Like rats . . .

I read a fair amount of books about ships, shipping, and the history of seafaring. I’ve enjoyed fiction written about the sea and those who explore the world by sailing. One of the recurring conversations in our home is whether or not Herman Melville’s Moby Dick should be required reading for high school students. My wife, who I must say has never read the novel, argues that it is a nonessential book. I argue that it is a classic that teaches not only about the culture of whaling, but the structure of literature. We won’t ever resolve the disagreement, but I do have to admit that my wife gained a few points in our move because when we were sorting our books, I decided that we not only didn’t need two copies of the novel, we didn’t even need one. We didn’t move that book as I admitted that I am extremely unlikely to ever read it again and if I do feel such a need it is readily available in nearly every library in the country.

But I also consider myself to be reasonably well read in nonfictional literature about ships, the sea and the industries that depend upon boats as well as naval exploration and the adventures of amateur sailors. I’ve read Eric Jay Dolin’s exhaustively researched histories including Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America and Black Flags, Blue Waters: the Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates. Every year I read several memoirs of sailors and sailing families. Jane Maufe’s The Frozen Frontier about the trips of David Scott Cowper through the Northwest Passage in his ship Polar Bound was one of my reads last year. There are many, many more.

Looking back, however, I can’t remember ever reading much at all about the phenomenon of rats leaving a sinking ship in my recreational reading. There is, however, a delightful essay on the Merriam-Webster website about the idiom. The phrase, like rats fleeing a sinking ship, has been in use for over four hundred years. It appears that there is significant popular agreement that mice and rats have an ability to know when a structure is on the verge of collapse and will decamp before it happens. By the 17th century the behavior was in regular use as a simile. In 1600 an anonymous person is quoted in “A Dialogue Between Two Members of the New and Old East-India Companies:” “Don’t suffer your Selves to be buffeted from Post to Pillar, by Pinning your Faith upon such that purpose no more than to find a way out for themselves, like Rats that quit the House before it falls.”

Like rats fleeing a rotten house may have had a certain ring to it, but by the mid 17th century the phrase had morphed into rats fleeing a burning house: “Yea, if but sickness come, these carnall delights will runner from you, affrighted like Rats from a house on fire.” (Richard Younge, The Drunkard’s Character, 1638).

By the latter part of the 17th century, however, rats decided that they had had enough of running from collapsing and burning houses, and the expression took on a new mode of egress: decamping from a foundering ship. Throughout the 18th century and well into the 19th the phrase was used as a political metaphor. There are numerous examples of the use of the phrase in political commentary, including rats deserting the sinking ship, abandoning the vessel and even fleeing it.

It is my hunch, backed up by other authors, that given the continued existence of rats and failing enterprises, political and otherwise, the expression is likely to be invoked for generations to come. Its use may continue to be as inevitable as death and taxes, if you know what I mean.

However, I still don’t know if the phenomenon is real, or just a part of the popular culture. Some of the most intense periods of shipwreck were the first and second world wars, when German u-boats wreaked a terrible toll from the ships of North Atlantic shipping, The sinking fo the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner and the American liner Housatonic were factors in the United States decision to enter World War I, and the toll on North Atlantic shipping by German u-boats during the second world war gave rise to the development of air cargo shipping which is common to this day. Nowhere in the books I have read about those chapters in history, however, have much information about the North Atlantic being plagued by hordes of rats deserting the sinking ships. Nowhere to my knowledge is there a tally of the toll among rats of these dark days of our history.

Still, it should surprise no one that the phrase about rodents and unseaworthy vessels has been showing up in political commentary in the past few weeks. Business columnist Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “The line of rats deserting the sinking S.S. Trump is growing longer almost every day.” There certainly have been a lot of resignations from the Cabinet and other political positions in the week since the violent mob stormed the Capitol. Some of those resigning appear to be attempting to salvage their political careers by distancing themselves from the appearance of complicity with the president’s inflammatory rhetoric, as if they only recently became aware of how toxic such speech and actions are.

I have to admit that I don’t have much problem calling some of those people rats. The incompetent education secretary Betsy DeVos’ resignation was welcomed by educators. It seems that being in charge of the nation’s agency that deals with public education didn’t require a person who believed that public eduction is a good and necessary endeavor and the choice of DeVos as secretary was a cynical attack on the cause of education in our country. It may be an insult of rats everywhere to make the comparison.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has also resigned and it appears that her husband, Mitch McConnell is also angry with the president, though it seems unlikely that history will remember his time in the US Senate as much more than playing lackey for the soon to be former president.

I think we need a new metaphor for the political fallout that we will continue to see in the weeks and months to come. In the meantime, I don’t expect to be reading much about rats in my exploration of naval texts.

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