Abstract
For maritime historians the title of this autobiography, Forty Years Master, aptly sums up the dominating theme in Killman’s recollections: being in command of a merchant ship. It also points to the structure of the recollections, ship by ship, and to the style, ‘authoritative’. The author’s text occupies 250 pages while the remaining 100 pages contain supportive material by the editorial team, of which the major part is a block of notes clarifying, correcting or confirming the author’s remarks.
Killman (1860–1936) was born in Maine, USA, into a seafaring family, but owing to the death of his mother and re-marriage of his father, before finishing school, he asserted his independence by leaving home and seeking work on farms. Five years later in 1878, and almost eighteen, he went to sea in a ship commanded by one of his brothers on a voyage from New York to Nagasaki. He was not entirely ignorant of ships as he had experienced at least one voyage as a young boy across the Atlantic with his father. But this voyage threw at him several of the dangers that could befall sailing vessels: a man lost overboard, dismasting and repair, and more unusually, the murder of his brother by the ship’s steward. This sequence of less than four pages is typical of what follows. It makes for compulsive reading. Dates are in short supply, but the notes, drawing on extensive searching of shipping reports in the press and maritime reference works, do much to fill the gap.
With less than two years sea time Killman, a rapid learner and probably already showing leadership qualities, secured engagement as a junior mate, from which he soon jumped up to first mate, apparently without taking any examinations for licences. He did eventually attend nautical school, and qualified to command vessels up to 600 tons. By 1886 he held command. Until then he had sailed internationally from the east coast of the USA, but from then on ports in Puget Sound on the west coast became his operational base. To enable the reader to follow Killman’s movements, the editors have helpfully provided a neat block of maps naming the locations mentioned.
Killman is believed to have written his memoir soon after retirement in 1929, probably with the aid of documentary records in his possession, which seem not to have survived. Typing the manuscript, detailed research and editing the text began in the mid-1970s but was laid aside and only picked up again some 35 years later. The various editorial essays raise several issues relating to social conditions in American sailing vessels and the extent to which Killman was a typical, hard, bullying mate and master. The memoirs offer evidence in the form of fights, working the crew when the ship needed them rather than waiting for a change in the watch, driving crews to overcome serious disasters to his vessels, or making the ship ready for the next charter. There are plenty of references to the role of the master in the management of ship’s business, whether seeking instructions from owners or charterers, or managing crews. Clearly, Killman was supremely confident of his own abilities in all the skills demanded of shipmasters; seamanship, navigation and shipping business. These are demonstrated in his sailing when other ships stayed in port, refusing exorbitant towage fees, losing the rudder yet sailing his ship into port, managing shipwreck, cargo handling, charters, buying cargoes, engaging crews – the list goes on. Perhaps unsurprisingly, occasionally his actions led to embroilment with the law.
There is a fine index. Many of Killman’s ships, square rig, schooner rig and steamer are depicted in 32 clear monochrome images. The notes, mainly from secondary sources, are supported with generalised bibliographical sources, but many elements are not precisely referenced. Ship registration data confirms appointments as master but other primary sources, official records such ships’ log books and crew agreements, are mentioned in one or two cases, but without clear reference to the archive in which they are held. This reader would have appreciated a tabular chronological listing of the vessels and voyages. But these are petty quibbles from a research perspective, of a volume aimed at a general readership, which is one of the best presented of maritime autobiographies, offering great insights into the roles of merchant shipmasters.