Sea Adventure Research Articles

CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL BASIC OF DUMA ABOUT OLEKSII POPOVYCH IN THE FOLKLORISTIC VISIONS OF KATERYNA HRUSHEVSKA

The article reinterprets the scientific achievements of K. Hrushevska, in particular, her vision of the cultural and historical basic of Duma about Oleksii Popovych, set forth in the work “Duma about Popovych’s sea adventure. Reasons for studying adventure traditions” (1926). The author suggested that the Ukrainian seafarers had an extensive system of traditions and rituals, which was described in the Ukrainian heroic epic and proves that Ukrainians are seafaring people. K. Hrushevska, having researching the widest comparative material – both folklore and historical-ethnographic – came to the conclusion that Duma reflects the tradition of going to sea, and therefore, with the help of the ethnographer V. Kravchenko, a native of Berduansk at the seaside, she collected the materials about traditions and rituals of local fishermen belonging to the group of transition rituals. Based on the opinion of K. Hrushevska and work of researchers of rituals of passage (Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner, Korniy Chervyak, etc.), as well as fundamental research on the Ukrainian heroic epic of Sofia Hrytsa, the authors of this article came to the conclusion that Duma about Oleksiy Popovych gives information about several other cultural sections, in particular, related to the Cossacks, also described in transition ritual. In particular, every sea campaign of the Ukrainian Cossacks was associated with dangers and involved certain ritual actions. It is described with three-stage transition rituals: separation from society and traditional environment → transition stage of journey, with temporary release from usual social ties and → reaggregation upon returning home. And being far from own land – in the sea, with all its dangers, was liminal (borderline, that is, beyond the border of own world). Dumy also include the Ukrainian society’s ideas about Zaporizhzhia and Zaporozhtsi as a border region and society that was also outside the usual social world. Therefore, we have opposite behavior of the hero during his trip to the Sich, which was obviously not a single incident.

Dark Shores by Danielle L. Jensen

Reviewed by: Dark Shores by Danielle L. Jensen Kate Quealy-Gainer Jensen, Danielle L. Dark Shores. Tor Teen, 2019 [368p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-250-31772-8 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-250-31771-1 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12 Teriana, her merchant sailor mother, and the rest of crew of the Quincense are the only ones who know how to move between the West and the East, a closely guarded secret that is unfortunately spilled when Teriana trusts the wrong person. Under threat of torture, Teriana is forced to lead the Celendor Empire's notorious Thirty-Seventh Legion to the Western shores. Meanwhile, Marcus, leader of the Thirty-Seventh, is taking this quest as an opportunity to finally get himself and his men out of the control of Celendor's power-hungry Senate and their bloody demands. This is a lush, imaginative world, and as the focus shifts between Teriana and Marcus, it becomes clear that the readers are only getting a glimpse of its complicated history and mythology. Similarly, hints at possible powerful connections and authority may mean Teriana is far more than a merchant's daughter, and the unknown but rumored violence committed by Marcus and his men will give pause to readers rushing to cast him as a dark hero. Their secrets don't, of course, stop Teriana and Marcus from embarking on a steamy romance, and fans of Rutkoski's sighworthy The Winner's Kiss (BCCB 3/14) and the high-stakes sea adventure of Levenseller's Daughter of the Pirate King (BCCB 1/17) will want to know where Marcus and Teriana journey to next. KQG [End Page 348] Copyright © 2019 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Ships and Boats in James Joyce: Representing Arrested Development in the Modernist Bildungsroman

Two major literary changes coincide between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century : on the one hand the traditional Bildungsroman is replaced by its modernist counterpart, which features adolescent protagonists whose development into mature adults in never achieved ; on the other hand, the traditional genre of sea adventure tales is replaced by more introspective narrations, anticipating many of the aspects that will become characterising features of Modernism – in particular, the overall dystopic representation of the sea and of the aquatic element in general. In the work of James Joyce, the concurrence of these two literary transformations distinctly stands out ; from those short stories in Dubliners (1914) centred on childhood and adolescence, to the anti-developmental novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses (1922), the marine/aquatic dimension both symbolises and determines the condition of arrested development of the young protagonists. In this article, I particularly focus on the maritime element of the ship and put in evidence how, in modernist fiction but especially for the Joycean characters, it loses its traditional rite-of-passage function.

