The visit to America makes a break in the character as well as in the continuity of Marryat’s work. He had said all he had to say about the sea life of his own time, and had to turn elsewhere. The “Diary in America” is perhaps a sign that he thought for a moment of rivalling Captain Basil Hall. If he was indeed tempted to do so, the temptation ceased to be difficult to resist after his return to Europe. The toil of travel, and then of writing out his impressions of travel, had been greater than he had expected, and had produced no equivalent result--either in money or reputation. Mrs. Ross Church states that he received for the “Diary,” “on first publishing the manuscript,” £1,600. But, according to the same authority, he had received nearly as much for several of his other books in a lump sum, and they continued to bring him in a yearly harvest, whereas the “Diary” sank at once into the position of a mere book about America. In truth, this kind of writing had been overdone. There was no longer a market for books of the Trollope or even the Martineau order. Everything had been said about the United States which the public wanted to hear for the time. The publishers of the “Diary” must have discovered that, in taking the “Diary,” they had made the mistake not uncommonly committed by the trade, and by theatrical managers, the mistake of overestimating the length of time during which the public will continue to care for the same thing. They, doubtless, told Marryat that the taste for stories was more enduring than the liking for descriptions, abusive, laudatory, or philosophical, of our American cousins. With or without advice of this kind, he returned to stories, and remained steadily faithful to them.
“The Phantom Ship,” written during the American tour, differs materially from all the tales which had preceded it, except “Snarley Yow.” It is a romance with a strong element of _diablerie_. Possibly because it was not written in a hurry for the press, it shows more signs of care in construction than most of the earlier books. Also, it is an historical romance, and proves that Marryat had worked at the history of the sea-life--not, doubtless, very hard, but still to some purpose. The result makes one regret that he did not find, or seek for, the leisure to dig further, and to avail himself of his discoveries. No great amount of research can have been required to collect the materials for “The Phantom Ship.” Admiral Burney’s “Discoveries in the South Seas” would alone have given Marryat all he wanted for this picture of the old Dutch seamanship. Still he brought with him so much knowledge acquired by actual experience that a little was enough. Had he so pleased he might, with the help of Hakluyt, of Monson, and of Sir Richard Hawkins’ “Voyage,” have given us a picture of the Elizabethan seamen. He might have drawn the “chivalry of the sea,” as Washington Irving asked him to do. A “Westward Ho” he would not have written. We should not have had from him (nor have expected) anything equivalent to the dream of Amyas Leigh, or the exquisite speech at the grave of Salvation Yeo. But what he could have done was what Kingsley could not do, and, with the tact of an artist, did not try to do too much. He might have realized the actual sea life of the time--the ships, the seamen, and the seamanship of the past. It was a work in which only a sailor could have succeeded. The pictorial imagination of Kingsley and the conscientious workmanship of Charles Reade alike fail to give reality to their sea scenes. The first was a great artist, and the second an exceedingly clever man with no contemptible share of the imagination of the historian and biographer--the power of seeing the value of materials, of deducing from the report of a thing done the manner of the doing and the nature of the doer. They both worked hard to realize the sea, and yet, if we compare the cruises of the _Rose_ and the _Vengeance_, or the fight with the pirates in “Hard Cash,” with the “club-hauling” of the _Diomede_, there is a perceptible difference. I am not unaware that one may be unconsciously influenced by the knowledge that Marryat was a seaman, to expect, and see more truth in his pictures than in theirs. Remembering that, however, I still think that his sea scenes differ from Kingsley’s, or Reade’s, as the thing seen differs from the thing “got up”--with imagination, with insight, with conscientious industry, no doubt,--but still “got up.”