Joshua Rigsby > Recent Status Updates

Just plodding along. Reading a poem or so per day.

"Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?" ~Annie Dillard

In a long calendar of horrors, almost monotonously the same, Macarthur listed the hellships Bohemia, Iroquois, John McDonald, M. P. Grace, May Flint, and others. But again and again the courts came back with “insufficient evidence,” “case dismissed,” “no malice, hatred or revenge proven,” “justifiable discipline,” and “conflict of testimony” in exculpation of masters and mates guilty of gross brutality.

In a long calendar of horrors, almost monotonously the same, Macarthur listed the hellships Bohemia, Iroquois, John McDonald, M. P. Grace, May Flint, and others. But again and again the courts came back with “insufficient evidence,” “case dismissed,” “no malice, hatred or revenge proven,” “justifiable discipline,” and “conflict of testimony” in exculpation of masters and mates guilty of gross brutality.

Rounded the horn and is at the line for the homeward voyage.

Bringing the plane in for a landing. Doing a brief overview of international Shanghaiing.

Dana is great. Doing his best to pick up Spanish along the way. My kind of guy.

Moving on to American Shanghaiing outside of SF.

Seems like there's not much left of the story to tell. We know what happened to the ship. Wait and see...

This is good an interesting and all, but the two layers of narration are a little confusing. It removes me from the action a little. Unlike, say, Heart of Darkness, where he used a similar strategy for great dramatic effect.

"...and the chaplain was ready now to capitulate to despair entirely but was restrained by the memory of his wife, whom he loved and missed so pathetically with such sensual and exalted ardor, and by the lifelong trust he had placed in the wisdom and justice of an immortal, omnipotent, omniscient, humane, universal, anthropomorphic, English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon, pro-American God, which had begun to waver."

The most comprehensive treatment of the trial of "Bully" Waterman I've yet found.

Good lord. This is one of the best sea stories I have ever read. So detailed and complex and brutal. Well done London, well done.