Jonah, Robinsons and Unlimited Gods: Re-reading Jonah as a Sea Adventure Story

The plot of the book of Jonah combines the motifs of a hero swallowed by a sea-monster with a hero rescued by a fish. The hero has to cross and survive the sea (as sphere of danger and death). In this article it is argued that the Book of Jonah belongs to a certain type of adventure stories, in which the hero not only survives his adventures but also experiences an intensive encounter with God.

The Role Of Sea-Based Adventure Experiences In Tourists’ Satisfaction and Behavioral Intentions

ABSTRACTThis study investigates sea-based adventure experiences on the Greek island of Rhodes and their impact on tourists’ satisfaction, word-of-mouth (WOM) and re-experience intentions. On-site surveys were conducted using a self-administered questionnaire. Results indicated that the experiential dimensions of hedonism, escapism, and socialization were positive antecedents of tourists’ satisfaction and behavioral intentions. In contrast, flow experience was negatively related to the behavioral intentions of sea adventure tourists. Marketers should carefully design and manage sea-based experiences in order to satisfy and retain their customers.

Crafty Sailors, Unruly Seas: Margaret Cohen’s Oceanic History of the Novel

CRAFTY SAILORS, UNRULY SEAS: MARGARET COHEN'S OCEANIC HISTORY OF THE NOVEL Novel and by Margaret Cohen. Translation/Transnation, edited by Emily Apter. Princeton, NJ: University of Princeton Press, 2010. Pp. xiii + 306, 30 illustrations. $39.50 cloth.Maritime studies, as traditionally practiced by naval historians and marine archaeologists, concentrates its efforts on battles, cargoes, and coastal events. But more recent development of an interdis-ciplinary oceanic studies has sought to place continental issues in background, focusing instead on space between departure and arrival. Part of argument for oceanic studies is that experience of being voyaging culture indelibly marks other-terrestrial-expressions, such as national philosophies, literature, and art. However, until recently, as Hester Blum argues, [t]he oceans comprise realm in which cultural exchange, whether dominant, resistant, or just circulatory, has not been of primary concern in its own terms-that is, independent of seas' function as passage for travel.1 Still developing as field, practitioners try to understand importance of oceanic space and history to modern culture; particular experience of maritime laborers, passengers, and captives; and significance of transported and transplanted people, crops, and animals to biological and ecological environments. Margaret Cohen's recent monograph Novel and (2010), relatively early in this fluid discipline, makes strong case for value and promise of oceanic literary studies.This ambitious book can be separated into two broad hemispheres that contain main argument, and an Interlude. first main section examines early modern period and longish eighteenth century to 1824. second covers roughly 1824 to early 1900s but concludes looking toward twentieth century and beyond. intervening Interlude is concerned with developments during long Romantic period.The book opens with two lengthy chapters, The Mariner's Craft and Remarkable Occurrences at and in Novel, and slight third, Sea Adventure Fiction, 1748-1824? which examine early modern treatises on seamanship and narratives written following Captain James Cook's voyages as precursors to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and eighteenth-century maritime adventure novel. Cohen imaginatively and convincingly proposes relationship between technical and traditional lore of pragmatic seafarer, his and influence of maritime fiction and nonfiction on development of novel over eighteenth century. By reproducing rational logic of early modern sea narrative, maritime adventure novel produces what Cohen calls cunning reader (79), who imaginatively enters voyage narratives, novels, and explorers' reports to enact readerly mariner's craft, or a poetics of problemsolving (86).The Interlude, titled The Sublimation of Sea, addresses fascination with sublime that for many characterizes long Romantic period from Milton to Byron. This chapter's sublimation insists on depopulation of sea as it is reimagined by poets as an empty aesthetic space devoid of craft. Cohen provides compelling readings of Milton, Byron, and-especially welcome-John Falconer's long poem Shipwreck (1762), as well as reviewing aesthetic works of Edmund Burke, Lord Shaftesbury, Joseph Addison, and John Baillie. contrast of Dutch maritime genre painting with Turner's later works is particularly rewarding. However, her assertion that during the eighteenth century, qualification of sublime was increasingly applied by philosophers and writers to ocean cut off from work (115) is incomplete. Cohen does not read nautical panegyrics of Edward Young that sought to render mercantile achievement in terms of aesthetic sublimity or renewed popularity of georgic during period. …

