The Boats of the "Glen Carrig"

by William Hope Hodgson

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Fiction, Classics, Weird Fiction, Gothic, Adventure

206 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1907

About the author

William Hope Hodgson was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction, and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his poems were published during his lifetime. He also attracted some notice as a photographer and achieved some renown as a bodybuilder. Hodgson served with the British Army durng World War One. He died, at age 40, at Ypres, killed by German artillery fire.

Reviews

[Henry Avila · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Glen Carrig a sailing ship hits an unseen, large, sharp rock just under the surface of this uncharted ocean in 1757, the survivors of the disastrous sinking float for five days, their precious food supply diminishing (and hope fades) in two lifeboats on the sixth a tremendous storm strikes the unfortunates, the furious seas lift their vessels high above and then sends them crashing below into a valley of watery walls spraying them with icy liquid, the surrounded soaked sailors are threatens by its collapse and the men forced down to the bottom never to return...Somehow they live and soon see a strange looking low lying island ( but one of the boats though, vanishes) the only way in is through a large creek, the sailors row up slowly the trees there are more like bushes, that's it on this weird isle for vegetation . Until night no sounds or animals are seen or heard not even a bird then a wailing, eerie, forlorn hubbub permeates the land, the strange noises breaks the great silence making the sailors uneasy, unknown things are felt though evil is near, going down the stream they view a derelict hulk a Brig, board this ship and stay on board, finding and reading letters that ominously warn of creatures that walk at night. John Winterstraw a wealthy young gentleman becomes just another hand, under the command of the wise, tough but fair boatswain, (no name is given) the only officer left. The sailors lock themselves in a big cabin listening to sounds of things crawling around trying to get inside, they hope the doors keep standing. Leaving this strange lonely island in the bright daytime , the men soon see a vast continent of seaweed (the Sargasso Sea, Portuguese for seaweed ) many a ship captured by the kelp, the crews slowly starve to death maybe or something else kills them, finding another bizarre island the sailors explore for food and water, again unknown things swim underwater and crawl in the darkness at night on the land. The men make numerous fires to keep the creatures away, they have human faces yet are more animal than human, crawl in the dirt and eat the sailors...To the top of a high hill the survivors camp, they view what looks like an abandoned ship however a fire is seen on board the weed captured vessel will this be an escape or their doom for the sailors ? When the shadows fall the abominations crawl....If you enjoy strange, weird, creepy stories this is for you the connoisseur, it is a voyage into the dark unknown.

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

When one is young and naïve then The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” is exactly one’s stuff… And if one is old and wise this exotically romantic exploration will do one no harm either…
The misadventures of the shipwreck survivors are captivating… The atmosphere of suspense is thick…
First adventurers find themselves on the strange island full of extremely weird plants…

Then I caught the bo’sun by the arm, and pointed; for whether it was a part of the tree or not, it was a work of the devil; but the bo’sun, on seeing it, ran straightway so close to the tree that he might have touched it with his hand, and I found myself beside him. Now, George, who was on the bo’sun’s other side, whispered that there was another face, not unlike to a woman’s, and, indeed, so soon as I perceived it, I saw that the tree had a second excrescence, most strangely after the face of a woman.

Then the wretched ones are stranded in the weed-choked sea full of hostile bloodthirsty creatures…

In the same instant, I found myself looking down into a white demoniac face, human save that the mouth and nose had greatly the appearance of a beak. The thing was gripping at the side of the boat with two flickering hands – gripping the bare, smooth outer surface, in a way that woke in my mind a sudden memory of the great devilfish which had clung to the side of the wreck we had passed in the previous dawn. I saw the face come up towards me, and one misshapen hand fluttered almost to my throat, and there came a sudden, hateful reek in my nostrils – foul and abominable.

If one can’t discover wonders in the real world one can always discover plenty of those in fascinating stories.

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' is a creepy travelogue set in 1757, following a diminishing group of men through alien waters after the foundering of the title ship. hey, do you want some giant sea squid, terrifying sounds in the night including some heavy breathing and light shrieking, trees that ooze blood and display tormented human faces, horrible slug-like 'weed men', squirmy flappy tentacled stinging biting things etc? you got it. you want a survival story that has a nuts-n-bolts approach to dealing with clean water, food, repairing a boat, making a fire, all those basic details of an adventure tale? you got that too. hey, do you want a brave & kind & loyal & stronger & smarter than anyone around him type supporting character as your blue collar The Real Hero? with this novella, you get a grade A specimen of the type, free of charge. oh noble unnamed bo'sun!

