Joseph Carl Spratt papers

The Joseph Carl Spratt papers provide a glimpse of the daily life and extraordinary travels of a regular sailor in the United States Navy both as a crewmember of the U.S.S. Kearsarge during the “Great White Fleet” cruise around the world during 1908-1909 and during later service aboard the U.S.S. North Dakota. The bulk of the collection consists of letters written home by Joe, along with picture postcards sent from many of the ports he visited.

Early letters in the series describe the feelings and observations of a young man from Grover Hill, Ohio about such things as his first impressions of New York City, training and drill routines, the other men he serves with, and his prospects when training is completed. Once he had been accepted as a coal-passer to serve in the Great White Fleet his next letters are more sporadic as he was often en route at sea and unable to write, with a single letter from Panama, one from Honolulu, and then beginning in August 1909 from various ports of call on the cruise, including Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney, Manila, Amoy, Colombo, Cairo, Malta, and Algiers. Spratt’s description of the various ports didn’t go into a lot of detail and were limited by his writing skills, but you still get a sense of the wonder and excitement he felt, and the recognition of the magnitude of his adventure.

Some letters are filled with the enthusiasm of a young man seeing the world, such as his letter of January 6, 1909 describing Cairo, the pyramids, and the rather macabre reaction to seeing a mummy, “They are awful looking things all dried up and no eyes. That alone was worth ten dollars”. Other letters show how he has matured from a footloose young man to a somber and responsible sailor describing the aftermath of a fatal explosion and fire on the U.S.S. North Dakota in his letter of Sept. 13, 1910, “I helped to carry the dead bodies out of the fireroom. The flesh was burnt to the bone on some parts of the body. It was the most horrible sight I ever seen.” Many of the letters written from Cuba in 1911 describe his activities in boat races and betting, as well as his observations about the country.

While most of his correspondence is more about the process of a trip as seen from above and below the decks than the wider implications on a national level, Spratt provides a unique point of view of an ordinary U.S. Navy seaman at the dawn of the 20th century.