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Peter Trawl The Adventures of a Whaler By: William Henry Giles Kingston (1814-1880) |
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Peter is a young teenager in a family that suffers a series of
disastrous events. Family money is lost due to the failure of a bank,
not at all uncommon in those days, probably about 1830. They lived in
Portsmouth, where the father was a wherryman, ferrying people out to the
ships. The father meets with an accident, having ferried a passenger to
his ship at anchor outside the harbour, is caught up by freak weather,
which broke up his boat and drowned him. The mother does what she can,
taking commodities out to the ships for the benefit of the sailors, but
trade was bad at that time, and she became ill, and dies as well. Thus
the family were left without any support, until a Mr Gray, a Quaker,
comes on the scene, and takes them under his wing. He is also a
shipowner, and he gives Peter a chance on one of his ships. However,
there are various mishaps with this ship, and Peter and his friend Jim
arrive in Shetland, an archipelago in the far north of Britain, where
Peter discovers that he has relatives. He takes a lift in a ship back
to Portsmouth, as the ship was due to call in at Plymouth, but due to
fair weather passes it by. The ship is a whaler, and needs to get into the Pacific Ocean, but has a
lot of trouble trying to round the Horn. Eventually they succeed. But
Peter now has a new ambition, to find his long lost brother Jack who had
gone to sea years before, and never been heard of. By chance he hears
that Jack may be alive. In due course they find Jack, and come home
again with him to Portsmouth, where Mr Gray has kindly looked after the
female members of Peter's family, including his sister Mary. Of course there are a lot of coincidences in this story, but that's part
of the fun. PETER TRAWL, THE ADVENTURES OF A WHALER, BY W.H.G. KINGSTON. CHAPTER ONE. MY EARLY DAYS AT HOME. Brother Jack, a seaman's bag over his shoulders, trudged sturdily ahead;
father followed, carrying the oars, spars, sails, and other gear of the
wherry, while as I toddled alongside him I held on with one hand to the
skirt of his pea jacket, and griped the boat hook which had been given
to my charge with the other. From the front of the well known inn, the "Keppel's Head," the portrait
of the brave old admiral, which I always looked at with awe and
admiration, thinking what a great man he must have been, gazed sternly
down on us as we made our way along the Common Hard of Portsea towards
the water's edge. Father and Jack hauled in the wherry, and having deposited their burdens
in her, set to work to mop her out and to put her to rights, while I
stood, still grasping the boat hook, which I held upright with the point
in the ground, watching their proceedings, till father, lifting me up in
his arms, placed me in the stern sheets. "Sit there, Peter, and mind you don't topple overboard, my son," he
said, in the kind tone in which he always spoke to me and Jack. I was too small to be of much use, indeed father had hitherto only taken
me with him when he was merely going across to Gosport and back or
plying about the harbour. It was a more eventful day to Jack than to me. When I saw mother
packing his bag, I had a sort of idea that he was going to sea, and when
the next morning she threw her arms round his neck and burst into tears,
and Jack began to cry too, I understood that he would be away for a long
time. Jack had been of great use to father, who grieved as much as mother to
part with him, but, as he said, he wouldn't, if he could help it, bring
him up as a long shore lubber, and a few voyages would be the making of
him. "He can't get none of the right sort of eddication on shore," observed
father. "He'll learn on board a man of war what duty and discipline
mean, and to my mind till a lad knows that he isn't worth his salt... Continue reading book >>
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Genres for this book |
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Adventure |
Fiction |
Teen/Young adult |
Travel |
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Wikipedia – William Henry Giles Kingston |
Wikipedia – Peter Trawl The Adventures of a Whaler |
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