The Voyages of the “Sea Adventure” to Ayutthaya, 1615–1618: The English East India Company and its Siam–Japan Trade

The English East India Company (EIC) first arrived in Siam in 1612, when its traders were given a royal audience by King Songtham (r. 1610/11–28) in Ayutthaya. Peter Floris and Lucas Antheuniss, Dutchmen working for the EIC, came to Patani on theGlobeand then branched out to other ports, exploring the possibilities of trade in mainland Southeast Asia. Armed with a letter from King James I, the EIC employees led by Antheuniss and Thomas Essington were able not only to approach the court, but also to observe for themselves the possibilities of trade in Siam. This first sojourn in Ayutthaya marked the start of over a decade of Anglo–Siamese contacts, through the establishment and maintenance of an EIC factory in Ayutthaya.During this first phase, the EIC was to stay in Ayutthaya for only eleven years, closing its factory in 1623. It was not until the 1660s, after a gap of around thirty years, that the company returned to trade in Siam. After a troubled stay, the EIC once again left Siam in 1685, and was engaged in war with the court of King Narai (r. 1656–88) over several disputes. The only English merchants coming to Siam after 1688 were “country traders” mostly based in India.

The Novel and the Sea by Margaret Cohen (review)

COHEN, MARGARET. The and Sea. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.328 pp. $24.95 paper, $52.50 cloth. I expected to find The and a new angle from which to view development of European novel, one that broadens field of inquiry and adds yet another sub-history to History of Novel canon. Instead, Margaret Cohen's fascinating changes playing field altogether: it persuasively elucidates entirely new criteria by which we can understand early European and American novels and their development across both time and space. Like practice of that Cohen outlines her first chapter, her argument is executed with deftness, skill, and compleat (37). Cohen's main aim this text is to show maritime ethics--and specifically, practice of craft--are adopted and repurposed early British, French, and American fiction. Cohen's focus on poetics of forces us to reconsider many of long-held beliefs about novel. Indeed, Sea adventure depicts action rather than psychology, its organization is episodic, and it measures plausibility by performance rather than mimesis. The heroism of skilled work substitutes for education and love (11). In Cohen's purview, even virtue--that hallmark of domestic novel--becomes less important than mariner's which encourages heroic performance dangerous zones, often at edges of existing knowledge and (12). As Cohen suggests, we might see all novels operating according to adventure poetics, particularly those that feature characters on margins of society (perhaps even Pamela and Evelina are adventure novels that test their heroines' mastery of a kind of feminine practical reason 1131). Cohen also suggests that itself develops a way parallel to adventure fiction its dedication to exploring edge zones and its centrifugal travels across time and space. The upshot to all this is breathtaking: Cohen invites us to revise dominant narrative about rise of novel not just by making a place for adventure fiction, but also by reconsidering our long-standing prejudice that those processes and events defining modern occur on land (l 3). As Cohen sees it, modernity of seafaring has been obscured from view, when fact maritime activity was central to eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and central to literature of this period. Cohen commences The and by outlining practice of craft, largely through a close reading of James Cook's first journal, which narrates navigator's harrowing encounter with still uncharted Great Barrier Reef. Focusing on Cook's description of practices that saved his ship and crew, Cohen disentangles elements that make up craft--e.g., prudence, protocol, endeavor, resolution, creative problem solving, and compleat knowledge. Importantly, Cohen also links mariner's to style that came to define travel writing of early eighteenth century. Thus, it is mariner's craft--rather than New Science--that gave rise to popularity of plain style, as well as its promise of authenticity. Cohen's exposition of this chapter also allows her to demonstrate one of her recurrent points: despite scholady debates about the novel's seeming lack of interest work, as Cohen sees it, Work does appear guise of craft (12). Though Cohen begins her study with a familiar text--Robinson Crusoe--she reinterprets Crusoe's character by explaining how Defoe wrought his new poetics of adventure from mariner's ethos of craft (60), which he released in competition with success of maritime book (7). Throughout this chapter, Cohen demonstrates exactly Defoe altered maritime tropes to make them more appealing to readers, part by reading Crusoe side-by-side with William Dampier's nonfictional travelogue. …

