Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution

Early American Studies

by Paul A. Gilje

Through careful research and colorful accounts, historian Paul A. Gilje discovers what liberty meant to an important group of common men in American society, those who lived and worked on the waterfront and aboard ships. In the process he reveals that the idealized vision of liberty associated with the Founding Fathers had a much more immediate and complex meaning than previously thought.

In Liberty on the American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution , life aboard warships, merchantmen, and whalers, as well as the interactions of mariners and others on shore, is recreated in absorbing detail. Describing the important contributions of sailors to the resistance movement against Great Britain and their experiences during the Revolutionary War, Gilje demonstrates that, while sailors recognized the ideals of the Revolution, their idea of liberty was far more individual in nature—often expressed through hard drinking and womanizing or joining a ship of their choice.

Gilje continues the story into the post-Revolutionary world highlighted by the Quasi War with France, the confrontation with the Barbary Pirates, and the War of 1812.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Research, American Revolution, Maritime

360 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

Paul A. Gilje is the George Lynn Cross Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Oklahoma.

Reviews

[Billy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liberty on the Waterfront provides a colorful narrative of maritime culture during the revolutionary period. Paul Gilje argues that sailors became a symbol of revolutionary ideals. These “Tar Jacks,” with their capricious-spending, drunkenness, and rowdy behavior, shunned traditional society. Sailors represented a culture that challenged established British social hierarchy. In short, the sailor, perhaps unconsciously, held symbolic importance for revolutionary-minded citizens of port towns. Gilje sheds light on how mariners lived and fought during the revolutionary period. When faced with capture, sailors often broke into storage to gorge themselves on food and drink, a final practice of liberty before imprisonment. When captured, the seaman faced unspeakable hardships. Soon the hardships of prison ships, such as the Jersey, as well as English prisons like Dartmoor, elevated sailors’ reputation for bravery. Gilje’s final section examines the sailors’ legacy post-revolution. As Americans adjusted to life after wartime, they now focused on reforming sailors. The Tar Jacks’ rowdiness and individuality that fit so nicely into revolutionary fervor now seemed out of place in a reform-minded American society.
Gilje’s cultural analysis of revolutionary sailors is both colorful and enlightening. He shows that authors such as Herman Melville, at times, misrepresented maritime culture. To Melville’s Ishmael, land was a place for confinement; freedom could only be found on the open sea. Gilje argues that just the opposite was true for the authentic Tar Jack. On the sea, sailors often lived no better than slaves. On land, however, they spent, drank, and caroused with abandon. Their behavior was no more than a release from life at sea, yet it represented a rebellion against established British society.
Sailors actively practiced liberty on the open seas. Aside from fighting the British, in the face of their own tyrannical captains, sailors might band together to exert agency. Gilje’s analysis shows that revolutionary ideas were not confined inland, but permeated the Atlantic as well. Some scholars might criticize this argument and insist that such actions hardly represent American revolutionary ideals. This argument overlooks a greater point. Whether conscious or not, ideals of the revolutionary period—including democratic society, economic self-interest, individuality, and a skepticism of government—all manifested themselves in the personages of the Tar Jacks. In short, incipient American ideology was both influence by, and influenced, revolutionary sailors.
If citizens applauded tar jacks in the revolutionary period, post-revolution they aimed to reform the seaman. The sailor’s place as a focus of effort for evangelical reformers shows just how much America changed post-revolution. The second great awakening has been examined in much historical detail, but Gilje shows how reform movements took a particular interest in sailors. In their shifting roles—from representative of rebellion to focus of reform—the sailor seldom wavered in his capricious spending habits and rambunctious ways. It was society that changed, thereby altering the place of the tar jack in society from a sort of anti-hero to a soul in need of saving. The sailor may have been an ambiguous figure, one hard to pin down in having a strict ideological sway. Yet, these unwitting participants in the American experiment were important figure of hope, and then reform, during and after the revolution.

[QOH · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rounding up from 3.5. Very good research and wonderful notes (I spent a lot of time perusing the notes and looking up new books to follow up with). However, the sections lack cohesion; the book reads like loosely related essays rather than a continuous narrative. This may be the nature of the topic, but it would have been nice if either a specific region or time period was focused on--"Age of Revolution" covers a lot of ground, and what was going on in 1830 was pretty different than 1790.

Also, the author is presumably writing for an academic or knowledgeable readership, so covering remedial early Republic history meant it dragged from time to time.