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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Afloat and Ashore: A Sea Tale," James Fenimore Cooper masterfully weaves a narrative steeped in nautical adventure and the complexities of human experience. The novel, characterized by Cooper's rich descriptive prose and keen observation of maritime life, reflects the early 19th-century American fascination with the sea. Set against the backdrop of a growing nation, Cooper's tale explores themes of isolation, companionship, and the struggle for identity amid turbulent oceanic currents, showcasing both the beauty and peril of life at sea. The narrative is enlivened by dynamic characters, including the stalwart sailor and the enigmatic shipmates whose fates intertwine with the vastness of the ocean. James Fenimore Cooper, an influential figure in American literature, drew inspiration from his own experiences at sea and his background as a sailor's son. His extensive travels and acute observations of the American frontier and maritime life informed much of his writing, allowing him to depict intricate social dynamics and psychological depth in his characters. This novel fits within Cooper's broader oeuvre of exploring themes of nature, civilization, and the American spirit, revealing the tensions that arise in the face of adventure. "Afloat and Ashore" is an essential read for those captivated by maritime lore and the existential inquiries of the human condition. Cooper's narrative brilliance invites readers to embark on a journey across tempestuous seas, evoking a visceral connection to the salty air and crashing waves. Whether you are a lover of classic literature or an aficionado of maritime exploration, this tale promises a compelling experience worthy of examination and reflection. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Afloat and Ashore: A Sea Tale
Table of Contents
Introduction
On a young mariner’s first voyages, the roll of the ocean becomes the measure of character, as each horizon tests the fragile pact between freedom and responsibility.
Afloat and Ashore: A Sea Tale holds a secure place in the American canon as a mature expression of James Fenimore Cooper’s mastery of maritime fiction. In this novel, Cooper extends the reach of the national narrative from frontier forests to the blue immensities of the world’s oceans, showing how American identity was forged not only on land but also under sail. Its stature as a classic rests on the blend of exact seamanship with moral inquiry, the sustained momentum of adventure joined to reflective purpose, and the way it helped define a distinctly American sea novel for generations of readers.
Written in the mid-nineteenth century and first published in 1844, the book showcases Cooper’s seasoned command of nautical subjects and his interest in character under pressure. It is narrated by Miles Wallingford, whose recollections of youth lead readers through the first stages of a life at sea and on shore. Without divulging crises or outcomes, the premise is simple and compelling: a young American leaves the security of home for the unpredictability of wind, water, commerce, and human motive. Cooper’s aim is not merely to chart peril and escape, but to examine how experience shapes judgment and conscience.
Cooper’s achievement lies in the equilibrium he maintains between technical authenticity and narrative clarity. Rigging, watches, and the discipline of the quarterdeck appear alongside the social textures of ports and parlors, rendering a world where the bark of orders and the murmur of drawing rooms inform one another. He conveys procedures, hierarchies, and risks with precision, yet never lets jargon occlude the human pulse of the tale. The result is a novel that satisfies readers seeking accuracy in maritime life while inviting those new to such detail to take soundings in a lucid, steadily navigated story.
The book’s classic status also emerges from its durable themes—education of the self, the testing of ideals, the costs and rewards of ambition—presented against the dramatic stage of the sea. Where earlier writers projected moral struggles onto solitary islands or pirate coves, Cooper uses the disciplined society of a working ship and the unsettled commerce of shore to ask how principles endure in motion. In doing so, he helped enlarge the American novel’s scope to include the global waters where the nation’s fortunes, laws, and manners were being negotiated in real time.
As a cornerstone of American maritime literature, Afloat and Ashore reinforced a tradition that later sea novelists would refine and challenge. Cooper’s careful rendering of shipboard labor, his sense of moral weather, and his frank attention to the costs of command offered a template for writers exploring authority and community under sail. Without tying the book to any single successor, one can see how its insistence on technical truth and ethical complexity created conditions in which later authors could experiment with voice, symbolism, and the vast metaphors the ocean affords the imaginative mind.
The novel’s historical frame—the decades when American commerce expanded and vessels linked distant ports—anchors its story in a world of contracts, customs, and cross-cultural encounters. Cooper evokes an early national moment when the United States was asserting itself on the oceans, and when the law of the sea, insurance ledgers, and the weathered judgment of captains determined livelihoods. Rather than treating history as backdrop only, he shows how the ordinary operations of trade and voyage shape private hopes and public character, making the book a valuable window onto the maritime foundations of American society.
Formally, Afloat and Ashore intertwines travel narrative and bildungsroman, alternating between the ordered routines of a ship and the looser intrigues of life on land. The title signals this structural rhythm: duty and danger at sea are set against the temptations, obligations, and uncertainties that await in harbors and homes. This oscillation allows Cooper to compare different codes—custom and command afloat, etiquette and economy ashore—and to observe how a young protagonist tests and revises his values within each. The pattern generates momentum while deepening the examination of character formation across changing environments.
Cooper’s purpose is moral without being moralizing. He is concerned with how a person learns to steer by principle when skill, luck, and authority all claim the helm. The novel considers responsibility in command and obedience, the appeal and perils of social advancement, and the interplay of law, custom, and conscience in resolving disputes. Mentorship, friendship, and rivalry each contribute to this education. The sea becomes both literal workplace and metaphorical proving ground, where storms and calms alike expose strengths and weaknesses that polite society ashore might conceal or forgive more easily.
Stylistically, the narrative benefits from a measured first-person voice that looks back with clarity on moments of confusion and risk. Cooper’s prose balances the cadence of action with reflective pauses, allowing readers to absorb technical details while sensing the emotional register of fatigue, exhilaration, fear, and resolve. Descriptions of sky, swell, and coastline carry more than scenic value; they suggest changing prospects, moral pressure, and the unpredictability that binds human plans to natural forces. The effect is a steady immersion that remains inviting even to those who approach nautical subjects with initial hesitation.
For contemporary readers, the book’s relevance lies in its close attention to work, risk, and ethical leadership within complex systems—concerns as pressing in modern enterprises as they are on a nineteenth-century deck. It speaks to the uncertainties of global exchange, the negotiation of identity in transient spaces, and the perennial challenge of acting justly when circumstances reward shortcuts. Its coming-of-age arc offers recognition to anyone who has learned through trial, misstep, and perseverance. And its respect for craft and cooperation under pressure resonates wherever teams must trust competence and character to prevail.
