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

Additional

Cadets of the 1920s-1940s

In this publication I explore the lives and writings of Cecil Northrop (New York State Nautical School class of 1922) and Van Horne Morris (Massachusetts Nautical School class of 1938, and my maternal grandfather). The following sources serve as future paths for comparison, contrast, and exploration:

Thomas F. Caldwell Papers
Caldwell was born on January 7, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York. In 1925 he graduated from the New York State Nautical School after 1.5 years of study and sea training as an engineering cadet aboard the Schoolship Newport. He sailed for many years with various shipping lines. He was called to active duty as a merchant mariner during World War II, sailing as Chief Engineer on the infamous Murmansk run, bringing supplies to the Russian front through Arctic seas. Caldwell's diary is on Maritime Digital Collections and his papers are in the SUNY Maritime archives.

Edward F. "Nick" Carter's "Tall Ship Tales" 
Carter (class of 1929) wrote a memoir documenting life aboard the Schoolship Newport. This item is posted on Maritime Digital Collections.

Newport Schoolship Records
Librarians at SUNY Maritime actively solicited recollections from alumni of the school's early history. These accounts (including Carter's, above) were compiled with other records of the Schoolship Newport. See the "Papers and Artifacts" of Albert A. Bombe, 1918 - 1923; Charles DeVita, 1923 - 1926; John Dondero, 1922; Edward P. Loeser, circa 1921-1922; R.O. Patterson and F.O. Poole, 1923; and the Student Publication "The Binnacle", circa 1924.

Phylipp Dilloway Papers
The Phylipp Dilloway Papers contain materials from his time at sea on the training ship USMSTS American Pilot (also known as the Empire State 1) including a journal kept from June 1946 - August 1946.

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Introduction 51 Publication Introduction plain 2021-08-27T12:07:30-07:00
A Medium in Which I Seek Relief - a Maritime and Naval Studies Graduate Capstone by Annie Tummino
"A Medium in Which I Seek Relief": Manuscripts and Letters of American Sailors, circa 1920-1940 exists at the intersection of archives, digital scholarship, open-access publishing, and genealogy, bringing to life the experiences of sailors of 80-100 years ago. This project explores how unpublished sailor writings from the SUNY Maritime College Archives and my family’s attic fit into the larger body of sailor literature and associated maritime scholarship. Harnessing the power of the open source digital publishing tool Scalar, the project integrates transcription, annotation, and commentary in a media-rich interactive publication.
Background
As the archivist at Maritime College’s Stephen B. Luce Library (2016-2018), I was tasked with preserving and making accessible a significant body of maritime records, papers, and artifacts. The sailor memoirs and diaries sprinkled among the more formal documents in the collections piqued my interest, beckoning as rich sources of insight that would elucidate the seafaring life. My capstone project for the Maritime and Naval Studies graduate program was a perfect opportunity to explore these materials in more depth.

The golden age of sail dominates most investigations into American sea fiction and sea memoirs. Here, I expand that discussion to first hand accounts of maritime life produced by students of the New York State Nautical School (now SUNY Maritime College) who went to sea in the early decades of the twentieth century. The Maritime Archives contain a particularly extensive corpus of manuscripts from this period, providing fertile ground for comparison and analysis. In order to make the scope of my capstone manageable, I elected to focus on the writings of Cecil Northrop (class of 1922), whose diaries represent a particularly vivid and literary rendering of life at sea.

The other sailor I feature in this project is Van Horne Morris, my maternal grandfather. While I was previously vaguely aware that he was a merchant mariner, I hadn't thought much about it. He died tragically when my mother was only nine, so I never got to meet him. The inclusion of his story and letters was an unexpected twist, which emerged after I described this project to my mother. Luckily, she had saved a treasure trove of documents from her parent's formative years, including diaries, letters, and photographs, which she pulled out of the attic for me to examine and preserve. These papers provide fascinating textual and visual evidence of life in the Merchant Marine in the late 1930s and in the United States Naval Reserve during World War II. Moreover, my grandfather’s letters are exceptionally poetic and well written.

My own journey with the Cecil Northrop and Van Horne Morris papers was intensely personal, leading to a new understanding of my family history, and a deeper appreciation of the collections held at the Stephen B. Luce Library, where I worked for close to three years. More broadly, the sources that I digitized, transcribed, uploaded, and annotated on this site will prove useful for anyone seeking to understand the lived experience of sailors in the 1920s-1940s.
Structure of this Publication
Annotated transcriptions of journals, memoirs, and letters written by sailors of the 1920s-1940s form the centerpiece of this publication. The subsequent paths provide information on the sailors who authored the materials, the ships they sailed on, and related context and analysis.

This publication is still evolving, with plans for additional transcriptions, annotations, and scholarly work.
Notes/Credits
- Feedback is welcome! Use the thought bubbles at the bottom of each page to leave a comment, or contact me at annie.tummino{at}qc.cuny.edu.
- This project was created under the supervision of Dr. John Rocco, Professor of Humanities and Maritime and Naval Studies Program Coordinator; and evaluated and improved by my committee, Dr. John Rocco, Dr. Elissa Defalco and Dr. Chris Holmes. Many thanks for their support in pursuing a creative project!
- The site is powered by Scalar, an open source digital publishing tool by the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture. More at https://scalar.me/anvc/about/.
- This project grew out of my work as an archivist. For more information, please see Stephen B. Luce Library Archival Collections and Maritime Digital Collections, my labors of love at Maritime College.