IT is the centennial year of “Billy Budd, Sailor,” Herman Melville’s last book, a novella. Melville wrote it in the last five years of his life, but it was published posthumously only in 1924. It is considered a masterpiece second only to “Moby Dick.” The Berkshire Historical Society, located in Arrowhead, Melville’s farmstead in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, is pulling out all the stops in celebrating the book’s centennial, with events and programs that started on September 20 with selections from the opera “Billy Budd, Sailor” by Benjamin Britten, along with readings from the novella, and will culminate on November 13 with a screening of the 1962 film “Billy Budd” directed by Peter Ustinov and starring Terence Stamp as Billy Budd.
Meanwhile, limited copies of a centennial edition of “Billy Budd Sailor With Fourteen Illustrations Cut in Wood” by American visual artist Barry Moser were published by Pennyroyal Press, Northampton, Massachusetts, 2024.
Literary critics consider “Billy Budd, Sailor” one of Melville’s best books, according to Lesley Herzberg, executive director of Berkshire Historical Society. In it, he returned full circle to his seafaring stories that endeared him to his avid readers in portraying the everyday dangers of an 18th-century sailor’s life. “Melville is playing with questions of right or wrong, morality, basic human questions and emotions,” says Herzberg.
Billy Budd, Sailor is the story of a young, handsome sailor impressed into the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th century. It was 1797, a year of mutiny in the British fleet and ongoing war with France. Melville characterized Billy Budd as “young; and despite his all but fully developed frame, in aspect looked even younger than he really was, owing to a lingering adolescent expression in the as yet smooth face, all but feminine in purity of natural complexion, but where, thanks to his seagoing, the lily was quite suppressed and the rose had some ado visibly to flush through the tan.”
He is not perfect, however: “Though our Handsome Sailor had as much of masculine beauty as one can expect anywhere to see; nevertheless, like the beautiful woman in one of Hawthorne’s minor tales, there was just one thing amiss in him. No visible blemish, indeed, as with the lady; no, but an occasional liability to a vocal defect. Though in the hour of elemental uproar or peril he was everything that a sailor should be, yet under sudden provocation of strong heart-feeling, his voice otherwise singularly musical, as if expressive of the harmony within, was apt to develop an organic hesitancy, in fact, more or less of a stutter or even worse.”
That speech impairment causes his downfall when the master-at-arms, who envies his popularity among the ship’s crew, falsely accuses him of mutiny in the presence of the ship’s captain, Captain Vere. In that moment of intense emotion and unable to defend himself verbally, Billy strikes Claggart and accidentally kills him. Billy Budd says, “I did not mean to kill him. Could I have used my tongue, I would not have struck him. But he foully lied to my face and in presence of my Captain, and I had to say something, and I could only say it with a blow, God help me!” Despite the lack of intent to kill, Billy is hanged after a drumhead trial for striking and killing his accuser.
Literary scholars believe that Melville built the story from his own family history. In 1842, a young midshipman and two of the crew were hanged for the crime of mutiny on an American naval brig. Guert Gansevoort, the ship’s executive officer who happened to be Melville’s cousin, presided over the drumhead court. But in the ensuing court martial of his commanding officer, Mackenzie, Gansevoort was implicated in what many considered a miscarriage of justice.
Despite recognizing Billy’s innocence and lack of intent to kill, Captain Edward Vere feels compelled by the letter of the law to sentence him to death to maintain order and discipline on the ship. He is torn between the rules and demands of authority and his empathetic side. “Our avowed responsibility,” he says, “is in this: that however pitilessly that law may operate, we nevertheless adhere to it and administer it… let not warm hearts betray heads that should be cool.” Claggart was “struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!” Thus, Billy Budd is formally convicted and sentenced to be hung. His last words were — “God bless Captain Vere!”
One hundred years after its publication, Billy Budd, Sailor remains relevant and continues to be read and reread as it explores the universal themes we still grapple with at present: themes of innocence, justice, conscience, and the conflict between natural goodness and the harsh demands of duty and law.
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