Typhoon, by Joseph Conrad
The Nigger of the "Narcissus," by Joseph Conrad
The Mirror of the Sea, by Joseph Conrad
Captains Courageous2, by Rudyard Kipling
The Brassbounder, by David W. Bone
Salt[183] of the Sea, by Morley Roberts
Mr. Midshipman Easy, by Captain Marryat
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
An Ocean Tramp, by William McFee.
If one is allowed to include books that deal partially4 with salt water, one would have to add "Treasure Island," "Casuals of the Sea," by McFee, and "Old Junk," by Tomlinson. The kind of shallow-water sea tales that we love to read after supper, with our feet on the nearest chair and a decent supply of tobacco handy, are the delicious stories by W.W. Jacobs. Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast," which is spoken of as a classic, we have never read. We have always had a suspicion of it, we don't know why. Before we tackle it we shall re-read "The Water Babies." We have always found a good deal of innocent cheer in the passages in John Woolman's Journal describing his voyage from Philadelphia to London in 1772. Friend Woolman, like the sturdy Quaker that he was, was horrified5 (when he went to have a look at the ship Mary and Elizabeth) to find "sundry6 sorts of carved work and imagery" on that part of the vessel7 where the cabins were; and in the cabins themselves he observed "some superfluity of workmanship of several sorts." This subjected his mind to "a deep exercise," and he decided8 that he would have to take passage in the steerage instead of the cabin. Having our self made use of the steerage aforetime, both in the Mauretania and humbler vessels9, we feel a certain kindred sympathy for his experiences. We have always enjoyed his remark:[184] "The wind now blew vehemently10, and the sea wrought11 to that degree that an awful seriousness prevailed."
To come to poetry, we suppose that the greatest sea-poet who never ventured on anything more perilous12 than a ferry-boat was Walt Whitman. Walt, one likes to think, would have been horribly sea-sick if he had ventured out beyond the harbour buoy13. A good deal of Walt's tempestuous14 uproar15 about the glories of America was undoubtedly16 due to the fact that he had never seen anything else. Speaking of Walt reminds us that one book of the sea that we have never read (for the best of reasons: it has not been written) might be done by Thomas Mosher, the veteran tippler of literary minims. Mr. Mosher, we understand, "followed" the sea in his youth. Not long ago, when Mr. Mosher published that exquisite17 facsimile of the 1855 "Leaves of Grass," we asked him when and how he first came in contact with Whitman's work. He said:
I don't suppose there was anything particularly interesting about my first acquaintance with Whitman, which at 14 years of age I made in my old family mansion18 situated19 at Smith's Corner, America. I had been taking "The Galaxy20" from its start, only a few months previous to the date I mention. I can still see myself in the sitting room of the old house. Smith's Cor., America, I will remind you, is a portion of Biddeford, Me. An extra "d" has got into the old English name—which, by the way, only a year later I passed through after a shipwreck21 on the Devonshire coast. (That was in 1867.) No one ever told me anything about Walt.
[185]These amateurish22 speculations23 on maritime24 books are of no value except for the fact that they elicited25 an interesting letter from an expert on these matters. William McFee wrote us as follows:—
"The first thing I laid my hands on this evening, while hunting for some forgotten nugget of wisdom in my note-books filled with Mediterranean26 brine, was that list of books for a projected sea library. Perpend....
The Sea Farer's Library
Tom Cringle's Log Michael Scott
Two Years Before the Mast Dana
Midshipman Easy Marryat
Captains Courageous Kipling
The Flying Cloud Morley Roberts
The Cruise of the Cachalot Frank T. Bullen
Log of a Sea Waif Frank T. Bullen
The Salving of a Derelict Maurice Drake
The Grain Carriers Edward Noble
Typhoon Conrad
Toilers of the Sea Hugo
An Iceland Fisherman Loti
The Sea Surgeon D'Annunzio
"A good many of these need no comment. Attention is drawn29 not to the individual items, but to the balance of the whole. That is the test of a list. But there is a good balance, a balance of power, and a balance of mere30 weight or prestige. It is the power we are after here. Regard for a moment the way 'Tom Cringle' balances Dana's laconic31 record of facts. No power on earth could hold 'Tom Cringle' to facts, with the result[186] that his story is more truly a representation of sea life in the old navy than a ton of statistics. He has the seaman's mind, which Dana had not.
