...On April 11, 1849, a violent fight ensued between seamen and their officers aboard the Lorena while the ship was about to set sail from its berth at the end of Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan. The incident demonstrates how labor and life worked—and did not work—at sea...

...Theoretically, the wages, conditions, punishment, and work performed by seamen on American merchant vessels were governed by the admiralty and maritime law of the United States. At the level of the individual vessel, however, life and labor at sea were determined by an amalgamation of tradition...

... maritime subjects and themes in their work. The impressments of American seamen into the British navy became a national scandal used by reformers and diarists to make their readers empathize with their subjects. They also sought to distinguish the newly distinct trait of the brave and patriotic American...

...This book has argued that the law played a far more important role in how life and labor operated in merchant vessels than historians have previously assumed. The dispute between officers and seamen aboard the Lorena in 1849 involved issues of personal honor and dignity, rights...

... the national government to address questions about personal honor, dignity, the rights of labor, and the meaning and privileges of citizenship, often for the first time. By examining how and why merchant seamen and their officers came into contact with the law, this book exposes the complex relationship...

..., but in practical terms, that task belonged to consuls. This chapter examines how the system of consuls and commercial agents addressed the needs of American merchant vessels and citizens abroad despite having no clear definition of their duties and powers. Prompted by the seamen who came to their offices for help...

...In the early days of America, officers on merchant vessels had to contend not only with often “saucy” and sometimes mutinous seamen, but also with the increasing legislative and judicial limits on their authority. In response to this growing body of regulation and convention, they argued against...

...Prior to the Civil War, merchant vessels were a precarious and dangerous workplace for seamen in antebellum America. The dangers came not only from seafaring itself—harsh weather, hazardous waters, and hard labor—but also from their officers and from one another. Despite the existence of statutes...

... forecastle men who used the new legal apparatuses available to them as they defended the rights and conventions of their craft. The chapter explores how seamen relied on the “forecastle law” of convention and tradition to assert some of their specific basic extralegal rights. Dickens Charles discipline...

...A law introduced in 1835 explained in clear terms what officers on merchant vessels could and could not do to keep seamen under control, forcing captains to rethink their strategies for instilling and maintaining discipline. These encroachments upon the legitimacy of their authority meant...

...The personal honor and masculine identity defended by officers and seamen turned into an assertion of national pride during the first half of the nineteenth century. Both groups began to invoke “rights” and “citizenship” in order to bolster their position at sea and ashore. This chapter looks...