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Lot 158
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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

 

Lot consists of 3pp 1st revision typed manuscript of The Cruise of the Snark with 20+ 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 250-256 of London's final 1st edition of The Cruise of the Snark. This excerpt, which is part of Chapter XIV: "The Amateur Navigator," describes how London struggled to learn rudimentary navigation while sailing through Fiji. The passage includes an amusing exchange between London's "literal mind" and "logical mind" as he tried to puzzle out the actual date, time, and geographical coordinates of the Snark.

 

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 with expected wear including paper folds and isolated light soiling. The manuscripts dates circa spring 1911.

 

London's edits throughout the manuscript are in pencil and blue pen. On the first page, London has pointed out an extra pair of quotation marks, corrected a spacing issue to the word "around," and corrected the spelling of the "Gulf of Darien." London wrote "OK" above an annotation in red on the second page, and replaced "in" with "to" on the third page. Throughout, London has drawn arrows pointing to text blocks where he wished corresponding illustrations to appear. Other possibly publisher's edits in red are found throughout.

 

London hand-inscribed captions to 2 remarkable black and white photographs that would become Illustration 84, "Between Black Diamonds (Girls of Savaii, Samoa" and Illustration 85, "Maids of the Village, Savaii, Samoa." The first dramatic photo juxtaposes Charmian London, in her long dress and upswept hair, sandwiched between two bare-breasted Samoan women wearing feathered skirts.

 

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.

 

"--my logical mind; “and you must grant that twenty hours and twenty-five minutes is better than eight hours and nine minutes.”

 

“All right,” I break in upon the squabble; “we’ll work up the sight and then we’ll see.”

 

And work it up I did, only to find that my longitude was 184° west.

 

“I told you so,” snorts my logical mind.

 

I am dumbfounded.  So is my literal mind, for several minutes.  Then it enounces:

 

“But there is no 184° west longitude, nor east longitude, nor any other longitude.  The largest meridian is 180° as you ought to know very well.”

 

Having got this far, literal mind collapses from the brain strain, logical mind is dumb flabbergasted; and as for me, I get a bleak and wintry look in my eyes and go around wondering whether I am sailing toward the China coast or the Gulf of Darien.

 

Then a thin small voice, which I do not recognize, coming from nowhere in particular in my consciousness, says: “The total number of degrees is 360.  Subtract the 184° west longitude from 360°, and you will get 176° east longitude.”

 

“That is sheer speculation,” objects literal mind; and logical mind remonstrates.  “There is no rule for it.”

 

“Darn the rules!” I exclaim.  “Ain’t I here?”

 

“The thing is self-evident,” I continue.  “184° west longitude means a lapping over in east longitude of four degrees.  Besides I have been in east longitude all the time.  I sailed from Fiji, and Fiji is in east longitude.  Now I shall chart my position and prove it by dead reckoning.”

 

But other troubles and doubts awaited me.  Here is a sample of one.  In south latitude, when the sun is in northern declination, chronometer sights may be taken early in the morning.  I took mine at eight o’clock.  Now, one of the necessary elements in working up such a sight is latitude.  But one gets latitude at twelve o’clock, noon, by a meridian observation.  It is clear that in order to work up my eight o’clock chronometer sight I must have my eight o’clock latitude.  Of course, if the Snark were sailing due west at six knots per hour, for the intervening four hours her latitude would not change.  But if she were sailing due south, her latitude would change to the tune of twenty-four miles.  In which case a simple addition or subtraction would convert the twelve o’clock latitude into eight o’clock latitude.  But suppose the Snark were sailing southwest.  Then the traverse tables must be consulted.

 

This is the illustration.  At eight A.M. I took my chronometer sight.  At the same moment the distance recorded on the log was noted.  At twelve M., when the sight for latitude was taken.  I again noted the log, which showed me that since eight o’clock the Snark had run 24 miles.  Her true course had been west ¾ south.  I entered Table I, in the distance column, on the page for ¾ point courses, and stopped at 24, the number of miles run.  Opposite, in the next two columns, I found that the Snark had made 3.5 miles of southing or latitude, and that she had made 23.7 miles of westing.  To find my eight o’clock’ latitude was easy.  I had but to subtract 3.5 miles from my noon latitude.  All the elements being present, I worked up my longitude.

