Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Blow the Man Down
Für wen es gedacht ist
Readers who like sea stories, Yankee characters and old shanties, and anyone drawn to tales of honest working people facing Wall Street schemers, with romance, storms and salvage along the way.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
Blow the Man Down is a sea novel by Holman Day, a Maine newspaperman and storyteller who died in 1935. It was written in the 1910s, when steamship lines along the American coast were being swallowed by Wall Street combinations. It gives you a young Yankee captain, a runaway schooner, a capsized hull, a colony of outcasts, a crooked promoter and a wreck that nobody believes can be saved.
The hero is Boyd Mayo, twenty-six, who captains the yacht Olenia for the financier Julius Marston and falls in love with the owner's daughter. His pride and his honest seamanship soon carry him into trouble with powerful men. Each chapter opens with a line from an old sailors' shanty, so the book sounds like the sea as well as telling of it.
The novel moves from drawing rooms and fog-bound harbors to storms, offices and a frozen reef. It asks what a man owes to his name and to the people who trust him. Let us begin on the Olenia, on a moonlit night when a kiss changes everything.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A kiss on the bridge of the OleniaFree
- 2A stubborn skipper shanghais his daughter
- 3Upside down in the dark
- 4The colony of Hue and Cry
- 5Mr. Fogg and the flagship Montana
- 6A fugitive in disguise
- 7A wreck, a gamble and a hostile city
- 8What the story is really about
- 9How the story is told
Punkt 1 von 9
A kiss on the bridge of the Olenia
The novel opens on a summer night aboard the steam yacht Olenia. Boyd Mayo, a twenty-six-year-old Yankee sailor, is her captain, and he works for Julius Marston, a Wall Street financier. Moved by moonlight and a violin playing below, Mayo suddenly kisses Marston's daughter Alma. He is so ashamed that he offers to jump overboard. Alma stops him, teases him, and kisses him back, saying she wanted it all along.
Over the next days Alma shows what kind of lover she is. She holds that the future takes care of itself, and she even keeps a little four-line poem that says so. Money talk, to her, spoils romance. Mayo is more careful. He tells her that his grandfather Gamaliel Mayo built sixteen ships at Mayoport, and that his own father lost the family fortune in railroad stocks. He wants to earn a standing before he dares to approach her father, and she finds this very Yankee and a little tiresome.
Others are watching. Arthur Beveridge, the dry little man Marston has chosen as her husband, breaks in on the chart room, and Alma makes fun of him by asking about a sea route that Mayo calls Love Harbor. The mate, a bowlegged man named McGaw, notices the captain's sudden cheer. The cruise itself puzzles Mayo. There are idle days offshore, then rushes into out-of-the-way harbors. Marston's business friends meet him in secret, and every order reaches the captain through a pale, rude secretary.
Marston soon orders his daughter off the bridge. Then the yacht is sent toward Razee Reef, where the Bee Line steamer Conomo crowds her, breaks the rules of the road, and mocks the Marston flag through a megaphone. Fog rolls in as Mayo takes the Olenia around the whistling buoy. For the first time he hears the owner's voice, and it is a shout of rage.
Mayo refuses to leave the bridge in the fog, and his answer shocks the secretary. Later Marston scolds him for using the whistle, certain that the rival manager was sneering at him. Mayo tries to resign, but Marston holds him to his written agreement. Below decks the financier tells three advisers that he will crush the rival line. He hints that something enormous, perhaps a great European war, will soon make American ships worth millions.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Blow the Man Down
What is Blow the Man Down about?
It follows Boyd Mayo, a young yacht captain who falls in love with his employer's daughter, loses his job, and is later blamed for a steamship wreck. He fights to clear his name while helping a colony of evicted islanders.
Who wrote Blow the Man Down and when?
Holman Day, a Maine writer who died in 1935. He wrote it in the 1910s, when steamship lines along the American coast were being bought up by Wall Street combines.
What does the title Blow the Man Down mean?
It comes from an old sailors' shanty sung on Atlantic packet ships, and the epigraph quotes it. In the book it points to the hard knocks of sea work and to the trouble that knocks Mayo down.
Is Blow the Man Down a true story?
No, it is fiction. Its characters and scenes are invented, though the setting is real, and a capsized lumber schooner escape like the one in the book had a true parallel off Hatteras.
Is Blow the Man Down easy to follow?
It has short chapters, a lively voice and clear action scenes. Sea terms are explained as they come up, and each chapter opens with a shanty verse that sets the mood.