Originally from: Letters from Linden
Date: February 2011
EQUALITY AT SEA
Contributed by CCHS member Michael Kent
Part of the oral history of my family is that a Black merchant seaman brought a Japanese wife from the Philippine Islands to Calvert County. In 1859, they had a child named Hezekiah Brooks who was my great grandfather. He appears to look part Asian in his photographs but there is not any other documentation to support this story. Hezekiah died in 1922, his father died shortly after his birth. The alleged Japanese mother became Caroline Sims, but no pictures or records have been found to verify her ethnicity. The question that always bothered me is why any free Black who could leave the United States during the time of slavery would voluntarily return.
A new book by Stephen Budiansky may provide some answers. In “Perilous Fight: America’s Intrepid War with Britain on the High Seas, 1812-1815,” Mr. Budiansky asserts that 15% to 20% of American seafarers at that time were free African Americans. Half of the Black seafarers worked in menial roles as stewards or cooks, but the other half were regular seamen, with jobs equal to their white shipmates.
The book asserts that life at sea was an opportunity for equal pay and respect for African Americans that did not exist anywhere else in American society. “To drive a carriage, carry a market basket after the boss, brush his boots, or saw wood and run errands, was as high as a colored man could rise” on land. But at sea, “the Negro feels as a man.” According to Mr. Budiansky’s research, Black seafarers responded to the opportunity by sticking with life at sea much longer than whites. Blacks were on average older (whites were 16-20 at enlistment), more likely to be married and likely to be tied to one home port. These factors also meant Black sailors were more experienced and, on many ships, Blacks had a higher rank and earned more money than whites. The average ship owners of the time paid about $18 per month, but some paid as much as $30 per month.
There were limits: Blacks were almost never officers. However, the commentary from that time period shows an equality and lack of racial animosity that existed among American sailors. On merchant ships and U.S. Navy ships, everyone ate together and worked together. Racial boundaries took a back seat to the rules and regimentation of shipboard life. It is speculated that the depersonalization and dehumanization that all sailors suffered under the stern discipline of shipboard rules made race recede in significance. The book quotes a visitor to a New Orleans seaport who noted with wonder that Black seamen might “give 20 lashes with the end of a rope to white sailors, but ashore they dare not even look him in the face.”
As a former Lieutenant, Junior Grade, in the U.S. Navy and a lifetime member of the Association of the United States Navy, I can confirm that military training forces those coming from different backgrounds to find common ground. Just as it was during the war of 1812, working together is essential to survival.
