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The Wreck of the Golden Mary (hosted by Petra) - 2nd Summer Read 2021
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Diane
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Jun 28, 2021 04:11AM
I loved this one too. The gothic-ness was overpowering, the comparison of the evil Jan Fagel and the innocence of the wife and small daughter, the danger of being on the Brocken Spectre on Christmas Eve, ghosts; I can see why the Victorians would have loved this. A true Christmas story.
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That's a fascinating article! Thanks Petra. And it's by Michael Slater, who is a highly respected Dickens scholar, and (as you know!) wrote an excellent biography about him called Charles Dickens (link to book) in 2009, as well as many other books about him.
I'm not sure which story you're thinking of I'm afraid, but the themes are common ones in his works, including minor plots in his novels. It's a shame it does not look as if those notes were written by Charles Dickens himself - according to that article anyway;
"the details do not correspond to any published story by Dickens and inserted in the volume is a 1965 letter from the Editors of the Pilgrim Edition of Dickens’s letters to the then Blackburn Librarian categorically stating that the manuscript is not in Dickens’s hand."
I'd be inclined to believe that, as there are so many examples of Charles Dickens's handwriting that an expert could make a fair assessment of its authenticity. And I like the idea at the end, that it was written by a guest to his home, "Gad's Hill". If we take this on board, then it's obviously a kind of literary tribute :)
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All the names in the story sound Dutch, and they were great sailors and explorers. But when the story mentioned "Loo", I immediately thought this referred to the Looe in Cornwall. It's an ancient fishing port, and the waters round there can be treacherous because of the rocks (there's a light-house). It looks as though there are various Loos in the Netherlands, but I can't find a one on the coast! Can any Dutch member help?
I also wondered if the derivation might help; perhaps there's a common root. But the closest I can get is "The sheltered side of a small boat without a latrine is called loo(w)ard or leeward, and sailors allegedly use it for urinating and defecating", which doesn't really help for a village or hamlet!
Your summary is excellent, Petra! Thank you so much for writing a full summary, so that those who cannot locate a complete edition which includes these passengers' stories, are still able to discuss this tale :)
Hi, if I read this short story I would never have guessed it was written by Dickens, my edition had only the Dickens and Collins tales.the start of the tale by the captain felt a little apologetic knowing the Golden Mary would eventually be wrecked. Maybe Dickens's aim was to convey a sense of inevitability to the wreck.
when Little Lucy began playing with the ship as if it was a doll, i was filled with dread, just hearing the crew calling the child "golden Lucy" similar to the "golden Mary" made me feel that there would be a pararell to their fates.
Good catch, Omar. I never thought of that with poor little Lucy.
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I too wondered at the title, which is such a spoiler! You may be right, plus it leads us to wonder how the tale came to be told, and at such length. We are reassured to know that there must be at least some survivors.
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She is placing links to each of them at the beginning of this thread, in comment 3.
Bionic Jean wrote: "I'm not sure which story you're thinking of I'm afraid, but the themes are common ones in his works, including minor plots in his novels. It's a shame it does not look as if those notes were written by Charles Dickens himself - according to that article anyway;..."Thank you, Jean. I had just skimmed the article and missed that the note is NOT in Charles Dickens' hand. Thanks for catching that.
That's too bad.
I've read that story before, though. I just can't remember what it was called.
Sue, Connie, Diane, this was a spooky, gothic story! I enjoyed it as well. This is what a good ghost story is all about. Fitzgerald has given us two very good stories. I really enjoyed his writings.
Connie and Jean, I hadn't heard of Brocken Spectres before either. They are a fascinating phenomenon. I imagine that when they occurred in the far past that they were seen as signs of some sort. I enjoyed the images a lot. It would be nice to observe a Brocken Spectre in real life at some point.
The name of the boat is so specific that I pondered a bit on the significance of the name within this story.
The closest I got was that a Brocken Spectre isn't often seen. The area of the Brocken Mountain seems to be an area where these sightings are concentrated more than other places and has led to local legends being told and one has to be in the right spot to see it.
