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Captain Singleton, Smollett’S Roderick Random and Marryat’S Mr DIPLOMARBEIT Titel der Diplomarbeit „Contextualizing Selected British Nautical Novels: Defoe’s Captain Singleton, Smollett’s Roderick Random and Marryat’s Mr. Midshipman Easy“ Verfasser Christoph Johann Buder angestrebter akademischer Grad Magister der Philosophie (Mag.phil.) Wien, 2009 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt: A 190 344 313 Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt: Anglistik und Amerikanistik Betreuerin ODER Betreuer: Ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Franz Wöhrer HINWEIS Diese Diplomarbeit hat nachgewiesen, dass die betreffende Kandidatin oder der betreffende Kandidat befähigt ist, wissenschaftliche Themen selbstständig sowie inhaltlich und methodisch vertretbar zu bearbeiten. Da die Korrekturen der/des Beurteilenden nicht eingetragen sind und das Gutachten nicht beiliegt, ist daher nicht erkenntlich mit welcher Note diese Arbeit abgeschlossen wurde. Das Spektrum reicht von sehr gut bis genügend. Die Habilitierten des Instituts für Anglistik und Amerikanistik bitten diesen Hinweis bei der Lektüre zu beachten. DECLARATION OF AUTHENTICITY I confirm to have conceived and written this M.A. thesis in English all by myself. Quotations from other authors are all clearly marked and acknowledged in the bibliographical references, either in the footnotes or within the text. Any ideas borrowed and/or passages paraphrased from the works of other authors have been truthfully acknowledged and identified in the footnotes. Signature TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 DANIEL DEFOE’S CAPTAIN SINGLETON 4 2.1 Historical background 4 2.2 Captain Singleton and history 6 2.2.1 Piracy as general historical theme 6 2.2.2 History as a theme in Captain Singleton 9 2.3 Social themes in Captain Singleton 18 2.3.1 “I’ll be hang’d for a Pyrate, rather than starve here” – why sailors become pirates 19 2.3.2 “With Consent of all the Ship’s Company” – Captain Singleton and pirate ship politics 24 2.4 The voyage in Captain Singleton 30 2.4.1 The factual dimension: aspects of a pirate’s voyage 30 2.4.2 The moral dimension: aspects of Bob Singleton’s development of character 35 3 TOBIAS SMOLLETT’S RODERICK RANDOM 39 3.1 Historical background 39 3.2 The Royal Navy as an institution and setting 40 3.2.1 Manning the Royal Navy 44 3.2.1.1 Impressment 48 3.3 Social themes in Roderick Random 52 3.3.1 Victualling and provisions as aspects of shipboard life 52 3.3.2 Authority 56 3.4 The maritime sphere in Roderick Random 62 4 FREDERICK MARRYAT’S MR. MIDSHIPMAN EASY 4.1 Historical background 69 4.2 Mr. Midshipman Easy and its Mediterranean setting 70 4.3 The seamen in Mr. Midshipman Easy 74 4.4 The maritime sphere and the concept of initiation 81 5 CONCLUSION 89 6 BIBLIOGRAPHY 91 7 INDEX 94 Appendixes: Abstract A Deutsche Zusammenfassung B Curriculum Vitae C 011 Acknowledgements I would like to use the opportunity to thank Prof. Franz Wöhrer not only for guiding me through the process of writing this thesis, but also his willingness to have a look at some chapters at short notice, which is something not to be taken for granted. Furthermore, an “ahoy” goes to out to the following people: the boys on the docks: my friends; the wind in my sails, in more than one way: my family; and my first mate, my girlfriend Tamara. Without all of you, I would have been wrecked more than once. 1 INTRODUCTION „The sea is our approach and bulwark; it has been the scene of our greatest triumphs and dangers, and we are accustomed in lyrical strains to claim it as our own”, Robert Louis Stevenson remarked in 1878 (qtd. in Klein 2). Indeed at that time, there was some right in the claim that Britain seemed to have formed some kind of patriotic pact with the ocean, since the command of it was one, if not the decisive factor that had enabled Britain to become an empire which ruled over great extents of territory and was uncontested in respect to naval matters. Even though, as Marshall (42) has stated, “[s]uch an empire was to require new ideological justifications beyond those appropriate to an empire of the seas”, it also true that “[c]oncepts of a territorial empire of rule over lands and peoples never, however, displaced earlier concepts of an empire of the seas based on trade and naval power, but rather were added to them” (Marshall 42-43). Already in 1674, in Navigation and Commerce, their Origin and Progress, John Evelyn had written: “whoever commands the ocean, commands the trade of the world, and whoever commands the trade of the world, commands the riches of the world , and whoever is master of that, commands the world itself” (qtd. in Rodger, Command ii). The period covered in this thesis, the almost 140 years from the early days of the eighteenth century to the year before Queen Victoria’s