John Clem and Laura Dekker

[chris_gerrib]

So, via the absolutely Not Safe For Work site Good Shit, I learned the story of John Clem. Clem ran off to join the Union Army at age 9 as a drummer boy. By age 12, using a specially-cut-down rifle, he had become a sergeant and had spent a brief stint as a prisoner of war. (His post-war life is also remarkable - he rejoined the Army in 1874 as a 2nd Lieutenant, and retired in 1916 as the last Civil War veteran on active duty. He died in 1937, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.)

As life would have it, the same day I read of Clem I saw that 14-year-old Laura Dekker got the legal green light to sail alone around the world. Now, I've written of 17-year-old Abby Sunderland's failed attempt, so I find the various stories make an interesting combination.

On the one hand, Clem had plenty of supervision during his Army stint. On the other hand, sergeants are supposed to provide some of that supervision. On the third hand, nobody will be shooting at Laura Dekker.

So is Dekker too young to make the attempt? Was Abby Sunderland too young, or just unlucky? For that matter, was John Clem too young, and just got lucky? Or is Clem's case not even relevant?

I don't have any answers, profound or otherwise. I'm just glad I'm not making the decisions.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I think the comment about the Sunderland case that made the most sense to me was from an experienced yachtsperson saying that nobody should try their first solo-circumnavigation in the lower 40s in Winter. He seemed to think that the problem wasn't her age, but that she'd been allowed to leave at a stupid and dangerous time when even highly experienced people get into serious trouble and all to break a record.

My father left home at 15, failed to join the Navy, having to wait until he was 16 and spent a year apprenticing at a machine shop in London during the early stage of the war (he'd left Ireland) - however - one of the reasons I suspect that a certain type of conservative looks back wistfully at the 1950s is they're missing the fact that almost all the adult male population had been institutionalized for the best part of a decade and, in the UK, all teenagers were in the service, and a civilian population which remembered regular bombing raids and deprivation.

I'm not sure that that model is sustainable for a society for anything more than a decade or so.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Had a coda to add:

I suspect that the economic and social problems that conservatives rally against, and which led to Reagan in the US and Thatcher in the UK, are probably due to the hangover of having had two consecutive generations be the products of intense militarization.

Hmmm... although on reflection that's more a UK thing I suppose as I'm not sure how much impact WW1 really had on the US?

UK: Boer War - Gap (good times) - WW1 - Depression - WW2

US: Good Times? - Depression - WW2/Korea - Gap (Good times, 1951-? late 60s) Vietnam