The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 162)

 

In this episode, I found a novel by the author of some non-fictional books that had an important affect on me. During my sophomore year in college, the stacks of the university library were opened up for all. Prior to that, you had to use the card catalog to select a book, and then submit a request for it and wait for someone to collect it from the stacks. Now, I could, and often did roam the stacks - six or seven floors of books. One of the subjects I searched out was had to do with naval matters, and having an interest in tea, I found a book about the tea clippers and the races they ran from China to London to bring the first tea of the season to London. A very romantic trade. I used the idea for one of my first (unpublished) stories, made a game of it, and tracked down more books on tea clippers. That first book was The China Clippers by Basil Lubbock. I have my own copy these days and a number of other books he wrote on that trade, the opium trade and others. Plus, he also wrote several novels. I have one in paper, and found this next one at Gutenberg.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Jack Derringer, A Tale of Deep Water by Basil Lubbock  DNF 41%

Alas, this effort was just too authentic for me. Lubbock set out to create an authentic story of life on a Yankee "hell-ship" on a voyage around the Cape Horn from Frisco to New York with a motley crew, most of whom had been shanghaied to serve aboard it, as this ship had a bad reputation with a ruthless captained and brutal mates. We follow the fortunes of Bucking Broncho, a cowboy who wakes up aboard ship after a night of drinking. He finds an old acquaintance, Jack Derringer, aboard, who is an experienced sailor and who takes him under his wing. Jack is an Englishman, with some education, who has taken to roving the world looking for adventure. The rest of the crew is made up of a variety of nationalities, and skill levels, all driven by those brutal mates who curse, beat, and kick men to make them work.

Lubbock himself was something very much like Jack Derringer, in that he was well educated, but had the itch for adventure. Giving university a miss, He sailed to America and the the Klondike gold rush of 1898. After that he signed on to a British sailing ship, and used that experience to write his first book, Around the Horn Before the Mast. After serving in the Boer War, he signed on for another sea voyage. In short, he knew of what he was writing about.

The problem with this book is, as I said above, it is too authentic, especially in the dialog of the motely variety of crew on board. The cowboy character talks like a cowboy from a very old western - dialed up to 11. And then you have all sorts of other nationalities, each using their own jargon. I simply found it too hard to follow what was actually being said. Plus, Lubbock did not bother to explain what these fellows where doing while working the ship. And though I have read a fair number of books and novels set in the age of sail, and so I have a general idea of what was going on in these scenes, the scenes themselves went on far too long for my taste, as usual. All in all, the story failed to engage me and so I decided to reluctantly call it a day for this novel.

Basil Lubbock is pictured on the cover of the edition I found to illustrate this book.