John C. Appleby

Daniel [De]Foe’s Virginia venture: Mutiny and indiscipline at sea during the 1680s and 1690s

This article uses evidence from the English High Court of Admiralty to examine the problem of mutiny and indiscipline among seafarers in the transatlantic trades during the 1680s and 1690s. It focuses on a venture of 1688, which is of particular interest not only for the light it sheds on maritime conditions, but also because it involved Daniel Defoe, a young and ambitious trader who was trying to establish a commercial opening in Chesapeake Bay. The article contextualizes this previously unknown venture, relating it to the development of the tobacco trade and its dependence on an expanding market and widening patterns of consumption. The failure of the voyage, in association with other business problems, had serious consequences for Defoe, leading to bankruptcy in 1692 and his withdrawal from direct involvement in overseas trade. Against a broader background of other voyages, the legal testimony heard by the court draws attention to the wider problem of mutinous conduct at sea. These cases were provoked by a range of grievances including pay, labour conditions and discipline. Repeatedly they raise questions about the conduct of masters at sea, including their rights and responsibilities. At the same time, the article argues that the upsurge in mutiny and indiscipline at sea, while revealing the inexorable tension between pay and productivity, also exposed deeper issues regarding seafaring custom and contract.

A Sea of Misadventures: Shipwreck and survival in early America

Shipwreck and other maritime misadventures are an ever-present danger facing seafarers. As a spectacle of human and preternatural drama it has attracted the attention of artists and dramatists as well as preachers. The dangers of the deep, so arbitrary and inexplicable in appearance and effect, were sometimes explained during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the work of witchcraft. Despite its significance, however, shipwreck has attracted the fleeting attention of maritime historians. As Amy Mitchell-Cook notes in this new study, focused on American experiences ranging from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, there has been little analysis of disaster at sea as an event, or of its social and cultural resonances. As such, while examining shipwreck from a variety or perspectives, the underlying ambition of this work is to incorporate seaborne disaster into American and maritime historiography. It is based on a detailed examination of published shipwreck narratives, amounting to one hundred in total, a form of prescriptive literature, the popularity of which testifies to the wide-ranging appeal of the subject, with some supporting legal evidence. The author is less concerned with testing the veracity of this material than with using it to explore the meaning of shipwreck against a broader background of the development of North American society. Thus shipwreck narratives expressed issues concerning hierarchy, gender and race, which reflected broader social and cultural change. As a framing device for understanding crisis at sea, the stories served various purposes, linked with values, conduct and definitions of identity. Mitchell-Cook insists that these stories were never merely tales. Through their character and content, they provided audiences with reassurance, rooted in a conservative view of society that reinforced stability, order and deference, which was potentially at odds, at least in appearance, with the articulation of a radical seafaring culture. Although varied in detail, the accounts on which this study is based tended to adopt a common structure and pattern. Aimed at a broad audience and occasionally published with sermons, they were a hybrid form of writing which freely mixed fact with fiction. Nearly three quarters of the total were in the form of first-person narratives, heightening the drama and emotional attachment. Sen sation alized reports, which included cases of cannibalism, were linked with themes of religion and redemption. Accounts of death and despair were quali fied by positive reports demonstrating the adaptability and control of survivors. The popularity and profitability of such works led to extensive reprinting in American and British editions. With the spread of literacy, Mitchell-Cook argues that published narratives confirmed and provided instruction in acceptable behaviour and values for middle and upper-class groups. Consequently they helped to pro mote community and a sense of identity among Americans. At the same time they provided acceptable gender roles for women and men. Indeed the role of women as authors and readers, in addition to being the victims of shipwreck, became more prominent during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As part of the inherent risks facing shipowners and merchants, as well as seafarers, wreck and misadventure at sea had far reaching legal ramifications of which mariners, especially captains and masters, were acutely aware. Cases of shipwreck dramatized deeper questions regarding the interplay between the law and custom of the sea, often through suits concerning wages and insurance claims that could be further explored. The concern of admiralty courts with property and responsibility led officers to argue that wreck was beyond human agency.

