When I logged in, I realized I had not been to this blog site in more than two years. Although in 2006 I thought I would be finished with this thesis by 2009, I am still slogging along.
One reason is that the hypothesis had to be greatly amended. Unfortunately I located very little historical documentation about the Massachusetts Maritime Academy or the Sears Nautical Trust; my first two forays into the subject of Massachusetts maritime education in the 19th century.
So now my thesis has become an examination of how maritime education evolved in Massachusetts from an apprenticeship to formal academic instruction during the 19th century. Specifically I will examine the time period before Massachusetts Maritime Academy was established in 1891. The years from 1800 to 1872.
Although maritime education is still the main focus,I am spotlighting the career of Sidney Brooks,who taught navigation at his academy in Harwich, Massachusetts for more than 20 years and his work with the juvenile delinquents the courts remanded to the Massachusetts Nautical Reform School. After he was forced by economic necessity to close his academy, Sidney spent six years aboard the GEORGE M. BARNARD as the teacher of his “naughty boys.”
- I will devote a page to Sidney’s biography. (The next post.)
- A page to Massachusetts maritime commerce in the 19th century.
- A page to the history of Massachusetts in general.
- And finally, the remainder of the blog to the Massachusetts Nautical Reform School.
Unlike the United Kingdom, little history has been written about the nautical reform schools in the United States. This blog is an attempt to remedy the lack of information available. In a country which experienced its first economic success as a sea power, little has been devoted to that history.
The Massachusetts Nautical Reform School was established in 1859 as an act of the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A state which has a 400 plus year history in seafaring. Governor Banks recommended that the Nautical Reform School initially be a division of the Lyman School in Westborough, Massachusetts, the first state-sponsored reform school in the country.
Next post: the answer to Who was Sidney Brooks?
