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White-Jacket
White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War is the fifth book by American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1850. The book is based on the author's fourteen months' service in the United States Navy, aboard the frigate USS Neversink (actually USS United States).
Although early biographers of Melville assumed the account was reliably autobiographical, scholars have shown that much in the book was taken and transformed from popular sea books.
Based on Melville's experiences as a common seaman aboard the frigate USS United States from 1843 to 1844, stories that other sailors told him, and earlier sea books, the novel is severely critical of virtually every aspect of American naval life and thus qualifies as Melville's most politically strident work.[citation needed] At the time, though, the one thing that journalists and politicians focused on in the novel was its graphic descriptions of flogging and the horrors caused by its arbitrary use; in fact, because Harper & Bros. made sure the book got into the hands of every member of Congress, White-Jacket was instrumental in abolishing flogging in the U.S. Navy forever. Melville scholars also acknowledge the huge number of parallels between White-Jacket and Billy Budd and view the former as "a major source for naval matters" in the latter.
The novel takes its title from the outer garment that the eponymous main character fashions for himself on board ship, with materials at hand, being in need of a coat sufficient for the rounding of Cape Horn. Due to a ship-wide rationing of tar, however, White-Jacket is forever denied his wish to tar the exterior of his coat and thus waterproof it. This causes him to have two near-death experiences, once when he is reclining among the canvases in the main-top and, his jacket blending in with the surrounding material, he is nearly unfurled along with the main sail; and once when, having been pitched overboard while reeving the halyards, he has to cut himself free from the coat in order not to drown. He having done so, his shipmates mistake the discarded jacket for a great white shark and harpoon it, sending it to a watery grave.
The symbolism of the color white, introduced in this novel in the form of the narrator's jacket, is more fully expanded upon in Moby-Dick, where it becomes an all-encompassing "blankness". The mixture of journalism, history, and fiction; the presentation of a sequence of striking characters; the metaphor of a sailing ship as the world in miniature, all prefigure Moby-Dick, his next novel.
Many of the actual crew and the incidents of the voyage recorded in the ship log are transformed and figure prominently in White-Jacket. As one Melville scholar has stressed, "Melville rarely invents..." and "the ship's records bear him out." Foremost among them is Melville's hero Jack Chase, captain of the maintop, in reality Englishman John J. Chase, age 53, whom Melville introduces in White-Jacket, Chapter 4, Jack Chase, thus, "First and foremost was Jack Chase, our noble First Captain of the Top." Melville described Chase, as having fought at the Battle of Navarino and deserted USS St. Louis to fight for Peruvian independence. The ship log confirms Melville's narrative, Chase returned to the frigate on 29 May 1842 and was pardoned, at the request of the Peruvian ambassador for his services to the government of Peru.
Similarly among the officers, Melville's paragon is a lieutenant he calls, "Mad Jack". Melville describes Mad Jack as a model of excellence in chapter 8, in contrast to an ineffectual lieutenant whom Melville refers to as "Selvagee." "Mad Jack is in his saddle on the sea. That is his home ... Mad Jack was a bit of tyrant — they say all good officers are — but the sailors loved him all round; and would much rather stand fifty watches with him, than one with a rose-water sailor." Mad Jack's original was Lt. Latham B. Avery, who two of Melville's shipmates identified as Mad Jack. Melville writes (chapter 27), "In time of peril, like the needle to the loadstone, obedience, irrespective of rank, generally flies to him who is best fitted to command." Melville recorded one other telling detail about his hero: "But Mad Jack, alas! has one fearful. He drinks." Melville adds, "in very fine weather he was sometimes betrayed into a glass too many. But with Cape Horn before him, he took the Temperance Pledge outright, till that perilous promontory should be far astern." The log for 15 August and 6 September 1842 confirms that Lt. Lantham B. Avery was court-martialed and reprimanded for leaving the deck while he was drunk.
Another actual crew member is "the Purser, who was a southern gentleman...." The purser was Edward Fitzgerald, who like many naval officers of the era was a slaveholder. On 18 October 1841 Fitzgerald, requested the consent of the Secretary of the Navy, Abel P. Upshur, to entered his "servant" (slave), Robert Lucas, as a landsman (in reality his personal steward) as a crew member and whose nine dollar per month wages Fitzgerald collected. In reply, Secretary Upshur, on 26 October 1841, wrote, "the department grants your request to take your own servant aboard the frigate United States." In White-Jacket, Lucas becomes "Guinea" the purser's body servant, the only person aboard except the hospital steward and the invalids who is exempt from being present at muster for punishment. Once in Boston, Robert Lucas was able with the help of sympathetic shipmates to flee the vessel and successfully petition Lemuel Shaw, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court, Melville's family friend and future father-in-law, for freedom. This important case Commonwealth vs. Edward Fitzgerald re Robert Lucas, became a precedent in the naval service, effectively barring enslaved individuals as seamen.
