Before the Wind: The Memoir of an American Sea Captain, 1808-1833 - Hardcover

Tyng, Charles; Fels, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670886327 ISBN 13: 9780670886326

Publisher: Viking, 1999

Synopsis

In the current wave of seafaring literature -- from Patrick O'Brian to C. S. Forester -- no fictional sailor's story can match this true, real-life adventure. Growing up in Boston with the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Tyng first followed the call of the sea at age thirteen, going, to China and back as a ship's boy. Over the next twenty-five years he rose through the ranks and made his fortune as a captain and ship owner in the tea and sugar trade.Before the Wind reads like a novel: the rich, wry observations of a curious mind wedded to a sensitive soul and a toughened body. With Tyng we roam the world of the early nineteenth century: sighting the first Atlantic steamship bound for Russia, visiting Lord Byron in Italy and opium dens in Hong Kong, and skirting Napoleon's prison isle of St. Helena. We sail into Havana Harbor and meet King Kamehameha of Hawaii and his three queens. We learn to shin up the rigging, pump out a leaky brig, siphon rum from the captain's cask, and allay its aftereffects with pepper sauce. From pirates and mutinies to shipwrecks and cholera, Tyng's eye for detail is sharp and his storytelling as fresh as an offshore breeze. Armchair travelers, history buffs, and lovers of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm will long to run away to sea with Before the Wind.

About this title

Review:

"Original and rich". -- New York Newsday

About the Author:

Charles Tyng was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1801. His voyages took him across the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Caribbean, visiting Cuba, China, Europe, Indonesia and the Sandwich Islands among other ports of call. He died in Rhode Island in 1879.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0670886327
• ISBN 13: 9780670886326
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Fels Susan