Jan Fagel has grown into such a legend. He appears in one place, rarely (once a year) and one has to be in that exact spot to be affected by the phenomenon.
Omar wrote: "when Little Lucy began playing with the ship as if it was a doll, i was filled with dread, just hearing the crew calling the child "golden Lucy" similar to the "golden Mary" made me feel that there would be a pararell to their fates..."Omar, great observation! It hadn't occurred to me to tie the fate of these two together like this. That's brilliant....and probably what Dickens had intended.
I hope you join us for the extra five stories. There are links to each story in Post 215. Please join us.
sure, I'm trying to find post 215, don't know how to do it on the phone app.could someone give me the timestamp of the post?
my impression on survivors without reading the short stories is that, there would no doubt be some, among them the captain as he states his age at the start of his tale is 56 in the year 1856, and that the year at the start of the voyage is 1851, there is no mention of them being in the voyage for years previous to the iceberg encounter and such voyages normally didn't last years (some one please correct me if I'm wrong on this assumption).
Hope this link helps:https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Time stamp: June 24 1:41PM
Something that helps me is to keep in mind that each page has 50 comments. That helps me narrow down which page I need to look at. :D
Omar, you are correct in your time assumption.If I recall, the Golden Mary hit the iceberg about 60 days into the voyage and they were shipwrecked about 27-28 days.
The stories are really nice. Besides being well written and very interesting, they give a little background on 5 of the passengers and crew.
For me, it makes the passengers & crew more real. In the Captain's and John's accounts, they are mentioned but we don't personally get to know any of them. These stories bring 5 of them to life.
I found it brought me an extra connection to these nameless, faceless people with the Captain and John.
If anyone is looking for the link to the stories in The Beguilement of the Boats, I've added the link to Post 3 of this thread, for easier access.
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It's fine - easily done! I was glad to learn that there are some papers relating to Charles Dickens in Blackburn (Lancashire), though it's doubtful whether I'll get there to see them. And I do like the idea of all his house guests at "Gads Hill" setting out to making jokes, or literary tributes, to their host, the great master. It reminds me of the house party where they all wrote ghostly stories, which resulted in
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley writing Frankenstein: The 1818 Text :)
Adelaide Anne Procter (1825 – 1864)
Adelaide was born in London to the poet Bryan Waller Procter and his wife Anne. The family had strong literary ties: novelist Elizabeth Gaskell enjoyed her visits to the Procter household, and Procter's father was friends with poet Leigh Hunt, essayist Charles Lamb, and novelist Charles Dickens, as well as being acquainted with poet William Wordsworth. A family friend wrote that "everybody of any literary pretension whatever seemed to flow in and out of the house and seemed to belong to the place."
Dickens spoke highly of Procter's quick intelligence. By his account, the young Procter mastered without difficulty the subjects to which she turned her attention.
Her literary career began when she was a teenager, her poems appearing in Charles Dickens's periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, and later in feminist journals.
A voracious reader, Procter was largely self-taught, though she studied at Queen's College in 1850.
In 1851, Procter converted to Roman Catholicism. Following her conversion, Procter became extremely active in several charitable and feminist causes. Her charity work and her conversion seem to have influenced her poetry, which deals with such subjects as homelessness, poverty, and fallen women, among whom she performed philanthropic work.
Procter was the favourite poet of Queen Victoria.
Few modern critics have rated her work, but it is still thought significant for what it reveals about how Victorian women expressed otherwise repressed feelings.
Procter never married. Her health suffered, possibly due to overwork, and she died of tuberculosis at the age of 38.
A sample of Adelaide's poems, with analysis.
The Complete Works of Adelaide A. Proctor, with a 12 page introduction by Charles Dickens:
https://archive.org/details/TheComple...
