The Mutiny of the Elsinore Jack London Books
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The Mutiny of the Elsinore Jack London Books
I first read this book as a young man, and loved it. Coming back to it after nearly 40 years, I still do; but it also raises questions about Jack London and what was going on in his head when he wrote it.Published in 1914, only two years before his death, The Mutiny of the Elsinore isn’t the most famous of London’s books and it’s not seen as his best. But there’s still a lot to enjoy. The book’s plot (without spoilers) is as follows: In March 1913 and a successful but world-weary young playwright, John Pathurst, seeks refreshment and inspiration by going round the Horn as a passenger on a windjammer from Baltimore to Seattle. He knows the Elsinore may take months over the voyage, but that’s fine. He has paid highly for his passage, and is accompanied by his manservant; he intends to be comfortable. But the rounding of the Horn is drawn-out and dangerous, and the ship is nearly lost. Moreover the regime aboard the Elsinore is harsh, and the crew are a bunch of no-good lowlifes who will eventually mutiny against it. Pathurst’s luxury passage will turn into a nightmare.
The long voyage south-east towards West Africa and then south-west to the tip of Argentina is used to build up character and tension, so that by the time the Elsinore gets stuck in westerlies off the Horn, you know there’s a disaster waiting to happen. It helps that London does a fair job of evoking what life in a windjammer must have been like. He can do this because this book was drawn, at least in part, from life. In March 1911 London and his second wife, Charmian Kitteredge London, took ship in Baltimore on a windjammer, the Dirigo, bound westward on the same route.
The windjammers came into service in the last quarter of the 19th century. They were the last of the age of sail; iron- or steel-hulled, they were designed to carry bulk cargoes that were not time-sensitive and could be carried more cheaply than by steam, by using the prevailing winds. The Dirigo was one of the finest, built in Maine in 1894 to an English design. London and Kitteredge boarded it in Baltimore very much as Pathurst does in the book, and Kitteredge later described the voyage in a memoir of London that she published a few years after his death. The Elsinore is clearly the Dirigo and the novel includes a number of incidents that that are in Kitteredge’s account. Most are trivial (London/Pathurst’s fox terrier, Possum; an attack of hives; the chickens in the hut amidships). One or two are major. For example, in the novel, the captain dies on passage off the Horn. On the Londons’ real voyage he did fall sick there, and died shortly after the ship reached Seattle.
The captain and mate in the book also seem to match those of the Dirigo. The captain, according to Charmian Kitteredge, was: “The fast disappearing type of lean New England aristocrat, who always presented himself on deck immaculately attired... The calm kingliness of his character was in cool contrast to that of the Mate, Fred Mortimer, hot-hearted, determined, all-around efficient driver of a crew that was composed, with a few exceptions well along in years, of landlubbers and weaklings.” London takes these two officers and exaggerates their characteristics, and those of the crew too. The latter board in Baltimore: “ ... for’ard of the amidship house I encountered a few laggards who had not yet gone into the forecastle. These were the worse for liquor, and a more wretched, miserable, disgusting group of men I had never seen in any slum. Their clothes were rags. Their faces were bloated, bloody, and dirty. I won’t say they were villainous. They were merely filthy and vile. They were vile of appearance, of speech, and action." And later: “I ...wondered where such a mass of human wreckage could have been obtained. There was something wrong with all of them. Their bodies were twisted, their faces distorted, and almost without exception they were under-sized.”
Long before the mutiny of the title, life on the Elsinore becomes a struggle of two worlds – the gracious, comfortable world of the officers and crew in the poop, dining pleasantly every night, the Mate, Pike, playing classical gramophone records with enthusiasm; and the forecastle, full of degenerate wretches that Pike controls with an iron fist and great savagery. Bit by bit the Elsinore seems to appear a microcosm of a divided, unfair society. Is this what Jack London was trying to say in this book?
Maybe, but there’s something not quite right here. Pathurst is the narrator, and his sense of superiority expresses itself in a belief that the Captain and the Mate are superior beings, and the crew scum. His class is thus destined to dominate. Moreover a number of the crew meet with nasty ends even before the mutiny. During it, two die quite horribly, torn apart by giant albatrosses: “A great screeching and squawking arose from the winged things of prey as they strove for the living meat. And yet, somehow, I was not very profoundly shocked. These were the men whom I had seen eviscerate [a] shark and toss it overboard, and shout with joy as they watched it devoured alive by its brethren. They had played a violent, cruel game with the things of life, and the things of life now played upon them the same violent, cruel game.”