“Sudden Holes in Space and Time”: Trauma, Dissociation, and the Precariousness of Everyday Life

Famous early on for his tales of the sea and exotic adventure, Joseph Conrad, in the course of his literary career, became increasingly interested in the difficulties of domestic life. In The Secret Agent (1907), most particularly, Conrad exposes the dangers and deficiencies of family life, especially its failure to protect women and children. The extremities of affect and trauma suffered by the characters in this novel may serve to illuminate the murkier and less extreme versions of trauma and consequent dissociation, as encountered in contemporary psychoanalytic treatment. Indeed, Conrad's examination of the underbelly of domestic relationships has helped me to understand the vicissitudes of family life and related experiences of trauma and dissociation suffered by several of my patients, as illustrated by two clinical examples.

The Far Side of the World: Naomi Novik and the Blended Genre of Dragon Fantasy and the Sea Adventure

The Far Side of the World: Naomi Novik and the Blended Genre of Dragon Fantasy and the Sea Adventure

Narratology in the Archive of Literature

To chart accurately the contours of the novel, literary historians are in the process of recovering the variety and complexity of its generic practice across its history. "Narratology in the Archive" surveys this recovery and discusses its methodology, differentiating this recovery from symptomatic reading. The article then illustrates this method with the recovery of sea adventure fiction as an influential transnational practice of the novel from Defoe to Conrad. I suggest that sea adventure plots are defined by readers' playful manipulation of information to solve problems posed by the text.

Drift House: The First Voyage (review)

Reviewed by: Drift House: The First Voyage Karen Coats Peck, Dale Drift House: The First Voyage. Bloomsbury, 2005437p ISBN 1-58234-969-X$16.95 Ad Gr. 5-8 After 9/11, Susan, Charles, and Murray are sent to Canada to stay with their uncle Farley in his mansion on the shores of the Bay of Eternity. Little do they know that the house is really a transtemporal vessel and that they will soon find themselves adrift on the Sea of Time. Here, some rather nasty mermaids enlist Susan to rescue their sister from Sea Pirates; when she handily accomplishes this feat, the mermaids' Queen Octavia (who is more octopus than mermaid) then forces her to set off on the real mission—to stop time altogether by closing the Great Drain in the Sea of Time, at the cost of her life. A wise whale, a crusty multilingual parrot, Susan's brothers, and the head Sea Pirate himself all help to thwart the mermaids' plans and restore navigation capability to Drift House, with the promise of more adventures to come. The children are a rather clichéd ensemble—shades of classic children's fantasy from Nesbit to Lewis to L'Engle, etc., render familiar the haughty, resourceful elder sibling, the mechanically handy but sullen middle child, and the strangely wise-beyond-his-years youngest. Their language takes its rhythms from these older fantasies as well, such that Peck feels the need to turn their overly formal dialect into a plot device by having Susan and Charles constantly bicker over who is being more affected, and to include a glossary that tries a bit too hard to replace mid-century Britishisms and genteelisms with up-to-date slang (for instance, defining "insolent" as "trash talk"). Peck would do better to trust his audience on this point; those who enjoy the kind of salty sea adventure he delivers here are unlikely to quibble with some highfalutin dialogue. His explanations about the mechanics of time and the dangers of its cessation do leave something to be desired, however, making this a comparatively lightweight yarn in the tradition it seeks to emulate. Copyright © 2006 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Grenzgänger

