Sea History in a Brooklyn Cemetery by John Ro usm aniere o u never kno w wh ere yo u might com e across an artifac t of m aritime history. Ir might be a photo of a fi shing schooner on eBay, an online blog by some navyve terans, or a few words by Joseph Conrad that make you think about sailing in a new way. Or you might be raking a stroll in an inland Brooklyn cemetery when you come upon a m arble monument displaying an anchor, a ship's hull, and the words "For Sailors of all Nations." This was one of many sea faring connections I discovered while writing the history of the Evergreens Cem etery, in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, N ew York. Founded in 1849 on the rolling hills of Long Island 's terminal moraine, this 225-acre nonsectarian cemetery (not to be confused with G reen-Wood Cemetery) is the fin al resting place of some 525,000 men and wom en , a large number of whom were mariners. This is not all that surprising; ma ny Norwegian and Swedish seamen settled in Brooklyn and worked on the piers, and the borough was home to o ne of the country's largest navy ya rds. Yet what was star tling was the va riety of the maritime co nnections within its gro unds. Besides emphasizing America's dependence on the sea and immigra nt seamen, this landlocked cem etery offers evidence that the brutality of seafaring has, at times, been softened by benevolent institutio ns. No visitor will mistake the Evergreens for a quaint sailors' burying gro und. It is too close to M anhattan's skyline fo r th at. Yet there is m ore than a touch of New England in its ru ral landscape (laid out by the originator of that style, A ndrew Jackson D owning) a nd the sweeping views ofNew Yo rk Bay and the coas tal Atl a ntic Ocea n that inspired an early visito r to rem ark, "No more fittin g spot could have been selected for the las t resting place of the men 'who go dow n to the sea in ships."' 1 1 h e remains of nea rly 2,000 sailors lie in a slope near the entra nce in a section called the Seamen's G rounds, near its acco mpanying marble m onument. Th is section a nd its monument were created in the 185 0s by the Sea men's Cemetery Association of the Port of New York. Its mission was to provide seamen who died in New York aboard ships or ashore with the courtesy of a proper grave 28
The "Vista of Beauty" at Evergreens Cemetery-the Seamen's Monument on Beacon H ill with its view over Brooklyn to the A tlantic and New York Harbor, 1867. and burial. The association's board included leading New York merchants and sea captains: Elisha E. M organ, head of the Red Ball Line; Pelatiah Perit and William H . M acy, presidents of the Seamen's Bank for Savin gs (which encouraged thrift among seamen); Walter Restored Jones, who installed the Long Island shore's first life-saving equipment; and C harles H. Marshall, of the Black Ball Li ne. H aving started out on the decks of coasters and tra nsAtlantic packe ts (Marshall crossed the Atlantic under sail 94 times), these m ercha nt princes knew all too well the profo und insecurity of the average seaman, both at sea and on shore. "Life in the forecas tle was bleak: damp and unheated , without amenities or rights," writes the historian of the Seamen's C hurch Institute, a New York sailors' aid society fo unded in 1843. 2 In port, life co uld be as hazardous as on the we t deck of a ship at sea. A fter twenty years in ships, Joseph C onrad compared the fellowship of life at sea with the chaos of sailors' existence in port, where seamen "appeared to be creatu res of another kind- lost, alone, fo rgetful, and doomed .. . like reckless and joyous castaways, li ke m ad castaways making merry in the storm a nd upo n an insecure ledge of a treacherous rock."3 "Los t" is the governing wo rd. "Seamen are fo rever getting lost," wrote a reporter who knew them well. "Not los t in the intricate streets
of a foreign city, but lost from their fa milies somewhere out in the wide world." 4 Discharged from their ships and far from home and fam ily, the impoverished, mostly illiterate wa ndering tribe of seam en crowded New Yo rk. In 1850, some 44,000 sailors of m any nationalities in 3, 163 ships came ashore at New York and Brooklyn , whose wharves handled half the country's imports and a third of its exports.5 The streets and ba rs of South Street and other corners of "Sa ilortown" were a Babel. The th ree largest gro ups of sailors in New York came from Ameri ca, the British Commo nwealth, a nd , a close third , Sca ndinavia. There were ma ny Germans, Itali ans, C hinese, and others, too. W hatever h is origin, every sea man was targeted to be robbed by la ndlords, bartenders, and crimps who kidnapped sa ilors and handed them over to outbo und ships. W ith little or no legal protection, the sailors fo und mostly spiritual guidance in the seamen's chapels and bethels, where bibles and hymnals were dis tributed by the thousands.6 N ot all were converted . "What the devil are they going to do with us?" as ked one sailor. "Make us all saints a nd deacons?" 7 A seaman's needs on shore were more ma terial: clea n clothing, an inexpensive bed free of bedbugs, a place to socialize away from the lure of demon rum, and, ultimately, a burial spot shou ld he die in
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