William Hope Hodgson is one of the senior members of the classic Weird Fiction crew, and yet he gets less love than melodramatic Lovecraft or the arch & ironic Clark Ashton Smith. unlike Lovecraft, he knows how to restrain himself. his style is wonderfully archaic but he rarely goes over the top and is able to capably conjure up an atmosphere of creeping dread without getting all hysterical about it. he's no Lovecraftian drama queen (don't get me wrong, i love Lovecraft). and unlike CAS, he doesn't seem interested in being witty or using sardonic drollness to create a kind of ironic distance from his horrorscapes (don't get me wrong, i love CAS the most of the Weird writers). Hodgson is rather dry, very sincere, practically humorless, and despite the palpable horrors of Boats, there is a kind of naturalist-slash-spiritual side to him that makes this tale particularly convincing. of all the Weird writers, i would say that his closest brother would be Algernon Blackwood.

4 stars for the first two-thirds, which is expertly written and wonderfully dark and atmospheric. unfortunately, 2 stars for the last third, where a very annoying second boat is found, full of annoying people, and worst of all, The Tender & Brave Romantic Interest. that last third brings out the worst in both Hodgson and the narrator. on the one hand, we have endless descriptions of ropes & kites & repairing ships & oh yawn i'm falling asleep again. on the other hand, we have a narrator who suddenly embodies the most cloying aspects of Victorian culture (although, to be precise, the narrative actually takes place in the Georgian era) and who plunges into a particularly labored and trite romantic affair. it's like being forced to sit in Great Aunt Hortensia's stuffy, musty, doily-shrouded parlour and listening to her endless and microscopic descriptions of the Victorian Mating Ritual. especially irritating when i came over to visit Grandfather Jedediah and listen to some of his eerie ghost stories. get away Aunt Hortensia, your stories make me a little nauseous. and your tea is too sickly sweet.

this was my first audiobook and i have to say that i didn't enjoy the experience. i have a couple more on my ipod so i will try again; hopefully this will turn out to be an anomaly. the narrator was as monotone as they come and the sinister, atonal sound effects & music - although suitably unnerving at first - eventually became wearying (although they did add a delightfully macabre quality to the saccharine romance). but worst of all was my inability to go back, reread, and so further enjoy all the glorious WORDS ON THE PAGE. it was frustrating and it made the experience so much less immersive.

[Louie the Mustache Matos · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Hope Hodgson was a writer of the “weird” subgenre of horror that included elements of science fiction, and fantasy horror before H. P. Lovecraft became emblematic of the subgenre. In The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ there is a perfect demonstration of the mash-up elements (science fiction, fantasy, horror) when the ship sinks and the crew boards lifeboats to save themselves from the tossing sea. This is but the beginning of an adventure that includes an island of seaweed, monstrous fish, giant beasts, and weed men. Building on adventure stories involving seafaring men, their harrowing challenges against the mysteries of nature, the wild seas, and alien beasts, the narrative is unpredictable and mesmerizing. There is something lyrical and magical about the story that swept me up because of its uniqueness cloaked in the mundane. This is a classic, but I believe that only lovers of Lovecraft and the weird will really enjoy it. The weird is a subgenre extremely under-represented in modern horror. I liked it a lot.

[Jon Recluse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though the writing is a bit rusty and crusted with sea salt at times, Hodgson's first novel is a sustained work of unrelenting terror that is a direct ancestor of Tim Curran's DEAD SEA. This is an excursion into the big unknown, filled with unimaginable horrors that the suthor never slows down to explain. He simply relates his tale of lifeboats lost somewhere off the nautical charts, letting the reader become one of the shipwrecked survivors, facing incomprehensible monstrosities borne from the depths of a nightmare sea.

Highly recommended!

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hodgson is one of my favourite British horror authors, his efforts coming in that golden period of fantastic fiction written at the turn of the 20th century. The Boats of the Glen Carrig is as creepy an effort as you could wish for, an outstanding cross between the kind of creepy sea chills that Hodgson based on personal experience of being a seaman (he also wrote many similarly-themed short stories) and the kind of thrilling, giant monster adventure that reminded me of Jules Verne.

All right, The Boats of the Glen Carrig may not be particularly original or unique – Hodgson saved that for The House on the Borderland and The Night Pirates – but it’s nonetheless a riveting story of adventures in the Sargasso sea, as our shipful of heroes (no mutineers here) find themselves facing creatures as diverse as giant crabs, huge devil-fish (or octopi) and, most memorable, a range of ‘weed men’, strange amphibian humanoids with a penchant for human flesh. I don’t know if Lovecraft read this before he sat down to write his Cthulhu stories but I’d guess he must have, as this reminded me a lot of sleeping Cthulhu and the sea-dwelling inhabitants of The Shadow over Innsmouth.

Hodgson’s anecdotal style is one I could immediately settle into and the resulting story is one which I didn’t want to end. It’s episodic in nature, heavily reliant on atmosphere (very effective) with bursts of action punctuating the narrative. The story always kept me guessing as to what was going to happen next and, while there’s no supernatural stuff going down here, it’s frequently eerie if not in-your-face frightening. I loved this, my first exposure to the author at novel-length, and I can’t wait to try the rest of his oeuvre.

