White Jacket - Herman Melville

White Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War (Melville, 1850)

Though Melville dismisses this book in the same breath as Redburn as a "job done for money", White Jacket is actually a good book.  It reads more like a non-fiction book than a novel, and I'm sure a lot of it is straight from Melville's experiences, but it has enough recurring characters, connected incidents, and linear continuity to distinguish it from Redburn as a very worthwhile read, perhaps the best of the pre-Moby novels.

A nameless narrator, known merely as White Jacket by virtue of his distinctive overcoat, recounts life as a sailor in a United States Navy ship in peacetime as it makes a homeward voyage from Peru, around Cape Horn, and up the east coast. The level and quality of humor in this book is excellent.  Melville's philosophizing includes a healthy dose of wit, and while somber incidents occur on board, there's some pretty funny stuff too.

One of the best storylines is the "great massacre of the beards," when the captain's edict to the sailors to get their facial hair within Navy regulations almost results in mutiny. If ever there were a No-Shave-November Bible, this vignette would be it: "Were the vile barbers of the gun deck to reap our long, nodding harvests, and expose our innocent chins to the chill air of the Yankee coast? ... Captain Claret! In cutting our beards and our hair, you cut us the unkindest cut of all!"

The narration and prose throughout is straightforward yet eloquent. Melville paints a vivid picture of life on the ship, and he raises more than one outcry at the injustices done to sailors by the officers, particularly at the arbitrary and violent punishment of flogging.  The scene where White Jacket is called before the mast to be flogged for shirking a heretofore unknown duty is gripping and intense.

Throughout the pages of this book, we are treated to bullies, smugglers, saw-happy surgeons, actors, poets, teachers, rogues, and about anyone in between - they are all on board.  Melville effectively uses the ship as a metaphor for the world, constantly at war, pursuing its wilful way regardless of the good doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount.  Ultimately, it's Melville's portrait of the dignity of man mixed with the parsimony of men that makes this an excellent book, and more than just another historical curiousity.

Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 great massacres of the beards