The Old Seaman's Story by Adelaide Anne Proctor(linking paragraph attributed to Charles Dickens)
An old Seaman in the Surf-boat sang this ballad, as his story, to a curious sort of tuneful no-tune, which none of the rest could remember afterwards.
Thirty six years ago, in a time of storm and gale, the Seaman was in a ship wreck and stranded in Red Algiers. Although he was young, he was strong and remained calm through the ordeal and had a belief that he could not die.
He fought hard for his life during the ordeal. The sea was rough, the waves huge. Pitiless rocks abounded and stood in his way but, bruised and half dead, he was tossed about to shore. Only to find that the sea was a friend compared to the people he found himself amongst on shore.
The landscape was unappealing. The mountains gaunt, deep gorges ran through the land up to the burning, lonely desert. Everywhere in the land, whether mountain or desert, were the cruel masters, the Black Moors of Barbary.
For ten years he was worked by them. Feeling hopeless, but he now knows that there was Hope in his heart. Hope that grew over Time. The years of toil and sorrow seem to like a long, dark dream. Each day that passed felt like a year.
How he cursed the Land (his prison), the sea and the Fates that cursed him to this existence. He was going mad, thinking that he had left a wife and child behind at home and that this voyage was to have been his last one.
One vision was in his heart always and never faded from his sight. Never once during his time of slavery, day or night, did it leave him and it kept him from the deepest of the despair. While sad and broken-hearted, his heart was not quite fully broken, as long as his wife and child lived and blessed him.
When the day was over and his tasks done, he hurried down to the shore. He never wandered into the Land, being unfamiliar with it’s bleak looking mountains, the red & black earth and the fountains with the flowing oreanders.
Nightly, he stared into the sea until she became his friend once again. Because she knew Old England, he forgave her all the pain she caused him with the shipwreck and by stranding him here in Algiers. Beside her, the blue sky, white clouds and glimmering stars looked like those at home in days past.
These thoughts calmed him. His weariness, pain and longing left him and he felt like his old self again. Looking up at the sky, he sorrowfully dreamt of home and all he had left behind.
A fair face, blue eyes brimming with tears, small red lips, pale with sorrow, smiled at him, hiding her fears from him. She held the baby towards him. Looking up at the sky, he saw them as he had last beheld them as the ship pulled out of harbour.
As the years passed, he would sometimes try to picture her and the baby as they were today. Her a bit aged; the baby no longer a baby. The wife no longer looked girlish; the child stands at her side. The wife’s face looks more sorrowed in her worry for him and his safety.
Then he imagined, as the night grew darker, how she taught the child to pray. The child holds its hands together, praying for the father never met. He feels her sorrow on him, heavier than any sorrow he feels for himself. He feels for her wasted youth and the joy that flew from her too early.
Then his calloused hands would come to his face and he’d cry bitter tears of anguish. He would find himself back in reality: a slave and outcast, far from home & across a sea. So, although it may seem childish, he cried himself to sleep.
As the years passed, his sorrow grew calmer and stronger. His sorrow was his shield against his suffering each day. His cruel master’s harshness fell on him in vain, yet he remembered all that he was put through. It echoed in his brain each day.
There was a group of Christians who travelled through foreign lands, looking to rescue all Christian captives. Each year, these gentle people go forth from Rome, armed with the ransom required to free as many captives as they can and bring them home.
One day, he was told he was free! This news was broken to him gently, but the hours went by and still his head could not comprehend – he was free! Sorrow only strains the heart fibers but Joy breaks them.
But, finally, it came to him and his heart felt full. His years of slavery & toil, the years of dreariness…..what were they?! They meant nothing in comparison to the impatient longing he feels as he crosses the sea and makes his way home.
He doesn’t know how the voyage went by but soon finds himself on shore, once again surrounded by his fellow Countrymen. Friendly hands grasped his, welcoming him home but all he can think about is hearing the first words from the gentle voice of his wife.
Would he see a look of surprise come to her face & eyes at the knowledge of his return? Would the light return to her dim eyes and her face flush at seeing him again? Oh, to see the doubt and fear receding as the joy of seeing him brings peace back to her heart.
