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 Praise for 1984 and Philosophy
“The reception of Orwell’s novel has gone through various stages. Until the
end of the Cold War, the emphasis was on the politics and the cruelty of
living in a totalitarian state. More recently, the focus has been on
surveillance. This volume finally brings together these and other
approaches in a meaningful way, with reference to the current political
climate. An excellent and timely collection of essays, which demonstrates
why Orwell’s great novel still matters!”
— MICHAEL NAGENBORG, co-editor of Ethics and Robotics
(2009)

“If ‘Freedom Is Slavery’, may philosophy be the liberator. In the fight

against oppression, 1984 and Philosophy is an exceptional tool. Read
carefully, however, Big Brother is watching.”
— JIM BERTI, co-editor, Rush and Philosophy: Heart and Mind
United (2011)

“It’s the best book they already know you will be reading!”
— GERALD BROWNING, author of Demon in My Head (2011)

“Orwell’s monumental 1984 may be even more important today than when
it was first published, and the international array of philosophers whose
essays are collected in this book explains why. Their essays broach
important topics such as torture, mass surveillance, revolution, resistance
to authoritarianism, news and media, freedom, history, and thought control.
It’s fascinating reading for people with any interest in philosophy and a
must-read for anyone with even a single political bone in their body.”
 — PETER S. FOSL, co-author of The Philosopher’s Toolkit
(2002)

“Winston Smith learns in excruciatingly painful detail how a fascist regime

operates. But, even as the rats eat his face, he never learns why. This book
reveals Big Brother’s real thoughts.”
— KEVIN GUILFOY, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Carroll
University

“This is an indispensable companion for anyone remotely interested in

resisting Newspeak, the thought police, and the other despotic tools of the
super state in Orwell’s brilliant dystopian classic.”
— CHARLES TALIAFERRO, Chair of the Department of
Philosophy, St. Olaf College

“Why are we still having serious discussions about 1984? It’s because
concerns about control of bodies, state oppression, alternative facts,
federal-level spying, identity politics, techno-augmentation and body
modifications, and social media concerns are as real for us today as for the
people in Oceania. The contributors to this book tackle these, and other,
issues by examining how George Orwell, through Winston, brings
discussions about these key social issues into sharp relief to help shed light
on what it means to speak truth to power. The most important question
raised by 1984 and Philosophy is whether resistance is futile. The answer is
No.”
— CLINT JONES, co-editor of The Individual and Utopia (2015)

“Irony abounds in high schoolers being forced to read 1984. The richness
and, as recent history seems to indicate, the relevance of Orwell’s work
could be lost. 1984 and Philosophy has salvaged this essential read for
another generation. It’s an important companion to the original and
whether you buy it for the radical flair it will give your classroom
discussion or simply as a born-again reader, partake and enjoy . . . BIG
BROTHER DEMANDS IT!”
— DAN MIORI, author, physician assistant, dissolute bastard

“Thought police, fake news, neoliberalism, mass incarceration, the pressure

to continuously function like our technology, anyone? This team of
philosophers present us with various philosophical and political views that
help put Orwell’s issues in their proper context. The volume reads like one
long, entertaining discussion of the ideas Orwell so artfully presented to us,
surely for the sake of provoking analyses like these. While fans of 1984 will
love this volume, it is also going to create some new admirers of Orwell’s
genius.”
— JENNIFER BAKER, Professor of Philosophy, College of
Charleston

“For over thirty years, 1984 has been a fictional benchmark for such
monumental issues as freedom and paternalism, knowledge and ignorance,
artificial intelligence and politics. And now, more than ever, it’s important
we truly grapple with these issues, in the real world. 1984 and Philosophy
does this for us. It’s great popular philosophical writing referencing an
iconic novel, all the while, framing the world we currently inhabit.”
— JACK BOWEN, author of A Journey through the Landscape of
Philosophy (2007)

“In today’s political climate, it’s more important than ever before to
consider the political and philosophical message of Orwell’s 1984.”
— DAVID KYLE JOHNSON, author of The Myths that Stole
Christmas (2015)

“Have you ever wondered how those online retailers knew about your
favorite kind of double-stuffed Oreo? Were you surprised when they
recommended the perfect gift for your niece’s First Communion? Big
Brother might still be watching but so are his younger siblings Google,
Facebook, and Amazon. This enlightening volume is a must-read for those
of us wondering what it means to watch and be watched in today’s
frightening digital age.”
— ROBERTO SIRVENT, author of Embracing Vulnerability
(2014)

“Big Brother has been watching you for some time now in the forms of
video surveillance at gas stations, fire stations, police stations, grocery
stores, department stores, street corners, and even nurseries through nanny
cams; the Party has always been in power, whether that be the Independent
Party, the Federalist Party, the Republican Party, or the Democratic Party;
and Newspeak—that obviously not ungood lingo that causes us to
doublethink that 2 + 2 = 5—is just political correctness in sheep’s clothing.
Why does Nineteen Eighty-Four resonate today as much as it did in 1984 or
1949? Because the topics discussed are deeply philosophical . . . and scary
as sh@t.”
— ROBERT ARP, author of 1001 Ideas that Changed the Way We
Think (2013)

“The Party would like you to know that this book is subversive and
dangerous; the Ministry of Truth has concluded that it fails to live up to the
standards of our carefully crafted society. Anyone reading this book will be
confused by its philosophical discussions of sexual enlightenment,
government resistance, media manipulation, and doublethink. The Party
has warned you!”
— COURTLAND LEWIS, author of Way of the Doctor: Doctor
Who’s Pocketbook Guide to the Good Life (2017)

“Is there a more pointed, potent allegory of contemporary civilization than

Orwell’s prescient post-World War II book, 1984? Supposing one lives
through the rise of fascism, as the author did, its recrudescence seems
highly plausible. Couple that return with advancing technologies that
outpace human care and control, and tyranny’s reassertion will be that
much more vicious and capacious. The best way to counter the Thought
Police is to think. This capable roster of scholars and critics does just that:
discern ways to defend freedom, articulate the distinctions between truth
and falsity in an age of simulacrum, and advance prospects for responding
philosophically to the dictates of an encroaching tyranny that is anything
but a fiction.”
— DAVID LAROCCA, editor of The Philosophy of War Films
(2014)

“Technological advances and recent concerns over censorship make many

of the themes in 1984 extremely relevant. The authors in this book unpack
many of the philosophical concerns over these issues. A great read!”
— MARC W. COLE, University of Leeds

“Philosophy is the love of wisdom, but the only universal truth is the love of
BIG BROTHER.”
— NATHANIEL GOLDBERG, author of Kantian Conceptual
Geography (2014)

“Beware! If Ignorance is Strength, this book will turn you into a ninety-
eight-pound weakling.”
— ERIC J. SILVERMAN, author of The Prudence of Love (2010)
Popular Culture and Philosophy® Series Editor: George A.
Reisch

VOLUME 1 Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing (2000)

VOLUME 2 The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer (2001)

VOLUME 3 The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real (2002)

VOLUME 4 Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale (2003)

VOLUME 9 Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts (2004)

VOLUME 12 Star Wars and Philosophy: More Powerful than You Can Possibly Imagine (2005)

VOLUME 13 Superheroes and Philosophy: Truth, Justice, and the Socratic Way (2005)

VOLUME 17 Bob Dylan and Philosophy: It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Thinking) (2006)
VOLUME 19 Monty Python and Philosophy: Nudge Nudge, Think Think! (2006)

VOLUME 30 Pink Floyd and Philosophy: Careful with that Axiom, Eugene! (2007)

VOLUME 35 Star Trek and Philosophy: The Wrath of Kant (2008)

VOLUME 36 The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy: I Link Therefore I Am (2008)

VOLUME 42 Supervillains and Philosophy: Sometimes Evil Is Its Own Reward (2009)

VOLUME 49 Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy: New Life for the Undead (2010) Edited by
Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad

VOLUME 54 The Onion and Philosophy: Fake News Story True, Alleges Indignant Area Professor
(2010) Edited by Sharon M. Kaye

VOLUME 55 Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside (2010) Edited by Courtland Lewis
and Paula Smithka

VOLUME 57 Rush and Philosophy: Heart and Mind United (2010) Edited by Jim Berti and Durrell
Bowman

VOLUME 58 Dexter and Philosophy: Mind over Spatter (2011) Edited by Richard Greene, George
A. Reisch, and Rachel Robison-Greene

VOLUME 60 SpongeBob SquarePants and Philosophy: Soaking Up Secrets Under the Sea! (2011)
Edited by Joseph J. Foy

VOLUME 61 Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy: The Footprints of a Gigantic Mind (2011) Edited
by Josef Steiff
VOLUME 63 Philip K. Dick and Philosophy: Do Androids Have Kindred Spirits? (2011) Edited by
D.E. Wittkower

VOLUME 64 The Rolling Stones and Philosophy: It’s Just a Thought Away (2012) Edited by Luke
Dick and George A. Reisch

VOLUME 67 Breaking Bad and Philosophy: Badder Living through Chemistry (2012) Edited by
David R. Koepsell and Robert Arp

VOLUME 68 The Walking Dead and Philosophy: Zombie Apocalypse Now (2012) Edited by Wayne
Yuen
VOLUME 69 Curb Your Enthusiasm and Philosophy: Awaken the Social Assassin Within (2012)
Edited by Mark Ralkowski

VOLUME 71 The Catcher in the Rye and Philosophy: A Book for Bastards, Morons, and Madmen
(2012) Edited by Keith Dromm and Heather Salter
VOLUME 73 The Wire and Philosophy: This America, Man (2013) Edited by David Bzdak, Joanna
Crosby, and Seth Vannatta