Afloat and Ashore endures because it marries the tangible realities of seafaring with the inward voyage of self-knowledge. In Cooper’s hands, the ocean is not a mere backdrop for spectacle but a world where practical skill and moral choice intersect. The novel’s measured adventure, historical texture, and sustained reflection secure its place among classics that reveal a nation to itself. Readers will find a story of discipline, ambition, and integrity that still asks timely questions: how we learn, whom we trust, and what we owe to others when weather and fortune turn. Its horizons remain open, and its compass true.
Synopsis
James Fenimore Cooper's Afloat and Ashore is narrated by Miles Wallingford, a young New Yorker raised at the river estate of Clawbonny under the guidance of the kindly but practical Reverend Mr. Hardinge. Miles grows up alongside the minister's children, Rupert and Lucy, forming bonds that shape his sense of duty and affection. The story begins at the turn of the nineteenth century, when American commerce expands across distant oceans and war clouds complicate neutral trade. Restless, proud, and eager to prove himself, Miles feels drawn from the quiet fields toward the sea, where skill, courage, and character decide a man's station and future.
As adolescence ends, Miles chooses a practical path into seamanship, seeking a berth before the mast rather than a gentleman's idle ease. His guardian consents, hoping work will steady the youth. Neb, a devoted servant from Clawbonny, insists on accompanying him, while the hard-headed Yankee sailor Marble emerges as a demanding mentor afloat. On their first passages out of New York, Miles learns knots, watches, and the language of spars and canvas. He discovers the discipline of the merchant service, the hierarchy of command, and the necessity of obedience, all under conditions that test endurance as much as ambition.
The early voyages expose Miles and his shipmates to the Atlantic's hazards and the demands of global trade. Storms batter the rigging, cargo must be secured, and small mistakes risk lives. Encounters with foreign cruisers and privateers show how America's neutral flag invites scrutiny as European wars rage. Marble's rough competence and Miles's quick learning earn trust in emergencies, while Rupert remains part of Miles's world without always aligning with the sea's discipline. The narrative builds the craft of seamanship through action and incident, showing how judgment, steady nerves, and cooperation keep a merchantman moving despite danger.
As the routes lengthen, the story turns to the legal and political crosscurrents that shape a sailor's fate. Neutral papers are examined, crews are mustered for inspection, and captains navigate between compliance and resistance. Miles experiences the limits of personal will when great powers detain ships, alter itineraries, or threaten impressment. Episodes of confinement and negotiation emphasize procedure over melodrama, detailing how maritime law, insurance, and prize courts can redirect a voyage. Through these entanglements, Miles gains a grounded understanding of risk and responsibility, and the narrative widens from adventure to a portrait of commerce amid international conflict.
Disaster at sea brings a stark change in tempo. After a sequence of misfortunes, Miles and a small company confront isolation on a remote shore, compelled to survive with limited tools and their seamanship. The episodes focus on rationing, shelter, repair, and the fragile authority that keeps order when hope is uncertain. Marble's practical ingenuity and Neb's steadfast help prove decisive, while Miles measures leadership against hunger, fatigue, and the moral weight of command. The account remains matter of fact, describing salvage and improvisation, and gestures toward rescue or escape without exhausting suspense or foreclosing the consequences.
The narrative then returns ashore, where obligations differ but pressures feel no lighter. At Clawbonny, inheritance questions, debts, and legal claims place the estate's continuity in doubt, requiring careful action rather than romantic impulse. Miles confronts the expectations of rank and property while renewing ties with Lucy Hardinge, whose constancy and insight complicate simple choices. The scenes balance domestic quiet with strategic decisions about money, trust, and reputation. Though longing for the sea's clarity, Miles recognizes responsibilities that extend beyond personal adventure, and he begins to imagine a future that might unite maritime skill with prudent stewardship.
Opportunities for renewed voyaging arise, now with greater stake and authority. Miles advances from able seaman to officer and investor, learning how owners' risks differ from a hand's daily tasks. Voyages thread blockades, negotiate with consuls, and adapt to fluctuating markets, while chases and evasions maintain narrative momentum without glorifying combat. Marble's partnership deepens, blending shrewd bargaining with seamanship, and Neb's loyalty remains a steady counterpoint. The work portrays commerce as a craft requiring foresight as well as courage, and presents success as a matter of preparation, timing, and an earned confidence in ship, cargo, and crew.
Tensions on shore and risks at sea converge toward a series of decisive tests. A voyage with personal and financial implications demands exacting choices about authority, prudence, and honor. Legal matters move toward judgment even as weather, pursuit, and chance threaten plans afloat. Relations among Miles, Lucy, and Rupert reach a delicate equilibrium shaped by obligation as much as feeling, while Marble considers how fortune and age may fix a sailor's course. The chapters emphasize resolve and restraint over theatrics, positioning outcomes so that meaning arises from character consistently tried under pressure rather than from sudden reversals.
By the close, Afloat and Ashore has traced the making of a seaman and proprietor who learns that mastery depends on conscience as much as skill. The book's central message links maritime independence with civic responsibility, suggesting that true success joins enterprise to probity, and courage to self-command. Cooper's narrative pairs incident with instruction, revealing how sea and land shape one another in an American life. While key arcs reach satisfying resting points, the story gestures forward, to be continued in the companion volume that bears Miles Wallingford's name. The effect is a measured completeness that invites further voyage.
Historical Context
James Fenimore Cooper situates Afloat and Ashore in the maritime world of the early American Republic, principally from the turn of the nineteenth century through the War of 1812 era. The narrative moves between a Hudson Valley estate, the rising port of New York, and transoceanic routes spanning the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean. This was a period when American neutrality promised profit but invited peril, as European wars made every voyage a legal and strategic gamble. Cooper’s seascapes mirror the busy wharves of Manhattan, the pilot-strewn waters of the Narrows, and far-flung anchorages shaped by imperial blockade, privateering, and contested maritime law.
