Interview: Thomas Balcerski on Sailors' Snug Harbor
Interviewed by Ryan Purcell
Today on Gotham, editor Ryan Purcell interviews Thomas Balcerski about his recent New York History essay about the history of Sailors’ Snug Harbor.
Sailors’ Snug Harbor, located along the Kill Van Kull in New Brighton, on the northern shore of Staten Island, was opened in 1833 as the country’s first home for retired seamen from the US Merchant Marine and the US Navy. Supported through an endowment left in the estate of Revolutionary War soldier and ship Captain Robert Richard Randall, Snug Harbor served retired sailors through the 19th century. At the turn of the 20th century, Sailors’ Snug Harbor had grown to become one of the most robust elder-care facilities in the country, a self-contained community of dormitories, farms, bakeries, workshops, a hospital, chapel, concert hall, and cemetery. In the mid-20th century, however, the number of accepted residents (or “inmates” as they were known) dwindled as Social Security and Medicare provided an alternative financial safety net for retired seamen. By the late-1960s, the campus was left virtually vacant and in disrepair until the trustees sold the property to New York City in 1974, at the height of the city’s fiscal crisis. Today, the grounds are now operated by the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden, a non-profit organization that is affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution.
Governor Thomas Melville (1867 to 1884) is a character in this story that readers might recognize in relation to this brother, the famous New York author and seaman Herman Melville. How does the story of Sailors’ Snug Harbor add to the meaning of Herman Melville, his work, and New York City in the 19th century?
The Melville family is emblematic of several trends happening in 19th-century America: the declining fortunes of a prominent American family, the challenges posed by urbanization to American society, and evolving attitudes towards American literature. Herman Melville, born in 1819, was eleven years older than his brother Tom, the baby of the family. In 1839, with his family struggling to support its many children, Herman went to sea out of financial necessity. As such, he was absent from home as his younger brother came of age.
Photograph of Herman Melville at the ferry terminal across the street from Sailors’ Snug Harbor, ca. 1880
During these early years, the Melvilles were based in Albany, primarily engaged in mercantile work. However, his father, Allan, struggled to make ends meet, hence why Herman went to sea. As an adult, Herman bounced around the Northeast, spending time in the Albany region, in the Berkshires. Only in 1863 did Melville locate permanently to Manhattan. In 1866, he obtained an appointment as a customs inspector in New York City. The following year, brother Tom secured the plum position of governor of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, and the center of power in the family shifted from Manhattan to Staten Island. Tom died in 1884, while Herman retired from his job at the Customs House in 1885. He died in 1891, largely broke and in literary obscurity. Only in the 1920s would his works be rediscovered as contributions to the American literary canon.
Without giving away too many details from your essay, can you describe the “taboo” book and how it informed the social order in Snug Harbor?
A representative page from the “Taboo Book” of Thomas Melville in the Noble Maritime Collection
Thomas Melville, like his older brother Herman, went to sea, captaining the clipper ship Meteor in 1860. As such, when the younger Melville was tapped as the governor of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, he brought with him notions of strict discipline and ship order from a life at sea. The “Taboo” book may have been in use before Melville’s time at the Harbor, but ironically the origins of the word likely came from brother Herman’s popular sea novel, Typee.
Regardless of its first implementation, Thomas Melville deployed the taboo system with unmatched vigor, dinging the inmates of the Harbor for infractions of all kinds. He recorded each taboo with a mark next to an inmate’s name. If an inmate accumulated enough marks against him, he could lose his meal and tobacco privileges, his freedom of mobility off Harbor, and even be expelled. The dreaded taboo system became a way to impose discipline upon the inmates, though at great cost to their manhood and individual freedoms.
Your essay suggests a sharp contradiction in the lives of sailors as Snug Harbor. On the one hand, admission to Snug Harbor was highly selective and the level of care Snugs received was parallel to few institutions in the United States during its time. On the other hand, the authoritarian rule of Governors like Thomas Melville could make Snug life austere, and harsh. How did Snugs justify this trade-off?
