Frank R. Stockton

The Adventures of Captain Horn (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

This was the third-best selling book in the United States in 1895. It begins:

"Early in the spring of the year 1884, the three-masted schooner Castor, from San Francisco to Valparaiso, was struck by a tornado off the coast of Peru. The storm, which rose with frightful suddenness, was of short duration, but it left the Castor a helpless wreck. ...

"The Castor was an American merchant-vessel, commanded by Captain Philip Horn, an experienced navigator of about thirty-five years of age. Besides a valuable cargo, she carried three passengers—two ladies and a boy. ...

"But when the storm had passed, and the sky was clear, and the mad waves had subsided into a rolling swell, there seemed no reason to believe that any one on board the Castor would ever reach Valparaiso. The vessel had been badly strained by the wrenching of the masts, her sides had been battered by the floating wreckage, and she was taking in water rapidly. Fortunately, no one had been injured by the storm, ...."

All of the row boats had been blown off of the ship, but the crew was able to retrieve two of them from the sea; and "...in less than three hours after the vessel had been struck, the two boats, containing all the crew and the passengers, besides a goodly quantity of provisions and water, and such valuables, clothing, rugs, and wraps as room could be found for, were pulling away from the wreck."

The adventure thus begins, lost at sea somewhere off of the unsettled coast of Peru with only a vague idea of where they are.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Frank R. Stockton
• Erscheinungstermin: 22. April 2017
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9788826056425
• Artikelnr.: 48097900

Autorenporträt

Frank Richard Stockton was an American author and humorist who lived from April 5, 1834, to April 20, 1902. He is best known for a set of unique children's fairy tales that were very popular in the last few decades of the 1800s. Stockton was born in Philadelphia in 1834. His father was a famous Methodist preacher who told him he shouldn't become a writer. He and his wife went to Burlington, New Jersey, after getting married to Mary Ann Edwards Tuttle. That's where he wrote some of his first books. They then moved to New Jersey's Nutley. He worked as a wood carver for many years until his father died in 1860. He went back to Philadelphia in 1867 to work as a writer for a newspaper that his brother had started. His first fairy tale, "Ting-a-ling," came out in The Riverside Magazine that same year. In 1870, he released his first collection of stories. In the early 1870s, he was also the editor of the magazine Hearth and Home. He went to Charles Town, West Virginia, around 1899. He died of a brain bleed in Washington, DC, on April 20, 1902. He is buried at The Woodlands in Philadelphia.