A NATION UNTO ITSELF: Race and Ethnicity in Shipboard Community : A Practical Application of Maritime History for the Secondary Classroom

by

Garrett T. Bowers

Primary Advisor: Charles Shively

Secondary Advisor: Julie Winch

Abstract:

Garrett T. Bowers has tracked down some remarkable material not generally familiar to non amritime students. And also not well known among students of race and ethnicity. Bowers combines with great intelligence material from conventinal maritime history and that of more recent studies of race. He follows some of this more perceptive and innovative trends in Afro-American history to move beyond (but not to forget) the issues of slavery and to look at how some sailors operated outside of the landlubber's social constraints.

Bowers's bibliography demonstrates how thoroughly he has utilized older and more recent works. His discussion of the Wreck of the Whale-ship ESSEX and the attendant amplification of that in Moby Dick are excellent. He also profited from many visits to and research at several historical maritime museums and archives.

This work mvoes a long way beyond Samuel Eliot Morrison's Maritime History of Massachusetts. Bower takes that rock as a jumping off point to go into deeper and more complex waters.