"TALES OF THE OCEAN AND ESSAYS FOR THE FORECASTLE," 1843 by "Hawser Martingale"

Description: Small Octavo (7 7/8 by 5 inches) vi, 431 pages, "illustrated with numerous engravings," including 27 full page black and white plates, two title pages, each with the same date: one for publisher Thomas Groom Co. and one for S.N. Dickinson. Fair condition (minor wear to edges of hardcover cloth bindiing decorated in blind on both upper and back covers, some signatures sprung, but holding, pagination misnumbered after page 290, but complete, minor spotting and stains to some pages – not affecting contents which are intact and very readable); title in gilt on spine beneath an ornament of a sailing ship, two old inked signatures of two previous individual owners on front fly leaf. "An author and journalist from New England, John Sherburne Sleeper first went to sea in 1809 as a cabin boy and assumed his first command in 1821. By 1825 he was captain of an East Indiaman, and he spent much of his career in merchant service out of Boston. After retiring from the sea in 1830, he began working in the printing industry, publishing and editing several newspapers in Lowell and Boston. Using the pseudonym “Hawser Martingale,” Sleeper published several books that fictionalized his adventures at sea. His early stories, serialized in the newspapers he edited, focused on the deadly combination of drunkenness and mutiny at sea; given the opportunity, Sleeper rarely failed to preach moral reform and temperance. When he avoided moralizing, Sleeper’s humor could illustrate the vitality and comedic aspects of life at sea." "Sleeper’s first book, Tales of the Ocean (1842), is a collection of stories that draw from his time as a sailor. One story, “Impressment of Seamen,” was the source for the incident in Herman Melville’s White-Jacket (1850) in which White Jacket, threatened with flogging, considered hurtling himself at Captain Claret and sending them both into the ocean. In Sleeper’s story, the flogged sailor actually threw himself and the captain overboard. Sleeper’s other works include the autobiographical Jack in the Forecastle (1860) and the novel Mark Rowand (1867), which includes the story of a sperm whale’s ramming a whaler." – The Maritime Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport Chapters include "Impressment of Seamen," "Fourth of July at Sea," "The Guerriere and the Constitution," "Scenes In Havana in 1822," "Books and Reading," "A Whale Adventure in the Pacific," and many other interesting subjects.

Price: 145 USD

Location: Los Angeles, California

End Time: 2024-10-27T19:10:54.000Z

Shipping Cost: 5.38 USD