VOLUME 74 Planet of the Apes and Philosophy: Great Apes Think Alike (2013) Edited by John
Huss

VOLUME 75 Psych and Philosophy: Some Dark Juju-Magumbo (2013) Edited by Robert Arp
VOLUME 82 Jurassic Park and Philosophy: The Truth Is Terrifying (2014) Edited by Nicolas
Michaud and Jessica Watkins

VOLUME 83 The Devil and Philosophy: The Nature of His Game (2014) Edited by Robert Arp

VOLUME 84 Leonard Cohen and Philosophy: Various Positions (2014) Edited by Jason Holt
VOLUME 85 Homeland and Philosophy: For Your Minds Only (2014) Edited by Robert Arp

VOLUME 86 Girls and Philosophy: This Book Isn’t a Metaphor for Anything (2015) Edited by
Richard Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene
VOLUME 87 Adventure Time and Philosophy: The Handbook for Heroes (2015) Edited by Nicolas
Michaud
VOLUME 88 Justified and Philosophy: Shoot First, Think Later (2015) Edited by Rod Carveth and
Robert Arp

VOLUME 89 Steve Jobs and Philosophy: For Those Who Think Different (2015) Edited by Shawn
E. Klein

VOLUME 90 Dracula and Philosophy: Dying to Know (2015) Edited by Nicolas Michaud and
Janelle Pötzsch
VOLUME 91 It’s Always Sunny and Philosophy: The Gang Gets Analyzed (2015) Edited by Roger
Hunt and Robert Arp
VOLUME 92 Orange Is the New Black and Philosophy: Last Exit from Litchfield (2015) Edited by
Richard Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene

VOLUME 93 More Doctor Who and Philosophy: Regeneration Time (2015) Edited by Courtland
Lewis and Paula Smithka
VOLUME 94 Divergent and Philosophy: The Factions of Life (2016) Edited by Courtland Lewis
VOLUME 95 Downton Abbey and Philosophy: Thinking in That Manor (2016) Edited by Adam
Barkman and Robert Arp

VOLUME 96 Hannibal Lecter and Philosophy: The Heart of the Matter (2016) Edited by Joseph
Westfall
VOLUME 97 The Ultimate Walking Dead and Philosophy: Hungry for More (2016) Edited by
Wayne Yuen
VOLUME 98 The Princess Bride and Philosophy: Inconceivable! (2016) Edited by Richard Greene
and Rachel Robison-Greene

VOLUME 99 Louis C.K. and Philosophy: You Don’t Get to Be Bored (2016) Edited by Mark
Ralkowski

VOLUME 100 Batman, Superman, and Philosophy: Badass or Boyscout? (2016) Edited by Nicolas
Michaud
VOLUME 101 Discworld and Philosophy: Reality Is Not What It Seems (2016) Edited by Nicolas
Michaud
VOLUME 102 Orphan Black and Philosophy: Grand Theft DNA (2016) Edited by Richard Greene
and Rachel Robison-Greene

VOLUME 103 David Bowie and Philosophy: Rebel Rebel (2016) Edited by Theodore G. Ammon
VOLUME 104 Red Rising and Philosophy: Break the Chains! (2016) Edited by Courtland Lewis
and Kevin McCain
VOLUME 105 The Ultimate Game of Thrones and Philosophy: You Think or Die (2017) Edited by
Eric J. Silverman and Robert Arp

VOLUME 106 Peanuts and Philosophy: You’re a Wise Man, Charlie Brown! (2017) Edited by
Richard Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene

VOLUME 107 Deadpool and Philosophy: My Common Sense Is Tingling (2017) Edited by Nicolas
Michaud
VOLUME 108 The X-Files and Philosophy: The Truth Is In Here (2017) Edited by Robert Arp

VOLUME 109 Mr. Robot and Philosophy: Beyond Good and Evil Corp. (2017) Edited by Richard
Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene

VOLUME 110 Hamilton and Philosophy: Revolutionary Thinking (2017) Edited by Aaron
Rabinowitz and Robert Arp
VOLUME 111 The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy: Subversive Reports from Another
Reality (2017) Edited by Bruce Krajewski and Joshua Heter

VOLUME 112 The Americans and Philosophy: Reds in the Bed (2018) Edited by Robert Arp and
Kevin Guilfoy
VOLUME 113 Jimi Hendrix and Philosophy: Experience Required (2018) Edited by Theodore G.
Ammon
VOLUME 114 American Horror Story and Philosophy: Life Is But a Nightmare (2018) Edited by
Richard Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene
VOLUME 115 Iron Man vs. Captain America and Philosophy (2018) Edited by Nicolas Michaud
and Jessica Watkins
VOLUME 116 1984 and Philosophy: Is Resistance Futile? (2018) Edited by Ezio Di Nucci and
Stefan Storrie

TITLES IN PREPARATION:
Twin Peaks and Philosophy: That’s Damn Fine Philosophy! (2018) Edited by Richard Greene and
Rachel Robison-Greene
The Dark Tower and Philosophy (2018) Edited by Nicolas Michaud and Jacob Thomas May

Scott Adams and Philosophy (2018) Edited by Daniel Yim, Galen Foresman, and Robert Arp

Amy Schumer and Philosophy (2018) Edited by Charlene Elsby and Rob Luzecky
The Twilight Zone and Philosophy (2018) Edited by Heather L. Rivera amd Alexander E. Hooke

Westworld and Philosophy (2018) Edited by Richard Greene and Joshua Heter

The Handmaid’s Tale and Philosophy (2018) Edited by Rachel Robison-Greene

Rick and Morty and Philosophy (2018) Edited by Wayne Yuen and Lester C. Abesamis
Tom Petty and Philosophy (2018) Edited by Randall E. Auxier and Megan Volpert

For full details of all Popular Culture and Philosophy® books, visit
www.opencourtbooks.com.
Volume 116 in the series, Popular Culture and Philosophy®, edited
by George A. Reisch

To find out more about Open Court books, visit our website at www.opencourtbooks.com.

Open Court Publishing Company is a division of Carus Publishing Company, dba Cricket Media.

Copyright © 2018 by Carus Publishing Company, dba Cricket Media

First printing 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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East Lake Street, Suite 800, Chicago, Illinois 60601.

1984 and Philosophy: Is Resistance Futile?

ISBN: 978-0-8126-9985-2.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933984

This book is also available as an e-book.
Contents

Thanks

Are We Living in 1984?

EZIO DI NUCCI AND STEFAN STORRIE

I War Is Peace
1. Revolutionary from the Waist Down
STEFAN STORRIE AND DIANA ADELA MARTIN

2. Physical Jerks Ungood

EZIO DI NUCCI

3. Why Don’t the Proles Just Take Over?

GREG LITTMANN

4. Non-State Enemies of Freedom

ERIN J. NASH

5. Ministry of Truth Handbook: Excerpt on the Strategic Use of

Fallacious Reasoning for Thoughtcrime Prevention
ELIZABETH RARD
6. Big Brother Ltd.
DARREN BOTELLO-SAMSON AND KAYCE MOBLEY

II Freedom Is Slavery
7. Big Brother, We’re Watching You!
 TORBJÖRN TÄNNSJÖ
8. Human Enhancement for Freedom
POLARIS KOI
9. 24/7 Newsleep
JASON MATTHEW BUCHANAN

10. Love, Truluv

TIMOTHY SANDEFUR

11. When Cruelty Is Not Enough

DANIEL CONWAY

12. No Crack in the Wall?

OSHRAT C. SILBERBUSCH

13. Hangings, Shootings, and Other Funny Stuff in 1984

JARNO HIETALAHTI

14. The Seduction of Winston Smith

MARK ALFANO

15. Happy in Oceania?

JOSIP ĆIRIĆ AND BRUNO ĆURKO

III Ignorance Is Strength

16. Bad Faith and Make-Believe
ISKRA FILEVA

17. Through a Telescreen Darkly

LAVINIA MARIN
18. Thoughtcrime or Feelingcrime?
ALBA MONTES SÁNCHEZ
19. Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Religion
JAMES CROSSLEY AND CHRISTOPHER MARKOU
 20. Wheat Can Become Rye!
WILLIAM GOODWIN

21. Controlling Thought through Tweets

EDWARDO PÉREZ

22. The Irrelevance of Truth

JAN KYRRE BERG FRIIS

23. oldthinkful duckspeak refs opposites rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

KEITH BEGLEY

IV Epilogue
24. Post-Factual Democracy
VINCENT F. HENDRICKS AND MADS VESTERGAARD

Bibliography

Unpersons

Destroy These Words

Thanks

We would like to thank the following people for helping us make this
book: Diana Adela Martin, Ursula Di Nucci, Michael Nixon, Anna Vera
Jørring Pallesen, George Reisch, Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, David
Ramsay Steele, Aaro Tupasela, and also the many authors—too many to
name—who submitted chapter proposals that we could not include. Finally,
Ezio would also like to thank Stefan for coming to him with this brilliant
idea.
Are We Living in 1984?
EZIO DI NUCCI AND STEFAN STORRIE