In his article "Crossing borders -- the motivation of extreme sportsmen" the author gets systematically to the bottom of the question of why extreme sportsmen voluntarily take risks and endanger themselves. Within the scope of a representative sampling 217 extreme sportsmen -- from the fields of mountain biking, trekking and free climbing, canoyning, river rafting and deep sea diving, paragliding, parachuting, bungee jumping and survival training -- give information about their personal motives. What fascinates them? The attraction of risk? The search for sensation? Or the drop out of everyday life? And what comes afterwards? Does in the end the whole life become an extreme sport? Fact is: they live extremely, because they want to move beyond well-trodden paths. To escape the boredom of everyday life they are searching for the kick, the thrill, the no-limit experience. It's about calculated risk between altitude flight and deep sea adventure.

A Welshman Abroad: Captain Peter Wynn Of Jamestown

A Welshman Abroad: Captain Peter Wynn Of Jamestown Paul £. J. Hammer 'I was not so desirous to come into this country, as I a m n o w willing here to end m y dayes: for I finde it a farr more plesant, and plentifull country than any report made mention of.' Peter Wynn to Sir John Egerton, from Jamestown, Virginia, 26 November 16081 Captain Peter W y n n is one of the minor figures in the early history of the Jamestown colony. The known facts of his short career in Virginia are sparse and have drawn very little attention.2 W y n n arrived in the N e w World in late 1 The Jamestown voyages under the First Charter, 1606-1609, ed. P. L. Barbour Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 2nd series, vols 136-7, 1969), 1:245-6. This letter is widely printed. The holograph original is Henry E. Huntington Library, Jamestown Colony, EL 1683. Note that all dates in this article are Old Style but the year is treated as beginning on 1 January. 2 A very brief biographical notice of Wynn is included in A. Brown, The genesis ofthe United States (2 vols, London, 1890), 2:1055. Subsequent published work indicates that there has been no advance in our knowledge of Wynn in the century since Brown's work was printed. P A R E R G O N ns 16.1 (July 1998) 60 Paul E.J. Hammer September or early October 1608 with the 'second supply',3 at a time when the fledgeling colony w a s close to failure and w h e n sharp divisions had emerged between the venture's London sponsors and the president of the colony's local council, Captain John Smith. Immediately upon his arrival, W y n n was sworn a m e m b e r of this council, along with another n e w arrival, Captain Richard Waldo.4 In the account of his experiences in Virginia which he later wrote for publication, Captain Smith described the n e w councillors as 'two ancient soldiers and valiant gentlemen'.5 However, this was the only praise which he bestowed upon W y n n . Smith's narrative subsequently refers to W y n n two or three times in a decidedly negative manner and mentions his death—some time early in 1609—only in retrospect.6 By contrast, when the London sponsors drew up instructions in M a y 1609 for the first 'governor' of Virginia, W y n n was listed as a m e m b e r of the governor's council with the title of 'serjeant-major of the fort'.7 In garrisons and armies of the time, the post of serjeant-major was a coveted one and, as today, denoted professional experience and responsibility. The n e w governor, Sir Thomas Gates, certainly regarded W y n n as a m a n w h o m he could trust at Jamestown. W h e n he was ship-wrecked on his w a y to Virginia aboard the ail-too aptly named Sea Adventure, Gates chose W y n n to act as his lieutenant-governor until he himself could reach the colony.8 Although he died before Gates had even left England, it seems that W y n n might have become a more significant figure in early Jamestown, if he had lived long enough. 3 The complete works ofCaptain John Smith (1580-1631) ed. P. L. Barbour (3 vols, C Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press for Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1986), 1; 240 (also 2:184). Note that references from vol. 1 are from Smith's Proceedings ofthe English colonie in Virginia (published in 1612) an from vol. 2 are from Smith's General historie, which is substantially the same work but amended in some places (published in 1624). For some differences in these editions, see K J. Hayes, 'Defining the ideal colonist: Captain John Smith's revisions from A true relation to the Proceedings to the third book of the Generall historie Magazine ofHistory and Biography, 99 (1991), 123-44...

