Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.