[Иван Величков · Rating 4 out of 5]

А тази книжка от кога я чакам да излезе на български, не е истина. И очакванията ми се оправдаха на 100%.
В малкото страници Ходжсън преплита изключително умело една робинзониада с космически ужас. Свръхестествения елемент беше първо изтръпващо загатнат, а после – брутално натурален. Корабната тематика пък е една от най-добре описаните. Друго си е истински моряк да пише за пътувания по вода. Терминологията беше малко, но изключително на място, точно когато е необходима.
Повествованието е издържано епистоларно, както е модерно за епоха в която цялата комуникация се е състояла от писма, а мемоарите са били на почит.
Две лодки от потъналия кораб „Глен Кариг“ се борят за оцеляване някъде из южните морета. Екипажът е сплотен, а боцманът е пример за морски офицер. Сред тях е и Джон Уинтерстроу – разказвачът на историята – потомствен дребен благородник, случайно оказал се в тежката ситуация. Моряците преживяват бури, кошмарни заплахи на неизвестни острови и пълен ужас на огромен водораслен нанос пълен с морски хуманоидни чудовища. Борят се и успяват да извоюват спасение, като Джон дори успява да намери любовта на живота си – мелодраматично, но много сладко.
Чакам си „Призрачните пирати“ сега.

[Hon Lady Selene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nautical tales are not amongst my usual cups of tea, this one was pretty great though; the writing is a tad archaic as the point of view is presented as a true account from 1757 of an event that happens earlier and William sure loves those long sentences but there is something about it, it's quite eerie and atmospheric and I got particularly excited somewhere early in the novel:

"Then, far away, I heard again the sound of the wailing and immediately, from among the trees about us, there came the answering wails and a great sighing. And before I had time to be more than aware of these things, the tree wailed again at us. [...] Now, from the brig, I heard them hallooing, and the trees had become like live things, and there was a vast growling in the air, and hideous trumpetings."

because this sounds much as an account of the Orcs being attacked by the Ents of Fangorn Forest and from here we are simply lost in a weed-chocked sea filled with terrifying creatures. Night or day, there is no respite in the land of lonesomeness.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts out great (and weird). It's an unusual book that gets you thinking about Dante's Inferno, Roger Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters, Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and Lovecraft (of course). All of that said, I wish Hodgson had cast this as a long short story. About the midway point I lost interest. Hodgson knew what it was to be a seaman, and he piles on the seafaring details in a way that recalls Conrad and Melville. These details add to the authenticity of the story by acting as concrete counterpoints to all the strangeness. This works -- up to a point, but about the time a giant bow is constructed (pages and pages), the recording of minute details really starts to drag the story down, and you start to become aware that this is a comfortable return point for Hodgson, a device, but one that he's relying too much on. Still, I'm glad I read it, and can see how influential this story must have been.

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bettie's Books

[Димитър Цолов · Rating 5 out of 5]

С Уилям Хоуп Ходжсън се запознах в Бащите на ужаса, където беше поместено може би най-известното му произведение Домът сред пущинака. Атмосферно-напоителен, в стилистиката на Х.Ф.Лъвкрафт, този кратък роман определено успя да ме впечатли. Впоследствие прочетох и два разказа - Изоставеният кораб (включен в Призрачният дилижанс) и заглавният на друго подобно изящно томче Глас в нощта: страшни истории от класически автори и майстори в жанра. Сиреч, всичките ми сблъсъци с писателя, родеещ се с гореспоменатия Бащица на Космическия ужас и М.Р. Джеймс, и оказал влияние върху редица именити негови братя по перо (Клак Аштън Смит, Джийн Улф, Чайна Миевил...) са се случили на страниците на издания на Изток-Запад, адмирации към тях, за което!

Корабокрушенците от "Глен Кариг", доколкото успях да се ориентирам от библиографската справка в уикипедия, е първият роман на Ходжсън, но плахостта на дебютанта не пролича никъде в тези сто и петдесетина страници. Имаше я напрегнатата Лъвкрафтова атмосфера в образите на ужасяващите твари (дървета с човешки лица, водораслени хора, някакви слузести хибриди между човеци и мекотели, гигантски главоноги и пр.), с които се сблъскаха моряците, без характерната за него мудност; точно обратното - действието препускаше задъхано, досущ като в приключенските романи на Жул Верн или Артър Конан Дойл. Липсваше ми пряката реч, но простих на автора, все пак романът е решен като мистификация и представя спомените на един от очевидците на описаните премеждия, записани от сина му. На моменти ми дотягаше и корабната терминология, но разлика от посочения разказ Изоставеният кораб, тук преводачът си беше научил урока и всички засукани понятия бяха коректно обяснени с пространни бележки. С леко подбутване нагоре - петорка.

[Netanella · Rating 5 out of 5]

. . . for it seemed to me that we had come upon the cemetery of the oceans . . .

