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Audiobook edition · 8 h 0 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Beyond the sails and open water lies a workplace where hard labour, harsh weather, and survival shape a sailor’s life.
In The Shellback’s Progress in the Nineteenth Century, Walter Runciman turns toward the common seaman’s changing world. A shellback is an old sailor, seasoned by long years at sea and a crossing of the equator. Here, the sailing age comes into view from the forecastle, where the crew lives.
Runciman brings close knowledge of ships and their crews to this account of working life. Daily labour and dangerous weather share the page with the harsh habits of life aboard. Alongside these pressures runs the question of change: how laws and public concern begin to touch sailors’ safety, food, and living space.
What you’ll discover
- Life in the forecastle See the sailing age from the crew’s quarters, close to the common seaman’s daily concerns.
- The weight of work Encounter a world where the ship is a workplace before it is an adventure.
- Weather with real stakes Feel the danger that storms, ice, fog, and rocky coasts bring to life at sea.
- A sailor’s changing lot Explore the slow pressure for better ship safety, crew food, and room to live.
- Fear and boredom aboard Look beyond sea adventure to the ordinary people who face both danger and weary routine.
Who will love it
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.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A sinking brig runs north
- Pride and loyalty rule a collier captain
- A brilliant captain and his ruin
- A shrewd young Scot meets pirates
- What sailors thought of great men
- A village tragedy and a sea disaster
- Forecastle life had pride and peril
- Hunger, bad food and sailors' legends
- Old ships, old winters, a grand finish
Formats and delivery
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- Audiobook
- 8 h 0 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Le parcours d’un vieux loup de mer au XIXe siècle in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Le parcours d’un vieux loup de mer au XIXe siècle
by Walter Runciman · 1904
A leaking brig flees a hurricane into the Arctic dark while old sailors rage over politics at a dramshop.
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In short
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.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
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.
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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.
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