Rites and Passages: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830-1870 [Hardcover]

Margaret S. Creighton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 25, 1995

Traditional accounts of whaling celebrate exotic locales and dangerous exploits but shed little light on the lives of the men who went to sea. Rites and Passages places sailors at the center of a social history of whaling and explores the ways in which the history of the sea and the history of the shore have intersected. Drawing on the evidence of ship logs and sailors' letters and journals, Margaret S. Creighton examines American whalemen during the industry's peak--the mid-nineteenth century--and argues that whaling life and culture were shaped by both the American mainland and by the exigencies of ocean life. Unlike other 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-dominated world, but also with an examination of the ways that seafaring served as a rite of passage into manhood. Professor of History at Bates College, Margaret Creighton is the author of Dogwatch and Liberty Days: Seafaring Life in the 19th Century and co-editor of Iron Men and Wooden Women: Gender and Maritime History. She has been guest curator at The Peabody Museum of Salem and the U.S.S. Constitution Museum of Boston.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her informative, engaging book, Creighton, a history professor and author of Dogwatch and Liberty Days: Seafaring Life in the 19th Century, offers valuable insight into the existence of real-life Ishmaels and Ahabs at the height of the American whaling industry. Her underlying investigation fits into current scholarly interests in "otherness" as she weighs two camps?one insisting sailors were misfits, alien to landbound norms; the other claiming that they were simply "working men who got wet." But Creighton's study isn't sunk by theoretical jargon; it's an accessible reconstruction of shipboard life and the feelings of sailors towards officers, each other and those left behind. Part of her research is based on newspaper accounts and other terra-firma evidence, but more is from the diaries and logbooks of some 200 sailors. What becomes clear is that embarking on a years-long whaling voyage wasn't farming the sea. Everything was different: law, earnings, food, rituals, power structure, social interaction, even gender roles (one sailor notes: "started the sewing society again... stitch on stitch, patch on patch is all the rage."). It was also deeply boring (one record reads: "something was done this day but i dont know what it was now, anyhow it began at 7 A.M. and finished at 2 P.M. what it was i cant remember.") and hugely dirty (another sailor describes rendering the blubber, saying "Everything [is] beshit."). But for all that, when the sailors detail their fear of the journey's dangers, anger at officers, their anxiety that hometown girls may betray them or may reject them altogether as "filthy whalemen," they show themselves to be profoundly, universally human.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...an intriquing probe of the heyday of the industry..." The Midwest Book Review

"In her informative, engaging book, Creighton...offers valuable insight into the existence of real-life Ishmaels and Ahabs at the height of the American whaling industry....Creighton's study isn't sunk by theoretical jargon; it's an accessible reconstruction of shipboard life and the feelings of sailors towards officers, each other and those left behind." Publishers Weekly

"Margaret Creighton has written a fascinating book on the world of whalemen in whaling's golden era. From her reading in more than two hundred diaries and letters, Creighton shows how factors such as gender, religion, and the profit motive produced the whalemen's rich and lively culture. This is an insightful piece of historical scholarship and a good story as well." E. Anthony Rotundo, author of American Manhood

"...a commendable analysis of the whaleman's experiences....Rites and Passages is important reading for anyone interested in American whaling....an essential reference for further work in this field." Erik A.R. Ronnberg, Jr., Nautical Research Journal

"...this is a book well worth reading. The depth of research alone is impressive. Frequent quotations from the sailors' diaries and letters allow the reader to form personal opinions of the matters at hand....She has created a convincing "chapter of human history." John F. Battick, International Journal of Maritime History

"...this remains a valuable and important book in a field that remains dominated, at least obliquely, by the genius of Melville." Stephen Innes, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"...artful and engaging....a well-written and beautifully illustrated book..." Simon P. Newman, The PA Magazine of History & Software

"Rites and Passages: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830-1870, Creighton takes the historiography of American Whaling well beyond its traditional boundaries to investigate issues as subtle and affective as gender identity, masculinity and femininity, the influence of race and class, and the rites of passage from adolescence into manhood. With this book, the ongoing conversation about the import and effect of American whaling has been advanced and updated significantly. Even the most casual student of whaling should have this intriguing book on his or her self." Glenn S. Gordinier, The Mariner's Museum Journal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (August 25, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521433363
• ISBN-13: 978-0521433365
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,070,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Humorless and Passionless Study of Whaling, April 24, 2002

By 

Allen Ruch (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rites and Passages: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830-1870 (Paperback)

The average whaleman was poor, prejudiced, and liked to drink; capitalist owners were exploitative; sea captains were often harsh and unfair; and sailors didn't often socialize with women in positive contexts. If this comes as a shock, this book might be for you; but to anyone whose read more than a page of nautical history or fiction, Creighton's work doesn't offer much. What it does offer is a joyless and often tendentious study of whaling by a student secure in her modern superiority. Partial to using phrases like "rituals of indoctrination" to describe being dunked in water, and "bourgeois ideals of hygiene" to connote the desire to be clean, Creighton seems to overshoot her mark, suffocating a rather exciting topic under the wet blankets of politicized academia. Do we really need a Marxist critique of an antiquated industry so transparently exploitative? Do we really gain anything by analyzing nineteenth-century sailors under the lens of modern gender and culture studies? (The average white, uneducated sailor from New England didn't find heavy-set Black natives attractive -- astonishing!) One wonders why Creighton even wanted to write this book, as she demonstrates precious little sympathy for her topic. She exhibits neither the contagious passion of an enthusiast over a favorite arcane subject, nor any understanding of possible non-political motives that might have driven some men to the sea to hunt a dangerous prey. (It's not that her sympathies lie with the whales, either. She barely discusses the hunt at all.) While I understand that there's value in clearing the deck of misplaced Romantic illusions, Creighton's study is utterly humorless, and she goes to great lengths to pull her examples from worst-case scenarios. Even her language betrays her distaste -- the captain of a ship is never called "captain," but always "master;" the officers are the "afterguard;" inviting prostitutes onto the ship leads to an "orgy;" and anecdotes of garden-variety racism rate labels like "virulent." Worse, she displays little to no desire to get *inside* the world of men, with its rough humor, sexual frustrations, notions of fraternity and nobility, and spontaneous brutalities. Indeed, much of her account feels like she's studying an alien culture which she has no desire to actually meet. Happily, this adds an occasional bit of unintentional humor. (For instance, after a sailor's diary cheerfully describes a hazing ritual akin to a nautical snipe-hunt, she interprets the following free-for-all water fight as a sign of resistance to being "strong-armed into the sea-faring brotherhood.")

Of course, Creighton's study is not wholly without recommendations. A careful researcher, she does some good work in applying both factual data and common sense to debunk a few whaling myths, and her discussion of homoeroticism among sailors is a welcome topic often "overlooked" in other books on the subject. It's also refreshing to read an account so unilaterally supportive of the sailor's complaints, even if one gets the impression that she doesn't dig too deeply to understand "the other side" of an issue. But her tediously superior tone, her evident moral and political distaste, and her total lack of empathy with her subject do not make "Rites & Passages" a very instructive work, much less an enjoyable one.

5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling and beautifully written account, December 8, 2002

By 

Fraser Albright (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rites and Passages: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830-1870 (Paperback)

This overview of American whaling was by far the best account of the hardships and the social dynamics of the fishery that I have read. It sensitively details the human relationships between sea captain and crew, between sailors and women at home, among the sailors themselves. It also describes the mechanics and challenges of the whale hunt. The author is a wonderful writer, too, bringing the research to life.