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"An old sailor's lament": Herman Melville, the Stone Fleet, and the Judgment of History.
From: Leviathan
Date: 20071001
Author:Edwards, Mary K. Bercaw
In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln ordered the blockade of southern ports. A fleet of aged whale ships loaded with stone was sent to Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, and sunk at the mouths of the harbors in an unsuccessful attempt to block them. Melville's poem, "The Stone Fleet," written in the voice of an old sailor, mourns the loss of the vessels. Its embittered final words damn those who ordered the death of the ships and pronounce the entire enterprise an utter failure. Melville's note to the poem states: "All accounts seem to agree that the object proposed ...
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