Stony Brook University

SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Whalemen’s Song: Lyrics and Masculinity in the Sag Harbor Whalefishery, 1840-1850 A Dissertation Presented by Stephen Nicholas Sanfilippo to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Stony Brook University May 2010 Copyright by Stephen Nicholas Sanfilippo 2010 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Stephen Nicholas Sanfilippo We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Dr. Wilbur R. Miller PhD Dissertation Advisor Professor of History Department of History Dr. Donna J. Rilling PhD Chairperson of the Defense Associate Professor of History Department of History Dr. Joel Rosenthal PhD Distinguished Professor of History Department of History Dr. Glenn Gordinier PhD Robert G. Albion Historian Co-Director Munson Institute This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Lawrence Martin Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Whalemen’s Song: Lyrics and Masculinity in the Sag Harbor Whalefishery, 1840-1850 by Stephen Nicholas Sanfilippo Doctor of Philosophy in History Stony Brook University 2010 “Whalemen’s Song” is a gender-based examination of conceptions and performances of masculinity among Long Islanders of British ancestry who whaled out of Sag Harbor in the 1840s. Its theoretical basis is that masculinity is cultural and demonstrated in performance, with concepts and performances varying from man to man, between and among groups of men, and in relation to various “others,” depending upon the particulars of a situation, including for whom masculinity is being performed. Three basic concepts of masculinity will be discussed: the Victorian bourgeois man, informed primarily by achieving economic success and status; the evangelical Christian man, informed by concern for personal salvation and for fulfilling his Christian obligations as family provider; and the secular libertine, informed by a pursuit of immediate pleasure iii without regard to bourgeois or Christian moral and economic restraints. The whaleship is considered as an enclosed, mobile, industrial company town, under the control of a captain legally empowered to inflict severe corporal punishment, and functioning as what Foucault called heterotopia, simultaneously creating its own control, resistance, and inversion. Within this site 20 to 30 men lived and labored for 2 to 4 years, rarely going ashore. “Whalemen’s Song” recognizes the importance of men and women of various ethnic and racial groups, but through examining Long Island’s “Yankee” whalemen we can see the great differences of masculinity within one set of persons, making the whaleship ideal for the study of varying performances of masculinity among men whose constant close contact exacerbated their differing, conflicting, and contested ideals of manhood with regard to labor, authority, women, alcohol, punishment, Christianity, and rights of citizenship. The dissertation is based upon extensive research into manuscripts held at eastern Long Island archives, using journals to establish whalemen’s masculine attitudes, and their songs and poems as expository of these attitudes. It also extends Long Island into the wider project of bottom-up gender, social, cultural and maritime history. iv DEDICATION Now, this couple, they still do reside, All in the cottage down by the river side; So maid be true whilst your lover’s away, For a cloudy morning may bring a pleasant day. for Susan, from Your Dark Eyed Sailor [from “The Dark Eyed Sailor,” heard at sea by Lewis Jones, Sag Harbor Bark Hamilton , 1845-1848] Table of Contents List of Illustrations…..……………………………………………………………..........vii Preface…………………………………………………………………………….....….viii Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………..........xi I. The Sag Harbor Whaleship……………………..…………………………………........1 II. Who Is the Whaler?.….………….…………...……………..………………..………20 III. Poor Jacks, Pretty Maidens, and Punitive Patriarchs……..........................................39 IV. “Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me”…….…………………….……………………..…………72 V. Prayers From the Fish’s Belly….…….…..…..…..………………....…….………..111 VI. What Shall We Do With the Drunken Whaler?......……..……...…….……………149 VII. The Whaleman as Observant Democrat………….……..….….………………….184 VIII. Conclusion………………………….…….…………..…..………………………236 IX. Bibliography..............................................................................................................240 vi Illustrations I. A Sailor Man, by Henry A. Fordham……………………...………..…………….... 132 II. Projection of an Eclipse of the Moon, by I. Sidney Gould……………………..….. 233 vii Preface “Whalemen’s Song” grew from a combination of long-standing interests in the history of my native Long Island, my work as a folk singer at rallies during the late 1970s and early 1980s with “Save the Whales” environmental groups, my month aboard Finback II , a marine mammal research vessel out of Montauk Harbor led by marine biologist Sam Sadove, and my passion for performing songs of maritime life. I have tried, I am certain with varying degrees of success, to subsume these interests into the task of a professional historian writing academic history. I have also tried, again with varying success, to craft my dissertation as whalemen crafted ballads and poems; amidst labor there should be something of beauty. I am hopeful that this sentiment will add to, rather than detract from, my depiction of the lives men lived in whaleships. It should be noted that although Stony Brook University is a major teaching and research institution, with an outstanding international reputation, it is still seen as a local college by many Suffolkites, and is situated near some of the most historic villages in the Town of Brookhaven. As such, it is a fitting site for the advancement of historical knowledge of national significance that rests upon the lives, activities and cultural values of Suffolk County’s past population. One whaleman whose writing serves as a major source for this dissertation lived within a few miles of the Stony Brook campus, and one a very short distance from the house in Ridge, also in Brookhaven, that was my boyhood home in the 1950s and 1960s, and went on to be my married home until 2006. Although ethnically I would fit in more closely with the Roman Catholic Romance language- speaking Azoreans than with the “Yankee boys” of whom I write, many of whose descendants no doubt saw me and sometimes still see me as an outsider in eastern Suffolk County. I do feel a definite affinity towards these men as my neighbors in place, if not in time. Many times over the past ten years while in doing my research I have traveled the same back roads, walked the same village streets, entered the same buildings, stood at the same harbor, attended the same church, and even visited the same cemeteries that these men walked, and in the last instance, where many of them and their families now rest. An important advantage to researching “Whalemen’s Song” so close to home has been familiarity with many of the family names and Long Island place names and locations involved. I also have had long-established working relationships with the staffs of many local history repositories as a result of 30 years as a history teacher on Long Island, and as a frequent performer of historical music at many of these institutions. As “Whalemen’s Song” is subtitled “Lyrics and Masculinity in the Sag Harbor Whalefishery, 1840-1850,” I have used direct quotations from many songs and poems. At times I have quoted only a few words or a line or two, while at other times I have presented a song or poem, uninterrupted by comment, in its entirety. My reason for doing so is governed by the concern of how best to use the song or poem to examine various aspects of whalemen’s masculinity at particular points in the dissertation. In describing and analyzing whalemen’s masculinity I have relied upon one very basic philosophical position: gender is cultural. I have taken the position that whalemen performed masculinity as a cultural phenomenon, rather than as a biological consequence. Critical to my presentation is my argument that the concept of manhood, and the varying performances of masculinity generated by that concept, varied greatly from individual whaleman to whaleman, as well as within the mind and manners of any one whaleman at any given time. Manhood’s ideals are complex and contested variables, and so, therefore, are the performances of masculinity. I have used many quotations from whalemen’s journal entries, songs, and poems, presenting their lives and values in their own voices, as they presented them through their pens. I have not used ( sic ), and have rarely interjected word or grammar corrections, preferring instead to quote the whalemen as they wrote, giving us further insights into their levels of education, the use of language on Long Island during the 1840s, and particularly with some misspellings, the ways in which Long Island whalemen pronounced words, such as “Montork” for Montauk, and “Owyhee,” for Hawaii. Finally, “Whalemen’s Song” is written to be heard. The reader should endeavor, in his or her mind’s ear, to hear these songs being sung,

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