New Amsterdam's Sailors

NEW AMSTERDAM’S SAILORS

I would see them come ashore after months at sea—tired and very glad to put their feet on dry land. Many of the townspeople thought of them as the dregs of society grouping them in the same category as vagrants, menial workers, and the unemployed. Sailors were considered irresponsible members of society who squandered their money in taverns and brothels. Maybe so, but living on the edge of the world as we were, a lot of us could have fit into that category.

So as not to see out little outpost degenerate into a cesspool of lawlessness, the authorities decided to institute a series of measures designed to protect and reflect the morals and values of our motherland, as well as to limit intrusions by outsiders. Sailors became the primary targets of these measures. The earliest laws of the colony dating from 1638 forbade seamen from staying on shore after sundown, i.e., they could not be lodged in the town overnight. Nailed to each ship’s mainmast was a copy of this injunction so that no sailor might be able to claim ignorance of it. Within a few months, a tavern keeper was fined for lodging a seaman after sundown. However, the onus of these laws usually fell on the seaman. In one case, several sailors who had been convicted of staying ashore illegally were sentenced to three months hard labor chained to a wheelbarrow and given nothing more to eat than bread and water.

By the 1650’s it was no longer illegal for a sailor to spend the night in town. Instead the authorities redirected their energies toward upholding the sacredness of the Sabbath. Ordinances were passed against tapping, sports, games, cards, and other pleasures on the Lord’s Day. Our shout fiscal, or sheriff was responsible for their enforcement. Our tapsters were told to stop the sale of alcohol at ten o’clock, a directive that Peter Stuyvesant, a true paragon of the Dutch Reformed Church, changed to nine o’clock. The sailors that came ashore found these measures abhorrent. They wanted to let loose and have some fun. I couldn't blame them.

Yet another restriction on sailor’s relating to a common practice known as primage, further antagonized them. Typically, a sailor would store in his sea chest a small quantity to goods that he could then sell or trade without having to worry about the normal duties, excise taxes and customs. The monopoly minded West India Company decided to ban this customary practice in the colony’s early years. But by the 1640’s a more relaxed set of rules allowed sailors to do a modicum of trading—goods valued at no more than 2 months pay. Of course, things got out of hand and our merchants complained to the authorities that they could not compete with the sailors who were by now adding smuggled items to their allotted duty free merchandise. Governor Stuyvesant, at the behest of the WIC, imposed an all-out ban on any further primage by sailors. This did not sit well with them.

Additionally, if you worked for the WIC, you were also required to work on civic projects if needed. So for instance, it was not uncommon to see sailors working on the refurbishment of Fort Amsterdam. Sometimes “the civic project” was war with the result that the colonial government could impress seamen into military service.

Despite all, sailors for the most part found comfort and safety in our port. There were not only Dutch taverns, but English and French as well—twelve in all. And they offered more than alcoholic beverages. There was dancing and gaming and gambling and opportunities to encounter the opposite sex. Even though our population was only about 1500 a discreet prostitution industry sprang up. The fear of deportation back to Holland faced the more boisterous participants.

Sailors often ran out of cash, but that only gave the more enterprising tapsters another opportunity to make money. They acted as lenders and pawnbrokers, collecting their fees from the sailors’ captains before they sailed. This led to a whole lot of drunkenness and dereliction of duty. So a ban on the practice was put into place. From what I saw though, things did not change one bit.

The courts of New Amsterdam provided sailors with a means to protect their rights and privileges. Most cases involved complaints from sailors who had not been paid as promised, but often times too they were the result of cruel and scurrilous ship owners. The judges meted out justice evenly and fairly even as a type of class society began to emerge in our town. The fact that we had a chronic shortage of labor, particularly skilled seamen, no doubt helped to influence their attitudes.

Many mariners found our town to their liking and asked to be released from their service to the WIC. From them came not only some of our most prominent citizens, but members of our growing middling, if you will, class—carpenters, cordwainers, carters, etc. We are a different place now and many of us like me once were sailors.

We will probably see even more changes now that the British under Colonel Nicholls has sailed into our harbor forcing the surrender of New Netherlands. It is 1664. We are to be called New York from now on.




SOURCE:

Wagman, Morton. “Liberty in New Amsterdam: A Sailor’s Life in Early New York.” New York History 64:2 (April 1983): 101-119.