Jens Jacob Eschels had a varied life at sea. His children, grandchildren and friends were interested in it, and in his old age he wrote his memoirs. Is Eschels’ life also of interest to maritime historians who want to study labour patterns in the age of sail? The question will be answered in the affirmative in this essay.

Born in 1757 on the Northern Frisian island of Föhr — near Schleswig and ruled by the king of Denmark - Eschels went to sea at the age of eleven. Under the guidance of a seafaring uncle he was enroled in Amsterdam for the Dutch whaling fleet. Starting as a junior cabin boy, after seven consecutive whaling voyages Eschels in 1776 switched in Copenhagen to a Danish whaler, where the financial rewards were greater. Meanwhile he had become an able seaman who spent winters at home supporting his family. In 1778 he stopped whaling and turned to the mercantile marine, not returning home for more than a decade. He sailed from Amsterdam, and later from Hamburg and Altona. At the age of twenty-four he became a captain, when his own superior died during the voyage. Eschels sailed in European, Mediterranean and Caribbean waters. He married in 1784 and six years later, as a widower, he remarried and settled in Altona. In 1797 he left the sea and became a shopkeeper, a tobacco manufacturer and a consultant on shipping. He died in 1842, seven years after his memoirs were published.

Eschels’ life contains all the elements usually ascribed to a successful seaman: maritime background, early entry, promotion, various sorts of voyages, marriage and a further life ashore. But not every young lad met the same Dame Fortune. Still, Jens Jacob was not exceptional. Many seamen could have told similar stories, and several did.

In a quantitative sense it is impossible to gauge how typical Eschels was. There were tens of thousands of them. In the other chapters of this book one can find rough estimates for different countries. But figures about the seafaring labour force do not provide insight into the labour pattern of the individual seaman. The vast majority of these men remain anonymous for the maritime historian and remain obscured within the totality of a crew.