"Tarring the Blacks" for Daniel Defoe's "Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1863-64)

Tarring the Blacks (page 344) — the volume's eighty-ninth composite wood-block engraving for Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Related by himself (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1863-64). Part II, The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Chapter XII, "The Carpenter's Whimsical Contrivance." Full-page, framed with a nautical rope border: 13.7 cm high x 21.2 cm wide. Running head: "An Unpleasant Conversation" (p. 345).

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Passage Illustrated: Repelling Aboriginal Attackers without Bloodshed

Our carpenterbeing prepared to grave the outside of the ship, as well as to pay the seams where he had caulked her to stop the leaks, had got two kettles just let down into the boat, one filled with boiling pitch, and the other with rosin, tallow, and oil, and such stuff as the shipwrights use for that work; and the man that attended the carpenter had a great iron ladle in his hand, with which he supplied the men that were at work with the hot stuff. Two of the enemy’s men entered the boat just where this fellow stood in the foresheets; he immediately saluted them with a ladle full of the stuff, boiling hot which so burned and scalded them, being half-naked that they roared out like bulls, and, enraged with the fire, leaped both into the sea. The carpenter saw it, and cried out, "Well done, Jack! give them some more of it!" and stepping forward himself, takes one of the mops, and dipping it in the pitch-pot, he and his man threw it among them so plentifully that, in short, of all the men in the three boats, there was not one that escaped being scalded in a most frightful manner, and made such a howling and crying that I never heard a worse noise: for it is worth observing that, though pain naturally makes all people cry out, yet every nation has a particular way of exclamation, and make a noise as different one from another as their speech. I cannot give the noise these creatures made a better name than howling, nor a name more proper to the tone of it; for I never heard anything more like the noise of the wolves which, as I have said, I heard howl in the forest on the frontiers of Languedoc.

I was never better pleased with a victory in my life; not only as it was a perfect surprise to me, and that our danger was imminent before, but as we got this victory without any bloodshed, except of that man the seaman killed with his naked hands, and which I was very much concerned at. Although it maybe a just thing, because necessary (for there is no necessary wickedness in nature), yet I thought it was a sad sort of life, when we must be always obliged to be killing our fellow-creatures to preserve ourselves; and, indeed, I think so still; and I would even now suffer a great deal rather than I would take away the life even of the worst person injuring me; and I believe all considering people, who know the value of life, would be of my opinion, if they entered seriously into the consideration of it. [Chapter XII, "The Carpenter's Whimsical Contrivance," page 342]

Commentary: "Blacks," "Indians," or Cochin-Chinese?

Although Phiz's 1864 treatment and the Cassell's version of that same year depict the European defenders as valiant in the confrontation with the Indo-Chinese pirates, neither treatment is particularly realistic or faithful to the text. The Cassell illustrator (James Abbott Pasquier) like Phiz in the same year has skewed the reader's perception of the incident by depicting the inept attackers as startled American aboriginals, semi-nude, wearing feathers, and carrying spears, hardly an improvement over George Cruikshank's earlier interpretation of the attackers as comic opera caricatures of Chinese warriors. Thus, Paget has deviated from past practice in treating his figures in this close-up of the European-Asian confrontation much more credibly, as the carpenter (in long naval coat, centre) is about to discharge the molten contents of the long-handled ladle at the assailant with the cutlass. The previous British illustrators, beginning with Cruikshank, have seen this incident not merely as a demonstration of British pluck and ingenuity, but as an opportunity for comic relief. Since the Cassell edition probably came out ahead of the Phiz-illustrated Routledge, Warne, and Routledge edition (also 1864), and since Phiz has captioned the parallel illustration Tarring the Blacks, Pasquier, albeit in a realistic vein, has probably borrowed the chief elements of his composition from Phiz. Moreover, unlike Cruikshank, both Phiz and Pasquier have depicted the attackers as spear-wielding, semi-nude, scalded aboriginals rather than as menacing Asians, which is the more accurate impression conveyed by Wal Paget in his 1891 lithograph "Well done, Jack! Give them some more of it.". However, all three interpretations smack of racist denigration of the Asian other who, despite numerical advantage, cannot defeat a much smaller number of resourceful Europeans.

Related Material

Other Interpretations of the Suppression of the Assault

Above: George Cruikshank's caricatural, half-page illustration of the discomfort visited upon the attacking Cochin Chinese, Fighting off the attackers with boiling oil. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Above: Phiz's comedic, full-page illustration of the ship's carpenter and a British seaman's using boiling pitch to terminate the invasion of the vessel by the "inhabitants," whom Phiz depicts as South-Sea islanders rather than Cochin Chinese: Tarring the Blacks. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Above: Paget's far more realistic full-page illustration of the ship's carpenter and his assistant about to use boiling pitch to combat the "inhabitants," who look again likeSouth-Sea islanders or North American aboriginals rather than Cochin Chinese: "Well done, Jack! Give them some more of it.". [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

References

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Related by himself. With upwards of One Hundred Illustrations. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1863-64.

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Exciting Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, as Related by Himself. With 120 original illustrations by Walter Paget. London, Paris,and Melbourne: Cassell, 1891.

Last modified 10 April 2018