In his autobiography, Living Again, Felix Riesenberg mentions that, during his time as editor of Seafarer and Marine Pictorial magazine, “I printed what I believe to be one of the outstanding sea stories ever written, ‘The Passing of Pengelley,’ by a sailor named Williams, a protégé of Hamilton Holt, the editor of the Independent.”
Googling “passing of pengelley” and “williams” produced just two hits: one to Living Again
In his preface to the book, Kuehl describes how he stumbled across a collection of Williams’ manuscripts while researching a biography on Holt:
In style and story, it held me spellbound. Here were daring adventures, heroic deeds, and colorful descriptive passages. And here was the lure of a romantic age now lost save in our imagination.
From reading the pieces, Kuehl soon learned more about the writer:
He called himself a common sailor, but he was a most uncommon man. With little formal education, he wrote in a style which would embarrass many polished scribes. Although a self-confessed murderer according to his own account, he possessed a high sense of moral virtue which like an unseen hand directed his actions. Although a practical man who survived innumerable storms and two major shipwrecks, he was a romantic soul who instinctively sought out the ships of masts and spars in an age in which the merchant marine was making its transition from sail to steam, from Wood to steel. Within him, too, burned a reforming fever so intense that he became an uncompromising enemy of crimps, jackals, avaricious shipowners, heartless masters, and all who preyed upon the common seaman. And he labored with some success to achieve through unions and legislation the humane treatment and legal rights which he felt his comrades of the sea deserved.
He was, Kuehl continues,
James H. Williams, Negro seaman with reddish hair and light-brown skin. He was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, on May 21, 1864, the son of James C. and Margaret Crotty Williams and, as he narrates in describing his family background and childhood experiences, went to sea at an early age. It was in 1897 that he first began to write about life in the old merchant marine. He was then thirty-three years old and had been a sailor for twenty-one years. Hamilton Holt, then the managing editor of the Independent, a prominent national magazine, opened the columns of his journal to Williams and subsequently prints over thirty articles and editorials from Williams’ pen.
As Williams writes in the first piece, “A Son of Ishmael,” his father was a black sailor, whose mother had been a slave, and his mother a white working-class woman from Fall River. Williams’ father rose to the status of pilot for a Long Island Sound line, and had ambitions of a college education for his son, but these ended with his death in an accident in 1870. At the age of twelve, Williams took to sea, bound to a shipmaster as a cabin boy.
By the time Williams went to sea, the great age of sailing ships was already coming to an end. Steamships were rapidly replacing sailing ships, and three-masters were being elbowed out of the most profitable routes. Although Williams was quite clearly a highly perceptive and intelligent man, for some reason he chose to stick with the older ships–a decision that relegated him to a series of rough, dangerous, and poorly-paid posts on ships plying secondary routes to such places as Bombay and Buenos Aires. Most of his jobs were on British ships, although he considered this “entirely the result of chance and not of choice.”
“I am proud of my hard-earned distinction as a maritime A. B. and of my lifetime of intimate and fraternal association with the ‘common’ sailors of the old merchant marine. No nobler or braver or more loyal, devoted and self-sacrificing martyrs than the merchant seaman ever lived.”
“The Passing of Pengelley” offers a dramatic illustration of the risks taken by these seamen. It describes the death of one of Williams’ shipmates, Alfred Pengelley, on the British ship, Late Commander, on a transit from Southhampton to Calcutta. As they huddle together on deck, sheltering from a terrific storm while standing watch, Pengelley confides in Williams that he has a crippling fear of climbing the masts and believes that he is destined to die from a fall. Pengelley’s premonition comes true that night. Williams then recounts his burial at sea and how the ship’s captains and owners then attempt to cover up the cause of the accident–the lack of proper safety attachments–and put the blame on Pengelley’s own negligence. It’s a vivid story that not only demonstrates the dangers of shipboard work but also Williams’ own advocacy of better working conditions and pay for sailors–a cause he championed both while at sea and later through his articles and columns.