ascended the throne in 1837, was the period which saw Britain rise to ultimate naval mastery and indeed the command of the ocean respectively large parts of the globe; Nicholas Rodger’s definitive naval history of Britain between 1649 and 1815 is therefore titled “The Command of the Ocean” with good reason indeed. Victories over France, Britain’s relatively constant enemy during that time, were boasted national pride; especially the ones achieved in the Seven Years War (1756-1763) and, of course, the triumph over Napoleon’s France in 1815. The hero of Trafalgar, Admiral Horatio Nelson, next to Drake and Cook perhaps the most famous British naval figure, came to be seen as a symbol for supposed British values such as bravery and sense of duty. From today’s perspective, however, it is maybe more interesting to see how he was a hero who [...] would rise above English and Scottish prejudices and become truly British. Although his signal to the fleet before the battle of Trafalgar [1805], ‘England expects every man to do his duty’, was scarcely tactful to the Scottish and Welsh sailors under him, he nevertheless became, in Byron’s words, ‘Britannia’s god of war’. (Speck 205). If Nelson, as a naval hero, became a national icon, the Royal Navy as such provided a more than fertile ground in which his legend was sown. As essential part of Britain’s bigger maritime story – in which piracy, as will be shown in the chapter on Defoe, also plays a prominent role – its ships and men, victories (but also failures) and famous campaigns were significant also in respect to the development of the notion of Britishness after the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707. At this point, since an attempt to outline the overall development of such a complex concept in a few paragraphs is certainly destined to fail, it is probably best to mention one of those authors who have, in my opinion, succeeded in telling the whole story in an excellent manner: Linda Colley and her book Britons. Forging the Nation 1707 – 1837 (1992). Nevertheless, some aspects of the navy’s role in this should be considered since, as I have already mentioned, the success of Britain on the high seas was something that the public became increasingly proud of; the importance of the maritime dimension went, as Marshall has pointed out, [...] beyond the commercial and the military. It was also powerfully ideological. Confidence in their maritime prowess was crucial to British peoples’ beliefs that they exercised an empire over the seas. This empire, at least from the 1730s, was characterized by a common commitment to values described by David Armitage as “Protestant, commercial, maritime and free”. [These] developed into an identity aspired to by nearly all sections of British opinion and shared by Irish Protestants as well as by the white Anglophone population of the Atlantic colonies. (Marshall 45-46). However, this relatively new notion of Britishness does certainly not mean that other, more local identities were lost; it is therefore not the case that “[...] the growing sense of Britishness in this period supplanted and obliterated other loyalties. It did not. Identities are not like hats. Human beings can and do put on several at a time” (Colley 6). This is certainly true, but to a considerable extent, the British navy did serve as a unifying factor, and added a significant piece to the overall ideological body of British identity. Smollett’s Roderick Random is a highly interesting novel in this respect; the ending of the novel, with sees the Scotsman Roderick restored to the privileged life that should have been his right from the start, has been interpreted as “[...] a sign of his full acceptance into the United Kingdom” (Crawford 60). The navy also had a special advantage over, for example, the British army. Seen as defender of Britain’s freedom, [e]nthusiasm for the navy and for war at sea usually rested on unfavourable comparisons with the army and with war on continental Europe. A standing army, associated with Cromwell and James II, was conceived as a threat to English liberties in a way that the navy could never be. Regular soldiers were likely to be the tools of despotism, whereas sailors were free-born Englishmen. [...] The army fought on the Continent at the behest of Britain’s Dutch or Hanoverian kings. The navy fought for truly British purposes of protecting and advancing trade. (Marshall 47) It should be mentioned that, however, the navy was not only so important for people of that time because it helped to build and maintain Britain’s empire, which was without a doubt a maritime one. It was at least equally important because people perceived the Royal Navy to be the protector in respect to the threat of an invasion of Britain, and, furthermore, it secured British interests in respect to continental affairs.
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