Alfred Bulltop Stormalong (folk hero)

Alfred Bulltop Stormalong is a folk hero who developed through sailors’ songs and tall tales throughout the 1800s and into the early 1900s. The legend of Stormalong most likely originated among the sailors and maritime workers of Massachusetts and was probably based on African American chanting of the nineteenth century.

Like other American tall tales, the stories of Stormalong are filled with humorous exaggeration and portray Stormalong as a sailor of unbelievable size, strength, and capability. At the helm of his appropriately enormous, sky-scraping ship, the Courser, Stormalong traveled the world, sometimes altering the course of nature or history through his sheer enormousness and equally expansive bravery.

Background

The tall tale is a literary tradition closely linked to the growth of the United States. As American settlers moved throughout the country and colonized the Western United States, finding both natural splendor and difficult obstacles, they helped to develop a new national culture. Part of this culture was a spirit of individualism and pride in hard work, personal toughness, and grand accomplishments. Those features would factor into the mindset of the early settlers, as well as the stories they told.

One new aspect of their storytelling tradition was the bragging contest, in which people—often lumberjacks, cowboys, and other rugged workers and adventurers—would take turns telling tales with ever-increasing doses of exaggeration. Over time, the exaggerations overtook the actual content of the stories and became the main attraction. To the delight of their listeners, storytellers would continually make the subjects of their tales taller, stronger, faster, and generally more impressive than the average human.

This new tradition created many well-known and much-loved tall tales, some of which evolved through countless retellings around campfires and were ultimately captured in written or even filmed formats. One of the most famous denizens of the American tall tale was Paul Bunyan, a lumberjack of mind-boggling physical size and ability. Along with his similarly oversized pet ox, Paul Bunyan performed unbelievable feats such as clearing entire forests with a single axe swipe or rerouting rivers with his footsteps.

Other industries had their own heroic folk-mascots, such as John Henry, a legendary railroad laborer. Tall tales of John Henry portray him as having a tireless and superhuman ability to hammer spikes and lay tracks. In some stories, he risks his life to compete in a track-laying contest against the huge mechanized devices that began to replace human railroad workers in the 1800s. Some other important figures in American tall tales are cowboy Pecos Bill and nurseryman Johnny Appleseed.

Overview

A lesser-known but interesting American folk hero, Alfred Bulltop Stormalong, developed in the shipyards of Massachusetts. Massachusetts was one of the first colonies that would eventually become the United States. Upon its first settlement by mostly English immigrants, the colony was mainly engaged in agriculture. However, the soil in the colony could not withstand the rigors of constant farming, so by the mid-1600s, more Massachusetts colonists were looking to the sea to make their living, based in growing ports such as Boston and Salem.

This focus on the colony’s lengthy coasts and bays proved to be an extremely lucrative choice. Fishing and trade flourished; so too did the shipbuilding industry necessary to equip all this seagoing activity. Massachusetts soon developed a thriving maritime culture that would help to define it in the generations to come. As with other regions and industries, the New England sailors and shipbuilders had their own traditions and formed their own stories based on the realities and imaginings of their nautical lives.

The exact origins of the Alfred Bulltop Stormalong story are unclear. However, it likely began as a popular chant (or “shanty”) among sailors, possibly based on African American songs of the early to mid-nineteenth century. Early versions of the song may have been somewhat mournful as they praised a deceased sailor named Stormy or Storm-a-long although they later became more energetic and exaggerated as they began to enumerate the daring deeds of this likely fictional character. These songs and stories varied greatly over the decades until they were finally documented and published in the 1930s.

Like most tall tales, the Stormalong legend varies somewhat between tellings. However, the most commonly accepted versions of the tales hold that Stormalong first became a sailor at the age of fourteen. He was already about thirty feet tall at that point and was therefore uniquely suited to serve as a lookout, as he could see farther than anyone else on the ship. Early in his voyages, his ability to see great distances saves the crew when he spots an oncoming pirate vessel. Although the ship cannot escape the pirates, Stormalong uses his outsized cleverness to defeat them. He suggests that the ship’s deck be covered with molasses, which will catch the pirates’ feet and incapacitate them when they attempt to board.

Another fateful day, Stormalong’s ship encounters a sea creature known as the kraken, a mythical monster that is part octopus and part serpent. Stormalong gamely jumps into the water to wrestle the monster but, since he is still young, he is unable to subdue it. Despondent at his failure, Stormalong retires from sailing and attempts to become a rancher. However, he soon finds problems with his new way of life and yearns to return to the sea.

Stormalong makes his return a triumphant one by creating his own supersized ship, the Courser. According to the tales, the Courser is so deep that it cannot land in any port, and its mast is so high that it threatens the clouds and the sun. The ship is also so wide that, during one mission, it can barely fit in the English Channel. The crew smears soap on the ship to help lubricate it; the soap that rubs off on the nearby hills creates the White Cliffs of Dover. Stormalong’s adventures take him to all corners of the world, including back to the lair of the kraken, which he defeats in a long-awaited rematch.

The Stormalong legend typically ends when the sailor encounters a new device, the steamship. The steamship captain challenges Stormalong to a race, which the hero accepts. Stormalong ultimately wins the race with his traditional sailboat, but it requires great exertion to beat the steam engine, which was a new technological marvel at the time, and the hero passes away from exhaustion. The end of the Stormalong legend coincided, in a rather melancholy way, with the real-life replacement of sailing ships with steamboats, seen by many traditional sailors as the end of the Age of Sail era.

Bibliography

Cohn, Amy L. (ed.) From Sea to Shining Sea: A Treasury of American Folklore and Folk Songs. Scholastic, 1993.

Fee, Christopher R. and Jeffrey B. Webb (eds.) American Myths, Legends and Tall Tales: An Encyclopedia of American Folklore, Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO, 2016.

Hugill, Stan. Shanties from the Seven Seas: Shipboard Work-songs and Songs Used as Work-songs from the Great Days of Sail. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.

“Maritime Commerce.” National Park Service, www.nps.gov/nr/travel/maritime/commerce.htm. Accessed 10 Aug. 2020.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783–1860. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921.

“Old Stormalong—A Great American Hero.” Activated Story Theatre, 2020, activatedstorytheatre.com/folktales/old‗stormalong.html. Accessed 10 Aug. 2020.

Schlosser, S.E. “Old Stormalong.” American Folklore, 1 May 2020, americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/08/old‗stormalong.html. Accessed 10 Aug. 2020.

“Study Guide for Old Stormalong.” Activated Story Theatre, 2020, activatedstorytheatre.com/study‗guide/Stormalong.html. Accessed 10 Aug. 2020.

“Why Do They Call It a ‘Tall Tale’?” Wonderopolis / National Center for Families Learning, 2020, www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/why-do-they-call-it-a-tall-tale. Accessed 10 Aug. 2020.