Pirates & Privateers: Books for Adults~Biography: Navy Seamn & Merchant Sailors

Born to a former privateer who spent time on a prison hulk during the American Revolution, David Neal went to sea at the age of seventeen. The delay in his seafaring career stemmed from President Thomas Jefferson’s Embargo Act, which essentially shut down the maritime shipping industry. He served as clerk aboard the 250-ton Union, which sailed to Calcutta. After the War of 1812 broke out, he joined a privateer and eventually ended up serving time in Dartmoor Prison as a prisoner of war. He later became master of a merchant ship called Alexander, which also sailed to India. Thereafter, his voyages would take him to the Cape Verde Islands, Le Havre, New Orleans, Germany, and South America. Eventually he turned from the sea to the railroads, becoming the president of the Eastern Railroad and later other railroads that stretched to the western part of the United States. He lived during a time of political change, such as the rise and fall of Napoleon, and innovation, including electric lights, iron ships, photography, and the telegraph.

Rantoul has published this handwritten journal, incorporating with it genealogical information, family portraits and letters, pictures and illustrations of places and items discussed in the journal, newspaper articles, and maps showing Neal’s travels. Unfamiliar terminology and exotic costumes are defined as well. There is a detailed table of contents, as was the fashion of early books, but no index.

The drawbacks to this volume pertain more to formatting and editing. The typeface is reminiscent of being written on a typewriter, so it’s not as dark as what readers are accustomed to. Also, to read this oversized book, it’s necessary to turn it 90 degrees so that it must be held similar to how one holds a wall calendar. There is no explanation provided as to how the layout works, although I eventually determined that the left column of the odd-numbered pages was the journal and even pages and right columns of odd pages were the additional information that Rantoul inserted to enhance the journal. Nor is it clear, at first, what the underlining signifies (defined words). Once or twice the additions interrupt the flow of the journal because the information spills onto more than a single page. An example of this is the inclusion of six pages from Harriet Neal’s Account Book, which is inserted one paragraph into her husband’s account of his arrival in Philadelphia and Salem.

There are occasional misspellings or missing words in the journal, which may require the reader to peruse the sentence more than once to decipher its meaning. Some minor editing would have helped make the narrative easier to read and the errors less distracting. Captions aren’t provided for some of the extra material, so readers are left to wonder what it is or why it is included. The same holds true for Appendix A, as there’s no explanation as to why another person’s diary excerpt belongs.

One factual error occurs in the editor’s note on English Turn. It was not an unloading dock but a bend in the Mississippi River below New Orleans. This was where the French encountered the English in 1699, who had thought to establish a colony there until the French explained that the region belonged to France. There is also a misplaced heading, which supposedly covers the death of Neal’s sister, but that occurs in the paragraph before the heading.

When I read Neal’s opening sentence – “Autobiography is seldom interesting . . .” – I feared it would be prophetic, but the narrative becomes more thought-provoking once his seafaring life begins. He opens a window into a past time and takes readers to exotic locales where customs, such as a Hindu suttee, differ greatly from the world in which he lives. Equally important are the tidbits that Neal provides about ships and their cargoes, for example, how chess pieces are kept from tumbling off the board or what exports and imports brought significant profits. For readers of Pirates and Privateers, the section on Neal’s experiences as a privateer and prisoner of war are most compelling and include an escape attempt in which he is wounded. Those interested in firsthand accounts and early travel logs will also find this book of interest.