Melville and the Woman's Story

MELVILLE AND THE WOMAN'S STORY Nancy Fredricks University of Colorado-Boulder One way to understand the change in direction that Herman Melville's work took in the 1850s is to consider his writing from Moby-Dick through The Piazza Tales in relation to the increasing involvement of women in reading, writing, and publishing. For feminists and traditional critics alike, Melville's Moby-Dick represents a bastion of masculinist aesthetics where women are as out of place as Aunt Charity's ginger beer on the Pequod. Long used to buttress theories of American literature that valorize male bonding and the romantic quest into the wilderness away from home and mother, Moby-Dick is an exemplary text for its generic representation from a male perspective of the segregation of the sexes in nineteenthcentury America.1 Melville himself apparently thought of Moby-Dick as a man's book and wrote to one of his female friends, Sara Moorehead, to dissuade her from reading it for fear of offending her feminine sensibilities: Dont you buy it—dont even read it, when it does come out, because it is by no means the sort of book for you. It is not a piece of fine, feminine, Spitalfield silk—but is of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ship's cables and hausers.2 When Sophia Hawthorne wrote to Melville praising the book, his response was one of astonishment: I have hunted up the finest Bath I could find, gilt-edged and stamped, whereon to inscribe my humble acknowledgement of your highly flattering letter of the 29th of Dec:—It really amazed me that you should find any satisfaction in that book. It is true that some men have said they were pleased with it but you are the only woman—for as a general thing, women have small taste for the sea.3 "Next time," Melville tells Sophia, he shall not send her a "bowl of salt water. . . . The next chalice I shall commend, will be a rural bowl of milk." He then inquires politely about the state of her "domestic affairs."4 Melville's remarks to these women suggest that he was working under certain gender-determined notions of genre. If genres represent mini-subcultures with their own values, languages, and epistemologies ,5 then it seems understandable that in a period characterized by relatively separate spheres for men and women there would be associated with each sphere types of works that best reflect that group's immediate concerns. Melville had been working most of his career 42Nancy Fredricks with a predominantly male audience in mind. In the six novels leading up to and including Moby-Dick—sea adventures all—women appear as either obstacles to the male romantic quest or as the distant and unattainable object of that quest. Pierre, which Melville referred to generically as a "regular romance," marks a definite shift away from the man's world of the sea adventure to the land-locked domestic world of women.6 In Pierre, Melville finally gives his female characters articulation7 and begins to face, on a generic level, the challenge that the female community presented to male writers like himself who had excluded them for too long. If women barely make it to the margin of Moby-Dick, the woman as artist takes center stage in Pierre. Pierre, for many readers, represents Melville's "Waterloo." One cannot help but wonder what could have led Melville, at the height of his creative powers, to plunge into the alien territory of the domestic romance. By following Moby-Dick with Pierre, he may have been trying to grant equal time to two competing myths of his day.8 After pursuing the romantic quest into the wilderness to its limits in Moby-Dick, it seems that Melville decided to turn to its generic "opposite ," the domestic romance, and take that to its limits also. Possibly Melville (who was nothing if not artistically ambitious) wanted to capture the totality of his world and knew he could not hope to do it with the Pequod alone as his setting. The familiar trope of the "ship as world," which had served Melville well for...

