Posts Tagged ‘19th Century’
Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens)
by John Samson (2000) [CLEMENS, SAMUEL LANGHORNE], “MARK TWAIN” (1835- 1910). Though more widely known for his writing on the Mississippi River, Samuel Clemens traveled extensively at sea, experiences that find their way into a number of the writings he published under the name Mark Twain. His prose accounts of sea voyages contain much that…
Read MoreBallou, Maturin Murray (“Lieut. Murray,” “Frank Forester”)
by Mary Malloy (2000) [BALLOU, MATURIN MURRAY], “LIEUT. MURRAY,” “FRANK FORESTER” (1820-1895). An influential publisher of American periodicals, Maturin Murray Ballou was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He traveled extensively and entered the literary world by writing descriptive letters of his adventures for publication in local newspapers. The editor and/or publisher of ten periodicals, including the Boston…
Read MorePyle, Howard
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) PYLE, [JOHN] HOWARD (1853-1911). Howard Pyle was one of America’s foremost artists of children’s books, and he exerted a dramatic influence on generations of book illustrators. Pyle was born in Wilmington, Delaware. Until attending art school, he was an admittedly mediocre student. A visit to Chincoteague Island, Virginia, in 1876 inspired…
Read MorePorter, David
by Udo Nattermann (2000) PORTER, DAVID (1780-1843). The son of a veteran of the American Revolution, David Porter was born in Boston and grew up in Baltimore. He began his naval career as a midshipman in 1798 and became master commandant in 1806. In the War of 1812, Porter was captain of the frigate Essex (1799)…
Read MorePoe, Edgar Allan
by Joan Tyler Mead (2000) POE, EDGAR ALLAN (1809-1849). Edgar Allan Poe, best known for his tales of Gothic horror, was a writer of poetry, short and long fiction, an unfinished drama, criticism, literary theory, essays, and a “cosmological prose poem.” His more than seventy short fictions include “ratiocinative” tales, comical pieces, hoaxes, imaginary landscape sketches,…
Read MorePhelps, Elizabeth
by Mira Dock (2000) PHELPS ELIZABETH [STUART] (1844-1911). Growing up in Andover, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Phelps was a lifelong resident of New England and had a summer home in Gloucester. She was a staunch feminist who participated in causes that ranged from temperance to conditions of factory workers. Though the main theme in her fifty-seven books is…
Read MorePeterson, Charles Jacob (“J. Thornton Randolph” or “Harry Danforth”)
by Robert L. Gale (2000) [PETERSON, CHARLES JACOB], “HARRY DANFORTH,” “J. THORNTON RANDOLPH” (1819-1887). Charles Jacob Peterson was an editor, publisher, and historian, born in Philadelphia, where he worked all his life. Once he acquired an ample fortune, he and his wife purchased a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, enjoyed its summer beach and coastal…
Read MorePerry, Commodore Matthew
by Nathaniel T. Mott (2000) PERRY, COMMODORE MATTHEW [CALBRAITH] (1794-1858). Commodore Matthew Perry served a long and distinguished career in the U.S. Navy, which began in January 1809, when he was commissioned as a midshipman. Perry is best known for commanding an 1853 expedition of four vessels, including the steam frigates Mississippi (built 1841) and Susquehanna…
Read MorePercival, James Gates
by Bernard F. Engel (2000) PERCIVAL, JAMES GATES (1795-1856). Though he often mentioned the ocean in his poetry, James Gates Percival made little use of direct observation. As state geologist for Connecticut, he mapped the landforms along the Atlantic and Long Island Sound. But in verse he seldom drew on this knowledge. He followed instead the…
Read MoreWoolson, Constance Fenimore
by Victoria Brehm (2000) WOOLSON, CONSTANCE FENIMORE (1840-1894). One of the first American realists, Constance Fenimore Woolson began her career writing about the Great Lakes, including an early story, “Margaret Morris” (1872), which is the first shipwreck fiction of the Lakes. She set more than a dozen stories on islands or in frontier settlements, most…
Read MoreWilkes, Charles
by Jason Smith (2013) WILKES, CHARLES (1798-1877). Charles Wilkes was an American naval officer, hydrographer, and writer. He commanded the United States Exploring Expedition, 1838 to 1842, wrote its five-volume Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition (1844), edited the expedition’s eighteen scientific volumes, and wrote the last of these, Hydrography (1861). He is also known…
Read MoreWhittier, John Greenleaf
by R. D. Madison (2000) WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF (1807-1892). A Quaker abolitionist and poet, John Greenleaf Whittier epitomizes the poet of rural life. With his New England contemporaries, however, he had little relish for straying far from the reach of the sea breeze. Sea motifs and imagery enter his earliest poetry from unexpected sources, such as…
Read MoreWhitman, Walt
by Philip A. Greasley (2000) WHITMAN, WALT[ER] (1819-1892). Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, near Huntington on northwestern Long Island. With almost two centuries of ancestral residence on the island and some seafaring tradition in his family, Whitman was naturally attuned to the ocean and its related occupations. Not until 1848 did he venture for…