When the future is already in the past, then there is no more hope left.
That’s what’s so depressing about discussing, in 2018, a book about 1984
published in 1949; but a book that turns out to be, today, more relevant than
ever before.
Are we living in 1984? Surely not: it is, after all, 2018! But while living
in 2018 is incompatible with living in 1984, it is not incompatible with
living in 1984—as in, George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four. It really is
unpleasant to think of perpetual war, global surveillance, and deliberate
mass distortion of objective facts. Should we consider such possibilities?
Orwell’s 1984 has been written off as no longer relevant numerous
times. In retrospect such dismissals look laughably naive. Isaac Asimov, in
his 1980 review of the book, complained that the specter of tyranny was no
longer alive. Sure, at the time of its publication in the late 1940s, with Stalin
still in power, it might have had some relevance; and sure, during the
McCarthy era in the 1950s it might have had some relevance. But not
anymore, declares Asimov: long gone are the days of Hitler, Mussolini,
Franco, Mao, and Stalin. “If anything,” Asimov muses “governments of the
1980s seem dangerously weak.”
A generation later Richard A. Posner, the most-cited legal scholar of the
twentieth century, painted a rosy picture of the future where any possibility
of the Orwellian nightmare will be left far behind. The reason?
“Freethinking among even deeply religious people is the order of the day,
not everywhere (in particular, not in all Muslim nations), but in most
quarters of the wealthy nations and many of the nonwealthy ones as well.”
Divested of its political relevance, Orwell’s novel amazingly becomes
almost pastoral for Posner: “As the political relevance of Nineteen Eighty-
Four fades” Posner declares, “We can see it better today for what it is—a
wonderfully vivid, suspenseful, atmospheric, and horrifying . . . romantic
adventure story.” Posner’s paper was written in 2000.
Asimov’s and Posner’s dismissal of 1984 were exceedingly optimistic
in their time of writing and such cosy assurances are now but a faded
memory. The events of 9/11 in 2001 heralded a new era of world-wide
constant terrorism and sectarian divide. The Iraq war that started in 2003
was premised on deliberately inaccurate claims about Iraq’s weapon
capabilities and Iraqi co-operation with al-Qaeda. A 2008 study by the
Center for Public Integrity found that the US President and top
administration officials had made 935 false statements in an orchestrated
campaign to sway public opinion for the war between 2001 and 2003, and
that the press was complicit in the push for war by its uncritical reporting
on the alleged facts.
From Edward Snowden’s 2013 global surveillance disclosures we know
that the NSA’s core purpose is to collect every retrievable communication
event in the world. Advances in communication technology have for the
first time allowed both state and non-state actors to create personalized
propaganda content which should be properly understood as the
weaponization of social media. The blatant disregard for truth and
objectivity in the 2016 UK referendum on membership in the EU and the
2016 US presidential election led Oxford Dictionaries to declare “post-
truth” the “international word of the year.” On cue, in January 2017, US
Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, faced with White House
Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s false statement regarding the number of
attenders at Donald Trump’s inauguration as President of the United States,
chose to relativize the notion of truth rather than accepting the falsity of
Spicer’s claims by coining the iconic term “alternative facts.” Orwell’s
1984 was at this point the world’s best-selling book.
You may understandably believe that this book should really have been
about the powerful man who shall not be named—well, we already did
name him actually; then call him the man whose name shall not be repeated
all too often. And indeed there was between the end of 2016 and the
beginning of 2017 a correlation between his election and renewed interest
in Orwell’s novel. But the Orwellian nature of the modern world transcends
the events of November 2016—indeed, those regrettable events may be
argued to represent an exception to the algorithmic predictability of modern
life. Trump’s not the problem: still, the exemplary nature of his political
abuse of technology already brings us closer to home; and, inevitably, to
1984.
On Super Bowl Sunday, January 22nd 1984, Apple ran a TV
advertisement that declared: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will
introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like Nineteen
Eighty-Four.” This is not surprising: the marketing department was
apparently already back then the most innovative unit in Cupertino. But
technology, such as Apple smartphones, is not the antidote to 1984—
indeed, it is much more likely to be part of the problem. The antidote is
called Philosophy.
Before beginning to explain the role of philosophy—which is really the
task of the whole book—it’s worth looking further into the relationship
between technology and what we may call ‘Orwellian concerns’ (which is
just short-hand for our original question of whether we are living in 1984).
It’s ironic that Apple would back in the 1980s advertise their Macintosh as a
solution to Orwellian concerns, because it is not just today that we
recognize the oppressive potential of technological innovation—that’s
already there in Orwell’s book which, let us not forget, was published in
1949—before Steve Jobs was even born.
Here we have to be careful: it’s undeniable that technology also has
empowering potential for individuals and not just for institutions—such as
for example oppressive governments like the Party in 1984. This is—on a
charitable reading—what the Apple marketing department was getting at—
remember, it was a Super Bowl ad. Likely, then, that they were appealing to
that typically American frontier spirit of anti-government individual
empowerment. It was, after all, the dawn of the personal computer, bringing
computers in every home, office or cubicle—just the way in which decades
before cars had allowed for individual empowerment (which in American
English should probably really just read: freedom).
So could we not just conclude that technology is, basically, neutral?
Namely that the interesting normative questions are all about the legitimate
and illegitimate uses of technology by both individuals and institutions but
that there is nothing particularly concerning—in the Orwellian sense—
about technology? This question goes not only beyond the scope of this
short introduction but also of the whole book: what’s relevant here is the
perceptiveness and creativity with which Orwell—in the 1940s—
anticipated the way in which technology could be effectively used for the
manipulation of information—and here the complex bureaucratic structures
of totalitarian states should probably themselves count as forms of—if you
like—political technology. So please don’t just think of the telescreens—
which may have an astonishing resemblance to today’s smartphones in their
omnipresence and inescapability but are probably not the most terrifying
instrument deployed by the Party—think for example instead of the Party’s
complex apparatus for the re-writing of history or its dictionary
‘streamlining’, and how these elements, when brought together and
integrated, amplify oppression.
How, then, is philosophy the solution? Philosophy teaches us to
examine the foundations of those beliefs that guide our thinking about
politics, morality and our everyday life. It allows us to become aware of our
assumptions and what the credible alternatives are, and allows us to weight
and compare different competing views. It makes us reflective and self-
aware and therefore less likely to be swayed by bad arguments or by
outright lies. At the same time, these skills can allow you to influence and
deceive the majority of people who are not trained in these areas.
Everyone with an interest in political power knows this, despite the bad
press philosophy often gets. Leaders such as Martin Luther King, Robert
McNamara, Bill Clinton, John Paul II, Aung San Suu Kyi, Emmanuel
Macron, as well as virtually every British politician and prominent media
person have studied philosophy at university level.
Winston knows this too. “His heart sank as he thought of the enormous
power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual
would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not
be able to understand, much less answer.”
Philosophy enhances our ability to understand concepts, to pose
questions and answer them, to analyze problems and possible solutions.
Philosophy supplies us the with tools to resist oppression.
 I

War Is Peace
1
Revolutionary from the Waist Down
STEFAN STORRIE AND DIANA ADELA MARTIN

At the heart of 1984 lies an erotic love story between Winston and Julia.
Love and the enjoyment of sex are forbidden by the Party. According to the
Party, sex should be an act of procreation not to be enjoyed (certainly not by
the woman), but to be barely endured as a “duty to the Party.” The Winston-
Julia liaison is therefore a political act in opposition to the powers that be.
But our two heroes have quite different views of how their relationship
challenges the Party.
Winston sees their relationship as a rebellion, ultimately aimed to
overthrow the oppressive society in which he lives. When Julia takes her
clothes off, first in his dream, later in reality, it seemed to Winston “to
annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought as Big Brother and
the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a
single splendid movement of the arm” (pp. 31, 125). He thinks that sex is
by its nature subversive and that it cannot fail to attack the regime,
ultimately tearing it to pieces. According to Winston “the sexual act,
successfully performed, was rebellion” (p. 65). And so, as Winston sees it,
sex is a positive political force for societal change.
For Julia, on the other hand, the political function of sex is to put up
resistance within the established political framework. “Life as she saw it
was quite simple. You wanted a good time; “they” meaning the Party,
wanted to stop you having it; you broke the rules as best you could.” A bit
later we find the thought that “any kind of organized revolt against the
Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever
thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same” (p. 131).
The political aspect of their relationship is for Julia a limited revolt
where she seeks to carve out a space for personal freedom and enjoyment
within an oppressive system. This is why, when Julia and Winston go to
O’Brien to join the resistance, she point-blank refuses to never see Winston
again for the sake of the cause. For her, the relationship with Winston
trumps the political martyrdom of the Brotherhood.
Winston thinks Julia is naive in not acknowledging the power that erotic
relations can have in a society and admonishes her half-hearted rebellion by
saying, much to Julia’s amusement, that she is merely “a revolutionary from
the waist down.” Julia, on the other hand, thinks organized revolution
against the party is an impossible dream, indeed, that it is “stupid.” Who is
right?

