80 Crossing the Line 



1803, continued 



PROCLAMATION OF NEPTUNE 



"Whereas a number of book-wrights by trade, have undertaken, without 

 being quahfied for the task, to introduce into their pages the characters 

 of sailors, and instead of exhibiting my legitimate children, have produced 

 a bastard race; I do hereby declare, that the time of impunity is at an end; 

 — and that henceforth should any man who has never been out of sound- 

 ings, or never beheld blue water, repeat the offence, — I will strike the 

 timber-head of his skuU a blow with my trident, that shall dispatch his 

 soul to the deepest receptacle of Davy Jones' Locker, whose bottom 

 no deep-sea-lead line could ever yet reach. Signed, Neptune. 



Latitude 44° 35' North. 

 (True Copy.) Longitude 51° 19' West." 



( John Davis. Travels of f oiur years and a half in the United States of Amer- 

 ica. London, 1803. p. 421-42À.) 



The comment of one man runs: "It's a horrible deformation of the primitive rite, but the whole 

 account of the sea journey has a distinct Rabelaisian smell." 



In 1909 Henry Holt & Company brought out a reprint "with an introduction and notes by A. J. 

 Morrison. The last section of the 1803 issue, "Voyage from Baltimore in Maryland to Cowes in the 

 Isle of Wight," was omitted in the 1909 reprint. 



Though bypassing the record of the ceremony, the crossing is mentioned again thus: 



As we increased our longitude, the priest, in examining his barrels of white biscuit, 

 found one of them emptied by other hands than his own. Suspicion fell on a sailor, 

 whom he one day accused before the passengers, as he was standing at the hekn. 'Did 

 you not steal my biscint, sirrah!' said the parson. 'I did. Sir,' answered the fellow. 

 'And what, pray, can you say in defence of yourself?' 'Why, Sir, I can say that when I 

 crossed the Line, Neptime made me swear I would never eat brovni bread when I could 

 get white; and your barrel of white stood next my barrel of brown.' (p. 14.) 



On the 26th of November, 1803 (new style) at 10:30 a. m., we crossed the 

 hne into the Southern Hemisphere at 24° 24' Western longitude, after a voy- 

 age of thirty days from Santa Cruz. To the accompaniment of a salvo of eleven 

 guns, we drank a toast to His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor Alexander I, 

 during whose glorious reign the Russian flag was raised in the Southern 

 Hemisphere for the first time. We couldn't have the usual celebration in honor 

 of Neptune because there was no one aboard beside myself who had previ- 

 ouslv crossed the equator. However, one sailor, name of Pavel Kinganov, was 

 such an accompHshed actor and speaker that, trident in hand, he played his 

 part hke an old dedicated servitor of the sea god, and congratialated the 

 Russians with sufficient decorum on entering Neptune's Southern domain for 

 the first time. 



Puteshestviye vokrug sveta v 1803 - 1804 - 1805 i 1806 godakh . . . na 

 korablyakh Nadezhde i Neve, pod nachal'stvom . . . Kruzenshtema, (Voy- 

 age around the world in 1803 ... on the ships Nadezhda and Neva . . . under 

 the command of Captain Krusenstem) Sanktpeterbing, 1809. v. 1. p. 70- 

 7L) 



The translation was made by Dr. Avraham Yarmohnsky, former chief of the Slavonic Division, 

 The New York PubUc Library. 



