Through the South Seas With Jack London

by Martin Johnson

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Genres: Travel

369 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

It wasn't until I was more than a few pages into Through the South Seas with Jack London that I realized who the author was. For Martin Johnson is the Martin Johnson, who, later, with his wife, Osa, would go on expeditions throughout the South Seas and Africa. They would also become noted (notorious?) documentary filmmakers. Alas, in retrospect, they came to be seen as shameless self-promoters who exploited the subjects of their work. The title of one of their films should suffice as illustration, Congorilla (1932), a film given to looking at pygmy life and highlighted as a movie about "big apes and little people."

But that was in the future. Here, Johnson does give a breathless and exciting account of the voyage of Jack London and his wife aboard the Snark, the Londons' 45-foot yacht, from 1907 to 1909. The trip took the core crew to an extended stay in Hawaii and subsequent trips to the Marquesas, where they explored the valley of the Typee, Tahiti, Bora Bora, Fiji, Samoa, the Solomons, and Australia.

The style of the book reflects its author, who was always something of a carnival barker underneath it all. Each trip is the "world's most difficult," each storm the "worst in history," and every island in Polynesia "a Garden of Eden," while Melanesia is the "worst spot on earth." Exaggeration and hyperbole are his hallmarks.

Neither is accuracy, historical or otherwise, much of a concern. Either Johnson naively accepted elaborations about the death of Captain Cook as truth or he made up his own version. Too, he either did not realize or perhaps ignored the fact that the Fayaway of Herman Melville's Typee was a creation of fiction. The effect is that the reader is never quite sure about the truth of things as Johnson describes them. Fortunately, the book comes with a large selection of photographs that Johnson took on the voyage, which does illustrate many of his descriptions.

Despite it all, this is a fun read. And the fact is that the voyage was dangerous; the islands were dangerous. Disease and death a distinct possibility. And hardship and isolation existed in a way that modern audiences for the book cannot imagine.

[Charles Van-Heyden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who thrives on great adventure or alternately vicariously great adventure stories will get a bang out of Through the South Seas With Jack London. Admittedly I read the Gutenberg version with illustrations enough to make it a very satisfying read with much learned about sailing the open ocean for months at a time, the beauty and mysterious phenomena associated with the South Sea Islands and archipelagos, cannibals, their true reason for cannibalism.

There, I said it in two sentences. Go and have a fun experience and learn by reading the book. I'm in the middle of Herman Melville's 'Typee: A Romance of the South Seas'

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting travel book, written over one century ago, but just a decade after Robert Louis Stevenson's "In the South Seas." In that time cannibalism had almost been eradicated, but there still were several savage peoples, some of which had never seen a white man. The description of the many illnesses they caught in the Solomon Islands is really gruesome: jaws, fever, and a mysterious affection of hands and feet that made it impossible for Jack London to write, and forced them to suspend the trip and sell the yacht.