In his Autobiography, after a description of his youthful adventures in London, Benjamin Franklin refers prospective readers to the journal he kept aboard the Berkshire in 1726 as he returned to Philadelphia to begin in earnest his career as a printer. This early travelogue shows Franklin developing identifications that came to full maturity 45 years later in Part One of his memoirs. Reminiscent in style of the travel narratives of Addison and Defoe, the work is notable for the extraordinary skill with which its 20-year-old author renders places and persons. A close examination of the journal of his of his voyage gives readers an indication of Franklin's artistic and philosophical development because entries from that journal act as prototypes of events and attitudes in Franklin's life as related in his Autobiography.
Several examples help to illustrate the journal's critical value. In the Autobiography Franklin describes his childhood exploits in Boston in terms of competence and leadership, telling us that "when in a Boat or Canoe with other Boys I was commonly allow'd to govern, especially in any case of Difficulty." In his journal however, a similar opportunity for "governorship" is reduced to slapstick farce, as Franklin and two other young travelers, after a series of misadventures, end up crawling on their knees in the cold mud simply to cross a creek. Other Autobiography anecdotes, like the famous "cod-eating scene" and Franklin's "excommunication" for refusing to pay the compositors' "Bienvenu" at Watts' London printing house (46) are in a sense prefigured by more serious reports in the journal concerning cutting open dolphins and the Berkshire passengers' "excommunication" of a card cheat.
Other very important entries in the journal relevant to the Autobiography include Franklin's commentary upon a monument to Sir Robert Holmes concerning the importance of self-representation: the statue with "the inscription...being written by himself" provides one example of how a person can create "a monument to record his good actions and transmit them to posterity." In contrast, Baron Cutts, the former governor of the Isle of Wight, lived on only in the mind of "the silly old fellow, the keeper of the castle" who remembered him as "a great villain." Additionally, in the "Plan of Conduct" written during the voyage, which Franklin in his Autobiography terms "the most important Part of that Journal," the young traveler asserts that "to write that we may be worth the reading, we ought always, before we begin, to form a regular plan and design of our piece....I am apt to think it is the same as to life," a significant statement given Franklin's eventual construction of his own life in the Autobiography as a printed text complete with "Errata."
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