- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Arco; First Edition edition (1968)
- ISBN-10: 0209620714
- ISBN-13: 978-0209620711
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The "Elsinore", a steel-hulled cargo sailing ship, travelling around Cape Horn, crewed by as inglorious a variety of cut-throats and villains imaginable.
Through his protagonist, Jack London touches upon some of the ideas also seen in "The Sea Wolf", on eugenics and race.
An excellent story, written in an easy style, but with deceptive depths and colour.
The titanic (and almost eternal) imagery of winning round Cape Horn makes this a worthy read in itself. This is a story of men and the sea, and of the sea and a woman.
Through his protagonist, Jack London touches upon some of the ideas also seen in "The Sea Wolf", on eugenics and race.
An excellent story, written in an easy style, but with deceptive depths and colour.
The titanic (and almost eternal) imagery of winning round Cape Horn makes this a worthy read in itself. This is a story of men and the sea, and of the sea and a woman.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
fantastic tale of mutiny
12 April 2011
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a great page turner of a book. It illuminates the times on board a sailing ship in the fading days of sail when the only crew that could be found was one full of thieves,drunks and worse.
If you love the sea and enjoy understanding how things were done this book is excellent.
The main character is a spoiled, wealthy malcontent who finds himself and love aboard ship. He miraculously transforms into the man of the hour.
Unfortunately, Jack London believed in the survival of the fittest and he regarded many less fortunates as deserving of their fate. He also beiieved in the superiority of the white race. He was a man of his times.
If you love the sea and enjoy understanding how things were done this book is excellent.
The main character is a spoiled, wealthy malcontent who finds himself and love aboard ship. He miraculously transforms into the man of the hour.
Unfortunately, Jack London believed in the survival of the fittest and he regarded many less fortunates as deserving of their fate. He also beiieved in the superiority of the white race. He was a man of his times.
7 of 12 people found the following review helpful
It held my attention, but...
2 Sep 2000
Format:Mass Market Paperback
If you're reading this, either you're a died-in-the-wool Jack London fan or you know little about his work.
To those who liked "The Call of the Wild" and "White Fang" and want to know what to read next: the short stories! And of the novels, "Martin Eden," "The Sea-Wolf." Among his LESS well-known works, I and others have a high regard for "John Barleycorn," "The Road," and "The Iron Heel," and many love "The Star-Rover" (although I don't care for it).
Now, as for those who just can't get enough Jack London and want to know what this book is like: it's not bad. It's readable. It is a Jack London account of a passage around Cape Horn in the last days of the sailing ship. It is based on a trip Jack and Charmian (and of course his valet Nakata) made in 1912.
Three-quarters of the way through this book I was almost ready to classify it as a hidden Jack London treasure but it really falls apart.
The problems? Well, loose construction and loose ends, common Jack London faults. He establishes an intriguing cast of grotesque characters and curious plot twists and then never resolves any of them. It builds up wonderfully, then it lets down miserably.
For example: the mutineers have a mysterious source of food which makes it hard for the officers to starve them into submission. Jack London elevates this to the status of a major riddle and refers to it again and again, until I reached the point of being really curious about what happened. And he never tells us!
Worse: what became of Mr. Pike and Mr. Mellaire? For two-thirds of the book he builds toward a confrontation between them. During the mutiny, Pike leaves the deck intending to find Mellaire--and, basically, both of them simply vanish!
Like many of his later tooks, this book contains the usual amount of racialist crappola, but not enough to ruin the book for me. The good guys win because "we, the fair-pigmented ones, by the seed of our ancestry rule in the high places and shall remain top dog over the rest of the dogs," etc. And there's the usual amount of what I can only call mushy stuff
"The Sea-Wolf," the protagonist earns his strength and self-reliance. In "Elsinore," he simply comes into it as his Aryan birthright.
4 of 9 people found the following review helpful
One of Jack London's Most Racially Conscious Works
28 Dec 2005
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a very exciting novel where the Nordics, Aryans, whatever you want to call them are the heroes, the officers of THE ELSINORE who are faced with mutiny by a crew made up of other races. It's inspiring to read a pro-WASP book that's well written. London was a great man of action and intellect who said these words at a Socialist Party conference: "I am a White Man first, and only then a Socialist." Words to inspire and ponder. I wonder what London would be saying today if he were here. I bet he'd know the score.
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