Reviews
Sailor Talk: Labor, Utterance, and Meaning in the Works of Melville, Conrad, and London by Mary K. Bercaw Edwards (Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, UK, 2021, 283pp, notes, index, isbn 978-1-80085-965-4; $130hc) Mary K. Bercaw Edwards’s most recent volume is essential reading for maritime historians and enthusiasts. Her subject is the “ephemeral” nature of sailor talk— epitomized by, but not limited to, nautical terminology, slang, cursing, swearing, and work songs—exploring the larger and enduring “cultural significance” of this vernacular in five distinct chapters. The titular “sailor talk” (as opposed to “sailors’ talk”) exemplifies her argument that the words shared, shouted, and sung at sea are more than simply the jargon collectively uttered by mariners. Instead, sailor talk is a unique, recognizable, coherent language with “extraordinary layers of meaning to be explored.” This valuable book succeeds in excavating considerable meaning from both the labor performed at sea and the words written about it; two acts, the author persuasively argues, that are inextricably linked. Edwards begins with a masterful overview of the big debates in the field, focusing especially on questions of sailor exceptionality, literacy, and “talk.” This lit review is both indispensable for readers new to maritime history and literature and beneficial to those who have studied it extensively. Comprehensive and fair-minded, Edwards clearly stakes out her own positions, while still respecting the complexity of these central questions and leaving room for those still undecided about them. The second chapter offers an important introduction to and survey of theories about orality and speech. Edwards highlights “the language of command, occupational jargon, and the coterie speech that developed among crews” to argue that “orality was a distinctive feature of the use of language aboard ship.” Here, too, she argues for the uniqueness and importance of sailor talk, before transitioning into an incisive meditation on the interplay between orality and writing that so “strongly influenced the writing of mariner authors.” This analysis grounds her next three chapters, original analyses of how sailor-writers—Herman 58
Melville, Joseph Conrad, and Jack London (though she dutifully notes how Conrad in particular hated to be pigeonholed as a sea writer) created and conveyed meaning by deploying the “technical language, occupational lore, coterie speech, and the
mythic elements of story-telling” common to sailor talk. Each chapter provides historical background as to the authors’ firsthand experiences at sea before turning to analyze how they utilized particular aspects of sailor talk in their writing. Her chapter on Melville argues that “the performative quality of sailor language is a defining feature of Melville’s works,” demonstrating how, for his narrators in particular, “their identity as sailors who perform seafaring labor is inextricable from their storytelling.” Edwards revisits and builds on this theme in the two subsequent chapters on Conrad and London, plumbing the “inseparable connection between orality and performance.” In her analysis of Conrad, she explores themes of the yarn, arguing that he “employs silence, ellipses, and misdirection” in his writing as well as refrains to evoke the experience of oral storytelling. In so doing, he “took the language of sailors…[to create] profound, universal works that question certainty, wrestle with morality, transcend time, and far surpass the limits of a ship’s deck.” Finally, she demonstrates London’s insistence that writing and working a ship were interlinked: “Both require skill, both require the use of his hands, and both result in moments of exultation, of despair, and of
boredom.” Edwards also wrests much meaning from London’s fascination with chanteys, arguing that knowledge of this genre demonstrated a crew’s “quality and skill as sailors.” Throughout the text, Edwards mirrors the sea-writers she discusses by drawing on her own extensive maritime experience and expertise to excavate meaning from the terse, exacting nature of this shared language. Her invaluable personal knowledge shines throughout the text. In just one example, she pauses to explain which sail is the most complicated to set and the precise command for heaving-to. These elucidations are fascinating and useful on their own, but she then turns to her literary training to show the reader how these seawriters intended for these often brusque, sometimes opaque passages to reveal deeper meanings about the characters, the plot, and the larger themes of the texts. In this way, Edwards herself embodies and exemplifies the central argument of her book: “labor in or on the sea is inseparable—one way or another—from language.” Her afterword makes plain that her work is as much a handbook to understanding and honoring life and work at sea as it is an analysis of the authors and their work. Generalists and specialists alike will benefit from Edwards’s sea-writer perspective; her deep knowledge of these twin crafts make a convincing case for the abiding importance of Sailor Talk. Sarah Crabtree Berkeley, California Opening the East River: John Newton and the Blasting of Hell Gate by Thomas Barthel (McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC, 2021, 236pp, maps, illus, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-4766-8298-3; $39.95pb) In his latest book, Thomas Barthel examines the obstacles to maritime progress in the rivers and straits surrounding Manhattan Island in the nineteenth century, and how they were overcome. Then, as now, New York City’s waterways had three major points of access: vessels coming from the north used the Hudson River, which linked New York Harbor to the state’s river-and-canal system to Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain; ships approaching from the south picked their way through SEA HISTORY 178, SPRING 2022