This old weird tale certainly has aged well. What an excellent yarn of a sea tale, full of devil fish, slime creatures, giant crabs and mushrooms, a weed continent, and a group of lifeboats with a few intrepid sailors, circa mid 18th century. There's a lovely cosmic horror feel to everything, as the survivors encounter strange crying sounds in the evening, following by unknown growling and pacing and slime trails. There are trees with faces growing in them. Strange pale weed men with tentacles for arms. Very fun, very adventurous, just very, very. I loved it.


Pencil drawing by Lawrence Sterne Stevens, from Hodgson’s “The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’” story appearance in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, June 1945.

[Γρηγόρης Δημακόπουλος · Rating 4 out of 5]

Απολαυστικό ανάγνωσμα, όπως όλα τα κλασικά έργα της λογοτεχνίας. Είναι κάπως... "σκουριασμένο" σε σημεία και το τέλος δείχνει την ηλικία του όμως πραγματικά σε αιχμαλωτίζει από την πρώτη στιγμή.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The conventional words of wisdom for any aspiring new author have long been "write what you know," a bit of advice that English author William Hope Hodgson seemingly took to heart with his first published novel, "The Boats of the Glen Carrig." Before embarking on his writing career, Hodgson had spent eight years at sea, first as an apprentice for four years and then, after a two-year break, as a third mate for another long stretch. And those hard years spent at sea were put to good use not only in "Boats," but in his third novel, "The Ghost Pirates," and in many of his short stories and poems as well. According to August Derleth, "No other writer--not Conrad nor Melville nor any other--has so consistently dealt with the eternal mystery of the sea," a sentiment very closely echoed by Lin Carter in his excellent introduction to "Boats" in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition pictured above.

"Boats" is in many ways a remarkable book. It takes the form of a saga of survival narrated by John Winterstraw to his son in the year 1757, and tells of what happened to the two remaining lifeboats after the sudden sinking of the Glen Carrig. The survivors had drifted for many days before coming upon a desolate swampland (referred to by Winterstraw as the Land of Lonesomeness), replete with strange wailing noises and some decidedly nasty arboreal life. After fleeing this inhospitable land and surviving a horrible storm, one of the boats had fetched upon a small island in the middle of a gigantic area of entangling seaweed. Their adventures on this unusual island make up the bulk of Winterstraw's narration, and what a strange tale it is! Indeed, this island almost makes the one featured on the hit TV series "Lost" seem normal, surrounded and infested as it is with giant crab monsters (could Roger Corman be a fan of this book?), humongous octopi (think 1955's "It Came From Beneath the Sea") and, most memorably (WARNING: possible spoiler ahead), the weed men: pale, slimy, vampiric, bipedal slug creatures that swarm in the hundreds and attack both on land and at sea. Between fending off attacks from the nasty animal life on the island, seeking food and water, and attempting the rescue of an old, manned sailing vessel that had been trapped for years in the seaweed morass, the Glen Carrig survivors surely do have their hands full.

But a capsule description of this novel cannot possibly succeed in conveying the eeriness of the book, or its outre sense of mood and otherworldliness. Hodgson has his Winterstraw narrator speak in a seemingly pseudo-archaic language that may intially put some readers off, but that (for me, anyhow) lends to an unusual veracity nevertheless, as well as strangeness. A single sentence can easily run on for 2/3 of a page in this novel, with six or seven semicoloned sections. The grammar and syntax used are quite bizarro, an expedient that Hodgson also used in his 1912 epic novel "The Night Land." In that later novel, this invented form of English was meant to convey the language of some billions of years hence; here, it stands in for an 18th century English that probably never was. Hodgson also uses many nautical terms that may send modern-day readers scurrying for their dictionaries, but most of those readers will not mind, being more than content with this short novel's rapid pacing, creepy atmosphere and, above all, truly frightening monsters. Not for nothing was this book chosen for inclusion in Newman & Jones' excellent overview volume "Horror: Another 100 Best Books." Though the only characters we really get to know with any degree of depth are our narrator and the remarkably intrepid bo'sun leader of the men, the book is as memorable as can be, and concludes most satisfactorily.

(On a side note, sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that in my first sentence above, I refer to "Boats" as Hodgson's "first published novel" rather than his "first novel," and that is because there seems to be some confusion on this point. In his scholarly Internet essay "Writing Backwards: The Novels of William Hope Hodgson," Sam Gafford makes a convincing case for "Boats" being Hodgson's LAST novel, and "The Night Land" his first...in direct opposition to the order long believed to have been the case! Using internal evidence from a batch of recently unearthed Hodgson letters, Gafford really does press his point home....)

[Петър Панчев · Rating 4 out of 5]

Море на коварство и ужас
(Цялото ревю е тук: https://knijenpetar.wordpress.com/201...)

