INHERITANCE OF SPECIAL TRAITS: THALASSOPHILIA. 25 



THE INHERITANCE OF SPECIAL TRAITS OF NAVAL OFFICERS. 

 THALASSOPHILIA, OR LOVE OF THE SEA. 



Source of Thalassophilia (or Sea-lust) in Naval Officers. The sea makes 

 to different people a varied appeal. There are those who dread to go 

 upon the great waters; there are those who have a genuine mania for the 

 sea. The love of the sea, sea-lust or thalassophilia, is apparently a specific 

 trait to be differentiated from wanderlust or love of adventure; several 

 sailors with whom I have spoken (at Sailors' Snug Harbor), while they 

 admit a strong love for travel on the sea, deny that they care for travel 

 on land; conversely, the gypsies are notorious as wanderers, but are 

 not notorious as sailors. Also, it is clear that many find then* love of 

 adventure fully satisfied by fighting Indians or living on the frontier as 

 cowboys, etc., and have no longing for the sea. Moreover, the modern 

 merchant vessel plying between New York and Liverpool offers, in times 

 of peace, as little probability of adventure as that of conductor on a rail- 

 road tram; and we have seen, on the increase of danger from submarines, 

 seamen declining to undertake trips on the sea because of the added hazard 

 of the trip; so that it is not adventure that leads them to become seamen. 

 To the landsman the sea is often regarded as exceedingly dangerous; how, 

 then, does it happen that some persons have been lured to undertake the 

 discomfort, disease, and dangers of life on the sea, even from an early age 

 of life, and at an era when little regard was had for the comfort or even 

 health of the sailor. It is because men are driven into sea life by their 

 instinctive fondness for the sea. 



That sea-lust is an inherited, racial trait is demonstrated by its dis- 

 tribution among the races of the globe. It is natural that races with a 

 sea-lust should make their way to the seacoast; and so we find Phoeni- 

 cians, Carthaginians, and even Romans developing great marine fleets. 

 That it is not proper to conclude that peoples are sea-lovers merely because 

 they live on the sea is illustrated in the history of the Jews, who (though 

 located on the Mediterranean, but without good natural harbors) were 

 never a great maritime people. Even the Greeks, though realizing at times 

 then* dependence for national existence upon ships, were aroused with diffi- 

 culty before the battle of Salamis and declined readily after the Syracusan 

 expedition (415-413 B.C.). The Turks rose to sea-power only during a 

 part of the sixteenth century. The great naval nations of the modern 

 world have been the English, Scandinavian, and Dutch; though France, 

 Spain, and Portugal have at times had great fleets and great sea fighters. 

 Though the marine commerce of the Germans has risen in recent years to 

 the first rank, their great navy has won no important victories. During 

 the early part of the nineteenth century our coastal states (settled largely 

 from England, Sweden, and Holland) produced great sea fighters, and dur- 

 ing the War of 1812-1814 inflicted a series of hiimiliating defeats on the 

 English navy. 



