The Cruise of the Snark
Encyclopedia
The Cruise of the Snark (1911) is a non-fictional, illustrated book by Jack London
chronicling his sailing adventure in 1907 across the south Pacific in his ketch
the Snark. Accompanying London on this voyage was his wife Charmian and a small crew. London taught himself celestial navigation
and the basics of sailing and of boats during the course of this adventure and describes these details to the reader. He visits exotic locations including the Solomon Islands
and Hawaii
, and his first-person accounts and photographs provide insight into these remote places at the beginning of the 20th century.
's poem The Hunting of the Snark
. The Snark had two masts and was 43 feet long at the waterline, and on it London claims to have spent thirty thousand dollars. The snark was primarily a sailboat, however, it also had an auxiliary 70-horsepower engine. It was further equipped with one lifeboat.
In 1906, Author Jack London
began to build a 45-foot yacht on which he planned a round-the-world voyage, to last seven years. After many delays, Jack and Charmian London and a small crew sailed out of San Francisco Bay on April 23, 1907, bound for the South Pacific.
The log of the Snark states:
One of London's crew members was young Martin Johnson
from Kansas. Following the cruise of the Snark, Martin became an adventurer and world traveler, making some of the earliest motion pictures of unexplored or less-explored areas and peoples of the earth.
The Snark first set sail out of San Francisco on April 23, 1907 following construction and several months of delay.
While in Hawaii, London learned the "Royal Sport" of surfing
, visited the Leper colony on Molokai
and traveled by horseback on Maui
around Haleakala
and to Hana.
London ended his voyage in Sydney
, spending five weeks in a hospital recovering from an illness.
Additional essays from the voyage also appeared in Pacific Monthly and Harper's Weekly prior to publication of the Cruise of the snark.
Charmain London subsequently authored two novels detailing their adventures aboard the Snark and their extended visits in Hawaii:
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
chronicling his sailing adventure in 1907 across the south Pacific in his ketch
Ketch
A ketch is a sailing craft with two masts: a main mast, and a shorter mizzen mast abaft of the main mast, but forward of the rudder post. Both masts are rigged mainly fore-and-aft. From one to three jibs may be carried forward of the main mast when going to windward...
the Snark. Accompanying London on this voyage was his wife Charmian and a small crew. London taught himself celestial navigation
Celestial navigation
Celestial navigation, also known as astronavigation, is a position fixing technique that has evolved over several thousand years to help sailors cross oceans without having to rely on estimated calculations, or dead reckoning, to know their position...
and the basics of sailing and of boats during the course of this adventure and describes these details to the reader. He visits exotic locations including the Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...
and Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
, and his first-person accounts and photographs provide insight into these remote places at the beginning of the 20th century.
About the Snark
The Snark was named after Lewis CarrollLewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
's poem The Hunting of the Snark
The Hunting of the Snark
The Hunting of the Snark is usually thought of as a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll in 1874, when he was 42 years old...
. The Snark had two masts and was 43 feet long at the waterline, and on it London claims to have spent thirty thousand dollars. The snark was primarily a sailboat, however, it also had an auxiliary 70-horsepower engine. It was further equipped with one lifeboat.
In 1906, Author Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
began to build a 45-foot yacht on which he planned a round-the-world voyage, to last seven years. After many delays, Jack and Charmian London and a small crew sailed out of San Francisco Bay on April 23, 1907, bound for the South Pacific.
"We ran down the Langa Langa LagoonLanga Langa LagoonLanga Langa Lagoon or Akwalaafu is a natural lagoon on the West coast of Malaita near the provincial capital Auki within the Solomon Islands. The lagoon is 21 km in length and just under 1 km wide...
, between mangrove swamps through passages scarcely wider than the Minota, and passed the reef villages of Kaloka and AukiAukiAuki is the provincial capital of Malaita Province, Solomon Islands. It is situated on the northern end of Langalanga Lagoon on the north-west coast of Malaita Island. There are daily flights between the Solomons capital of Honiara and Auki...
. Like the founders of Venice, these salt-water men were originally refugees from the mainland. Too weak to hold their own in the bush, survivors of village massacres, they fled to the sand-banks of the lagoon. These sand-banks they built up into islands. They were compelled to seek their provender from the sea. They developed canoe-bodies, unable to walk about, spending all their time in the canoes, they became thick-armed and broad-shouldered with narrow waists and frail spindly legs" (p 138)
"I sailed in the teak-built ketch, the Minota, on a blackbirdingBlackbirdingBlackbirding is a term that refers to recruitment of people through trickery and kidnappings to work as labourers. From the 1860s blackbirding ships were engaged in seeking workers to mine the guano deposits on the Chincha Islands in Peru...
cruise to Malaita, and I took my wife along. The hatchet-marks were still raw on the door of our tiny stateroom advertising an event of a few months before. The event was the taking of Captain Mackenzie's head, Captain Mackenzie, at that time, being master of the Minota.... As we sailed in to Langa-Langa on the shore side of the lagoon, was Binu, the place where the Minota was captured a year previously and her captain killed by the bushmen of Malaita, having been hacked to pieces and eaten" (p 135)
The log of the Snark states:
"..still bore the tomahawk marks where the MalaitaMalaitaMalaita is the largest island of the Malaita Province in the Solomon Islands. A tropical and mountainous island, Malaita's pristine river systems and tropical forests have not been exploited. Malaita is the most populous island of the Solomon Islands, with 140,000 people or more than a third of the...
