A Review of Jack Corbett, Mariner
by Richard Porter
Maritime Writer and Editor

Although it may read like fiction, Jack Corbett, Mariner is pure memoir. In November 1849, a 20-year-old Vermonter ventured down to New York City’s bustling commercial waterfront and got his first, faint whiffs of sea air. He was on a mission. His physician father had dispatched young Alfrederick Hatch to crew aboard a sailing ship in hopes of ridding his son of various youthful infirmities, including asthma. According to family lore, Dr. Horace Hatch proclaimed, it would “either cure him or kill him.”

Very luckily, young Fred quickly found the ideal mentor and protector in Jack Corbett -- “a rollicking, reckless, horny-handed, hairy-chested product of wind and storm and sea and the rough and tumble of a sailor’s life.” The two signed on aboard a three-masted, 1,400-ton sailing ship bound for Liverpool and back. The crossing was about 3,300 miles, made all the more challenging by the late-fall, early-winter season. Hatch, under Corbett’s dogged tutelage, thrived in his role as apprentice sailor, standing up to all that the sea threw at him.

Hatch and Corbett developed a solid relationship on the crossings, but on return to New York, Corbett mysteriously disappeared, only to reappear 30 years later, knock on the office door of his former charge and now very successful financier, and become an intimate part of Fred’s household as guardian for his 11 children.

Jack Corbett, Mariner is Hatch’s tribute to Corbett, penned when Hatch was in his 60s, after Corbett’s death. The manuscript has remained unpublished until now.

What could have been a workmanlike document of family history turns out to be a solid piece of literature and a page-turner to boot. Hatch’s and Corbett’s lives intersected with true mutual benefit, but the saga could have gone horribly wrong at many points. Hatch’s father had vested a lot of faith in his asthmatic son when posting him to New York to go to sea. This gem of a book reveals just how fully that faith was justified and how a crusty sailor played a key and loving role.

Written in first-person narrative, young Hatch proves to be a fast learner aboard the 187-foot ship and quickly gains the grudging respect of his fellow crew in often harrowing conditions. His descriptions of those crew members, including the captain, the passengers, fellow crew, and most immediately, Corbett himself, reveal a canny observer of the human condition and sailors in particular:

The majority of sailors are naturally religious in sentiment, though they may be far from it in practice. They are firm believers in the supernatural, both divine and diabolical. To them, both God and the devil are personal realities, There are a few, however, who like their skeptical brethren ashore, believe in nothing that cannot be seen or handled or demonstrated to the senses and the reason.

And consider this passage on sailors’ temperament:

The sailor is not naturally brutal. For the most part he is kindhearted, submissive to authority, disposed to be peaceable when you will let him, and susceptible to decent treatment. It is only when he is goaded and bullied beyond endurance and exasperated by a sense of injustice, that the brute in him rises up and snaps at the other brute [in authority]that is worrying him ... [but]it is true that there are exceptions.

Hatch’s egalitarianism allows him to see the essential goodness that may lie behind an individual’s coarse exterior. That innate attitude informs Hatch’s later charity work with sailors and allows the relationship with Corbett to be rekindled after the 30-year separation.

Hatch the writer develops a colorful voice for Corbett. One example is from a scene where Hatch is recuperating from an illness contracted after going ashore during the ship’s normal turnaround and refitting in Liverpool. Corbett is caring for Hatch on the captain’s orders and telling some of Hatch’s sailor friends not to overstay their welcome at Hatch’s sickbed:

Now look a-here, you youngsters ... this ain’t no fo’c’s’le for spinnin’ yarns in, nor yet no concert hall for c’rousin’ an’ jollyfyin’, an’ this ‘ere boy ain’t no haudience fer a v’ri’ty show, not wile Jack Corbett’s ‘esponsible fer ‘im to the skipper, an’ you boys has got ter be qui’t wen yer in ‘ere an’ git out w’en I tells ye, or get yer ‘eads punched.

A five-page glossary of nautical terms at then end of the book unravels arcane sea language.

Hatch lays out the illiterate Corbett’s weaknesses, particularly for alcohol and cursing, often hilariously, but never with disdain. That equanimity informs the whole text and makes the book a morality tale of sorts. Whether the subject is temperance or tattoos, the humor never lapses into ridicule.

Hatch brings the same balance of respect and humor to his portrayal of Corbett ashore, after the 30-year separation, the last third of the text. It is a situation rife for comedy: the old salt plunked down in a family of thirteen. Naturally, Corbett remakes his new world in nautical terms. The initial transition is made easier by Corbett’s being appointed “captain of the pier and boat landing” at the Hatch waterfront estate. When the family moves inland, his title becomes “quartermaster of the castle.” Hatch’s daughters try various stratagems to reform Corbett, still given to the occasional cursing rant and alcohol binge, and the humor flows. By this time, Corbett has become a trusted family intimate, and his death is truly mourned.

Hatch’s skills as a mature author leave the reader yearning for more. Pity that Hatch had not also directed his talents to analyzing his formative Vermont childhood or those very successful years as a Wall Street financier. All the more reason not to forgo this very satisfying single sample of his work.