Captain Stormalong is a heroic sailor in the tall tales tradition of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. Songs and stories set in the mid-nineteenth century depicted his legendary feats amid the transition from wooden sailing ships to steam-powered ironsides. Later storytellers noted his extraordinary size and strength, and credited him with battling mythical sea monsters and shaping the contours of the landscape.
As early as the 1830s and 1840s, Stormalong appears as a key figure in sea shanties, or sailors’ work songs. These songs and chants set the pace of work for sailors who manned the rigging and trimmed the sails of merchant and fishing vessels across the North Atlantic. One well-known shanty, “Old Stormy Was a Good Old Man,” mourned Stormalong’s death: “O Stormy’s dead and gone to rest … Of all the sailors he was best.” Workers pledged the royal treatment for a commoner otherwise denied the pleasures of a sumptuous lifestyle: “We’ll dig his grave with a silver spade … And lower him down with a golden chain.” Other verses revealed working-class aspirations for wealth and prosperity: “I’d sail this wide world ‘round and ‘round … With plenty of money I would be found.” Stormalong expressed the workers’ sense of themselves as plain, hardworking men with dreams of a better life.
In the early twentieth century, Stormalong took his place squarely in the middle of the American tall tale tradition. In 1930, Frank Shay published Here’s Audacity! American Legendary Heroes, which included stories about Stormalong. These stories burnished the legend and transformed “Old Stormy” into a superhuman figure capable of otherworldly deeds. In these accounts, he stood four fathoms tall (twenty-four feet) and because of his sailing acumen, quickly earned the rank of bosun (foreman of the crew of deck hands). On one voyage, the crew aboard his whaling vessel tried to weigh anchor but found themselves at odds with a giant octopus wrapped around the chain. This was the Kraken of Scandinavian legends. Stormalong went overboard with a knife in his teeth and after a fifteen-minute struggle, resurfaced and directed his men to weigh anchor. When asked what happened to the Kraken, he replied, “Jes’ tied his arms in knots. Double Carrick bends. It’ll take him a month o’ Sundays to untie them.”
Eventually, Stormalong became restless and irritable because his ship wasn’t large enough to accommodate his enormous body. He left the sea to grow potatoes, but could not suppress the urge to sail. Upon his return, Stormalong sought out the biggest ship in the ocean, the Courser, which had dimensions better suited to a giant of Stormalong’s stature. The crew rode on horseback because the deck was too large to cross on foot. The masts were hinged to allow the ship to pass under the sun and moon, and the sails were stitched together in the Sahara Desert because no other place was large enough to unfurl them. The captain assigned Stormalong to man the wheel since it normally took thirty-two men to manage it.
On a voyage in the North Sea, Stormalong steered the Courser toward the English Channel. The captain worried that the ship’s enormous beam would cause it to get stuck between England and France, but Stormalong was calm. He ordered the crew to lubricate the sides of the ship with soap and watched with satisfaction as the Courser squeezed between Dover and Calais. According to the legend, soap streaks explain why the cliffs of Dover appear white. A subsequent storm drove the Courser onto the Central American shoreline, where crews were digging a canal. The result, of course, was the Panama Canal. After a number of other exploits Stormalong challenged the captain of a steamship to a race across the Atlantic. Although victorious, Stormalong died from exhaustion. This part of the Stormalong tradition offers a nautical parallel to the John Henry legend, in which a railroad worker bests a steam-powered hammer brought in to render him obsolete. Both Henry and Stormalong die valiantly in the struggle to preserve work traditions amid the onrush of new technologies and new workplace relations.
In 1933, Charles Edward Brown followed Frank Shay’s book about folk heroes with a collection of Stormalong stories titled Old Stormalong Yarns: Small and Tall Tales of Alfred Bulltop Stormalong, Bravist and Best of the Old Time Deep-water Sailors of the American Seaboard. By this time, commercial sailing was a distant memory on the Atlantic coast, but locals embraced maritime folkways and traditions as a vital part of regional identity. Captain Stormalong served as a nostalgic balm for New Englanders longing to preserve a more heroic, if imagined past.
Jeffrey B. Webb
See also Febold Feboldson; Paul Bunyan; Sea Shanties; Tall Tales
Further Reading
Botkin, B. A. 1944. A Treasury of American Folklore. New York: Crown.
Brown, Charles Edward. 1933. Old Stormalong Yarns: Small and Tall Tales of Alfred Bulltop Stormalong, Bravist and Best of the Old Time Deep-water Sailors of the American Seaboard. Madison, WI: C. E. Brown.
Felton, Harold. 1968. True Tall Tales of Stormalong: Sailor of the Seven Seas. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Hugill, S. 1979. Shanties from the Seven Seas. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Miller, Olive Beaupré. 1939. Heroes, Outlaws and Funny Fellows of American Popular Tales. New York: Doubleday/Doran.
Osborne, Mary Pope. 1991. American Tall Tales. New York: Knopf.
Walker, Paul Robert, and James Bernardin. 1993. Big Men, Big Country: A Collection of American Tall Tales. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Captain Alfred Bulltop Stormalong—Primary Document
Frank Shay, “Old Stormalong, the Deep-Water Sailorman” (1930)
A common theme in American folklore is the societal changes brought on by technological innovation. Typically, these are considered changes for the worse, and the old ways are lamented as a lost art. The legend of Stormalong harkens back to the glorious days of sailing ships, disdaining younger sailors and their steamships. While the legend of Stormalong can be traced back to the 1830s, it did not appear in printed form until Frank Shay’s famous publication of Here’s Audacity! nearly a hundred years later. In this version, an old sailor recounts the heroic deeds of Old Stormie, bitterly lamenting the bygone days.