ns at Langa Langa several months before broke in for the trove of rifles and ammunition locked therein, after bloodily slaughtering Jansen's predecessor, Captain Mackenzie. The burning of the vessel was somehow prevented by the black crew, but this was so unprecedented that the owner feared some complicity between them and the attacking party. However, it could not be proved, and we sailed with the majority of this same crew. The present skipper smilingly warned us that the same tribe still required two more heads from the Minota, to square up for deaths on the Ysabel plantation. (p 387)
One of London's crew members was young Martin Johnson
Martin and Osa Johnson
Martin Johnson and his wife Osa Johnson were American adventurers and documentary filmmakers.-Biography:...
from Kansas. Following the cruise of the Snark, Martin became an adventurer and world traveler, making some of the earliest motion pictures of unexplored or less-explored areas and peoples of the earth.
Locations Visited by the Snark
- San Francisco
The Snark first set sail out of San Francisco on April 23, 1907 following construction and several months of delay.
- HawaiiHawaiiHawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
While in Hawaii, London learned the "Royal Sport" of surfing
Surfing
Surfing' is a surface water sport in which the surfer rides a surfboard on the crest and face of a wave which is carrying the surfer towards the shore...
, visited the Leper colony on Molokai
Molokai
Molokai or Molokai is an island in the Hawaiian archipelago. It is 38 by 10 miles in size with a land area of , making it the fifth largest of the main Hawaiian Islands and the 27th largest island in the United States. It lies east of Oahu across the 25-mile wide Kaiwi Channel and north of...
and traveled by horseback on Maui
Maui
The island of Maui is the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands at and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is part of the state of Hawaii and is the largest of Maui County's four islands, bigger than Lānai, Kahoolawe, and Molokai. In 2010, Maui had a population of 144,444,...
around Haleakala
Haleakala
Haleakalā , or the East Maui Volcano, is a massive shield volcano that forms more than 75% of the Hawaiian Island of Maui. The western 25% of the island is formed by the West Maui Mountains.- History :...
and to Hana.
- Marquesas IslandsMarquesas IslandsThe Marquesas Islands enana and Te Fenua `Enata , both meaning "The Land of Men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southern Pacific Ocean. The Marquesas are located at 9° 00S, 139° 30W...
including the island of Taiohee - TahitiTahitiTahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...
including the town of PapeetePapeete-Sights:* Interactive Google map of Papeete, to discover the 30 major tourist attractions in Papeete downtown.*The waterfront esplanade*Bougainville Park -Sights:* Interactive Google map of Papeete, to discover the 30 major tourist attractions in Papeete downtown.*The waterfront...
, and the islands of RaiateaRaiateaRaiatea , is the second largest of the Society Islands, after Tahiti, in French Polynesia. The island is widely regarded as the 'center' of the eastern islands in ancient Polynesia and it is likely that the organised migrations to Hawaii, Aotearoa and other parts of East Polynesia started at...
, - Bora BoraBora BoraThe commune of Bora-Bora is made up of the island of Bora Bora proper with its surrounding islets emerging from the coral reef, 29.3 km² in total, and of the atoll of Tupai , located north of Bora Bora...
- FijiFijiFiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
- SamoaSamoaSamoa , officially the Independent State of Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa is a country encompassing the western part of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It became independent from New Zealand in 1962. The two main islands of Samoa are Upolu and one of the biggest islands in...
- Solomon IslandsSolomon IslandsSolomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...
, MalaitaMalaitaMalaita is the largest island of the Malaita Province in the Solomon Islands. A tropical and mountainous island, Malaita's pristine river systems and tropical forests have not been exploited. Malaita is the most populous island of the Solomon Islands, with 140,000 people or more than a third of the...
, Langa Langa LagoonLanga Langa LagoonLanga Langa Lagoon or Akwalaafu is a natural lagoon on the West coast of Malaita near the provincial capital Auki within the Solomon Islands. The lagoon is 21 km in length and just under 1 km wide...
, Laulasi IslandLaulasi IslandLaulasi island is an artificial island in the Langa Langa Lagoon, South of Auki on the island of Malaita in the Solomon Islands. It is believed that Headhunter tribes from mainland Malaita forced some people into the lagoon where over time they built their islands on sandbars after diving for coral... - AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
London ended his voyage in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, spending five weeks in a hospital recovering from an illness.
Media coverage
London's voyage garnered some media attention from the point when he first set out into the Pacific. Concern was raised that the Snark might be lost when London failed to arrive in the Marquesas Islands on schedule.Related Works
Jack London's "The Lepers of Molokai" first appeared as articles in the Woman's Home Companion (1908) and the Contemporary Review (1909).Additional essays from the voyage also appeared in Pacific Monthly and Harper's Weekly prior to publication of the Cruise of the snark.
Charmain London subsequently authored two novels detailing their adventures aboard the Snark and their extended visits in Hawaii:
- The Log of the Snark (1915)
- Our Hawaii (1917)