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

Van Horne Morris Biography (1)

While I was aware that my grandfather had been a Merchant Mariner, one of my most exciting new discoveries was that he attended the Massachusetts Nautical School (now Mass Maritime). Here I was, working as an archivist a the oldest maritime academy in the country (SUNY Maritime, founded in 1874), and I never knew that my own grandfather was a graduate of Mass Maritime, the second oldest (1891)! I made this discovery when I encountered my grandfather's photos of a ship captioned The Nantucket 1937, and traced its identity through this NavSource page. From there I contacted the Mass Maritime Library, and received a prompt response from one Arlene Cardoza, a librarian of twenty years who retired but continues to work there part-time. She kindly sent me copies of my grandfather's records. 

Cadet and Merchant Mariner

Van Horne Morris was born in 1919 (the same year that Cecil Northrop went on his first sea voyage) and grew up in Melrose, Massachusetts, a suburb located about 7 miles north of Boston. He entered Massachusetts Maritime Academy (then called the Massachusetts Nautical School) on September 19, 1936. 

As a cadet on the training ship Nantucket he visited San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Ponta Delgada, Azores in 1937. Morris's relatively short list of cadet infractions at Mass Maritime included leaving ship on liberty without a pass, sleeping in without authority, taking coffee from cadet officers pot, and causing a disturbance in class. (Some cadets in the SUNY Maritime conduct books racked up full pages or more of offenses). 

After graduating on on September 27, 1938, Morris's career as a merchant mariner took him through ports in Singapore, Malaysia, and India, among others. 




After five years at sea, Morris expressed a desire to give up his maritime career. As he wrote in an intensely personal and poetic letter home, he longed to “sleep in a bed that doesn’t roll, to hear the wind rustling through the trees.” However, his time at sea wasn't over just yet. 

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