Reviewed by:

• Sons of the Waves: The Common Seaman
  in the Heroic Age of Sail, 1740–1840 by Stephen Taylor
• Sharada Balachandran Orihuela (bio)

Stephen Taylor's Sons of the Waves is an impressively researched yet distressingly undertheorized book about the seminal role of the common British sailor, or the Jack Tar, in the rise of British power. Covering the hundred years after 1740, before steam ships came to dominate the seas, this work of trade history follows the lives of dozens of ordinary seamen, some of whom left letters, memoirs, and even novels narrating their participation in British seafaring. As Taylor argues, Jack Tars, named for the tar used to waterproof their coats, were integral to a British sense of national identity, the Industrial Revolution, as well as to the expansion of British colonialism and the consolidation of its empire. Taylor's monograph is convincing in its claim that ordinary seamen were integral in the accumulation of British wealth and power. While this work is expansive in historical and archival scope, I want to focus on two aspects of Sons of Waves that I believe will be most useful to literary scholars: the first is the impressive range of written texts authored by ordinary seamen found in this monograph, and the second is the importance this work lends to ongoing debates about the place of the ordinary seaman in the creation of the liberal subject.

Taylor's monograph follows in the tradition of Marcus Rediker's work on seamen and pirates on the other side of the Atlantic found in works including Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (Cambridge UP, 1987); The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Beacon P, 2000); Villains of All Nations: [End Page 273] Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Beacon P, 2004); and Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail (Beacon P, 2014). Rediker's works, like Taylor's, are focused on re-creating the life of ordinary sailors using a range of different primary documents that include works authored by the sailors themselves. In particular, they share detailed descriptions of the difficult lives of ordinary sailors, including being subject to harsh disciplinary measures, to impressment and other forms of forced conscription, as well as having to navigate the harsh conditions of life at sea (as Taylor repeatedly notes, the mortality rate of sailors was extremely high, with sometimes as many as one in three sailors succumbing to scurvy, disease, or the rough seas).

However, while Rediker's works tend to focus on the place of the sailor as a figure central to the development of free wage labor, to the growth of a transnational working class, and also to the expression of revolutionary fervor across the Atlantic, Taylor's monograph focuses on sailors' rebellions that resulted in better wages, the outlawing of impressment, and reduced corporeal punishment for minor offenses at sea. As he writes, Rights of Man (1791) by Thomas Paine, himself a privateer and sailmaker, had quite an effect on sailors' demands for egalitarianism. In many ways, Taylor, like Rediker, attributes a more progressive politics to the demands made by mariners, an argument made even more compelling when considering that by and large mariners belonged to the lower classes in pre-industrial England. For example, Taylor's focus on Edward Pellew who rose from ordinary seaman to a Navy frigate captain to viscount, is illustrative of how life at sea provided some men from the lower classes with the ability to move across the class divisions of the age. Taylor makes a compelling case for why we should view these common mariners as anti-authoritarian heroes who are able to transcend their station, and in doing so, are also central to more egalitarian and less cruel lives in England.

Taylor's book is also impressive in the archival materials it assembles found in the British Library, the Library of...

审核人：

• 海浪之子：
  英雄航海时代的共同海员，1740-1840年，斯蒂芬·泰勒（Stephen Taylor）
• Sharada Balachandran Orihuela（生物）

斯蒂芬·泰勒（Stephen Taylor）的《海浪之子》这本书是一本令人印象深刻的书，但却缺乏理论依据，它讲述了英国普通水手或杰克·塔尔（Jack Tar）在英国势力崛起中的开创性作用。在1740年之后的一百年里，在蒸汽船统治海洋之前，这项贸易史的著作遵循了数十名普通海员的生活，其中一些人留下了书信，回忆录，甚至是小说，讲述了他们参与英国航海的故事。正如泰勒所说，杰克·塔尔斯（Jack Tars）以用来防水外套的焦油命名，是英国的民族意识，工业革命，英国殖民主义的扩张及其帝国的巩固的组成部分。泰勒的专着令人信服，声称普通海员是英国财富和权力积累不可或缺的一部分。我相信波峰之子对文学学者将是最有用的：第一个是本专着中普通海员撰写的大量令人印象深刻的书面文本，第二个是这项工作对正在进行的有关普通民众地位的辩论的重要性海员在创造自由主义主题。

泰勒（Taylor）的专着遵循马库斯·雷迪克（Marcus Rediker）在大西洋彼岸的海员和海盗的著作的传统，这种著作在《魔鬼与深蓝色的海之间：商人海员，海盗和英美海事世界》（1700–1750）中发现（剑桥大学出版社，1987）；多头九头蛇：水手，奴隶，平民和革命大西洋的隐藏历史（灯塔P，2000年）；万国恶棍： [第273页] 黄金时代的大西洋海盗（Beacon P，2004年）；和大西洋的law徒：航海时代的水手，海盗和杂色船员（信标P，2014年）。像泰勒（Taylor）一样，雷迪克（Rediker）的作品都致力于通过使用一系列不同的原始文件重塑普通水手的生活，其中包括水手自己创作的作品。他们特别分享了普通水手的艰苦生活的详细描述，包括受到严厉的纪律处分，留下深刻印象和其他形式的强迫征兵，以及必须应对海上恶劣的生活条件（泰勒一再指出） ，水手的死亡率极高，有时多达三分之二的水手屈服于坏血病，疾病或波涛汹涌的大海。

然而，尽管雷迪克的作品倾向于将水手的位置集中在自由工资劳动发展，跨国工人阶级的成长以及在大西洋上空表达革命热情的中心人物上，但泰勒的专着着眼于水手的位置。导致水手的叛乱，从而提高了工资，取缔了印象，并减少了对海上轻微犯罪的有形惩罚。正如他所写的那样，人权托马斯·佩恩（Thomas Paine）（1791）本人是私人游艇制造商，对水手的平均主义要求产生了很大影响。泰勒（Taylor）和雷迪克（Rediker）一样，将更为进步的政治归因于水手提出的要求，当考虑到大范围的水手属于工业化前英格兰的下层阶级时，这一论点就变得更加引人注目。例如，泰勒的重点是爱德华·佩莱（Edward Pellew），他从普通的海员升为海军护卫舰队长，以担任副司令。这说明了海上生活如何为一些下层阶级的人们提供了跨年龄划分的能力。泰勒（Taylor）提出了一个令人信服的论据，为什么我们应该将这些普通水手视为能够超越自己立场的反威权英雄，而在这样做时，

泰勒的书在大英图书馆，...