SMALL BOAT ADVENTURES
By
An able-bodied crew: thirteen excerpts that read well on their own, gathered from both fictional and non-fictional sources. Shackleton's account of the voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia is as spine-tingling as Belloc's ""Bardsey Race"" from The Cruise of the Nona. Somewhat more amusing is Jan de Hartog's ""The Coastal Run"" featuring a young captain bluffing his way to authority with a new crew and using a sixth sense to get them through an impenetrable fog. Erskine Childers' ""The Initiation"" features one of those one-keeled yachtsman confronted by an un-rough-eled clubman; more familiar (perhaps overfamiliar) is Richard Tregaskis' account of Kennedy's rescue of his PT 109 crew. Other authors include Melville, Conrad, C. S. Forester. Jack London as well as Captain Joshua Slocum and similar seamen.