Reading the Bodies of Early American Seafarers

Abstract

I N one of his poignant vignettes, Herman Melville recorded the declining years of a man who had spent his entire working life at sea. Landsmen and women who encountered Daniel Orme were impressed by the features that defined him as a sailor, his moody and tanned complexion, his scars, the darned Guernsey frock he wore, and the crucifix tattooed on his chest. Interpreting these wens and knobs and distortions of the bark as the measure of the man, Melville was fascinated by the ways in which this lifelong seafarer defined himself, and was defined by others, by his very body.1 Few American seafarers were long-term professionals like Orme. Seeking youthful adventure and income, attempting to escape obligations, problems, and debts, or despairing of employment ashore, many men signed up for an occasional voyage but spent the greater part of their adult lives on land.2 Historians have found it difficult to learn about the before-the-mast career seamen who were at the heart of the maritime community, for when they appear in such records as tax lists and militia rolls, it is all but impossible to