Source of book: I own this
Back in late 2020, during the height of the pandemic, but between surges, my wife and I took a quick romantic getaway to Sonoma County. This was before vaccinations, so there was some degree of risk involved, but we followed guidelines for masking, ate outdoors, and distanced ourselves from other humans where possible.
It must have worked, because to this date, neither of us has had Covid.
Since she had been working crazy shifts, she definitely needed a break, and we needed some time together.
One of the things we ended up doing on the trip was visiting Jack London State Park, which is a fascinating place. London bought the place with the intention of creating a model farm - with some very avant garde ideas about agriculture and animal husbandry. For a combination of reasons, the farm turned out to be a money pit, and it was only London’s frantic writing that kept it solvent.
After London’s untimely death in 1916, his wife Charmian inherited the place, and built the house that still stands. (The intended house burned before its completion while the London’s were away - you can still see the stone ruins.) She lived there until her death in 1955; both of them are buried there as well.
Soon after Charmian’s death, the various relatives decided that the best option was to donate the land to the State of California, to be preserved as a park. It is a great place to visit, particularly if you are a fan of Jack London. But really, even if you are not, as it captures a certain era of optimism, progressivism, science, and new ideas.
I mention this in part because one of the displays at the park is a model of the Snark, the boat which is the center of this book.
London had a tendency to go from project to project, sometimes completing them, sometimes not. He took a fancy to sailing, and decided to have a boat custom built, then sail it around the world, writing about his adventures, of course.
The cruise of the Snark was not entirely successful. Jack and Charmian and their small crew only made it as far as Australia before Jack became so ill that the voyage had to be discontinued.
In fact, in many ways, the whole voyage was a total shitshow. Even before the boat set sail, crooked contractors cut corners in its assembly. Construction went far over budget and took far longer than promised. It wasn’t even entirely complete when it launched, with some of the final work done after sailing to Hawaii.
Other issues included navigation. Charmian’s uncle Roscoe turned out to be incapable of navigating, despite his claims. As a result, Jack had to teach himself the art using the books he brought along. To his credit, he in fact did learn to navigate quite well.
The Cruise of the Snark is London’s account of the voyage, and it really is a classic of American humor.
In contrast to London’s novels, which are typically full of Darwinistic ideas, nature red in tooth and claw, survival of the fittest, and other ideas popular at the time, this book is hilarious. London laughs at everything and especially himself, and finds the good in even the worst of circumstances.
To be sure, there are some instances of casual racism as you would find in most books written by white men of the era. Since they traveled around the South Pacific, there were lots of opportunities.
But I do want to note that despite London’s eugenicist beliefs, he was actually a lot less racist than his contemporaries. His account of the indigenous peoples is admirable in all except for a handful of places. (Regarding “cannibals,” naturally.) His interactions with the islanders was far more on an equal basis than not, and you will come away from the book with the overall impression of human fraternity.
London also took the time to stay with people and partake in their food and customs without judgment, which is why the book is so full of interesting experiences. He and Charmian were both adventuresome, and open to experience.
There are many memorable episodes, such as Jack learning to surf, the visit to the leper colony on Molokai, the visit to the site of Typee (by Melville), and even all the tropical diseases they all get.
Throughout, the writing is excellent, filled with descriptions that take you right to the scene. London’s larger-than-life personality is evident throughout as well, and you can see how people would want to travel with him.
The book opens with a fascinating combination of personal philosophy and nostalgia for a seafaring adventure when Jack was a teenager. It sets the tone for the entire book, and draws the adventure-seeking reader in right at the start.
The ultimate word is I LIKE. It lies beneath philosophy, and is twined about the heart of life. When philosophy has maundered ponderously for a month, telling the individual what he must do, the individual says, in an instant, “I LIKE,” and does something else, and philosophy goes glimmering. It is I LIKE that makes the drunkard drink and the martyr wear a hair shirt; that makes one man a reveller and another man an anchorite; that makes one may pursue fame, another gold, another love, and another God. Philosophy is very often a man’s way of explaining his own I LIKE.
He also talks about the fragility of life and the heartlessness of nature.
Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life - it is all I am. About me are the great natural forces - colossal menaces, Titans of destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no concern at all for me. They do not know me. They are unconscious, unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloud-bursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, undertows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death - and these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior being.
And he continues with this idea:
I dare to assert that for a finite speck of pulsating jelly to feel godlike is a far more glorious feeling than for a god to feel godlike.
As soon as London announced the voyage, he was besieged with letters applying to be part of the crew. He quotes a good many of them, often with snarky comments. Particularly about the ones where the person seems wholly unsuitable for a voyage by the terms of their own letter. Here is a bit that I thought was amusing.
Every mail to me was burdened with the letters of applicants who were suffocating in the “man-stifled towns,” and it soon dawned upon me that a twentieth century Ulysses required a corps of stenographers to clear his correspondence before setting sail. No, adventure is certainly not dead…
The chapter on surfing is particularly wonderful. I could quote the entire chapter, but will make do with a couple of passages. This one describes the ocean in the most beautiful language.
The grass grows right down to the water at Waikiki Beach, and within fifty feet of the everlasting sea. The trees also grow down to the salty edge of things, and one sits in their shade and looks seaward at a majestic surf thundering in on the beach to one’s very feet. Half a mile out, where is the reef, the white-headed combers thrust suddenly skyward out of the placid turquoise-blue and come rolling in to shore. One after another they come, a mile long, with smoking crests, the white battalions of the infinite army of the sea. And one sits and listens to the perpetual roar, and watches the unending procession, and feels tiny and fragile before this tremendous force expressing itself in fury and foam and sound. Indeed, one feels microscopically small, and the thought that one may wrestle with this sea raises in one’s imagination a thrill of apprehension, almost of fear. Why, they are a mile long, these bull-mouthed monsters, and they weigh a thousand tons, and they charge in to shore faster than a man can run. What chance? No chance at all, is the verdict of the shrinking ego; and one sits, and looks, and listens, and thinks the grass and the shade are a pretty good place in which to be.
I don’t surf per se, but I do enjoy boogie boarding and body surfing, and it really is a thrill to get out their in big(ish) waves and feel the power of the sea.
London spent a whole day learning to surf, and fully intended to do so the next day, but…
For the first time in my life I was sunburned unawares. My arms, shoulders, and back had been burned many times in the past and were tough; but not so my legs. And for four hours I had exposed the tender backs of my legs, at right angles, to that perpendicular Hawaiian sun. It was not until after I got ashore that I discovered the sun had touched me. Sunburn at first is merely warm; after that it grows intense and the blisters come out. Also, the joints, where the skin wrinkles, refuse to bend. And that is why, to-day, I am writing this in bed.
I feel his pain. I’ve done that, although not to the point of blisters. Thank goodness for sunblock.
The chapter on the leper colony is also excellent. London dispels many misconceptions about leprosy, including the idea that is easy to spread, or that it dehumanizes its victims. This chapter could serve as a stand-alone article, first rate reportage. The colony also made its way into a short story, which likewise humanizes the ill.
On the other hand, the awful horror with which the leper has been regarded in the past, and the frightful treatment he has received, have been unnecessary and cruel. In order to dispel some of the popular misapprehensions of leprosy, I want to tell something of the relations between the lepers and non-lepers as I absorbed them at Molokai.
The chapter on Tai Pe, described in Melville’s semi-factual book Typee, is fascinating but also deeply sad. Rather than the robust civilization that Melville encountered, London saw a dying community hollowed out by Tuberculosis and other imported diseases. It made him sad as well, but this was before treatments were available, so there was nothing to be done.
I do want to quote a passage from this chapter, which has snarky Indiana Jones vibes.
So we took a short ride to break in, and crawled through thick jungle to make the acquaintance of a venerable moss-grown idol, where had foregathered a German trader and a Norwegian captain to estimate the weight of said idol, and to speculate upon depreciation in value caused by sawing him in half. They treated the old fellow sacrilegiously, digging their knives into him to see how hard he was and how deep his mossy mantle, and commanding him to rise up and save them trouble by walking down to the ship himself. In lieu of which, nineteen Kanakas slung him on a frame of timbers and toted him to the ship, where, battened down under hatches, even now he is cleaving the South Pacific Hornward and toward Europe - the ultimate abiding-place for all good heathen idols, safe for the few in America and one in particular who grins beside me as I write, and who, barring shipwreck, will grin somewhere in my neighborhood until I die. And he will win out. He will be grinning when I am dust.
