Influenced by the seafaring tales of Captain Frederick Marryat and James Fenimore Cooper, eleven-year-old Samuel Samuels runs away from home to become a sailor. His autobiography recounts his life as a seaman, from his days as a lowly cabin boy on a coastal schooner to his tenure as captain of the famous Liverpool packet Dreadnought. During his fifty-year career, he survives “storm and shipwreck, famine and disease, press-gangs and desertion, piracy, violence, and mutiny.” (1) He even rescues a woman from a harem.

This book, the eighth volume in the Seafarers’ Voices series, uses the text from the 1877 edition, published by Harper, and includes some details about the mutiny of the Dreadnought from Basil Lubbock’s The Western Ocean Packets (1925). The text has been shortened, but the omissions pertain to “repetitious sailing passages and . . . elaborate technical details relating to the handling of sails and rigging . . .”. (xi) This volume includes a map that highlights the various ports to which Samuels sails.

As Vincent McInerney points out in his introduction, the importance of Samuels’s book is that it demonstrates how a man, who begins his career as a lowly seaman, can advance to captain a ship, and how his views of seafaring life change as he matures and advances. His recounting of the mutiny aboard Dreadnought is spine-tingling yet matter of fact. At other times, his tale is harrowing – such as when he encounters a ghost or discovers a mate who commits suicide – or astounding as when he talks about the armament on one ship. To defend themselves against pirates who prey on ships in Chinese waters, his vessel carries “four carronades and six ‘Quakers’ (mock cannon bolted to the bulwarks which, with painted-on gun ports, give the appearance of a sloop-of-war.” (79) Rather than romanticizing his seafaring life, Samuels wishes to show the reality of it.

I would not commit my experiences to paper if I felt that they would in the slightest tend to induce a boy to become a sailor. The rough experience I have gone through, few could live to endure. I have seen many a man who started with me in this race of a daring and reckless life fall early on the journey, leaving his mother, wife, or sweetheart to watch and wait for one who will never return to her loving embrace, or meet her again until the sea shall be called to give up its dead. (4)

How he ends his narrative is just as compelling as how he begins, and his words will haunt readers long after they close the cover.

Review Copyright ©2012 Cindy Vallar

This handy-sized version of a much longer accounting of American Captain Samuel Samuels's growth and learning experiences on and off several vessels, the most famous being the Dreadnought, made a quick and easy read for this reviewer. Being interested in journals and logs of voyages, I found it enlightening to read how Captain Samuels grew up and learned to handle just about any situation presented a seafaring young man in the 19th century.

Samuel Samuels learned to live on pennies a day, survive prison, and set his own broken leg bone; these are only some of the intolerable pains to which most anyone else would succumb. Aging fast, dealing with every imaginable situation and human tragedy, and having the opportunity to see and do what most could not, seems to be the best and worse of a world Samuel endured. It was a lifestyle in need of every prayer known to man.

The story reads quickly as I stated, but it also includes much detail. Each tale is presented in a way to be savored and enjoyed. Having sailed various sized vessels myself, it intrigued me to read every written word and absorb each colorful entry. I found myself circling phrases and returning later to reread and savor the facts of how Samuels dealt with the situation. I know I will reread this version, and I recommend it to anyone eager to have a quick education on what it means to be a seafarer willing and eager to gain a worldly education by starting at the bottom of the ship and working his way to the top.

Review Copyright ©2012 Cindy Vallar