Отминали са времената, когато мистериите и необикновените приключения са всявали очакван страх и респект у читателите, но и онези читатели тепърва са откривали мащабите на авторовото въображение в лицата на Едгар Алан По, Лъвкрафт, Артър Конан Дойл, Натаниъл Хоторн, Хърбърт Уелс, Александър Грин и други от мощните гласове на онези времена. Уилям Хоуп Ходжсън също се нарежда някъде там, макар името му да не се споменава със съответния респект. За мен си е доста неп��знат автор и „Корабокрушенците от ‘Глен Кариг’“ („Изток-Запад“, 2019, с превод на Атанас Парушев) се явява първото ми прочетено от него произведение. Има още едно, което смятам да подхвана след известно време. Краткият роман на Ходжсън се родее с приключенските хоръри, които отвеждат читателите на малко познати или неизследвани територии, където – съвсем основателно – могат да се крият мистериозни същества и ужасяващи чудовища. Океаните и моретата пък са добра отправна точка за този вид творческа фантазия и се вписва доста добре в умовете на „жертвите“, разгръщащи страниците. Да очакваш нещо да надзърне от дълбоките води? Безценно! Но явно не само историите са страшни, а и силата на въображението на четящите. За днешните такива едва ли подобни произведения ще предизвикат реален потрес, но уважението към родоначалниците на хоръра е достатъчно, за да пазим тези „реликви“ с подобаваща почест. Сега интересите клонят към съвсем друг вид литература, но следите на класиците могат да се открият при хиляди съвременни автори. Обаче да четеш „оригиналите“ и да потънеш в онези смутни времена на дива фантазия, не може да бъде сравнено с нищо. Затова от време на време се бухвам в класическите страхотии и следвам пътя на жертвените агнета от страниците. За мен е изключително удоволствие!
(Продължава в блога: https://knijenpetar.wordpress.com/201...)

[Dfordoom · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the weirdest books I’ve ever read. In the mid-18th century a ship, The Glen Carrig has ventured into strange and unknown seas and has been wrecked. Some of the crew survive and take to the lifeboats. They initially reach an island that is nothing but mud, with strange and rather disgusting vegetation. They find the wreck of another ship, and encounter strange noises and are attacked by nameless faceless horrors. The horror is very Lovecraftian. What Hodgson seemed to be aiming for in this novel is what I call A Sense of Wrongness – these are beings that should not be allowed to exist, but they do exist, things that exist in defiance of Nature’s laws. There’s the same sense that you get in much of Lovecraft’s work of unhealthiness and corruption, and physical degeneracy. Hodgson is very effective in conveying a morbid atmosphere, an atmosphere of dread. If you like very off-beat weird fiction then Hodgson may well be just the writer you’ve been looking for.

[Nickolas B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Οκ.. Θα βάλω 2,5 σε αυτό το βιβλίο... Σε γενικές γραμμές δεν ήταν άσχημο. Θυμίζει την Μυστηριώδη Νήσο του Ι. Βερν, αλλά με μια πιο απόκοσμη και σκοτεινή ατμόσφαιρα...
Δυστυχώς, δεν αποφεύγονται αρκετά κλισέ (ρομάντζο, ηρωισμοί κλπ κλπ).
Τέλος κάπου κουράστηκα και απο τους πολλούς ναυτικούς όρους!

[Natalie aka Tannat · Rating 3 out of 5]

A madcap horror adventure written back in 1907 with monsters with tentacles and a lot of craziness. Overall it was alright although the descriptions went on a bit.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, I didn't *read* this so much as listen to it in a wonderful podcast reading complete with dark ambient music and atmospheric sound effects, by Paul R. Potts. Mr. Potts has read a few short Hodgson pieces, downloadable at his blog TALES FROM THE POTTS HOUSE, but this is the first novel he tackled (I believe The House on the Borderland is on its way). The production and ambient music choices are very well done and Mr. Potts, while the slightest bit stiff at times, is actually the perfect reader for the rather dry, stiff, deliberately dated style Hodgson chose to write this book in. The podcast runs 17 chapters, the first of which is downloadable here.

The book itself is written as an account/record by one of the survivors of the accidental sinking of the Glen Carrig, those lucky few who fled to two large lifeboats when the ship hit a rock, and the adventures they experience. Those of modern sensibilities, unable to place writings into their historical stylistic contexts, need not apply. There are no "characters", per se, just a recitation of the vicissitudes the survivors must undergo as, adrift at sea, they encounter a flat island of mud and evil vegetation (trees that bleed, complete with wailing human faces, and nightly assaults by monstrous plants), escape into a storm at sea and then find themselves stranded on a larger, higher island smack dab in the middle of a "weed continent" in the Sargasso sea. Survival is the key, as our plucky narrator and the crew/passengers fight off giant crabs (brought to mind the Harryhausen MYSTERIOUS ISLAND film adaptation of Verne), "Devil Fish" (essentially, giant squids), and the hideous "Weed Devils", pale white squid-men with tentacled arms and snapping beaks who live in the sargassum and come ashore for nightly attacks. And all this must be done while engineering a way of making contact with a huge old ship, stranded just off-shore in a tangle of weed, whose survivors have been in this hellish place for seven years!

