(LITERATURE AND POETRY) GOODING [JAMES] HENRY The Sailors Th

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(LITERATURE AND POETRY.) GOODING, [JAMES] HENRY. The Sailor's Thoughts of Home * Oh Do They Sometimes Think Of Me * In Memory of Albert Hooper Who was Lost Overboard, October 4th 1856 * In Memory of Eli Dodge, who was Killed by a Whale, Sept. 4, 1858. Four printed poems on thin paper, each with a woodcut border, and averaging 6 x 3-1/2 inches; paper evenly toned; a couple with archival paper repairs. should be seen. [New Bedford?, circa 1864?]

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four rare examples of poems by a young african american whaler. James Henry Gooding (1836-1864) poet, sailor, and Civil War soldier, was born in Troy, New York. Little is known of his early life but six poems composed while at sea on the whaling ship Sunbeam from 1856 to 1859 were printed in small broadside format. His letters home have been published in a collection "On the Altar of Freedom, a Black Soldier's Civil War letters from the Front, edited by Virginia M. Adams (University of Massachusetts Press), where these poems are cited. There is no record of where the poems were printed, though the editor mentions similar work by the Mercury Job Printer in New Bedford, which would make sense. They are not cited by Porter or French, nor included in Brown University's enormous Harris Collection of American poetry. A complete set of six were given to the Old Dartmouth Historical Society in 1916 by Frank E. Brown, a New Bedford manufacturer of Whaling gear. Other than that, the present four examples are the only other known copies.