Captain Marryat and Sea Adventure

Captain Marryat and Sea Adventure Anita Moss (bio) By the time that Charles Dickens had published A Holiday Romance (1868), the stock features of sea adventure stories were so well-known that his nine-year-old character, the would-be writer Robin Redforth, can tell the adventures of one Captain Boldheart and his encounters with cannibals, pirates, and worst of all, the Latin Grammar Master (who gets boiled in a pot by the cannibals). As Harvey Darton suggested, Redforth probably subscribed to The Boys of England, a magazine whose aim was to enthrall the youthful male reader with "wild and wonderful but healthy fiction."1 This wild and wonderful fiction invariably included bold adventurous sea captains who battled bloodthirsty pirates led by a villainous and infernal chief, rescued helpless maidens in the thrall of the pirate chief, and triumphantly discovered buried treasure. James Barrie and Robert Louis Stevenson, authors of classic sea adventure stories, both admit that they had devoured "penny-dreadfuls" and that they especially preferred to read about pirates in their goriest form. The children in Kenneth Grahame's The Golden Age (1895 and Dream Days (1898) reveal that they had also appropriated the conventions of sea adventure stories when they reenact the quest of the Argonauts and when they desperately exclaim that what they want is "blood and plenty of it." Where did these conventions originate? What Wallace Stevens called "the everhooded and tragic-gestured sea," the savage source with its power, mystery, and, to human consciousness at least, apparent will of its own, has inspired a range of literature from the earliest times to the present—from ephemeral popular works to enduring classics, and from the first great classic of sea literature, Homer's Odyssey, in Paula Fox's excellent contemporary novel for children, The Slave Dancer. In the eighteenth century the sea became a powerful setting for Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, the model for so many subsequent Robinsonnades and other sea adventures. Edwin M. Hall provides a useful working definition of the sea adventure story: "it is a fictional prose narrative of which at least half takes place on shipboard and in which the handling of the ship is important to the plot."2 Hall argues that James Fenimore Cooper invented the genre with the publication of The Pilot (1824). If Cooper invented it, however, Captain Frederick Marryat (1792-1848) not only set a high standard of accuracy in writing nautical fiction, but also, popularized the sea story as a form of adventure and romance. Captain Marryat had himself led an impressive and romantic life at sea: he ran away to sea at the age of fourteen, engaged in over fifty naval battles, and guarded Napoleon at the Island of St. Helena, eventually bringing news of the fallen hero's death back to England.3 Having read The Swiss Family Robinson (English trans., 1814) to his children, Marryat was angered by this novel's nautical and geographical errors, a central reason why he undertook the writing of Masterman Ready. This novel recounts the adventures of the Seagrave family, who are deserted after a shipwreck by everyone save the faithful old seaman Ready, a black nanny called Juno, and the family dog. Unfortunately, Marryat's consciousness of his child audience results in unpleasantly overt preaching. Every event is an occasion for Mr. Seagrave to expand upon self-evident morals; he exclaims after a storm, for example, "See, my child, the wreck and devastation which are here. See how the pride of man is humbled before the elements of the great Jehovah."4 The novel is further weakened by the stereotyped characterizations of children, a practice stemming from well-established traditions of the moral tale. William is the grave and intelligent older son, who listens to his elders, obeys them, and stays out of trouble. He is loathsomely good, pious, and self-sacrificing. The younger boy, Tommy, is totally depraved; he thinks only of bodily gratification, ignores advice from his elders, and finally brings disaster on everyone. He is even responsible for the death of the good and faithful Ready. Click for larger view View full resolution From Peter Pan by James Barrie. Illustrated by Alice Woodward...

Fishing and Sea-Food Supplies of the Ancient Maori

IN the second Bulletin of the Dominion Museum of New Zealand, the director, Mr. A. Hamilton, contributes an elaborate monograph on the fishing and sea-food supplies of the ancient Maori, based upon the investigation of numerous coastal kitchen-middens and camp sites. The importance of these sources of food supply is clearly illustrated by the Maori mythology, which abounds in tales of sea adventure and monsters of the deep. Among the mammalia, the only class affording food or valuable spoil, except the native rat and the imported dog, was the marine fauna, including the fur-seal, sea-leopard (Ogmo-rhinus leptonyx), and the sea-lion (Macrorhinus leoninus), of all of which traces are found in the middens in the form of bones and ornaments made from their teeth. One of the most valued prizes was the great sperm-whale (Physeter macrocephalus); but other members of the same group, such as the black-fish (Globiocephalus melas), were used for food. Of mollusca the consumption must have been enormous, one of the many middens consisting of shells of the Maori pipi (Mesodesma novae-zealandiae) being 340 feet long and more than 4 feet high. Many of these shells, particularly that of the beautiful Holiotus iris, were used in the preparation of ornaments. Among the crustaceans, the most valued were the red crayfish, crabs, and shrimps. Sea-urchins and many kinds of seaweed were collected from the rocks.