Oh dear. Men born to rule over their inferiors, and nature red in tooth and claw. It’s the narrator’s voice, but London seems to use it with great enthusiasm (with references to the captain as a Samurai warrior, and occasional references to Nietzche). It’s just a little too genuine, and Pathhurst’s views are not discredited by the way the book ends. Jack London was a socialist all his life, but was there also a whiff of fascism about him?
George Orwell thought so. Writing in 1940 about an earlier London book, The Iron Heel, he commented that London was “temperamentally ...very different from the majority of Marxists. With his love of violence and physical strength, his belief in ‘natural aristocracy’, his animal-worship and exaltation of the primitive, he had in him what one might fairly call a Fascist strain." In The Mutiny of the Elsinore, I think I see this; it’s also evident in his earlier and greater book, The Sea Wolf. However, Orwell didn’t say London was a fascist. Rather, he thought these traits made London better able to understand the nature of the ruling class, and that far from espousing fascism, he understood its dangers before it existed (The Iron Heel, published in 1908, describes a fascistic dystopia). It is more likely that London is using Pathurst to warn how the ruling class really think. Still, the earliest Nazis were pretty good at appealing to a certain type of person on the left as well as the right. Reading The Mutiny of the Elsinore, you do wonder whether, had London lived into the Fascist era, he might have been swept up in it all.
That apart, The Mutiny of the Elsinore is quite a book. Some have accused London of being long-winded, but he isn’t here. To be sure, he takes time to ramp up the tension before the mutiny, but that works. The description of the ship as it fights to round the Horn is also excellent, bringing forth a picture of a great steel ship, its sides streaked with rust, burdened by a cargo of thousands of tons of coal, wallowing in the huge seas as the sun comes and goes behind fast-moving, hostile clouds. The crew are also well-drawn. Now and then they do get close to caricature, but most work well. In particular, there is a frail man with a twisted spine who radiates malevolence; he is also very well-read, and it is easy to see where that malevolence comes from as he compares Pathurst’s lot with his own. Several of the crew are clearly “bad lots” and there is a reign of terror in the forecastle, from which the officers mostly dissociate themselves. By the time the ship reaches the Le Maire (or Lemaire) Strait at the southern extremity of Argentina, several of the crew have gone mad, or killed themselves or someone else.
Perhaps London exaggerates somewhat (he’s writing a novel, after all). But life on a windjammer was indeed hard. To compete with steam, they sailed on small margins; the crew were paid little, the food was bad and the ships were sometimes worked with too few men. London is not exaggerating about the difficulty of rounding the Horn, either. Now and then a skipper just gave up, turned round and sailed east around the world instead.
You can still see the Tall Ships, as they are now called; a number have survived as training ships for navies, and every now and then they foregather somewhere and are a tourist attraction. New Yorkers can see two moored at the South Street Seaport. But their time as trading ships was really over by 1939. The Mutiny of the Elsinore is a striking account of how it must have been. Maybe it raises doubts about how London saw his fellow-man. Maybe it doesn’t. In any case, London is not the only person whose attitudes now look suspect because of events that he pre-dated, and would not have condoned. Like The Sea-Wolf, Jack London’s The Mutiny of the Elsinore is a rattling good read and a vibrant picture of an era that has passed.
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The Mutiny of the Elsinore Jack London Books Reviews
The descriptive powers of Mr. London, the romance, the power of men and the sea, the weaknesses of men, the many philosophies and most of all, the effect that a woman can have on them. In short, a wonderful read!
I love London's style, but it took 70% of the book to get anywhere near the title plot line. it was a little slow but excellently written.
extremely well written and informative..
I thought it a great sea story, trusting it was a realistic depiction of the early 1900's when sailing ships were still being used in the American merchant marine. What a rough life for seamen, especially for the sailors as opposed to the officers.
