-to the US whaling industry

Shorey with his wife, Julia (seated right) and two of their five children

LAST MONDAY (July 13, 2009) marked the 150th anniversary of the birth, in Barbados, of William T Shorey.

In 1886, he became the first African-American to captain a whaling vessel on the west coast  of the United States,  and one of the first to have done so nationwide.

Perhaps more importantly, his inspirational working life in the important whaling industry at the time underscored the contribution of immigrants to the United States.  They helped build up that great country’s economy, and all aspects of its social life and culture. Some, like Shorey, were from the Caribbean area, even at that early date.

Shorey died in 1919 in Oakland, California where he had retired with his American wife, Julia Ann (died 1944). He is one of the featured individuals in a succinct but little-known work titled ‘Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of African-American Whalers’ (published 1999, Scholastic Inc, New York) by Patricia McKissack and Frederick McKissack.

Whaling is the going to sea on specially outfitted vessels to harpoon several species of whales. The mammals’ thick oily skin (blubber) was boiled for its oil, while other parts, such as the baleen (a bony fibre hanging from the roof of the mouths of some whales), were used in the making of corsets. Whale oil was extensively used for lubricating machinery, and other consumer items such as candles and soap. By 1850, there were over 500 US whaleships in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The ships stayed at sea for as long as four years. Some of them visited the Caribbean in pursuit of the whales.

The book by the McKissacks

Sometimes, as they put into port for food and rest, the captains signed on men from the islands as part of the crew. Most likely, this is how Shorey got to Boston, Massachusetts in 1876 at the age of 17. The son of a Scottish-born planter and a black Barbadian woman, he probably signed on as a cabin boy.

The focus of the book, available in the Barbados Public library system, is on the relatively high number of black sailors and those from the Caribbean area, the Cape Verdes Islands and Native American Indian (known in Guyana as Amerindians) communities in the whaling industry. Some rose to be prominent businesspeople, including ship builders. According to the McKissacks, by 1850, some 20 per cent of the 3000 whaling seafarers out of New Bedford, one of the main fishing harbours in the north eastern US seaboard, were Afro-American.

There were two main reasons for this relatively high figure. One was that whaling was an opportunity for black (and some Amerindian) slaves to obtain some sort of freedom. The sailors were actually given a special identification paper, which permitted them to move freely in ports where slavery was still practised. It must be remembered that whaling got going in the 1700s, over a hundred years before. Slavery in the US was formally abolished in 1865, but a ship was landing slaves from Africa in the State of Alabama as late as 1859.

Secondly, New Bedford (Nantucket was another main whaling port) and the surrounding townships were home to many Quakers. This religious ‘white’ group was a significant advocate against slavery. The word had gotten around that they had long freed their slaves. The area was also a staging area, or stop, on the ‘Underground Railroad’ escape route for slaves travelling to Canada and freedom. Some Quakers, however, were themselves unscrupulous businesspeople.

A typical whaler of the type used back in Shorey’s days

One black ship owner (his mother was an Amerindian) named Paul Cuffe (died 1817) was a  Quaker. Cuffe himself captained some of his ships and visited the west coast of Africa and the West Indies with cargo. His vessels were mostly crewed by blacks. Again, it is likely that some Caribbean young men came to the US that way during that time. As an aside, there is evidence that a number of white whalers ‘jumped ship’  in the islands. That is how the (still ongoing indigenous and allowable) whaling activity in the island of Bequia in St.Vincent and the Grenadines was mainly started. There were also small whaling stations in Barbados, at and around the west coast town of Speightstown, during this period. I was greatly honoured to attend a modest display of artifacts and information at the Speightstown branch Library last year and learn about this.

Whaling  life, or ‘going oiling’ as the workers called it, was rough.  As the McKissacks observed: “Even though the Quakers might have been socially liberal, their influence stopped at land’s end….Once out at sea, men of colour were often at the mercy of bigoted captains, prejudiced mates, and racist crew members.” Generally though, from what I read of the industry in other sources, black and white and other races of working class sailors got on well together. Because of safety factors, they had to work as a team, and in general, they realised their interests were the same. All ‘greenies’ (the term comes from being so sea sick, their faces turned a sort of green colour) would get only 1/120th of the profit of the ship at the end of the voyage. The ship’s owners alone took 50 per cent, while the captain and officers received a sizeable portion. In fairness, too, the McKissacks also write that the studies of ships’ logs (record books of voyages)  and other records show that the ‘lay’ (the pay received at end of voyage)  of blacks were lower than whites who had same qualifications.

In other ways, for both black and white, a sailor’s life at the time had its tribulations. Food was less than satisfactory. Fresh vegetables and ‘ground provisions’, as the Caribbean sailors would say, like potatoes ran out after a few weeks. Living conditions in the cramped crews’ quarters up in the bows were filthy: they could never get rid of lice they brought from the rooming houses of unscrupulous landlords (some of them black) and stale smells, like that of blubber oil and sweat, abounded. Loneliness was a problem on long voyages, relieved only by the singing of sea shanties (songs) and drawing on whale teeth (scrimshaw) so as to divert attention. Your life could easily be lost should an angry whale attack the flimsy small whaleboat from which the mammals were killed with harpoons. Not surprisingly, only 20 per cent of the black sailors returned for a second trip, though the figure was probably near that for white sailors as well.

The New Bedford and neighbouring Boston area had a high proportion of black Portuguese-speaking sailors who settled there and eventually inter-married with local (Amerindian and white) women. The men had been signed on in the Cape Verdes, a group of islands off Africa which were colonised by people from Portugal.

By the time Willliam Shorey came ashore in 1908 with his family (his wife would often accompany him on his whaling trips before their two sons and daughters came along), the writing was already on the wall for the industry. Oil (from the ground) was being commercially pumped in the mid 1800s. It would be a better substitute than whale oil. It came just in time for the mammals, too. By then, they were virtually wiped out in most of the Atlantic. Today, due significantly to the work of the Greenpeace group, they are largely protected.

The value of  this little book is that it highlights the valuable inputs of immigrants in a little- known area of US society, and the role of ethnic minorities, particularly black people, in that contribution. We note as well, in contrast to the situation today, the relatively easy way the overseas born could enter the US. Shorey himself was probably given a  slip of paper by the ship’s captain, and he obtained residency status that way. It is not known if Shorey ever returned to Barbados on one of his 22 voyages. There are several Shorey families still on the island, and I will be contacting some of them to find out if they have any connections to this remarkable man.

Unlike others, such as Frederick Douglass (who caulked whale ships’ seams as one of his jobs) and Cuffe, who were civil rights activists,  Shorey’s contribution was through his own unstinting dedication to disciplined honest work and intelligent, fair and  courageous leadership  as a ship’s captain. Moreover, he is an inspiration for those who continue with the time honoured tradition of travelling and making homes in other countries, and working and struggling  in their own small way with  people of other races.

(Norman Faria is Guyana’s Honorary Consul in Barbados)