The book’s geography reflects the trade circuits that bound New York to the West Indies, Britain, northern Europe, and Italian ports such as Leghorn (Livorno). Ships threaded Gibraltar, called at Madeira and the Azores, and risked encounters with British cruisers or French privateers in the Channel and Bay of Biscay. Ashore, the social world of Hudson River landholding and New York mercantile capital frames the protagonist’s choices. The time and place are those of a young republic building institutions of commerce, seafaring labor, and naval defense while navigating the coercive reach of British and French belligerents across the salt-water commons.
The explosive growth of the American merchant marine after independence forms the book’s operative backdrop. Federal tariff and tonnage policies after 1789, relative political stability, and neutral status fueled expansion: American-flag tonnage in foreign trade increased severalfold between 1789 and 1810, and New York’s population rose from roughly 33,000 in 1790 to nearly 100,000 by 1810. Warehouses, ropewalks, chandlers, and insurance underwriters multiplied along the East River. Cooper leverages this boom to explain how a young man could gain berth, experience, and advancement. The novel’s career arcs echo the era’s expectation that maritime skill and prudence could convert opportunity into fortune.
The Jay Treaty (signed 1794, in force by 1796) stabilized Anglo-American relations after the Revolutionary War and opened limited avenues for trade, while failing to resolve all maritime disputes. British adherence to the Rule of 1756 and restrictions on the British West Indies trade meant American vessels risked detention if they seemed to carry colonial produce in wartime patterns barred in peacetime. Prize courts at Halifax and elsewhere condemned cargos and hulls on technicalities. Cooper’s plot recognizes this legal minefield: manifests, clearances, and routing through neutral ports become matters of life, liberty, and capital, shaping the caution and cunning of his captains.
The Quasi-War with France (1798–1800) placed American commerce under threat from French privateers in the Caribbean and Atlantic. Congress reestablished the Navy in 1794; by 1799–1800, U.S. frigates such as Constellation took prizes like L’Insurgente, and convoys protected merchantmen. Privateering flourished under letters of marque. Although Afloat and Ashore begins after open hostilities subsided, the cohort of masters and mates who trained Cooper’s characters learned seamanship and risk management in this crucible. The novel mirrors their habits—armed merchantmen, wary watchkeeping, and a practical understanding that legal neutrality required preparedness against sudden captures.
The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) overturned France’s richest colony, Saint-Domingue, leading to Haitian independence under Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1804. Earlier fires at Cap-Français (Cap-Haïtien) in 1793 and subsequent warfare disrupted sugar, coffee, and molasses trade, redirected routes, and sent refugees to ports including New York and Philadelphia. British and French naval moves in the Caribbean intensified scrutiny of neutral shipping. Cooper’s maritime world registers these shifts: West Indian voyages carry both heightened profit and danger, and the social mix on New York’s docks—French-speaking émigrés, Black sailors, and seasoned privateers—echoes the revolution’s diaspora and commercial reconfiguration.
The First Barbary War (1801–1805) exposed American ships in the Mediterranean to corsair predation from Tripoli, Algiers, and Tunis. Commodore Edward Preble’s squadron, Stephen Decatur’s 1804 burning of the captured frigate Philadelphia in Tripoli harbor, and the 1805 peace with Tripoli reduced, but did not eliminate, risks to merchantmen. Before 1815, tributes and passports remained part of Mediterranean navigation. Cooper’s seafarers, threading Gibraltar toward Leghorn or Malta, operate under the shadow of Barbary cruisers and convoy systems. The book’s Mediterranean passages absorb this reality, where coastal batteries, quarantine stations, and consular protections shape every landfall.
British impressment—seizing seamen for Royal Navy service—peaked after 1803 as Britain fought Napoleonic France. The Chesapeake–Leopard affair in June 1807, when HMS Leopard fired on USS Chesapeake off Norfolk to reclaim alleged deserters, inflamed U.S. opinion. Contemporary estimates hold that thousands of U.S. seamen, often around 6,000 between 1803 and 1812, were impressed, many claimed as British subjects by birth. Boarding by British frigates, musters on deck, and the demand for papers were common hazards. Cooper’s narrative channels the dread of a man-of-war looming to windward, the fear of losing crew, and the intricate paperwork meant to defend American identity.
The Napoleonic Wars’ economic warfare—Britain’s Orders in Council and Napoleon’s Continental System—most decisively shaped the world of Afloat and Ashore. Napoleon’s Berlin Decree (1806) and Milan Decree (1807) declared the British Isles under blockade and authorized the seizure of ships trading with Britain; Britain’s Orders in Council (notably of November 1807) required neutral vessels bound for continental Europe to clear through British ports, pay fees, and accept inspection. The Rule of 1756, revived by British prize courts, held that neutrals could not assume colonial trades closed to them in peacetime. These measures produced a labyrinth of licenses, false papers, cargo reconsignments, and circuitous routing through “open” ports such as Gibraltar, Lisbon, and certain Italian harbors under shifting control. Hundreds of American ships were detained or condemned in British and French courts; insurance premia spiked; and convoy or “dodge and run” tactics became routine. American captains carried duplicate manifests, adjusted flags of convenience in foreign harbors, and timed departures to avoid cruising squadrons off the Channel approaches and off the Azores. New York merchants hedged by dividing consignments among multiple hulls and by consigning through friendly houses in London and Cádiz. Cooper’s seagoing chapters embody this climate of legal brinkmanship and practical seamanship. Decisions about when to speak a cruiser, whether to heave-to under a gun, or how to document origin and destination are presented not as abstractions but as minute, consequential choices. The book’s ports of call—Gibraltar, the Tyrrhenian gateways, and northern European roads—mirror the real corridors neutrals used to pick their way through imperial barricades. In dramatizing these pressures, Cooper foregrounds the collision between commercial enterprise and great-power coercion that defined American oceanic life from 1806 to 1812.
The Embargo Act of 1807, signed by President Thomas Jefferson in December, halted virtually all American foreign trade to pressure Britain and France. Exports collapsed—from about $108 million in 1807 to roughly $22 million in 1808—idling ships and crews from New York to Portland. Smuggling proliferated along the Canadian border and through coastal inlets despite enforcement by the Revenue Cutter Service. Cooper’s depiction of laid-up vessels, restless officers, and the temptation of clandestine coasting reflects the embargo’s strain on maritime livelihoods, while the silence of the wharves underscores the policy’s domestic costs alongside its strategic aims.