The story illustrates why Kuehl is apt in comparing Williams’ writings to Richard Henry Dana, Jr.’s classic, Two Years Before the Mast
Ironically, though, at the same time that Williams began to write, the very organizations he was trying to support were making it more and more difficult for a black man to work as a merchant sailor. By the time he came ashore for good in 1910, it would have been difficult for him to get a posting as anything other than a cook or steward.
Williams’ time at sea took a considerable toll on his health. Although supported by Holt and others, he still had to rely on odd jobs on the Manhattan waterfront to get by. He collected his manuscripts and wrote an introductory foreword to them in 1922, hoping to publish them as a book. It was this collection that Kuehl discovered among Hamilton Holt’s papers.
In 1926, he retired to Sailor’s Snug Harbor a home founded in 1801 to give refuge to “aged, decrepit and worn-out” seamen. He died a year later after an operation to treat his throat cancer and was buried in the Sailor’s Snug Harbor cemetery.
A paperback reproduction of Blow The Man Down
Willie Bolden: drop me a note at blanketghs@yahoo.com. Reg Pitts.
I have been studying the life of James H. Williams for some time, an “Uncommon” Common Sailor. His life and story should definitely be explored and shared with the broader reading public. Would really appreciate any information any of you can share on where I might find additional stories about his life.
Many Many Thanks!
Willie M. Bolden
Atlanta
I discovered this book when I was in junior high (about 1969) and fell in love with it. I became interested in Williams and started gathering information on his career, his family and his writings–no mean feat for a teenager in a pre-Internet world. While in college, I contacted Dr. Kuehl, who was at the University of Akron and sent him a fan letter–he invited me to New York City and we actually went out to Sailors Snug Harbor (can’t do that these days) to try and locate williams’ grave (not successful). I was going to Akron to get my masters in History, but the funding wasn’t there, and as I was able to swing a scholarship elsewhere, there I went, but not without regrets. This book, at least should be reissued, so that young ones can get an idea of how things were on the dark and rolling seas many years ago. Great stuff, and thank you for your blog. I still give the old fellow some thought at times (particularly during heavy rainstorms). Thank you!
The sailing merchant (usually with an auxiliary mule backup engine) did not pass away until World War 1 when so many of them were sunk by commerce raiders and submarines. Once they needed new stock, the switch over to steam/diesel was much more complete.
It should be remembered that some of the most successful German commerce raiders of World War 1 were sailing ships.
Here is a comment from an Amazon reader which reinforces yours:
“Wow, this is a gem of a book! The reason for its undeserved obscurity is likely that rather than being an autobiographical narrative that runs logically from A-Z this book is actually a group of chronologically arranged stories about the author’s experiences on the high seas as an able-bodied seaman on board of sailing ships. The peculiar structure is due to the fact that the stories were put together from articles he wrote for The Independent, a magazine published at the turn of the 20th Century. Still, these stories are extraordinary. Mainly because the narrator has a true gift for story-telling and an amazing command of the English language, despite being cut from the roughest of cloth and being largely self-educated. It helps that he was a quite extraordinary human being: physically, intellectually and professionally. Why it was that he chose to be an itinerant seaman we can only wonder and marvel at. Whatever the reason it accrues to our benefit. The action takes place on many different ships in many different areas of the globe, involving much death, injury, brutality, heroism, humor, horror, humanity and tragedy. Some of the stuff is so extraordinary that it leaves the reader wondering how it can be true, but is simultaneously so convincingly and honestly portrayed that it causes him to realize that it must be. This author describes a world and working conditions that will absolutely open ones eyes up in shock and outrage. It will also cause one to realize how effeminate we have become as we have grown more civilized (thank goodness, I say, for I wouldn’t want to live and work in the conditions that he and his fellow sailors had to). I give this book four stars only because not everybody loves adventure stories and also because the author uses many words and expressions that have long since left the vernacular so one will need to consult a dictionary (and the helpfully included glossary) from time to time in order to completely follow the story. Having said that I HIGHLY recommend this book!!!”