This week I read another interesting book that you probably know nothing about (you can ignore the word “probably”): Around Cape Horn to Honolulu by L. Vernon Briggs, published in 1924, but detailing his seafaring trip from Boston to Honolulu in 1880. Briggs (who later became a prominent Boston psychiatrist), the son of a prominent family, was diagnosed with a serious case of asthma. and his family doctor thought he could use a change of climate to improve his health. He was 16.

Briggs was a curious young man and his family agreed that a trip at sea might be just the thing, and they found a commercial cargo ship which was willing to take him on as its only passenger (although, as the trip went on, he became a virtual crew member) on its journey around the southern tip of South America to the Kingdom of Hawaii. It was by no means a smooth trip. They hit a number of strong and lengthy storms in the Atlantic, and then had to face the terrible storms and waves as the crossed the Straits of Magellen, when it appears as likely or not that their boat would not make it through.

The entire trip took about 5 months, and – this should be obvious – Briggs had not heard anything from or been able to transmit anything to his family in Boston. For this entire time, they were at sea; they stopped at no intervening ports along the way. (The book, by describing the way a cargo ship traveled and how its crew fared in the 1880s, is very interesting, but that is for another day; not the subject of this post.)

When they got to Honolulu, there was mail waiting (the mail was brought on ships that came directly from San Francisco; I assume mail was sent from Boston to San Francisco by railroad. And Briggs was able to write his family that he was fine (actually better than when he left home), and send his mail by ship back to California.

What I am interested here is that his parents sent their son on a dangerous voyage, where communication was impossible, and where – at the end of that voyage – he would be over 5,000 miles from home (and have to get back).

Of course, travel without communication was very common in those days. Men and women, and sometimes children, were leaving the more remote parts of Europe, for example, to come to the New World, and it was very difficult for them to communicate with people back home. Sometimes, they had no contact with them ever again. I was glancing through The Adventures of Marco Polo (should I read it/should I not) the other day, and realized that Marco and his father traveled for years without being able to hear from to communicate with their family in Italy.

I have never been in that situation, although when I took my 3 month long trip to Europe in 1962, I had no contact with family (I did send them a few post cards, I guess) for that period of time. And when I was in basic training at Ft. Ord California (and the base was locked down because of meningitis), I was only allowed one three minute phone call home per week, and no one could call me. But that was far from the same.

And then there was that old joke (certainly neither politically correct not accurate) showing the differences between Italian and Jewish husband. The joke was that Italian husbands would leave in the morning, saying “I’m going. I may come back”, while Jewish husbands would call home as soon as they crossed the street, saying “I’m across the street. I will call you when I get to the corner.”

Today, our ability to communicate is astounding. Virtually everyone, middle school age or older, has a cell phone, and younger people apparently talk to their friends on the phone, or text them, more than they do in person. They even take their phones to school where they can apparently use them (with permission or without) even during class. This has to be terrible for the teachers, and certainly must have a bad effect on the ability of a student to absorb what is being taught.

For some reason, it took the education establishment in many places years before they realized that something had to be done and only now are school districts forbidding the use of cell phones during class. But there are, apparently, many parents who strongly object to this change of policy. “What”, they say, “will we do if there is a shooter incident and we cannot reach our kids?”

How different this is from the parents of Vernon Briggs, who put him on a boat, knowing he had a physical illness, although the trip was ostensibly for his health, knowing they won’t know how, or even if, he is for a half of a year, and maybe longer.

Right, wrong? Better, worse? I don’t know. I am not expressing an opinion. Why? Because both seem right, and both seem wrong to me. It’s hard not to be a helicopter parent, I think, when helicopters are available. It’s impossible to be a helicopter parent, when they aren’t.