There are times as a man in gaining years when remembering the boy feels so good,
those years sure were joyous as you might know. This book is sort of the bookmark of
good years gone by along with Poe and Kipling, whom I also hold in reserve!My First Touch & Feel Picture Cards First Words (MY 1ST T&F PICTURE CARDS)
Great book by Jack London---if you are a Jack London fan, you will also want to read a book about him written by his wife;
The Book of Jack London, Volumes I & II (1921)
I have no issue with the novel. It's excellent, as are all of Jack London's works. What I do have a big problem with is the extremely CHEAP paperback it came in. The manufacturer used the cheapest, flimsiest material he could find. The insult to injury came when I looked at the printed text-- it's so small I need to use a magnifying glass to read it. No doubt by using TINY print the manufacturer could use fewer, smaller, cheaper pages of paper. What a joke, and a bad one at that, on me!!! Not worth the price of postage to send it back. AVOID buying this poorly manufactured paperback!
I first read this book as a young man, and loved it. Coming back to it after nearly 40 years, I still do; but it also raises questions about Jack London and what was going on in his head when he wrote it.
Published in 1914, only two years before his death, The Mutiny of the Elsinore isn’t the most famous of London’s books and it’s not seen as his best. But there’s still a lot to enjoy. The book’s plot (without spoilers) is as follows In March 1913 and a successful but world-weary young playwright, John Pathurst, seeks refreshment and inspiration by going round the Horn as a passenger on a windjammer from Baltimore to Seattle. He knows the Elsinore may take months over the voyage, but that’s fine. He has paid highly for his passage, and is accompanied by his manservant; he intends to be comfortable. But the rounding of the Horn is drawn-out and dangerous, and the ship is nearly lost. Moreover the regime aboard the Elsinore is harsh, and the crew are a bunch of no-good lowlifes who will eventually mutiny against it. Pathurst’s luxury passage will turn into a nightmare.
The long voyage south-east towards West Africa and then south-west to the tip of Argentina is used to build up character and tension, so that by the time the Elsinore gets stuck in westerlies off the Horn, you know there’s a disaster waiting to happen. It helps that London does a fair job of evoking what life in a windjammer must have been like. He can do this because this book was drawn, at least in part, from life. In March 1911 London and his second wife, Charmian Kitteredge London, took ship in Baltimore on a windjammer, the Dirigo, bound westward on the same route.
The windjammers came into service in the last quarter of the 19th century. They were the last of the age of sail; iron- or steel-hulled, they were designed to carry bulk cargoes that were not time-sensitive and could be carried more cheaply than by steam, by using the prevailing winds. The Dirigo was one of the finest, built in Maine in 1894 to an English design. London and Kitteredge boarded it in Baltimore very much as Pathurst does in the book, and Kitteredge later described the voyage in a memoir of London that she published a few years after his death. The Elsinore is clearly the Dirigo and the novel includes a number of incidents that that are in Kitteredge’s account. Most are trivial (London/Pathurst’s fox terrier, Possum; an attack of hives; the chickens in the hut amidships). One or two are major. For example, in the novel, the captain dies on passage off the Horn. On the Londons’ real voyage he did fall sick there, and died shortly after the ship reached Seattle.
The captain and mate in the book also seem to match those of the Dirigo. The captain, according to Charmian Kitteredge, was “The fast disappearing type of lean New England aristocrat, who always presented himself on deck immaculately attired... The calm kingliness of his character was in cool contrast to that of the Mate, Fred Mortimer, hot-hearted, determined, all-around efficient driver of a crew that was composed, with a few exceptions well along in years, of landlubbers and weaklings.” London takes these two officers and exaggerates their characteristics, and those of the crew too. The latter board in Baltimore “ ... for’ard of the amidship house I encountered a few laggards who had not yet gone into the forecastle. These were the worse for liquor, and a more wretched, miserable, disgusting group of men I had never seen in any slum. Their clothes were rags. Their faces were bloated, bloody, and dirty. I won’t say they were villainous. They were merely filthy and vile. They were vile of appearance, of speech, and action." And later “I ...wondered where such a mass of human wreckage could have been obtained. There was something wrong with all of them. Their bodies were twisted, their faces distorted, and almost without exception they were under-sized.”