And the child! He conjured up every memory. He could picture the cottage, see the crackling fire in the hearth, with his wife and child seated by it, waiting and watching for his return.
So, at last, he reached the harbour and remembers nothing more until he stood, with an anxious and throbbing heart, with his hand upon the door. He paused before opening the door. He hears her speaking in a soft, low, murmuring voice. He is relieved. He realizes that he was worried that she may have died before his return.
It was an autumn evening, the wind blew chill, the leaves fell all around him and the red sun lit the hills. It’s now 26 years since that day when he stood by the door of the cottage, waiting to go in. He’s now old and grey……but he’s never told a single person what he say that day.
She was sitting by the fire, holding a small child, whispering sweet baby words to it. Then she looked up and smiled….at the man standing at her side. Oh what sorrow he felt as he saw the loving, trusting look that she had once given him now being given to another man.
She rose and looked towards him as he waited, cold and dumb, at the door. She shrieks in fear and terror at the sight of him, her face white in despair. He was once a friend. They stared at each other, not saying a single word. He, the living love; the Seaman, the dead.
He walks to her and, taking her trembling hand, he looks into her white face. He looks at her earnestly and solemnly, wanting her to see the understanding, love and pity that he couldn’t put into words to tell her. Today he gives thanks to God that no thoughts passed between them, except sorrow for a lost and crushed love.
The three cried bitter tears together, bitter from the broken hearts they all felt. The baby continues to sleep, a smile on its lips. Only tears passed between them, no words were spoken, until her new husband tells him that his son, the child, was dead.
After awhile, he rose, turned to the husband, and wrung his hand. He gently kissed his wife on her forehead as if she were still his. He did not say words of farewell but, with broken words, prayed that she would be blessed always. Then he left without a word more.
For the next 26 years he roams the seas. All his shipmates, old & weary, have returned to England to die at home. Home! Yes, he, too, would one day reach home and be able to rest. He will find her waiting for him, holding their child at her breast.
Petra wrote: "The Old Seaman's Story by Adelaide Anne Proctor(linking paragraph attributed to Charles Dickens)
An old Seaman in the Surf-boat sang this ballad, as his story, to a curious sort of tuneful no-tu..."
This one really pulled at my heartstrings. Thank you for the information on Proctor as well. I have marked her poetry book to read (someday).
Petra, I am so impressed and indebted for the work you have done on this summer read! Summer reads should be relaxing, but this has been a lot of work for you and relaxation for us!
Petra wrote: "Procter was the favourite poet of Queen Victoria...."
This is the second of the authors of this story that are Queen Victoria's favourites!
I like the mental picture of The Queen enjoying personal time enjoying the magazines of Charles Dickens.
Sara, thank you. It has been fun digging up this info for us all. I'm glad to be a part of bringing them back into reader's eyes. These are good authors who just fell out of sight, probably due to so many new authors as the ages went by. I'm glad you are enjoying the titbits of information.
This was one of my favourite stories of the five, too. I enjoyed the poem format quite a bit.
The Old Seaman is such a resilient man surviving a shipwreck in the Mediterranean, slavery in Algiers, the loss of his wife who thought he was dead, years of hard work as a seaman, and now another shipwreck. It felt like he was married to the Sea after losing the woman he loved. I hope that the home (heaven) exists so that the Old Seaman can experience the love of his dreams. It was a sad poem with a sense of hope at the end.
First, thank you Petra, for recapping these stories so thoroughly. Hard to remember just from the title when the story was read a couple of weeks ago, but your reconstruction of the plot brings it all back to mind. This was one of the best of the stories for me. What tragedy to find that all you had lived for and stayed alive for considered you dead and had moved on. I imagine this may have happened at times before communication was easy. Missing, presumed dead, wouldn't have been that unusual, especially for seafarers.
