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Lot 159
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Jack London, "The Cruise of the Snark" Annotated Manuscript and Signed Check
Jack London, "The Cruise of the Snark" Annotated Manuscript and Signed Check
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Description:

London Jack



Jack London, The Cruise of the Snark Annotated Manuscript and Signed Check

 

The lot consists of 3pp 1st revision typed manuscript of The Cruise of the Snark with 35+ handwritten edits/words in Jack London's hand; along with a signed check dating from the era of the Snark's construction.

 

In the spring of 1907, Jack London (1876-1916), along with his wife Charmian (1871-1955) and a small crew, set out for a modern maritime adventure aboard the Snark, their 45' long custom built sailboat. Over the next 2 years, the Londons would sail west and south across the Pacific Ocean, exploring Hawaii, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tahiti, Australia, and other tropical locales. London later recounted his travel experiences in a non-fiction illustrated account called The Cruise of the Snark, published by The Macmillan Company in New York in 1911.

 

These typed manuscript galleys correspond to pages 231-238 of London's final 1st edition of The Cruise of the Snark. This excerpt, which includes the end of Chapter XIII: "Stone-Fishing of Bora Bora" and the beginning of Chapter XIV: "The Amateur Navigator," describes traditional stone-fishing practices in Bora Bora, the difficulties of finding a reliable captain for the Snark, and how London mastered rudimentary navigation.

 

The galley proofs are oversized, measuring 9.25" x 12" on average overall, and have generously sized margins to accommodate handwritten author's edits. The pages are in very good to near fine condition. Central paper folds and a few large closed tears. Light soiling and isolated pin rust marks do not affect the text. The manuscripts dates circa spring 1911.

 

London's edits throughout the manuscript are in pencil and blue pen. Throughout, London has drawn arrows pointing to text blocks where he wished corresponding illustrations to appear. On the first page, London has crossed out a notation in red pen and added a question mark. On page two, London struck out two sentences, wrote "OK," and replaced the phrase "once more" with "again." London inserted the phrase "practice of" and replaced the word "from" with "for." Other possibly publisher's edits in red are found throughout.

 

London hand-inscribed captions to 4 remarkable black and white photographs that would become Illustration 75, "One of the fisherman," Illustration 76, "The Gendarme of Bora Bora, paddled by his prisoners," Illustration 77, "The kind of fish we did not catch," and Illustration 78, "The Famous 'Broom Road,' Tahiti."

 

The manuscript pages correspond to the following published text found in The Cruise of the Snark. Areas affected by London's edits are in bold.

 

"On the bow of the launch, Tehei, with eyes fixed on the leader, worked his stone in unison with the others.  Once, the stone slipped from the rope, and the same instant Tehei went overboard after it.  I do not know whether or not that stone reached the bottom, but I do know that the next instant Tehei broke surface alongside with the stone in his hand.  I noticed this same accident occur several times among the near-by canoes, but in each instance the thrower followed the stone and brought it back.

 

The reef ends of our lines accelerated, the shore ends lagged, all under the watchful supervision of the leader, until at the reef the two lines joined, forming the circle.  Then the contraction of the circle began, the poor frightened fish harried shoreward by the streaks of concussion that smote the water.  In the same fashion elephants are driven through the jungle by motes of men who crouch in the long grasses or behind trees and make strange noises.  Already the palisade of legs had been built.  We could see the heads of the women, in a long line, dotting the placid surface of the lagoon.  The tallest women went farthest out, thus, with the exception of those close inshore, nearly all were up to their necks in the water.

 

Still the circle narrowed, till canoes were almost touching.  There was a pause.  A long canoe shot out from shore, following the line of the circle.  It went as fast as paddles could drive.  In the stern a man threw overboard the long, continuous screen of cocoanut leaves.  The canoes were no longer needed, and overboard went the men to reinforce the palisade with their legs.  For the screen was only a screen, and not a net, and the fish could dash through it if they tried.  Hence the need for legs that ever agitated the screen, and for hands that splashed and throats that yelled.  Pandemonium reigned as the trap tightened.

 

But no fish broke surface or collided against the hidden legs.  At last the chief fisherman entered the trap.  He waded around everywhere, carefully.  But there were no fish boiling up and out upon the sand.  There was not a sardine, not a minnow, not a polly-wog.  Something must have been wrong with that prayer; or else, and more likely, as one grizzled fellow put it, the wind was not in its usual quarter and the fish were elsewhere in the lagoon.  In fact, there had been no fish to drive.

 

“About once in five these drives are failures,” Allicot consoled us.

 

Well, it was the stone-fishing that had brought us to Bora Bora, and it was our luck to draw the one chance in five.  Had it been a raffle, it would have been the other way about.  This is not pessimism.  Nor is it an indictment of the plan of the universe.  It is merely that feeling which is familiar to most fishermen at the empty end of a hard day.

 

THE AMATEUR NAVIGATOR

 

There are captains and captains, and some mighty fine captains, I know; but the run of the captains on the Snark has been remarkably otherwise.  My experience with them has been that it is harder to take care of one captain on a small boat than of two small babies.  Of course, this is no more than is to be expected.  The good men have positions, and are not likely to forsake their one-thousand-to-fifteen-thousand-ton billets for the Snark with her ten tons net.  The Snark has had to cull her navigators from the beach, and the navigator on the beach is usually a congenital inefficient—the sort of man who beats about for a fortnight trying vainly to find an ocean isle and who returns with his schooner to report the island sunk with all on board, the sort of man whose temper or thirst for strong waters works him out of billets faster than he can work into them.