"Then again 'Captains Courageous' and 'The Flying Cloud' balance each other with temperamental exactitude. Each is a fine account of sea-doings with a touch of fiction to keep the sailor reading, neither of them in the very highest class. 'The Cruise of the Cachalot' is balanced by the 'Log of a Sea Waif,' each in Bullen's happier and less evangelical vein33. I was obliged to exclude 'With Christ at Sea,' not because it is religious, but because it does not balance. It would give the whole list a most pronounced 'list,' if you will pardon the unpardonable.... I regret this because 'With Christ at Sea' has some things in it which transcend34 anything else Bullen ever wrote.
"Now we come to a couple of books possibly requiring a little explanation. 'The Salving of a Derelict' is a remarkably35 able story of a man's reclamation36. I believe Maurice Drake won a publisher's prize with it as a first novel some years ago. It was a winner among the apprentices37, I remember. 'The Grain Carriers' is a grim story of greedy owners and an unseaworthy ship by an ex-master mariner38 whose 'Chains,' while not a sea story, is tinged39 with the glamour40 of South American shipping41, and is obviously a work written under the influence of Joseph Conrad. 'Marooned' and 'Typhoon' balance (only you mustn't be too critical) as examples of the old and new methods of telling a sea story.
"'The Sea Surgeon' is one of a collection of stories about the Pescarese, which D'Annunzio wrote years ago. They are utterly42 unlike 'II Fuoco' and the other absurd tales on which translators waste their time. In passing one is permitted to complain of the persistent43 ill-fortune Italian novelists suffer at the hands of their English translators.
[187]"Assuming, however, that our seafarer wants a book or two of what is euphemistically termed 'non-fiction,' here are a few which will do him no harm:
"Southey's 'Life of Nelson.'
"'The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,' Mahan.
"The Diary of Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty in the Reign45 of Charles II and James II. It is most grievously overlooked that Samuel was the first to draft a naval46 Rate Book, which is a sort of indexed lexicon47 of everything one needs 'for fighting and sea-going efficiency.' And it is a pleasure, chastened by occasional fits of ill-temper, to discover that the present British Naval Rate Book hath in it divers48 synonyms49 coeval50 with Samuel and his merry monarchs51. As when the present writer tried to order some hammer-handles and discovered after much tribulation52 that the correct naval equivalent for such is 'ash-helms.' Whereupon he toilfully rewrote his requisitions 'and so to bed.'
"Another suggestion I might make is a volume to be compiled, containing the following chapters:
II. "A Dutch Triumvirate," Van Tromp, De Witt and De Ruyter.
IV. "Decatur and the Mediterranean Pirates."
V. "The Chesapeake and the Shannon."
VI. "The Spanish-American Naval Actions."
VII. "The Russo-Japanese Naval Actions."
VIII. "The Turko-Italian Naval Actions."
Conclusion. "Short Biography of Josephus Daniels."
"Only deep-water sailors would be able to take this suggested library to sea with them, because a sailor only reads at sea. When the landward breeze brings [188]the odours of alien lands through the open scuttle55 one closes the book, and if one is a normal and rational kind of chap and the quarantine regulations permit, goes ashore56."
Gruesome as anything in any seafaring pirate yarn57 is Trelawny's description (in "Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron") of the burning of Shelley's body on the seashore near Via Reggio. The other day, in company with two like-minded innocents, we visited a bookshop on John Street where we found three battered58 copies of this great book, and each bought one, with shouts of joy. The following day, still having the book with us, we dropped in to see the learned and hospitable59 Dr. Rosenbach at his new and magnificent thesaurus at 273 Madison Avenue. We showed him the book, because every time one shows the doctor a book he can startle you by countering with its original manuscript or something of that sort. We said something about Shelley and Trelawny, in the hope of starting him off. He smiled gently and drew out a volume from a shelf. It was the copy of "Prometheus Unbound" that Shelley had given Trelawny in July, 1822, with an inscription60. As the poet was drowned on July 8, 1822, it probably was the last book he ever gave away.
