Redburn | Page 2

In the Merchant Navy

I. HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN'S TASTE FOR THE SEA
WAS BORN AND BRED IN HIM
"Wellingborough, as you are going to sea, suppose you take this
shooting-jacket of mine along; it's just the thing--take it, it will save the
expense of another. You see, it's quite warm; fine long skirts, stout horn
buttons, and plenty of pockets."
Out of the goodness and simplicity of his heart, thus spoke my elder
brother to me, upon the eve of my departure for the seaport.
"And, Wellingborough," he added, "since we are both short of money,
and you want an outfit, and I Have none to give, you may as well take
my fowling-piece along, and sell it in New York for what you can
get.--Nay, take it; it's of no use to me now; I can't find it in powder any
more."
I was then but a boy. Some time previous my mother had removed
from New York to a pleasant village on the Hudson River, where we
lived in a small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several
plans which I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing
something for myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now
conspired within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.
For months previous I had been poring over old New York papers,
delightedly perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of
which possessed a strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again

I devoured such announcements as the following:
"FOR BREMEN.
"The coppered and copper-fastened brig Leda, having nearly completed
her cargo, will sail for the above port on Tuesday the twentieth of May.
For freight or passage apply on board at Coenties Slip."
To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement like
this, suggested volumes of thought.
A brig! The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn craft,
with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards.
Coppered and copper-fastened! That fairly smelt of the salt water! How
different such vessels must be from the wooden, one-masted,
green-and- white-painted sloops, that glided up and down the river
before our house on the bank.
Nearly completed her cargo! How momentous the announcement;
suggesting ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases of silks and satins, and
filling me with contempt for the vile deck-loads of hay and lumber,
with which my river experience was familiar.
"Will sail on Tuesday the 20th of May"--and the newspaper bore date
the fifth of the month! Fifteen whole days beforehand; think of that;
what an important voyage it must be, that the time of sailing was fixed
upon so long beforehand; the river sloops were not used to make such
prospective announcements.
"For freight or passage apply on board!"
Think of going on board a coppered and copper-fastened brig, and
taking passage for Bremen! And who could be going to Bremen? No
one but foreigners, doubtless; men of dark complexions and jet-black
whiskers, who talked French.
"Coenties Slip."
Plenty more brigs and any quantity of ships must be lying there.
Coenties Slip must be somewhere near ranges of grim-looking
warehouses, with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old
anchors and chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned coffeehouses,
also, much abound in that neighborhood, with sunburnt sea-captains
going in and out, smoking cigars, and talking about Havanna, London,
and Calcutta.
All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by certain
shadowy reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping,

with which a residence in a seaport during early childhood had supplied
me.
Particularly, I remembered standing with my father on the wharf when
a large ship was getting under way, and rounding the head of the pier. I
remembered the yo heave ho! of the sailors, as they just showed their
woolen caps above the high bulwarks. I remembered how I thought of
their crossing the great ocean; and that that very ship, and those very
sailors, so near to me then, would after a time be actually in Europe.
Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had several times
crossed the Atlantic on business affairs, for he had been an importer in
Broad-street. And of winter evenings in New York, by the
well-remembered sea-coal fire in old Greenwich-street, he used to tell
my brother and me of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high; of
the masts bending like twigs; and all about Havre, and Liverpool, and
about going up into the ball of St. Paul's in London. Indeed, during my
early life, most of my thoughts of the sea were connected with the land;
but with fine old lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long,
narrow, crooked streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange
houses. And especially