Long before the mutiny of the title, life on the Elsinore becomes a struggle of two worlds – the gracious, comfortable world of the officers and crew in the poop, dining pleasantly every night, the Mate, Pike, playing classical gramophone records with enthusiasm; and the forecastle, full of degenerate wretches that Pike controls with an iron fist and great savagery. Bit by bit the Elsinore seems to appear a microcosm of a divided, unfair society. Is this what Jack London was trying to say in this book?
Maybe, but there’s something not quite right here. Pathurst is the narrator, and his sense of superiority expresses itself in a belief that the Captain and the Mate are superior beings, and the crew scum. His class is thus destined to dominate. Moreover a number of the crew meet with nasty ends even before the mutiny. During it, two die quite horribly, torn apart by giant albatrosses “A great screeching and squawking arose from the winged things of prey as they strove for the living meat. And yet, somehow, I was not very profoundly shocked. These were the men whom I had seen eviscerate [a] shark and toss it overboard, and shout with joy as they watched it devoured alive by its brethren. They had played a violent, cruel game with the things of life, and the things of life now played upon them the same violent, cruel game.”
Oh dear. Men born to rule over their inferiors, and nature red in tooth and claw. It’s the narrator’s voice, but London seems to use it with great enthusiasm (with references to the captain as a Samurai warrior, and occasional references to Nietzche). It’s just a little too genuine, and Pathhurst’s views are not discredited by the way the book ends. Jack London was a socialist all his life, but was there also a whiff of fascism about him?
George Orwell thought so. Writing in 1940 about an earlier London book, The Iron Heel, he commented that London was “temperamentally ...very different from the majority of Marxists. With his love of violence and physical strength, his belief in ‘natural aristocracy’, his animal-worship and exaltation of the primitive, he had in him what one might fairly call a Fascist strain." In The Mutiny of the Elsinore, I think I see this; it’s also evident in his earlier and greater book, The Sea Wolf. However, Orwell didn’t say London was a fascist. Rather, he thought these traits made London better able to understand the nature of the ruling class, and that far from espousing fascism, he understood its dangers before it existed (The Iron Heel, published in 1908, describes a fascistic dystopia). It is more likely that London is using Pathurst to warn how the ruling class really think. Still, the earliest Nazis were pretty good at appealing to a certain type of person on the left as well as the right. Reading The Mutiny of the Elsinore, you do wonder whether, had London lived into the Fascist era, he might have been swept up in it all.
That apart, The Mutiny of the Elsinore is quite a book. Some have accused London of being long-winded, but he isn’t here. To be sure, he takes time to ramp up the tension before the mutiny, but that works. The description of the ship as it fights to round the Horn is also excellent, bringing forth a picture of a great steel ship, its sides streaked with rust, burdened by a cargo of thousands of tons of coal, wallowing in the huge seas as the sun comes and goes behind fast-moving, hostile clouds. The crew are also well-drawn. Now and then they do get close to caricature, but most work well. In particular, there is a frail man with a twisted spine who radiates malevolence; he is also very well-read, and it is easy to see where that malevolence comes from as he compares Pathurst’s lot with his own. Several of the crew are clearly “bad lots” and there is a reign of terror in the forecastle, from which the officers mostly dissociate themselves. By the time the ship reaches the Le Maire (or Lemaire) Strait at the southern extremity of Argentina, several of the crew have gone mad, or killed themselves or someone else.
Perhaps London exaggerates somewhat (he’s writing a novel, after all). But life on a windjammer was indeed hard. To compete with steam, they sailed on small margins; the crew were paid little, the food was bad and the ships were sometimes worked with too few men. London is not exaggerating about the difficulty of rounding the Horn, either. Now and then a skipper just gave up, turned round and sailed east around the world instead.
You can still see the Tall Ships, as they are now called; a number have survived as training ships for navies, and every now and then they foregather somewhere and are a tourist attraction. New Yorkers can see two moored at the South Street Seaport. But their time as trading ships was really over by 1939. The Mutiny of the Elsinore is a striking account of how it must have been. Maybe it raises doubts about how London saw his fellow-man. Maybe it doesn’t. In any case, London is not the only person whose attitudes now look suspect because of events that he pre-dated, and would not have condoned. Like The Sea-Wolf, Jack London’s The Mutiny of the Elsinore is a rattling good read and a vibrant picture of an era that has passed.
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