Congress replaced the embargo with the Non-Intercourse Act (1809), reopening trade except with Britain and France, and then passed Macon’s Bill No. 2 (1810), which restored commerce while promising to reimpose restrictions against whichever belligerent failed to respect U.S. neutral rights. Napoleon’s ambiguous 1810 “Cadore letter” prompted the United States to act against Britain; London rescinded the Orders in Council only in June 1812—too late to avert war. Cooper’s mariners chase these fleeting openings, embodying the era’s whiplash: one season a market beckons in Cadiz or London, the next it vanishes under decree, blockade, or retaliatory statute.
The War of 1812 brought open conflict to seas already under strain. U.S. frigates scored early victories—Constitution over Guerriere (1812), United States over Macedonian (1812)—but the Royal Navy’s vast resources imposed a tightening blockade by 1813. American privateers, with hundreds of commissions issued, captured more than a thousand British merchantmen, disrupting enemy supply while risking capture themselves. Lake battles and coastal raids complemented Atlantic cruising. Cooper, once a midshipman, folds this martial environment into his tale: the pride of seamanship, the legality of prizes, and the hazards of blockade-runner calculations inform the ethos of his officers and crews.
Blockade conditions reshaped New York’s maritime rhythms. British squadrons cruised off Sandy Hook and the Long Island approaches; signals, harbor pilots, and shore batteries at the Narrows coordinated defense, while fortifications on Staten Island and the approaches guarded the channel. Shipowners delayed departures, employed swift pilot boats to scout, or risked nighttime exits under coastal shadows. Insurance rates and wages spiked. Cooper’s depiction of a port living under watch—from quarantine stations to harbor forts—captures the wartime choreography of risk management that defined the city’s waterfront in 1813–1814 and framed every decision to get to sea or lay up.
Seafaring labor and law provided the social fabric of voyages. The 1790 Seamen’s Act mandated written shipping articles, defined desertion penalties, and regulated advances and wage settlements; the Marine Hospital Fund (1798) established medical support for merchant seamen. Discipline at sea remained strict—flogging persisted—and wages varied with risk, often rising in wartime. Forecastle cultures mixed Americans, Britons, Africans, and Europeans in cosmopolitan crews. Cooper’s shipboard hierarchies mirror this order: masters negotiate law, custom, and necessity, while mates and hands navigate the thin line between obedience and self-preservation, revealing the occupational realities behind romantic images of the sea.
The transatlantic slave trade’s abolition reshaped Atlantic shipping patterns. Britain outlawed the trade in 1807 and pressed suppression through the Royal Navy; the United States banned importation of slaves effective 1 January 1808. Enforcement was uneven, and illegal traffic persisted via Cuba and other outlets, but legal American participation ceased. The Caribbean economy, still slave-based, continued to draw neutral shipping for sugar and coffee. Cooper’s maritime canvas acknowledges the moral and commercial entanglements of this economy—American hulls sharing seas with slavers and patrols—highlighting how even lawful commerce necessarily moved within a system shadowed by human bondage.
As social and political critique, the book contrasts republican ideals of lawful commerce with the arbitrary power of empires at sea. Impressment appears as an assault on personal liberty; prize law and blockade expose small merchants to strategies dictated in London and Paris. Cooper’s attention to documents, identity, and jurisdiction underscores how ordinary citizens bore the costs of diplomatic failure. The novel suggests that a nation without credible naval protection and coherent policy leaves its traders to improvise legality voyage by voyage, making personal prudence the only refuge against caprice and cannon.
Ashore, the narrative registers class tensions within an American society negotiating between inherited landholding and mercantile wealth. Guardianship, debt, and inheritance law structure fates as surely as wind and current. Afloat, strict hierarchies and corporal discipline reveal a social order built on obedience and risk, while cosmopolitan crews and portside encounters expose the contradictions of a republic profiting from slave economies yet proclaiming liberty. By juxtaposing estate, countinghouse, and quarterdeck, Cooper indicts complacent privilege and imperial arrogance alike, presenting commerce as both opportunity and crucible, and insisting that justice at sea and on shore requires institutional, not merely personal, virtue.
Author Biography
James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was among the first American novelists to gain international renown. Writing in the decades between the early republic and the antebellum era, he helped define the historical romance, the frontier tale, and the sea novel for a U.S. readership. His most enduring creation, the Leatherstocking series, established archetypes of wilderness heroism and shaped global perceptions of North America. Cooper combined adventure plotting with debate over law, land, and national character, producing fiction that was simultaneously popular and culturally formative. His work circulated widely in Britain and on the continent, placing American narrative art into lively conversation with European Romanticism.
Cooper’s early life unfolded near the edge of Euro‑American settlement in upstate New York, an environment that furnished the landscapes and conflicts central to his fiction. He briefly attended Yale College as a teenager but left without a degree. He then served at sea in the merchant marine and as a midshipman in the United States Navy, experiences that later informed his nautical narratives. Literary models included the historical romances of Sir Walter Scott and broader Romantic-era treatments of nature and history. This combination—frontier experience, maritime training, and exposure to British and European narrative forms—provided the foundation for his thematic range and techniques.
Cooper began publishing fiction in the early 1820s. An initial social novel met modest notice, but The Spy, a Revolutionary War tale, established his reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. The Pioneers soon followed, inaugurating the Leatherstocking cycle centered on the backwoods scout later known as Natty Bumppo. Readers responded to the blend of legal disputes, settlement pressures, and natural description, while critics recognized an ambitious effort to craft a distinctly American historical romance. Translation and serialization expanded his audience, setting the stage for a sustained career that alternated between frontier sagas and other experiments in popular narrative.
Across the Leatherstocking Tales—commonly identified as The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer—Cooper mapped the advance of settlement and the ethical dilemmas it posed. The Last of the Mohicans, published in the mid‑1820s, became the most famous, cementing the series’ international profile. The books juxtapose wilderness knowledge and European‑derived law, dramatize conflicts among colonial powers and Native nations, and frame nature as both refuge and contested resource. While celebrated for scenic power and momentum, the cycle has also provoked enduring debate over its portrayals of Indigenous peoples, a subject central to modern reassessment.
