Figure 14. An Inuit woman named Martha, playing the concertina for a group of boy dancers, Resolute Bay (Qausuittuq), N.W.T. (now Nunavut), Canada, 1956. Until quite recently, concertinas were commonly found in many Arctic villages, as a result of 19 th century visits by whalers. Library and Archives Canada, photographer Gar Lunney. 12
<strong>The</strong> 1870s <strong>The</strong> Levina was a commercial schooner from nearby Wales th<strong>at</strong> was tied up in Dublin harbor in January 1870 while a murder inquest took place. An Irish sailor named Denis Kelly had died of suffoc<strong>at</strong>ion in his quarters in the forecastle, and had also suffered a broken nose. A ship’s officer, who had been the last to see the sailor alive, recounted th<strong>at</strong> …when I went to tell them the night before to go to bed they said they would, as soon as they played out their tune on the concertina. 38 Figure 15. <strong>The</strong> Young Australia, built 1853 and shipwrecked in 1872. <strong>The</strong> image is courtesy of the Brodie Collection, La Trobe Picture Collection, St<strong>at</strong>e Library of Victoria, Australia. On the other side of the globe, the year 1870 was a hard one in the crown colony of Australia, and a number of Australians voyaged to the Fiji Islands to seek their fortune, colonizing it in turn. <strong>The</strong> three-masted ship Young Australia was one of the ships used in this venture. At harbor in Rotumah, Fiji, <strong>The</strong>re happened fortun<strong>at</strong>ely to be a concertina on board the ship, and this was brought ashore every evening by one of the sailors. First of all, the white men would dance a hornpipe or ‘break-down’, then the n<strong>at</strong>ives would dance their own dances to their own wild music. Sometimes both parties would take hands and dance together, and then assuredly the measure would be one of the strangest ever stepped by sane people. 39 All was not well, however. <strong>The</strong> new colonists needed laborers to do their work, and were not above enslaving n<strong>at</strong>ive Fijians. This reportedly occurred with the assistance of a concertina-playing crew member, in one of the worst abuses of the instrument ever recorded: Masters and crews would not always be proof against the tempt<strong>at</strong>ion of securing a large number of men <strong>at</strong> one ‘haul.’ Wh<strong>at</strong>, for example, could be easier than to put the h<strong>at</strong>ches on when a number of n<strong>at</strong>ives were e<strong>at</strong>ing beef and biscuit in the hold? Or, if some n<strong>at</strong>ives were too wary to come off, might there not be found ways to induce them to do so? If there was a concertina on board, it might be played as the vessel coasted along certain islands, and its Siren notes would be sure to <strong>at</strong>tract a crowd of delighted and astonished n<strong>at</strong>ives. ….Perhaps a dozen islanders would now come off-some swimming, some on surfboards, some in canoes. Meanwhile, the men would be busy in their own way. …the captain stands <strong>at</strong> the wheel, with a twinkle in his eye, and anon asks aloud, ‘Are you ready, men?’ ‘Aye, aye,sir,’ is the universal response. <strong>The</strong>n, in a voice th<strong>at</strong> rings through the ship, comes the laconic order, ‘Grab!’ 40 Wh<strong>at</strong> goes around often comes around, however. In San Francisco, California in 1873, the concertina was used in a similar fashion to secure workers, but this time the sailors themselves became the hunted ones, by runners whose employment involved providing a steady supply of sailors to ships: <strong>The</strong> sailor runner’s principal inducement to Jack is a billet ashore where he can have all play and very little work. <strong>The</strong> bark Kelso, which sailed a few days ago, had all her men captured by runners, and among them a bo<strong>at</strong>swain who played remarkably well on the concertina…. <strong>The</strong> bo<strong>at</strong>swain got $10 a week for playing the concertina to amuse the sailors in a (runner-owned) boarding house. …But the bo<strong>at</strong>swain became disgusted with his occup<strong>at</strong>ion, and gave his ‘boss’ the slip, shipping aboard a vessel bound for Liverpool. 41 <strong>The</strong> practice of ‘shanghaiing’ sailors was a sizeable industry along the San Francisco w<strong>at</strong>erfront from 1850- 1910, and occurred with a nod and a wink from corrupt public officials there. Targeted sailors were usually drugged in a w<strong>at</strong>erfront tavern, boarding house, or brothel, and brought aboard unconscious. <strong>The</strong>ir captors signed them on, and would typically receive a signing bonus of three month’s pay from the ship’s captain. 42 By 1871, the concertina was considered part of the kit of the average sailor. Witness this description of ‘Our <strong>Sea</strong>men and <strong>Sea</strong> Captains’, from a period British maritime magazine: In the foreign trades, in fine we<strong>at</strong>her, during his day and dog-w<strong>at</strong>ch below, when his ship is well clear of land, he has many leisure hours which, if he can read, he wastes in the perusal of trashy novels, too often the only books to be found in a forecastle, save the tracts and magazines which the seaman’s chaplain has put on board. Not infrequently the seaman is totally uneduc<strong>at</strong>ed, and then playing <strong>at</strong> cards, building and rigging mini<strong>at</strong>ure ships, painting curious devices upon the inside of the lid of his clothes chest, t<strong>at</strong>tooing his arms, making m<strong>at</strong>s, practicing on his flute or concertina, idle talk and grumbling, occupy all of his spare time…. 43 13
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