I mentioned that London’s experience in Polynesia was written with respect toward the islanders, and I think that is true. He starts with a quote from Polynesian Researches, an older book describing the islands.
“On the arrival of strangers, every man endeavored to obtain one as a friend and carry him off to his own habitation, where he is treated with the greatest kindness by the inhabitants of the district; they place him on a high seat and feed him with abundance of the finest food.”
Melville too noted this, and argued that the use of the word “savage” to describe them was incorrect. One might even say that it has been the white Europeans and white Americans who have behaved most savagely. And, as MAGA has taken over the United States, we are doubling down on our savage behavior toward outsiders.
London also describes a custom that I remember my dad (who grew up in the Philippines) also talked about. When visiting, you should avoid complimenting anything, because the host will give it to you as a gift. Cultural differences. In this case, London pokes fun at himself and Charmian, who walked right into this, and then had to figure out how to reciprocate from the things on board their boat.
There is also a great description of “rock fishing” - where the entire village joins to herd fish using canoes and rocks. London, an avowed socialist, had a fun take on all of this.
The man who originated it is not remembered. They always did this thing. But one cannot help wondering about that forgotten savage of long ago, into whose mind first flashed this scheme of easy fishing, of catching huge quantities of fish without hook, or net, or spear. One thing about him we can know: he was a radical. And we can be sure that he was considered feather-brained and anarchistic by his conservative tribesmen. His difficulty was much greater than that of the modern inventor, who has to convince in advance only one or two capitalists. That early inventor had to convince his whole tribe in advance, for without the co-operation of the whole tribe the device could not be tested. One can well imagine the nightly pow-wow-ings in that primitive island world, when he called his comrades antiquated moss-backs, and they called him a fool, a freak, and a crank, and charged him with having come from Kansas. Heaven alone knows at what cost of grey hairs and expletives he must finally have succeeded in winning over a sufficient number to give his idea a trial. At any rate, the experiment succeeded. It stood the test of time - it worked! And thereafter, we can be confident, there was no man to be found who did not know all along that it was going to work.
That sure seems relevant today, yes? About everything from weaning ourselves off fossil fuels to building needed public transportation. Or universal healthcare. You name it. “It will never work.” followed by “I always knew it would work.”
I’ll mention a few other things I found interesting. First is the mention of a favorite historical figure of mine: Nathaniel Bowditch. You can read my post about him, but I also recommend reading his biography. He was responsible for far more than the navigation tables mentioned here, from modern Trust law to corporate forms to Harvard as a leading center of learning rather than a finishing school for rich twats.
Finally, the diseases. Oh so many horrid diseases. One is elephantiasis, a mosquito-borne worm parasite that clogs up the lymph passages. Yuck. The interesting thing about this is that unlike most mosquito-borne illnesses, humans are the only host for the adult worms. That means that if we eradicate it from humans, it will go extinct, like smallpox. And good riddance.
London and company did not catch elephantiasis, fortunately. But they did catch Yaws, which is also nasty. It is a spirochete infection related to syphilis and Lyme disease, but spread through contact with scrapes or cuts. Which is why it is spread largely by children playing together. London didn’t know that, however - the cause and means of transmission wouldn’t be discovered until later.
These days, treatment with antibiotics is effective, and, like elephantiasis, the disease could eventually be eliminated entirely.
In London’s day, the only effective treatment was the same one used for syphilis: mercury. Yeah, that’s not at all ideal, because mercury is pretty damn toxic. In fact, while London’s early death had multiple contributing factors including alcohol abuse, very likely his kidney failure was caused in part by the mercury he used to treat his Yaws infections from this trip. He also was suffering from dysentery at the time, and the opioids he was taking both for the pain and to slow his intestines down may have been a factor. It was a sad and all-too-early end for a man with so much vigor and originality.
It is ironic that Charmian, who was several years older, outlived him by 40 years.
The Cruise of the Snark is a fun read, full of fascinating detail, good humor, and high adventure.
Sounds fascinating!
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