It's quite a lot of fun, although Hodgson's choice to tell the story in deliberately archaic language may turn off quite a few - the writing is dry and flat, although not without exciting incident. Some details that seem like wastes of time (the construction of a giant bow, the manufacturing of which is described in full detail, that later proves incapable of fulfilling its purpose) do end up having a point, while it also may be said that you might hear more in-depth nautical details and lists of equipment than you would care for. The scenes in the initial mud-island and the first wrecked ship that the survivors retreat to at night are very effective - suffused with a feeling of both sterility and corruption (nothing will grow there but fecund yet degenerate vegetation) and a later attack by a devil-fish on the beach of the higher island, again, reads as something out of a Sinbad movie. Parts of this book must have been lifted for the obscure Hammer film THE LOST CONTINENT, I think.

Anyway, lots of fun.

[Maggie K · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this book, and felt that it kept up a good amount of tension.
I think I only rated it a 3 because there is something about a story in first person chronological narrative that just always adds a little monotony.
It's also a little frustrating that there was never anything else learned about wth these 'monsters' were...but the escape from them was enough to make the read enjoyable.

[Bbrown · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' is a very weird tale, not as bizarre in terms of content compared to William Hope Hodgson's most famous work The House on the Borderland, but even stranger in terms of structure. Additionally, the book is only partially a horror story, and arguably is more of an adventure narrative. Finally, the role of the narrator distinguishes this story from many first person works from that era.

Perhaps the thing that surprised me the most about this book was its beginning. Hodgson had first-hand experience as a sailor, which quickly becomes apparent by the plethora of nautical terminology used by the narrator, a nice bit of window dressing. Even though Hodgson himself survived dangerous storms on the high seas, he starts The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' after the sinking of the titular Glen Carrig, with no buildup at all. We the readers are dropped right into things with no transition from the normal world to one filled with the supernatural, instead the book's first pages find the narrator and his companions rowing their boats through an unnaturally silent land filled with bio-arboribus horror.

After a brief stint in that location (the strongest of the book) the story moves on to the sea of weeds, the setting for the large majority of the tale. There are some good scenes in this section, but here more than anywhere else the narrative drags. I believe this is because the book is not fully a horror story, but rather is part horror and part adventure yarn, and the weaker for so splitting the baby. In my head I reimagined this section of the story to be more centered on horror: Instead of finding some improbable survivors living on a boat in the weed sea, the smaller boats could have been destroyed, perhaps by the devilfish that attacked the boats once they reached the island. The sailors would initially think things were hopeless, until they notice the ship mired in seaweed and decide to explore it to determine if it was still seaworthy or could be made so. An expedition sent to the ship is then attacked en route by the weed people or by the giant crabs, killing most except for the narrator and maybe one or two others, who make it and find that the abandoned vessel is seaworthy but stuck fast in the weeds. After that it could be about the struggle to find a way to drag the ship free of the weeds, with both the narrator on the ship and the remaining men on the island fighting off weed people and the narrator not knowing how things are going. In this way the narrator himself could be dejected when the bow and arrow project fails, and elated when the kite idea succeeds, rather than merely being an interested observer. The ending could remain the same, minus the romance and presence of any of the 7-year survivors. Of course the narrative going this route would lose out on many of the adventure elements, but it would have made up for it by being a better horror story.

The strangeness of this book isn’t limited to its abrupt start and its hybrid horror/adventure story nature either. Contrary to most first-person narratives, the narrator here is not the hero of this tale, instead that role is filled by the bo’sun (boatswain), who far outstrips the narrator in terms of courage, strength, and foresight. The narrator tries to contribute, but his plans are largely unsuccessful, and it's other people that solve their predicament. It’s also possible that one character from this narrative re-appears in Hodgson’s later work The Ghost Ships, though they may just share the same name.

All these little things make The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ a very interesting book, though not as strong as The House on the Borderland. It is, however, notably stronger than the later work The Ghost Ships, a story that overcorrects in favor of a classic horror story structure and does not embrace the weirdness that is Hodgson’s chief virtue. 3/5. It’s available for free since it’s in the public domain, so if it looks interesting to you there’s little downside to giving it a shot.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with much of Hodgson's writing, there is no dialogue in The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig', the story being presented as a witness account from one person's viewpoint, with few of the characters, including the narrator, being named. I've read some reviews which criticise him for this form, it being, undeniably, monotone in effect and, for some, it may come off as rather flat, if not to say boring. In the present case, throw in the reserved language of an earlier era and a surfeit of nautical jargon and the result might be of remoteness and impenetrability. However, that's a view for others, as I love Hodgson's work and find in the faults ascribed by others a well-crafted style, well-suited to the atmosphere he seeks to create.

The story begins without preamble with the narrator and his companions already adrift in their lifeboats. It's never explained how the 'Glen Carrig' came to founder, nor exactly where nor when. It is to be assumed that the narrator's fictional audience know these details, the loss of a vessel and the unexpected return of the survivors having undoubtedly been a widely-reported sensation. Depending upon your temperament, this, and other, unexplained incidents may be frustrating or evocative. I'll pass on from narrative style, though, by restating that it suits my own taste.

