Document text
Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
FORMA
Circumstances of Interview
u/4(9
FOLKLORE 42_
(1,50
NEVI YORK
STATE Now York
NAME OF WORKER Herman Rartnow Saul Levitt
ADDRESS 557 W. 144th Street 557 W. 144th Street
DATE June 14, 1039
SUBJECT Maritime Folklore REP SKY AT NIGHT 18 A SIILOR'S DELIGHT
1. Date and time of interview June 11, 1939
2. Place of interview Waterfront 21st Street 11th Avenue
3. Name and address of informant Anonymous
4. Name and address of person, if any, who out you in
touch with informant.
5. Name and address of pE:rson, if any, acoom7mwring you
6. Description of r3om, house, surrounding, eto.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms,
each bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material
refers.)
FORM C
TEXT OF INTERVIEW (UNEDITED)
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
STATE New York
NAM OF WORKER Hem= part:Kew Saul Levitt
ADDRESS 557 W. 144th Street 567 W. 144th Street
DATE June 14, 1939
SUBJECT Maritime Folklore RED SKY AT MIGHT IS A SAILOR'S DELIGHT
Why, the ocean is my home. I sailed in a big hull clipper from
Boston to Coby, Japan, 1674 tons, register, when I was a led of six.
I ran away from my old man in Hong Ong when I was twelve. I went to
sea shippin sugar to the Delaware Breakwater, 5 months and twenty three
days trip. I was in the Naval Reserve, twice mounded and discharged.
Imes captain of the Leonard Parker. I lost her' in the Heys in 19
and 13. I took her out of Gulfport, Mississippi, gain to Louisburg,
Neva Scotia. I didn't have no telegraph, I don't like to blackball
nobody so Pm not goin to do much taikin about that. Call it an anecdote.
I'm 51 now and I'm the youngest skipper alive. On my papers I'm 40 but
officially I'm 51, I really should have been born in Boston but I was
born in Pittsburgh and I was 25 years old when I was commander of the
Leonard Parker. It was dammed good and hard all the lay. my own
father once hanged me up by the nails in the rigging byway thmahs
when I was eleven years old. I stole some tobacco for one of the
sailors. In 1904, the Rhone she was English, we left with ease oil
in five -gallon cans and barrels in the lower hold from Bayonne Mew
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Jersey. Twenty seven thousand yards of canvas on her. 14 reached
Saga Light, the entrance to the Ganges River, there are three rivers
runnin tn there the Roogli, the Ganges and another one, I disremember
now, it runs all the way to Calcutta. Well, a monsoon struck us and
it was three weeks between the time we sighted the light again and went
down into Diamond Harbor. 14 were driven out to the Island of Columbia
in the Indian Ocean.
A monsoon, or a typhoon or a pampero in Argentine, off the west
ooast of Africa they call it a gale. A hundred miles out at sea and
you're covered with sand... Jesus, when you're running down the Easting
between Cape Horn and Australia, you've taken everything in and tied her
down. I seen seas over my bead around the Cape. The seals my home, for
Chrissake. And when it's blowin damn good and hard I like it best. I
hoar it in my ears. Christ, anybody can wash, painAr or scrub a deck.
A
But can you judge the sky? The wive Can you tell when a breeze is
oomin up. "Red sky at morning, sailor, take warning." Mare's tails
in the sky. The Batch from London, the first mate's name, it was
Naohlagian. What a ship. 183 days from. Seattle to Falmouth, England.
Listen, if you go up the Seamen's Rouse there's a case
of knots, I can make all of them, man, fancy splices. I can tie up
a whole ship. There're very few sailors, but I can rig up Old Iron
sides, man. There's a man on 42nd Street, and I don't say as good
but he's an old timer. Another man, up in the bull, and he can. Now
there's a man and I don't know his name lives in Boston, I should think
of his name.
Why, man, I'd rather go off in the Joseph Conrad for a long voyage,
they've got her tied up alongside the dock. "Red sky at night is a
sailor's delight."
-3-
I knew the captain of the Shendoah, the Roanoke, Captain
Murphy was in the Shenandoah, new the Edward Soule, that's the
one I came home in after I ran away from my old man. Murphy
is dead, one of his sons died too off the west ooast of Africa.
I happened to be in the Shenandoah the very last trip she made,
she was a clipper, they built her in '92 or '94, just when I
couldn't say. The old man, the skipper, I mean, he was good
and he didn't want any hard stuff and the American ships were
good and hard. Now there was the Benjamin F. Packard, they
brought her back from San Francisco eight or nine years ago, the,
finest example of a ship ever they built, man. But the man I
liked more is Paddy Whalen, I think a hell of a lot of him and
I know a lot about him. The Irish makes the best sailors anyhowl
I think they're braver. The Newfoundlanders and the man from the
Coast of Maine is good too but take them all in all it's the hard
time canvas grabber, man, that's the best of all. A seaman never
did have to be on the bun in them times and there was always some-
body to take of him then. But now you hang around in the street,
maybe you sleep intthe goddmm street.
My old man teaohed no navigation and he sent me to Trinity
College too to make some kind of a man out of me. But I didn't
want it, I liked it damn good and hard and that's what I got, man.
But if a young man was to ask me, I'd tell him to go to school and
lay off the booze what I myself should have done and didn't. "Keep
her by the wind, boy" I'd say, No WO bein (*nary.
The sea ain't ornery, it's just dam good and hard and it's
about as honest as most people are.