I agree with Diane. This is probably my favorite of this group of stories though it is terribly sad. When he reports just as he is near home, that it’s been 26 years, the ending was telegraphed a bit for me. But his response is a noble touch. This is very well written.
Connie, Diane and Sue, this is probably my favourite, too. I'm waffling between this one and the next/last story. But it's this one that my mind keeps coming back to. It was heart breaking to know that
Although she moved on, I believe her love for him was also true. The child she has is young, so she must have waited a long number of years for her Love to return to her. There always comes a time when one must move on and try to find happiness in some way.
She spent a lot of years alone, going through hardship and sorrow with the loss of her husband and their child.
From the silent exchange, I think she may have wanted to trade places and return to him, but that die had been cast.
Both were resigned to their fates.
It's a wonderful, lovely and sad Love story.
The seaman was wrecked off of red Algiers six-and-thirty years ago. He was in slavery, then returned to his wife six-and-twenty years ago. So his wife remarried and their little son died sometime during those ten years. She probably received word that the ship was destroyed, and everyone on the ship was declared dead.He now has been sailing for twenty-six years since his return to their home, and he still loves her. Some people deeply fall in love, and never feel that way about anyone else again.
In the last stanza he tells about his comrades dying at home. He also wants to reach home and rest with her and their baby. So it seems like he will be meeting her again either in heaven or in his dreams.
Connie, you're right. I meant that. It states early on he was away for 10 years. I got the years mixed up as I typed. Sorry. I'll go back and correct that. Thanks. I do like the idea that she waited for him for years, thinking about him but then thinking she had to lay him to rest and move on with her life.
He didn't want to cause her any pain and he's got a deep understanding. His love for her and their child lives. One day, he hopes to meet them again in Heaven and live eternity together with them.
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I'm not sure I enjoyed the ballad itself as much as others here have. It was interesting to learn that Adelaide Ann Procter (the GR database badly needs an entry on this author, if you feel like uploading what you've written, Petra!) was the daughter of a poet, and grew up surrounded by literary folk. She was evidently quite the stylist, because with this poem I found the form, especially the insistent rhythm, quite intrusive and distracting. Every other line ending in a rhyme stood out too.
It reminded me of The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They both have the stress on the first syllable, rather than the second or third ... Without getting too technically detailed (but many here will know), the meter in both cases is trochaic tetrameter, which is not an easy one to read:
(dah di dah di dah di dah di
dah di dah di dah di dah)
Because of others' reactions, I'm wondering if Americans are more familiar with the works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow than English people. I find the iambic pentameter form, used by William Shakespeare to be far more restful to read :) That has 5 metrical feet instead of four, but crucially the stress is on the second syllable, which is more like the way we naturally speak. It's an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable:
(di dah di dah di dah di dah di)
William Shakespeare used this more flowing way of speaking, and only used the trochaic tetrameter for effect: eg. the three witches in Macbeth speak in trochaic tetrameter. To me, this is the way to use it, as otherwise it feels stilted and archaic.
It would be interesting if this is indeed a cultural difference! In some respects American English has not diverted from the 18th century as much as English English has, eg. you say "gotten", which is archaic here. I read a book about why this is, once, but gosh, this is a long post! I'll stop there.
Just to add that I have made a little progress in adding illustrations! I now have the disc to reinstall the program ... but it needs converting (via a different program) so my computer can read it :( I'll get there!
An interesting hypothesis, Jean. As an American, I grew up on Longfellow, can recite portions of Hiawatha and Evangeline from memory, and find his meter very easy and rhythmic. So, you may well be correct, assuming you and I to be typical of the English and the American, respectively.
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Adelaide Ann Procter was evidently a fan!
Jean, that's an interesting thought about the poetry. I didn't have a problem reading it and it read quite comfortably.
We didn't study Longfellow in school here in Canada, but I do recall reciting bits of Hiawatha when young. Maybe we did hear this poem in Elementary School at some point; I honestly don't recall.
