Between 1930 and 1950, a Newfoundland sailor was used by a prominent American cartoonist to represent the spirit of working-class New York City. That Newfoundland sailor was Captain William Morris Barnes and his extraordinary life will be the subject of a “storytelling” on April 6 at the Maritime History Archives.

Inhabiting the voice of Capt. Barnes will be none other than recent Memorial writer-in-residence Andy Jones. Performing artist Anita Best will be featured as the voice of Barnes’ wife Anastasia, historical asides will be supplied by Dr. Valerie Burton and fourth year history student Meaghan Walker (whose honours paper “So That Was All Right”: The Extraordinary Life of a Sailor and His Autobiography” was the inspiration for the storytelling) will put the entire presentation into context.

The project began when Ms. Walker was handed an almost illegible photocopy of a BT-124, the record of a master sailor’s career, by Dr. Burton. The record was that of Capt. Barnes. Repeatedly cited for being drunk and disorderly, his employment problems and bad behaviour more than filled the narrow strip of paper. Born into a middle class merchant family in St. John’s, Capt. Barnes first went to sea as an 11-year-old.

“Dr. Burton [who specializes in the Atlantic world and the study of sailors and masculinity] suggested to me at the time that here was a man whose real life might be a better story than the autobiography he produced at the age of 79,” says Ms. Walker. 

Capt. Barnes’ autobiography is a story in itself. It was published in two versions – an American edition in 1929 and a British edition in 1930. The British edition (Rolling Home: When Ships Were Ships and Not Tin Pots) credits Capt. Barnes as sole author whereas the American edition (When Ships Were Ships and Not Tin Pots: The Seafaring Adventures of Captain William Morris Barnes) deviates significantly from the later one. It includes photographs, engravings, a forward that doesn’t exist in the British version and a dedication to a Hilda Renbold Wortman.

Ms. Walker started digging around to find out who Hilda Renbold Wortman was. Her story, too, is truly amazing. One of the first people ever to appear on film as a result of her father working with Thomas Edison, Ms. Wortman met Capt. Barnes in Abington Square in New York City while doing some scouting work for her husband Denys Wortman, a prominent American cartoonist of the early to mid-20th century. Ms. Wortman worked with Capt. Barnes to transcribe his stories into the autobiography and her husband used Capt. Barnes as the inspiration for one of his most famous cartoon characters, a man named “Mopey Dick.”

Ultimately Ms. Walker was able to make contact with the Wortmans’ son who was still in possession of Capt. Barnes’ writings and his mother’s careful transcriptions of their conversations. Denys Wortman Jr. has now donated these papers to the Maritime History Archive.

Ms. Walker’s paper looks at how Capt. Barnes invents and imagines himself through autobiography but it was the power of his voice, which can still be heard through the text of When Ships Were Ships, which led to the idea for a dramatization.

“I could really hear his voice, the old seafarer that’s telling stories,” says Ms. Walker. 

Dr. Valerie Burton, who comments, “this is a co-operative project in the best pedagogic sense,” brought the idea of a storytelling to Andy Jones last fall.

“Andy contributed a suggestion of no small significance when he observed that the voice that spoke to him from the autobiography had a West Country burr,”  Dr. Burton says. “This will be a presentation with general appeal, but it also discusses what counts in history: how to negotiate the individual and the collective, where 'the local’ ends and the general takes over and then comes back again.”

“The Extraordinary Captain Barnes: b. 1850 St. John’s, d. 1934 Snug Harbour, New York” takes place Tuesday, April 6 from 12-1:30 p.m. at the Maritime History Archive, AA-1014.