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POST CAPT WOODEN WALL
This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: HistoryPrivate presses; History / Native American; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Native American Studies; Sports & Recreation / Sailing; Transportation / Ships & Shipbuilding / General;
Hardcover
First published February 16, 2010
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About the author
John Davis
11 booksJohn Davis (1774-1854) was an English-born American explorer and journalist in the late 18th/early 19th century. He is known for his travels through the southern United States.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 12, 2025
It was interesting to read this, but in the end it's a book by someone that knows naval terms but little about literature. I had been hoping for a great deal more about the life of sailors and ships from an insider, instead there was a lot of lewd (for the time) jokes and very dull romance. Not really worth it.
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July 16, 2010This book was originally published in 1815
John Davis was born the year before Jane Austen--same month, December. Both of them wrote from an early age, though Davis also spent a lot of time at sea. He wrote this novel (it's extremely short--novella, barely) around the time of the false peace, sold it, and the publisher, a Thomas Tegg, sat on it for a couple of years, and when the Nelson death became the big buzz, he published it--but hinting that a famous person had written it. Poor Davis not only didn't get his name on it, but never seems to have earned any money, though it stayed in print for fifty years. He died in a poor house, apparently writing away.
It's not very good. In fact, I couldn't help comparing it to Austen's brilliance, being penned at the same time...there's that curious blend of unsophisticated writing technique mixed with a trainload of classical reference that characterizes so much minor 18th C fiction. You can really see the evidence of all that Greek and Latin stuff having been whacked into the backsides of scrubby schoolboys who then couldn't help but pepper their conversation for the rest of their lives with bits of Xenophon and the rest. Writers of that time will employ some of the conventions of fiction, ignore others--break out of POV and address the reader directly, not just to reinforce a moral but to explain a pun. There is also a whole lot of overt sexual reference all hidden in arcane sail lore. It's quite flagrant, making me think that the novel's popularity later was probably confined to those who knew the sea and enjoyed the bawdy references that slid right past the more refined early Victorian ear. The sailors in the story certainly slide the refs past the young ladies in the novel--though at the end, one of the wives wins my heart by knowing very well what the guys are saying, and in effect she shrugs and joins in.
There's a middle chapter about a man's experience as prisoner of a Native American tribe, probably heard from someone Davis met while he was in North America. It reminds me of some of Marryat's North American yarns. Davis's ship battles are full of jargon but almost no visual details, so you have to know what the jargon means in order to follow the action, but the book is fascinating for little details of life, both on board and ashore--things so obvious Davis takes them for granted. That's the value of pulp fiction, I've always found--the nickel novels by unknowns that you find on dusty used bookstores for fifty cents, stereotypical stories chockfull of tropes popular at that time, full of assumptions the writers never question that show details and attitudes of their daily lives more clearly than the greats, whose examinations and extrapolations step out into timelessness because part of their greatness is that we adopted their extrapolations and made them part of our own daily assumptions.
Anyway, a fun read, but only recommended if you really, really like maritime yarns, and are fairly up on your eighteenth century idiom and maritime jargon.
John Davis was born the year before Jane Austen--same month, December. Both of them wrote from an early age, though Davis also spent a lot of time at sea. He wrote this novel (it's extremely short--novella, barely) around the time of the false peace, sold it, and the publisher, a Thomas Tegg, sat on it for a couple of years, and when the Nelson death became the big buzz, he published it--but hinting that a famous person had written it. Poor Davis not only didn't get his name on it, but never seems to have earned any money, though it stayed in print for fifty years. He died in a poor house, apparently writing away.
It's not very good. In fact, I couldn't help comparing it to Austen's brilliance, being penned at the same time...there's that curious blend of unsophisticated writing technique mixed with a trainload of classical reference that characterizes so much minor 18th C fiction. You can really see the evidence of all that Greek and Latin stuff having been whacked into the backsides of scrubby schoolboys who then couldn't help but pepper their conversation for the rest of their lives with bits of Xenophon and the rest. Writers of that time will employ some of the conventions of fiction, ignore others--break out of POV and address the reader directly, not just to reinforce a moral but to explain a pun. There is also a whole lot of overt sexual reference all hidden in arcane sail lore. It's quite flagrant, making me think that the novel's popularity later was probably confined to those who knew the sea and enjoyed the bawdy references that slid right past the more refined early Victorian ear. The sailors in the story certainly slide the refs past the young ladies in the novel--though at the end, one of the wives wins my heart by knowing very well what the guys are saying, and in effect she shrugs and joins in.
There's a middle chapter about a man's experience as prisoner of a Native American tribe, probably heard from someone Davis met while he was in North America. It reminds me of some of Marryat's North American yarns. Davis's ship battles are full of jargon but almost no visual details, so you have to know what the jargon means in order to follow the action, but the book is fascinating for little details of life, both on board and ashore--things so obvious Davis takes them for granted. That's the value of pulp fiction, I've always found--the nickel novels by unknowns that you find on dusty used bookstores for fifty cents, stereotypical stories chockfull of tropes popular at that time, full of assumptions the writers never question that show details and attitudes of their daily lives more clearly than the greats, whose examinations and extrapolations step out into timelessness because part of their greatness is that we adopted their extrapolations and made them part of our own daily assumptions.
Anyway, a fun read, but only recommended if you really, really like maritime yarns, and are fairly up on your eighteenth century idiom and maritime jargon.
Read
March 20, 2011Probably the first Royal Navy novel pubished, in 1803. It's hard to believe that this rollicking, structurally clumsy, very 18th Century-in-feel novel was published at the same time as Jane Austen's brilliance was just emerging. Fun, but you do need to know a lot of ship jargon (which is mostly put to use making sexual innuendo).
July 26, 2019
Surely C.S. Forester read this before writing the Hornblower novels. A great read, but the prose style is rather dated.
April 3, 2025
I read this book for a research paper I am writing on the Navy Gentleman trope in British 1800s nautical/courtship literature. I thought this book was really fun and ridiculous, especially given the time. It did not make me think too deeply but was a great exercise for my annotative and theory skills!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews