Billy Budd: A Sailor’s Perspective

Last summer my husband and I visited the Erie Maritime Museum and took a daysail aboard the US Brig Niagara. The Niagara was built in 1988 as a reconstruction of the warship aboard which Oliver Hazard Perry won the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813.

Her senior captain Walter Rybka, who is devoted to the preservation of this rich epoch in our naval history, was kind enough to send these eloquent reflections on the story of Billy Budd. 

–Opera Lady

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14 April 2007

Even were it not set at sea, Herman Melville’s Billy Budd would claim our attention as an amazingly compact tragedy. The tale reveals the helplessness of the conventional, well-ordered society represented by Captain Vere to protect the innocent Budd when confronted by the malignant Claggart.

Being set at sea, however, makes this story so much more gripping. The sea is a place of wonder, mystery, beauty, but also a place of hardship, danger, and cruel terror. It is a place of peril humans can only venture upon through skill, courage, and faith in their ship.

Every ship is a microcosm of the society it came from. In past ages there was no communication with the land between departure and arrival. A ship at sea was its own isolated society, a tiny floating city suspended over an abyss.

Every society is at heart based on trust, but nowhere else is this more so than in the tight confines of a sailing ship at sea. All onboard are dependent upon each other. The crew must trust the officers to be competent and just, the officers must trust the crew to be diligent and loyal, and all must trust an ancient set of traditions.

Joseph Conrad once wrote, “The true peace of God begins a thousand miles from the nearest land.” It is into this peace, so utterly indifferent to us, that we intrude our ship. A ship that whatever its cargo or mission, is also freighted with the whole human condition.

We bring with us to sea our hopes and fears, our good intent as well as our sins, our strength and our frailty. It is on this narrow stage of a ship’s deck we find ourselves in the characters of this drama of Billy Budd.

Walter P. Rybka
Erie Maritime Museum Administrator &
Senior Captain US Brig Niagara