REUBEN RANSOM,
Presiding Elder, Springfield Dis. N. E. C.
HENRY CHASE,
Preacher to Seamen, N. Y.
PREFACE
Narratives of service, a century ago, written by private soldiers, are rare, but such by common sailors are almost unknown.
Samuel Leech’s narrative “Thirty Years from Home, a voice from the Main-Deck” is a unique book, and now scarce. It is a valuable contribution to our history, giving a sailor’s experience in both British and American navies, and being the sole account by a British seaman of the capture of the Macedonian by the United States, in 1812.
The revelations he makes of the cruel treatment of their men by British naval officers are unfortunately matched by the similar account of life on the same frigate United States, then under command of “Captain Claret” in 1843-44, given by Herman Melville in his remarkable book “White Jacket, or the World in a Man of War.” Though he is writing of an era thirty years later than Leech’s, the picture is equally distressing.
Leech also gives almost as bad a character to Captain David Porter (father of the late Admiral David D. Porter) as to the British tyrants.
It should be recorded in this connection, that flogging was abolished in the United States navy in 1851, through the efforts of Commodore Robert P. Stockton.