Rites and Passages: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830–1870

by Margaret S. Creighton

• ISBN13: 9780521484480
• ISBN10: 0521484480
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-08-25
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book contributes to what has recently been called a 'new social history of seafaring'. This new maritime history places sailors themselves at the center, not the periphery, of the maritime past, and explores ways that the history of the sea and the history of the shore have intersected. It differs from traditional accounts which celebrate exotic trades, powerful merchants, maritime technologies, and military exploits. Drawn on the evidence of nearly two hundred ship logs and sailors' diaries, Rites and Passages examines American whalemen at the height of the whaling industry in the 1800s and argues that whaling life and culture was shaped by both the American mainland and by the exigencies of ocean life. Unlike other published accounts of seafaring, this work brings gender into the maritime equation, not only with a discussion of the ways that women figured in this male world, but also with an examination of the ways that seafaring served as a rite of passage into manhood.

Table of Contents

Introduction - the passing of Nathaniel Robinson

1. The evolution of the American whaling industry: 2. 'Tis advertised in Boston': the making of a ship's crew

3. 'Wondrous tales of the mighty deep': whaling work and its meaning

4. The old man: the view from the afterdeck

5. Crossing the line: Fraternity in the forecastle

6. The attack of the Daniel: whalemen ashore

7. Women and whalemen

8. Afterword, 'All the honour and the glory': the men who returned 'the spell that binds us': the men who stayed on

Appendices.