We “Other Oceanians”
In The History of Sexuality French philosopher and historian Michel
Foucault examined the relation between sexuality and power. He presented
and rejected the repressive hypothesis, the widespread belief that sexuality
was socially repressed from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth
century, which he calls the Victorian Era, before the partial sexual liberation
began in the 1960s.
According to this hypothesis, the rise of the middle class and the
emergence of the capitalist industrial society resulted in the social
organization that centered on the family unit. The couple became the model
of sexuality, the privacy of the parents’ bedroom became its “utilitarian and
fertile” locus (History of Sexuality, p. 3). By sexuality becoming a private
matter it also became something secret and not talked about. All of this
suited the emerging economical order because by repressing sexuality it
diminished the waste of labor energy.
However, the repression hypothesis, Foucault argues, is simplistic and
inaccurate. It is simplistic because it sees the relation between power and
sexuality merely as prohibition. In doing so it sees the relation in strictly
negative terms and fails to acknowledge the many different active ways that
sexuality is used to gain control and power. As Foucault puts it in Politics,
Philosophy, Culture “the interdiction, the refusal, the prohibition, far from
being essential forms of power, are only its limits, power in its frustrated or
extreme forms. The relations of power are, above all, productive” (p. 118).
For example, Foucault argues, while religious confession became less
sexually direct in the Victorian Era, at the same time it demanded that the
confessors gave progressively more (albeit veiled) detailed accounts about
sexual sins. Similarly, children’s sexuality came to be seen as abnormal and
as a consequence it became heavily regulated, but at the same time it
became something that was copiously examined, studied, and taught.
The idea is that while greater efforts were made during the Victorian era
to control sexuality and that sex then became something to be ashamed of,
it is not accurate to see this merely in terms of repression and silencing.
Rather, the process leads to a new way of speaking, thinking and acting in
relation to sex, and doing so profusely. It has become more complex and
scientific, more an object of knowledge than a source of pleasure. This
means that those who control this knowledge, such as social scientists,
educationalists, and those involved in certain forms of government policy,
become more important and powerful.
As the repressive hypothesis is wrong, according to Foucault, an
important question to consider is why modern western society was so ready
to believe in the repressive hypothesis. His answer is that by portraying the
Victorian era as sexually repressed, it allowed us “Other Victorians” to

speak out against the powers that be, to utter truths and promise bliss, to link together
enlightenment, liberation, and manifold pleasures; to pronounce a discourse that combines the
fervor of knowledge, the determination to change the laws, and the longing for the garden of
earthly delights. (History of Sexuality, p. 7)

Does this sound familiar? Winston believes in a version of the repressive

hypothesis—his model of how sexuality is understood in Oceania is simply
that the Party represses sexuality, and if it is let free it will destroy the
current order. For this reasons he thinks that sex, because it can affect
society, must do so in a revolutionary way.
Is Winston right? We say that the answer is no.
 Winston’s belief about repression does not map on to the facts of the
situation, but is more likely based on the desire to see himself, this “Other
Oceanian,” as utterly different from his fellow citizens, and to allow himself
to imagine a straightforward solution to the nightmare of existence in 1984.
You might not be convinced that we can find the relevant similarities
between Western culture in Victorian times and the Ingsoc regime. After all,
bourgeois culture at, say, the turn of the twentieth century, was rather
pastoral compared to the totalitarian nightmare of 1984. It might therefore
be instructive to consider the political use of sexuality in a society more like
that of the Orwellian nightmare.
Orwell took his dystopian inspiration from a number of sources such as
his experience of British colonialism in Asia and the British Labour party
after World War II. But a central inspiration was always the Soviet Union.
The political Left in Britain was in Orwell’s view accepting and forgiving
of the vast transgressions in Soviet Russia because the Communists were
mistakenly seen as political allies. For this reason, shining a light on the
atrocities perpetuated by Communism was urgent. It is the central theme of
Animal Farm and also permeates 1984.

Springtime of the Soviet Libido

In 1917, Lenin promulgated the Decree about the Dissolution of Marriage.
Man and woman were now allowed to form or dissolve a family without
registering themselves with the authorities as married. It was sufficient for
one of the partners to request the end of the relationship, and no party had
obligations towards the other after separation. Other measures led to the
decriminalization of group sex and public exhibitionism.
This was an unprecedented thawing of restrictions related to sexuality. It
was in Soviet Russia that the term “sexual revolution” was coined in a
brochure promoting the policy of non-interference into sexual matters
written by Dr. Grigorii Batkis. He was the director of the Moscow Institute
for Sexual Hygiene and also led the Soviet delegation to the World League
for Sexual Freedom conference in Berlin in 1923, where the initiatives
presented were seen at the forefront of a liberalized sexuality.
 But the socialist sexual revolution, praised in many quarters in the
Western world as liberal and enlightened, was Janus-faced. Under the call
for free sexual practices lay acts of subjugation. At the heart of the Stalinist
sensual revolution’s motto of sexual happiness for all, there is a political
strategy of ensuring the continual power of the state.
US newspapers of the time, as well as a Senate Committee testimony of
an American traveller in Soviet Russia, drew attention to sexual practices
which resembled more a ‘collectivization of women’ than liberalization. In
writing 1984, Orwell took as a model the 1921 novel We by Russian writer
Yevgeny Zamyatin, even writing a review of it in 1946, two years before
the publication of 1984.
In the dystopian society of We people are referred to as numbers and the
ruler promulgated a sexual law that states that “each cipher has the right to
any other cipher as sexual product.” This, as Orwell notes in his review, is
done by registering your preference at a special office where you receive a
pink voucher showing your partner’s number.
In his travel journal across Soviet Russia in 1916–18, Constantin
Constante takes note of a conversation he had with a firm believer in the
erotic liberation promised by the sensual revolution. Asking him how he
sees the application of this ideal, the revolutionary proceeds by explaining
that

a commissariat of public love will be created, such that every citizen will be entitled to a love
making voucher per day. Upon presentation of this voucher, the socialist woman will be obliged
to put her body at his disposal, without opposition or expecting financial benefits. The children
born from these second-long marriages will become property of the Soviet State, who will raise
them and take care of them. These children, bearing no affection for their families, will be the
most ardent and honest supporters of the Soviet family which is represented by the Soviet state.
(p. 64)

While a wide range of sexual activity was permissible, new obligations

were also being put in place, and sexual activity was controlled and
sanctioned by the state. The Soviet Sexual Revolution, as Orwell knew, was
not a liberation but a subjugation; sex was a means of state power.
However, this exercise of power was rather creative and productive,
certainly not reducible to probation and repression.
 Big Brother Is Father to All the Children
Other Communist regimes were less creative and more draconian—perhaps
the repressive hypothesis can find its confirmation here? During the rule of
Nicolae Ceausescu in 1965–1989, Romania was under a dictatorship that
showed many similarities with Orwell’s dystopia. Extreme surveillance,
food rations, censorship, and propaganda transformed communist Romania
into an Orwellian state—one in which Orwell’s 1984 was banned!
As a measure to boost natality, the dictator Ceausescu issued in 1966 the
770 Decree, and with it an entire generation came into being—a generation
subsumed under the derisory name of “The Decree Generation—Decreteii.”
The sexuality of the Romanian woman of that period was depicted as being
put to the service of building socialism. Abortion was banned and
contraceptive methods were kept off the market, making women relate
differently to their bodies, by directing them to the very specific function of
making children. Ceausescu’s political body clock was ticking. Every
woman was expected to conceive four or five children, and all Romanian
women together were “the Mothers of the Nation.”
Children born in the years of 1972 up to late 1980s were used to hearing
as early as kindergarten or in the overpopulated orphanages spread across
the country that Ceausescu was their father. “In many cases, this is in a
macabre sense true” concludes Herta Muller in her powerful essay Death or
Prison or Children written in 1998 for the German journal Taz. What better
way for the state of Big Brother to strengthen its hold than to take on the
father figure? Muller goes on to ask what could drive such an insane policy
in regards to sexuality, which can only lead to a rapid growth in population,
already subsisting on inadequate resources. She answers: “The knowledge
that precarious standards of living are a precondition for creating a large
population of ‘subjects’—as opposed to a small population of citizens.”
The state put in place a framework of policy and support structures that
encouraged procreation and child-raising by creating crèches and child-care
facilities. It also punished those who were unmarried after the age of
twenty-five, or were married but did not have a child in their first two years
of marriage, with ten percent salary cuts. Gail Kligman, in her book The
Politics of Duplicity, notes that the concept of “family planning” acquired
an ironic connotation, given that the state did the planning with the aim of
“achieving the right number of children suited to the family and to society”
(p. 10). Ceausescu and the Communist Party “appealed to the entire
population, to urban and village workers, to understand that to ensure
normal demographic growth is a great honor and patriotic obligation for
every family and for all of our people” (p.9). In the case of Socialist
Romania, the family lost the capacity for self-determination in order to
serve as an object of government.
This in turn diminished considerably the parents’ private influence over
their own children. The aim was to recreate the family structure ultimately
making Ceausescu every child’s father and therefore, surely, every mother’s
husband. While this exercise of power over human sexuality was draconian,
its primary function was not the suppression of sexuality but a redirection
for sexuality to be funnelled into service of a state gone insane. Again, as
with the Soviet case, it was not simply a case of repression, but largely an
active and productive change in state institutions, law, and propaganda.
Foucault’s position holds up again—power does not fear sex, it uses it for
its own ends.

