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9781558497948

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This book presents an unusual, close-up view of an apparently ordinary seaman. I know of no other work that does such a good job of representing what life was actually like for thousands of nineteenth-century Americans who made their living on the seas.... At the same time, there are several unexpected twists to this tale, most notably that Benson was an African American and subject to all the tensions and uncertainties that buffeted American blacks in the decades bracketing the Civil War.

At once a social history and psychological history of a working-class Victorian black man from Massachusetts, this book is an important counterpoint to many of the reigning assumptions about what it means (or what it meant) to be black. This is virtually a one-of-a-kind book, because the number of relatively anonymous nineteenth-century African Americans who left such diaries is minuscule. . . . I expect a significant public readership as well as an academic readership.--W. Jeffrey Bolster, author of Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail This book presents an unusual, close-up view of an apparently ordinary seaman. I know of no other work that does such a good job of representing what life was actually like for thousands of nineteenth-century Americans who made their living on the seas. . . . At the same time, there are several unexpected twists to this tale, most notably that Benson was an African American and subject to all the tensions and uncertainties that buffeted American blacks in the decades bracketing the Civil War.--James M. O'Toole, author of Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820-1920

At once a social history and psychological history of a working-class Victorian black man from Massachusetts, this book is an important counterpoint to many of the reigning assumptions about what it means (or what it meant) to be black. This is virtually a one-of-a-kind book, because the number of relatively anonymous nineteenth-century African Americans who left such diaries is minuscule. . . . I expect a significant public readership as well as an academic readership.--W. Jeffrey Bolster, author of Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail This book presents an unusual, close-up view of an apparently ordinary seaman. I know of no other work that does such a good job of representing what life was actually like for thousands of nineteenth-century Americans who made their living on the seas. . . . At the same time, there are several unexpected twists to this tale, most notably that Benson was an African American and subject to all the tensions and uncertainties that buffeted American blacks in the decades bracketing the Civil War.--James M. O'Toole, author of Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820-1920

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Michael Sokolow is assistant professor of history, Kingsborough Community College, CUNY.

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