University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTION

Educated criticism of John Smith's writings has conspicuously fought shy of
his two works on seamanship. Some critics have taken little notice of the
value of his ethnographical work, but have vigorously oppugned his reliability
as a historian. Others have praised his reports on how the American
Indians lived and acted, but have remained silent or noncommittal when it
came to what he wrote about his fellow colonists. Still others, who were conversant
with the history of Jamestown but whose knowledge of eastern
Europe stopped short of Budapest, have said that his tales of the Turks were
fabrications, especially after a Hungarian engineer resident in England chose
to expose his own ignorance by publishing derogatory comments on Smith's
True Travels.

In short, of all the scholarship on John Smith, almost nothing
has been written about the Accidence or the Sea Grammar. Edward Arber, perhaps
stymied by the Accidence, barely mentioned the other and did not trouble
to print it. Even the most recent and soundest critic of Smith's writings,
Everett Emerson, perhaps relying too much on Arber, has asserted that "the
Accidence and its sequel are the least important of Smith's writings." On the
other hand, a highly praised summation of English knowledge of seamanship
in Elizabethan and early Stuart times opens with the words, "In the
year 1626 Captain John Smith ...," and goes on to point out in a number
of extensive passages the "virtues" of Smith's two books for seamen. This
hardly bears out Emerson's opinion, that the Accidence "seems to have been
hack work" and that in the Sea Grammar "only a chapter...has much interest
now." Emerson's opinion is understandable, since he was evidently speaking
only from the literary point of view. Yet Smith is not sui generis. Blaise
Pascal (1623–1662), a man of letters, was also a mathematician. His Essai
pour les coniques (Paris, 1640) may be unreadable from a literary point of view,
but that does not mean it is unimportant.

Like the Accidence, the Sea Grammar requires editorial treatment different

from Smith's other works. What holds good for the Accidence holds good for
its sequel. The Sea Grammar is also a list of names for nautical things and
people. It differs only in that these names are for the most part explained, and
most of the explanations are not Smith's. They were borrowed from a manuscript
copy of Sir Henry Mainwaring's "Dictionary." To annotate this
small book would therefore be like annotating a pocket dictionary — an
exercise in tautology.

Still, a good many terms occur in the Sea Grammar that are barely, if at
all, comprehensible to modern readers. In view of this, the editor has used
his discretion in supplying definitions for such terms as are not readily found
in modern dictionaries or that otherwise seem difficult. The editor has also
occasionally attempted to clarify obscure passages.

The Sea Grammar is usually considered the first work on seamanship in
the English language. But one must define "first work" to mean the compound
text that resulted from Smith's incorporation of Mainwaring's explanations
into the framework Smith had already established in the Accidence.
Beyond that, the Sea Grammar is also a work of distinction in literary terms if
one considers Smith's embellishment of the whole with "you are there" immediacy,
as in the memorable scene of the fight at sea, or in his moving plea
for better conditions for sailors, which makes up the last three pages of the
work.

For readers especially interested in this early quasi-technical work, the
following publications were of unusual assistance to the editor in his own
research on Smith as a nautical writer:

1.

• Sir Henry Mainwaring, "The Seaman's Dictionary," in G. E. Manwaring
  and W. G. Perrin, eds., The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring
  (Navy Records Society, LIV, LVI [London, 1920, 1922]), II, a work undoubtedly
  used by Smith himself, though not precisely in its modern form.

2.

• Nathaniel Butler, "A Dialogicall Discourse Concerninge Marine
  Affaires ...," in W. G. Perrin, ed., Boteler's Dialogues (Navy Records Society,
  LXV [London, 1929]), a work by a personal friend of Smith's (see the
  Generall Historie, 190) who may have been instrumental in guiding Smith to
  Mainwaring's manuscript.

3.

• M[ichael] Oppenheim, ed., The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson
  (Navy Records Society, XXII, XXIII, XLIII, XLV, XLVII [London,
  1902–1914]), a general work, parts of which may have been known to Smith,
  though acquaintance with the author is doubtful.

4.

• John Davis, The Seamans Secrets (London, 1607), in Albert Hastings
  Markham, ed., The Voyages and Works of John Davis, the Navigator (Hakluyt
  

  ---

  43

  
  
  Society, 1st Ser., LIX [London, 1880]), 229–337, a work by the early explorer
  John Davis that is referred to in the Sea Grammar, 83.

5.

• W[illiam] Salisbury and R[oger] C[harles] Anderson, eds., A Treatise
  on Shipbuilding and a Treatise on Rigging Written about 1620–1625 (Society
  for Nautical Research, Occasional Publications, No. 6 [London, 1958]), two
  contemporary treatises only recently published.

6.

• D. W. Waters, The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early
  Stuart Times (New Haven, Conn., 1958), a modern magnum opus.

7.

• Bertil Sandahl, Middle English Sea Terms, Essays and Studies on
  English Language and Literature, VIII, XX (Uppsala, Sweden, 1951,
  1958), an important work still in progress.

8.

• Kermit Goell, ed., A Sea Grammar with the Plaine Exposition of Smiths
  Accidence for Young Sea-Men, Enlarged (London, 1970), a modern edition of the
  Sea Grammar, annotated, with a few minor errors, and well indexed.

9.

• F. H. Burgess, A Dictionary of Sailing (Baltimore, 1961), "a dictionary
  for all sailors and those interested in the sea."