The Court of Admiralty of Ireland, 1575–1893

towards Fitzjames was because Fitzjames had paid off some blackmailer, or otherwise dug George Barrow out of a hole of his own making, in Singapore’ (186). Fitzjames had called on George Barrow, the brother of his friend John Barrow and son of the Admiralty Secretary Sir John Barrow, on his way to the war in China in 1841. Battersby says that ‘the encounter is shrouded in mystery’, meaning that he has not found out much about it. Fitzjames gave George a loan because he was ‘rather adrift’ (a nautical euphemism for being short of money – the loan put enough wind in George’s sails to get him home). George’s brother John wrote to thank Fitzjames, offering immediate repayment, but Fitzjames replied that he had ‘lost the memo’ he made of the exact sum owed and would leave it to George to settle with his agent. Battersby totally misunderstands the contemporary usage of ‘memo’ and the social conventions shaping this interaction. (To relieve the embarrassment of owing money, the lender dismisses it as of no importance while the borrower is honour-bound to make full and prompt repayment.) Battersby imagines that the memo was not simply a jotted reminder but was a formal written statement recording some ‘quite substantial scandal – perhaps something that could have ended George Barrow’s career at the Colonial Office or possibly even something which would threaten Sir John Barrow’s position at the Admiralty’ (136). Battersby claims that from then on Sir John Barrow acted as though he was in debt to Fitzjames. ‘He went to China with nothing to distinguish him from thousands, but returned as Sir John Barrow’s favourite to lead the Franklin [sic] expedition’ (123). There was plenty ‘to distinguish Fitzjames from thousands’, as the core of this biography makes clear. We learn about his life-saving bravery, his energy and resourcefulness during the Chesney expedition to the Euphrates, his extraordinary nerve at Beirut, for which he was mentioned in dispatches, his bullet-proof constitution and his immense popularity. Battersby’s narrative highlights Fitzjames’s qualities of gallantry, zeal and alacrity which made him eminently suited to lead an Arctic expedition. His advancement depended on his own merits, so his parentage is irrelevant and there is no need to explain Barrow’s selection of Fitzjames as a repayment of dishonourable debts. In his foreword, Battersby hopes ‘that somewhere in the frozen shades the spirit of Captain James Fitzjames, RN, will have been amused by my attempts to wrest him back to reality’ (9). I think it more likely that Fitzjames, heading up a sizable company of libelled spirits, would wish to tip him out of bed and kick him downstairs for writing such a fantastic biography.

Book Review: Seawolves: Pirates and the ScotsGrahamEric J., Seawolves: Pirates and the Scots.Edinburgh: Birlinn Limited [www.birlinn.co.uk], 2005. xxx + 223 pp., glossary, photoplates (b+w, colour), bibliography, index. £16.99, cloth; ISBN 1-84158-388-X.

Nothing can be less correct. These disputes were all about contraband that was being transported under a questionable flag. Lunsford is also incorrect when she refers to legislation of 1599 while discussing matters relating to the year 1705. Indeed, this is a recurring problem with the book: there is no consistent chronology. The reader carried from 1585 to 1700 and back time and time again. Lunsford also argues [188] that Zeeland policy links medieval ideas to patriotic tenacity. In fact, by 1700 Zeeland privateering was the product of decades of continuous warfare and thus of modern Realpolitik which was anything but patriotic. Financial gain, pure and simple, was the aim. How else can one explain how Zeeland manoeuvred itself in such a stubborn position towards Holland? According to Lunsford, nearly every privateer exceeding its authority was a pirate, which of course is the question quite often it turned out that the cargo of a seized ship was being transported with false papers to disguise the fact that it originated in a prohibited harbour. Overall, this study is more a narrative analysis than the systematic and structured research that its subject needs. Discussion of its thesis tends to be superficial, while Lunsford is occasionally somewhat pedantic and repetitive. In the final analysis, is her study successful? On the one hand, it is. Lunsford has uncovered much material that was previously unknown about privateering and piracy in the Netherlands; on the other hand this study does not offer as clear an explanation of its subject as one would wish. And, as already mentioned, for a new study this book has already been outdated by recent works of which several provide better and newer statistics (as, for example, data on the average size of a privateering crew). Lunsfords work does, however, have one important advantage over others it is the first general work on Dutch privateering written in English and, as such, it is more accessible to a broader and larger audience.