Ned Myers (Esprios Classics): or, A Life Before the Mast

James Fenimore Cooper's 1843 nautical biography, NED MYERS, at some level is a response to Richard Henry Dana, Jr's TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST (1840). Twenty years earlier in reacting against technical errors in Sir Walter Scott's THE PIRATE (1821), Scott had, in THE PILOT, invented the sea adventure romance. THE PILOT is a tale of John Paul Jones raiding in English waters. *** Cooper penned ten sea adventure tales. But Dana's TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST had tapped into a new, sober-sided sea genre: popular but realistic depiction of harsh, always perilous life of ordinary seamen aboard sailing vessels. In NED MYERS Fenimore Cooper also explored the new "sea realism." *** In 1806 - 1807 two youngsters, James Cooper and Ned Myers, aged 16 and 13 respectively, worked their way across the Atlantic to England and back to America as shipmates aboard the merchant sailing ship Stirling (spelled Sterling in the book). As the youngest crewmen, though of different social strata, they became friends and saw England together. They rarely encountered each other again until 1843 when disabled ex-seaman Myers wrote to Cooper. They spent five months together at Cooper's home in Otsego, New York and NED MYERS resulted, the old sailor's first person narrative as told by Fenimore Cooper. *** Myers sailed in or was imprisoned (during the War of 1812 on Lake Ontario) on around 100 ships and ended his sailing days when he was disabled and nearly 50 years old. The book tells his story, born in Quebec of German parents in 1793, but a runaway to Boston and New York as soon as he could get there. Literate but not well educated, Ned Myers rose several times to the rank of mate (third, second, even first) but was never able to master enough of the mathematics and literature of navigation to merit command. The biography tells of his many voyages to China, South America, the Mediterranean and Northern Europe, mainly as a merchant seaman "before the mast," i.e. quartered with the non-officers in the bow of a ship. But he also did several stints in the U. S. Navy, which he relished above all else. *** Ned is frank in dealing with his restlessness, dissipation in liquor and easy going through of his wages in giving parties. NED MYERS became a special literary source for the rediscovery on Lake Ontario of a US Navy ship that sank out from under Myers, the Scourge. If you care to follow up, you can start with NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC for March of 1983, Daniel A. Nelson, "Ghost Ships of the War of 1812," pp. 289 - 313. The biography is also striking for Cooper's new writing style: less labored and complex than in his romances, more in anticipation of Ernest Hemingway. -OOO-