The Third Wheel

Before considering the repressive hypothesis in Oceania, it’s worth asking
what George Orwell meant to convey in 1984 regarding the subversive
nature of sexuality. It might be thought that we are overthinking things.
After all, isn’t Winston Orwell’s mouthpiece? Therefore, as Winston
believes in the repressive hypothesis, so does Orwell, and therefore the
‘meaning of the book’ is to convey that hypothesis.
But identifying Orwell with Winston is a mistake. Orwell likes to cast
his main character as a naive but principled male in his late thirties, where
the hero’s delusions are part of the unfolding tragedy. In Orwell’s first
novel, Burmese Days, the main character John Flory is a British teak
merchant in colonial Myanmar. He attempts to escape his lonely and guilt-
ridden existence by falling in love with Elizabeth Lackersteen, the only
young European woman in town. He projects onto her an egalitarian
understanding of the world, which in reality she does not hold in the
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unsettled and uncomfortable. The ship would not keep still. New
complications of ropes and hauling-gear were developed. The capstan in the
waist was manned, and round and round went the sailors, while the deck
they trod was inclined in all manner of uncomfortable angles. Tackle and
great blocks were hooked to ringbolts, and a vast amount of what seemed to
me fruitless hauling went on. Barrels of water swashed over the bulwarks,
knocking us down and drenching us. Wet and shivering we clung to
belaying pins or anything within reach, of no earthly use to anybody,
thinking of the cheerfully lit, well-warmed rooms and comfortable tea-
tables even then set but so few miles away on the shores of Long Island.
When the order came to reef, and I saw the men clambering up the fore and
main rigging, I added myself to their number, though I felt I should never
come down again—at least in one piece. It was my debut aloft off
soundings. Many a time had I clambered about the rigging of the old
whalers as they lay at the village wharf, but they were not roaring, kicking,
and plunging like this vessel. Heavy seamen’s boots kicked me in the face
as I followed their wearers up this awful ascent; other heavy boots trod on
my fingers; they shook the ratlines, too, in a most uncomfortable manner.
The mast strained and groaned fearfully. Somehow, after climbing over
some awful chasms, I got on the yard with the men. I dared not go out far.
The foot rope wobbled, jerked, and gave way under me at times with the
weight and notion of the men upon it. The great sail seemed in no humor to
be furled. It hauled away from us, bellied, puffed, and kept up a gigantic
series of thundering flaps. Laying over on the yard the men would gather in
as much of the hard, wet, wire-like canvas as possible and then together
haul back on it.
This I objected to. It was risky enough to lay out on an enormous stick
sixty feet in the air, while the wind tore our voices from us and seemed to
hurl the words far away ere they had well got out of our mouths, and the
white-topped waves, dimly seen below, seemed leaping up and snatching at
us. But at that height, and amid all that motion, to balance one’s body on the
stomach, grasp with outstretched arms a hard roll of struggling, wet canvas,
while the legs were as far extended the other way and the feet resting only
against a rope working and wobbling and giving way here and there from
the weight of fifteen hundred pounds of men unequally distributed over it,
was a task and seeming risk too great for my courage. I dared do nothing
but hold on. The conduct of the maintopsail was desperate and outrageous.
It seemed straining every nerve—supposing, for the sake of forcible
expression, that it had nerves—to pull us off the yard and “into the great
deep.” I found myself between two old sailors, who lost no time in
convincing me of my complete and utter worthlessness aloft. I concurred.
They bade me clear out and get down on deck. I was glad to do so. Reefing
topsails in reality was very different from reefing them in books or in
imagination. On reaching the deck I concluded to lie down. All through the
evening I had experienced an uneasy sensation in the stomach. I argued
with myself it was not seasickness—something did not agree with me. But
when I lay down in the scuppers I admitted being seasick. Then I only cared
to lie there. Life was too miserable even to hope in. The tumult went on as
ever. The sailors trampled over me. Being in the way, they dragged me
aside. I cared not. Finally some one bawled in my ear, “Sick! go below.” I
went. The five other boys, all similarly affected, all caring naught for life or
living, lay in their bunks.
The boys’ house was about the size of a respectable pig pen—a single
pig pen. There was room in it for two boys to turn at once, providing they
turned slowly and carefully. On going on board we had bestowed such of
our outfit as could be brought into this pen in the manner in which boys of
sixteen bestow things generally on first commencing to “keep house.”
Everything was arranged on a terra firma basis. We made no calculation for
the ship’s deviating from an even keel. When she did commence to pitch
everything fell down. Clothing fell on the floor; plates, knives, forks, cups
and bottles rolled from shelf and bunk; bread, meat, and the molasses kegs
fell; plum and sponge cake, pie and sweetmeats fell; for each boy had a
space in his sea-chest filled with these articles, placed there by kind, dear
relatives at home. It was intended that we should not refer to them until the
ship was far advanced on her voyage. But we never had such large supplies
of cake and sweetmeats at hand before; so we went for these things
immediately. The house abounded with them the first night out. The roof
leaked. We left our sliding-door carelessly open, and a few barrels of the
ocean slopped over the bulwarks into the apartment. At midnight our
combined clothing, plates, mugs, knives, forks, bottles, water-kegs, combs,
hair-brushes, hats, pants, coats, meat, bread, pie, cake, sweetmeats,
molasses, salt water, and an occasional seasick and despairing boy, united to
form a wet, sodden mass on the floor two feet in depth. Above the storm
howled and swept through the rigging, with little sail to interrupt it. Six sick
and wretched boys in their berths lay “heads and pints,” as they pack
herring; that is, the toe of one rested on the pillow of the other, for it was
not possible to lie otherwise in those narrow receptacles for the living. But
the horrors of that second night are not to be related.
No solicitous stewards with basins and tenders of broth and champagne
attended us. We were not cabin passengers on an ocean steamer. Barely had
the next morning’s dawn appeared when our door was flung open. In it
stood that dreadful second mate of the greenish eyes, hard, brick-red
complexion, horny fists and raspy voice—a hard, rough, rude, unfeeling
man, who cried: “Come out of that! Oh, you’re young bears—your troubles
ain’t commenced yet!” Then his long, bony arm gripped us one after the
other and tore us from our bunks. How unlike getting up at home on a cold
winter’s morning, as, snuggling in our warm feather beds, we heard our
mothers call time after time at the foot of the stairs: “Come now, get up!
Breakfast is ready!” And with the delay prone to over-indulged youth, we
still lay abed until the aroma of buckwheat cakes and coffee stealing to our
bedrooms developed an appetite and induced us to rise. Out, this dreadful
morning, we tumbled, in the wet clothes wherein we had lain all night,
weak, sick, staggering, giddy. A long iron hook was put in my hand and I
was desired to go forward and assist in hauling along length after length of
the cable preparatory to stowing it away. Sky and sea were all of dull,
monotonous gray; the ship was still clambering one great wave after an
another with tiresome and laborious monotony. All the canvas of the
preceding day had disappeared, save a much-diminished foretop-sail and
storm staysail. The mates on duty were alert and swearing. The men, not all
fully recovered from their last shore debauch, were grumbling and swearing
also. The cook, a dark-hued tropical mongrel, with glittering eyes, was
swearing at something amiss in his department. It was a miserable time. But
a cure was quickly effected. In thirty-six hours all seasickness had departed.
With the delicate petting process in vogue with wealthy cabin-passengers it
would have required a week. But we had no time in which to be seasick.
Life for us on board this ship was commenced on a new basis. We were
obliged to learn “manners.” Manners among modern youth have become
almost obsolete. The etiquette and formality required from the younger to
the elder, and common to the time of perukes and knee-breeches, has now
little place save on shipboard, where such traditions and customs linger. We
were surprised to find it our duty to say “Sir” to an officer, and also to find
it imperative to recognize every order addressed us by the remark; “Aye,
aye, sir!” The sullen, shambling fashion of receiving words addressed us in
silence, so that the speaker was left in doubt as to whether he was heard or
not, had no place off soundings. In short, we were obliged to practice what
is not common now to many boys on shore—that is, an outward show of
respect for superiors. If business called us to the “West End” of a ship, the
quarter-deck, our place was to walk on the lee side of that deck and leave
the weather side the moment the duty was done. If sent for any article by an
officer, it was our business to find it without further recourse to him.
Petted boys have little patience for hunting for things. At home two
minutes is about the limit of time spent in looking for a mislaid poker, and
then “Ma!” “Pa!” or “Aunt!” is called on to turn to and do this disagreeable
work. The second mate once ordered me to find a certain iron hook,
wherewith to draw the pump boxes, and when, after a short search, I
returned and asked him where it might be I was horrified by the expression
of astonished indignation spreading over his face as he yelled: “Great Scott,
he expects me to help him find it!” I saw the point and all it involved, and
never so wounded an officer’s dignity again. It is a sailor’s, and especially a
boy’s business on shipboard, to find whatever he is ordered to. It must be
produced—no matter whether it’s in the ship or not. At all events that’s the
sentiment regarding the matter. But it is good discipline for boys over-
nursed at home and only physically weaned. The “cold, cold world” would
not, in some cases, be so cold to the newly-fledged youth first trying his
feeble wings outside the family nest, did parents judiciously establish a
little of this maritime usage at home.
We soon learned on the Wizard how well we had lived at home. Our sea
fare of hard tack and salt junk taught us how to appreciate at their true value
the broiled streaks, hot cakes, and buttered toast of home tables. The quart
of very common molasses served out to us weekly soon became a luxury,
and when the steward occasionally brought us “Benavlins” (the nautical
term for the broken fragments from the cabin table), we regarded it as very
luxurious living, though a month previous we should have deemed such
food fit only for the swill-tub.
In about two weeks we had settled down into the routine of life at sea.
Sailors are apt to term theirs a “dog’s life.” I never did. It was a peculiar
life, and in some respects an unpleasant one—like many others on land. But
it was not a “dog’s life.” There was plenty to eat, and we relished our
“lobscouse,” hard tack, salt junk, beans, codfish, potatoes and Sunday’s and
Thursday’s duff. The hours for labor were not exhausting. It was “watch
and watch, four hours off and four hours on.” Many a New York retail
grocer’s clerk, who turns to at 5 in the morning and never leaves off until 11
at night, would revel on such regulation of time and labor. So would many a
sewing-girl. We had plenty of time for sleep. If called up at 4 every
alternate morning, and obliged to stand watch until 8 A.M., we could “turn
in” at that hour after breakfast and sleep till noon. Apart from the alternate
watches the work or “jobs” occupied about six hours per day. True, there
was at times some heavy work, but it was only occasional. Sailor-work is
not heavy as compared with the incessant fagging, wearing, never-ending
character of some occupations on shore. Skill, agility, and quickness are in
greater demand than mere brute strength.
Lobscouse is a preparation of hard bread, first soaked and then stewed
with shredded salt beef. It looks somewhat like rations for a delicate bear
when served out by the panful. But it is very good. Salt beef is wonderfully
improved by streaks of fat through it. These serve the foremast hands in
place of butter. I know of no better relish than good pilot bread and sliced
salt junk, with plenty of clean white fat. On shore that quart of boiling hot
liquid, sweetened with molasses and called tea, would have been pitched
into the gutter. At sea, after an afternoon’s work, it was good. With similar
content and resignation, not to say happiness, we drank in the morning the
hot quart of black fluid similarly sweetened and called coffee. It was not
real coffee. I don’t know what it was. I cared not to know. Of course we
grumbled at it. But we drank it. It was “filling,” and was far better than the
cold, brackish water, impregnated thickly with iron rust, a gallon of which
was served out daily. For the fresh water was kept below in an iron tank,
and, as the deck leaked, a small portion of the Atlantic had somehow gained
admission to it and slightly salted it. It resembled chocolate to the eye, but
not to the palate.
 CHAPTER IV.

