ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the stereotypic image of the American merchant seaman and the orientations of the present members of the occupation to this historically based stereotype. Sea daddy, as the traditional seaman is called here, is an anachronism. Once he represented a vast majority of seamen; now he is a dying breed. He is all that remains of the drunken, spend-it-all, old salts who once manned American merchant vessels during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This era is the source of many Americans' affection and nostalgia for the sea. This somewhat imagined and glorious past has been laboriously memorialized into a national identity (Lawrence 1966; Forsyth 1986). Although sea daddy is disappearing, he nevertheless still characterizes the occupation and continues to umbrella public opinion. America is no longer a great maritime nation (Morris 1979:231), and sea daddy is no longer representative of the men who now sail America's merchant fleet.