Read MoreThoreau, Henry David
by Capper Nichols (2000) THOREAU, HENRY DAVID (1817-1862). Henry David Thoreau is most often associated with his birthplace and home, Concord, Massachusetts, and the woods, ponds, and streams in the vicinity of the town. But he frequently made excursions to other places, and often these travels took him to the seaside. The longest of these interludes…
Read MoreThaxter, Celia Laighton
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) THAXTER, CELIA [LAIGHTON] (1835-1894). Celia Thaxter was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Thomas and Eliza Laighton, who moved to the Isles of Shoals, nine miles off the coast of New Hampshire, when Celia was five years old. They eventually settled on the largest of the islands, Appledore, where they built and…
Read MoreTaylor, James Bayard
by James L. Gray (2000) TAYLOR, JAMES BAYARD (1825-1878). James Bayard Taylor, born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, launched his career as a travel writer with Views Afoot (1846), an account of a walking tour of Europe, and soon became probably the most popular and prolific American travel writer of his time. His accounts usually emphasize inland…
Read MoreSymmes, John Cleves, “Captain Adam Seaborn”
by Richard J. King [SYMMES, JOHN CLEVES], “CAPTAIN ADAM SEABORN” (1780-1829). Some scholars believe that “Captain Adam Seaborn,” the author of this fictional, first-person narrative, is the pseudonym of army officer and amateur geographer Captain John Cleves Symmes (1780-1829). Symmes claimed that the earth was hollow and accessible by “holes in the poles,” basing his…
Read MoreStowe, Harriet Beecher
by Margherita M. Desy (2000) STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER (1811-1896). Harriet Beecher Stowe is internationally famous for her antislavery best-seller Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). In the summer of 1852, still living in Brunswick, Maine, where she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe began her romantic Maine idyll The Pearl of Orr’s Island (1862). The first half of The…
Read MoreStone, William Leete
by Boyd Childress (2000) STONE, WILLIAM LEETE (1792-1844). William Leete Stone was a journalist and writer whose career as a newspaperman largely overshadowed his work as a historian. Born in New Paltz, New York, Stone had little formal schooling in advance of his employment with several upstate New York newspapers. By 1821, Stone had purchased, sold,…
Read MoreStoddard, Elizabeth
by Elizabeth Schultz (2000) STODDARD, ELIZABETH [DREW BARSTOW] (1823-1902). Iconoclastic novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet, Elizabeth Stoddard was born in the coastal town of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, the daughter of its foremost shipbuilder and maritime merchant. Both the fluctuations of her father’s maritime fortunes and the constant presence of the sea during her childhood had…
Read MoreSlocum, Joshua
by Haskell Springer (2000; rev. 2021) SLOCUM, JOSHUA (1844-1909). Joshua Slocum, the first singlehanded circumnavigator and author of the classic Sailing Alone Around the World (1900), was born in Nova Scotia. At about sixteen he left home to work as a deepwater sailor and by 1869 commanded his first vessel. In 1871 he married Virginia Walker,…
Read MoreSimms, William Gilmore
by Norman E. Stafford (2000) SIMMS, WILLIAM GILMORE (1806-1870). William Gilmore Simms was born in Charleston, South Carolina, where he spent most of his life. He was, with the exception of Edgar Allan Poe, the most significant author of the antebellum South. Beginning as a lawyer, Simms soon turned to his true love, writing, and became…
Read MoreSemmes, Raphael
by Anna E. Lomando (2000) SEMMES, RAPHAEL (1809-1877). A naval officer first in the United States and then in the Confederate navy, Raphael Semmes wrote two books on his naval adventures. The first, Service Afloat and Ashore during the Mexican War (1851), is an account of his service during that conflict. In the early portion of…
Read MoreSchoolcraft, Henry Rowe
by R. D. Madison and Victoria Brehm (2000) SCHOOLCRAFT, HENRY ROWE (1793-1864). Born in upstate New York, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was trained as a glassmaker. Like many Americans of his age, however, as a young man Schoolcraft went west, where his knowledge of mineralogy led eventually to his appointment to the 1820 expedition to the…
Read MoreSargent, Epes
by Mary Malloy (2000) SARGENT, EPES (1813-1880). A Boston newspaperman and son of a Gloucester sea captain, Epes Sargent is best remembered as the author of the lyrics of one of the best-known nautical songs of the nineteenth century. In addition to American Adventures by Land and Sea (1841) and other works meant for a…
Read MoreSamuels, Samuel
by Mary K. Bercaw Edwards (2000) SAMUELS, SAMUEL (1823-1908). Samuel Samuels was the most famous of the packet-ship masters, eventually commanding the renowned Dreadnought (1853). Packets sailed on a set schedule, regardless of whether or not their cargo holds were full. Almost all that is known of Samuels comes from his autobiography, From the Forecastle…
Read MoreRowson, Susanna H.