I don't think it's giving too much away to say that the 'horror' in the story is not of the supernatural variety, such as in Hodgson's The Ghost Pirates, but is rather in the macabre/weird vein, with the 'Glen Carrig' survivors contending with mundane, if strange, eerie and malevolent, forces. That said, it's little surprise that H.P. Lovecraft admired Hodgson's writing, and the dangers faced by the survivors could easily have crawled out of the Cthulhu bestiary (though Hodgson wrote during the generation before Lovecraft).

The ingenuity and occasional foolishness of the survivors is appealing and, despite knowing the characters mainly as sketches rather than fully-formed persons, I nonetheless found myself engaged with and drawn into their struggle for survival.

Hodgson having been a sailor for many years, he writes what he knows, which includes a lot of nautical jargon. I think it's rarely necessary to know the specifics of the terms, as they're generally adding flavour, though there are those times when it seemed to me he could have explained himself in more lubberly terms for the sake of his non-fictional audience (really, my only small criticism). The upshot (if you've not served time on a square-rigged sailing so) is that you either blithely pass over the nautical terms or have a good dictionary to hand, speaking of which...

Some nautical nomenclature that I've had to look up to be sure of what I'm reading (gleaned from The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Volume I and The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Volume II):

Thwart: [page 2] A seat across a boat, on which the rower sits; a rower's bench (ok, I knew this one, but then doubted myself).
Bo'sun [page 3] (Well, yes, it's short for 'boatswain', one of a ship's officers, but what are their duties?) An officer in a ship who has charge of the sails, rigging, etc., and whose duty it is to summon the men to their duties with a whistle.
Scuttle: [page 9] A square or rectangular hole or opening in a ship's deck, smaller than a hatchway, furnished with a movable cover or lid, used as a means of communication between deck and deck. (From which is derived the act of sinking a vessel by cutting a hole, or 'scuttle', into the bottom of the hull).
Lazarette: [page 10] A space between decks, in some merchant vessels, used as a storeroom.
Breaker: [page 11] A small keg.
Caboose: [page 16] The cook-room of merchantmen on deck.
Brig: [page 25] A vessel with two masts square-rigged like a ship's fore and main masts, but carrying also on her main-mast a lower fore-and-aft sail with a gaff and boom. (I'm not sure I'll remember this technical description of what makes vessel a brig.)
Whaleback: [page 32] Interestingly, there is no definition for this particular usage of the word in my dictionaries, nor on the internet. From what Hodgson describes, it appears to be a large piece of curved timber which can be stowed on a boat, which he says is erected using supports and stay ropes to act as a framework for sailcloth, the sailcloth being nailed to the gunnels and the whole acting as a roof to the boat to prevent water washing into the vessel during a storm.
Bends: [page 47] The wales of a boat. With 'wales', in turn, meaning either the gunwales (the topmost planking of the vessel's sides) or, most likely in this case, the horizontal planks or timbers, broader and thicker than the rest, which extend along a ship's sides at different heights, from stem to stern.
Shroud: A set of ropes, usually in pairs, leading from the head of a mast and serving to relieve the latter of lateral strain.
Futtock-shroud: [page 106] One of the small shrouds which secure the lower dead-eyes and futtock-plates of topmast rigging to a band around the lower mast. Futtock-plate: One of the iron plates crossing the sides of the top-rim perpendicularly, to which the futtock-shrouds are secured. Dead-eye: A round, laterally flattened wooden block, pierced with three holes through which a lanyard is reeved,used for extending the shrouds.
Sennit: [page 106] Plaited grass used to make hats, though in Hodgson's usage, also twine.
Frap: [page 109] To bind tightly.
Flake down: [page 110] to lay out rope in long flat flakes, or fakes, each one overlapping the previous one, so that it is ready for running. A Flake is a coil of rope ready to be run out.
Kedge: [page 166] A small anchor which, being attached to a hawser and cast out, is hauled upon to move a boat in lieu of sail or oar. To kedge is to propel a boat in this fashion.

[George K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Πριν από τρία χρόνια διάβασα το πιο γνωστό έργο του συγγραφέα, το The House on the Borderland (Το σπίτι στα σύνορα του κόσμου), οπότε καιρός ήταν να διαβάσω και το άλλο του μυθιστόρημα που έχω στην βιβλιοθήκη μου, απόκτημα και αυτό από τα γνωστά μου βιβλιοσαφάρι στο Μοναστηράκι.

Η ιστορία είναι αρκετά απλή μα συνάμα συναρπαστική: Βρισκόμαστε στο 1757 στις άγνωστες θάλασσες του Νότου και το πλοίο Γκλεν Κάριγκ προσέκρουσε σε ύφαλο και βούλιαξε. Οι περισσότεροι ναυτικοί την γλίτωσαν, μιας και μεταφέρθηκαν με προμήθειες σε δυο βάρκες. Όμως το δράμα τους δεν τελειώνει εκεί, μιας και θα χαθούν σε μυστηριώδη νερά, γεμάτα φύκια και φρικώδη πλάσματα και θα βρεθούν κοντά σ'ένα άγνωστο νησί, βγαλμένο από τους χειρότερους εφιάλτες.