Running parallel to the frontier romances were sea novels that drew directly on his maritime training. The Pilot proposed an American alternative to European nautical romance, and works such as The Red Rover, The Water‑Witch, and The Two Admirals elaborated shipboard hierarchy, seamanship, and the code of naval honor. Cooper also wrote travel books and social commentary after an extended residence in Europe, including Notions of the Americans and a multi‑volume series often collected as Gleanings in Europe. His History of the Navy of the United States of America blended archival research with professional advocacy, elevating naval themes within national letters.
Cooper did not separate art from civic argument. In The American Democrat, he outlined a guarded republicanism wary of demagoguery and protective of property and legal order. He returned to those issues in later novels—among them the Littlepage Manuscripts trilogy—while also completing The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer to round out his frontier design. His public disputes with segments of the press, including libel actions, became part of his notoriety in the 1830s and 1840s. At home critics sometimes faulted his style or politics, even as European audiences remained enthusiastic, a transatlantic split that shaped his reception throughout his career.
Settled again in upstate New York in his later years, Cooper continued to revise earlier materials and mentor American prose through example rather than institution. He died in 1851, leaving a body of work that has remained in print and in debate. Later writers alternately rebuked and acclaimed him—Mark Twain’s famous critique coexists with sustained scholarly admiration for his narrative architecture, landscape writing, and mythmaking. The Leatherstocking Tales and the sea novels still attract readers and adaptations, though they are approached today with critical attention to their historical contexts and representations. Cooper endures as a foundational builder of American fiction.
Afloat and Ashore: A Sea Tale
“Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits."Two Gentlemen of Verona
PREFACE.
The writer has published so much truth which the world has insisted was fiction, and so much fiction which has been received as truth, that, in the present instance, he is resolved to say nothing on the subject. Each of his readers is at liberty to believe just as much, or as little, of the matter here laid before him, or her, as may suit his, or her notions, prejudices, knowledge of the world, or ignorance. If anybody is disposed to swear he knows precisely where Clawbonny[4] is, that he was well acquainted with old Mr. Hardinge, nay, has often heard him preach—let him make his affidavit, in welcome. Should he get a little wide of the mark, it will not be the first document of that nature, which has possessed the same weakness.
It is possible that certain captious persons may be disposed to inquire into the cui bono?[2] of such a book. The answer is this. Everything which can convey to the human mind distinct and accurate impressions of events, social facts, professional peculiarities, or past history, whether of the higher or more familiar character, is of use. All that is necessary is, that the pictures should be true to nature, if not absolutely drawn from living sitters. The knowledge we gain by our looser reading, often becomes serviceable in modes and manners little anticipated in the moments when it is acquired.
Perhaps the greater portion of all our peculiar opinions have their foundation in prejudices. These prejudices are produced in consequence of its being out of the power of any one man to see, or know, every thing. The most favoured mortal must receive far more than half of all that he learns on his faith in others;[1q] and it may aid those who can never be placed in positions to judge for themselves of certain phases of men and things, to get pictures of the same, drawn in a way to give them nearer views than they might otherwise obtain. This is the greatest benefit of all light literature in general, it being possible to render that which is purely fictitious even more useful than that which is strictly true, by avoiding extravagancies, by pourtraying with fidelity, and, as our friend Marble might say, by “generalizing” with discretion.
This country has undergone many important changes since the commencement of the present century. Some of these changes have been for the better; others, we think out of all question, for the worse. The last is a fact that can be known to the generation which is coming into life, by report only, and these pages may possibly throw some little light on both points, in representing things as they were. The population of the republic is probably something more than eighteen millions and a half to-day; in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred, it was but a little more than five millions. In 1800, the population of New-York was somewhat less than six hundred thousand souls; to-day it is probably a little less than two millions seven hundred thousand souls. In 1800, the town of New-York had sixty thousand inhabitants, whereas, including Brooklyn and Williamsburg, which then virtually had no existence, it must have at this moment quite four hundred thousand. These are prodigious numerical changes, that have produced changes of another sort. Although an increase of numbers does not necessarily infer an increase of high civilization, it reasonably leads to the expectation of great melioration in the commoner comforts. Such has been the result, and to those familiar with facts as they now exist, the difference will probably be apparent in these pages.
Although the moral changes in American society have not kept even pace with those that are purely physical, many that are essential have nevertheless occurred. Of all the British possessions on this continent, New-York, after its conquest from the Dutch, received most of the social organization of the mother country. Under the Dutch, even, it had some of these characteristic peculiarities, in its patroons[3]; the lords of the manor of the New Netherlands. Some of the southern colonies, it is true, had their caciques and other semi-feudal, and semi-savage noblesse, but the system was of short continuance; the peculiarities of that section of the country, arising principally from the existence of domestic slavery, on an extended scale. With New-York it was different. A conquered colony, the mother country left the impression of its own institutions more deeply engraved than on any of the settlements that were commenced by grants to proprietors, or under charters from the crown. It was strictly a royal colony, and so continued to be, down to the hour of separation. The social consequences of this state of things were to be traced in her habits unlit the current of immigration became so strong, as to bring with it those that were conflicting, if not absolutely antagonist. The influence of these two sources of thought is still obvious to the reflecting, giving rise to a double set of social opinions; one of which bears all the characteristics of its New England and puritanical origin, while the other may be said to come of the usages and notions of the Middle States, proper.
This is said in anticipation of certain strictures that will be likely to follow some of the incidents of our story, it not being always deemed an essential in an American critic, that he should understand his subject. Too many of them, indeed, justify the retort of the man who derided the claims to knowledge of life, set up by a neighbour, that “had been to meetin' and had been to mill.” We can all obtain some notions of the portion of a subject that is placed immediately before our eyes; the difficulty is to understand that which we have no means of studying.
On the subject of the nautical incidents of this book, we have endeavoured to be as exact as our authorities will allow. We are fully aware of the importance of writing what the world thinks, rather than what is true, and are not conscious of any very palpable errors of this nature.
