Ned Myers: or, A Life Before the Mast

by James Fenimore Cooper

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, American

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1843

About the author

James Fenimore Cooper was a popular and prolific American writer. He is best known for his historical novel The Last of the Mohicans, one of the Leatherstocking Tales stories, and he also wrote political fiction, maritime fiction, travelogues, and essays on the American politics of the time. His daughter Susan Fenimore Cooper was also a writer.

Series:
* The Leatherstocking Tales
* The Littlepage Manuscripts
* Afloat and Ashore
* Homeward Bound

Reviews

[Chip · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting read! It reminded me quite a bit of Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, but where Dana was a rich kid taking time off from Harvard to go slumming with sailors, Myers was the real thing, who ran away from his foster parents to join a ship, was taken prisoner during the war of 1812, etc.

Myers and Cooper had served together on the Sterling when Myers was a cabin boy of thirteen, and then crossed paths again nearly 40 years later. The book is an "as told to" autobiography, written by Cooper in Myers' voice in the first person. For some reason, I had gotten the impression that Cooper had taken some liberties with the story, but now I believe that impression was wrong.

I read this as a download from Project Gutenberg. It was particularly gratifying to be able to flip back and forth from the ebook to Wikipedia or Google to look up further details on some of the ships Myers sailed, captains he served, ports he visited, and battles he fought. I was already familiar with a lot of "age of sail" jargon from books like Dana, Moby Dick, and Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, but a few of the terms left me - and Google! - scratching our heads.

I see that Cooper also wrote some other non-fiction books and biographies about the U.S. Navy. While Ned Myers might not be everyone's cup of tea, I'd say it's definitely worth reading if you're interested in sea stories or biographies from that period or the history of America and the American Navy in the first half of the 19th century.

[Miles Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to describe. Its a novelized autobiography focusing on a sailor in the United States Navy in the Early Republic. The ending is fantastic, but much of the narrative is wordy and halting.