American Studies

As many historians have observed, the Atlantic maritime culture of the Age of Sail was unique in many ways. At the same time, for most New England mariners of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, seafaring was but one stage in a life arc that often encompassed rural farmwork, employment along seaport waterfronts, or incipient entrepreneurial efforts. One scholar who demonstrates a keen understanding of the multifaceted experience of these sailors is Daniel Vickers. In Young Men and the Sea, as in his previous work Farmers and Fishermen, Vickers presents the full spectrum of these [End Page 146] seafarers' lives. He examines their occupational histories before and after they sailed before the mast, traces the familial and social connections that influenced their maritime experiences, and notes the impact of age and race upon their lives. At once a history of disparate individuals and the communities they formed, this book presents a nuanced and dynamic vision of seafaring lives in motion.

Young Men and the Sea concentrates on the port city of Salem, Massachusetts. First settled by seafaring colonists in the 1620s, the small outpost on the North Shore endured several rocky decades before it began to prosper. The advent of the cod fishery, supplemented by coastal trading, soon led to the development of a complex and successful local economy that expanded into shipbuilding, mercantile activity, and a growing presence in transatlantic trade. By the end of the eighteenth century Salem boasted a prominent merchant fleet that employed hundreds of sailors, as well as growing numbers of shore workers who swelled Salem's population. As seafaring opportunities ebbed by 1850 with the fading of the Age of Sail, the city's workingmen turned to shore employment in the textile mills and other factories that came to dominate the industrializing community.

Maritime Salem is an ideal research subject due to its rich resources of personal and institutional records. Court records, account books, shipping documents and crew lists, church records, family papers, and sea-journals were all meticulously kept and preserved by the literate, historically-minded townsfolk. The surfeit of documentation allows Vickers to reconstruct minutiae including the ratio of carts to boats in town (3:2 in the years after 1645, 32) as well as desertion rates among sailors aboard Salem vessels (which rose from three percent to thirty-three percent between 1726 and 1850, 197). More significantly for the purpose of the book, the quantity and variety of available sources provides a wealth of detail attesting to the experiences and motivations of Salem's seafarers.

The book is organized into seven chapters by chronological period, with the eighteenth century comprising its central section. Only the final chapter titled "Mastery and the Maritime Law" does not quite fit the flow of the narrative, as its broader discussions of maritime discipline and labor relations fall outside the purview of Salem and its inhabitants. Nonetheless, it is as insightful and informative as the rest of the work.

In conclusion, Young Men and the Sea is a masterly work of particular interest to maritime and labor historians, as well as a more general readership. [End Page 147]