Charles Tyng (August 24, 1801June 20, 1879) was a New England sea captain and merchant, notable for a memoir written near the end of his life. Although Tyng was born, the fifth of eight children, to a prosperous upper-middle class family, his mother died when he was seven, and Tyng thereafter seemed unable to apply himself to his studies. Sent to sea at age thirteen, Tyng matured quickly and, by his early twenties—beginning within the empire of Boston merchant prince

Thomas Handasyd Perkins Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins, also known as T. H. Perkins (December 15, 1764 – January 11, 1854), was an American merchant, slave trader, smuggler and philanthropist from a wealthy Boston Brahmin family. Starting with bequests from his grand ...

—Tyng was captaining his own ships, in the process encountering

sharks Sharks are a group of elasmobranch cartilaginous fish characterized by a ribless endoskeleton, dermal denticles, five to seven gill slits on each side, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the ...

pirates Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are call ...

mutinies Mutiny is a revolt among a group of people (typically of a military or a crew) to oppose, change, or remove superiors or their orders. The term is commonly used for insubordination by members of the military against an officer or superior, b ...

shipwrecks A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. It results from the event of ''shipwrecking'', which may be intentional or unintentional. There were approximately thre ...

, horrific storms, and

cholera Cholera () is an infection of the small intestine by some Strain (biology), strains of the Bacteria, bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea last ...

. The memoir of his early life has been called "an irreplaceable account of the nation's seafaring history, an authentic chronicle that needs no fictional embellishment," for instance, shedding additional light on the

Canton system The Canton System (1757–1842; zh, t=一口通商, p=Yīkǒu tōngshāng, j=jat1 hau2 tung1 soeng1, "Single orttrading relations") served as a means for Qing China to control trade with the West within its own country by focusing all trade ...

in China and the

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

of early nineteenth-century seamen. In 1826, Tyng married Anna Arnold (1804–1831), who died before they had been married seven years. In 1833, Tyng married Anna Amelia (or Amelia Anna) McAlpine (1816–1885), sister of civil engineer William J. McAlpine. The Tyngs spent thirty years of their married life in

Havana Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.Black Warrior Affair) before they retired to

Newburyport, Massachusetts Newburyport is a coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, northeast of Boston. The population was 18,289 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. A historic seaport with a vibrant tourism industry, Newburyport includes p ...

. Tyng died in 1879 while visiting his daughter in

Providence, Rhode Island Providence () is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Rhode Island, most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. The county seat of Providence County, Rhode Island, Providence County, it is o ...

. Tyng's memoir was published in 1999 as ''Before the Wind: The Memoir of an American Sea Captain, 1808–1833'' (

Viking Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

Penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...

, 1999). In his review for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'',

W. Jeffrey Bolster W. Jeffrey Bolster is a professor emeritus of history at the University of New Hampshire in the United States, and the author of ''The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail'',Bolster, W. Jeffrey. The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic i ...

wrote that the book had "authenticity and nerve" and was "a testimonial to an ambitious but likable man with a penchant for the unusual," a writer with a "storyteller's flair" and a "novelist's eye for detail."W. Jeffrey Bolster, "Seaward Ho!" ''New York Times Book Review'', July 11, 1999, 24

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tyng, Charles 1801 births 1879 deaths 19th-century American memoirists Maritime writers American sailors American expatriates in Cuba