[In the following essay, Moss offers a brief overview of two sea adventure stories by Marryat: Masterman Ready and Mr. Midshipman Easy.]

By the time that Charles Dickens had published A Holiday Romance (1868), the stock features of sea adventure stories were so well-known that his nine-year-old character, the would-be writer Robin Redforth, can tell the adventures of one Captain Boldheart and his encounters with cannibals, pirates, and worst of all, the Latin Grammar Master (who gets boiled in a pot by the cannibals). As Harvey Darton suggested, Redforth probably subscribed to The Boys of England, a magazine whose aim was to enthrall the youthful male reader with “wild and wonderful but healthy fiction.”¹ This wild and wonderful fiction invariably included bold adventurous sea captains who battled bloodthirsty pirates led by a villainous and infernal chief, rescued helpless maidens in the thrall of the pirate chief, and triumphantly discovered buried treasure. James Barrie and Robert Louis Stevenson, authors of classic sea adventure stories, both admit that they had devoured “penny-dreadfuls” and that they especially preferred to read about pirates in their goriest form. The children in Kenneth Grahame's The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898) reveal that they had also appropriated the conventions of sea adventure stories when they reenact the quest of the Argonauts and when they desperately exclaim that what they want is “blood and plenty of it.” Where did these conventions originate?

What Wallace Stevens called “the everhooded and tragic-gestured sea,” the savage source with its power, mystery, and, to human consciousness at least, apparent will of its own, has inspired a range of literature from the earliest times to the present—from ephemeral popular works to enduring classics, and from the first great classic of sea literature, Homer's Odyssey, in Paula Fox's excellent contemporary novel for children, The Slave Dancer. In the eighteenth century the sea became a powerful setting for Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, the model for so many subsequent Robinsonnades and other sea adventures.

Edwin M. Hall provides a useful working definition of the sea adventure story: “it is a fictional prose narrative of which at least half takes place on shipboard and in which the handling of the ship is important to the plot.”² Hall argues that James Fenimore Cooper invented the genre with the publication of The Pilot (1824). If Cooper invented it, however, Captain Frederick Marryat (1792-1848) not only set a high standard of accuracy in writing nautical fiction, but also, popularized the sea story as a form of adventure and romance.

Captain Marryat had himself led an impressive and romantic life at sea: he ran away to sea at the age of fourteen, engaged in over fifty naval battles, and guarded Napoleon at the Island of St. Helena, eventually bringing news of the fallen hero's death back to England.³ Having read The Swiss Family Robinson (English trans., 1814) to his children, Marryat was angered by this novel's nautical and geographical errors, a central reason why he undertook the writing of Masterman Ready.

This novel recounts the adventures of the Seagrave family, who are deserted after a shipwreck by everyone save the faithful old seaman Ready, a black nanny called Juno, and the family dog. Unfortunately, Marryat's consciousness of his child audience results in unpleasantly overt preaching. Every event is an occasion for Mr. Seagrave to expand upon self-evident morals; he exclaims after a storm, for example, “See, my child, the wreck and devastation which are here. See how the pride of man is humbled before the elements of the great Jehovah.”⁴

The novel is further weakened by the stereotyped characterizations of children, a practice stemming from well-established traditions of the moral tale. William is the grave and intelligent older son, who listens to his elders, obeys them, and stays out of trouble. He is loathsomely good, pious, and self-sacrificing. The younger boy, Tommy, is totally depraved; he thinks only of bodily gratification, ignores advice from his elders, and finally brings disaster on everyone. He is even responsible for the death of the good and faithful Ready.

Ready himself assumes the role of the stereotyped teacher and friend, rather like Mr. Barlow in Thomas Day's Sandford and Merton. Ready instructs William in seamanship, geography, and natural history, as well as in moral and spiritual matters. Despite his attention to morals, Ready does possess some understanding of children. He explains that “Every high-spirited boy wishes to go to sea—it's quite natural; but if the most of them were to speak the truth, it is not so much to go to sea that they want, as they want to go from school or home, where they are under control of their masters or parents” (p. 22). In this passage Marryat may reflect his own boyhood discontent with the adult world. He ran away twice before his father finally permitted him to become a midshipman.

Ready's preaching is not confined to the children. He sometimes finds that he must explain to Mr. Seagrave the spiritual meaning of catastrophic events, as well as practical matters of survival. In sum, the didacticism of Masterman Ready is unrelieved from first to last. The accuracy of nautical and geographical details can hardly make up for the dreariness of the work. The importance of the work, then, is purely historical; with this work Marryat helps to establish the sea adventure as an important sub-genre in children's literature.

