Young Men and the Sea

I appreciate this book for bringing the local into the world of Atlantic seafarers. Daniel Vickers is one of the deans of early American social history (he is one of the historians mentioned in the Harvard bar scene in the film Good Will Hunting) and turns his talents here to explain how American seamen were different in the Age of Sail. The simple answer is that they were young. Unlike the long-distance professional seafarers of Europe, sailing in America, especially New England was more of a life stage on the way to other jobs and pursuits.

These sailors were… show more.

The sea figured prominently in early American life.  Westward expansion is a dominant theme in American history, but as historian Daniel Vickers demonstrates, the horizon extended in all directions. For those who lived along the Atlantic coast, it was the East — and the Atlantic Ocean — that beckoned. In Young Men and the Sea, seafaring is a normal part of life. Drawing on the records of thousands of mariners sailing from Salem, Massachusetts, Vickers offers a fascinating social history of early American seafaring.  In what sort of families were sailors raised? When did they go to sea?  What… show more.

While this book isn’t about piracy, it’s no less important to the field. Vickers explores the lives of sailors in the first two centuries of American history. He uses a plethora of primary sources to examine the lives of sailors and the factors that drove men to dangerous lives at sea. Not only that, Vickers takes great care to examine the early American maritime communities in New England and the mid-Atlantic to show just how important sailors were to the economy, their communities, and their families.