 

The Snark has had three captains, and by the grace of God she shall have no more.  The first captain was so senile as to be unable to give a measurement for a boom-jaw to a carpenter.  So utterly agedly helpless was he, that he was unable to order a sailor to throw a few buckets of salt water on the Snark’s deck.  For twelve days, at anchor, under an overhead tropic sun, the deck lay dry.  It was a new deck.  It cost me one hundred and thirty-five dollars to recaulk it.  The second captain was angry.  He was born angry.  “Papa is always angry,” was the description given him by his half-breed son. This captain required eighteen hours to bring the Snark twelve miles in a spanking breeze. Also he required a quart of whiskey for the same twelve miles. The third captain was so crooked that he couldn’t hide behind a corkscrew.  The truth was not in him, common honesty was not in him, and he was as far away from fair play and square-dealing as he was from his proper course when he nearly wrecked the Snark on the Ring-gold Isles.

 

It was at Suva, in the Fijis, that I discharged my third and last captain and took up again the rôle of amateur navigator.  I had essayed it once before, under my first captain, who, out of San Francisco, jumped the Snark so amazingly over the chart that I really had to find out what was doing.  It was fairly easy to find out, for we had a run of twenty-one hundred miles before us.  I knew nothing of navigation; but, after several hours of reading up and half an hour’s practice with the sextant, I was able to find the Snark’s latitude by meridian observation and her longitude by the simple method known as “equal altitudes.”  This is not a correct method.  It is not even a safe method, but my captain was attempting to navigate by it, and he was the only one on board who should have been able to tell me that it was a method to be eschewed.  I brought the Snark to Hawaii, but the conditions favored me.  The sun was in northern declination and nearly overhead.  The legitimate “chronometer-sight” method of ascertaining the longitude I had not heard of—yes, I had heard of it.  My first captain mentioned it vaguely, but after one or two attempts at practice of it he mentioned it no more.

 

I had time in the Fijis to compare my chronometer with two other chronometers.  Two weeks previous, at Pago Pago, in Samoa, I had asked my captain to compare our chronometer with the chronometers on the American cruiser, the Annapolis.  This he told me he had done—of course he had done nothing of the sort; and he told me that the difference he had ascertained was only a small fraction of a second.  He told it to me with finely simulated joy and with words of praise for my splendid time-keeper.  I repeat it now, with words of praise for his splendid and unblushing unveracity.  For behold, fourteen days later, in Suva, I compared the chronometer with the one on the Atua, an Australian steamer, and found that mine was thirty-one seconds fast.  Now thirty-one seconds of time, converted into arc, equals seven and one-quarter miles.  That is to say, if I were sailing west, in the night-time, and my position, according to my dead reckoning from my afternoon chronometer sight, was shown to be seven miles off the land, why, at that very moment I would be crashing on the reef.  Next I compared my chronometer with Captain Wooley’s.  Captain Wooley, the harbormaster, gives the time to Suva, firing a gun signal at twelve, noon, three times a week.  According to his chronometer mine was fifty-nine seconds fast, which is to say, that, sailing west, I should be crashing on the reef when I thought I was fifteen miles off from it.

 

I compromised by subtracting thirty-one seconds from the total of my chronometer’s losing error, and sailed away for Tanna, in the New Hebrides, resolved, when nosing around the land on dark nights, to bear in mind the other seven miles I might be out according to Captain Wooley’s instrument.  Tanna lay some six hundred miles west-southwest from the Fijis, and it was my belief that while covering that distance I could quite easily knock into my head sufficient navigation to get me there.  Well, I got there, but listen first to my troubles.  Navigation is easy, I shall always con--".

 

In addition to the hand-corrected manuscript is an unnumbered check inscribed overall and signed “Jack London” on the payee line. Issued from the Central Bank of Oakland, California on June 8, 1905 in the amount of $2.00 payable to “The Thermalite Co.” The plain cream check is stamped in blue and purple recto and verso, bears a c-shaped cancellation mark near bottom left and a possible bank clerk's spike mark at extreme left. In very good to near fine condition. Check measures 6.5" x 2.875".

 

According to contemporaneous patent registration records, the New York- and Montreal-based Thermalite Company specialized in heat-storing devices like hot water bottles and bags. In fact, a 1905 periodical advertised a Thermalite two-quart size hot water bag for $2.00, the very amount of London's check. Could London have purchased a hot water bag for one of his numerous health problems--one of the legacies of hard days spent in the arduous Klondike?

 

Jack London grew up in Oakland, California. He attended elementary school through high school there, and studied at a local waterfront bar named Heinold's First and Last Saloon; the proprietor later lent him tuition money to Berkeley.

 

Jack London wrote dozens of poems, short stories, essays, and novels over a prolific career curtailed by chronic ill-health. With income generated from adventure classics like Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906), London was able to purchase a ranch and outfit the Snark.

 



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