 

But this was my eight o’clock longitude.  Since then, and up till noon, I had made 23.7 miles of westing.  What was my noon longitude?  I followed the rule, turning to Traverse Table No. II.  Entering the table, according to rule, and going through every detail, according to rule, I found the difference of longitude for the four hours to be 25 miles.  I was aghast.  I entered the table again, according to rule; I entered the table half a dozen times, according to rule, and every time found that my difference of longitude was 25 miles.  I leave it to you, gentle reader.  Suppose you had sailed 24 miles and that you had covered 3.5 miles of latitude, then how could you have covered 25 miles of longitude?  Even if you had sailed due west 24 miles, and not changed your latitude, how could you have changed your longitude 25 miles?  In the name of human reason, how could you cover one mile more of longitude than the total number of miles you had sailed?

 

It was a reputable traverse table, being none other than Bowditch’s.  The rule was simple (as navigators’ rules go); I had made no error.  I spent an hour over it, and at the end still faced the glaring impossibility of having sailed 24 miles, in the course of which I changed my latitude 3.5 miles and my longitude 25 miles.  The worst of it was that there was nobody to help me out.  Neither Charmian nor Martin knew as much as I knew about navigation.  And all the time the Snark was rushing madly along toward Tanna, in the New Hebrides.  Something had to be done.

 

How it came to me I know not—call it an inspiration if you will; but the thought arose in me: if southing is latitude, why isn’t westing longitude?  Why should I have to change westing into longitude?  And then the whole beautiful situation dawned upon me.  The meridians of longitude are 60 miles (nautical) apart at the equator.  At the poles they run together.  Thus, if I should travel up the 180° meridian of longitude until I reached the North Pole, and if the astronomer at Greenwich travelled up the 0 meridian of longitude to the North Pole, then, at the North Pole, we could shake hands with each other, though before we started for the North Pole we had been some thousands of miles apart.  Again: if a degree of longitude was 60 miles wide at the equator, and if the same degree, at the point of the Pole, had no width, then somewhere between the Pole and the equator that degree would be half a mile wide, and at other places a mile wide, two miles wide, ten miles wide, thirty miles wide, ay, and sixty miles wide.

 

All was plain again.  The Snark was in 19° south latitude.  The world wasn’t as big around there as at the equator.  Therefore, every mile of westing at 19° south was more than a minute of longitude; for sixty miles were sixty miles, but sixty minutes are sixty miles only at the equator.  George Francis Train broke Jules Verne’s record of around the world.  But any man that wants can break George Francis Train’s record.  Such a man would need only to go, in a fast steamer, to the latitude of Cape Horn, and sail due east all the way around.  The world is very small in that latitude, and there is no land in the way to turn him out of his course.  If his steamer maintained sixteen knots, he would circumnavigate the globe in just about forty days.

 

But there are compensations.  On Wednesday evening, June 10, I brought up my noon position by dead reckoning to eight P.M.  Then I projected the Snark’s course and saw that she would strike Futuna, one of the easternmost of the New Hebrides, a volcanic cone two thousand feet high that rose out of the deep ocean.  I altered the course so that the Snark would pass ten miles to the northward.  Then I spoke to Wada, the cook, who had the wheel every morning from four to six.

 

“Wada San, to-morrow morning, your watch, you look sharp on weather-bow you see land.”

 

And then I went to bed.  The die was cast.  I had staked my reputation as a navigator.  Suppose, just suppose, that at daybreak there was no land.  Then, where would my navigation be?  And where would we be?  And how would we ever find ourselves? or find any land?  I caught ghastly visions of the Snark sailing for months through ocean solitudes and seeking vainly for land while we consumed our provisions and sat down with haggard faces to stare cannibalism in the--".

 

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 14, 1905 in the amount of $12.50 payable to “Cash Buyer's Union.” The plain cream check is stamped in maroon and purple recto and verso, and bears a x-shaped cancellation mark at left. In very good condition, with expected folds and wrinkles. Check measures 6.5" x 2.875".

 

London wrote this check to the Cash Buyers' Union First National Cooperative Society based in Chicago. A period pamphlet advertised the company as "A magnificent mercantile enterprise of the people, for the people, by the people," and economic journals noted the investment firm's reform-minded emphasis on profit sharing from the bottom to the top. The firm, which acquired and operated department store type businesses and services in the United States and Europe, guaranteed a 7% year profit to shareholders and its average share cost $10. Could London's check of $12.50 have purchased a slightly larger share?

 

Jack London was interested in socialism throughout his young adulthood. He was not a dedicated party-line ideologue; rather his interest stemmed from personal observations of hardships among the poor. After two unsuccessful bids as a Socialist Party mayoral candidate of his hometown of Oakland, London toured the country. His lecture series coincided with the publication of his The War of the Classes (1905) and Revolution, and other Essays (1906).

 

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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