MUCH WATER AND MUTINY.

On the fourth day out the Wizard was found to have four feet of water in
her hold. The ship was pumped dry in about four hours, when she
proceeded to fill up again. The Captain seemed a man of many minds for
the next two or three days. First the ship was put back for New York. This
course was altered and her bows pointed for Africa. Then the foremast
hands became worried, and going aft one morning in a body, asked Captain
S—— what he meant to do and where he meant to go, because they had
shipped for San Francisco and they did not intend going anywhere else. The
Captain answered, that his own safety and that of the vessel were as dear to
him as their lives were to them, and that he intended doing the best for the
general good. This answer was not very satisfactory to the crew, who went
grumbling back to their quarters. Ultimately it turned out that we were to
take the leak with us to San Francisco. At the rate the water was running in
it was judged that the bone, muscle, and sinews of the crew could manage
to keep it down. So we pumped all the way round Cape Horn. We pumped
during our respective watches every two hours. In good weather and on an
even keel it took half an hour to “suck the pumps.” If the vessel was heeled
to larboard or starboard, it took much longer. In very rough weather we
pumped all the time that could be spared from other duties. There were two
pumps at the foot of the mainmast worked by levers, and these were
furnished with “bell ropes” to pull on. Half the watch worked at each lever,
and these were located exactly where on stormy nights the wild waves were
in the habit of flinging over the bulwarks a hogshead or two of water to
drench us and wash us off our feet.
The Wizard was a very “wet ship.” She loved giving us moist surprises.
Sometimes on a fine day she would gracefully, but suddenly, poke her nose
under, and come up and out of the Atlantic or Pacific ocean with fifteen or
twenty tons of pea-green sea water foaming over the t’gallant forecastle,
cascading thence on the spar deck and washing everything movable slam
bang up and sometimes into the cabin. This took place once on a washday.
Sailors’ washday is often regulated by the supply of water caught from the
clouds. On this particular occasion the fore deck was full of old salts up to
their bared elbows in suds, vigorously discoursing washtub and washboard.
Then the flood came, and in a moment the deck was filled with a great
surge bearing on its crest all these old salts struggling among their tubs,
their washboards, their soap and partly-washed garments. The cabin
bulkhead partly stopped some, but the door being open others were borne
partly inside, and their woollen shirts were afterward found stranded on the
carpeted cabin floor. One “duff day” we had gathered about our extra repast
in the boys’ house. The duff and New Orleans molasses had just
commenced to disappear. Then a shining, greenish, translucent cataract
filled the doorway from top to bottom. It struck boys, beef, bread, duff, and
dishes. It scattered them. It tumbled them in various heaps. It was a brief
season of terror, spitting, and sputtering salt water, and a scrambling for life,
as we thought. It washed under bunks and in remote corners duff, bread,
beef, plates, knives, forks, cups, spoons and molasses-bottles. The dinner
was lost. Going on deck we found a couple of feet of water swashing from
bulwark to bulwark with every roll, bearing with it heavy blocks and
everything movable which had been loosened by the shock, to the great risk
of legs and bodies. But these were trifles. At least we call them trifles when
they are over. I have noticed, however, that a man may swear as hard at a
jammed finger as a broken leg, and the most efficacious means in the world
to quickly develop a furious temper is to lose one’s dinner when hungry, get
wet through, then abused by a Dutch mate for not stirring around quicker,
and finally work all the afternoon setting things to rights on an empty
stomach, robbed and disappointed of its duff. This is no trifle.
Learning the ropes isn’t all a boy’s first lessons at sea. He must learn
also to wash and mend his own clothes. At least he must try to learn and go
through the forms. I never could wash a flannel shirt, and how the
extraneous matter called dirt, which the washing process is intended to
disperse, is gotten rid of by soap and muscle at an equal average over the
entire surface of the garment is for me to-day one of earth’s mysteries. I
could wash a shirt in spots. When I tried to convince myself that I had
finished it I could still see where I had washed clean and where I had not.
There is a certain system in the proper manipulation of a garment in a
washtub which to me is incomprehensible. An old sailor is usually a good
washer. It’s part of his trade. Those on the Wizard would reprove the boys
for their slipshod work. “Such a slovenly washed shirt as that,” said Conner,
an old man-of-war’s man, “hung in the rigging is a disgrace to the ship.” He
alluded to one of mine. The failure was not from any lack of labor put on it.
The trouble lay in that I didn’t know where to put the labor on. It was easier
to tie a shirt to a line, fling it overboard and let it tow. This will wash
clothes—wash all the warp out of them in time. The practice was at last
forbidden the boys on the Wizard. It’s a lazy boy’s wash. The adage “It’s
never too late to mend” is not applicable on shipboard. It should there read
“It’s never too early to mend.” Of course a boy of sixteen, whose mother
has always stitched for him, will allow his clothes to go until they fall off
his body before using his needle. As I did. And I sewed myself up only to
rip asunder immediately. I went about decks a thing of flaps, rips, rags, and
abortive patches, until they called me the ship’s scarecrow. And so would
many another spruce young man under similar discipline. It’s good once in
one’s life to be brought thus low.
It was particularly disagreeable at midnight as we assembled at the bell
ropes to give her the last “shake-up,” and more asleep than awake pulled
wearily with monotonous clank. Sometimes at that hour, when our labors
were half through, the valves would get out of order. It was then necessary
to call the carpenter and have them repaired. This would keep us on deck
half an hour or more, for by mutual compact each watch was obliged to
“suck its own pumps.” Such delays made the men very angry. They stopped
singing at their work—always a bad sign—and became silent, morose, and
sullen. For the first six weeks all the “shanti songs” known on the sea had
been sung. Regularly at each pumping exercise we had “Santy Anna,”
“Bully in the Alley,” “Miranda Lee,” “Storm Along, John,” and other
operatic maritime gems, some of which might have a place in our modern
operas of The Pinafore school. There’s a good deal of rough melody when
these airs are rolled out by twenty or thirty strong lungs to the
accompaniment of a windlass’ clank and the wild, shrill sweep of the winds
in the rigging above. But the men would no longer sing. The fact was
reported to the Captain. He put on his spectacles, walked out on the quarter-
deck and gazed at them mournfully and reprovingly. The mates tried to
incite them to renewed melody. But the shipping articles did not compel
them to sing unless they felt like it. The pumps clanked gloomily without
any enlivening chorus. The Captain went sadly back to his cabin and
renewed his novel.
 One night the pumps broke down five minutes before 12 o’clock. Our
watch was at work on them. The carpenter was called as usual, and after the
usual bungling and fishing in the well for the broken valves, they were put
in order again. It was then nearly 1 A.M. Meanwhile all the able seamen in
our watch had at eight bells walked below. The watch newly come on deck
refused to pump the ship clear, alleging it was the business of the others.
The watch below were bidden to come on deck and perform their neglected
duty. They refused. This was mutiny. The four mates got their pistols,
entered the forecastle and stormed, ordered, and threatened. It was of no
avail. The fifteen able seamen who refused constituted the main strength
and effectiveness of that watch. They were threatened with being put in
irons. They preferred irons to pumping out of their turn. They were put in
irons, fifteen stout men, by the four mates, who then returned and reported
proceedings to the Captain. The men remained shackled until the next
morning. It was then discovered that it was impossible to work the ship
without their aid. Of course they couldn’t handle the vessel in irons. In
reality double the number of able men were needed in both watches. The
Wizard rated over 3,000 tons, and many a frigate of her size would have
been deemed poorly off with less than one hundred men for handling the
ship alone. We rarely secured the lower sails properly in heavy weather,
from the mere lack of physical strength to handle them. So Captain S——
pored sadly at his breakfast through his gold-bowed spectacles, and when
the meal was over issued orders for the release of the fifteen men in irons.
In this little affair the boys and ordinary seamen belonging to the mutinous
watch took no part. They were strictly neutral and waited to see which side
would win. I felt rather unpleasant and alarmed. Though not a full-fledged