One wonders what may have become of the log of the American clipper that Shelley and Trelawny visited in the harbour of Leghorn shortly before Shelley's death. Shelley had said something in praise of George Washington, to which the sturdy Yankee skipper replied: "Stranger, truer words were never spoken; there is dry [189]rot in all the main timbers of the Old World, and none of you will do any good till you are docked, refitted, and annexed61 to the New. You must log that song you sang; there ain't many Britishers that will say as much of the man that whipped them; so just set these lines down in the log!"
Whereupon Shelley autographed the skipper's log for him, with some sentiments presumably gratifying to American pride, and drank some "cool peach brandy." It was his last drink.
We ourself, just as much as Shelley, enjoy visiting ships, and have had some surprising adventures in so doing. We remember very clearly our first call upon William McFee, when he was First Assistant Engineer in S.S. Turrialba. But getting aboard vessels is a much more complicated and diplomatic task than it was in Shelley's day. Even when armed with Mr. McFee's autographed card, it was by no means easy. We went dutifully up to the office of the United Fruit Company at Pier32 9, to apply for a pass, and were surveyed with grim suspicion. Why, we asked gently, in these peaceful times is it so difficult to visit a friend who happens to be in a ship? Prohibition62, said the candid63 clerk, and a whole province of human guile64 was thereby65 made plain to our shrinking mind. Mortals incline readily to sin, it seems, and apparently66 evil and base men will even go so far as to pretend a friendship with those who go down to wet territory in ships, simply for the sake of—well, we cannot bring ourself to mention it. "How do you know Mr. McFee wants to see you?" we were asked. Luckily we had Mac's card to prove it.
[190]We had long wanted to see Mr. McFee in his sea-going quarters, where he writes his books and essays (so finely flavoured with a rich ironical67 skepticism as to the virtues68 of folk who live on shore). Never was a literary sanctum less like the pretentious69 studios of the imitation litterateurs. In a small cabin stood our friend, in his working dungarees (if that is what they are called) talking briskly with the Chief and another engineer. The conversation, in which we were immediately engulfed70, was so vivacious71 that we had small chance to examine the surroundings as we would have liked to. But save for the typewriter on the desk and a few books in a rack, there was nothing to suggest literature. "Plutarch's Lives," we noticed—a favourite of Mac's since boyhood; Frank Harris's "The Bomb" (which, however, the Chief insisted belonged to him), E.S. Martin's "Windfalls of Observation," and some engineering works. We envied Mac the little reading lamp at the head of his bunk72.
We wish some of the soft-handed literary people who bleat73 about only being able to write in carefully purged74 and decorated surroundings could have a look at that stateroom. In just such compartments75 Mr. McFee has written for years, and expected to finish that night (in the two hours each day that he is able to devote to writing) his tale, "Captain Macedoine's Daughter." As we talked there was a constant procession of in-comers, most of them seeming to the opaque76 observation of the layman77 to be firemen discussing matters of overtime78. On the desk lay an amusing memorandum79, which the Chief referred to jocularly as one [191]of Mac's "works," anent some problem of whether the donkeyman was due certain overtime on a Sunday when the Turrialba lay in Hampton Roads waiting for coal. On the cabin door was a carefully typed list marked in Mr. McFee's hand "Work to Do." It began something like this:
Main Circulator Impeller to Examine
Hydrokineter Valve on Centre Boiler to be Rejointed
The delightful83 thing about Mr. McFee is that he can turn from these things, which he knows and loves, to talk about literary problems, and can out-talk most literary critics at their own game.
He took us through his shining engines, showing us some of the beauty spots—the Weir84 pumps and the refrigerating machinery85 and the thrust-blocks (we hope we have these right), unconsciously inflicting86 upon us something of the pain it gives the bungling87 jack88 of several trades when he sees a man who is so fine a master not merely of one, but of two—two seemingly diverse, but in which the spirit of faith and service are the same. "She's a bonny ship," he said, and his face was lit with sincerity89 as he said it. Then he washed his hands and changed into shore clothes and we went up to Frank's, where we had pork and beans and talked about Sir Thomas Browne.
