By Ted Simonds, Sion Project Cataloguer and David Thomas, Assistant Librarian
This month we are taking a look at two 17th-century nautically inspired works recently catalogued in the Sion College Library collection.
John Ryther, A plat for mariners; or, The seaman’s preacher : Delivered in several sermons upon Jonah’s voyage… (London, 1675) Sion Main Octavo A66.1/R99
John Ryther (or Rither) (1634?-1681) was a Church of England clergyman and later nonconformist preacher from Yorkshire. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. In 1655, a year after the Protectorate established the Commission of Triers to assess the suitability of clergy, he was appointed vicar of Frodingham in Lincolnshire. He was ejected from his living with the Restoration in 1660 and became vicar of North Ferriby in Yorkshire, only to be removed again in 1662. Undeterred he illegally preached from his house in Brough and was imprisoned in York Castle. A further spell of imprisonment followed his time preaching at chapels in Bradford-Dale and around Halifax.
Seeking respite, he eventually moved to Wapping in east London in 1669, where he became much-loved by the seamen who lived there. His Plat for mariners was a popular work printed in 1675, and gives spiritual lessons tailored to seafarers aptly derived from the book of Jonah. So beloved was he, that it is said the seamen in his congregation protected him from further censure. This adoration earned him the popular epithet of ‘seaman’s preacher’, as well as ‘Crying Jeremy’ due to his emotional style of preaching . Interestingly, his son (also called John Ryther) went on to be a chaplain aboard merchant ships. This work continued to have influence into the next century, it was reprinted in 1780 with a preface by one of the most famous Christian mariners, John Newton.
Daniel Pell, Pelagos. Nec inter vivos, nec inter mortuos, Neither amongst the living, nor amongst the dead. Or, An improvement of the sea : upon the nine nautical verses in the 107. Psalm… (London, 1659) Sion Main Octavo A66.1/P36
Little is known of Daniel Pell, the author of Pelagos (the Greek word meaning “sea”) printed in London in 1659. He may be the same Daniel Pell who was admitted to St John’s College, Cambridge, aged 19 in 1651, was ordained in Peterborough ten years later, and whose living was the village of Little Oakley in Essex, next to the port of Harwich. If this Pell is the author of Pelagos, then he must have, for some time, traded the flat terrestrial expanses of eastern England for adventure in the world’s corners found only on the high seas. It is possible that he may have spent time as a naval chaplain. This quirky little book brings the genre of travel writing into union with a homiletical expostulation on Psalm 107.
Pell’s Pelagos contains descriptions of the world made from observation and conversations with numerous sailors. He describes places as wide-ranging as the Caribbean, Cape Horn, and Novaya Zemlya. The accounts he gives contain rich descriptions of Stromboli’s eruptions, mermaids, ginger trees and (pictured below), sharks.
Alongside the zoological details, Pell illustrates a Christian lesson, often with striking turns of phrase. For example in his discussion of flying fish:
“It is observed by the Mariners, that this fish rather than it will bee taken by its enemies in the waters, it will many times betake it self in its flight into ships, or boats. And alas this makes the Proverb good, Out of the frying-pan into the fire … That many a pretious, and gratious soul is as hardly chased, and pursued with heart-daunting terrours, both from sin, conscience, law, and Satan, as ever this poor creature was in the waters, and in a far dolorouser sort. Sin makes a Hubbub in the soul” (p.199-201)
The book was later heavily plagiarised by the publisher and writer John Dunton, who travelled to New England in 1686 and wrote letters home describing various sea creatures.
A Monument of Fame 