26 HEREDITY AND DEVELOPMENT OF NAVAL OFFICERS. 



While few of the native African tribes, though fronting on the sea, 

 developed significant sea-power, and though even the Chinese were not 

 given to long voyages, yet the Polynesians are the most maritime of all 

 peoples and centuries ago traversed hundreds of miles of ocean in open 

 canoes and proved themselves such gallant fighters that they conquered 

 remote inhabited countries, like New Zealand, which they reached in their 

 journeys. 



That sea-lust is a racial trait is recognized by seamen themselves, 

 who hold themselves apart as a different race from the " land-lubber." 

 Seamen know very well that their cravings for the sea are racial "it 

 is in the blood," they say. 



As Hoppin (1874, p. 19) writes: "The sea is a magnet that draws its 

 own to it wherever they may be. ... The love of the sea is one of the 

 instincts that are original in the nature of some." 



Just what there is in the sea that makes the appeal is a question. 

 I have repeatedly inquired of sailors, especially at Sailors' Snug Harbor, 

 Staten Island, as to this matter. Some reply naively that there was a 

 good living to be made on the sea and therefore they naturally entered 

 upon it. One can imagine that if one asked a tern why it lived on the sea 

 instead of inland, like robins, it might reply because "I get my food from 

 the sea." It is more in accordance with correct thinking to conclude 

 that a tern feeds on the sea because its instincts lead it to live on the sea; 

 and a fisherman or a sea captain finds his living on the sea because, for- 

 tunately for him, he can make a living where his instincts draw him. As 

 Robert Hare, 1810, wrote concerning the adoption by America of the 

 policy of abandoning the sea: "The utter impossibility of enforcing this 

 abandonment in practice has already been demonstrated. A portion of 

 our countrymen are amphibious and we might as well forbid the birds 

 to fly or the fishes to swim as deny them access to their favorite element." 



Other seamen have told me that it was the "romance of the sea" 

 that attracted them. One stated that it was the form of the ship with 

 sails spread that lured him; and to the visualist this sight makes a strong- 

 appeal. We have the statement that John Rodgers as a boy left his home 

 at Havre de Grace and walked to Baltimore because he wanted to see a 

 square-rigged ship. Also, many sailors have been visualists, fond of objects 

 of natural history of all sorts, bringing home collections of shells and fruits 

 and works of "savage" art to find place in local museums. Still, this is not 

 the whole explanation, for a steady stream of applicants for the navy con- 

 tinues, even in time of peace, despite the replacement of sails by steam. 



One sailor suggested that the young man who has returned from the 

 sea carries a glamor of romance and heroism that attracts young women 

 and enables him to make a better marriage selection. This would natu- 

 rally be a strong incentive and, no doubt, in sea-loving communities like 

 Salem, Marblehead, Sag Harbor, etc., it played an important part in 

 securing the mating of two thalassophilic strains and in establishing a 