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1
marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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courageous
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| adj.勇敢的，有胆量的 | |
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wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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6
sundry
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| adj.各式各样的，种种的 | |
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7
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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8
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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vehemently
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| adv. 热烈地 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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buoy
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| n.浮标；救生圈；v.支持，鼓励 | |
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tempestuous
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| adj.狂暴的 | |
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uproar
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| n.骚动，喧嚣，鼎沸 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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shipwreck
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| n.船舶失事，海难 | |
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amateurish
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| n.业余爱好的，不熟练的 | |
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speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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24
maritime
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| adj.海的，海事的，航海的，近海的，沿海的 | |
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elicited
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| 引出，探出( elicit的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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marooned
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| adj.被围困的；孤立无援的；无法脱身的 | |
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hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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laconic
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| adj.简洁的；精练的 | |
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32
pier
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| n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱 | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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transcend
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| vt.超出，超越(理性等)的范围 | |
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35
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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reclamation
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| n.开垦；改造；（废料等的）回收 | |
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apprentices
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| 学徒，徒弟( apprentice的名词复数 ) | |
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mariner
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| n.水手号不载人航天探测器，海员，航海者 | |
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tinged
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| v.（使）发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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46
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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lexicon
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| n.字典，专门词汇 | |
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48
divers
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| adj.不同的；种种的 | |
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synonyms
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| 同义词( synonym的名词复数 ) | |
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50
coeval
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| adj.同时代的；n.同时代的人或事物 | |
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51
monarchs
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| 君主，帝王( monarch的名词复数 ) | |
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52
tribulation
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| n.苦难，灾难 | |
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53
monk
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| n.和尚，僧侣，修道士 | |
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54
tactician
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| n. 战术家, 策士 | |
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55
scuttle
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| v.急赶，疾走，逃避；n.天窗；舷窗 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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yarn
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| n.纱，纱线，纺线；奇闻漫谈，旅行轶事 | |
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58
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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59
hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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60
inscription
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| n.（尤指石块上的）刻印文字，铭文，碑文 | |
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61
annexed
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| [法] 附加的，附属的 | |
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62
prohibition
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| n.禁止；禁令，禁律 | |
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63
candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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64
guile
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| n.诈术 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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66
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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68
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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69
pretentious
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| adj.自命不凡的，自负的，炫耀的 | |
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70
engulfed
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| v.吞没，包住( engulf的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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71
vivacious
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| adj.活泼的，快活的 | |
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72
bunk
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| n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话 | |
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73
bleat
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| v.咩咩叫，(讲)废话，哭诉；n.咩咩叫，废话，哭诉 | |
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74
purged
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| 清除（政敌等）( purge的过去式和过去分词 )； 涤除（罪恶等）； 净化（心灵、风气等）； 消除（错事等）的不良影响 | |
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75
compartments
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| n.间隔( compartment的名词复数 )；（列车车厢的）隔间；（家具或设备等的）分隔间；隔层 | |
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76
opaque
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| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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layman
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| n.俗人，门外汉，凡人 | |
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78
overtime
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| adj.超时的，加班的；adv.加班地 | |
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79
memorandum
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| n.备忘录，便笺 | |
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80
brasses
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| n.黄铜( brass的名词复数 )；铜管乐器；钱；黄铜饰品（尤指马挽具上的黄铜圆片） | |
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81
rams
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| n.公羊( ram的名词复数 )；(R-)白羊（星）座；夯；攻城槌v.夯实（土等）( ram的第三人称单数 )；猛撞；猛压；反复灌输 | |
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82
boiler
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| n.锅炉；煮器(壶，锅等) | |
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83
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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84
weir
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| n.堰堤，拦河坝 | |
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85
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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86
inflicting
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的现在分词 ) | |
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87
bungling
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| adj.笨拙的，粗劣的v.搞糟，完不成( bungle的现在分词 )；笨手笨脚地做；失败；完不成 | |
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88
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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89
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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