It is no more than fair to apprize the reader, that our tale is not completed in the First Part, or the volumes that are now published. This, the plan of the book would not permit: but we can promise those who may feel any interest in the subject, that the season shall not pass away, so far as it may depend on ourselves, without bringing the narrative to a close. Poor Captain Wallingford is now in his sixty-fifth year, and is naturally desirous of not being hung up long on the tenter-hooks of expectation, so near the close of life. The old gentleman having seen much and suffered much, is entitled to end his days in peace. In this mutual frame of mind between the principal, and his editors, the public shall have no cause to complain of unnecessary delay, whatever may be its rights of the same nature on other subjects.
The author—perhaps editor would be the better word—does not feel himself responsible for all the notions advanced by the hero of this tale, and it may be as well to say as much. That one born in the Revolution should think differently from the men of the present day, in a hundred things, is to be expected. It is in just this difference of opinion, that the lessons of the book are to be found.
AFLOAT AND ASHORE.
CHAPTER I.
I was born in a valley not very remote from the sea. My father had been a sailor in youth, and some of my earliest recollections are connected with the history of his adventures, and the recollections they excited. He had been a boy in the war of the revolution, and had seen some service in the shipping of that period. Among other scenes he witnessed, he had been on board the Trumbull, in her action with the Watt—the hardest-fought naval combat of that war—and he particularly delighted in relating its incidents. He had been wounded in the battle, and bore the marks of the injury, in a scar that slightly disfigured a face, that, without this blemish, would have been singularly handsome. My mother, after my poor father's death, always spoke of even this scar as a beauty spot. Agreeably to my own recollections, the mark scarcely deserved that commendation, as it gave one side of the face a grim and fierce appearance, particularly when its owner was displeased.
My father died on the farm on which he was born, and which descended to him from his great-grandfather, an English emigrant that had purchased it of the Dutch colonist who had originally cleared it from the woods. The place was called Clawbonny, which some said was good Dutch others bad Dutch; and, now and then, a person ventured a conjecture that it might be Indian. Bonny it was, in one sense at least, for a lovelier farm there is not on the whole of the wide surface of the Empire State. What does not always happen in this wicked, world, it was as good as it was handsome. It consisted of three hundred and seventy-two acres of first-rate land, either arable, or of rich river bottom in meadows, and of more than a hundred of rocky mountain side, that was very tolerably covered with wood. The first of our family who owned the place had built a substantial one-story stone house, that bears the date of 1707 on one of its gables; and to which each of his successors had added a little, until the whole structure got to resemble a cluster of cottages thrown together without the least attention to order or regularity. There were a porch, a front door, and a lawn, however; the latter containing half a dozen acres of a soil as black as one's hat, and nourishing eight or ten elms that were scattered about, as if their seeds had been sown broad-cast. In addition to the trees, and a suitable garniture of shrubbery, this lawn was coated with a sward that, in the proper seasons, rivalled all I have read, or imagined, of the emerald and shorn slopes of the Swiss valleys.
Clawbonny, while it had all the appearance of being the residence of an affluent agriculturist, had none of the pretension of these later times. The house had an air of substantial comfort without, an appearance that its interior in no manner contradicted. The ceilings, were low, it is true, nor were the rooms particularly large; but the latter were warm in winter, cool in summer and tidy, neat and respectable all the year round. Both the parlours had carpets, as had the passages and all the better bed-rooms; and there were an old-fashioned chintz settee, well stuffed and cushioned, and curtains in the “big parlour,” as we called the best apartment,—the pretending name of drawing-room not having reached our valley as far back as the year 1796, or that in which my recollections of the place, as it then existed, are the most vivid and distinct.
We had orchards, meadows, and ploughed fields all around us; while the barns, granaries, styes, and other buildings of the farm, were of solid stone, like the dwelling, and all in capital condition. In addition to the place, which he inherited from my grandfather, quite without any encumbrance, well stocked and supplied with utensils of all sorts, my father had managed to bring with him from sea some fourteen or fifteen thousand dollars, which he carefully invested in mortgages in the county. He got twenty-seven hundred pounds currency with my mother, similarly bestowed; and, two or three great landed proprietors, and as many retired merchants from York, excepted, Captain Wallingford was generally supposed to be one of the stiffest men in Ulster county. I do not know exactly how true was this report; though I never saw anything but the abundance of a better sort of American farm under the paternal roof, and I know that the poor were never sent away empty-handed. It as true that our wine was made of currants; but it was delicious, and there was always a sufficient stock in the cellar to enable us to drink it three or four years old. My father, however, had a small private collection of his own, out of which he would occasionally produce a bottle; and I remember to have heard Governor George Clinton, afterwards, Vice President, who was an Ulster county man, and who sometimes stopped at Clawbonny in passing, say that it was excellent East India Madeira. As for clarets, burgundy, hock and champagne, they were wines then unknown in America, except on the tables of some of the principal merchants, and, here and there, on that of some travelled gentleman of an estate larger than common. When I say that Governor George Clinton used to stop occasionally, and taste my father's Madeira, I do not wish to boast of being classed with those who then composed the gentry of the state. To this, in that day, we could hardly aspire, though the substantial hereditary property of my family gave us a local consideration that placed us a good deal above the station of ordinary yeomen. Had we lived in one of the large towns, our association would unquestionably have been with those who are usually considered to be one or two degrees beneath the highest class. These distinctions were much more marked, immediately after the war of the revolution, than they are to-day; and they are more marked to-day, even, than all but the most lucky, or the most meritorious, whichever fortune dignifies, are willing to allow.
The courtship between my parents occurred while my father was at home, to be cured of the wounds he had received in the engagement between the Trumbull and the Watt[1]. I have always supposed this was the moving cause why my mother fancied that the grim-looking scar on the left side of my father's face was so particularly becoming. The battle was fought in June 1780, and my parents were married in the autumn of the same year. My father did not go to sea again until after my birth, which took place the very day that Cornwallis capitulated at Yorktown. These combined events set the young sailor in motion, for he felt he had a family to provide for, and he wished to make one more mark on the enemy in return for the beauty-spot his wife so gloried in. He accordingly got a commission in a privateer, made two or three fortunate cruises, and was able at the peace to purchase a prize-brig, which he sailed, as master and owner, until the year 1790, when he was recalled to the paternal roof by the death of my grandfather. Being an only son, the captain, as my father was uniformly called, inherited the land, stock, utensils and crops, as already mentioned; while the six thousand pounds currency that were “at use,” went to my two aunts, who were thought to be well married, to men in their own class of life, in adjacent counties.
