REVIEWS Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail, by W. Jeffrey Bolster(Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA & London UK, 1997 , 31 Opp, illus , notes, index, ISBN 0-674-076249; $27hc) This long-overdue book takes us on a voyage of discovery in what we thought were fami liar waters as W. Jeffrey Bolster-a veteran seaman and University of New Hampshire associate professor of history- lifts our collective awareness of a little known maritime subject. The vivid portrait of an unknown I 9thcentury African-American seaman on the cover appropriately introduces the adventuro us subject matter presented in this story. Bolster eloquently articulates his keen knowledge of 18th- and 19th-century American sea history as it relates to those of African descent, slave and free , seamen, laborers, statesmen and entrepreneurs. The impact of the Black Diaspora in the maritime realm traditionally has been limited to discou rse on the M iddle Passage. Here, we learn that these men, too, hoisted sails and piloted vessels, and as slaves or free men, they helped stoke the flames of a young Arr}erica's economic growth in o ur coastal Atlantic waterways or in deepwater Nantucket whalers traveling halfway around the world in search of oil. This book is a porthole onto a world that reveals something of their identities as men of color whose roots were the cosmopolitan Atlantic seascape as they oscillated between three worlds-Africa, Europe and America. In a Western society where slavery was a foundation for America's agrarian economy in the 1700s and early 1800s, we learn that these men found greater solace offshore where they had a modicum of control and contributed to a demanding collective effort more or less as equals, in a vocation rich with cultural exchange. The author candidly explores a rarely seen aspect of American maritime history, adding concrete evidence and anthropological insight to what has been an opaque tangential subject. He introduces us to such seamen as Briton Hammon, whose autobiography (ca 1747) vividly desc ribes 12 Horatio Alger-like years at sea; Olaudah Equiano, a fonner slave and self-taught statesman who lobbied Parliament to abandon the slave trade; Richard Crafus, a prisonerof-war known as King Dick of Dartmoor No. 4; Jam es Forten, sail maker and civic SEA HISTORY 84, SPRING 1998
leaderof Philadelphia; John Jea, seaman and evangelist; Crispus Attucks, wellknown patriotic martyr of the Boston Massacre; Denmark Vesey, whose illfated slave revolt fomented a rash of Negro Seamen Act legislation; Paul Cuffe, merchant, philanthropist, Civil War hero , and US Congressman. These men and others who toiled without leaving records were common figures on American waterfronts and contributed greatly to our maritime heritage. We, as late-20th-century Americans, who collectively recognize the invaluable contributions of maritime hi story and those who made it, as well as its living impact on our present and future lives , areindebted to Bolster. Blacklacks intellectually broadens our perspective by bringing this unsung saga to a bright light and its rightful position on American and sea history 's hori zon. STEVEN W. JONES Middletown , Delaware Voyage of the Forest Dream and Other Sea Adventures, A Memoir, by Captain Niels Peter Thomsen (publi shed by the author, 1997 , 167pp, illus, index, appen, gloss; $25pb) Available from the author at 19222 Olympic View Drive, Edmonds WA 98020) In the long history of sail, published chronicles of voyages in square riggers by foremast hands such as this book are rare; no more than half a dozen come to mind. The author, born in Denmark and brought to California as a child, left home at the age of 15 to go to sea and two years later, in 1925, joined the fivemasted barkentine Forest Dream in Victoria, British Columbia. She was bound for Mauritius with a lumber cargo including a ten-foot deckload. Built in 1919 in Aberdeen , Washington, like so many war-built sailers, she was to have a short active life. The Forest Dream was a sizeable vessel to be taken to sea by only 13 men, of whom only six were sailors, or three in each watch , especially since the gasoline donkey engine that was meant to ease the heavy labor on deck failed to work. So began a voyage of many hardships including a fatal fall from aloft, drunken bickering between the captain and his chief mate, harassment of the crew, and rudder trouble that forced a course change to Australia for repairs. Reaching Mauritius, they found that because they were long overdue, the consignees had bought lumber elsewhere
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