Résumé
Résumé de Le parcours d’un vieux loup de mer au XIXe siècle
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
You will enjoy this book if you love tales of the sea, rough humor and vivid characters, or if you wish to hear what life aboard a nineteenth-century sailing ship felt like to the men who lived it.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Walter Runciman went to sea as a boy, and the sailors he met there stayed with him for life. In The Shellback's Progress in the Nineteenth Century, written for his friend Walter Townend and dated 1904, he sets down the storms, characters, jokes and hardships of the sailing-ship age. A shellback is an old, seasoned sailor, and these pages are crowded with them.
The book is a string of sketches, each with its own people and its own sea. You meet a leaking brig that runs north before a hurricane, a collier captain too proud to show grief, and a clever Scot who drinks himself to ruin. You meet a young Scottish master who fights pirates and carries stores to the Crimean War, and sailors who argue about Nelson, Napoleon and Gladstone. Later chapters take you into the forecastle, the food locker and the quiet ports where ships lay idle.
Runciman writes with warmth for the men and open anger at careless owners. He tells his stories as he heard them, or lived them, and he does not hide his opinions. Let us begin where the book begins, on a quay in the northeast, with a fleet waiting for the wind.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A sinking brig runs northFree
- 2Pride and loyalty rule a collier captain
- 3A brilliant captain and his ruin
- 4A shrewd young Scot meets pirates
- 5What sailors thought of great men
- 6A village tragedy and a sea disaster
- 7Forecastle life had pride and peril
- 8Hunger, bad food and sailors' legends
- 9Old ships, old winters, a grand finish
Point clé 1 sur 9
A sinking brig runs north
The book opens on a northeast coast quayside, where a spring fleet of brigs and barques waits for a fair wind to cross the Bar. Collier apprentices and the gentlemen bound for southern ports settle a quarrel over seamanship with a fistfight on neutral ground. Both fighters go to bed with raw beef on their eyes. That night the lads hoist the topsail yards of the Silverspray for fun, and when her captain appears, the main topsail yard crashes down in two pieces.
Captain Thomas Arlington is portly and proud, his learning amounting to reading and writing legibly. After two days of repairs, the Silverspray and the Francis Blake sail for the Baltic in a February easterly. They stay together off Flamborough Head, carrying every stitch of sail to claw away from a lee shore. Runciman adds a memory of his own first voyage, when he innocently hoped a ship would go ashore so he could go home.
In the night the Blake loses her companion, and a hurricane strikes. Her rotten gear fails, the gaff halyards part, and a leg of the pump stand breaks. The crew pump waist deep in icy water until they hoist the ensign upside down and ready the longboat. Then a young hand notices ropes that do not wash about with the rest, and he finds a wedge of deck stove in and never nailed down.
The leak is plugged, and the crew cheer. The captain, who has leaned on whiskey, is told by a seaman to stay on deck and stay sober, and the cook pours the spirits overboard. At dawn they see a brig sinking, and she is the Silverspray herself. A Yarmouth smack saves her crew, and the Blake's men watch their only rescuer sail out of sight.
Alone, the crew choose to run before the gale rather than sink. The brig races north toward the Arctic dark, steered by men forbidden to look behind. They pass a barque foundering, reach sixty-five degrees north, and chip ice from the reefs with marlinspikes. At Stavanger two apprentices lose their feet to frostbite. Runciman blames owners who trust Providence instead of sound gear, and a sailor's plain letter home tells the rest.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Questions about Le parcours d’un vieux loup de mer au XIXe siècle
What is The Shellback's Progress in the Nineteenth Century about?
It collects sketches of sailing-ship life drawn by Walter Runciman. It covers a storm-battered brig, eccentric captains, pirates, sailors' political arguments, forecastle customs, bad food and the pride of crews, all told with humor and anger at careless owners.
What does the word shellback mean?
A shellback is an old, seasoned sailor, a man hardened by years at sea. Runciman uses the word fondly for the rough, proud, humorous seamen whose habits, quarrels, prayers and loyalties fill the book.
Is The Shellback's Progress a true story?
Runciman wrote from his own experience and from tales he heard, and he dedicated the book to his friend Walter Townend in 1904. Some scenes he saw himself, while others he gives as local tradition or what sailors told him.
Is The Shellback's Progress easy to read?
The book is made of short, self-contained sketches with plain storytelling, lively dialogue and comic scenes. You can read a chapter at a time, and each one introduces its own memorable people and a clear incident.
What is the main message of the book?
Runciman wants readers to value the courage and humor of old-time sailors and to see how owners, captains and the public failed them. He argues for sound ships, decent food, kind treatment and respect for the men at sea.