by cgod

I've been reading Richard Henry Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast." Dana was a Harvard student who decided to enlist as a common sailor in an effort to recover his health. He left in the wake of his journey one of the best accounts of what the life of a common sailor. The book goes far beyond a short sailors biography, Dana was a keen observer of his world. He breaks down the customs, culture, dress, manners, food, geography, weather, hardships and so many other parts of the people and places he saw. It's a book without a plot, but the lack of plot gives space for an unhurried look at the world around him without the pressure of pushing a narrative. It's a surprisingly good read, one I've meant to dive into for years but had left moldering on my shelves until now.

I thought this passage, about the death of a young shipmate at sea, was a good example Dana at his best.

Death is at all times solemn, but never so much so as at sea. A man dies on shore; his body remains with his friends, and ``the mourners go about the streets''; but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost, there is a suddenness in the event, and a difficulty in realizing it, which give to it an air of awful mystery. A man dies on shore,-- you follow his body to the grave, and a stone marks the spot. You are often prepared for the event. There is always something which helps you to realize it when it happens, and to recall it when it has passed. A man is shot down by your side in battle, and the mangled body remains an object, and a real evidence; but at sea, the man is near you,-- at your side,-- you hear his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows his loss. Then, too, at sea-- to use a homely but expressive phrase-- you miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night-watch is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss.

All these things make such a death peculiarly solemn, and the effect of it remains upon the crew for some time. There is more kindness shown by the officers to the crew, and by the crew to one another. There is more quietness and seriousness. The oath and the loud laugh are gone. The officers are more watchful, and the crew go more carefully aloft. The lost man is seldom mentioned, or is dismissed with a sailor's rude eulogy,-- ``Well, poor George is gone! His cruise is up soon! He knew his work, and did his duty, and was a good shipmate.'' Then usually follows some allusion to another world, for sailors are almost all believers, in their way; though their notions and opinions are unfixed and at loose ends. They say, ``God won't be hard upon the poor fellow,'' and seldom get beyond the common phrase which seems to imply that their sufferings and hard treatment here will be passed to their credit in the books of the Great Captain hereafter,-- ``To work hard, live hard, die hard, and go to hell after all, would be hard indeed!'' Our cook, a simple-hearted old African, who had been through a good deal in his day, and was rather seriously inclined, always going to church twice a day when on shore, and reading his Bible on a Sunday in the galley, talked to the crew about spending the Lord's Days badly, and told them that they might go as suddenly as George had, and be as little prepared.

Yet a sailor's life is at best but a mixture of a little good with much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is linked with the revolting, the sublime with the commonplace, and the solemn with the ludicrous.

Not long after we had returned on board with our sad report, an auction was held of the poor man's effects. The captain had first, however, called all hands aft and asked them if they were satisfied that everything had been done to save the man, and if they thought there was any use in remaining there longer. The crew all said that it was in vain, for the man did not know how to swim, and was very heavily dressed. So we then filled away and kept the brig off to her course.