However it happened, I remember the shores of Gitche Gumee and enjoying reciting the few lines I knew.
If you feel it's useful, I can upload the bio. It's a shortened bio that I found on-line, not written by myself. Does that matter?
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There's a space where you can credit where you got it from, and also you have to make sure the picture is not copyright. (You can't copy an image from wiki, unless it says it's OK eg. "Wiki commons"). All your work on these authors is fabulous Petra and far better than any present GR details :)
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This ballad has a dream-like quality, in a way. Perhaps this is partly because of the structure, and the way it is told, as something long ago. And how long? The 4th line says "six-and-thirty-years ago".
So this starts when the seaman was young, and presumably his wife, with their baby, was even younger. Because if we understand this literally, when he returned after 36 years, she had had another baby, by a new sweetheart. (He has moved on 10 years from the beginning (stanza 4) and then another 26 years (stanza 22), he says). It's unlikely, as she would have been old in terms of childbearing for the time. But it is just possible.
Then in the final stanza we learn that the seaman is to roam the seas again for a further 26 years. Or is he remembering how he felt, when he had been in slavery for just 10? He does not seem to be doing that, as the final 4 lines seem to be his thoughts on the voyage home.
For these reasons, I think we can assume that he died, or is dying, delirious on the voyage home. This seems indicated by stanza 24, where we learn that his wife had married an "ancient comrade" (of the seaman's presumably). She utters a "shriek of fear and terror" - why? Shock, yes, but why terror? Why would she be terrified of her first husband, unless ...
He is "cold and dumb". And he looks at the one who has supplanted him:
"He the living - I the dead!"
To me, that seems to indicate that his wife has been visited by the seaman at the point of death, as a spectre. This feels in key with the Victorian sing-song pathos.
And if this is the correct interpretation (what do you think?) then Charles Dickens would definitely have liked it :) He used exactly the same theme in one of our short reads, of someone visiting (his brother, in that case) in spirit form, at the point of death.
To me this makes more sense than to have exactly 26 years repeated as being in the future, in the final stanza. It's all conflated in his mind, as he lays dying. And it makes a poignant and spooky tale to share with his friends.
I didn't see the title until I read Petra's summary as in my edition it is merely called "Chapter 4", starting with Charles Dickens's linking sentence. But "The Old Seaman's Story" ?
Well we all know how fanciful they are! Remember Captain Cuttle, and Old Sol in Dombey and Son, spinning desperately exciting yarns, and embroidering on stories of the sea, to tell to a wide-eyed and impressionable young Walter Gay? :)
This is how I imagine the sequence of events:The old seaman is in the lifeboat, looking back and remembering how he felt twenty-six years ago before he was roaming the seas. He had been enslaved for ten years. During those ten years his wife received notice that he was presumed dead. She remarried an older man, her son died, and she had a baby with her new husband.
The seaman returned home after the Christians from Rome obtained his release, ten years after he was shipwrecked off of Algiers. When he walks into the house, the wife screams in terror because she has been told he is dead. In the wife's mind, the seaman is dead even though he is really alive. He's not a spectre because he is alive. But the wife thinks he is a spectre because she has been told he died, so she's terrified for a short time.
In terms of the seaman's position as a husband, the other man is the living and the seaman is the dead. Then all three broken hearts wept together when they realized what had happened. The seaman shook the hand of the new husband, kissed his former wife, and asked God to bless her.
Then the seaman roamed the seas for twenty-six years. Since he is near death now, he is hallucinating and thinking about seeing his wife and their baby probably in heaven (since we know the baby already died).
I agree Dickens would love the idea of the seaman being a specter, but I don't think this is what Proctor wrote. The seaman goes to sea when he is young. He is shipwrecked and spends 10 years in slavery. He is freed and returns home to find that his child has died and his wife has remarried and has a child with her second husband. He kisses her on the forehead and leaves her to her new life and he returns to sea, where he spends the next 26 years.