“Certainly I ‘member Old Stormalong,” said the oldest skipper on Cape Cod. “I was a ‘prentice fust on his ship and later on I was Second when he was bosun on the Courser, out o’ Boston. That was a ship, a wooden ship with iron men on her decks, a ship that aint been eekaled by these hoity-toity steamboats. No, sir, an’ never will. Donald McKay built that ship just because he found one sailorman who could handle her as she should be handled. But, you’re aimin’ to hear about a sailorman an’ not about ships.
“Only t’other day a young whippersnapper was a-tellin me about Stormie sayin’ as how he fourteen fathoms tall. I’ve heared other tales about his height. I know! He was jes’ four fathoms from the deck to the bridge of his nose.
“He was the first sailorman to have the letters ‘A.B.’ after his name. Those were jes’ his ‘nitials, put after his name on the ship’s log just the same as always. Alfred Bulltop Stormalong was the name he gave his first skipper. The old man looked him over and says:
“‘A.B.S. Able-Bodied Sailor. By your size and strength they should measure the talents of all other seaman.’
“It makes me pretee mad when I see some of the hornswogglers of today with these letters after their names. They are only feeble imitators o’ the greatest o’ all deep-water sailormen.
“You landsmen know little about real sailormen, that is, blue-water sailors. This chap Stormalong was not only a sailorman for all waters, he was a whaler too. I mind the time we was anchored in the middle of the North ‘Lantic fishin’ off a right whale. The lookout sights a school off to the east’ard and Stormie, the bosun, gives the order to hi’st the mudhook. All hands for’ard but not a h’ist. The hook ‘ud give a bit and then it ‘ud sink right back into the mud. Seemed to be hands clutchin’ it and draggin’ it out o’ our hands. Once we got it clear o’ the bottom and almost shipped it when we seed what was wrong. Nothin’ short of an octopus was wrapped all ‘round that mudhook. He was holdin’ the anchor with half of his tenacles and with the other half hangin’ on to the seaweed on the bottom.
“The mate yelled ‘vast heavin’ and went back to tell the skipper. When the old man came for’ard to see for himself he was just in time to see Stormie go overboard with his sheath knife in his teeth. He went below the su’face and there began a terrific struggle. The water was churned and splashed about so that old hooker jes’ rolled about like she was beam to the wind. All of us was sure our bosun had been tore ‘part by the octopus. The struggle went on for about a quarter of an hour when Stormie’s head came to the su’face. Some one called out to throw him a line but before one could be brought he had grabbed the anchor chain and came hand over hand to the deck. The strugglin’ in the water kept on for a while but moved away from the ship.
“‘All right,’ yelled Stormie, ‘all hands lean on it and bring it home.’
“After the anchor was shipped I asked him what he had done to the octopus.
“‘Jes’ tied his arms in knots. Double Carrick bends. It’ll take him a month o’ Sundays to untie them.’
“There was one peculiar thing about Stormalong that was due to his size. He was as loyal to his ship as any sailorman until he saw a bigger one. Then he’d get peevish an’ sullen until he had signed aboard the bigger ship. His biggest complaint was that ships weren’t built big enough for a full sized man.
“Well, the ship we were on that time was Lady of the Sea, finest and fastest of the tea packets. Even that didn’t satisfy him. He wanted a bigger ship or he’d go farmin’. Once he said to us as we sat ‘round the forebitt:
“‘When this hooker gets to port I’m goin’ to put an oar over my shoulder and I’m goin’ to start walkin’ until some hairlegger says to me, “What’s that funny stick you have on your shoulder, matey?” an’ right there I’m goin’ to settle down and dig potaters.’
“‘Yes,’ said the Third-in-Command, skeptically, ‘what potaters are you goin’ to dig?’
“‘Regular and proper spuds, fresh ones, not like the dead potaters you get on this hooker,’ said the Sailor Who Was Tired of the Sea.
“‘Got to plant them first,’ said the Third. ‘Then you got to hoe them, pick the bugs off’n them, spray them, hoe them some more. You got to irrigate them, too. Best irrigate for potatoes is the sweat off’n your brow. Just dig so hard and fast that the sweat rolls down along your nose and drops on the plant. Much harder’n holystoning the deck which, by the way, you’ll begin on jus’ as soon as you turn to in the mornin.’
“‘Compared with sailoring,’ I cuts in, ‘farmin’ comes under the headin’ of hard labor. The best part o’ farmin’, I’ll admit, is that all the hard work comes in fine weather while with sailorin’ it’s jest t’other way ‘bout.’
“For the rest of that trip Stormalong was moody and preoccupied. He had been on a ship for over a year, a very long time for him, without seeing a bigger ship. When the ship hit Boston Stormie signed off. He came on deck with his duffel bag over his shoulder.
“‘Where you goin’?’ I asks him.
“‘Farmin’,’ says he.
“Then he heaves the bag over the rail and follows it to the wharf. The crew of the Lady of the Sea just stood along the rail and gaped.”
Source: Shay, Frank. “Old Stormalong, the Deep-Water Sailorman.” In Here’s Audacity! American Legendary Heroes. New York: The Macaulay Company, 1930, pp. 17–31.