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White-Jacket
White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War is the fifth book by American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1850. The book is based on the author's fourteen months' service in the United States Navy, aboard the frigate USS Neversink (actually USS United States).
Although early biographers of Melville assumed the account was reliably autobiographical, scholars have shown that much in the book was taken and transformed from popular sea books.
Based on Melville's experiences as a common seaman aboard the frigate USS United States from 1843 to 1844, stories that other sailors told him, and earlier sea books, the novel is severely critical of virtually every aspect of American naval life and thus qualifies as Melville's most politically strident work.[citation needed] At the time, though, the one thing that journalists and politicians focused on in the novel was its graphic descriptions of flogging and the horrors caused by its arbitrary use; in fact, because Harper & Bros. made sure the book got into the hands of every member of Congress, White-Jacket was instrumental in abolishing flogging in the U.S. Navy forever. Melville scholars also acknowledge the huge number of parallels between White-Jacket and Billy Budd and view the former as "a major source for naval matters" in the latter.
The novel takes its title from the outer garment that the eponymous main character fashions for himself on board ship, with materials at hand, being in need of a coat sufficient for the rounding of Cape Horn. Due to a ship-wide rationing of tar, however, White-Jacket is forever denied his wish to tar the exterior of his coat and thus waterproof it. This causes him to have two near-death experiences, once when he is reclining among the canvases in the main-top and, his jacket blending in with the surrounding material, he is nearly unfurled along with the main sail; and once when, having been pitched overboard while reeving the halyards, he has to cut himself free from the coat in order not to drown. He having done so, his shipmates mistake the discarded jacket for a great white shark and harpoon it, sending it to a watery grave.
The symbolism of the color white, introduced in this novel in the form of the narrator's jacket, is more fully expanded upon in Moby-Dick, where it becomes an all-encompassing "blankness". The mixture of journalism, history, and fiction; the presentation of a sequence of striking characters; the metaphor of a sailing ship as the world in miniature, all prefigure Moby-Dick, his next novel.
Many of the actual crew and the incidents of the voyage recorded in the ship log are transformed and figure prominently in White-Jacket. As one Melville scholar has stressed, "Melville rarely invents..." and "the ship's records bear him out." Foremost among them is Melville's hero Jack Chase, captain of the maintop, in reality Englishman John J. Chase, age 53, whom Melville introduces in White-Jacket, Chapter 4, Jack Chase, thus, "First and foremost was Jack Chase, our noble First Captain of the Top." Melville described Chase, as having fought at the Battle of Navarino and deserted USS St. Louis to fight for Peruvian independence. The ship log confirms Melville's narrative, Chase returned to the frigate on 29 May 1842 and was pardoned, at the request of the Peruvian ambassador for his services to the government of Peru.
Similarly among the officers, Melville's paragon is a lieutenant he calls, "Mad Jack". Melville describes Mad Jack as a model of excellence in chapter 8, in contrast to an ineffectual lieutenant whom Melville refers to as "Selvagee." "Mad Jack is in his saddle on the sea. That is his home ... Mad Jack was a bit of tyrant — they say all good officers are — but the sailors loved him all round; and would much rather stand fifty watches with him, than one with a rose-water sailor." Mad Jack's original was Lt. Latham B. Avery, who two of Melville's shipmates identified as Mad Jack. Melville writes (chapter 27), "In time of peril, like the needle to the loadstone, obedience, irrespective of rank, generally flies to him who is best fitted to command." Melville recorded one other telling detail about his hero: "But Mad Jack, alas! has one fearful. He drinks." Melville adds, "in very fine weather he was sometimes betrayed into a glass too many. But with Cape Horn before him, he took the Temperance Pledge outright, till that perilous promontory should be far astern." The log for 15 August and 6 September 1842 confirms that Lt. Lantham B. Avery was court-martialed and reprimanded for leaving the deck while he was drunk.
Another actual crew member is "the Purser, who was a southern gentleman...." The purser was Edward Fitzgerald, who like many naval officers of the era was a slaveholder. On 18 October 1841 Fitzgerald, requested the consent of the Secretary of the Navy, Abel P. Upshur, to entered his "servant" (slave), Robert Lucas, as a landsman (in reality his personal steward) as a crew member and whose nine dollar per month wages Fitzgerald collected. In reply, Secretary Upshur, on 26 October 1841, wrote, "the department grants your request to take your own servant aboard the frigate United States." In White-Jacket, Lucas becomes "Guinea" the purser's body servant, the only person aboard except the hospital steward and the invalids who is exempt from being present at muster for punishment. Once in Boston, Robert Lucas was able with the help of sympathetic shipmates to flee the vessel and successfully petition Lemuel Shaw, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court, Melville's family friend and future father-in-law, for freedom. This important case Commonwealth vs. Edward Fitzgerald re Robert Lucas, became a precedent in the naval service, effectively barring enslaved individuals as seamen.
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