and out of Congress.”
The essential accuracy of Melville’s account of life on board the
Frigate _United States_ is thus, in the above as in other passages,
vouched for by a Rear-Admiral. Franklin, himself, however, is not
exhaustively familiar with the life and works of Melville, making him
an “admiralty lawyer” who went to sea for his health. And according to
Franklin’s account, Melville shipped on board the _United States_ from
Tahiti. According to Melville’s own account, he left Eimeo--from the
harbour of Tamai--not on board a man-of-war, but on board an American
whaler bound for the fishing grounds off Japan.
The itinerary of Melville’s rovings in the Pacific after he left Tahiti
cannot be stated with any detailed precision. In an Appendix to the
American edition of _Typee_, Melville says: “During a residence of four
months at Honolulu, the author was in the confidence of an Englishman
who was much employed by his lordship”--Sir George Paulet. In both
_Typee_ and _Omoo_ he speaks of conditions in the Sandwich Islands with
the familiarity of first-hand observation. The Frigate _United States_
sailed from Hampton Roads early in January, 1842. It doubled the Horn
late in February, and joined the Pacific squadron at Valparaiso.
After spending the winter of 1842-3 off Monterey, the _United States_
returned to Callao in the spring, and sailed for Honolulu, arriving in
the early summer of 1843. According to his own account, Melville left
Tahiti in the autumn of 1842. The _United States_ left Tahiti in the
summer of 1843. Melville speaks of revisiting the Marquesas and Tahiti
after the experiences recorded in _Typee_ and _Omoo_. In _Typee_ he
says: “Between two and three years after the adventures recorded in
this volume, I chanced, while aboard a man-of-war, to touch at these
islands”--the Marquesas. Though in this statement Melville is patently
careless in his chronology, there is no reason to doubt his geography.
According to the hypothesis that offers fewest difficulties--and none
of these at all serious--it would appear that Melville left the Society
Islands in the autumn of 1842, on board a whaler bound for the coast
of Japan, to arrive in Honolulu some time in the early part of 1843,
where, according to Arthur Stedman, he was “employed as a clerk.” In
the Introductory Note to _White-Jacket_ he says: “In the year 1843 I
shipped as ‘ordinary seaman’ on board a United States frigate, then
lying in a harbour of the Pacific Ocean. After remaining in the frigate
for more than a year, I was discharged from the service upon the
vessel’s arrival home.” Melville was discharged in Boston, in October,
1844. It would appear that Melville shipped on board the _United
States_, from Honolulu, in the summer of 1843, touching again at the
Marquesas and at Tahiti, and returning home by way of the Peruvian
ports.
Of Melville’s experiences between the time of his leaving the Society
Islands and that of his homeward cruise as a sailor in the United
States Navy, nothing is known beyond the meagre details already stated.
In _White-Jacket; or, the World in a Man-of-War_ (1850) Melville has
left a fuller account, however, of his experiences on board the _United
States_. The opening of _White-Jacket_ finds Melville at Callao, on
the coast of Peru--the last harbour he touched in the Pacific. In
_Typee_ and _Omoo_ he had already recounted his adventures in the South
Seas, with all the crispness and lucidity of fresh discovery. While on
board the _United States_ he returned to old harbours, and sailed past
familiar islands. But _White-Jacket_ is not a _Yarrow Revisited_.
On the showing of _White-Jacket_, Melville’s life in the navy
was, perhaps, the happiest period in his life. It is true that in
_Typee_ he wrote: “I will frankly confess that after passing a few
weeks in the valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of
human nature than I had ever before entertained. But, alas, since
then I have been one of the crew of a man-of-war, and the pent-up
wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous
theories.” And in _White-Jacket_ he has many a very dark word to say
for the navy. Sailors, as a class, do, of course, entertain liberal
notions concerning the Decalogue; but in this they resemble landsmen,
both Christian and cannibal. And in Melville’s day--as before and
after--from a frigate’s crew might be culled out men of all callings
and vocations, from a backslidden parson to a broken-down comedian. It
is an old saying that “the sea and the gallows refuse nothing.” But
withal, more than one good man has been hanged. “The Navy,” Melville
says, “is the asylum for the perverse, the home of the unfortunate.
Here the sons of adversity meet the children of calamity, and here
the children of calamity meet the offspring of sin.” According to
this version, a typical man-of-war was a sort of State Prison afloat.
