Robert Perry (sailor)

Transcription

I was born in August of 1960 and my mother, she was very young. She was in the eighth grade at the time. Because she was actually 13 when she got pregnant. She was 14 by the time that I was born. Well, when I was growing up as a kid, I mean it wasn't really terrible conditions, but it wasn't really, it wasn't ideal conditions. As time went on I just wanted to you know distance myself from it. That's one reason I say, well, there's got to be more to the world than this. Well, one time we went out in suburban Maryland on something like a small lake and we had a bathtub and you know we turned it into a boat. You know there was about six of us, and little kids you know and that was like, I was about 11 years old. It was like magic. You know what I mean? Because we were you know not sinking. We were defying you know nature. It was like you know we're floating on water. Then I started reading about boats and ships and you know stuff like that and so I said, you know, I want to be a sailor. You know I know what I'll do. I'll join the Navy. My father taught me to row when I was about five or six years old. It was actually a family holiday trip through Massachusetts and we stopped at some motel. This would have been in the late 1950s. And there was a pond there that had old flat-bottomed wooden skiff rowboats and Dad decided that was the moment that he should teach me how to row. I got a boat, I guess my first boat when I was about 12. And you know I had a job running a yacht as skipper by the time I was 21 and I spent most of the next ten years sailing as a mate or deckhand, mate, master on sailing school ships, oceanographic research vessels, big charter boats, etc. When I got out of the Navy I came back to Washington, DC. And I was just running with a pretty rough crowd of young people. You got to remember I'm 21 years old. So I really didn't have a whole lot of good ideas at the time. And so I just up and said, if I'm going to do anything you know I would rob a bank. And so that's what I did. And you know it was probably the worst decision I ever made. I wasn't thinking about writing a book about African Americans in the age of sailing. I was just like a young kid in my 20s hanging out with these old men in you know goat fields and drinking beer and talking to them about sailing boats in the Caribbean. But they struck my imagination. They were, in my naiveté there was this authenticity about these guys and what they were about. And that authenticity spoke to me. I went into the archives and I started rummaging around in old shipping records. I didn't really exactly know what I was going to do. And I found all these African American guys on ships, cargo ships, in the first decade of the 19th century, right after 1800. I'd read all the books about shipping, I'd been reading books since I was a kid. I'd been to all the museum exhibits in the United States. Nothing about African American guys on ships. And now when I'm in the archive and I'm unfolding these pieces of paper it was like a third of the crew, a quarter of the crew, half the crew, all the crew are black guys on boats. I'm in prison man, you know. It's not a story book world. You're in there by yourself and you know you're living. You're breathing. You know some people do it quiet. Some people make noise. Some people holler and scream. Some people go crazy. And you have to read and be able to imagine and to be able to dream and hope, you know, that you know, I know there's something better than this. When "Black Jacks" came along, the story, and the book review I read at first and then the book, it came along at just the right time. So I'm reading these stories about different sailors, African American sailors in slavery. Some can't read, some can't write, cut off from everything they've known. I say well if they can do it, maybe I can do it. The im age at the heart of the book was black men in motion at a time when most black people were enslaved and fixed in place. And a sailing ship provided a means of liberation, a means of escape. They were in a system that was stacked against them so deeply that the most ambitious and bold found ships a place where they could express themselves, develop a craft skill, see the world, get away from slavery, make a little money. All I started thinking about was getting out and getting a job on a boat. I had a million people telling me that you can't do it. I had to find out. So that's why I wrote Dr. Bolster, Dr. Jeff Bolster. I wrote him a letter so I could find out. Hey! How you doing, man. August 13, 1997. Dear Mr. White, thank you for your letter. I am delighted that were intrigued by the subject of my book. Clearly you are a man who likes to dream, who feels called by the sea and who likes to write. A man, too, who knows more than most these days about restricted freedoms. You are a soul mate with the men I wrote about in "Black Jacks." The brave unchanging sea will be there when you get out. It is waiting for you. Good luck to you. I hope you're out soon and I hope that you find the circumstances and the strength to walk a different path. W. Jeffrey Bolster, associate professor. He had this vision. The vision was inspired by the written word. I'm a sailor. I'm a professional sailor, a merchant mariner, merchant marine. And I did it. I have been released. You know I'm doing what I want to do. I am free. And I have accomplished something that I set out to do 35 years ago. The book, reading, being able to read and write, it's probably made the biggest difference in my life, more than anything. I've been on a 35 year odyssey. That's how I feel. I feel good. And I still have a lot of stuff to do.