Of Melville’s experiences between the time of his leaving the Society Islands and that of his homeward cruise as a sailor in the United States Navy, nothing is known beyond the meagre details already stated.
In White-Jacket; or, the World in a Man-of-War (1850) Melville has left a fuller account, however, of his experiences on board the United States. The opening of White-Jacket finds Melville at Callao, on the coast of Peru—the last harbour he touched in the Pacific. In Typee and Omoo he had already recounted his adventures in the South Seas, with all the crispness and lucidity of fresh discovery. While on board the United States he returned to old harbours, and sailed past familiar islands. But White-Jacket is not a Yarrow Revisited.
On the showing of White-Jacket, Melville’s life in the navy was, perhaps, the happiest period in his life. It is true that in Typee he wrote: “I will frankly confess that after passing a few weeks in the valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. But, alas, since then I have been one of the crew of a man-of-war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous theories.” And in White-Jacket he has many a very dark word to say for the navy. Sailors, as a class, do, of course, entertain liberal notions concerning the Decalogue; but in this they resemble landsmen, both Christian and cannibal. And in Melville’s day—as before and after—from a frigate’s crew might be culled out men of all callings and vocations, from a backslidden parson to a broken-down comedian. It is an old saying that “the sea and the gallows refuse nothing.” But withal, more than one good man has been hanged. “The Navy,” Melville says, “is the asylum for the perverse, the home of the unfortunate. Here the sons of adversity meet the children of calamity, and here the children of calamity meet the offspring of sin.” According to this version, a typical man-of-war was a sort of State Prison afloat. “Wrecked on a desert shore,” Melville says, “a man-of-war’s crew could quickly found an Alexandria by themselves, and fill it with all the things which go to make up a capital.” The United States, surely, lacked in none of the contradictions that go to make up a metropolis: “though boasting some fine fellows here and there, yet, on the whole, charged to the combings of hatchways with the spirit of Belial and unrighteousness.” Or it was like a Parisian lodging house, turned upside down: the first floor, or deck, being rented by a lord; the second by a select club of gentlemen; the third, by crowds of artisans; and the fourth—on a man-of-war a basement of indefinite depth, with ugly-looking fellows gazing out at the windows—by a whole rabble of common people.
The good or bad temper, the vices and virtues of men-of-war’s men were in a great degree attributable, Melville states, to their particular stations and duties aboard ship. Melville congratulated himself upon enjoying one of the most enviable posts aboard the frigate. It was Melville’s office to loose the main-royal when all hands were called to make sail: besides his special offices in tacking ship, coming to anchor, and such like, he permanently belonged to the starboard watch, one of the two primary grand divisions of the ship’s company. And in this watch he was a main-top-man; that is, he was stationed in the main-top, with a number of other seamen, always in readiness to execute any orders pertaining to the main-mast, from above the main-yard. In Melville’s time, the tops of a frigate were spacious and cosy. They were railed in behind so as to form a kind of balcony, that looked airily down upon the blue, boundless, dimpled, laughing, sunny sea, and upon the landlopers below on the deck, sneaking about among the guns. It was a place, too, to test one’s manhood in rough weather. From twenty to thirty loungers could agreeably recline there, cushioning themselves on old sails and jackets. In being a main-top-man, Melville prided himself that he belonged to a fraternity of the most liberal-hearted, lofty-minded, gay, elastic, and adventurous men on board ship. “The reason for their liberal-heartedness was, that they were daily called upon to expatiate themselves all over the rigging. The reason for their lofty-mindedness was, that they were high lifted above the petty tumults, carping cares, and paltrinesses of the decks below.” And Melville attributed it to his having been a main-top-man, and that in the loftiest yard of the frigate, the main-royal-yard, “that I am now enabled to give such a free, broad, off-hand, bird’s-eye, and more than all, impartial account of our man-of-war world; withholding nothing; inventing nothing; nor flattering, nor scandalising any; but meting out to all—commodore and messenger boy alike—their precise descriptions and deserts.”
Melville says that the main-top-men, with amiable vanity, accounted themselves the best seamen in the ship; brothers one and all, held together by a strong feeling of esprit de corps. Their loyalty was especially centred in their captain, Jack Chase—a prime favourite and an oracle among the men. Upon Jack Chase’s instigation they all wore their hats at a peculiar angle; he instructed them in the tie of their neck handkerchiefs; he protested against their wearing vulgar dungaree trousers; he gave them lessons in seamanship. And he solemnly conjured them, with unmitigated detestation, to eschew the company of any sailor suspected of having served in a whaler. On board the United States, Melville wisely held his peace “concerning stove boats on the coast of Japan.”
Melville’s admiration for Jack Chase was perhaps the happiest wholehearted surrender he ever gave to any human being. Jack Chase was “a Briton and a true-blue; tall and well-knit, with a clear open eye, a fine broad brow, and an abounding nut-brown beard. No man ever had a better heart or a bolder. He was loved by the seamen and admired by the officers; and even when the captain spoke to him, it was with a slight air of respect. No man told such stories, sang such songs, or with greater alacrity sprang to his duty. The main-top, over which he presided, was a sort of oracle of Delphi; to which many pilgrims ascended, to have their perplexities or difficulties settled.” Jack was a gentleman. His manners were free and easy, but never boisterous; “he had a polite, courteous way of saluting you, if it were only to borrow a knife. He had read all the verses of Byron, all the romances of Scott; he talked of Macbeth and Ulysses; but above all things was he an ardent admirer of Camoen’s Lusiad, part of which he could recite in the original.” He spoke a variety of tongues, and was master of an incredible richness of Byronic adventure. “There was such an abounding air of good sense and good feeling about the man that he who could not love him, would thereby pronounce himself a knave. I thanked my sweet stars that kind fortune had placed me near him, though under him, in the frigate; and from the outset, Jack and I were fast friends. Wherever you may be now rolling over the blue billows, dear Jack, take my best love along with you,” Melville wrote; “and God bless you, wherever you go.” And this sentiment Melville cherished throughout his life. Almost the last thing Melville ever wrote was the dedication of his last novel, Billy Budd—existing only in manuscript, and completed three months before his death to “Jack Chase, Englishman, wherever that great heart may now be, Here on earth or harboured in Paradise, Captain in the war-ship in the year 1843, In the U. S. Frigate United States.”
In White-Jacket, Melville glows with the same superlative admiration for Jack Chase that Ouida, or the Duchess, exhibit in portraying their most irresistible cavaliers; an enthusiasm similar to that of Nietzsche’s for his Übermensch. So contagious is Melville’s love for his ship-mate that strange infections seem to have been caught therefrom. Though it is certainly not true that “all the world loves a lover,” Melville’s affection for Jack Chase won him at least one rather startling proof that Shakespeare’s dictum is not absolutely false. The proof came in the following form:
“No 2, Guthuee Port, Arbrooth 13 May 1857
“Herman Melville Esquire
“Author of the white Jacket Mardi and others, Honour’d Sir Let it not displease you to be addressed by a stranger to your person not so to your merits, I have read the white jacket with much pleasure and delight ‘I found it rich in wisdom and brilliant with beauty, ships and the sea and those who plow it with their belongings on shore—those subjects are idintified with Herman Melvil’s name for he has most unquestioneably made them his own,, No writer not even Marryat himself has observed them more closely or pictured them more impressively, a delightful book it is. I long exceedingly to read Mardi, but how or where to obtain it is the task? I have just now received an invitation to cross the Atlantic from a Mr and Mrs Weed Malta between Bolston springs and saratoga Countie, ,, as also from Mr Alexer Muler my own Cousin, Rose bank Louistown