“Wrecked on a desert shore,” Melville says, “a man-of-war’s crew could
quickly found an Alexandria by themselves, and fill it with all the
things which go to make up a capital.” The _United States_, surely,
lacked in none of the contradictions that go to make up a metropolis:
“though boasting some fine fellows here and there, yet, on the whole,
charged to the combings of hatchways with the spirit of Belial and
unrighteousness.” Or it was like a Parisian lodging house, turned
upside down: the first floor, or deck, being rented by a lord; the
second by a select club of gentlemen; the third, by crowds of artisans;
and the fourth--on a man-of-war a basement of indefinite depth, with
ugly-looking fellows gazing out at the windows--by a whole rabble of
common people.
The good or bad temper, the vices and virtues of men-of-war’s men were
in a great degree attributable, Melville states, to their particular
stations and duties aboard ship. Melville congratulated himself upon
enjoying one of the most enviable posts aboard the frigate. It was
Melville’s office to loose the main-royal when all hands were called
to make sail: besides his special offices in tacking ship, coming to
anchor, and such like, he permanently belonged to the starboard watch,
one of the two primary grand divisions of the ship’s company. And in
this watch he was a main-top-man; that is, he was stationed in the
main-top, with a number of other seamen, always in readiness to execute
any orders pertaining to the main-mast, from above the main-yard. In
Melville’s time, the tops of a frigate were spacious and cosy. They
were railed in behind so as to form a kind of balcony, that looked
airily down upon the blue, boundless, dimpled, laughing, sunny sea,
and upon the landlopers below on the deck, sneaking about among the
guns. It was a place, too, to test one’s manhood in rough weather. From
twenty to thirty loungers could agreeably recline there, cushioning
themselves on old sails and jackets. In being a main-top-man,
Melville prided himself that he belonged to a fraternity of the most
liberal-hearted, lofty-minded, gay, elastic, and adventurous men on
board ship. “The reason for their liberal-heartedness was, that they
were daily called upon to expatiate themselves all over the rigging.
The reason for their lofty-mindedness was, that they were high lifted
above the petty tumults, carping cares, and paltrinesses of the decks
below.” And Melville attributed it to his having been a main-top-man,
and that in the loftiest yard of the frigate, the main-royal-yard,
“that I am now enabled to give such a free, broad, off-hand,
bird’s-eye, and more than all, impartial account of our man-of-war
world; withholding nothing; inventing nothing; nor flattering, nor
scandalising any; but meting out to all--commodore and messenger boy
alike--their precise descriptions and deserts.”
Melville says that the main-top-men, with amiable vanity, accounted
themselves the best seamen in the ship; brothers one and all, held
together by a strong feeling of _esprit de corps_. Their loyalty was
especially centred in their captain, Jack Chase--a prime favourite
and an oracle among the men. Upon Jack Chase’s instigation they
all wore their hats at a peculiar angle; he instructed them in the
tie of their neck handkerchiefs; he protested against their wearing
vulgar _dungaree_ trousers; he gave them lessons in seamanship. And he
solemnly conjured them, with unmitigated detestation, to eschew the
company of any sailor suspected of having served in a whaler. On board
the _United States_, Melville wisely held his peace “concerning stove
boats on the coast of Japan.”
Melville’s admiration for Jack Chase was perhaps the happiest
wholehearted surrender he ever gave to any human being. Jack Chase was
“a Briton and a true-blue; tall and well-knit, with a clear open eye,
a fine broad brow, and an abounding nut-brown beard. No man ever had
a better heart or a bolder. He was loved by the seamen and admired by
the officers; and even when the captain spoke to him, it was with a
slight air of respect. No man told such stories, sang such songs, or
with greater alacrity sprang to his duty. The main-top, over which
he presided, was a sort of oracle of Delphi; to which many pilgrims
ascended, to have their perplexities or difficulties settled.” Jack
was a gentleman. His manners were free and easy, but never boisterous;
“he had a polite, courteous way of saluting you, if it were only to
borrow a knife. He had read all the verses of Byron, all the romances
of Scott; he talked of Macbeth and Ulysses; but above all things was he
an ardent admirer of Camoen’s _Lusiad_, part of which he could recite
in the original.” He spoke a variety of tongues, and was master of an
incredible richness of Byronic adventure. “There was such an abounding
air of good sense and good feeling about the man that he who could not
love him, would thereby pronounce himself a knave. I thanked my sweet
stars that kind fortune had placed me near him, though under him,
in the frigate; and from the outset, Jack and I were fast friends.
Wherever you may be now rolling over the blue billows, dear Jack, take