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"A Medium in Which I Seek Relief": Manuscripts of American Sailors 1919-1940

Barchives

About Barchives NYC

Why bring archivists into bars? Because we’re not the dusty basement cousins of your well-loved librarians. We’ve got the details behind your favorite borough, brand, book, and beer. We collect, preserve, and digitize so our records can be viewed, touched, and heard. Even so, we know we’re sometimes hard to find– so we’re coming to you! Every month we’ll meet you at the bar. Have a drink, relax, and learn about the archives of NYC.

Barchives is brought to you by two NYC-based archivists, Lindsay Anderberg and Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez. Our idea originated in 2018 when we hosted the event Before This Was A Bar It Was A… as members of the Archivists Round Table’s Outreach Committee. One year after that sold-out event, we struck out on our own to bring Barchives to life as an ongoing series.

This page is referenced by:

Van Horne Morris Letter Home, circa 1940
In this remarkable letter, circa 1940, presumably written from sea, my grandfather explains why he decided to give up his career as a merchant mariner. A complete transcription (with some annotations) follows. You can also click on the video to see Annie read the letter at a "Barchives" event (#4: "Mariners, Floating Churches & Grog Shops") which took place at the Ear Inn, September 2019.
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Dear Folks,

Five years have passed now since I made up my mind about a career, packed my back [bag?], and went away to sea. Five years of education that no man ashore would ever get, an education that was by no means confined to seafaring subjects. Five years of the same rolling ocean, the same distant horizon, the same clouds and stars of the sky. The romance, the adventure, the strange and distant countries. Ah yes, the romance and adventure. More words that originated not from the man who supposedly realizes them, but by the youth who stares out of the window of the trolley, the bus, or the car in which he rides homeward from his daily work. He sees the ships at dusk, their red and green lights twinkling as they sail steadily and majestically down the harbor to the open sea. “The open sea!” The words themselves just teem with adventure. “Outward bound,” “Over the horizon,” “Strange and far away.” Just phrases, but everyone a trap for the unfortunate whose imagination is strong and whose feet are itching to trod new places. All he can see is a picture in his mind of himself, bracing his legs on the deck of a sturdy vessel facing into a gale with a smile on his lips, a smile- for isn’t he conquering nature? Battling down the tremendous seas and surging steadily onward. He can see himself coming home with tanned and weathered face in the middle of January when the snows are deep and everyone else’s face is white. He has come from the tropics where the sun shines all the time. Yes, just as I do. My face is tanned and my hands are weathered, but I know it from experience. I know how the winter weather feels after a trip through the tropics. My blood is thinned from the heat I’ve been through and winter seems twice as cold. Do you remember how I piled on coats and sweaters, whenever I went out? That was the reason – I was cold! And home! To me it’s not a place to stay over just to glory in the excitement of my coming. Home is home, a place a sailor seldom has. It will be hard for you to believe this but many [of?] the times that I’ve longed to be at home. The back yard with its grass and flowers neatly trimmed and pruned. The cellar door with the crack down the full length of the right side. The picture of it often comes before my eyes as I study our position on a chart, and inconceivably note the thousands of miles that lie between me and the place called home. Making you realize what a fool you were to go to sea. A man without a home fully describes my own position. That probably shocks you, but try to remember just how much of the last five years I have spent at home. Three days every three months! Quite a home life isn’t it. My schoolmates don’t know me anymore. They may recognize me walking down the street, but they cannot be classified as friends. Former friends is how I think of them, and even so, they are the only friends I have. Friends are not made at sea. Shipmates – brother officers yes, but not friends. Some are senior to me and some are juniors, but there’s only one of me. We cannot fraternize- we must keep our position. At least that’s what we are told.

I know a few girls, but not very well. I dare not know them too well for fear I’ll fall in love, and have that haunting me every night watch I stand. It would be foolish to marry. Can a person live a married life in three days every three months? That was the reason I stopped seeing Marion. You remember the girl I used to go with so much during the last year I was home. Love isn’t built up by never seeing each other we decided, and parted. I know that to be true. The Chief Officer is married and his wife is just so much a stranger to him as are the women he knows in foreign parts. No – he’s not a cad, he’s just human. A man can stand just so much of his own sex, then he wants to see a woman, and ninety days is a long while to wait.

I’ve come to one conclusion. I’ll never be happy at sea. There is too much time on the ocean to think and realize what you're missing. Perhaps it is just a complex of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. Perhaps, but I want to be able to sleep in a bed that doesn’t roll, to hear the wind rustling through the trees, each night to come to that little house, the house that took a heap of living in to make it home, and know it for what it is. And even more there is that I want – friends.