My father never went to sea after he inherited Clawbonny. From that time down to the day of his death, he remained on his farm, with the exception of a single winter passed in Albany as one of the representatives of the county. In his day, it was a credit to a man to represent a county, and to hold office under the State; though the abuse of the elective principle, not to say of the appointing power, has since brought about so great a change. Then, a member of congress was somebody; now, he is only—a member of congress.
We were but two surviving children, three of the family dying infants, leaving only my sister Grace and myself to console our mother in her widowhood. The dire accident which placed her in this, the saddest of all conditions for a woman who had been a happy wife, occurred in the year 1794, when I was in my thirteenth year, and Grace was turned of eleven. It may be well to relate the particulars.
There was a mill, just where the stream that runs through our valley tumbles down to a level below that on which the farm lies, and empties itself into a small tributary of the Hudson. This mill was on our property, and was a source of great convenience and of some profit to my father. There he ground all the grain that was consumed for domestic purposes, for several miles around; and the tolls enabled him to fatten his porkers and beeves, in a way to give both a sort of established character. In a word, the mill was the concentrating point for all the products of the farm, there being a little landing on the margin of the creek that put up from the Hudson, whence a sloop sailed weekly for town. My father passed half his time about the mill and landing, superintending his workmen, and particularly giving directions about the fitting of the sloop, which was his property also, and about the gear of the mill. He was clever, certainly, and had made several useful suggestions to the millwright who occasionally came to examine and repair the works; but he was by no means so accurate a mechanic as he fancied himself to be. He had invented some new mode of arresting the movement, and of setting the machinery in motion when necessary; what it was, I never knew, for it was not named at Clawbonny after the fatal accident occurred. One day, however, in order to convince the millwright of the excellence of this improvement, my father caused the machinery to be stopped, and then placed his own weight upon the large wheel, in order to manifest the sense he felt in the security of his invention. He was in the very act of laughing exultingly at the manner in which the millwright shook his head at the risk he ran, when the arresting power lost its control of the machinery, the heavy head of water burst into the buckets, and the wheel whirled round carrying my unfortunate father with it. I was an eye-witness of the whole, and saw the face of my parent, as the wheel turned it from me, still expanded in mirth. There was but one revolution made, when the wright succeeded in stopping the works. This brought the great wheel back nearly to its original position, and I fairly shouted with hysterical delight when I saw my father standing in his tracks, as it might be, seemingly unhurt. Unhurt he would have been, though he must have passed a fearful keel-hauling, but for one circumstance. He had held on to the wheel with the tenacity of a seaman, since letting go his hold would have thrown him down a cliff of near a hundred feet in depth, and he actually passed between the wheel and the planking beneath it unharmed, although there was only an inch or two to spare; but in rising from this fearful strait, his head had been driven between a projecting beam and one of the buckets, in a way to crush one temple in upon the brain. So swift and sudden had been the whole thing, that, on turning the wheel, his lifeless body was still inclining on its periphery, retained erect, I believe, in consequence of some part of his coat getting attached, to the head of a nail. This was the first serious sorrow of my life. I had always regarded my father as one of the fixtures of the world; as a part of the great system of the universe; and had never contemplated his death as a possible thing. That another revolution might occur, and carry the country back under the dominion of the British crown, would have seemed to me far more possible than that my father could die. Bitter truth now convinced me of the fallacy of such notions.
It was months and months before I ceased to dream of this frightful scene. At my age, all the feelings were fresh and plastic, and grief took strong hold of my heart. Grace and I used to look at each other without speaking, long after the event, the tears starting to my eyes, and rolling down her cheeks, our emotions being the only communications between us, but communications that no uttered words could have made so plain. Even now, I allude to my mother's anguish with trembling. She was sent for to the house of the miller, where the body lay, and arrived unapprised of the extent of the evil. Never can I—never shall I forget the outbreakings of her sorrow, when she learned the whole of the dreadful truth. She was in fainting fits for hours, one succeeding another, and then her grief found tongue. There was no term of endearment that the heart of woman could dictate to her speech, that was not lavished on the lifeless clay. She called the dead “her Miles,” “her beloved Miles,” “her husband,” “her own darling husband,” and by such other endearing epithets. Once she seemed as if resolute to arouse the sleeper from his endless trance, and she said, solemnly, “Father—dear, dearest father!” appealing as it might be to the parent of her children, the tenderest and most comprehensive of all woman's terms of endearment—“Father—dear, dearest father! open your eyes and look upon your babes—your precious girl, and noble boy! Do not thus shut out their sight for ever!”
But it was in vain. There lay the lifeless corpse, as insensible as if the spirit of God had never had a dwelling within it. The principal injury had been received on that much-prized scar; and again and again did my poor mother kiss both, as if her caresses might yet restore her husband to life. All would not do. The same evening, the body was carried to the dwelling, and three days later it was laid in the church-yard, by the side of three generations of forefathers, at a distance of only a mile from Clawbonny. That funeral service, too, made a deep impression on my memory. We had some Church of England people in the valley; and old Miles Wallingford, the first of the name, a substantial English franklin, had been influenced in his choice of a purchase by the fact that one of Queen Anne's churches stood so near the farm. To that little church, a tiny edifice of stone, with a high, pointed roof, without steeple, bell, or vestry-room, had three generations of us been taken to be christened, and three, including my father, had been taken to be buried. Excellent, kind-hearted, just-minded Mr. Hardinge read the funeral service over the man whom his own father had, in the same humble edifice, christened. Our neighbourhood has much altered of late years; but, then, few higher than mere labourers dwelt among us, who had not some sort of hereditary claim to be beloved. So it was with our clergyman, whose father had been his predecessor, having actually married my grand-parents. The son had united my father and mother, and now he was called on to officiate at the funeral obsequies of the first. Grace and I sobbed as if our hearts would break, the whole time we were in the church; and my poor, sensitive, nervous little sister actually shrieked as she heard the sound of the first clod that fell upon the coffin. Our mother was spared that trying scene, finding it impossible to support it. She remained at home, on her knees, most of the day on which the funeral occurred.
