Liberty on the Waterfront. Paul A. Gilje
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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
Several of these songs were written for the stage and for a popular audience, including sailors.37 Plays, too, often turned to the image of the female sweetheart remaining true to her absent sailor beau. In The Purse; or Benevolent Tar by J. C. Cross, the sailor's wife is pressured by a rich aristocrat, resists, and is rewarded when her husband returns to save her and her son from the clutches of the evil would-be suitor.38 Isaac Bickerstaff's Thomas and Sally: Or, The Sailor's Return follows a similar outline, but also includes some revealing images of women. Sally is first seen sitting by a spinning wheel, representing domesticity and female industry. She and Thomas pledge mutual love to one another, then he is off to sea. Later, when Sally is again engaged in female industry (she is carrying a milk bucket), a rich squire offers her money, clothes, and promises if he can have his way with her. The squire is about to force himself on her when Thomas appears and rescues Sally.39
The resolution of such difficulties followed an idealized goal, especially in the nineteenth century, of domestic bliss. The happy couple in “The Dark-Eyed Sailor” marries after Mary passes a test of her faithfulness to her William in disguise. The song concludes:
In a cottage neat by the river side
It's William and Mary they do reside
So girls prove true while your lovers are away
For a cloudy morning oft brings a pleasant day.40
Similar images of domestic tranquility appear in the carvings of whalemen on scrimshaw. Typically the husband and wife gather around a comfortable chair, surrounded by children. In the background is a window with a ship in the harbor. Sometimes the carving portrayed a parting scene. Other times it represented an ideal of an ongoing domestic arrangement in which all relished one another's company. Such images may well have been simply the musings of a husband absent for years who wanted to present his wife with a token of his affection upon his return. They also reflect one aspect of women in the mind of the sailor.41
Seafarers could celebrate the virtues of married life, especially in contrast to more ephemeral liaisons. John Baker wrote a poem in his journal declaring, “I am Marry'd and happy with wonder.” He chided “rovers and rakes…who laugh at the mention of conjugal bliss.” Baker believed that only in marriage could “permanent pleasure be found,” in contrast to “the joys of lawless connection” which were “fugitive and never secure.” Such relationships were “Oft stolen in haste or snatched by surprise” and troubled by “doubts and fears.” Men with a “mistress ye hire” were “misled by a false flattering fire” that threatens their destruction. Baker believed it was far better to be married, and he concluded his poem:
If ye ask me from whence my felicity flows
My answer is short—from a wife
Who for cheerfulness sense and good nature I Chose
Which are beauties that charm us for life
7. Scrimshaw often idealized the home and family and was likely intended as a present to a loved one when the sailor returned from his voyage. “Domestic Happiness.” Kendall Whaling Museum.
To make home the mat of perpetual delight
Every hour each studies to seize
And we find ourselves happy from morning to night
By our mutual endeavours to please.42
Sentimental attachment to domesticity and praise for marital bliss formed only one small component of the sailor's portrayal of women. Jack Tar may have regretted the loss of relationships at home while aboard ship and extolled the virtues of mother, sister, daughter, and wife. But he also relished the liberty he gained by going to sea and the liberties he took with women along the waterfront. The braggadocio with which he expressed his heterosexuality became a crucial aspect of his manhood and gender identity. What emerges out of the various chanteys and sailor songs, as well as illustrations on scrimshaw and sea journals, is a vision of women that runs the gamut from the idealized sweetheart to the lusty maid eager for some fun to the harlot willing to sleep with Jack for a little quick change.
Some songs, like “When Seated with Sal,” simply describe drinking and dancing with girlfriends and wives, having a grand time while briefly on liberty ashore. Prince Hoare's “The Sailor Boy” was written in this spirit. The sailor flirts with two girls, Poll and Nan, declaring, “Say shall we kiss and toy” while assuring them, “I goes to Sea no more.” Yet his refrain seems to say the opposite: “O I'm the Sailor Boy, A Capering a shore.”43 This theme also appeared in sailor journals. The author of the logbook of the General Wolfe copied a bawdy poem in which the sailor attempted to seduce a young woman. The girl sees through the sailor, telling him, “You have a Longing Desire to insnare a maid, for when you have had your will with Me, than from me you shall go.” The tar responded, “Don't you say so My Charming pretty Maid, for I will never leave thee,