“The Fishes Life”: Social and Physical Liminality in Mather’s The Fisher-mans Calling

Abstract

The majority of early English settlements in America were by definition coastal, but critical attention on Puritans and the environment has largely focused on the terrestrial landscape. While recent interventions have argued for an oceanic focus, such a reorientation remains blind to the unique influences of coastal environments and the cultural conflicts that happened there. Drawing largely on Cotton Mather’s maritime sermons written between 1704 and 1726, with particular emphasis on The Fisher-mans Calling (1711), this essay argues that early New England Puritan communities had a nuanced and difficult relationship to the liminal coastal, environmental, and sociocultural worlds around them. The cultural conflict, in particular, is best represented by fishermen as a distinct subset of the local population. Unlike merchant mariners and deepwater sailors, fishermen were often local citizens who consistently bridged the gap between maritime and terrestrial worlds. They were themselves liminal figures who presented unique problems around community inclusion for civic and ecclesiastic leaders. Understanding the problems fishermen posed for Puritan community leaders offers new insights into the ways environment and culture interacted in early America.