Statue of founder Robert Richard Randall
As envisioned by the last will and testament of founder Robert Richard Randall, Sailors’ Snug Harbor would be a place for “aged, decrepit, and worn-out sailors.” Those men who applied for admission to Sailors’ Snug Harbor typically had nowhere else to go. In addition, the Harbor was the best of the several charitable institutions available to elderly seamen. The lifestyle and comfort afforded the inmates was unmatched elsewhere.
Nevertheless, an inmate gave up certain freedoms in exchange for the privilege of entry to Sailors’ Snug Harbor. Prior to admission, he needed to agree to abide by the rules of the Harbor, especially its prohibition against the consumption of alcohol. The lack of booze particularly irked seamen used to the grog ration and a hard-drinking lifestyle at sea. Some inmates simply could not adapt to the rules imposed upon them, whether it be their inability or unwillingness to conform to the dress code, the regimented schedule of meals, or the rules governing their conduct at the Harbor. Such friction may have existed elsewhere, but given the Harbor’s prominence, it was often noticed by journalists and visitors alike.
What factors did trustees consider for admission of sailors to Snug harbor? What role did the social categories of “race” and class play in the admission process?
Building A, today home to the Staten Island Museum. Once the dormitory for the inmates of Sailors’ Snug Harbor.
The governor of Sailors’ Snug Harbor had full leeway in making admissions decision. No restrictions were placed on the kinds of inmates who could be admitted, so long as they had served at sea. Both captains and regular seamen were admitted, and in this way, class barriers formerly enforced at sea could be softened at the Harbor. Similarly, ethnic and racial divisions were blurred, as inmates of all stripes lived together. Yet segregation persisted in other ways: African American inmates were housed in the basement of the dormitories with blind inmates. Based on the surviving records, Black inmates were admitted in disproportionately fewer numbers than their white counterparts.
What does the story of Snug Harbor have to tell readers about the relationship between governance and elderly care in US history?
Thomas Melville treated the inmates as if they were children, ones who required strict rules to regulate their behavior. Melville also imposed a three-tiered class system based on physical ability, with the first-class inmates able to do heavy lifting and physical labor around the Harbor, the second-class inmates able to do lighter work such as housekeeping, and the third-class inmates being permanently disabled and not capable of working. In this way, Melville tried to impose fairness in what was expected of each inmate.
Institutions such as Sailors’ Snug Harbor were privately owned and operated. The government did not regulate them. All that changed in the 20th century with the social security system providing pensions to the elderly and, later, with the passage of laws that brought senior health care through Medicare. Societal notions of how to treat the elderly also began to change. Without the government stepping up to provide for this vulnerable population, the concept of “senior citizens” would not exist today.
Cornerstone inscription mentioning Governor Thomas Melville inside Building A, today home to the Staten Island Museum.
Sailors’ Snug Harbor itself drifted along as an institution, modifying its rules and regulations somewhat to change with the times (for example, alcohol was eventually permitted at Harbor parties). But the financial burden of maintaining a large campus with historic buildings requiring maintenance became too much for the institution, especially as its once rich endowment dwindled. In 1976, the Harbor abandoned the Staten Island campus for a new location at Sea Level, North Carolina. In 2019, this second location closed for good.
Do you see an overlap between your work on Snug Harbor and your work on 19th century congressional politics generally, and your research on the relationship between James Buchannan and William Rufus King in particular?
In the sense that I am primarily interested in the analytical category of gender and specifically manhood, yes, I do see some similarities between these two topics. The living arrangements at Sailors’ Snug Harbor were primarily homosocial, meaning of one sex, in this case men. Likewise, many congressmen who came to Washington, DC, did so alone, without their wives or families. With Buchanan and King, given that both men were bachelors, they naturally sought out other like-minded men, forming what they called the “Bachelor’s mess.”
The aged, worn-out, and decrepit sailors of Sailors’ Snug Harbor faced more serious physical and financial constraints than their counterparts in the US Congress, but both groups needed to fulfill the basic function of finding suitable shelter. But whereas congressmen paid for the services of a boardinghouse, the Snugs relied on the charity of an institution. The former therefore exerted more control of their living arrangements in Washington, DC, whereas the latter could be subjected to the whims of the administration of the Harbor.
Your essay vividly describes the unique homosocial order within Snug Harbor. How was that society enforced? Did you find examples of “bromosexual friendships” that you have elucidated in your work elsewhere?