by Philip Barnard (2000) ROWSON, SUSANNA H[ASWELL]. (1762-1824). Born in Portsmouth, England, Susanna H. Rowson became an actress, educator, prolific writer in several genres, and notably the author of Charlotte Temple (1791), America’s first best-selling novel. Rowson’s father, William Haswell, was a lieutenant in the British Royal Navy, and her childhood and adolescence were marked by…
Read MoreRobertson, Morgan
by Donald P. Curtis (2000) ROBERTSON, MORGAN (1861-1915). Son of a Great Lakes captain, Morgan Robertson was born in Oswego, New York, on Lake Ontario. He wrote popular sea fiction with the authoritative voice of an expert seaman. Sailing from 1877 to 1886, he first shipped out on a Great Lakes vessel before exploring the oceans.…
Read MoreRiley, James
by Daniel E. Williams (2000) RILEY, JAMES (1777-1840). While on a voyage from Gibraltar to the Cape Verde Islands during the summer of 1815, Captain James Riley and his crew of the brig Commerce were shipwrecked on the barren coast of the western Sahara, where they were soon enslaved by wandering Bedouins. The Americans were bought…
Read MoreReynolds, J. N.
by Peter F. deCataldo (2000) REYNOLDS, J[EREMIAH]. N. (1799?-1858). Details of the life of J. N. Reynolds are sketchy, and his lingering reputation today is mainly the result of his influence upon major works of Edgar Allan Poe (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym [1838]) and Herman Melville (Moby-Dick [1851]). Reynolds, who was born in Cumberland…
Read MoreOptic, Oliver (William T. Adams)
by Frank Rotsaert (2000) [ADAMS, WILLIAM TAYLOR], “OLIVER OPTIC” (1822-1897). Using the pen name “Oliver Optic,” William Taylor Adams spent twenty years as a teacher in Boston schools and wrote popular children’s fiction in the nineteenth century. The publication of The Boat Club: or, The Bunkers of Rippleton (1855) gave Adams the status of major author of…
Read MoreNordhoff, Charles, the elder
by John B. Hattendorf (2000) NORDHOFF, CHARLES, the elder (1830-1901). A journalist, Charles Nordhoff was born in Erwitte, a village in Westphalia, Prussia. At five, he emigrated with his parents to Ohio, where they died. Left an orphan in the care of a family in Cincinnati, he was apprenticed to a printer at age thirteen. After…
Read MoreNickerson, Thomas
by Nathaniel Philbrick (2000) NICKERSON, THOMAS (1805-1883). At fifteen years old, Thomas Nickerson was the youngest member of the crew of the Nantucket whale-ship Essex when she was rammed and sunk by a whale in the Pacific Ocean, 20 November 1820. In 1876, fifty-five years after the appearance of first mate Owen Chase’s account of…
Read MoreMorrell, Benjamin
by Haskell Springer (2000) MORRELL, BENJAMIN (1795-1839). Benjamin Morrell, sealing captain and explorer, was born in Rye, New York, the son of a shipbuilder. His early experiences included being twice captured by the British during the War of 1812 and spending over two and a half years in prison. Subsequently, he made a number of deep-sea…
Read MoreMorrell, Abby Jane
by Haskell Springer (2000) MORRELL, ABBY JANE [WOOD] (1809-l???). The cousin and second wife of Captain Benjamin Morrell, Abby Jane Wood married the captain when she was fifteen. She accompanied him on the last of his four voyages of commerce and exploration, in the schooner Antarctic (1829-1831). Apparently emulating his account of his ventures in his…
Read MoreMerwin, Samuel
by Robert Beasecker (2000) MERWIN, SAMUEL (1874-1936). Born in Evanston, Illinois, Samuel Merwin attended Northwestern University but did not graduate. His literary career began with the publication of two popularly acclaimed novels, The Short Line War (1899) and Calumet “K” (1901), written in collaboration with his boyhood friend Henry Kitchell Webster. Following the separation of this…
Read MoreMelville, Herman
by Mary K. Bercaw Edwards (2000) MELVILLE, HERMAN (1819-1891). More than any other American author, Herman Melville used the sea as setting and concept to create great literature. With broad-ranging and deep philosophical interests, his books are far more than adventure stories. In his works, Melville struggles with human interactions in a diverse and complex world,…
Read MoreSleeper, John Sherburne (“Hawser Martingale”)
by Peter H. McCracken (2000) [SLEEPER, JOHN SHERBURNE], “HAWSER MARTINGALE” (1794-1878). An author and journalist from New England, John Sherburne Sleeper first went to sea in 1809 as a cabin boy and assumed his first command in 1821. By 1825 he was captain of an East Indiaman, and he spent much of his career in merchant…
