Synopses & Reviews
Literary giant Jack London joins the Adventure Classics library with the true tale of his own South Sea odyssey aboard the Snark. In 1906, Jack London set out from San Francisco with his wife and two crewmembers on a voyage across the Pacific. Newspaper readers were horrified by the proposed trip, which was inspired by Joshua Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World. London knew little about navigation, and his schooner, the Snark, possessed numerous defects, including a tendency to leak. London's account of this extraordinary trip is charming and fascinating by turns, and a wonderful display of his eye for poetic and ironic details. Navigating more by feel than by skill, London visited Hawaii, the Marquesas, Tahiti, and the Solomon Islands. For the most part, the voyagers were greeted with South Seas hospitality, though the trip had its dangers--including head-hunting natives. London claimed that sailing the Snark gave him his greatest sense of personal accomplishment, and The Cruise of the Snark is saturated with his enthusiasm and sheer love of adventure. An exciting new volume in the Adventure Classics series, this edition includes a new National Geographic map and excerpts from his wife Charmian's out-of-print account of the expedition, offering new insights into London's personality, and into his remarkable voyage.
Synopsis
A collection of travel writings from the author of the classic novels
The Call of the Wild and
White Fang.
In 1907, world-renowned writer Jack London, his wife, and two crew members set sail for the South Pacific aboard the Snark, a 45-foot yacht built specifically for the trip. In this account of their voyage, he details the beleaguered construction of the boat and the enterprise in it that followed, as the group departed from San Francisco and ventured everywhere from Tahiti and Bora Bora to Fiji and the Hawaiian archipelago, where he tried the "royal sport" of surfing and traveled to the leper colony on Molokai. While their plan to spend seven years traversing the globe was derailed by illness--which hospitalized London for five weeks in Sydney--the journey recounted is a fun and informative adventure, filled with details on the ins and out of sailing and celestial navigation.