In Redburn, I have just discovered that Herman Melville explicitly lays out my thesis that the entire American economy during the Age of Sail depended upon the exploitation of sailor personalities, which were innately reckless, impulsive, addictive, and thrill-seeking:

…with the majority of them, the very fact of their being sailors, argues a certain recklessness and sensualism of character, ignorance, and depravity; consider that they are generally friendless and alone in the world; or if they have friends and relatives, they are almost constantly beyond the reach of their good influences… consider that by their very vocation they are shunned by the better classes of people, and cut off from all access to respectable and improving society…

There are classes of men in the world, who bear the same relation to society at large, that the wheels do to a coach: and are just as indispensable. But however easy and delectable the springs upon which the insiders pleasantly vibrate: however sumptuous the hammer-cloth, and glossy the door-panels; yet, for all this, the wheels must still revolve in dusty, or muddy revolutions. No contrivance, no sagacity can lift them out of the mire; for upon something the coach must be bottomed; on something the insiders must roll.

Now, sailors form one of these wheels: they go and come round the globe; they are the true importers, and exporters of spices and silks; of fruits and wines and marbles; they carry missionaries, embassadors, opera-singers, armies, merchants, tourists, and scholars to their destination: they are a bridge of boats across the Atlantic; they are the primum mobile of all commerce; and, in short, were they to emigrate in a body to man the navies of the moon, almost every thing would stop here on earth except its revolution on its axis, and the orators in the American Congress.

And yet, what are sailors? What in your heart do you think of that fellow staggering along the dock? Do you not give him a wide berth, shun him, and account him but little above the brutes that perish? Will you throw open your parlors to him; invite him to dinner? or give him a season ticket to your pew in church?–No. You will do no such thing; but at a distance, you will perhaps subscribe a dollar or two for the building of a hospital, to accommodate sailors already broken down; or for the distribution of excellent books among tars who can not read. And the very mode and manner in which such charities are made, bespeak, more than words, the low estimation in which sailors are held. It is useless to gainsay it; they are deemed almost the refuse and offscourings of the earth; and the romantic view of them is principally had through romances.

But can sailors, one of the wheels of this world, be wholly lifted up from the mire? There seems not much chance for it, in the old systems and programmes of the future, however well-intentioned and sincere; for with such systems, the thought of lifting them up seems almost as hopeless as that of growing the grape in Nova Zembla…

To which Walt Whitman effectively answered:

I am for those who believe in loose delights—I share
the midnight orgies of young men,
I dance with the dancers, and drink with the drink-
ers,
The echoes ring with our indecent calls,
I take for my love some prostitute—I pick out some
low person for my dearest friend,
He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate—he shall be one
condemned by others for deeds done;
I will play a part no longer—Why should I exile
myself from my companions?
O you shunned persons! I at least do not shun you,
I come forthwith in your midst—I will be your poet,
I will be more to you than to any of the rest.

And:

Then falter not, O book! fulfil your destiny!
You, not a reminiscence of the land alone,
You too, as a lone bark, cleaving the ether—purpos’d I
know not whither—yet ever full of faith,
Consort to every ship that sails—sail you!
Bear forth to them, folded, my love —(Dear mariners!
for you I fold it here, in every leaf;)
Speed on, my Book! spread your white sails, my little
bark, athwart the imperious waves!
Chant on—sail on—bear o’er the boundless blue, from
me, to every shore,
This song for mariners and all their ships.