Το βιβλίο γράφηκε πριν από 110 χρόνια σχεδόν και το δείχνει αρκετά. Όμως η ιστορία που περιγράφεται είναι τόσο ενδιαφέρουσα και σκοτεινή, γεμάτη δράση, ανατριχίλες και φρίκη, που κρατάει το ενδιαφέρον του αναγνώστη μέχρι το τέλος, παρά την (ελάχιστα) κουραστική αφήγηση, που είναι περιγραφική και χωρίς διαλόγους. Λογικό είναι να έχει γεράσει (εδώ γεράσαμε εμείς!), όμως χωρίς αμφιβολία πρόκειται για ένα κλασικό και καλογραμμένο βιβλίο τρόμου που όλοι οι λάτρεις του είδους πρέπει να διαβάσουν κάποια στιγμή. Στα θετικά σημεία μετράω επίσης την εξαιρετική ατμόσφαιρα και φυσικά τα απίθανα μέρη στα οποία διαδραματίζεται η ιστορία.

[Ана Хелс · Rating 5 out of 5]

Мракът на моретата, обитавани от сенки със зъби и огромен апетит към всичко движещо се, е способен да докара дори на истински закоравелите читатели морска болест на сухо. Ходжсън е майстор на това да плаши и смущава, дори с една приключенска история, разказваща за корабокрушение на, вярно, далечна част от собствения ни свят, но изглеждаща сякаш се намира на зловредна и грозна планета, ужасяващо мразеща хората от първо вдишване. Всичко е безнадеждно, уморително и фаталистично, но и носещо есенцията на човешкият вид, който продължава да се опитва да спечели мача срещу вселената, дори и когато тя ни води с билион на нула. Класическо приключение с класически ужас :)

[José Nebreda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gozosa relectura de mi adorado Hodgson.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nautical terror at its best.

Highly recommended for fans of the weird and horror in general. It is hard to state how impressed I really was with this. The author deserves a wider audience.

A note: Never have I liked an unnamed character as much as this novel's mighty bo'sun.

[Rory · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd never read anything by this author up until now so I was very curious to see what they had to offer (though if you're one of the writers who inspired H.P Lovecraft then surely it's worth some merit ain't it?)


For a first novel (not just for myself but the writer as well) this was quite a satisfactory read. Though the characterization and story is pale what really comes through with this book is the spectacle. There's a lot of really sublime descriptions of weird sea creatures, from fish monsters and giant crabs to seeweed men and the like it's all wrought with wonderfully palpable passages.

Pretty much everyone in this book can never catch a break from fighting off these things (and there's a whole ferry load of them), these people must have iron willpower 'cause they re still standing after all that like nothing's happened.

Me? I'd have been like:

One gripe I had was that it always continued with a heavy prose style, which I sometimes found hard to read (though part of this might be to do with the edition I read from), it got a bit monotonous from time to time, and I know it was written in the style of a old MS, but I think some spoken text would have worked just a bit to break up sections.

Overall I somewhat enjoyed this novel and I'll be sure to read more works by the same author, and those who are interested in weird fiction might like to dip into this.

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first saw William Hope Hodgson's work published in the "fantasy masterworks" series, so I was curious to read these forerunners to modern fantasy fiction. It's a bit like fantasy, a bit like speculative fiction, and a bit like horror, all mixed in. Quite interesting to read, and to guess at who it might be an influence for.

I couldn't help thinking of Homer's Odyssey as I was reading this, although the men and women of this story don't have to go quite so far as Odysseus -- except perhaps the ones in the hulk, who have to endure seven years hanging around in the weed continent, fearing the monsters all the time... In any case, this book isn't really about any of the characters -- there are few named characters, and little dialogue, and not many descriptions of people -- but about the semi-supernatural monsters the luckless ship comes across. The writing is slow to read, and quite dense, but the descriptions and the tension of it are good. There's a touch of romance, too, and although Mary Madison isn't exactly a fully realised character, and the narrator isn't wonderfully sympathetic and human himself, that does add a bit of life and cheer to the end of the story.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't my kind of novel at all, very tedious and repetitious, tonnes of description of boats and nautical themes.

It plods along at the same pace throughout, in fact I think it might have been more effective if written in diary format in shorter entries.

When supernatural events do occur, they have little to no terror or atmosphere to them, everything is matter of fact and lacking in emotion, the chapters are interchangeable, I had to force myself to finish this one.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hodgson has always been one of my favorites, and this novel, while not one of his better-known stories, is one of his best. It's a very moody thing, very Lovecraftian in tone, but with an interesting plot and full of all kinds of imaginative perils. Just the thing for vacation by the water; lots of cool fun!