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14 December 2023 — The American Seamen’s Friend Society and Its “Little Red Boxes”
In a recent search for information, I came across a brief notice in a New York Times issue from 1914:
Mrs. Moses D. Wadley of Augusta, Ga, made the donation that bought library “no. 11,196, in Memory of Mrs. Woodrow Wilson,” that the Seamen’s Friend Society of 76 Wall Street placed on the Honolulan, which left this port recently for San Francisco, via the Panama Canal.
This is one of the deep-sea going libraries that are the most unique part of the work being done for sailormen by the Society. The libraries are now afloat and have proved to be a boon to the sailors. The books are all selected by those who know what a sailor likes to read and are renewed and changed as often as a ship reaches New York, the home port of the “deep-sea libraries.”
First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson, remembered as an accomplished painter, a vocal advocate for social causes, and directing the creation of the first open-air rose garden at the White House, died of Bright’s disease just seventeen months after Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. The donation in her honor was a kind tribute to her memory. I was more intrigued, however, by the nearly 12,000 “deep-sea libraries,” “selected by those who know what a sailor likes to read.”
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 | “The Society’s View of the Forecastle,” Sailor’s Magazine 41 January 1969, p. 31 (PD) | |
The sailors’ library program is the project for which the American Seamen’s Friend Society (ASFS) is best remembered today; scholar David M. Hovde described its century of service as “unparalleled in the annals of American librarianship.” The Society had a rocky beginning, organizing initially in 1825 but failing to find much support, and then reorganizing in 1828 with new leadership, “to improve the social and moral condition of Seamen, by uniting the efforts of the wise and good in their behalf; by promoting, in every port, Boarding-Houses of good character, Savings’ Banks, Register Offices, Libraries, Museums, Reading-Rooms, and Schools; and also the ministrations of the Gospel, and other religious blessings.” The services that the ASFS provided in port were beneficial to sailors’ personal and financial security, but their time spent at sea was felt to be the best opportunity to reach them on a moral and spiritual level, given how eager a bored sailor would be to have new reading material.
In Four Years Aboard the Whaleship, William B. Whitecar Jr. described his delight at getting his hands on some newspapers: “I read them completely through, advertisements and all, with a degree of attention I had never before bestowed on a printed sheet. Others were not so fortunate as myself, and gave vent to their disappointment in bitter terms.” Sailors also faced the very practical problem that, without a permanent home address, many were ineligible to borrow books from brick-and-mortar libraries in port. The ASFS placed portable lending libraries of books, pamphlets, and papers on board ships departing from New York and port cities such as New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Boston; by 1838 eighty libraries had been installed. The effort flagged for a few decades, but it began anew by 1859. Ten libraries were sent out of the port of Boston that year, and by 1878 over ten thousand of its libraries were in circulation aboard oceangoing vessels. By 1940, that number was nearly 40,000. Libraries were lent to merchant ships, as well as US Navy and Coast Guard vessels.
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Sailors could choose from instructive books on subjects such as oceanography, tales of sea voyages, and other topics from the ASFS portable lending libraries. Watercolor by Reverend Thomas Streatfeild (1777–1848); PD | |
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A typical “little red box” containing one portable lending library from the ASFS was essentially a wooden bookshelf with doors, that could be situated where the crew could access it. The library was lent to the ship; when a vessel returned to port after her voyage, the library could be directed to another ship. A crewmember served as librarian, recording the materials that were checked out and returned, and providing feedback at the end of the journey as to which items were most popular, as well as behavioral changes, such as “temperance” or “reduced swearing” as well as outright religious conversions that might be attributed to the lessons of the literature. The majority of the works in the early libraries were predominantly donated Bibles and religious tracts, reflecting both the organization’s appreciation of free materials and its goals of religious indoctrination and the encouragement of what it deemed moral behavior. The included secular reading material was often informative, such as US history and biography, oceanography, an atlas or almanac, and stories about ocean voyages. The collection would be rounded out with fiction and poetry that was considered uplifting, such as Pilgrim’s Progress.
The proportion of secular literature increased over the years; a New York Times article from 1960 reported that a typical library that year consisted of forty books and a whopping 120 magazines. ASFS Executive Director Walter E. Messenger reported that “tales of the sea and detective stories” were the most popular genres. The organization’s two delivery trucks collected items donated by the public and delivered the boxes to ships in port. The last ASFS library was shipped out just seven years later, in 1967. Thanks to donors like Mrs. Wadley and so many others, seafarers all over the world had the opportunity to read, to learn, and to entertain themselves during the long months at sea.
Extra Credit
Fifty Years’ Efforts for the Welfare of Seamen
Books Afloat and Ashore
Sea History Today is written by Shelley Reid, NMHS senior staff writer. Past issues can be read online by clicking here.
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