For the next 26 years he roams the seas. All his shipmates, old & weary, have returned to England to die at home. Home! Yes, he, too, would one day reach home and be able to rest. He will find her waiting for him, holding their child at her breast.
I think this final stanza is his lamentation that he lost his home and can only expect now to die at sea. He lives in hope that he will be reunited with both his wife (as she was to him) and the child when he is released from this life and enters heaven.
I can actually imagine that this kind of scenario happened more often than we might expect, since many men went to sea and were suspected to be lost, but returned eventually. This woman's baby is small, so we can assume she waited some eight or nine years before remarrying. (I'm allowing time for the pregnancy and no more than a year for the child to still be a baby).
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Yes, I like this idea, but "The seaman returned home after the Christians from Rome obtained his release, ten years after he was shipwrecked off of Algiers." This must be part of the 36 years.
So Sara "this final stanza is his lamentation that he lost his home and can only expect now to die at sea." That's nice too, but "This woman's baby is small, so we can assume she waited some eight or nine years before remarrying." He has been gone for 36 years - and only now has she had another baby?
Sorry, it doesn't seem to hang together to me, unless he is a spectre. As well as "He the living - I the dead!" we have in the penultimate stanza that he "passed away", and this is a very effective description of a ghostly passing over the sea. So by my interpretation he is destined to travel the sea, in spirit form until he is joined with his wife after her death. "Home" is heaven.
Charles Dickens himself continually used the sea metaphorically in this way.
I don’t know what I think anymore, but I really like your idea, Jean!
The poem is written in the past tense except for the last few lines. So the seaman is telling the story of what happened years ago. Then he changes tenses as he thinks about the future (in heaven, after death):"Home! yes, I shall reach a haven,
I, too, shall reach home and rest;
I shall find her waiting for me
With our baby on her breast."
My interpretation is the same as Connie's.Jean, I think the sailor's tale began 36 years ago when he went to sea for the last time, leaving his wife and child. He was then in slavery for 10 years, freed by the Christians, then returned home to find his wife married and with another child.
He then returns to the sea, where he's been for the past 26 years. He's now near death, in a lifeboat, and thinking that he will see his child soon and his wife when she joins them. The three will live together happily for eternity.
The wife, I think, is 10 years older than when the sailor left, not 26 years older. She's still young, but she's married an older man.
He has had no home for the past 26 years, having lost his home when he returned from slavery. He's been roaming the world since then. It's really a sad tale. I hope this sailor had an enjoyable life with good comrades at sea.
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LOL at this time of night here, I feel a bit like that, Sue :D It sounds like there are several points where each interpretation meets, and also differs, but it's good to hear the various options. And everyone in the boat would bring their own ideas to it too :)
I'm sorry, Jean, but I agree with Petra. He has not been gone for 36 years, only for ten, when he returns and sees the remarried wife. She would be ten years older than when he left her, and since she has a new baby, probably not remarried for too many years. He then returns to sea for 26 years and he is telling his story of what happened to him from the lifeboat...now an old sailor, who lost everything during that ten years of absence.
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So I've spent the day preparing the illustrations by John Dugan, and will post them now. There are also tiny little ones in the text, but I'll leave those. I'll add the frontispiece to the first comment, and add the rest as Petra posts her summaries, and "The Deliverance" last of all :)
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The Wreck chapter 1
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The Wreck chapter 2
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The Wreck chapter 3
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John Steadiman's Story
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The Beguilement of the Boats - The Armourer
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The Beguilement of the Boats - Poor Dick's Story
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The Beguilement of the Boats - The Supercargo's Story
Dickensians!
Books mentioned in this topic
The Life of Charles Dickens : Volume II (other topics)The Life of Charles Dickens : Volume II (other topics)
The Woman in White (other topics)
David Copperfield (other topics)
Dombey and Son (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Charles Dickens (other topics)Arthur Conan Doyle (other topics)
Elizabeth Gaskell (other topics)
Charles Dickens (other topics)
Wilkie Collins (other topics)
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