Dead Men Do Tell Tales: Folklore, Fraternity, and the Forecastle

Abstract

Dead Men Do Tell TalesFolklore, Fraternity, and the Forecastle Brian J. Rouleau Born in the small village of Currie, about six miles from Edinburgh, in the year 1755, John Nicol took to sea at the age of eighteen and did not permanently settle again for another twenty-five years. His experiences abroad were as numerous as they were various, allowing him to compile a most ambitious service record. He shipped for the Royal Navy during the War for Independence, circumnavigated the globe on two separate occasions, and crewed in the first vessel to reach Hawaii following the death of Captain Cook. Nicol visited China, Australia, South America, and Africa before old age rendered further travel impossible. Originally apprenticed by his father to a local cooper, Nicol escaped parochial mediocrity to travel the world. And this transformation represented only one of many to result from his choice of occupation. Nicol's life before becoming another Jack-Tar before the mast, as he described it, was one in which he dutifully observed the "strictest conversation," saying his "prayers [both] night and day." But a personal laxity in matters religious increasingly troubled him upon joining his mates aboard ship. At first, he remarked, "I said my prayers and read my Bible in private." But it was not long before he "became more and more remiss," until he was "a sailor like the rest."1 In a rather revealing display of the growing caprice of his faith, he was soon stricken with a serious fever while lading cargo in St. Kitts. Bedridden in a hospital where the dead were common enough to warrant the unceremonious heaping of corpses into pits, he occupied his mind with [End Page 30] "thoughts of the neglect of [his] Maker." Weeping with remorse, he swore to reform if spared such a gruesome death. But as he grew stronger his resolve grew weaker, and by the time he recovered fully he had quite forgotten his promises.2 This cycle of religiosity—danger followed by remorseful oaths and completed by prompt backsliding—surfaces in many of the available records. So deep an impression did this constant vacillating make that nearly every sailor surveyed commented on it overtly, referring either to themselves or to others (or both).3 When he signed his shipping articles, John Nicol remitted himself to the confines of the forecastle for an indefinite period. He essentially agreed to subject himself to the efforts of his officers to make a sailor of him. They compelled him to follow their orders, obey their laws, eat their food, and bear it as best he could. In exchange, Nicol expected fair treatment and a responsible management of the vessel from port to port. Officers would control many of his basic liberties, but they agreed to teach him a trade and provide him a living wage. The contract presented to all sailors before departure outlined this arrangement in some detail. Yet when Nicol spoke of how he "became a sailor like the rest," epaulets did not factor in the transformation. Rather, when a seaman graduated from lubber to sea dog, the written agreement between masters and men had far less effect than the unwritten but more immediate influences of shipmates. Nicol felt himself a sailor not so much when he came to understand the orders of his captain but when he successfully imitated the disposition of his fellow mariners. This change was never as simple as the mere substitution of one set of beliefs and practices for another; sailors responded in a variety of ways to the [End Page 31] transformative efforts of those around them, their reactions running the gamut from outright defiance to mere supplication. Some never lost their deeply held religious convictions, whereas others stepped aboard with little to lose in the first place. Whatever the individual case, this was on the whole a mimetic process influencing many common sailors new to the sea, a sculpting procedure that took the soft clay of these greenhands and attempted to mold them into hardened shellbacks capable of withstanding the many trials to come in an ever-perilous maritime world. Not an instantaneous conversion, this was a process, as John Nicol noted...