mutiny and a conversion of a peaceful merchantman into a pirate, it did
look at one time as if the initiatory steps to such end were being taken.
One of the great aims of existence at sea is that of keeping the decks
clean. The scrubbing, swishing, and swashing is performed by each watch
on alternate mornings, and commences at daylight. It was the one ordeal
which I regarded with horror and contempt. You are called up at four in the
morning, when the sleep of a growing youth is soundest. The maniacal
wretch of the other watch, who does the calling, does it with the glee and
screech of a fiend. He will not stop his “All Ha-a-a-nds!” until he hears
some responsive echo from the sleepers. He is noisy and joyous because it
is so near the time he can turn in. And these four hours of sleep at sea are
such luxuries as may rarely be realized on shore. But the mate’s watch is
calling us, screeching, howling, thumping on the forecastle door, and
making himself extremely pleasant. The old sailors being called gradually
rise to sitting postures in their berths with yawns, oaths, and grumblings. If
the hideous caller is seen, a boot or other missile may be shied in that
direction. Otherwise the prejudice and disgust for his clamor on the part of
those called expresses itself in irritable sarcasms such as, “Oh, why don’t
you make a little more noise?” “Think yourself smart, don’t you?” “Say,
don’t you s’pose we can hear?” To-morrow morning at 12 or 4 these
personalities and conditions of mind will be reversed. The awakened
irritable grumbler will be the joyous caller, and the joyous caller of this
early morn will be searching about his bunk for some offensive implement
to hurl at the biped who thus performs the matutinal office of the early
village cock.
We are called and on deck, and stumbling about, maybe with one boot
half on, and more asleep than awake and more dead than alive. We are in
the warm, enervating latitude of the tropics, with every sinew relaxed from
the steaming heat. Perhaps there is a light wind aft. We are carrying
studding-sails. Studding-sails are beautiful to look at from a distance. But
when once you have sailed in a ship carrying them from the royals down
and know something of the labor of rigging them out all on one side, fore,
main, and mizzen-masts, and then, if the breeze alters a couple of points,
taking the starboard sails all down and rigging out the larboard, or perhaps
on both sides—and this on a Sunday afternoon, when there are no jobs and
you’ve been expecting plenty of leisure to eat your duff and molasses; or if
you have ever helped carry those heavy yards about the deck when the ship
was rolling violently in a heavy ground swell, and every time she brought
up, sails, blocks, and everything movable was bringing up also with a series
of pistol-like reports; or if you have ever laid out on a royal yard trying to
pass a heavy rope through the “jewel block,” at the extreme end thereof,
while the mast and yard were oscillating to and fro with you through the air
in a rapidly recurring series of gigantic arcs caused by the lazy swell, in the
trough of which your ship is rolling—and at the end of each roll you find
yourself holding on for dear life, lest at the termination of each oscillation
you be shot like an arrow into the sea from your insecure perch—why in all
these cases the beauty and picturesqueness of a ship under studding-sails
will be tempered by some sober realities.
 It is 5:30 or 6 o’clock. The morning light has come. The cry of “Turn
to!” is heard. That is, “turn to” to wash down decks, an operation which will
tax the already exhausted resources of an empty stomach until breakfast
time at 8 o’clock. The mates have their fragrant “cabin coffee” and biscuit
served them on the brass capstan aft; we can smell its aroma, but nothing
warm can get into our stomachs for over two long hours of work. The basic
idea in this regular washing down decks at sea seems to be that of keeping
men busy for the sake of keeping them busy. The top of every deck plank
must be scrubbed with a care and scrutiny befitting the labors of a diamond
polisher on his gems, while the under side may be dripping with foulness,
as it sometimes is. I had the post of honor in scrubbing the quarter-deck.
That was the drawing of water in a canvas bucket from the mizzen chains to
wash over that deck. The remaining five boys would push wearily about
with their brooms, hand-brushes, squabs, and squilgees, superintended by
our extraordinary fourth mate (always to me an object of interest, from the
fact of the secret carefully hoarded in my breast that I had pulled him into
the New York dock), who, with a microscopic eye inspected each crack and
seam after the boys’ labors, in search of atomic particles of dirt, and called
them back with all the dignity of command, and a small amount of
commanding personality behind it, whenever he deemed he had discovered
any. When this labor was finished I was generally so exhausted as to have
no appetite for breakfast. But a sailor’s stomach is not presumed to be at all
sensitive under any conditions. And above all a “boy”—a boy belonging to
a squad of boys who about once a day were encouraged and enthused to
exertion and maritime ambition by the assurance conveyed them by one of
the mates that they weren’t “worth their salt”—what business had a boy’s
stomach to put on airs at sea? Most landsmen if called up at 4 o’clock on a
muggy morning and worked like mules for a couple of hours on a digestive
vacuum, would probably at the breakfast hour feel more the need of food
than the appetite to partake of it.
Though I followed the sea nearly two years, I am no sailor. The net
result of my maritime experience is a capacity for tying a bow-line or a
square knot and a positive knowledge and conviction concerning which end
of the ship goes first. I also know enough not throw hot ashes to windward.
But on a yard I could never do much else but hold on. The foolhardy
men about me would lie out flat on their stomachs amid the darkness and
storm, and expose themselves to the risk of pitching headlong into the sea
in the most reckless manner while trying to “spill the wind” out of a
t’gallant sail. But I never emulated them. I never lived up to the maritime
maxim of “one hand for yourself and the other for the owners.” I kept both
hands for myself, and that kept me from going overboard. What would the
owners have cared had I gone overboard? Nothing. Such an occurrence
twenty-five odd years ago would, weeks afterward, have been reported in
the marine news this way: “Common sailor, very common sailor, fell from
t’gallant yard off Cape Horn and lost.” The owner would have secretly
rejoiced, as he bought his Christmas toys for his children, that the t’gallant
yard had not gone with the sailor. No; on a yard in a storm I believed and
lived up to the maxim: “Hold fast to that which is good.” The yard was
good. Yet I was ambitious when a boy before the mast on the clipper which
brought me to California. I was quick to get into the rigging when there was
anything to do aloft. But once in the rigging I was of little utility.
The first time I went up at night to loose one of the royals, I thought I
should never stop climbing. The deck soon vanished in the darkness of a
very black tropical night, the mastheads were likewise lost in a Cimmerian
obscurity—whatever that is. At last I found the yard. I wasn’t quite sure
whether it was the right one or not. I didn’t know exactly what to do. I knew
I had to untie something somewhere. But where? Meantime the savage
Scotch second mate was bellowing, as it then seemed, a mile below me. I
knew the bellow was for me. I had to do something and I commenced
doing. I did know, or rather guessed, enough to cast off the lee and weather
gaskets, or lines which bind the sail when furled to the yard, and then I
made them up into a most slovenly knot. But the bunt-gasket (the line
binding the middle and most bulky portion of the sail), bothered me. I
couldn’t untie it. I picked away at it desperately, tore my nails and skinning
my knuckles. The bellowing from below continued as fiercely as ever,
which, though not intelligible as to words, was certainly exhorting me, and
me only, to vigilance. Then the watch got tired waiting for me. Thinking the
sail loosed, they began hoisting. They hoisted the yard to its proper place
and me with it. I clung on and went up higher. That, by the way, always
comes of holding fast to that which is good. Then a man’s head came
bobbing up out of the darkness. It was that of a good-natured Nantucket
boy, whose name of course was Coffin. He asked me the trouble. I went
into a lengthy explanation about the unmanageable knot. “Oh—the knot!”
said he. “Cut it!” and he cut it. I would never have cut it. In my then and
even present nautical ignorance I should have expected the mast or yard to
have fallen from cutting anything aloft. Only a few days previous I had seen
the Captain on the quarter-deck jumping up and down in his tracks with
rage because a common seamen had, by mistake, cut a mizzen brace, and
the second mate, as usual, had jumped up and down on the seaman when he
reached the deck. I feared to set a similar jumping process in operation.
Coming on deck after my lengthy and blundering sojourn loosing a royal, I
expected to be mauled to a pulp for my stupidity. But both watch and
bellowing mate had gone below and I heard no more of it.
 CHAPTER V.

