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The Log of the Snark
The Log of the Snark
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The Log of the Snark, by Charmian Kittredge London, (wife of Jack London). Published in New York in 1915. Ships Log in the form of a journal type memoir, written by Mrs. London giving a more in depth look into their "Cruise of the Snark". (562 pages)
To MY HUSBAND who made possible these happiest and most wonderful pages of my life.
The Publisher has copy-edited this book to improve the formatting, style and accuracy of the text to make it readable. This did not involve changing the substance of the text. Some books, due to age and other factors may contain imperfections. Since there are many books such as this one that are important and beneficial to literary interests, we have made it digitally available and have brought it back into print for the preservation of printed works of the past.
Excerpts:
...It was all due to Captain Joshua Slocum and his Spray, plus our own wayward tendencies. We read him aloud to the 1905 camp children at Wake Robin Lodge, in the Valley of the Moon, as we sat in the hot sun resting between water fights and games of tag in the deep swimming pool. Sailing Alone Around the World was the name of the book, and when Jack closed the cover on the last chapter, there was a new idea looking out of his eyes. Joshua Slocum did it all alone, in a thirty-seven-foot sloop. Why could not we do it, in a somewhat larger boat, with a little more sociable crew? Jack and I loved the water, and a long voyage was our dream. He and Roscoe fell at once to discussing the scheme, the rest of us listening fascinated.
...This was a few months before we were married. "Say we start five years from now," figured Jack, who always seems to be making plans for a tangible eternity. "We'll build our house on the ranch and get the place started with orchard and vines a livestock, at the same time going ahead with boat-drawings and building a yacht to suit. Five years will not be too much time."
...Then, privily, he asked what I thought of it. Too good to be true, was what I thought; but why wait so long? We'd never be younger than we were, and, besides, what was the good of putting up a home and leaving it for seven years?—seven years being the time roughly calculated to carry out our far-reaching plan. I won the day.
...And the boat. She should be ketch-rigged, like the English fishing boats on the Dogger Bank. We had never seen a ketch, but knew that for our purpose it combined the virtues of both schooner and yawl. There should be six feet of headroom, under flush decks unbroken save by companionway, skylights, and hatches. The roomy cockpit should be sunk deep beneath the deck, high-railed and self-bailing. There should be no hold, all space being occupied by accoutrement, and engines—one a seventy horse-power auxiliary, and one five horse-power to spin out electric lights and fans. Forty-five feet should be her water-line, with a length over all of fifty-seven feet. She should draw six feet, with no inside ballast, but with fifty tons of iron on the keel. There should be used only the strongest and best materials of every kind—a solid, serviceable deep-sea craft, the strongest of her size ever constructed.
...But we counted without the Great Earthquake of April 18, 1906. The vessel was already begun, and the iron keel was actually to have been cast the night of April 18. Following that date, what we did not suffer from damage to other property, was inflicted by post-earthquake conditions which made our shipbuilding triply expensive and incomprehensibly protracted. Everybody and everything went mad; and it was nearly a year after the delayed laying of her doughty keel that the yacht, unfinished, unclean, her seventy horse-power engine a heap of scrap-iron from the ignorant tinkering that had been done to it, sailed from California for Hawaii, manned, or unmanned, by a more or less discouraged crew, whose original adventurous spirits and efficiency had been sorely dampened by the weary postponement of departure dates. The final one was set behind an extra week-end by a ship chandler who libeled the yacht because he was afraid he would not get his last bill paid, the while Jack was settling accounts right and left aboard the boat, one pocket full of gold and silver, the other containing check-book and fountain pen.
...The naming of the yacht was not the least of our difficulties. Friends were prolific with Petrels and Sea Birds; they even dared White Wings and Sea Wolves, not to mention Calls of the Wild. Jack recalled Mr. Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, and held that name up as a warning inducement for better suggestions. Such were not forthcoming, and when we sailed for Hawaii, the elliptic American stern bore the gilded inscription:
SNARK
San Francisco
To MY HUSBAND who made possible these happiest and most wonderful pages of my life.
The Publisher has copy-edited this book to improve the formatting, style and accuracy of the text to make it readable. This did not involve changing the substance of the text. Some books, due to age and other factors may contain imperfections. Since there are many books such as this one that are important and beneficial to literary interests, we have made it digitally available and have brought it back into print for the preservation of printed works of the past.
Excerpts:
...It was all due to Captain Joshua Slocum and his Spray, plus our own wayward tendencies. We read him aloud to the 1905 camp children at Wake Robin Lodge, in the Valley of the Moon, as we sat in the hot sun resting between water fights and games of tag in the deep swimming pool. Sailing Alone Around the World was the name of the book, and when Jack closed the cover on the last chapter, there was a new idea looking out of his eyes. Joshua Slocum did it all alone, in a thirty-seven-foot sloop. Why could not we do it, in a somewhat larger boat, with a little more sociable crew? Jack and I loved the water, and a long voyage was our dream. He and Roscoe fell at once to discussing the scheme, the rest of us listening fascinated.
...This was a few months before we were married. "Say we start five years from now," figured Jack, who always seems to be making plans for a tangible eternity. "We'll build our house on the ranch and get the place started with orchard and vines a livestock, at the same time going ahead with boat-drawings and building a yacht to suit. Five years will not be too much time."
...Then, privily, he asked what I thought of it. Too good to be true, was what I thought; but why wait so long? We'd never be younger than we were, and, besides, what was the good of putting up a home and leaving it for seven years?—seven years being the time roughly calculated to carry out our far-reaching plan. I won the day.
...And the boat. She should be ketch-rigged, like the English fishing boats on the Dogger Bank. We had never seen a ketch, but knew that for our purpose it combined the virtues of both schooner and yawl. There should be six feet of headroom, under flush decks unbroken save by companionway, skylights, and hatches. The roomy cockpit should be sunk deep beneath the deck, high-railed and self-bailing. There should be no hold, all space being occupied by accoutrement, and engines—one a seventy horse-power auxiliary, and one five horse-power to spin out electric lights and fans. Forty-five feet should be her water-line, with a length over all of fifty-seven feet. She should draw six feet, with no inside ballast, but with fifty tons of iron on the keel. There should be used only the strongest and best materials of every kind—a solid, serviceable deep-sea craft, the strongest of her size ever constructed.
...But we counted without the Great Earthquake of April 18, 1906. The vessel was already begun, and the iron keel was actually to have been cast the night of April 18. Following that date, what we did not suffer from damage to other property, was inflicted by post-earthquake conditions which made our shipbuilding triply expensive and incomprehensibly protracted. Everybody and everything went mad; and it was nearly a year after the delayed laying of her doughty keel that the yacht, unfinished, unclean, her seventy horse-power engine a heap of scrap-iron from the ignorant tinkering that had been done to it, sailed from California for Hawaii, manned, or unmanned, by a more or less discouraged crew, whose original adventurous spirits and efficiency had been sorely dampened by the weary postponement of departure dates. The final one was set behind an extra week-end by a ship chandler who libeled the yacht because he was afraid he would not get his last bill paid, the while Jack was settling accounts right and left aboard the boat, one pocket full of gold and silver, the other containing check-book and fountain pen.
...The naming of the yacht was not the least of our difficulties. Friends were prolific with Petrels and Sea Birds; they even dared White Wings and Sea Wolves, not to mention Calls of the Wild. Jack recalled Mr. Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, and held that name up as a warning inducement for better suggestions. Such were not forthcoming, and when we sailed for Hawaii, the elliptic American stern bore the gilded inscription:
SNARK
San Francisco
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