Read MoreMaury, Matthew Fontaine
by R. D. Madison (2000) MAURY, MATTHEW FONTAINE (1806-1873). The 1855 publication of Matthew Fontaine Maury’s Physical Geography of the Sea inaugurated the distinct discipline of oceanography, but earlier essays under the pseudonym “Harry Bluff” helped shape reform of the antebellum U.S. Navy. Born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Maury pursued a career as an officer in the…
Read MoreLowell, James Russell
by Brendan A. Rapple (2000) LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL (1819-1891). James Russell Lowell, poet, literary and social critic, editor, abolitionist, scholar of comparative literature, Harvard professor, diplomat, and consummate traveler, frequently crossed the Atlantic to visit Britain and the Continent. On 12 July 1851, he sailed from Boston in the bark Sultana on his first trip to…
Read MoreLongfellow, Henry Wadsworth
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH (1807-1882). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, at a time when that seaport was second in New England only to Boston in total tonnage engaged in maritime trade. Close to half a century later, in the poem “My Lost Youth” (1855)–his reminiscences of those early days–Longfellow’s…
Read MoreLodge, George Cabot
by Dana L. Peterson (2000) LODGE, GEORGE CABOT (1873-1909). Son of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and acquaintance of Edith Wharton, Henry James, and his own biographer, Henry Adams, the poet and verse dramatist George Cabot Lodge was well acquainted with the sea. Growing up in the coastal Massachusetts town of Nahant and, as an adult, summering…
Read MoreLittle, George
Life on the Ocean, or Twenty Years at Sea (1843)
Read MoreLincoln, Joseph Crosby
by Susan Raidy Klein (2000) LINCOLN, JOSEPH C[ROSBY]. (1870-1944). Joseph C. Lincoln, the descendant of a long line of a seafarers, was a prolific author of best-selling verses, stories, and novels that portrayed life along the shore of Cape Cod with nostalgia and humor. The son of Captain Joseph and Emily (Crosby) Lincoln, the author was…
Read MoreLarcom, Lucy
by Thomas R. Brooks (2000) LARCOM, LUCY (1824-1893). Lucy Larcom was a prolific and highly regarded writer of descriptive and religious verse, short fiction, and inspirational prose in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born on the Massachusetts North Shore in Beverly, she lived and worked as a young girl in the Lowell mills, taught…
Read MoreHurlbut, Frances B.
by Donald P. Curtis (2000) HURLBUT, FRANCES [BRINDEL] (1842?-1892). Orphaned by age nine, Frances Hurlbut, nee Brindel, left Pennsylvania for Newport (now Marine City), Michigan, to live with her aunt, Emily Ward. Hurlbut’s only publication, Grandmother’s Stories (1889), recounts Aunt Emily’s tales of their pioneer family. Two themes dominate: the danger of the untamed Great Lakes,…
Read MoreJudson, Edward Zane Carroll (“Ned Buntline”)
by Margarita Rigal-Aragon (2000) [JUDSON, EDWARD ZANE CARROLL], “NED BUNTLINE” (1823-1886). Edward Zane Carroll Judson, better known by his pseudonym Ned Buntline, was born on the Atlantic coast in Stamford, New York. The family moved to Bethany, Pennsylvania, and then to Philadelphia about the time Judson was a teenager. The docks of this port impressed…
Read MoreJones, Justin (“Harry Hazel”)
by Boyd Childress (2000) [JONES, JUSTIN] “HARRY HAZEL” (1814-1889). Justin Jones, who wrote under the pseudonym Harry Hazel, authored more than forty dime novels about Boston, war, life at sea, and other adventure. His career as a fiction writer covered the 1840s and 1850s, for the most part, although he edited a newspaper as early…
Read MoreJones, John Paul
by Kay Seymour House (2000) JONES, JOHN PAUL (1747-1792). Born in Scotland, John Paul went to sea as an apprentice at age twelve. After inheriting property in Virginia, he added “Jones” to his name and became a lieutenant in the Continental navy in 1775. His was the first vessel to fly the Continental flag. After reporting…
Read MoreJewitt, John Rodgers
by Mary Malloy (2000) JEWITT, JOHN RODGERS (1783-1821). An Englishman who served aboard the American merchant vessel Boston, John Jewitt became famous as a “captive” of the Indians of Nootka Sound, off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, when he survived the destruction of his ship and massacre of its crew in 1803. Born in…
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