SAN FRANCISCO IN 1856.

The Wizard sailed through a great bank of fog one August morning and
all at once the headlands of the Golden Gate came in sight. It was the first
land we had seen for four months. We sailed into the harbor, anchored, and
the San Francisco of 1856 lay before us.
The ship was tied up to the wharf. All but the officers and “boys” left
her. She seemed deserted, almost dead. We missed the ocean life of the set
sails, the ship bowing to the waves and all the stir of the elements in the
open ocean.
The captain called me one day into the cabin, paid me my scanty wages
and told me he did not think I “was cut out for a sailor,” I was not handy
enough about decks.
Considering that for two months I had been crippled by a felon on the
middle finger of my right hand, which on healing had left that finger curved
inward, with no power to straighten it, I thought the charge of awkwardness
somewhat unjust.
However, I accepted the Captain’s opinion regarding my maritime
capacities, as well as the hint that I was a superfluity on board.
I left the Wizard—left her for sixteen years of varied life in California.
I had no plans, nor aims, nor purpose, save to exist from day to day and
take what the day might give me.
Let me say here never accept any person’s opinion of your qualifications
or capacities for any calling. If you feel that you are “cut out” for any
calling or that you desire to follow it, abide by that feeling, and trust to it. It
will carry you through in time.
I believe that thousands on thousands of lives have been blasted and
crippled through the discouragement thrown on them by relation, friend,
parent, or employer’s saying continually (or if not saying it verbally,
thinking it) “You are a dunce. You are stupid. You can’t do this or that. It’s
ridiculous for you to think of becoming this or that.”
 The boy or girl goes off with this thought thrown on them by others. It
remains with them, becomes a part of them and chokes off aspiration and
effort.
Years afterward, I determined to find out for myself whether I was “cut
out for a sailor” or not. As a result I made myself master of a small craft in
all winds and weathers and proved to myself that if occasion required, I
could manage a bigger one.
San Francisco seemed to me then mostly fog in the morning, dust and
wind in the afternoon, and Vigilance Committee the remainder of the time.
San Francisco was then in the throes of the great “Vigilanteeism” of
1856. Companies of armed men were drilling in the streets at night. In the
city’s commercial centre stood “Fort Gunnybags”—the strong hold of the
Vigilantes—made, as its name implied, of sand-filled gunny sacks.
Carronades protruded from its port holes, sentinels paced the ramparts.
There was constant surging of men in and out of the building behind the
fort,—the headquarters and barracks of the Vigilantes. From its windows a
few days before our arrival they had hung Casey for the killing of James
King—one of the editors of the Bulletin. I saw two others hung there on the
sixth of August. Vigilanteeism was then the business and talk of the town.
The jail had just been captured from the “Law and Order” men, who were
not “orderly” at all, but who had captured the city’s entire governmental and
legal machinery and ran it to suit their own purposes.
The local Munchausens of that era were busy; one day the U. S. ship of
war, St. Mary’s, was to open fire on Fort Gunnybags; the next, Governor
Johnson, backed by twenty thousand stalwart men, was to fall upon the city
and crush out the insurrection.
The up-country counties were arming or thought of arming to put down
this “rebellion.” The “Rebellion” was conducted by the respectability and
solidity of San Francisco, which had for a few years been so busily engaged
in money making as to allow their city government to drift into rather
irresponsible hands; many of the streets were unbridged, many not lighted
at night. Cause—lack of money to bridge and light. The money in the hands
of the city officials had gone more for private pleasure than public good.
I speak of the streets being unbridged because at that time a large portion
of the streets were virtually bridges. One-fourth of the city at least, was
built over the water. You could row a boat far under the town, and for miles
in some directions. This amphibious part of the city “bilged” like a ship’s
hold, and white paint put on one day would be lead colored the next, from
the action on it of the gases let loose from the ooze at low tide.
There were frequent holes in these bridges into which men frequently
tumbled, and occasionally a team and wagon. They were large enough for
either, and their only use was to show what the city officials had not done
with the city’s money.
Then Commercial street between Leidesdorff and Battery was full of
Cheap John auction stores, with all their clamor and attendant crowds at
night. Then the old Railroad Restaurant was in its prime, and the St.
Nicholas, on Sansome, was the crack hotel. Then, one saw sand-hills at the
further end of Montgomery street. To go to Long Bridge was a weary, body-
exhausting tramp. The Mission was reached by omnibus. Rows of old hulks
were moored off Market street wharf, maritime relics of “ ’49.” That was
“Rotten Row.” One by one they fell victims to Hare. Hare purchased them,
set Chinamen to picking their bones, broke them up, put the shattered
timbers in one pile, the iron bolts in another, the copper in another, the
cordage in another, and so in a short all time that remained of these bluff-
bowed, old-fashioned ships and brigs, that had so often doubled the stormy
corner of Cape Horn or smoked their try-pots in the Arctic ocean was so
many ghastly heaps of marine débris.
I had seen the Niantic, now entombed just below Clay street, leave my
native seaport, bound for the South Pacific to cruise for whale, years ere the
bars and gulches of California were turned up by pick and shovel. The
Cadmus, the vessel which brought Lafayette over in 1824, was another of
our “blubber hunters,” and afterward made her last voyage with the rest to
San Francisco.
Manners and customs still retained much of the old “ ’49” flavor.
Women were still scarce. Every river boat brought a shoal of miners in gray
shirts from “up country.” “Steamer Day,” twice a month, was an event. A
great crowd assembled on the wharf to witness the departure of those
“going East” and a lively orange bombardment from wharf to boat and vice
versa was an inevitable feature of these occasions.
The Plaza was a bare, barren, unfenced spot. They fired salutes there on
Independence Day, and occasionally Chief Burke exhibited on its area
gangs of sneak thieves, tied two and two by their wrists to a rope—like a
string of onions.
There was a long low garret in my Commercial street lodgings. It was
filled with dust-covered sea-chests, trunks, valises, boxes, packages, and
bundles, many of which had been there unclaimed for years and whose
owners were quite forgotten. They were the belongings of lost and strayed
Long Islanders, ex-whaling captains, mates and others. For the “Market”
was the chief rendezvous. Every Long Islander coming from the “States”
made first for the “Market.” Storage then was very expensive. It would
soon “eat a trunk’s head off.” So on the score of old acquaintance all this
baggage accumulated in the Market loft and the owners wandered off to the
mines, to Oregon, to Arizona, to Nevada—to all parts of the great territory
lying east, north and south, both in and out of California, and many never
came back and some were never heard of more. This baggage had been
accumulating for years.
I used occasionally to go and wander about that garret alone. It was like
groping around your family vault. The shades of the forgotten dead came
there in the evening twilight and sat each one on his chest, his trunk, his
valise, his roll of blankets. In those dusty packages were some of the closest
ties, binding them to earth, Bibles, mother’s gifts, tiny baby shoes, bits of
blue ribbon, which years by-gone fluttered in the tresses of some Long
Island girl.
It was a sad, yet not a gloomy place. I could feel that the presence of
one, whose soul in sad memory met theirs, one who then and there recalled
familiar scenes, events and faces, one who again in memory lived over their
busy preparations for departure, their last adieux and their bright
anticipations of fortune, I could feel that even my presence in that lone,
seldom-visited garret, was for them a solace, a comfort. Imagination? Yes,
if you will. Even imagination, dreamy, unprofitable imagination, may be a
tangible and valuable something to those who dwell in a world of thought.
One night—or, rather, one morning—I came home very late—or, rather,
very early. The doors of the Long Island House were locked. I wanted rest.
One of the window-panes in front, and a large window-pane at that, was
broken out. All the belated Long Islanders stopping at the place, when
locked out at night, used to crawl through that window-pane. So, I crawled
through it. Now, the sentinel on the ramparts of Fort Gunnybags, having
nothing better to do, had been watching me, and putting me up as a
suspicious midnight loiterer. And so, as he looked, he saw me by degrees
lose my physical identity, and vanish into the front of that building; first,
head, then shoulders, then chest, then diaphragm, then legs, until naught but
a pair of boot-soles were for a moment upturned to his gaze, and they
vanished, and darkness reigned supreme. The sentinel deemed that the time
for action had come. I had just got into bed, congratulating myself on
having thus entered that house without disturbing the inmates, when there
came loud and peremptory rappings at the lower door. Luther and John, the
proprietors, put their heads out of the chamber windows. There was a squad
of armed Vigilantes on the sidewalk below; and, cried out one of them,
“There’s a man just entered your house!” Now I heard this, and said to
myself, “Thou art the man!” but it was so annoying to have to announce
myself as the cause of all this disturbance, that I concluded to wait and see
how things would turn out. John and Luther jumped from their beds, lit
each a candle and seized each a pistol; down-stairs they went and let the
Vigilantes in. All the Long Island captains, mates, coopers, cooks, and
stewards then resident in the house also turned out, lit each his candle,
seized each a pistol or a butcher-knife, of which there were plenty on the
meat-blocks below. John came rushing into my room where I lay,
pretending to be asleep. He shook me and exclaimed, “Get up! get up!
there’s a robber in the house secreted somewhere!” Then I arose, lit a
candle, seized a butcher-knife, and so all the Vigilantes with muskets, and
all the Long Island butchers, captains, mates, cooks, coopers, and stewards
went poking around, without any trousers on, and thrusting their candles
and knives and pistols into dark corners, and under beds and behind beef
barrels, after the robber. So did I; for the disturbance had now assumed such
immense proportions that I would not have revealed myself for a hundred
dollars. I never hunted for myself so long before, and I did wish they would
give up the search. I saw no use in it; and besides, the night air felt raw and
chill in our slim attire. They kept it up for two hours.
Fort Gunnybags was on Sacramento Street; I slept directly opposite
under the deserted baggage referred to. The block between us and the fort
was vacant. About every fourth night a report would be circulated through
that house that an attack on Fort Gunnybags would be made by the Law and
Order men. Now, the guns of Fort Gunnybags bore directly on us, and as
they were loaded with hard iron balls, and as these balls, notwithstanding
whatever human Law and Order impediments they might meet with while
crossing the vacant block in front, were ultimately certain to smash into our
house, as well as into whatever stray Long Island captains, mates, boat-
steerers, cooks, and coopers might be lying in their path, these reports
resulted in great uneasiness to us, and both watches used frequently to
remain up all night, playing seven-up and drinking rum and gum in Jo.
Holland’s saloon below.
I became tired at last of assisting in this hunt for myself. I gave myself
up. I said, “I am the man, I am the bogus burglar, I did it.” Then the crowd
put up their knives and pistols, blew out their candles, drew their tongues
and fired reproaches at me. I felt that I deserved them; I replied to none of
their taunts, conducted myself like a Christian, and went to bed weighted
down with their reproof and invective. The sentinel went back to his post
and possibly slept. So did I.
 CHAPTER VI.

AS A SEA COOK.

I drifted around San Francisco for several months and finally shipped
as cook and steward of the schooner Henry, bound from San Francisco for a
whaling, sealing, abalone curing, and general “pick up” voyage along the
Lower Californian coast. My acceptance as cook was based on the
production of an Irish stew which I cooked for the captain and mate while
the Henry was “hove down” on the beach at North point and undergoing the
process of cleaning her bottom of barnacles. I can’t recollect at this lapse of
time where I learned to cook an Irish stew. I will add that it was all I could
cook—positively all, and with this astounding capital of culinary ignorance
I ventured down upon the great deep to do the maritime housework for
twenty men.
When we were fairly afloat and the Farallones were out of sight my
fearful incapacity for the duties of the position became apparent. Besides, I
was dreadfully seasick, and so remained for two weeks. Yet I cooked. It was
purgatory, not only for myself but all hands. There was a general howl of
execration forward and aft at my bread, my lobscouse, my tea, my coffee,
my beef, my beans, my cake, my pies. Why the captain continued me in the
position, why they didn’t throw me overboard, why I was not beaten to a
jelly for my continued culinary failures, is for me to this day one of the
great mysteries of my existence. We were away nearly ten months. I was
three months learning my trade. The sufferings of the crew during those
three months were fearful. They had to eat my failures or starve. Several
times it was intimated to me by the under officers that I had better resign
and go “for’ard” as one of the crew. I would not. I persevered at the
expense of many a pound of good flour. I conquered and returned a second-
class sea cook.
The Henry was a small vessel—the deck was a clutter of whaling gear.
Where my galley or sea-kitchen should have been, stood the try-works for
boiling blubber. They shoved me around anywhere. Sometimes I was
moved to the starboard side, sometimes to the larboard, sometimes when