A later book, Mr. Midshipman Easy, was not designed to be a children's book, and it is not marred by the excessive overt preachment of Masterman Ready.

Mr. Midshipman Easy recounts the quest of Mr. Midshipman Jack Easy to become a respectable nineteenth-century gentleman of property. Marryat blends aspects of eighteenth-century realistic fiction and the trappings of romance in writing this sea adventure, which remains readable because of its humorous characterizations and its exciting, if somewhat episodic, plot.

Jack Easy's troubles begin at birth with his rather theatrical father. In the first chapter Marryat has much fun at the expense of this gentleman, punning outrageously on the word “easy”:

Mr. Nicodemus Easy was a gentleman who lived down in Hampshire: he was a married man, and in very easy circumstances. Most couples find it very easy to have a family but not always quite so easy to maintain them. Mr. Easy was not at all uneasy on the latter score, as he had no children … After ten years, Mr. Easy gave it up as a bad job …⁵

To assuage his disappointment, Mr. Easy decides to become a philosopher, purveying his unshakable belief in equality and the rights of man. Nevertheless, he is delighted to discover that Mrs. Easy “could no longer nejoy her breakfast” (p. 2). Mr. Easy is overjoyed when he becomes the father of a fine boy—a son who will embody and espouse the great causes of equality and the rights of man. Marryat introduces more humor when a young woman is found to nurse the Easy heir. Mrs. Easy objects when she learns that the girl has given birth to a child out of wedlock:

“Good heavens! Dr. Middleton, what can you mean by bringing this person here?” exclaimed Mrs. Easy. “Not a married woman, and she has a child!” “If you please, ma'am; it was a very little one.”

(p. 10)

The nurse's illegitimate child, however, turns out to be the least problem in the rearing of Jack Easy. Mr. Easy has read Rousseau and Thomas Day with an astonishingly literal mind. As a result of his father's overly indulgent methods and obsessive philosophy of the rights of man, Jack appropriates a concern only for his own rights. By the time that he is finally sent to school, he has become a truculent and violent little beast who throws hot coffee on his father, while biting and kicking his nurse. At school Jack is subjected to brutal canings from his headmaster, Mr. Bonnycastle. Bonnycastle's harsh measures do not deter Jack from his father's philosophy. He continues to believe ardently in the rights of man, and he loves to argue so much that he can soon out-talk his father.

Jack's philosophy gets him into increasingly serious trouble. He takes apples from neighbors, insisting that because of the rights of man, he has a perfect right to them. He abuses fishing rights. He is chased by a mad bull; he falls into a well, and is drawn up by a superstitious young woman who mistakes him for the devil and lets him fall down again. The poor hero finally decides that the land is no place for the equal rights of man to prosper. Master Jack, aged sixteen, embarks upon a career at sea, in order, he thinks, to be free.

Jack Easy must learn the via media, the way of reasonable men, like the ship's captain, Wilson and the ship's doctor, Middleton. In the manner of eighteenth-century novelists and dramatists, Marryat plays humorously with characters' names. Mr. Nicodemus Easy is a devil in disguise for taking the “easy” way. Dr. Middleton must provide the middle ground between absolute tyranny and absolute chaotic freedom. Mr. Sawbridge must help Jack to sever his connections with his self-indulgent past and embark upon a new stage of responsibility.

Jack's adventures at sea involve undoing follies in his character brought about as a result of the harsh treatment of Bonnycastle, on one hand, and the elder Easy's excessive lenience on the other. This arduous task is left to Mr. Sawbridge and Captain Wilson, both men of integrity, calm demeanor, and reason. Finally Jack has the wise and patient teachers he has needed all along. Still, Marryat implies that Jack gets special treatment because of his social station. A midshipman who receives 8,000 pounds a year is clearly not an ordinary seaman. At every stage of Jack's development, the novel emphasizes his station and its responsibilities to society. One enjoys Jack's outrageous adventures at sea with the sense that after all, Jack is not preparing for a serious nautical career; he is merely marking time until he can assume his proper role as an English gentleman.

Despite the presence of pirates, savages, and battles, the novel endorses the familiar values of duty, responsibility, acquisition of goods, good sense, and a keen awareness of one's place in society. Marryat also endorses a code important to most adventure stories; the hero defends himself and his weaker fellows against bullies.