Time soothed our sorrows, though my mother, a woman of more than common sensibility, or, it were better to say of uncommon affections, never entirely recovered from the effects of her irreparable loss. She had loved too well, too devotedly, too engrossingly, ever to think of a second marriage, and lived only to care for the interests of Miles Wallingford's children. I firmly believe we were more beloved because we stood in this relation to the deceased, than because we were her own natural offspring. Her health became gradually undermined, and, three years after the accident of the mill, Mr. Hardinge laid her at my father's side. I was now sixteen, and can better describe what passed during the last days of her existence, than what took place at the death of her husband. Grace and I were apprised of what was so likely to occur, quite a month before the fatal moment arrived; and we were not so much overwhelmed with sudden grief as we had been on the first great occasion of family sorrow, though we both felt our loss keenly, and my sister, I think I may almost say, inextinguishably. Mr. Hardinge had us both brought to the bed-side, to listen to the parting advice of our dying parent, and to be impressed with a scene that is always healthful, if rightly improved. “You baptized these two dear children, good Mr. Hardinge,” she said, in a voice that was already enfeebled by physical decay, “and you signed them with the sign of the cross, in token of Christ's death for them; and I now ask of your friendship and pastoral care to see that they are not neglected at the most critical period of their lives—that when impressions are the deepest, and yet the most easily made. God will reward all your kindness to the orphan children of your friends.” The excellent divine, a man who lived more for others than for himself, made the required promises, and the soul of my mother took its flight in peace.
Neither my sister nor myself grieved as deeply for the loss of this last of our parents, as we did for that of the first. We had both seen so many instances of her devout goodness, had been witnesses of so great a triumph of her faith as to feel an intimate, though silent, persuasion that her death was merely a passage to a better state of existence—that it seemed selfish to regret. Still, we wept and mourned, even while, in one sense, I think we rejoiced. She was relieved from, much bodily suffering, and I remember, when I went to take a last look at her beloved face, that I gazed on its calm serenity with a feeling akin to exultation, as I recollected that pain could no longer exercise dominion over her frame, and that her spirit was then dwelling in bliss. Bitter regrets came later, it is true, and these were fully shared—nay, more than shared—by Grace.
After the death of my father, I had never bethought me of the manner in which he had disposed of his property. I heard something said of his will, and gleaned a little, accidentally, of the forms that had been gone through in proving the instrument, and of obtaining its probate. Shortly after my mother's death, however, Mr. Hardinge had a free conversation with both me and Grace on the subject, when we learned, for the first time, the disposition that had been made. My father had bequeathed to me the farm, mill, landing, sloop, stock, utensils, crops, &c. &c., in full property; subject, however, to my mother's use of the whole until I attained my majority; after which I was to give her complete possession of a comfortable wing of the house, which had every convenience for a small family within itself, certain privileges in the fields, dairy, styes, orchards, meadows, granaries, &c., and to pay her three hundred pounds currency, per annum, in money. Grace had four thousand pounds that were “at use,” and I had all the remainder of the personal property, which yielded about five hundred dollars a-year. As the farm, sloop, mill, landing, &c., produced a net annual income of rather more than a thousand dollars, besides all that was consumed in housekeeping, I was very well off, in the way of temporal things, for one who had been trained in habits as simple as those which reigned at Clawbonny.
My father had left Mr. Hardinge the executor, and my mother an executrix of his will, with survivorship. He had also made the same provision as respected the guardians. Thus Grace and I became the wards of the clergyman alone on the death of our last remaining parent. This was grateful to us both, for we both truly loved this good man, and, what was more, we loved his children. Of these there were two of ages corresponding very nearly with our own; Rupert Hardinge being not quite a year older than I was myself, and Lucy, his sister, about six months younger than Grace. We were all four strongly attached to each other, and had been so from infancy, Mr. Hardinge having had charge of my education as soon as I was taken from a woman's school.
I cannot say, however, that Rupert Hardinge was ever a boy to give his father the delight that a studious, well-conducted, considerate and industrious child, has it so much in his power to yield to his parent. Of the two, I was much the best scholar, and had been pronounced by Mr. Hardinge fit to enter college, a twelvemonth before my mother died; though she declined sending me to Yale, the institution selected by my father, until my school-fellow was similarly prepared, it having been her intention to give the clergyman's son a thorough education, in furtherance of his father's views of bringing him up to the church. This delay, so well and kindly meant, had the effect of changing the whole course of my subsequent life.
My father, it seems, wished to make a lawyer of me, with the natural desire of seeing me advanced to some honourable position in the State. But I was averse to anything like serious mental labour, and was greatly delighted when my mother determined to keep me out of college a twelvemonth in order that my friend Rupert might be my classmate. It is true I learned quick, and was fond of reading; but the first I could not very well help, while the reading I liked was that which amused, rather than that which instructed me. As for Rupert, though not absolutely dull, but, on the other hand, absolutely clever in certain things, he disliked mental labour even more than myself, while he liked self-restraint of any sort far less. His father was sincerely pious, and regarded his sacred office with too much reverence to think of bringing up a “cosset-priest,” though he prayed and hoped that his son's inclinations, under the guidance of Providence, would take that direction. He seldom spoke on the subject himself, but I ascertained his wishes through my confidential dialogues with his children. Lucy seemed delighted with the idea, looking forward to the time when her brother would officiate in the same desk where her father and grandfather had now conducted the worship of God for more than half a century; a period of time that, to us young people, seemed to lead us back to the dark ages of the country. And all this the dear girl wished for her brother, in connection with his spiritual rather than his temporal interests, inasmuch as the living was worth only a badly-paid salary of one hundred and fifty pounds currency per annum, together with a small but comfortable rectory, and a glebe of five-and-twenty acres of very tolerable land, which it was thought no sin, in that day, for the clergyman to work by means of two male slaves, whom, with as many females, he had inherited as part of the chattels of his mother.
I had a dozen slaves also; negroes who, as a race, had been in the family almost as long as Clawbonny. About half of these blacks were singularly laborious and useful, viz., four males and three of the females; but several of the remainder were enjoying otium, and not altogether without dignitate
