Cast Up By the Sea, a Boy's Story

by Samuel White Baker

Cast Up by the Sea puppies out of ponds to try his hand at restoring them to life, then on the failure of his attempts, burying them with honours. Geography and Natural History were favourite studies with him, and a story is told of experiments with gunpowder, resulting in smashed crockery, broken windows, and severe burns. He went first to school at Rottingdean, and after his fathers removal to Highnam Court, two miles from Gloucester, to the College School at Gloucester. He was after that for about two years with a private tutor at Tottenham, and then for a time he went to Frankfort-on-M ain, attending lectures and studying German. It was intended that he should succeed to his fathers business, his elder brother having died in youth, but a very short experience of ofl ce work was enough to show his unsuitability for a commercial career. In 1842 Baker sfather bought Lypiatt Park in Gloucestershire, and here during that year he and his brother John married two sisters, daughters of a neighbouring clergyman, on the same day. John went out to Mauritius to manage their fathers estate there, and Samuel followed to assist him the next year. Two years in Mauritius was enough for Samuel, and in 1845 the spirit of wandering seized him and was not to be denied. He had heard of the big-game shooting in Ceylon, and had made up his mind to go tliere for the hunting, which he did in 1846, accompanied by his wife. After several months spent in shooting game both big and small, he was stricken down with fever, but quickly recovered after his removal to the mountain health resort of Newera-E liya. This beautiful hill station, standing on a tableland between six and seven thousand feet above sea level, was at that time chiefly used as a sanatorium for the British forces in Ceylon, but Baker saw that it was a desirable land to dwell in and to possess, and after his recovery c
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

364 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1869

About the author

Sir Samuel White Baker of Britain founded a settlement at Ceylon in 1848, explored the region of the Blue Nile from 1861 to 1862, and as the first such European, reached Albert in 1864.

Baker served as an English officer, naturalist, big game hunter, engineer, writer, and abolitionist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_...

Reviews

[George Lysy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fairly typical boys' adventure novel from the 1800s which, admittedly, has an extra sauce to it that a lot of other boys adventure novels don't have, at least at the beginning of the story. And that seems to have been at least somewhat acknowledged over time, as this book actually once recieved an edition in the Everyman's Library when it was first created in 1929.
The start of the story is actually very creative and engaging. In a small benighted coastal town, an old and witch-like woman named mother lee embittered by her privateer husband being hung by the authorities, makes a regular habit of lighting false signal fires around the rocky cliffs to intentionally shipwreck ships and scavenge through their remains. Our hero, a young boy and his dog, find mother Lee engaged in murderously throwing rocks at the survivors of one of her shipwrecks desperately clinging to a mast. However, one of the men left is a black gentleman named Tom, whom our hero rescues, and he becomes his companion through the book. He is definitely a servile character and a stereotype, but there is a sacrifice he makes by the end which, (when, impossibly, seperated from racist ideas of servility) is fairly emotional. He also has an older brother who is framed for murder by Mother Lee in the typical style of victorian melodrama, and for a while the book also shows his adventures taking French ships and encountering sea battles. This is all well and good, but at a certain point pur young hero gets shipwrecked and has adventures with the natives, and here is where the book falls away into being exactly like any other boys' adventure story featuring an account with some natives. Except here there is an amazon queen that our young hero is engaged to marry, but it is a very short section of the book.
The story is distinct from other boys' adventure novels I've read. As I've said, it contains a sort of sauce the others don't, and an uncommon amount of creativity in its plot, setting and characters. But this falls away before the end.
However, I still found it a real easy-to-read page-turner with some very memorable moments. (Including, spoilers, the death of Mother Lee, which leads to a darkly funny illustration.) I read it eight months ago and it is still relatively fresh in my mind.
I would recommend this book only if you are specifically interested in the boys' adventure subgenre. For general fans of victorian literature, this book may be more interesting than the regular boys' adventure specimen, but unless you're specifically into that you'd probably rather be reading something that was more relevenat to the development of genres anyway.