One could hardly leave Mr. Midshipman Easy without discussing the Ashantee prince who attaches himself to Jack. Mephistopheles or “Mesty” is perhaps the counterpart of Crusoe's Man Friday. Mesty brings Jack a knowledge of the sea, and of the realities of evil in human nature, as well as his own unerring loyalty. Mesty brings a dimension of romance to the novel, for he reflects characteristics of the noble savage and imparts an ambiance of mystery and terror to the narrative. Yet he also represents an unfortunate stereotype: his teeth are filed, and his eyes sparkle with pleasure at the thought of danger, battle, and, especially, the deadly sharks' chewing up the bodies of mutinous sailors.

Like many other adventure stories, Mr. Midshipman Easy reveals the essential structure of romance. The hero is separated from his rightful home and must undergo a period of testing and ordeal. He meets a primitive and wise mentor (Mesty) who teaches him heroic virtues and practical skill. The hero inevitably grows in character, finally returning to demand his rightful place in the kingdom.

In portraying female characters, Marryat is not successful. One wonders why Jack falls so madly in love with the Spanish beauty Agness, who alternately cries and faints, apparently incapable of a single thought. Jack's poor mother is little better; she spends her time sitting in a corner waiting for the millenium.

Jack Easy's career at sea ends when his father goes completely mad. After Mrs. Easy's death, Mr. Easy begins to spend all of his time in his laboratory contemplating the rights of man, while servants devastate his estate. Jack must put aside his adventures and take his place in society. Such a resolution is in keeping with the habit of early Victorian novels: happiness resides in finding one's rightful place in society and using that place in the right and appropriate way. Mr. Easy, for all his social class, simply is not made of the right stuff; he is too easy.

For all its social implications and its concern for establishing the power of the upper middle-class, Mr. Midshipman Easy has been read by generations of boys strictly for its adventurous episodes. Marryat's biographer claims in fact that this novel, more than any other novel of sea adventure, inspired countless lads to run away to sea.

For Marryat's young protagonists, self-discovery was the purpose of enduring adventures and trials at sea. But for Marryat, self-discovery is primarily external and social. For him, the ship was a microcosm of British society, and hence the perfect place in which to shape the identity of a British gentleman. As the sea story matured, it became not only a microcosm of society, but, as W. H. Auden has written, “a metaphor of danger from within or without,” and it assumed several Romantic attitudes:

1) To leave the land and the city is the desire of every man of sensibility and honor.

2) The sea is the real situation and the voyage is the true condition of man.

3) The sea is where the decisive events, the moments of eternal choice, of temptation, fall, and redemption occur. The shore life is always trivial.

4) The abiding destination is unknown even if it may exist: a lasting relationship is not possible nor even to be desired.⁶

The sea adventure story assumed such dimensions in its maturest expressions: Herman Melville's great sea novels Moby-Dick and Billy Budd and, to a lesser extent, White-Jacket and “Benito Cereno.” Joseph Conrad, who had read Marryat avidly, maintained the earlier novelist's high level of accuracy but revealed new possibilities for sea adventure in such classics as The Heart of Darkness, in which the sea story becomes the arena for searching the dark abyss of the self and its capacity for evil.

In children's literature sea adventure stories were more often formulaic. Kathleen Blake has described how such novels as Masterman Ready and Coral Island, and Jules Verne's Their Island Home (1900), among many others, contributed to the creation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883). Blake comments: “Treasure Island is the dream come true in the full-bodied glory of versimilitude, which had belonged to tradition since Crusoe experienced the romance of his island in terms of common sense, a providential tally sheet, and the sound use of capital, and which allows Jim Hawkins to dream his island and to go there, returning with real pieces of eight.”⁷ In Peter Pan (1911) the tradition became much more self-consciously artifice—avowedly a world of make-believe. Blake explains: “Barrie is concerned with showing how the palpable absolute conjured by such as Stevenson is both forever and never, and in particular, never again” (p. 168). …

Notes

1. Children's Books In England: Five Centuries of Social History (1939; Rpt. Cambridge: The University Press, 1970), p. 300.

2. “James Fenimore Cooper and Literature of the Sea,” Sea Fiction Guide, Myron J. Smith, Jr. and Robert C. Weller (Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1976), p. xviii.

3. All details concerning Captain Marryat's life are taken from Oliver Warner, Captain Marryat: A Rediscovery (London: Constable, 1953).

4. Captain Frederick Marryat, Masterman Ready (1841; Rpt. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1907 and 1948), p. 20.

5. Captain Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy (1839; Rpt. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1906 and 1954), p. 211.

6. The Enchafed Flood, or, the Romantic Iconography of the Sea (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1949), pp. 12-13.

7. “The Sea-Dream: Peter Pan and Treasure Island,” Children's Literature, 6 (1977), 167. …