Poor Jack to Pious sailor: Religious literature for British seamen, 1815-c.1850

This essay analyses the representation of the British sailor in literature produced by missions to seamen in England and Wales in the first half of the 19th century. Over these decades, the marine mission movement expanded nationally and internationally to include floating chapels, shipboard visitation, and institutions for destitute sailors, sailors’ orphans and sex workers, as well as an outpouring of printed religious literature. This article examines the rhetorical strategies used to appeal to sailors through religious handbooks, printed sermons, tracts and pamphlets, and hymns for seamen. While earlier studies have focussed on temperance and the reform of the drunken sailor, this article suggests that temperance only emerged as a primary cause under the impact of the American movement in the 1830s. Religious outreach had the radical aim of reforming ‘Poor Jack’ by creating a leaven of pious sailors and masters for the post-war imperial and industrial age.