It’s often difficult to locate evidence of sexuality in history, and it’s even more challenging to find examples of same-sex attraction and orientation in the period prior to a defined homosexual identity. Homosocial settings, those primarily populated by men, provide productive avenues for such investigation, which makes Sailors’ Snug Harbor a potentially rich source for same-sex activity. Yet I could not find any evidence of sexual infraction in Thomas Melville’s taboo book, nor do the admission records provide details about marital status (another good signal for researching early queer history). Few letters written by inmates are left in the records either. All in all, the archival records are largely silent about how sexuality functioned at the Harbor.
What first attracted you to Snug Harbor as a topic of study?
To be honest, I was first attracted to studying Sailors’ Snug Harbor because of the stunning architecture of the surviving buildings. The Greek revival architecture was but the Trojan Horse that lured me into the study of the Harbor’s rich history, however. Inside those buildings one can learn about the inmates of Sailors’ Snug Harbor in detail. The Noble Maritime Collection effectively interprets the lives of the sailors as part of a permanent exhibition on the Harbor, and two published books about its history provided starting points for further study.
From there, I found an opportunity to write about the Harbor for a graduate seminar at SUNY Stony Brook. The research process took me to SUNY Maritime, whose archives contain the bulk of the Sailors’ Snug Harbor collection. I also learned of archaeological efforts underway at the Harbor that yielded new insights from the material culture of the time. After more than a decade of research, my article was published by the New York History Journal in summer 2021.
Did you run into any archival challenges while researching your piece on Snug Harbor? Were there any unexpected discoveries?
I first began my research on Sailors’ Snug Harbor in 2008. At that point, the collection at SUNY Maritime had not yet been fully accessioned. Similarly, the sheer bulk of material required me to narrow my window to a single governorship. Over time, the Sailors’ Snug Harbor papers at SUNY Maritime were accessioned and even digitized thanks to a grant from the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO), the New York State Archives’ Documentary Heritage Program, and the New York State Education Department for a Preservation Survey and Long Range Preservation Planning. The resulting digital database opened new avenues for research and expanded my ability to find additional sources pertaining to this critical period of the Harbor’s history.
Snug Harbor has gone through many changes over the course of its history. How is the site used today? As a historian, how do you think Snug Harbor might optimize its rich history to convey meaning in the 21st century?
Today, the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Gardens is truly one of the jewels of New York City. It’s become something of a convention for people to say after their initial visit, “I had no idea this placed existed.” Well, I had no idea that Snug Harbor existed! I was supremely fortunate that my parents had heard of it and that they invited me to join them on a road trip from New Jersey to Staten Island to visit it and other historic sites in the area, notably Fort Wadsworth and Battery Weed, both part of Gateway National Recreation Area.
The campus of the Snug Harbor contains museums, gardens, and offices of various kinds. However, no colleges or universities have a connection to the site, and I think this is a possible way to expand access and use of today’s Snug Harbor. I could imagine public history students benefiting from taking classes and utilizing the collections on site, just as I could imagine more programming related to this important part of New York City’s history.
What do you think is most significant about the history of Snug Harbor for readers today?
The Governor’s House today, overrun by vegetation.
To visit Snug Harbor today is first to be awed by the many surviving buildings and commanding location of the site in New York Harbor. But once you step inside those buildings, you realize that the truly significant legacy of the Harbor is the lives of the inmates who once resided there. Fortunately, their story is being effectively interpreted today by the Noble Maritime Collection and by informational exhibits around the Snug Harbor Cultural Center. Their dormitories are among the most attractive of the surviving buildings today. By contrast, the former Governor’s House has fallen into disrepair, and it’s unclear if the building will be preserved in the long run. It’s a fitting last word on this rich legacy, with the attention finally focused on those who for too long have been forgotten by history.
Thomas J. Balcerski is an associate professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University. He is the author of Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King (Oxford University Press, 2019). Balcerski holds a PhD in History from Cornell University, a Master’s in History from SUNY Stony Brook, and a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies and Economics from Cornell University. He is currently working on a new history of the Democratic Party, America’s oldest partisan institution.
Ryan Purcell is an editor for Gotham.